One would suspect it for a shop of witchcraft, to find in it the fat of serpents, spawn of snakes, Jews’ spittle, and their young children’s ordure; and all these for the face. I would sooner eat a dead pigeon taken from the soles of the feet of one sick of the plague, than kiss one of you fasting. Here are two of you, whose sin of your youth is the very patrimony of the physician; makes him renew his foot-cloth with the spring, and change his high-pric’d courtesan with the fall of the leaf. I do wonder you do not loathe yourselves. Observe my meditation now.
What thing is in this outward form of man
To be belov’d? We account it ominous,
If nature do produce a colt, or lamb,
A fawn, or goat, in any limb resembling
A man, and fly from’t as a prodigy:
Man stands amaz’d to see his deformity
In any other creature but himself.
But in our own flesh though we bear diseases
Which have their true names only ta’en from beasts—
As the most ulcerous wolf and swinish measle—
Though we are eaten up of lice and worms,
And though continually we bear about us
A rotten and dead body, we delight
To hide it in rich tissue: all our fear,
Nay, all our terror, is, lest our physician
Should put us in the ground to be made sweet.—
Your wife’s gone to Rome: you two couple, and get you to the wells at Lucca to recover your aches. I have other work on foot.
I observe our duchess
Is sick a-days, she pukes, her stomach seethes,
The fins of her eyelids look most teeming blue,35
She wanes i’ the cheek, and waxes fat i’ the flank,
And, contrary to our Italian fashion,
Wears a loose-bodied gown: there’s somewhat in’t.
I have a trick may chance discover it,
A pretty one; I have bought some apricocks,
The first our spring yields.
And so long since married?
You amaze me.
Let me seal your lips forever:
For, did I think that anything but th’ air
Could carry these words from you, I should wish
You had no breath at all.—Now, sir, in your contemplation?
You are studying to become a great wise fellow.
I do understand your inside.
Do you so?
Because you would not seem to appear to th’ world
Puff’d up with your preferment, you continue
This out-of-fashion melancholy: leave it, leave it.
You would look up to heaven, but I think
The devil, that rules i’ th’ air, stands in your light.
Your arm, Antonio: do I not grow fat?
I am exceeding short-winded.—Bosola,
I would have you, sir, provide for me a litter;
Such a one as the Duchess of Florence rode in.
The duchess us’d one when she was great with child.
I think she did.—Come hither, mend my ruff:
Here, when? thou art such a tedious lady; and
Thy breath smells of lemon-pills: would thou hadst done!
Shall I swoon under thy fingers? I am
So troubled with the mother!38
Aside. I fear too much.
I have heard you say that the French courtiers
Wear their hats on ’fore that king.
I have seen it.
In the presence?
Yes.
Why should not we bring up that fashion?
’Tis ceremony more than duty that consists
In the removing of a piece of felt.
Be you the
