_1 Serv_. The nearer bedtime,
The better still; my lord will not defer it:
He swears, the clergy are no fit judges
Of our necessities.
_2 Serv_. Where is my lord?
_1 Serv_. Gone out to meet his bride.
_2 Serv_. I wonder that my lady Angelina
Went not with him; she's to be married too.
_1 Serv_. I do not think she fancies much the man:
Only, to make the reconcilement perfect
Betwixt the families, she's passive in it;
The choice being but her brother's, not her own.
_2 Serv_. Troth, were't my case, I cared not who
chose for me.
_1 Serv_. Nor I; 'twould save the process of a tedious
passion,
A long law-suit of love, which quite consumes
An honest lover, ere he gets possession:
I would come plump, and fresh, and all my self,
Served up to my bride's bed like a fat fowl,
Before the frost of love had nipped me through.
I look on wives as on good dull companions,
For elder brothers to sleep out their time with;
All, we can hope for in the marriage-bed,
Is but to take our rest; and what care I,
Who lays my pillow for me?
_Enter a Poet with verses_.
_1 Serv_. Now, what's your business, friend?
_Poet_. An epithalamium, to the noble bridegrooms.
_1 Serv_. Let me see; what's here? as I live,
[_Takes it_.
Nothing but downright bawdry: Sirrah, rascal,
Is this an age for ribaldry in verse;
When every gentleman in town speaks it
With so much better grace, than thou canst write it?
I'll beat thee with a stave of thy own rhymes.
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