SCENE I.-Before Holyrood. A crowd of people;
among them Soldiers, Burgesses, a Preacher, &c.

1ST CITIZEN.
They are not out yet. Have you seen the man?
What manner of man?

2D CITIZEN.
Shall he be hanged or no?
There was a fellow hanged some three days gone
Wept the whole way: think you this man shall die
In better sort, now?

1ST CITIZEN.
Eh, these shawm-players
That walk before strange women and make songs!
How should they die well?

3D CITIZEN.
Is it sooth men say
Our dame was wont to kiss him on the face
In lewd folk's sight?

1ST CITIZEN.
Yea, saith one, all day long
He used to sit and jangle words in rhyme
To suit with shakes of faint adulterous sound
Some French lust in men's ears; she made songs too,
Soft things to feed sin's amorous mouth upon--
Delicate sounds for dancing at in hell.

4TH CITIZEN.
Is it priest Black that he shall have by him
When they do come?

3D CITIZEN.
Ah! by God's leave, not so;
If the knave show us his peeled onion's head
And that damned flagging jowl of his--

2D CITIZEN.
Nay, sirs,
Take heed of words; moreover, please it you,
This man hath no pope's part in him.

3D CITIZEN.
I say
That if priest whore's friend with the lewd thief's cheek
Show his foul blinking face to shame all ours,
It goes back fouler; well, one day hell's fire
Will burn him black indeed.

A WOMAN.
What kind of man?
'T is yet great pity of him if he be
Goodly enow for this queen's paramour.
A French lord overseas? what doth he here,
With Scotch folk here?

1ST CITIZEN.
Fair mistress, I think well
He doth so at some times that I were fain
To do as well.

THE WOMAN.
Nay, then he will not die.

1ST CITIZEN.
Why, see you, if one eat a piece of bread
Baked as it were a certain prophet's way,
Not upon coals, now--you shall apprehend--
If defiled bread be given a man to eat,
Being thrust into his mouth, why he shall eat,
And with good hap shall eat; but if now, say,
One steal this, bread and beastliness and all,
When scarcely for pure hunger flesh and bone
Cleave one to other--why, if he steal to eat,
Be it even the filthiest feeding-though the man
Be famine-flayed of flesh and skin, I say
He shall be hanged.

3D CITIZEN.
Nay, stolen said you, sir?
See, God bade eat abominable bread,
And freely was it eaten--for a sign
This, for a sign--and doubtless as di