come away; when I had my things but now brought me out of the laundry.
God forgive me, I did not see my Lord before! I'll set a good face on
it, as though what I had talk'd idly all this while were my part. So it
is, _boni viri_, that one fool presents another; and I, a fool by nature
and by art, do speak to you in the person of the idiot of our
play-maker. He, like a fop and an ass, must be making himself a public
laughingstock, and have no thank for his labour; where other Magisterii,
whose invention is far more exquisite, are content to sit still and do
nothing. I'll show you what a scurvy Prologue he had made me, in an old
vein of similitudes: if you be good fellows, give it the hearing, that
you may judge of him thereafter.




THE PROLOGUE.


At a solemn feast of the Triumviri in Rome, it was seen and observed
that the birds ceased to sing, and sat solitary on the housetops, by
reason of the sight of a painted serpent set openly to view. So fares it
with us novices, that here betray our imperfections: we, afraid to look
on the imaginary serpent of envy, painted in men's affections, have
ceased to tune any music of mirth to your ears this twelvemonth,
thinking that, as it is the nature of the serpent to hiss, so childhood
and ignorance would play the gosling, contemning and condemning what
they understood not. Their censures we weigh not, whose senses are not
yet unswaddled. The little minutes will be continually striking, though
no man regard them: whelps will bark before they can see, and strive to
bite before they have teeth. Politianus speaketh of a beast who, while