Unwise woman, say me why
  That thou hast done this foul folly,
  And I made thee a great lady,
    In Paradise for to play?

As they leave the gates, the angel with the flaming sword ends his speech thus: 

  This bliss I spere from you right fast; bar.
    Herein come ye no more,
  Till a child of a maid be born,
  And upon the rood rent and torn,
  To save all that ye have forlorn, lost.
    Your wealth for to restore.

Eve laments bitterly, and at length offers her throat to her husband, praying him to strangle her: 

  Now stumble we on stalk and stone;
  My wit away from me is gone;
    Writhe on to my neck-bone
      With hardness of thine hand.

Adam replies—­not over politely—­

  Wife, thy wit is not worth a rush;

and goes on to make what excuse for themselves he can in a very simple and touching manner: 

  Our hap was hard, our wit was nesche, soft, weak, still in use in
    To Paradise when we were brought:  [some provinces. 
  My weeping shall be long fresh;
    Short liking shall be long bought. pleasure.

The scene ends with these words from Eve: 

  Alas, that ever we wrought this sin! 
  Our bodily sustenance for to win,
  Ye must delve and I shall spin,
    In care to lead our life.

Cain and Abel follows; then Noah’s Flood, in which God says,

  They shall not dread the flood’s flow;

then Abraham’s Sacrifice; then Moses and the Two Tables; then The Prophets, each of whom prophesies of the coming Saviour; after which we find ourselves in the Apocryphal Gospels, in the midst of much nonsense about Anna and Joachim, the parents of Mary, about Joseph and Mary and the birth of Jesus, till we arrive at The Shepherds and The Magi, The Purification, The Slaughter of the Innocents, The Disputing in the Temple, The Baptism, The Temptation, and The Woman taken in Adultery, at which point I pause for the sake of the remarkable tradition embodied in the scene—­that each of the woman’s accusers thought Jesus was writing his individual sins on the ground.  While he is writing the second time, the Pharisee, the Accuser, and the Scribe, who have chiefly sustained the dialogue hitherto, separate, each going into a different part of the Temple, and soliloquize thus: 

  Pharisee.  Alas! alas!  I am ashamed! 
    I am afeared that I shall die;
  All my sins even properly named
    Yon prophet did write before mine eye. 
  If that my fellows that did espy,
    They will tell it both far and wide;
  My sinful living if they outcry,
    I wot not where my head to hide.