A Select Collection of Old English Plays, Vol. VIII (4th edition) | Page 6

_goes in, and fetcheth out the hobby-horse[27] and the morris-dance, who dance about_.
SUM. How now? is this the reckoning we shall have?
WIN. My lord, he doth abuse you; brook it not.
AUT. _Summa totalis_, I fear, will prove him but a fool.
VER. About, about! lively, put your horse to it, rein him harder; jerk him with your wand: sit fast, sit fast, man! fool, hold up your ladle there.
WILL SUM. O brave Hall![28] O, well-said, butcher. Now for the credit of Worcestershire. The finest set of morris-dancers that is between this and Streatham. Marry, methinks there is one of them danceth like a clothier's horse, with a woolpack on his back. You, friend with the hobby-horse, go not too fast, for fear of wearing out my lord's tile-stones with your hobnails.
VER. So, so, so; trot the ring twice over, and away. May it please my lord, this is the grand capital sum; but there are certain parcels behind, as you shall see.
SUM. Nay, nay, no more; for this is all too much.
VER. Content yourself; we'll have variety.
Here enter three CLOWNS and three MAIDS, _singing this song, dancing:--
Trip and go, heave and hoe, Up and down, to and fro; From the town to the grove, Two and two let us rove. A maying, a playing: Love hath no gainsaying; So merrily trip and go_.
WILL SUM. Beshrew my heart, of a number of ill legs I never saw worse dancers. How bless'd are you, that the wenches of the parish do not see you!
SUM. Presumptuous Ver, uncivil-nurtur'd boy? Think'st I will be derided thus of thee? Is this th'account and reckoning that thou mak'st?
VER. Troth, my lord, to tell you plain, I can give you no other account; _nam quae habui perdidi_; what I had, I spent on good fellows; in these sports you have seen, which are proper to the spring, and others of like sort (as giving wenches green gowns,[29] making garlands for fencers, and tricking up children gay), have I bestowed all my flowery treasure and flower of my youth.
WILL SUM. A small matter. I know one spent in less than a year eight and fifty pounds in mustard, and another that ran in debt, in the space of four or five year, above fourteen thousand pound in lute-strings and grey-paper.[30]
SUM. O monstrous unthrift! who e'er heard the like? The sea's vast throat, in so short tract of time, Devoureth nor consumeth half so much. How well might'st thou have liv'd within thy bounds.
VER. What, talk you to me of living within my bounds? I tell you none but asses live within their bounds: the silly beasts, if they be put in a pasture, that is eaten bare to the very earth, and where there is nothing to be had but thistles, will rather fall soberly to those thistles and be hunger-starv'd, than they will offer to break their bounds; whereas the lusty courser, if he be in a barren plot, and spy better grass in some pasture near adjoining, breaks over hedge and ditch, and to go, ere he will be pent in, and not have his bellyful. Peradventure, the horses lately sworn to be stolen,[31] carried that youthful mind, who, if they had been asses, would have been yet extant.
WILL SUM. Thus, we may see, the longer we live the more we shall learn: I ne'er thought honesty an ass till this day.
VER. This world is transitory; it was made of nothing, and it must to nothing: wherefore, if we will do the will of our high Creator, whose will it is that it pass to nothing, we must help to consume it to nothing. Gold is more vile than men: men die in thousands and ten thousands, yea, many times in hundred thousands, in one battle. If then the best husband has been so liberal of his best handiwork, to what end should we make much of a glittering excrement, or doubt to spend at a banquet as many pounds as he spends men at a battle? Methinks I honour _Geta_, the Roman emperor, for a brave-minded fellow; for he commanded a banquet to be made him of all meats under the sun, which were served in after the order of the alphabet, and the clerk of the kitchen, following the last dish, which was two miles off from the foremost, brought him an index of their several names. Neither did he pingle, when it was set on the board, but for the space of three days and three nights never rose from the table.
WILL SUM. O intolerable lying villain, that was never begotten without the consent of a whetstone![32]
SUM. Ungracious man, how fondly he argueth!
VER. Tell me, I pray, wherefore was gold laid under our feet in the veins of the earth, but that we should