As one of several good things in this pleasant Interlude may be quoted
Will's speech on life before and after marriage, from the point of view
of a favoured servant:

I am not disposed as yet to be tame,
And therefore I am loth to be under a dame.
Now you are a bachelor, a man may soon win you,
Methinks there is some good fellowship in you;
We may laugh and be merry at board and at bed,
You are not so testy as those that be wed.
Mild in behaviour and loth to fall out,
You may run, you may ride and rove round about,
With wealth at your will and all thing at ease,
Free, frank and lusty, easy to please.
But when you be clogged and tied by the toe
So fast that you shall not have pow'r to let go,
You will tell me another lesson soon after,
And cry _peccavi_ too, except your luck be the better.
Then farewell good fellowship! then come at a call!
Then wait at an inch, you idle knaves all!
Then sparing and pinching, and nothing of gift,
No talk with our master, but all for his thrift.
Solemn and sour, and angry as a wasp,
All things must be kept under lock and hasp;
All that which will make me to fare full ill.
All your care shall be to hamper poor Will.

The liberty and, we may infer, good hearing extended to these
unblushingly didactic Interludes attracted into authorship writers with
purposes more aggressive and debatable than those pertaining to wise