DUCHESS. Am not I thy duchess?
BOSOLA. Thou art some great woman, sure, for riot begins to sit
on thy forehead (clad in gray hairs) twenty years sooner than on
a merry milk-maid's. Thou sleepest worse than if a mouse should be
forced to take up her lodging in a cat's ear: a little infant that
breeds its teeth, should it lie with thee, would cry out, as if thou
wert the more unquiet bedfellow.
DUCHESS. I am Duchess of Malfi still.
BOSOLA. That makes thy sleep so broken:
Glories, like glow-worms, afar off shine bright,
But, look'd to near, have neither heat nor light.
DUCHESS. Thou art very plain.
BOSOLA. My trade is to flatter the dead, not the living;
I am a tomb-maker.
DUCHESS. And thou comest to make my tomb?
BOSOLA. Yes.
DUCHESS. Let me be a little merry:--of what stuff wilt thou make it?
BOSOLA. Nay, resolve me first, of what fashion?
DUCHESS. Why, do we grow fantastical on our deathbed?
Do we affect fashion in the grave?
BOSOLA. Most ambitiously. Princes' images on their tombs do not
lie, as they were wont, seeming to pray up to heaven; but with their
hands under their cheeks, as if they died of the tooth-ache.
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