Ben Jonson Author:Ben Jonson Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: EPICCENE; OR, THE SILENT ACT THE FIRST. SCENE I. — A Room in Enter Clerimont making himself ready, followed by his Page. LER. Have you got the s... more »ong yet perfect I gave you, boy ? Page. Yes, sir. Cler. Let me hear it. Page. You shall, sir ; but i' faith let nobody else. Cler. Why, I pray ? Page. It will get you the dangerous name of a poet in town, sir ; besides me a perfect deal of ill-will at the mansion you wot of, whose lady is the argument of it ; where now I am the welcomest thing under a man that comes there. Cler. I think ; and above a man too, if the truth were racked out of you. Page. No, faith, I'll confess before, sir. The gentle- '51 women play with me, and throw me on the bed, and carry me in to my lady ; and she kisses me with her oiled face, and puts a peruke on my head ; and asks me an I will wear her gown ? and I say no : and then she hits me a blow o' the ear, and calls me Innocent! and lets me go. Cler. No marvel if the door be kept shut against your master, when the entrance is so easy to you Well, sir, you shall go there no more, lest I be fain to seek your voice in my lady's rushes a fortnight hence. Sing, sir. [Page sings. Still to be neat, still to be drest— Enter Truewit. True. Why, here's the man that can melt away his time, and never feels it! What between his mistress abroad and his ingle T at home, high fare, soft lodging, fine clothes, and his fiddle ; he thinks the hours have no wings, or the day no post-horse. Well, sir .gallant, were you struck with the plague this minute, or condemned to any capital punishment to-morrow, you would begin then to think, and value every article of your time, esteem it at the true rate, and give all for it. Cler. Why, what should a man do ? True. Why, nothing.; or t...« less