SCENE II.--_A Yard_.

_Enter_ Nicholas, Jenkin, Jack Slime, _and_ Roger Brickbat, _with_ Country Wenches, _and two or three_ Musicians.

Jenkin. Come, Nick, take you Joan Miniver to trace withal; Jack Slime, traverse you with Cicely Milk-pail: I will take Jane Trubkin, and Roger Brickbat shall have Isbel Motley; and now that they are busy in the parlour, come, strike up; we’ll have a crash[1.07] here in the yard.

Nicholas. My humour is not compendious; dancing I possess not, though I can foot it; yet, since I am fallen into the hands of Cicely Milk-pail, I consent.

Slime. Truly Nick, though we were never brought up like serving courtiers, yet we have been brought up with serving creatures, ay, and God’s creatures too; for we have been brought up to serve sheep, oxen, horses, hogs, and such like: and, though we be but country fellows, it may be in the way of dancing we can do the horse-trick as well as serving-men.

Brickbat. Ay, and the cross-point too.

Jenkin. O Slime, O Brickbat, do not you know that comparisons are odious? now we are odious ourselves too, therefore there are no comparisons to be made betwixt us.

Nicholas. I am sudden, and not superfluous; I am quarrelsome, and not seditious; I am peaceable, and not contentious; I am brief, and not compendious.

Slime. Foot it quickly: if the music overcome not my melancholy, I shall quarrel; and if they do not suddenly strike up, I shall presently strike them down.

Jenkin. No quarrelling, for God’s sake: truly, if you do, I shall set a knave between ye.

Slime. I come to dance, not to quarrel. Come, what shall it be? “Rogero?”[1.08]

Jenkin. “Rogero!” no; we will dance “The Beginning of the World.”

Cicely. I love no dance so well as “John come kiss me now.”

Nicholas. I, that have ere now deserved a cushion, call for the “Cushion-dance.”

Brickbat. For my part, I like nothing so well as “Tom Tyler.”

Jenkin. No; we’ll have “The Hunting of the Fox.”

Slime. “The Hay,” “The Hay;” there’s nothing like “The Hay.”

Nicholas. I have said, I do say, and I will say again--

Jenkin. Every man agree to have it as Nick says.

All. Content.

Nicholas. It hath been, it now is, and it shall be--

Cicely. What, Master Nicholas, what?

Nicholas. “Put on your smock a’ Monday.”

Jenkin. So the dance will come cleanly off. Come, for God’s sake agree of something: if you like not that, put it to the musicians; or let me speak for all, and we’ll have “Sellenger’s round.”

All. That, that, that.

Nicholas. No, I am resolved, thus it shall be: First take hands, then take ye to your heels.

Jenkin. Why, would ye have us run away?

Nicholas. No; but I would have you shake your heels. Music, strike up!

[_They dance_. Nicholas _whilst dancing speaks stately and scurvily, the rest after the country fashion_.

Jenkin. Hey! lively, my lasses! here’s a turn for thee!

[_Exeunt_.