SCENE I. A Room in ALBIUS'S House.
Enter ALBIUS and CRISPlNUS.
Alb. Master Crispinus, you are welcome: pray use a stool, sir. Your cousin Cytheris will
come down presently. We are so busy for the receiving of these courtiers here, that I can
scarce be a minute with myself, for thinking of them: Pray you sit, sir; pray you sit, sir.
Crisp. I am very well, sir. Never trust me, but your are most delicately seated here, full of
sweet delight and blandishment! an excellent air, an excellent air!
Alb. Ay, sir, 'tis a pretty air. These courtiers run in my mind still; I must look out. For
Jupiter's sake, sit, sir; or please you walk into the garden? There's a garden on the back-
side.
Crisp. I am most strenuously well, I thank you, sir.
Alb. Much good do you, sir.
[Enter CHLOE, with two Maids.
Chloe. Come, bring those perfumes forward a little, and strew some roses and violets
here: Fie! here be rooms savour the most pitifully rank that ever I felt. I cry the gods
mercy, [sees Albius] my husband's in the wind of us!
Alb. Why, this is good, excellent, excellent! well said, my sweet Chloe; trim up your
house most obsequiously.
Chloe. For Vulcan's sake, breathe somewhere else; in troth you overcome our perfumes
exceedingly; you are too predominant.
Alb. Hear but my opinion, sweet wife.
Chloe. A pin for your pinion! In sincerity, if you be thus fulsome to me in every thing, I'll
be divorced. Gods my body! you know what you were before I married you; I was a
gentlewoman born, I; I lost all my friends to be a citizen's wife, because I heard, indeed,
they kept their wives as fine as ladies; and that we might rule our husbands like ladies,
and do what we listed; do you think I would have married you else?
Alb. I acknowledge, sweet wife:--She speaks the best of any woman in Italy, and moves
as mightily; which makes me, I had rather she should make bumps on my head, as big as
my two fingers, than I would offend her--But, sweet wife--
Chloe. Yet again! Is it not grace enough for you, that I call you husband, and you call me
wife; but you must still be poking me, against my will, to things?
