Nan monologue — Volpone

Now, room for fresh gamesters, who do will you to know, They do bring you neither play, nor university show; And therefore do entreat you, that whatsoever they rehearse, May not fare a whit the worse, for the false pace of the verse. If you wonder at this, you will wonder more ere we pass, For know, here is inclosed the soul of Pythagoras, That juggler divine, as hereafter shall follow; Which soul, fast and loose, sir, came first from Apollo, And was breath'd into Aethalides; Mercurius his son, Where it had the gift to remember all that ever was done. From thence it fled forth, and made quick transmigration To goldy-lock'd Euphorbus, who was killed in good fashion, At the siege of old Troy, by the cuckold of Sparta. Hermotimus was next (I find it in my charta) To whom it did pass, where no sooner it was missing But with one Pyrrhus of Delos it learn'd to go a fishing; And thence did it enter the sophist of Greece. From Pythagore, she went into a beautiful piece, Hight Aspasia, the meretrix; and the next toss of her Was again of a whore, she became a philosopher, Crates the cynick, as it self doth relate it: Since kings, knights, and beggars, knaves, lords and fools gat it, Besides, ox and ass, camel, mule, goat, and brock, In all which it hath spoke, as in the cobler's cock. But I come not here to discourse of that matter, Or his one, two, or three, or his greath oath, BY QUATER! His musics, his trigon, his golden thigh, Or his telling how elements shift, but I Would ask, how of late thou best suffered translation, And shifted thy coat in these days of reformation.