fly,
as one said, with a straw in your arse: any way, rather than to
follow this goblin Matrimony. Alas, sir, do you ever think to
find a chaste wife in these times? now? when there are so many
masques, plays, Puritan preachings, mad folks, and other strange
sights to be seen daily, private and public? If you had lived
in king Ethelred's time, sir, or Edward the Confessor, you might,
perhaps, have found one in some cold country hamlet, then, a dull
frosty wench, would have been contented with one man: now, they
will as soon be pleased with one leg, or one eye. I'll tell you,
sir, the monstrous hazards you shall run with a wife.

MOR: Good sir, have I ever cozen'd any friends of yours of their
land? bought their possessions? taken forfeit of their mortgage?
begg'd a reversion from them? bastarded their issue? What have I
done, that may deserve this?

TRUE: Nothing, sir, that I know, but your itch of marriage.

MOR: Why? if I had made an assassinate upon your father, vitiated
your mother, ravished your sisters--

TRUE: I would kill you, sir, I would kill you, if you had.

MOR: Why, you do more in this, sir: it were a vengeance centuple,
for all facinorous acts that could be named, to do that you do.

TRUE: Alas, sir, I am but a messenger: I but tell you, what you
must hear. It seems your friends are careful after your soul's
health, sir, and would have you know the danger: (but you may do
your pleasure for all them, I persuade not, sir.) If, after you are
married, your wife do run away with a vaulter, or the Frenchman
that walks upon ropes, or him that dances the jig, or a fencer
for his skill at his weapon; why it is not their fault, they have
discharged their consciences; when you know what may happen. Nay,
suffer valiantly, sir, for I must tell you all the perils that
you are obnoxious to. If she be fair, young and vegetous, no sweet-
meats ever drew more flies; all the yellow doublets and great
roses in the town will be there. If foul and crooked, she'll be
with them, and buy those doublets and roses, sir. If rich, and
that you marry her dowry, not her, she'll reign in your house
as imperious as a widow. If noble, all her kindred will be your
tyrants. If fruitful, as proud as May, and humorous as April; she
must have her doctors, her midwives, her nurses, her longings every
hour; though it be for th