ACADEMICO.  Faith, Ingenioso, I think the university is a melancholic life; for there a good fellow cannot sit two hours in his chamber, but he shall be troubled with the bill of a drawer or a vintner.  But the point is, I know not how to better myself, and so I am fain to take it.

ACTUS V., SCAENA 4.

PHILOMUSUS, STUDIOSO, FUROR, PHANTASMA.

PHILOMUSUS. 
Who have we there?  Ingenioso and Academico?

STUDIOSO. 
The very same; who are those?  Furor and Phantasma?

[FUROR takes a louse off his sleeve.

FUROR. 
And art thou there, six-footed Mercury?

[PHANTASMA, with his hand in his bosom.

Are rhymes become such creepers nowadays? 
Presumptuous louse, that doth good manners lack,
Daring to creep upon poet Furor’s back!

Multum refert quibuscum vixeris: 
Non videmus manticae quod in tergo est.

PHILOMUSUS.  What, Furor and Phantasma too, our old college fellows?  Let us encounter them all.  Ingenioso, Academico, Furor, Phantasma, God save you all.

STUDIOSO. 
What, Ingenioso, Academico, Furor, Phantasma, how do you, brave lads?

INGENIOSO. 
What, our dear friends Philomusus and Studioso?

ACADEMICO. 
What, our old friends Philomusus and Studioso?

FUROR. 
What, my supernatural friends?

INGENIOSO. 
What news with you in this quarter of the city?

PHILOMUSUS. 
We’ve run[134] through many trades, yet thrive by none,
Poor in content, and only rich in moan. 
A shepherd’s life, thou know’st I wont t’admire,
Turning a Cambridge apple by the fire: 
To live in humble dale we now are bent,
Spending our days in fearless merriment.

STUDIOSO. 
We’ll teach each tree, ev’n of the hardest kind,
To keep our woful name within their rind: 
We’ll watch our flock, and yet we’ll sleep withal: 
We’ll tune our sorrows to the water’s fall. 
The woods and rocks with our shrill songs we’ll bless;
Let them prove kind, since men prove pitiless. 
But say, whither are you and your company jogging? it seems by your
apparel you are about to wander.

INGENIOSO. 
Faith we are fully bent to be lords of misrule in the world’s wide
heath:  our voyage is to the Isle of Dogs, there where the blatant beast
doth rule and reign, renting the credit of whom it please. 
Where serpents’ tongues the penmen are to write,
Where cats do wawl by day, dogs by night. 
There shall engorged venom be my ink,
My pen a sharper quill of porcupine,
My stained paper this sin-loaden earth. 
There will I write in lines shall never die,
Our seared lordings’ crying villany.

PHILOMUSUS. 
A gentle wit thou hadst, nor is it blame
To turn so tart, for time hath wrong’d the same.

STUDIOSO. 
And well thou dost from this fond earth to flit,
Where most men’s pens are hired parasites.