EPILOGUE. SPOKEN BY A DANCER. FIRST, my fear; then, my court'sy: last, my speech. My fear is, your displeasure; my court'sy, my duty; und my speech, to beg your pardons. If you look for a good speech now, you undo me: for what I have to say, is of mine own making; and what, indeed, I should say, will, I doubt, prove mine own marring. But to the purpose, and so to the venture.-Be it known to you, (as it is very well,) I was lately here in the end of a displeasing play, to pray your patience for it, and to promise you a better. I did mean, indeed, to pay you with this; which, if, like an ill venture, it come unluckily home, I break, and you, my gentle creditors lose. Here, I promised you, I would be, and here I commit my bady to your mercies: bate me some, and I will pay you some, and as most debtors do, promise you infinitely. If my tongue cannot entreat you to acquit me, will you. command me to use my legs? and yet that were but light payment, to dance out of your debt. But a good conscience will make any possible satisfaction, and so will I. All the gentlewomen here have forgiven me; if the gentlemen will not, then the gentlemen do not agree with the gentlewomen, which was never seen before in such an assembly. One word more, I beseech you. If you be not too much cloyed with fat meat, our humble author will continue the story, with sir John in it, and make you merry with fair Katharine of France: where, for any thing I know, Falstaff shall die of a sweat, unless already he be killed with your hard opinions; for Oldcastle died a martyr, and this is not the man. My tongue is weary; when my legs are too, I will bid you good night: and so kneel down before you : -but, indeed, to pray for the queen.9 Most of the ancient interludes conclude with a prayer for the king or queen. Hence, perhaps, the Vivant Rex & Regina, at the bottom of our modern play-bills. |