INGENIOSO. So ho, Master Recorder. You that are one of the devil's fellow-commoners; one that sizeth the devil's butteries, sins, and perjuries very lavishly; one that are so dear to Lucifer, that he never puts you out of commons for nonpayment; you that live, like a sumner, upon the sins of the people; you whose vocation serves to enlarge the territories of hell that, but for you, had been no bigger than a pair of stocks or a pillory; you, that hate a scholar because he descries your ass's ears; you that are a plague-stuffed cloak-bag of all iniquity, which the grand serving-man of hell will one day truss up behind him, and carry to his smoky wardrobe.
RECORDER. What frantic fellow art thou, that art possessed with the spirit of malediction?
FUROR.
Vile, muddy clod of base, unhallowed clay,
Thou slimy-sprighted, unkind Saracen,
When thou wert born, Dame Nature cast her calf;
For age and time hath made thee a great ox,
And now thy grinding jaws devour quite
The fodder due to us of heavenly spright.
PHANTASMA.
Nefasto te posuit die,
Quicunque primum, et sacrilegâ manu
Produxit arbos in nepotum
Perniciem obpropriumque pugi.
INGENIOSO. I pray you, Monsieur Ploidon, of what university was the first lawyer of? None, forsooth: for your law is ruled by reason, and not by art; great reason, indeed, that a Polydenist should be mounted on a trapped palfry with a round velvet dish on his head, to keep warm the broth of his wit, and a long gown that makes him look like a Cedant arma togae, whilst the poor Aristotelians walk in a short cloak and a close Venetian hose, hard by the oyster-wife; and the silly poet goes muffled in his cloak to escape the counter. And you, Master Amoretto, that art the chief carpenter of sonnets, a privileged vicar for the lawless marriage of ink and paper, you that are good for nothing but to commend in a set speech, to colour the quantity of your mistress's stool, and swear it is most sweet civet; it's fine, when that puppet-player Fortune must put such a Birchen-Lane post in so good a suit, such an ass in so good fortune!
AMORETTO.
Father, shall I draw?
SIR RADERIC.
No, son; keep thy peace, and hold the peace.
INGENIOSO.
Nay, do not draw, lest you chance to bepiss your credit.
FUROR.
Flectere si nequeo superos, Acheronta movebo.
Fearful Megaera, with her snaky twine,
Was cursed dam unto thy damned self;
And Hircan tigers in the desert rocks
Did foster up thy loathed, hateful life;
Base Ignorance the wicked cradle rock'd,
Vile Barbarism was wont to dandle thee;
Some wicked hellhound tutored thy youth.
And all the grisly sprights of griping hell
With mumming look hath dogg'd thee since thy birth:
See how the spirits do hover o'er thy head,
As thick as gnats in summer eveningtide.
Baleful Alecto, prythee, stay awhile,
Till with my verses I have rack'd his soul;
And when thy soul departs, a cock may be
No blank at all in hell's great lottery—
Shame sits and howls upon thy loathed grave,
And howling, vomits up in filthy guise
The hidden stories of thy villanies.
SIR RADERIC. The devil, my masters, the devil in the likeness of a poet! Away, my masters, away!