DEFENSOR. 
It’s but a Christmas toy; and may it please your courtesies to let it pass.

MOMUS. 
It’s a Christmas toy, indeed! as good a conceit as sloughing[26]
hotcockles or blindman-buff.

DEFENSOR. 
Some humours you shall see aimed at, if not well-resembled.

MOMUS.  Humours, indeed!  Is it not a pretty humour to stand hammering upon two individuum vagum, two scholars, some whole year?  These same Philomusus and Studioso have been followed with a whip and a verse, like a couple of vagabonds, through England and Italy.  The Pilgrimage to Parnassus and the Return from Parnassus have stood the honest stagekeepers in many a crown’s expense for links and vizards; purchased a sophister a knock with[27] a club; hindered the butler’s box,[28] and emptied the college barrels:  and now, unless you know the subject well, you may return home as wise as you came, for this last is the least part of the return from Parnassus:  that is both the first and last time that the author’s wit will turn upon the toe in this vein, and at this time the scene is not at Parnassus, that is, looks not good invention in the face.

DEFENSOR. 
If the catastrophe please you not, impute it to the unpleasing fortunes
of discontented scholars.

MOMUS. 
For catastrophe, there’s never a tale in Sir John Mandeville or Bevis
of Southampton, but hath a better turning.

STAGEKEEPER. 
What, you jeering ass! begone, with a pox!

MOMUS. 
You may do better to busy yourself in providing beer; for the show
will be pitiful dry, pitiful dry. [Exit.

STAGEKEEPER. 
No more of this:  I heard the spectators ask for a blank verse. 
What we show is but a Christmas jest;
Conceive of this, and guess of all the rest: 
Full like a scholar’s hapless fortune’s penn’d,
Whose former griefs seldom have happy end. 
Frame as well we might with easy strain,
With far more praise and with as little pain,
Stories of love, where forne[29] the wond’ring bench
The lisping gallant might enjoy his wench;
Or make some sire acknowledge his lost son: 
Found, when the weary act is almost done.[30]
Nor unto this, nor unto that our scene is bent;
We only show a scholar’s discontent. 
In scholars’ fortunes, twice forlorn and dead,
Twice hath our weary pen erst laboured;
Making them pilgrims in Parnassus’ Hill,
Then penning their return with ruder quill. 
Now we present unto each pitying eye
The scholars’ progress in their misery: 
Refined wits, your patience is our bliss;
Too weak our scene, too great your judgment is: 
To you we seek to show a scholar’s state,
His scorned fortunes, his unpity’d fate;
To you:  for if you did not scholars bless,
Their case, poor case, were too-too pitiless. 
You shade the muses under fostering,
And made[31] them leave to sigh, and learn to sing.