e enter three_ CLOWNS _and three_ MAIDS,
_singing this song, dancing:--

Trip and go, heave and hoe,
Up and down, to and fro;
From the town to the grove,
Two and two let us rove.
A maying, a playing:
Love hath no gainsaying;
So merrily trip and go_.

WILL SUM. Beshrew my heart, of a number of ill legs I never saw worse
dancers. How bless'd are you, that the wenches of the parish do not
see you!

SUM. Presumptuous Ver, uncivil-nurtur'd boy? Think'st I will be derided
thus of thee? Is this th'account and reckoning that thou mak'st?

VER. Troth, my lord, to tell you plain, I can give you no other account;
_nam quae habui perdidi_; what I had, I spent on good fellows; in these
sports you have seen, which are proper to the spring, and others of like
sort (as giving wenches green gowns,[29] making garlands for fencers,
and tricking up children gay), have I bestowed all my flowery treasure
and flower of my youth.

WILL SUM. A small matter. I know one spent in less than a year eight
and fifty pounds in mustard, and another that ran in debt, in the space
of four or five year, above fourteen thousand pound in lute-strings and
grey-paper.[30]

SUM. O monstrous unthrift! who e'er heard the like?
The sea's vast throat, in so short tract of time,
Devoureth nor consumeth half so much.
How well might'st thou have liv'd within thy bounds.

VER. What, talk you to me of living within my bounds? I tell you none
but asses live within their bounds: the silly beasts, if they be put in
a pasture, that is eaten bare to the very earth, and where there is
nothing to be had but thistles, will rather fall soberly to those
thistles and be hunger-starv'd, than they will offer to break their
bounds; whereas the lusty courser, if he be in a barren plot, and spy
better grass in some pasture near adjoining, breaks over hedge and
ditch, and to go, ere he will be pent in, and not have his bellyful.
Peradventure, the horses lately sworn to be stolen,[31] carried that
youthful mind, who, if they had been asses, would have been yet extant.

WILL SUM. Thus, we may see, the longer we live the more we shall learn:
I ne'er thought honesty an ass till this day.

VER. This world is transitory; it was made of nothing, and it must to
nothing: wherefore, if we will do the will of our high Creator, whose
will it is that it pass to nothing, we must help to consume it to
nothing. Gold is more vile