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The Praise of Folly 53
manner Philosophy of the rest; but let this
one, for example’s sake, be enough.
Yet why this? will some one say. Have
patience, and Pll shew ye what I drive at.
If any one seeing a Player acting his Part on
a Stage, should go about to strip him of his
disguise, and shew him to the people in his true
Native Form, would he not, think ye, not onely
spoil the whole design of the Play, but deserve
himself to be pelted off with stones as a Phantasti¬
cal Fool, and one out of his wits? But nothing
is more common with them than such changes;
the same person one while personating a
Woman, and another while a Man; now
a Youngster, and by and by a grim Seigniour;
now a King, and presently a Peasant; now
a God, and in a trice agen an ordinary Fellow.
But to discover this were to spoil all, it being
the onely thing that entertains the Eyes of the
Spectators. And what is all this Life but a kind
of Comedy, wherein men walk up and down in
one another’s Disguises, and Act their respective
Parts, till the property-man brings ’em back
to the Tyring House. And yet he often orders
a different Dress, and makes him that came