So, pray you, come.
MICHAEL ANGELO.
If it were now the Improvisatore, Luigia Pulci, whom I used to hear With Benvenuto, in the streets of Florence, I might be tempted.

I was younger then And singing in the open air was pleasant.
FRA SEBASTIANO.
There is a Frenchman here, named Rabelais, Once a Franciscan friar, and now a doctor, And secretary to the embassy: A learned man, who speaks all languages, And wittiest of men; who wrote a book Of the Adventures of Gargantua, So full of strange conceits one roars with laughter At every page; a jovial boon-companion And lover of much wine.

He too is coming.
MICHAEL ANGELO.
Then you will not want me, who am not witty, And have no sense of mirth, and love not wine.
I should be like a dead man at your banquet.
Why should I seek this Frenchman, Rabelais?
And wherefore go to hear Francesco Berni, When I have Dante Alighieri here.
The greatest of all poets?
FRA SEBASTIANO.
And the dullest; And only to be read in episodes.
His day is past.

Petrarca is our poet.
MICHAEL ANGELO.
Petrarca is for women and for lovers And for those soft Abati, who delight To wander down long garden walks in summer, Tinkling their little sonnets all day long, As lap dogs do their bells.
FRA SEBASTIANO.
I love Petrarca.
How sweetly of his absent love he sings When journeying in the forest of Ardennes! "I seem to hear her, hearing the boughs and breezes And leaves and birds lamenting, and the waters Murmuring flee along the verdant herbage." MICHAEL ANGELO.
Enough.

It is all seeming, and no being.
If you would know how a man speaks in earnest, Read here this passage, where St.Peter thunders In Paradise against degenerate Popes And the corruptions of the church, till all The heaven about him blushes like a sunset.
I beg you to take note of what he says About the Papal seals, for that concerns Your office and yourself.
FRA SEBASTIANO, reading.
Is this the passage?
"Nor I be made the figure of a seal To privileges venal and mendacious, Whereat I often redden and flash with fire!"-- That is not poetry.
MICHAEL ANGELO.
What is it, then?
FRA SEBASTIANO.
Vituperation; gall that might have spirited From Aretino's pen.
MICHAEL ANGELO.
Name not that man! A profligate, whom your Francesco Berni Describes as having one foot in the brothel And the other in the hospital; who lives By flattering or maligning, as best serves His purpose at the time.