[36]
SUM. O vanity itself: O wit ill-spent!
So study thousands not to mend their lives,
But to maintain the sin they most affect,
To be hell's advocates 'gainst their own souls.
Ver, since thou giv'st such praise to beggary,
And hast defended it so valiantly,
This be thy penance: thou shalt ne'er appear
Or come abroad, but Lent shall wait on thee:
His scarcity may countervail thy waste.
Riot may flourish, but finds want at last.
Take him away that knoweth no good way,
And lead him the next way to woe and want. [_Exit_ VER.
Thus in the paths of knowledge many stray,
And from the means of life fetch their decay.
WILL SUM. Heigho. Here is a coil indeed to bring beggars to stocks. I
promise you truly I was almost asleep; I thought I had been at a sermon.
Well, for this one night's exhortation, I vow, by God's grace, never to
be good husband while I live. But what is this to the purpose? "Hur come
to Fowl," as the Welshman says, "and hur pay an halfpenny for hur seat,
and hur hear the preacher talg, and hur talg very well, by gis[37]; but
yet a cannot make her laugh: go to a theatre and hear a Queen's Fice,
and he make hur laugh, and laugh hur belly full." So we come hither to
laugh and be merry, and we hear a filthy, beggarly oration in the praise
of beggary.
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