the air, touching to the earth, smelling to the fire, tasting to the water, by which five means only the understanding is able to apprehend the knowledge of all corporeal substances:  wherefore we judge you to be no sense simply:  only thus much we from henceforth pronounce, that all women for your sake shall have six senses—­that is, seeing hearing, tasting, smelling, touching, and the last and feminine sense, the sense of speaking.

GUS.  I beseech your lordship and your assistants (the only cause of our friendship) to grace my table with your most welcome presence this night at supper.

COM.  SEN.  I am sorry I cannot stay with you:  you know we may by no means omit our daily attendance at the court, therefore I pray you pardon us.

GUS.  I hope I shall not have the denial at your hands, my masters, and you, my Lady Lingua.  Come, let us drown all our anger in a bowl of hippocras[296].

[Exeunt SENSUS omnes exteriores.

COM.  SEN.  Come, Master Register, shall we walk?

MEM.  I pray you, stay a little.  Let me see! ha, ha, ha, ha, ha!

PHA.  How now, Memory, so merry? what, do you trouble yourself with two palsies at once, shaking and laughing?

MEM.  ’Tis a strange thing that men will so confidently oppose themselves against Plato’s great year.

PHA.  Why not?

MEM.  ’Tis as true an opinion as need be; for I remember it very readily now, that this time 49,000 years ago all we were in this very place, and your lordship judged the very same controversy, after the very same manner, in all respects and circumstances alike.

COM.  SEN.  ’Tis wondrous strange.

ANA.  By the same token you held your staff in your right hand, just as you do now; and Master Phantastes stood wondering at you, gaping as wide as you see him.

PHA.  Ay, but I did not give you a box on the ear, sirrah, 49,000 years ago, did I? [Snap.]

ANA.  I do not remember that, sir.

PHA.  This time Plato’s twelvemonth to come, look you save your cheeks better.

COM.  SEN.  But what entertainment had we at court for our long staying?

MEM.  Let’s go, I’ll tell you as we walk.

PHA.  If I do not seem pranker[297] now than I did in those days, I’ll be hanged.

[Exeunt omnes interiores Sensus:  manet LINGUA.

SCAENA OCTAVA.

LINGUA, MENDACIO.

LIN.  Why, this is good.  By Common Sense’s means,
Lingua, thou hast fram’d a perfect comedy. 
They are all good friends, whom thou mad’st enemies;
And I am half a Sense:  a sweet piece of service,
I promise you, a fair step to preferment! 
Was this the care and labour thou hast taken
To bring thy foes together to a banquet,
To lose thy crown, and be deluded thus! 
Well, now I see my cause is desperate,