Well, tis thus:
I am not as the world does take me for;
If ever wolf were clothed in sheep's coat,
Then I am he,--old huddle and twang, yfaith,
A priest in show, but in plain terms a thief.
Yet, let me tell you too, an honest thief,
One that will take it where it may be spared,
And spend it freely in good fellowship.
I have as many shapes as Proteus had,
That still, when any villainy is done,
There may be none suspect it was sir John.
Besides, to comfort me,--for what's this life,
Except the crabbed bitterness thereof,
Be sweetened now and then with lechery?--
I have my Doll, my concubine, as twere,
To frolic with, a lusty bouncing girl.
But whilst I loiter here, the gold may scape,
And that must not be so. It is mine own;
Therefore, I'll meet him on his way to court,
And shrive him of it: there will be the sport.
[Exit.]
ACT I. SCENE III. Kent. An outer court before
lord Cobham's house.
[Enter three or four poor people: some soldiers,
some old men.]
FIRST.
God help! God help! there's law for punishing,
But there's no law for our necessity:
There be more stocks to set poor soldiers in,
Than there be houses to relieve them at.
OLD MAN.
Faith, housekeeping decays in every place,
Even as Saint Peter writ, still worse and worse.
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