Bartholomew Fair: A Comedy

SCENE I.--_The Fair, as before.

Chapter 8222 wordsPublic domain

A Booth.

_LANTHORN LEATHERHEAD, dressed as a puppet-show man, FILCHER, and SHARKWELL with a flag._

LEATH. Well, luck and Saint Bartholomew! out with the sign of our invention, in the name of wit, and do you beat the drum the while: all the foul i' the Fair, I mean all the dirt in Smithfield,--that's one of master Littlewit's carwhitchets now--will be thrown at our banner to-day, if the matter does not please the people. O the motions that I Lanthorn Leatherhead have given light to, in my time, since my master Pod died! Jerusalem was a stately thing, and so was Nineveh, and the city of Norwich, and Sodom and Gomorrah, with the rising of the prentices, and pulling down the bawdy-houses there upon Shrove-Tuesday; but the Gun-powder plot, there was a get-penny! I have presented that to an eighteen or twenty pence audience, nine times in an afternoon. Your home-born projects prove ever the best, they are so easy and familiar; they put too much learning in their things now o' days: and that I fear will be the spoil of this. Littlewit! I say, Micklewit! if not too mickle! look to your gathering there, goodman Filcher.

FILCH. I warrant you, sir.

LEATH. An there come any gentlefolks, take two-pence apiece, Sharkwell.

SHARK. I warrant you, sir, three-pence an we can.

[_Exeunt._