Of that an _obstreperous_ lawyer bereft me.
_Nano_. O wonderful change, when sir lawyer forsook thee!
For Pythagore's sake, what body then took thee?
_Androgyno_. A good dull mule.
_Nano_. And how! by that means Thou wert brought to allow of
the eating of beans?
_Androgyno_. Yes.
_Nano_. But from the mule into whom didst thou pass?
_Androgyno_. Into a very strange beast, by some writers called
an ass;
By others, a precise, pure, _illuminate brother_,
Of those devour flesh, and sometimes one another;
And will drop you forth a libel, or a sanctified lie,
Betwixt every spoonful of a Nativity [30] pie.
Nano then admonishes Androgyno to quit that profane nation. Androgyno
answers that he gladly remains in the shape of a fool and a hermaphrodite.
To the question of Nano, as to whether he likes remaining a hermaphrodite
in order to 'vary the delight of each sex,' Androgyno replies:--
Alas, those pleasures be stale and forsaken;
No 't is your fool wherewith I am so taken,
The only one creature that I can called blessed;
For all other forms I have proved most distressed.
_Nano_. Spoke true, as thou wert in Pythagoras still.
This learned opinion we celebrate will,...
With a song, praising fools, the Interlude closes.
In act ii. sc. 2, after Mosca and Volpone have erected a stage upon
the stage, Volpone enters, disguised as a mountebank, and abuses those
'ground ciarlatani' (charlatans, impostors) 'who come in lamely, with
their mouldy tales out of Boccaccio.
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