SCENE IV.[1242

CASH. [_Enter_] COB, [_hastily_].

_Cob._ Fasting-days! what tell you me of fasting-days? ’Slid, would they were all on a light fire for me! They say the whole world shall be consum’d with fire one day, but would I had these Ember-weeks and villanous Fridays (5) burnt in the mean time, and then——

_Cash._ Why, how now, Cob? What moves thee to this choler, ha?

_Cob._ Collar, master Thomas! I scorn your collar, I, sir; I am none o’ your cart-horse, (10) though I carry and draw water. An you offer to ride me with your collar or halter either, I may hap shew you a jade’s trick, sir.

_Cash._ O, you’ll slip your head out of the collar? Why, goodman Cob, you mistake me. 15

_Cob._ Nay, I have my rheum, and I can be angry as well as another, sir.

_Cash._ Thy rheum, Cob! Thy humour, thy humour—thou mistak’st.[1243]

_Cob._ Humour! mack,[1244] I think it be so indeed. (20) What is that humour? Some rare thing, I warrant.

_Cash._ Marry I’ll tell thee, Cob: it is a gentleman-like monster, bred in the special gallantry of our time, by affectation, and fed by folly. 25

_Cob._ How! must it be fed?

_Cash._ Oh ay, humour is nothing if it be not fed; didst thou never hear that? It’s a common phrase, _Feed my humour_.

_Cob._ I’ll none on it: humour, avaunt! I know you not, be gone! Let who will make hungry (31) meals for your monstership, it shall not be I. Feed you, quoth he! ’Slid. I ha’ much ado to feed myself; especially on these lean rascally days too; an’t had been any other day but a (35) fasting-day—a plague on them all for me! By this light, one might have done the commonwealth good service, and have drown’d them all i’ the flood, two or three hundred thousand years ago. O, I do stomach[1245] them hugely. I (40) have a maw[1246] now, and ’twere for sir Bevis his horse, against ’em.

_Cash._ I pray thee, good Cob, what makes thee so out of love with fasting days?

_Cob._ Marry, that which will make any man (45) out of love with ’em, I think; their bad conditions, an you will needs know. First, they are of a Flemish breed, I am sure on’t, for they raven up more butter than all the days of the week beside; next, they stink of fish and leek-porridge miserably; thirdly, they’ll keep a man devoutly 51 hungry all day, and at night send him supperless to bed.

_Cash._ Indeed, these are faults, Cob. 54

_Cob._ Nay, an this were all, ’twere something; but they are the only known enemies to my generation. A fasting-day no sooner comes, but my lineage goes to wrack; poor cobs! they smoke for it, they are made martyrs o’ the gridiron, they melt in passion: and your maids 60 too know this, and yet would have me turn Hannibal,[1247] and eat my own flesh and blood. My princely coz (_Pulls out a red herring_), fear nothing; I have not the heart to devour you, an I might be made as rich as king Cophetua. O that I had room for my tears, I could weep salt-water (66) enough now to preserve the lives of ten thousand of my kin! But I may curse none but these filthy almanacs; for an ’twere not for them, these days of persecution would never (70) be known. I’ll be hang’d an some fishmonger’s son do not make of ’em, and puts in more fasting-days than he should do, because he would utter[1248] his father’s dried stock-fish and stinking conger. 75

_Cash._ ’Slight, peace! Thou’lt be beaten like a stock-fish else. Here is master Mathew. Now must I look out for a messenger to my master. [_Exeunt._]