cut. I'll once more try her. (Aside.) I have loved thee long, Silena.

Sil. In your t'other hose?

Cand. Too simple to be natural, too senseless to be artificial. (Aside.) You said you went to know your fortune; I am a scholar and cunning in palmistry.

Sil. The better for you, sir: here's my hand, what's a clock?

Cand. The line of life is good; Venus' mount very perfect: you shall have a scholar for your first husband.

Sil. You are well seen in crane's dirt; your father was a poulterer; ha, ha, ha.

Cand. Why laugh you?

Sil. Because you should see my teeth.

Cand. Alas, poor wretch! I see now also thy folly a fair fool is like a fresh weed, pleasing leaves and sour juice. I will not yet leave her, she may dissemble. (Aside.) I cannot choose but love thee.

Sil. I had thought to ask you.

Card. Nay, then, farewell: either too proud to accept, or too simple to understand.

Sil. You need not be crusty, you are not so hard baked.

Cand. Now I perceive thy folly; who hast raked together all the odd blind phrases that help them that know not how to discourse, but when they cannot answer wisely, either with gybing cover their rudeness, or by some new coined by-word bewray* their peevishness; I am

Bewray," to show, to discover. It has much the meaning of betray, but was commonly used at that time.

glad of this now shall I have colour to refuse the match, and my father reason to accept of Livia: I will home, and repeat to my father our wise encounter, and he shall perceive there is nothing so fulsome as a she-fool. [Exit.

Sil. Good God, I think gentlemen had never less wit in a year. We maids are mad wenches, we gird them*, and flout them out of all scotch and notch, and they cannot see it. I will know of the old woman whether I be a maid or no; and then if I be not, I must needs be a man. God be here.

Enter MOTHER Bombie.

Bom. Who's there?

Sil. One that would be a maid.

Bom. If thou be not, it is impossible thou shouldst

be, and a shame thou art not.

Sil. They say you are a witch.

Bom. They lie; I am a cunning woman.

Sil. Then tell me something.

Bom. Hold up thy hand: not so high.

Thy father knows thee not,

Thy mother bare thee not,

Falsely bred,

Truly begot,

Choice of two husbands, but never tied in bands,

Because of love and natural bonds.

Sil. I thank you for nothing, because I understand nothing: though you be as old as you are, yet am I as young as I am; and because that I

am so fair, therefore are you so foul*; and so farewell frost, my fortune nought me cost. [Exit.

Bom. Farewell, fair fool; little dost thou know thy hard fortune; but in the end thou shalt, and that must bewray what none can discover; in the mean season I will profess cunning for all [Exit.

comers.

SCENE IV.

DROMIO, RISIO, LUCIO, and HALFPENNY.

Drom. We are all taken tardy.

Ris. Our masters will be overtaken if they tarry.

Half. Now must every one by wit make an excuse, and every excuse must be cozenage. Luc. Let us remember our complot.

Drom. We will all plod on that. Oh! the wine hath turned my wit to vinegar.

Ris. You mean 'tis sharp.

Half. Sharp! I'll warrant 'twill serve for as good sauce to knavery as

Luc. As what?

Half. As thy knavery's meat for his wit. Drom. We must all give a reckoning for our day's travel.

"And therefore are you so foul:" foul is frequently used by the dramatic writers of that age to denote plainness, or homeliness. In this sense it may be found in the " King and no King" of Beaumont and Fletcher, and in the third Act, third Scene, of "As you like it;" but, it may here possibly allude to the harsh language which Silena supposes she has received from Bombie.

+ " Overtaken," it means made drunk: perhaps Risio also intends to play on the words of Dromio.

Ris. Tush! I am glad we escaped the reckoning for our liquor. If you be examined how we met, swear by chance, for so they met, and therefore will believe it: if how much we drunk, let them answer themselves, they know best because they paid it.

Half. We must not tarry abeundum est mihi, I must go and cast this matter in a corner*. Drom. I, præ sequar, a bowl, and I'll come after with a broom; every one remember his cue. Ris. Aye, and his K, or else we shall thrive ill.

Half. When shall we meet?

Ris. To-morrow, fresh and fasting.

Drom. Fast eating our meat; for we have drunk for to-morrow, and to-morrow we must eat for to-day.

Half. Away, away! if our masters take us here the matter is marr'd.

Luc. Let every one to his task.

[Exeunt.

SCENE V.

MEMPHIO, STELLIO, PRISIUS, and SPÉRANTUS.

Mem. How quickly we met on a sudden in a tavern, that drunk not together almost these thirty years.

Stel. A tavern is the rendezvous, the exchange, the staple for good fellows: I have heard my great grandfather tell, how his great great grand

* The meaning of Halfpenny is, that the liquor hath made him sick the meaning of the bowl and broom will now be clear.

father should say, that it was an old proverb when his great grandfather was a child*, that it was a good wind that blew a man to the wine.

Pris. The old time was a good time; ale was an ancient drink, and accounted of our ancestors authentical. Gascoign wine was a liquor for a lord; sack a medicine for the sick; and I may tell you, he that had a cup of red wine to his oysters was hoisted in the queen's subsidy book.

Sper. Ah! but now you see to what looseness this age is grown our boys carouse sack like double beer, and say that which doth an old man good can do a young man no harm: old men (say they) eat pap, why should not young men drink sack, their white heads have counted time out of mind our young years.

Mem. Well, the world is wanton since I knew it first: our boys put as much wine in their bellies in an hour, as would clothe their whole bodies in a year; and, as I have heard, it was as much as bought Rufus, sometime king of this land, a pair of hose.

Pris. Is't possible?

Stel. Nay, 'tis true: they say ale is out of request; 'tis hog's porridge, broth for beggars, a caudle for constables, watchmen's mouth-glue; the better it is the more like bird-lime it is, and never makes one staid but in the stocks.

Mem. I'll teach my wag-halter to know grapes from barley.

* This passage was probably intended as a sneer at the Popish doctrine of oral tradition; and perhaps Swift had it in his eye when he wrote that passage in his "Tale of a Tub," in which Lord Peter proves their right to wear gold lace.