A marketplace. Enter Maximus, a merchant, and Linus, an artisan.
Maximus I beseech you now, moderate your choler.
This bodes some strange eruption to our state.
Wherefore do you rage? Who is the object of your spleen?
Linus A dull and muddy-mettled rascal,
Every one fault seeming monstrous
Till his fellow fault came to match it.
And this man is now become a god.
What a falling off was there!
Maximus. I have heard you speak of this wretch and his secrets
And of the engendered virtue of that wherein you strive withal. Pray tell me anon, what manner of thing is this yawning fount,
That you do protest so much, and that most eloquently.
Linus An ill-favoured thing sir, but mine own.
The public outpouring of combined fancy
That is the main motive of our preparations,
The chief head of this post-haste and romage in the land.
Maximus In Nature’s infinite book of secrecy
A little I can read. This gaping well, unlocked,
Set in a notebook, learned and conned by rote,
It is not, nor it cannot come to good.
Linus It is a custom more honoured in the breach than the observance.
My friends were poor but honest.
Sweep on, you fat and greasy citizens!
Base is the slave that pays.
Max Peace, good yeoman.
The web of our life is a mingled yarn, good and ill together.
Our remedies oft in ourselves do lie.
Tho’ satisfaction in revenge, there is no return on spite.
Linus Never come such division between our souls.
Striving to better, oft we mar what’s well.
Max A peace is of the nature of a conquest
For then both parties nobly are subdued
And neither party loser.
Linus So have I heard, and do in part believe it.
Exeunt, severally.
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