HOST. How now?

PROD.  How now? now the devil take thee! 
Can calling, nor knocking, nor nothing, awake thee?

HOST. Now, sir, what lack ye?

PROD.  Lodging.

HOST. What are you?

PROD.  Gentlemen.  Seest thou not?

HOST. Whence come ye?

PROD.  What skills that? open the gate.

HOST. Nay, soft a while, I am not wont so late
To take in guests.  I like ye not:  away.

PROD.  Nay, stay awhile, mine host; I pray thee, stay,
Open the gate, I pray thee heartily,
And what we take we will pay thee royally.

HOST. And would ye have lodging then?

PROD.  Yea, rather than my life.

HOST. Then stay a while; I’ll first go ask my wife.

PROD.  Nay, nay, send her rather to me: 
If she be a pretty wench, we shall soon agree.

POST. Now a bots[381] on him and his wife both for me! [Aside.

HOST. Then you would have lodgings belike, sir?

PROD.  Yea, I pray thee come quickly.

HOST. What’s your name, and please you?

PROD.  Prodigality.

HOST. And will you indeed spend lustily?

PROD.  Yea, that I will.

HOST. And take that ye find patiently?

PROD.  What else?

HOST. And pay what I ask willingly?

PROD.  Yea, all reckonings unreasonably.

HOST. Well, go too; for this once I am content to receive ye:  come on, sir, I daresay you are almost weary.

PROP.  Thou may’st swear it.

[Exeunt.

SCENE III.

Enter VIRTUE and EQUITY.

VIR.  O most unhappy state of reckless humane kind! 
O dangerous race of man, unwitty, fond and blind! 
O wretched worldlings, subject to all misery,
When fortune is the prop of your prosperity! 
Can you so soon forget, that you have learn’d of yore
The grave divine precepts, the sacred wholesome lore,
That wise philosophers with painful industry
Have[382] written and pronounc’d for man’s felicity? 
Whilome [it] hath been taught, that Fortune’s hold is tickle;
She bears a double face, disguised, false and fickle,
Full fraughted with all sleights, she playeth on the pack;
On whom she smileth most, she turneth most to wrack. 
The time hath been, when Virtue had[383] the sovereignty
Of greatest price, and plac’d in chiefest dignity;
But topsy-turvy now the world is turn’d about: 
Proud Fortune is preferr’d, poor Virtue clean thrust out. 
Man’s sense so dulled is, so all things come to pass,
Above the massy gold t’esteem the brittle glass.

EQ.  Madam, have patience, Dame Virtue must sustain,
Until the heavenly powers do otherwise ordain.

VIR.  Equity, for my part, I envy not her state,
Nor yet mislike the meanness of my simple rate. 
But what the heavens assign, that do I still think best: 
My fame was never yet by Fortune’s frown opprest: 
Here, therefore, will I rest in this my homely bower,
With patience to abide the storms of every shower.