Was by their cunning made the go-between,
The only messenger, the token-carrier;
Told them the times when they might fitly meet,
Nay, shew’d the way to one another’s bed?’
To which Gonzago replies, in a strain of exulting dotage:
‘May one have the sight of such a fellow for nothing? Doth there breathe such an egregious ass? Is there such a foolish animal in rerum natura? How is it possible such a simplicity can exist? Let us not lose our laughing at him, for God’s sake; let folly’s sceptre light upon him, and to the ship of fools with him instantly.
Dondolo. Of all these follies I arrest your grace.’
Molière has built a play on nearly the same foundation, which is not much superior to the present. Marston, among other topics of satire, has a fling at the pseudo-critics and philosophers of his time, who were ‘full of wise saws and modern instances.’ Thus he freights his Ship of Fools:
‘Dondolo. Yes, yes; but they got a supersedeas; all of them proved themselves either knaves or madmen, and so were let go: there’s none left now in our ship but a few citizens that let their wives keep their shop-books, some philosophers, and a few critics; one of which critics has lost his flesh with fishing at the measure of Plautus’ verses; another has vowed to get the consumption of the lungs, or to leave to posterity the true orthography and pronunciation of laughing.
Hercules. But what philosophers ha’ ye?