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Michael: But who is this? the painter, my corrival, that would needs win Mistress Susan.

Clarke: How now, Michael? how doth my mistress and all at home?

Michael: Who? Susan Mosby? she is your mistress, too?

Clarke: Ay, how doth she and all the rest?

Michael: All’s well but Susan; she is sick.

Clarke: Sick? Of what disease?

Michael: Of a great fever.

Clarke: A fear of what?

Michael: A great fever.

Clarke: A fever? God forbid!

Michael: Yes, faith, and of a lordaine, too, as big as yourself.

Clarke: O, Michael, the spleen prickles you. Go to,you carry an eye over Mistress Susan.

Michael: I’ faith, to keep her from the painter.

Clarke: Why more from a painter than from a serving creature like yourself?

Michael: Because you painters make but a painting table of a pretty wench, and spoil her beauty with blotting.

Clarke: What mean you by that?

Michael: Why, that you painters paint lambs in the lining of wenches’ petticoats, and we serving-men put horns to them to make them become sheep.

Clarke: Such another word will cost you a cuff or a knock.

Michael: What, with a dagger made of a pencil? Faith,’tis too weak, and therefore thou too weak to win Susan.

Clarke: Would Susan’s love lay upon this stroke.

[Then he breaks Michael’s head.]

Anonymous, Arden of Faversham, Scene 10, ll.47-72.