have Peter Plod-all, she’ll have anybody; and so I shall be sure that Sophos shall never come at her.  Why, I’ll warrant ye, she’ll be glad to run away with me at length.  Hang him that has no shifts.  I promised Sophos to further him in his suit; but if I do, I’ll be pecked to death with hens.  I swore to Gripe I would persuade Lelia to love Peter Plod-all; but, God forgive me, ’twas the furthest end of my thought.  Tut! what’s an oath? every man for himself:  I’ll shift for one, I warrant ye.
          
                                [Exit.

Enter FORTUNATUS solus.

FORTUNATUS. 
Thus have I pass’d the beating billows of the sea,
By Ithac’s rocks and wat’ry Neptune’s bounds: 
And wafted safe from Mars his bloody fields,
Where trumpets sound tantara to the fight,
And here arriv’d for to repose myself
Upon the borders of my native soil. 
Now, Fortunatus, bend thy happy course
Unto thy father’s house, to greet thy dearest friends;
And if that still thy aged sire survive,
Thy presence will revive his drooping spirits,
And cause his wither’d cheeks be sprent with youthful blood,
Where death of late was portray’d to the quick. 
But, soft; who comes here? [Stand aside.

    Enter ROBIN GOODFELLOW.

ROBIN GOODFELLOW.  I wonder I hear not of Master Churms; I would fain know how he speeds, and what success he has in Lelia’s love.  Well, if he cosen the scholar of her, ’twould make my worship laugh; and if he have her, he may say,—­Godamercy, Robin Goodfellow:  O, ware a good head as long as you live.  Why, Master Gripe, he casts beyond the moon, and Churms is the only man he puts in trust with his daughter; and, I’ll warrant, the old churl would take it upon his salvation that he will persuade her to marry Peter Plod-all.  But I will make a fool of Peter Plod-all; I’ll look him in the face, and pick his purse, whilst Churms cosen him of his wench, and my old grandsire Holdfast of his daughter:  and if he can do so, I’ll teach him a trick to cosen him of his gold too.  Now, for Sophos, let him wear the willow garland, and play the melancholy malcontent, and pluck his hat down in his sullen eyes, and think on Lelia in these desert groves:  ’tis enough for him to have her in his thoughts, although he ne’er embrace her in his arms.  But now there’s a fine device comes into my head to scare the scholar:  you shall see, I’ll make fine sport with him.  They say that every day he keeps his walk amongst these woods and melancholy shades, and on the bark of every senseless tree engraves the tenor of his hapless hope.  Now when he’s at Venus’ altar at his orisons, I’ll put me on my great carnation-nose, and wrap me in a rowsing calf-skin suit, and come like some hobgoblin, or some devil ascended from the grisly pit of hell, and like a scarbabe make him take his legs:  I’ll play the devil, I warrant ye.

[Exit ROBIN GOODFELLOW.