me. And she
all berated him, and asked him, "What will you do, that you will
not put yourself forth as other folk do? Will you sit by the fire
and make goslings in the ashes with a stick, as children do? Would
God I were a man--look what I would do!" "Why, wife," quoth her
husband, "what would you do?" "What? By God, go forward with the
best! For, as my mother was wont to say--God have mercy on her
soul--it is evermore better to rule than to be ruled. And
therefore, by God, I would not, I warrant you, be so foolish as to
be ruled where I might rule." "By my troth, wife," quoth her
husband, "in this I daresay you say truth, for I never found you
willing to be ruled yet."

VINCENT: Well, uncle, I follow you now, well enough! She is indeed
a stout master-woman. And in good faith, for aught that I can see,
even that same womanish mind of hers is the greatest commodity that
men reckon upon in offices of authority.

ANTHONY: By my troth, and methinketh there are very few who attain
any great commodity therein. For first there is, in every kingdom,
but one who can have an office of such authority that no man may
command him or control him. No officer can stand in that position
but the king himself; he only, uncontrolled or uncommanded, may
control and command all. Now, of all the rest, each is under him.
And yet almost every one is under more commanders and controllers,
too, than one. And many a man who is in a great office commandeth
fewer things and less labour to many men who are under him than
someone that is over him commandeth him alone.

VINCENT: Yet it doth them good, uncle, that men must make courtesy
to them and salute them with reverence and stand bareheaded before
them, or unto some of them peradventure kneel, too.

ANTHONY: Well, cousin, in some part they do but play at
gleek--they receive reverence, and to their cost they pay honour
again therefor. For except, as I said, a king alone, the greatest
in authority under him receiveth not so much reverence from any man
as according to reason he himself doth honour to the king. Nor
twenty men's courtesies do him not so much pleasure as his own once
kneeling doth him pain if his knee hap to be sore. And I once knew
a great officer of the king's to say--and in good faith I believe
he said but as he thought--that twenty men standing bareheaded
before him kept not his head half so warm as to keep on his own
cap. And he never took so much ease with their being bar