Template:Dkt complicatio introduction

SCENE I. Venice. A street.

Enter Complicatio, Regolamento and Inclusivia

Complicatio: In sooth, I know not why it is so hard:
These cursed rules! They baffle and confront our peaceable comportment.
But who wrote them, amended them, or understands them,
From what principle they’re hewn, what calumny born,
I am yet to learn.
Regolamento: Your bewilderment, good friend, let be my Earthly quest.
Pray, toss your troubled load upon my broad shoulder
Whereupon shall I guide that weighty pole
O’er this angry sea of inner incongruity —
These chary rules are beastly set, with bastard expectations
Which o’erpeer the petty machinations of thy staff
Who curtsy to them — affect them unthinking reverence,
And yet fly above them with their woven wings.
Inclusivia Believe me, sir, had I such venture forth,
The better part of my affections would
Be with my hopes abroad. I should be still
Plucking the grass, to know where sits the wind,
Peering in maps for ports and piers and roads;
And every object that might make me fear
Misfortune to my ventures, out of doubt
Would make me sad.
Regolamento My wind cooling my broth
Would blow me to an ague, when I thought
What harm a wind too great at sea might do.
I should not see the sandy hour-glass run,
But I should think of shallows and of flats,
And see my wealthy Andrew dock’d in sand,
Vailing her high-top lower than her ribs
To kiss her burial. Should I go to church
And see the holy edifice of stone,
And not bethink me straight of dangerous rocks,
Which touching but my gentle vessel’s side,
Would scatter all her spices on the stream,
Enrobe the roaring waters with my silks,
And, in a word, but even now worth this,
And now worth nothing? Shall I have the thought
To think on this, and shall I lack the thought
That such a thing bechanced would make me sad?
But tell not me; I know, Complicatio
Is sad to think upon his merchandise.
Complicatio Believe me, no: I thank my fortune for it,
My ventures are not in one bottom trusted,
Nor to one place; nor is my whole estate
Upon the fortune of this present year:
Therefore my merchandise makes me not sad.
Regolamento Why, then you are in love.
Complicatio Fie, fie!
Regolamento Not in love neither? Then let us say you are sad,
Because you are not merry: and ’twere as easy
For you to laugh and leap and say you are merry,
Because you are not sad. Now, by two-headed Janus,
Nature hath framed strange fellows in her time:
Some that will evermore peep through their eyes
And laugh like parrots at a bag-piper,
And other of such vinegar aspect
That they’ll not show their teeth in way of smile,
Though Nestor swear the jest be laughable.