Ovid. 
   O, my Tibullus,
   Let us not blame him; for against such chances
   The heartiest strife of virtue is not proof. 
   We may read constancy and fortitude. 
   To other souls; but had ourselves been struck
   With the like planet, had our loves, like his,
   Been ravish’d from us by injurious death,
   And in the height and heat of our best days,
   It would have crack’d our sinews, shrunk our veins,
   And made our very heart-strings jar, like his. 
   Come, let’s go take him forth, and prove if mirth
   Or company will but abate his passion.

Tib.  Content, and I implore the gods it may.
          
                                            [Exeunt.

Actii

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?