[Exit MENDACIO.

SCAENA QUARTA.

MEMORIA, ANAMNESTES.

MEM.  Ah, you leaden-heeled rascal!

ANA.  Here ’tis, sir; I have it, I have it.

MEM.  Is this all the haste you make?

ANA.  An’t like your worship, your cloghead Oblivio went before me, and foiled the trail of your footsteps, that I could hardly undertake the quest of your purse, forsooth.

MEM.  You might have been here long ere this.  Come hither, sirrah, come hither:  what, must you go round about?  Goodly, goodly, you are full of circumstances.

ANA.  In truth, sir, I was here before, and missing you, went back into the city, sought you in every alehouse, inn, tavern, dicing-house, tennis-court, stews, and such like places, likely to find your worship in.

MEM.  Ha, villain! am I a man likely to be found in such places, ha?

ANA.  No, no, sir; but I was told by my Lady Lingua’s page that your worship was seeking me; therefore I inquired for you in those places, where I knew you would ask for me, an it please your worship.

MEM.  I remember another quarrel, sirrah; but—­well, well, I have no leisure.

SCAENA QUINTA.

    COMMUNIS SENSUS, LINGUA, PHANTASTES, MEMORY, ANAMNESTES.

COM.  SEN.  Lingua, the Senses, by our appointment, anon are to present their objects before us.  Seeing, therefore, they be not in readiness, we license you in the meanwhile, either in your own person or by your advocate, to speak what you can for yourself.

LIN.  My lord, if I should bring before your honour all my friends, ready to importune you in my behalf, I should have so many rhetoricians, logicians, lawyers, and (which is more) so many women, to attend me, that this grove would hardly contain the company; wherefore, to avoid the tediousness, I will lay the whole cause upon the tip of mine own tongue.

COM.  SEN.  Be as brief as the necessity of our short time requires.

LIN.  My lord, though the imbecillitas of my feeble sex might draw me back from this tribunal, with the habenis, to wit timoris and the Catenis pudoris, notwithstanding being so fairly led on with the gracious [Greek:  epiecheia] of your justissime [Greek:  dikaiosynaes].  Especially so aspremente spurd’ con gli sproni di necessita mia pugente, I will without the help of orators commit the totam salutem of my action to the volutabilitati [Greek:  ton gynaicheion logon], which avec vostre bonne plaisir, I will finish with more than Laconica brevitate.

COM.  SEN.  What’s this? here’s a gallimaufry of speech indeed.

MEM.  I remember about the year 1602 many used this skew kind of language which, in my opinion, is not much unlike the man Platony,[251] the son of Lagus, king of Egypt, brought for a spectacle, half-white, half-black.