Volpone; Or, the Fox by Ben Jonson
page 46 of 362 (12%)
page 46 of 362 (12%)
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To goldy-lock'd Euphorbus, who was killed in good fashion,
At the siege of old Troy, by the cuckold of Sparta. Hermotimus was next (I find it in my charta) To whom it did pass, where no sooner it was missing But with one Pyrrhus of Delos it learn'd to go a fishing; And thence did it enter the sophist of Greece. From Pythagore, she went into a beautiful piece, Hight Aspasia, the meretrix; and the next toss of her Was again of a whore, she became a philosopher, Crates the cynick, as it self doth relate it: Since kings, knights, and beggars, knaves, lords and fools gat it, Besides, ox and ass, camel, mule, goat, and brock, In all which it hath spoke, as in the cobler's cock. But I come not here to discourse of that matter, Or his one, two, or three, or his greath oath, BY QUATER! His musics, his trigon, his golden thigh, Or his telling how elements shift, but I Would ask, how of late thou best suffered translation, And shifted thy coat in these days of reformation. AND: Like one of the reformed, a fool, as you see, Counting all old doctrine heresy. NAN: But not on thine own forbid meats hast thou ventured? AND: On fish, when first a Carthusian I enter'd. NAN: Why, then thy dogmatical silence hath left thee? AND: Of that an obstreperous lawyer bereft me. |
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