on my daughter, that learns to play on the viol-de-gambo—­ Her viol-de-gambo is her best content; For ’twixt her legs she holds her instrument.  Very knavish, very knavish, if you look into it, Master Recorder.  Nay, they have played many a knavish trick beside with me.  Well, ’tis a shame, indeed, there should be any such privilege for proud beggars as Cambridge and Oxford are.  But let them go; and if ever they light in my hands, if I do not plague them, let me never return home again to see my wife’s waiting-maid!

RECORDER. 
This scorn of knights is too egregious: 
But how should these young colts prove amblers,
When the old, heavy, galled jades do trot? 
There shall you see a puny boy start up,
And make a theme against common lawyers;
Then the old, unwieldy camels ’gin to dance,
This fiddling boy playing a fit of mirth;
The greybeards scrub, and laugh, and cry, Good, good! 
To them again, boy; scourge the barbarians. 
But we may give the losers leave to talk;
We have the coin, then tell them laugh for me. 
Yet knights and lawyers hope to see the day,
When we may share here their possessions,
And make indentures of their chaffer’d skins,
Dice of their bones to throw in merriment.

SIR RADERIC. 
O, good faith, Master Recorder, if I could see that day once?

RECORDER.  Well, remember another day what I say:  scholars are pryed into of late, and are found to be busy fellows, disturbers of the peace.  I’ll say no more; guess at my meaning.  I smell a rat.

SIR RADERIC.  I hope at length England will be wise enough, I hope so, i’faith; then an old knight may have his wench in a corner without any satires or epigrams.  But the day is far spent, Master Recorder; and I fear by this time the unthrift is arrived at the place appointed in Moorfields.  Let us hasten to him. [He looks on his watch.

RECORDER.  Indeed, this day’s subject transported us too late:  [but] I think we shall not come much too late.

[Exeunt.

ACTUS III., SCAENA 3.

    Enter AMORETTO, and his Page, IMMERITO booted.

AMORETTO.  Master Immerito, deliver this letter to the poser in my father’s name.  Marry, withal some sprinkling, some sprinkling; verbum sapienti sat est.  Farewell, Master Immerito.

IMMERITO. 
I thank your worship most heartily.

PAGE.  Is it not a shame to see this old dunce learning his induction at these years?  But let him go, I lose nothing by him; for I’ll be sworn, but for the booty of selling the parsonage, I should have gone in mine old clothes this Christmas.  A dunce, I see, is a neighbour-like brute beast:  a man may live by him. [Aside.

[AMORETTO seems to make verse.

AMORETTO.  A pox on it, my muse is not so witty as she was wont to be:  ——­ Her nose is like ——­ not yet; plague on these mathematics! they have spoiled my brain in making a verse.