DICER.  What a prodigious knave, what a slave is this? [Aside.

PROD.  Fortune, fine Fortune, you minion, if ye be wise,
Bethink ye betimes, take better advice: 
Restore unto me my money quietly,
Else look for wars:  Vanity, Fortune, Vanity!

DICER.  Sir, you see it booteth not.

PROD.  It is but my ill-luck. 
Now the devil and his dam give them both suck! 
What may we do? what counsel giv’st thou, Dick?

DICER.  Marry, sir, be rul’d by me; I’ll show you a trick,
How you may have him quickly.

PROD.  As how?

DICER.  Scale the walls:  in at the window; by force fet him.

PROD.  None better, in faith; fetch a ladder, and I will set him. 
Fortune, thou injurious dame, thou shalt not by this villany
Have cause to triumph over Prodigality. 
Why speak’st thou not? why speak’st thou not, I say? 
Thy silence doth but breed thine own hurt and decay.

DICER.  Here is a ladder.

PROD.  Set it to.

    [Here PRODIGALITY scaleth; FORTUNE claps a halter
    about his neck; he breaketh the halter, and falls.

PROD.  ’Swounds! help, Dick:  help quickly, or I am chok’d!

DICER.  God-a-mercy, good halter, or else you had been yok’d!

PROD.  O thou vile, ill-favoured, crow-trodden, pye-pecked ront! 
Thou abominable, blind foul-filth,[400] is this thy wont: 
First, maliciously to spoil men of their good,
And then by subtle sleights thus to seek their blood? 
I abhor thee—­I defy thee, wheresoever I go;
I do proclaim myself thy mortal foe.

    [Enter TOM TOSS.][401]

TOM TOSS.  News, Prodigality, news!

DICER.  Good, and God will?

PROD.  What news, Tom?

TOSS.  I have met with Money.

PROD.  Where?

TOSS.  Marry, sir, he is going into a strange country
With an old chuff, called Tenacity.

PROD.  Tenacity? is that tinker’s budget so full of audacity?

TOSS.  ’Tis true.

PROD.  May we not overtake him?

TOSS.  Yes, easily with good horses.

PROD.  Let’s go then, for God’s sake; we’ll catch him in a trap.

DICER and TOSS.  Go; we will go with you, whatever shall hap.

[Exeunt.

SCENE V.

Enter VANITY.[402]

VAN.  O rotten rope, that thou must be so brittle! 
Hadst thou but happened to have held a little,
I had taught my princocks against another time
So to presume Dame Fortune’s bower to climb. 
To make such a ’scape, his hap was very good: 
Well, he ’scaped fair, I swear by the rood: 
But will you have me say my fantasy,
Quod differtur, non aufertur; for assuredly
The gentleman will never hold himself quiet,
Till once more he come to taste of this diet. 
Mark the end.