ANS.  O, I shall die!

FUL.  Tush! live to laugh a little: 
Here’s the best subject that thy love affords;
Listen awhile and hear this:  ho, boy! speak.

    Enter AMINADAB.

AMIN. As in presenti, thou loath’st the gift I sent thee; Nolo plus tarry, but die for the beauteous Mary; Fain would I die by a sword, but what sword shall I die by?  Or by a stone, what stone? nullus lapis jacet ibi.  Knive I have none to sheathe in my breast, or empty my full veins:  Here’s no wall or post which I can soil with my bruis’d brains; First will I therefore say two or three creeds and Ave Marys, And after go buy a poison at the apothecary’s.

FUL.  I pry thee, Anselm, but observe this fellow;
Doest not hear him? he would die for love;
That misshap’d love thou wouldst condemn in him,
I see in thee:  I prythee, note him well.

ANS.  Were I assur’d that I were such a lover
I should be with myself quite out of love: 
I prythee, let’s persuade him still to live.

FUL.  That were a dangerous case, perhaps the fellow
In desperation would, to soothe us up,
Promise repentant recantation,
And after fall into that desperate course,
Both which I will prevent with policy.

AMIN.  O death! come with thy dart! come, death, when I bid thee! Mors, veni:  veni, mors! and from this misery rid me; She whom I lov’d—­whom I lov’d, even she—­my sweet pretty Mary, Doth but flout and mock, and jest and dissimulary.

FUL.  I’ll fit him finely; in this paper is
The juice of mandrake, by a doctor made
To cast a man, whose leg should be cut off,
Into a deep, a cold, and senseless sleep;
Of such approved operation
That whoso takes it, is for twice twelve hours
Breathless, and to all men’s judgments past all sense;
This will I give the pedant but in sport;
For when ’tis known to take effect in him,
The world will but esteem it as a jest;
Besides, it may be a means to save his life,
For being [not] perfect poison, as it seems
His meaning is, some covetous slave for coin
Will sell it him,[17] though it be held by law
To be no better than flat felony.

ANS.  Uphold the jest—­but he hath spied us; peace!

AMIN.  Gentles, God save you! 
Here is a man I have noted oft, most learn’d in physic,
One man he help’d of the cough, another he heal’d of the pthisic,
And I will board him thus, salve, O salve, magister!

FUL. Gratus mihi advenis! quid mecum vis?

AMIN. Optatus venis; paucis te volo.

FUL. Si quid industria nostra tibi faciet, dic, quaeso.

AMIN.  Attend me, sir;—­I have a simple house,
But, as the learned Diogenes saith
In his epistle to Tertullian,
It is extremely troubled with great rats;
I have no mus puss, nor grey-ey’d cat,
To hunt them out.  O, could your learned art
Show me a means how I might poison them,
Tuus dum suus, Sir Aminadab.