These pictures must be taken down: 
The portraitures of our most ancient family
For nigh three hundred years!  How have I listen’d,
To hear Sir Walter, with an old man’s pride,
Holding me in his arms, a prating boy,
And pointing to the pictures where they hung,
Repeat by course their worthy histories,
(As Hugh de Widville, Walter, first of the name,
And Anne the handsome, Stephen, and famous John: 
Telling me, I must be his famous John.)
But that was in old times. 
Now, no more
Must I grow proud upon our house’s pride. 
I rather, I, by most unheard-of crimes,
Have backward tainted all their noble blood,
Razed out the memory of an ancient family,
And quite reversed the honors of our house. 
Who now shall sit and tell us anecdotes? 
The secret history of his own times,
And fashions of the world when he was young: 
How England slept out three-and-twenty years,
While Carr and Villiers ruled the baby king: 
The costly fancies of the pedant’s reign,
Balls, feastings, huntings, shows in allegory,
And Beauties of the court of James the First.

MARGARET enters.

John.  Comes Margaret here to witness my disgrace? 
O, lady, I have suffer’d loss,
And diminution of my honor’s brightness. 
You bring some images of old times, Margaret,
That should be now forgotten.

Marg.  Old times should never be forgotten, John.  I came to talk about them with my friend.

John.  I did refuse you, Margaret, in my pride.

Marg.  If John rejected Margaret in his pride,
(As who does not, being splenetic, refuse
Sometimes old playfellows,) the spleen being gone,
The offence no longer lives. 
O Woodvil, those were happy days,
When we two first began to love.  When first,
Under pretence of visiting my father,
(Being then a stripling night upon my age,)
You came a-wooing to his daughter, John. 
Do you remember,
With what a coy reserve and seldom speech,
(Young maidens must be chary of their speech,)
I kept the honors of my maiden pride? 
I was your favorite then.

John.  O Margaret, Margaret! 
These your submissions to my low estate,
And cleavings to the fates of sunken Woodvil,
Write bitter things ’gainst my unworthiness. 
Thou perfect pattern of thy slander’d sex,
Whom miseries of mine could never alienate,
Nor change of fortune shake; whom injuries,
And slights (the worst of injuries) which moved
Thy nature to return scorn with like scorn,
Then when you left in virtuous pride this house,
Could not so separate, but now in this
My day of shame, when all the world forsake me,
You only visit me, love, and forgive me.

Marg.  Dost yet remember the green arbor.  John,
In the south gardens of my father’s house,
Where we have seen the summer sun go down,
Exchanging true love’s vows without restraint? 
And that old wood, you call’d your wilderness,
And vow’d in sport to build a chapel in it,
There dwell