STUDIOSO.
What, Ingenioso, Academico, Furor, Phantasma, how do you, brave lads?

INGENIOSO.
What, our dear friends Philomusus and Studioso?

ACADEMICO.
What, our old friends Philomusus and Studioso?

FUROR.
What, my supernatural friends?

INGENIOSO.
What news with you in this quarter of the city?

PHILOMUSUS.
We've run[134] through many trades, yet thrive by none,
Poor in content, and only rich in moan.
A shepherd's life, thou know'st I wont t'admire,
Turning a Cambridge apple by the fire:
To live in humble dale we now are bent,
Spending our days in fearless merriment.

STUDIOSO.
We'll teach each tree, ev'n of the hardest kind,
To keep our woful name within their rind:
We'll watch our flock, and yet we'll sleep withal:
We'll tune our sorrows to the water's fall.
The woods and rocks with our shrill songs we'll bless;
Let them prove kind, since men prove pitiless.
But say, whither are you and your company jogging? it seems by your
apparel you are about to wander.

INGENIOSO.
Faith we are fully bent to be lords of misrule in the world's wide
heath: our voyage is to the Isle of Dogs, there where the blatant beast
doth rule and reign, renting the credit of whom it please.
Where serpents' tongues the penmen are to write,
Where cats do wawl by day, dogs by night.
There shall engorged venom be my ink,
My pen a sharper quill of porcupine,
My stained paper this sin-loaden earth.
There will I write in lines shall never die,
Our seared lordings' crying villany.

PHILOMUSUS.
A gentle wit thou hadst, nor is it blame
To turn so tart, for time hath wrong'd the same.

STUDIOSO.
And well thou dost from this fond earth to flit,
Where most men's pens are hired parasites.

ACADEMICO.
Go happily; I wish thee store of gall
Sharply to wound the guilty world withal.

PHILOMUSUS.
But say, what shall become of Furor and Phantasma?

INGENIOSO.
These my companions still with me must wend.

ACADEMICO.
Fury and Fancy on good wits attend.

FUROR.
When I arrive within the Isle of Dogs,
Dan Phoebus, I will make thee kiss the pump.
Thy one eye pries in every draper's stall,
Yet never thinks on poet Furor's need.
Furor is lousy, great Furor lousy is;
I'll make thee rue[135] this lousy case, i-wis.
And thou, my sluttish[136] laundress, Cynthia,
Ne'er think'st on Furor's linen, Furor's shirt.
Thou and thy squirting boy Endymion
Lies slav'ring still upon a lawless couch.
Furor will have thee carted through the dirt,
T