PHA. A fashion for his suit! Let him button it down the sleeve with four elbows, and so make it the pure hieroglyphic of a fool.
HEU. Nay, then let me request one thing of you.
PHA. What's that, boy? By this fair hand, thou shalt have it.
HEU. Mistress Superbia, a gentlewoman of my acquaintance, wished me to devise her a new set for her ruff and an odd tire. I pray, sir, help me out with it.
PHA. Ah, boy, in my conceit 'tis a hard matter to perform. These women have well-nigh tired me with devising tires for them, and set me at a nonplus for new sets. Their heads are so light, and their eyes so coy, that I know not how to please them.
HEU. I pray, sir, she hath a bad face, and fain would have suitors. Fantastical and odd apparel would perchance draw somebody to look on her.
PHA. If her face be nought, in my opinion, the more view it the worse. Bid her wear the multitude of her deformities under a mask, till my leisure will serve to devise some durable and unstained blush of painting.
HEU. Very good, sir.
PHA. Away, then, hie thee again; meet me at the court within this hour at the farthest. [Exit HEURESIS.] O heavens! how have I been troubled these latter times with women, fools, babes, tailors, poets, swaggerers, gulls, ballad-makers! They have almost disrobed me of all the toys and trifles I can devise. Were it not that I pity the multitude of printers, these sonnet-mongers should starve for conceits for all Phantastes. But these puling lovers—I cannot but laugh at them, and their encomiums of their mistresses. They make, forsooth, her hair of gold, her eyes of diamond, her cheeks of roses, her lips of rubies, her teeth of pearl, and her whole body of ivory; and when they have thus idoled her like Pygmalion, they fall down and worship her.[222] Psyche, thou hast laid a hard task upon my shoulders to invent at every one's ask. Were it not that I refresh my dulness once a day with thy most angelical presence, 'twere impossible for me to undergo it.