e, and all the rules
Each formal usher in that politic school
Can teach a man. A third comes, giving nods
To his repenting creditors, protests
To weeping suitors, takes the coming gold
Of insolent and base ambition,
That hourly rubs his dry and itchy palms;
Which griped, like burning coals, he hurls away
Into the laps of bawds, and buffoons' mouths.
With him there meets some subtle Proteus, one
Can change, and vary with all forms he sees;
Be any thing but honest; serves the time;
Hovers betwixt two factions, and explores
The drifts of both; which, with cross face, he bears
To the divided heads, and is received
With mutual grace of either: one that dares
Do deeds worthy the hurdle or the wheel,
To be thought somebody; and is in sooth
Such as the satirist points truly forth,
That only to his crimes owes all his worth.

ARE. You tell us wonders, Crites.

CRI. This is nothing.
There stands a neophite glazing of his face,
Pruning his clothes, perfuming of his hair,
Against his idol enters; and repeats,
Like an unperfect prologue, at third music,
His part of speeches, and confederate jests,
In passion to himself. Another swears
His scene of courtship over; bids, believe him,
Twenty times ere they will; anon, doth seem
As he would kiss away his hand in kindness;
Then walks off melancholic, and stands wreath'd,
As he were pinn'd up to the arras, thus.
A third is most in action, swims, and frisks,
Plays with his mistress's paps, salutes her pumps;
Adores her hems, her skirts, her knots, her curls,
Will spend his patrimony for a garter,
Or the least feather in her bounteous fan.
A fourth, he only comes in for a mute;
Divides the act with a dumb show, and exit.
Then must the ladies laugh, straight comes their scene,
A sixth times worse confusion then the rest.
Where you shall hear one talk of this man's eye,
Another of his lip, a third, his nose,
A fourth commend his leg, a fifth, his foot,
A sixth, his hand, and every one a limb;
That you would think the poor distorted gallant
Must there expire. Then fall they in discourse
Of tires, and fashions, how they must take place,
Where they may kiss, and whom, when to sit down,
And with what grace to rise; if they salute,
What court'sy they must use; such cobweb stuff
As would enforce the common'st sense abhor