Strange you should lose your count.
Cam. We never lay together, but ere morning
There grew a flaw between us.
Flam. 'T had been your part
To have made up that flaw.
Cam. True, but she loathes I should be seen in 't.
Flam. Why, sir, what 's the matter?
Cam. The duke your master visits me, I thank him;
And I perceive how, like an earnest bowler,
He very passionately leans that way
he should have his bowl run.
Flam. I hope you do not think——
Cam. That nobleman bowl booty? faith, his cheek
Hath a most excellent bias: it would fain
Jump with my mistress.
Flam. Will you be an ass,
Despite your Aristotle? or a cuckold,
Contrary to your Ephemerides,
Which shows you under what a smiling planet
You were first swaddled?
Cam. Pew wew, sir; tell me not
Of planets nor of Ephemerides.
A man may be made cuckold in the day-time,
When the stars' eyes are out.
Flam. Sir, good-bye you;
I do commit you to your pitiful pillow
Stuffed with horn-shavings.
Cam. Brother!
Flam. God refuse me.
Might I advise you now, your only course
Were to lock up your wife.
Cam. 'Twere very good.
Flam. Bar her the sight of revels.
Cam. Excellent.
Flam. Let her not go to church, but, like a hound
In leon, at your heels.
Cam. 'Twere for her honour.
Flam. And so you should be certain in one fortnight,
Despite her chastity or innocence,
To be cuckolded, which yet is in suspense:
This is my counsel, and I ask no fee for 't.
Cam. Come, you know not where my nightcap wrings me.
Flam. Wear it a' th' old fashion; let your large ears come through,
it will be more easy—nay, I will be bitter—bar your wife of her
entertainment: women are more willingly and more gloriously chaste,
when they are least restrained of their liberty. It seems you would
be a fine capricious, mathematically jealous coxcomb; take the height
of your own horns with a Jacob's staff, afore they are up. These
politic enclosures for paltry mutton, makes more rebellion in the
flesh, than all the provocative electuaries doctors have uttered since
last jubilee.
Cam. This doth not physic me——
Flam. It seems you are jealous: I 'll show you the error of it by a
familiar example: I have seen a pair of spectacles fashioned with such
perspective art, that lay down but one twelve pence a' th' board,
'twill appear as if there were twenty; now should you wear a pair of
these spectacles, and see your wife tying her shoe, you would imagine
twenty hands were taking up of your wife's clothes, and this would put
you into a horrible causeless fury.
Cam. The fault there, sir, is not in the eyesight.
Flam. True, but they that have the yellow jaundice think all objects
they look on to be yellow. Jealousy is worse; her fits present to a
man, like so many bubbles in a basin of water, twenty several crabbed
faces, many times makes his own shadow his cuckold-maker. [Enter
Vittoria Corombona.] See, she comes; what reason have you to be
jealous of this creature? what an ignorant ass or flattering knave
might be counted, that should write sonnets to her eyes, or call her
brow the snow of Ida, or ivory of Corinth; or compare her hair to the
blackbird's bill, when 'tis liker the blackbird's feather? This is
all. Be wise; I will make you friends, and you shall go to bed
together.
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