University of Virginia Library

Enter Will Summers in his fooles coate but halfe on, comming out.

Noctem peccatis, & fraudibus obiice nubem.
There is no such fine time to play the knaue
in, as the night. I am a Goose or a Ghost at
least; for what with turmoyle of getting my
fooles apparell, and care of being perfit, I am
sure I haue not yet supt to night. Will Summers
Ghost I should be, come to present you with Summers
last will, and Testament. Be it so, if my cousin Ned will lend
me his Chayne and his Fiddle. Other stately pac't Prologues
vse to attire themselues within: I that haue a toy in my head,
more then ordinary, and vse to goe without money, without
garters, without girdle, without a hat-band, without poynts to
my hose, without a knife to my dinner, and make to much vse
of this word without, in euery thing, will here dresse me without.
Dick Huntley cryes, Begin, begin: and all the whole
house, For shame come away; when I had my things but now
brought me out of the Lawndry. God forgiue me, I did not
see my Lord before. Ile set a good face on it, as though what
I had talkt idly all this while, were my part. So it is, boni viri,
that one foole presents another; and I a foole by nature, and
by arte, do speake to you in the person of the Idiot our Playmaker.
He like a Foppe & an Asse, must be making himselfe a
publike laughing stock, & haue no thanke for his labor; where
other Magisterij, whose inuention is farre more exquisite, are
content to sit still, and doe nothing. Ile shewe you what a

scuruy Prologue he had made me in an old vayne of similitudes:
if you bee good fellowes, giue it the hearing, that you may iudge of him thereafter.