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CLOWN What hast here? ballads?
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YOKEL What do you have here? Ballads?
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MOPSA Pray now, buy some: I love a ballad in print o’
life, for then we are sure they are true.
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MOPSA Please, buy some. I love having a ballad written out, because then we are sure it’s true.
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AUTOLYCUS Here’s one to a very doleful tune, how a usurer’s
285wife was brought to bed of twenty money-bags at a
burthen and how she longed to eat adders’ heads and
toads carbonadoed.
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AUTOLYCUS Here’s one that’s sung to a very mournful tune: how a money lender’s wife delivered twenty bags of money in one birth, and she wanted to eat snakes’ heads and toads grilled.
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MOPSA Is it true, think you?
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MOPSA Do you think it’s true?
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AUTOLYCUS Very true, and but a month old.
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AUTOLYCUS Very true, and only a month old.
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DORCAS
290Bless me from marrying a usurer!
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DORCAS May I never marry a loan shark!
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AUTOLYCUS Here’s the midwife’s name to’t, one Mistress
Tale-porter, and five or six honest wives that were
present. Why should I carry lies abroad?
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AUTOLYCUS Here’s the name of the midwife who helped at the birth, one Mistress Taleporter, and the five or six who witnessed it. Why should I spread lies around?
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MOPSA Pray you now, buy it.
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MOPSA Please, buy it.
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CLOWN
295Come on, lay it by: and let’s first see more
ballads; we’ll buy the other things anon.
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YOKEL Come on, put it aside, and let’s see more ballads before we buy anything.
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AUTOLYCUS Here’s another ballad of a fish, that appeared upon
the coast on Wednesday the four-score of April,
forty thousand fathom above water, and sung this
300ballad against the hard hearts of maids: it was
thought she was a woman and was turned into a cold
fish for she would not exchange flesh with one that
loved her: the ballad is very pitiful and as true.
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AUTOLYCUS Here’s another ballad about a fish that appeared on the shore on Wednesday, the eightieth of April, two hundred and forty thousand feet above sea level, and sang this song to soften the hearts of young women. Some thought it was a woman who had been changed into a cold fish because she wouldn’t sleep with the man who loved her. The ballad is as sad as it is true.
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