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Anne. The dinner is on the table; my father desires your worships' company.

Shal. I will wait on him, fair mistress Anne. Evans. Od's plessed will! I will not be absence at the grace. [Exeunt Shallow and Sir H. Evans. Anne. Will 't please your worship to come in, sir?

Slen. No, I thank you, forsooth, heartily; I am very well.

Anne. The dinner attends you, sir.

Slen. I am not a-hungry, I thank you, forsooth. -Go, sirrah, for all you are my man, go, wait upon my cousin Shallow. [Exit Simple.] A justice of peace sometime may be beholden to his friend for a man :-I keep but three men and a boy yet, till my mother be dead. But what though? yet I live like a poor gentleman born.

Anne. I may not go in without your worship: they will not sit, till you come.

Slen. I'faith, I'll eat nothing; I thank you as much as though I did.

Anne. I pray you, sir, walk in.

1

Slen. I had rather walk here, I thank you: I bruised my shin the other day with playing at sword and dagger with a master of fence, (three veneys 1 for a dish of stewed prunes) and, by my troth, I cannot abide the smell of hot meat since. Why do your dogs bark so? be there bears i' the town?

Three bouts or hits: a technical term.

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Anne. I think, there are, sir; I heard them talked of.

Slen. I love the sport well; but I shall as soon quarrel at it as any man in England.-You are afraid, if you see the bear loose, are you not?

Anne. Ay, indeed, sir.

Slen. That's meat and drink to me now: I have

seen Sackerson 1 loose twenty times; and have taken him by the chain: but, I warrant you, the women have so cried and shrieked at it, that it passed: -but women, indeed, cannot abide 'em ; they are very ill-favored rough things.

Re-enter PAGE.

Page. Come, gentle master Slender, come; we stay for you.

Slen. I'll eat nothing, I thank you, sir.

Page. By cock and pye,3 you shall not choose,

sir: come, come.

Slen. Nay, pray you, lead the way.

Page. Come on, sir.

Slen. Mistress Anne, yourself shall go first.

Anne. Not I, sir; pray you, keep on.

Slen. Truly, I will not go first; truly, la: I will not do you that wrong.

1 The name of a bear, exhibited, in our author's time, at

Paris Garden, in Southwark.

2 It surpassed all description.

3 A popular adjuration.

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