PHANTASMA. Habet et musca splenem, et formicae sua bilis inest.
INGENIOSO. Gramercy,[118] good lads. This is our share in happiness, to torment the happy. Let's walk along and laugh at the jest; it's no staying here long, lest Sir Raderic's army of bailiffs and clowns be sent to apprehend us.
PHANTASMA.
Procul hinc, procul ite, profani.
I'll lash Apollo's self with jerking hand,
Unless he pawn his wit to buy me land.
ACTUS IV., SCAENA 3.
BURBAGE, KEMP.
BURBAGE. Now, Will Kemp, if we can entertain these scholars at a low rate, it will be well; they have oftentimes a good conceit in a part.
KEMP. It's true, indeed, honest Dick, but the slaves are somewhat proud; and besides, it's a good sport in a part to see them never speak in their walk, but at the end of the stage; just as though, in walking with a fellow, we should never speak but at a stile, a gate, or a ditch, where a man can go no further. I was once at a comedy in Cambridge, and there I saw a parasite make faces and mouths of all sorts on this fashion.
BURBAGE. A little teaching will mend these faults; and it may be, besides, they will be able to pen a part.
KEMP.
Few of the university pen play well; they smell too much of that writer
Ovid and that writer Metamorphosis, and talk too much of Proserpina and
Jupiter. Why, here's our fellow Shakespeare puts them all down—ay, and
Ben Jonson too. O, that Ben Jonson is a pestilent fellow; he brought up
Horace, giving the poets a pill;[119] but our fellow Shakespeare hath
given him a purge that made him bewray his credit.
BURBAGE. It's a shrewd fellow, indeed. I wonder these scholars stay so long; they appointed to be here presently, that we might try them. O, here they come.