Gone already!
Inch-thick,
knee-deep, o'er head and
ears a fork'd one!
Go,
play, boy, play:
thy mother plays,
and I play too,
but so disgraced a part, whose issue
Will hiss me to my grave:
contempt and clamour
Will be my knell.
Go, play, boy, play...
There have been, or I am much deceived,
cuckolds ere now;
And many a man there is, even at this present, now,
while I speak this, holds his wife by the arm,
That little thinks she has been sluiced in's absence,
And his pond fish'd by his next neighbour,
by Sir Smile, his neighbour:
nay, there's comfort in't
Whiles other men have gates and those gates open'd,
As mine, against their will.
Should all despair, that have revolted wives, the tenth of mankind would hang themselves.
Physic for't there is none;
It is a bawdy planet, that will strike where 'tis predominant;
and 'tis powerful,
think it,
From East, West, North and South:
be it concluded, no barricado for a belly;
know't;
It will let in and out the enemy with bag and baggage:
many thousand on's have the disease, and feel't not.
How now, boy!
