Enter ROBIN GOODFELLOW[448] with his master’s gown.

ROB.  Many good-morrows to my gentle master
And my new mistress; God give you both joy! 
What say you to your gown, sir, this cold morning?

CAS.  Robin, I am undone, and cast away!

ROB.  How, master, cast away upon a wife?

CAS.  Yea, Robin, cast away upon a wife.

ROB.  Cast her away then, master, can you not?

MAR.  No, sir, he cannot, nor he shall not do it.

ROB.  Why, how know you?  I am sure you are not she.

MAR.  Yes, sir, I am your mistress, as it falls.

ROB.  As it falls, quoth ye? marry, a foul fall is it.

MAR.  Base rascal, dost thou say that I am foul?

ROB.  No, it was foul play for him to fall upon you.

MAR.  How know you that he fell? were you so nigh?

[She giveth ROBIN a box on the ear.

ROB.  Mass, it should seem it was he that fell, if any,
For you (methinks) are of a mounting nature: 
What, at my ears at first? a good beginning.

LACY.  My dear delight, why dost thou stain thy cheeks,
Those rosy beds, with this unseemly dew? 
Shake off those tears, that now untimely fall,
And smile on me, that am thy summer’s joy.

HON.  Hapless am I to lose so sweet a prison,
Thus to obtain a weary liberty. 
Happy had I been so to have remain’d,
Of which estate I ne’er should have complain’d.

ROB.  Whoop, whoo! more marriages! and all of a sort.  Happy are they, I see, that live without them:  if this be the beginning, what will be the ending?

    Enter EARL MORGAN and DUNSTAN.

MOR.  Look, Dunstan, where they be; displeas’d, no doubt,
Try, if thou canst work reconciliation.

CAS.  My lord, I challenge you of breach of promise,
And claim your daughter here to be my wife.

LACY.  Your claim is nought, sir; she is mine already.

HON.  Your claim is nought, sir; I am none of yours.

MAR.  Your claim is here, sir; Marian is yours. 
What, husband, newly married and inconstant! 
’Greed we so well together all this night,
And must we now fall out? for shame, for shame! 
A man of your years, and be so unstay’d! 
Come, come away, there may no other be;
I will have you, therefore you shall have me.

ROB.  This is the bravest country in the world,
Where men get wives, whether they will or no: 
I trow ere long some wench will challenge me.

CAS.  O, is not this a goodly consequence? 
I must have her, because she will have me!

DUN.  Ladies and gentlemen, hear Dunstan speak. 
Marriage, no doubt, is ordain’d by providence;
Is sacred, not to be by vain affect
Turn’d to the idle humours of men’s brains. 
Besides, for you, my lady Honorea,
Your duty binds you to obey your father,
Who better knows what fits you than yourself;
And ’twere in you great folly to neglect
The earl’s great love, whereof you are unworthy,
Should you but seem offended with the match. 
Therefore submit yourself to make amends,
For ’tis your fault; so may you all be friends.