PAGE.
Thrice noble lord, let me entreat of you
To pardon me yet for a night or two;
Or, if not so, until the sun be set:
For your physicians have expressly charg’d,
In peril to incur your former malady,
That I should yet absent me from your bed:
I hope this reason stands for my excuse.
SLY.
Ay, it stands so that I may hardly tarry so long; but I would be loath to fall into my dreams again: I will therefore tarry in despite of the flesh and the blood.
Enter a Messenger.
MESSENGER.
Your honour’s players, hearing your amendment,
Are come to play a pleasant comedy;
For so your doctors hold it very meet,
Seeing too much sadness hath congeal’d your blood,
And melancholy is the nurse of frenzy:
Therefore they thought it good you hear a play,
And frame your mind to mirth and merriment,
Which bars a thousand harms and lengthens life.
SLY.
Marry, I will; let them play it. Is not a commonty a Christmas gambold or a tumbling-trick?
PAGE.
No, my good lord; it is more pleasing stuff.
SLY.
What! household stuff?
PAGE.
It is a kind of history.
SLY.
Well, we’ll see’t. Come, madam wife, sit by my side and let the world slip: we shall ne’er be younger.