1599 MUCH ADO ABOUT NOTHING
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ducats.
Con. Is it possible that any villany should be so dear?
Bora. Thou shouldst rather ask if it were possible any villany
should be so rich; for when rich villains have need of poor
ones,
poor ones may make what price they will.
Con. I wonder at it.
Bora. That shows thou art unconfirm'd. Thou knowest that the
fashion of a doublet, or a hat, or a cloak, is nothing to a
man.
Con. Yes, it is apparel.
Bora. I mean the fashion.
Con. Yes, the fashion is the fashion.
Bora. Tush! I may as well say the fool's the fool. But seest
thou
not what a deformed thief this fashion is?
2. Watch. [aside] I know that Deformed. 'A bas been a vile
thief
this seven year; 'a goes up and down like a gentleman. I
remember
his name.
Bora. Didst thou not hear somebody?
Con. No; 'twas the vane on the house.
Bora. Seest thou not, I say, what a deformed thief this fashion
is?
how giddily 'a turns about all the hot-bloods between
fourteen
and five-and-thirty? sometimes fashioning them like Pharaoh's
soldiers in the reechy painting, sometime like god Bel's
priests
in the old church window, sometime like the shaven Hercules
in
the smirch'd worm-eaten tapestry, where his codpiece seems as

massy as his club?
Con. All this I see; and I see that the fashion wears out more
apparel than the man. But art not thou thyself giddy with the
fashion too, that thou hast shifted out of thy tale into
telling
me of the fashion?
Bora. Not so neither. But know that I have to-night wooed
Margaret,
the Lady Hero's gentlewoman, by the name of Hero. She leans
me
out at her mistress' chamber window, bids me a thousand times
good night--I tell this tale vilely; I should first tell thee
how
the Prince, Claudio and my master, planted and placed and
possessed by my master Don John, saw afar off in the orchard
this
amiable encounter.
Con. And thought they Margaret was Hero?
Bora. Two of them did, the Prince and Claudio; but the devil my
master knew she was Margaret; and partly by his oaths, which