be vigitant, I beseech you.
What Conrade!
Peace! stir not.
Conrade, I say!
Here, man; I am at thy elbow.
Mass, and my elbow itched; I thought there would a
scab follow.
I will owe thee an answer for that: and now forward
with thy tale.
Stand thee close, then, under this pent-house, for
it drizzles rain; and I will, like a true drunkard,
utter all to thee.
Some treason, masters: yet stand close.
Therefore know I have earned of Don John a thousand ducats.
Is it possible that any villany should be so dear?
Thou shouldst rather ask if it were possible any
villany should be so rich; for when rich villains
have need of poor ones, poor ones may make what
price they will.
I wonder at it.
That shows thou art unconfirmed. Thou knowest that
the fashion of a doublet, or a hat, or a cloak, is
nothing to a man.
Yes, it is apparel.
I mean, the fashion.
Yes, the fashion is the fashion.
Tush! I may as well say the fool's the fool. But
seest thou not what a deformed thief this fashion
is?
I know that Deformed; a' has been a vile
thief this seven year; a' goes up and down like a
gentleman: I remember his name.
Didst thou not hear somebody?
No; 'twas the vane on the house.
Seest thou not, I say, what a deformed thief this
fashion is? how giddily a' turns about all the hot
bloods between fourteen and five-and-thirty?
sometimes fashioning them like Pharaoh's soldiers
in the reeky painting, sometime like god Bel's
priests in the old church-window, sometime like the
shaven Hercules in the smirched worm-eaten tapestry,
where his codpiece seems as massy as his club?
All this I see; and I see that the fashion wears
out more apparel than the man. But art not thou
thyself giddy with the fashion too, that thou hast
shifted out of thy tale into telling me of the fashion?
Not so, neither: but know that I have to-night
wooed Margaret, the Lady Hero's gentlewoman, by the
name of Hero: she leans me out at her mistress'
chamber-window, bids me a thousand times good
night,--I tell this tale vilely:--I should first
tell thee how the prince, Claudio and my master,
planted and placed and possessed by my master Don
John, saw afar off in the orchard this amiable encounter.
And thought they Margaret was Hero?
Two of them did, the prince and Claudio; but the
devil my master knew she was Margaret; and partly
by his oaths