And hence it cometh, lo, that by reason of this favour for a time we wax, as I said, so wanton, that we forget where we are.  And we think that we are lords at large, whereas we are indeed, if we would consider, even poor wretches in prison.  For, of very truth, our very prison this earth is.  And yet we apportion us out divers parts of it diversely to ourselves, part by covenants that we make among ourselves, and part by fraud and violence too.  And we change its name from the odious name of prison, and call it our own land and our livelihood.  Upon our prison we build; our prison we garnish with gold and make it glorious.  In this prison they buy and sell; in this prison they brawl and chide.  In this they run together and fight; in this they dice; in this they play at cards.  In this they pipe and revel; in this they sing and dance.  And in this prison many a man who is reputed right honest forbeareth not, for his pleasure in the dark, privily to play the knave.

And thus, while God our king and our chief jailor too, suffereth us and letteth us alone, we think ourselves at liberty.  And we abhor the state of those whom we call prisoners, taking ourselves for no prisoners at all.  In this false persuasion of wealth and forgetfulness of our own wretched state, which is but a wandering about for a while in this prison of this world, till we be brought unto the execution of death, we forget in our folly both ourselves and our jail, and our under-jailors the angels and devils both, and our chief jailor God too—­God, who forgetteth not us, but seeth us all the while well enough.  And being sore discontent to see so ill rule kept in the jail, he sendeth the hangman Death to put some to execution here and there, sometimes by the thousands at once.  And he handleth many of the rest, whose execution he forbeareth yet unto a farther time, even as hardly and punisheth them as sorely, in this common prison of the world, as there are any handled in those special prisons which, for the hard handling used in them, you say your heart hath in such horror and so sore abhorreth.

VINCENT:  The rest will I not gainsay, for methinketh I see it so indeed.  But that God, our chief jailor in this world, useth any such prisonly fashion of punishment, that point must I needs deny.  For I see him neither lay any man in the stocks, nor strike fetters on his legs, nor so much as shut him up in a chamber, neither.

ANTHONY:  Is he no minstrel, cousin, who playeth not on a harp?  Maketh no man melody but he who playeth on a lute?  He may be a minstrel and make melody, you know, with some other instrument—­a strange-fashioned one, peradventure, that never was seen before.