Page 1127 - Shakespeare - Vol. 2

EPILOGUE IT

[Spoken by a Dancer]

First my fear, then my curtsy, last my speech.
My fear is, your displeasure; my curtsy, my duty; and my speech, to beg your
pardons. If you look for a good speech now, you undo me, for what I have to
say is of mine own making, and what indeed I should say will, I [5] doubt,
prove mine own marring. But to the purpose, and so to the venture. Be it

known to you, as it is very well, I was lately here in the end of a displeasing
play, to pray your patience for it and to promise you a better. I meant indeed
to pay you with this, which, if like an ill venture it [10] come unluckily home, I

break, and you, my gentle creditors, lose. Here I promised you I would be
and here I commit my body to your mercies. Bate me some and I will pay you
some and, as most debtors do, promise you infinitely. [15]
If my tongue cannot entreat you to acquit me, will you command me to use
my legs? And yet that were but light payment, to dance out of your debt. But

a good conscience will make any possible satisfaction, and so would I. All the
gentlewomen here have forgiven me. If the [20] gentlemen will not, then the
gentlemen do not agree with the gentlewomen, which was never seen in

such an assembly.
One word more, I beseech you. If you be not too much cloyed with fat meat,
our humble author will continue [25] the story, with Sir John in it, and make
you merry with fair Katherine of France. Where, for anything I know, Falstaff
shall die of a sweat, unless already ’a be killed with your hard opinions, for

Oldcastle died a martyr, and this is not the man. My tongue is weary. When
my [30] legs are too, I will bid you good night, and so kneel down before you,
but indeed, to pray for the queen.