lives than that they may please the man? For to what other purpose are
all those dresses, washes, baths, slops, perfumes, and those several
little tricks of setting their faces, painting their eyebrows, and
smoothing their skins? And now tell me, what higher letters of
recommendation have they to men than this folly? For what is it they do
not permit them to do? And to what other purpose than that of pleasure?
Wherein yet their folly is not the least thing that pleases; which so
true it is, I think no one will deny, that does but consider with
himself, what foolish discourse and odd gambols pass between a man and
his woman, as often as he had a mind to be gamesome? And so I have shown
you whence the first and chiefest delight of man's life springs.


But there are some, you'll say, and those too none of the youngest, that
have a greater kindness for the pot than the petticoat and place their
chiefest pleasure in good fellowship. If there can be any great
entertainment without a woman at it, let others look to it. This I am
sure, there was never any pleasant which folly gave not the relish to.
Insomuch that if they find no occasion of laughter, they send for "one
that may make it," or hire some buffoon flatterer, whose ridiculous
discourse may put by the gravity of the company. For to what purpose were
it to clog our stomachs with dainties, junkets, and the like stuff,
unless our eyes and ears, nay whole mind, were likewise entertained with
jests, merriments, and laughter? But of these kind of second courses I am
the only cook; though yet those ordinary practices of our feasts, as
choosing a king, throwing dice, drinking healths, trolling it round,
dancing the cushion, and the like, were not invented by the seven wise
men but myself, and that too for the common pleasure of mankind. The
nature of all which things is such that the more of folly they have, the
more they conduce to human life, which, if it were unpleasant, did not