1st entry

"Your honors players, hearing your amendment,,
are come to play a pleasant comedy.
For so your doctors hold it very meet,
seeing too much sadness hath congealed your blood,
And melancholy is the nurse of frenzy.
Therefore they thought it good you hear a play
and frame your mind to mirth and merriment,
which bars a thousand harms and lengthens life."

This is the passage spoken by the messenger to the tricked Christopher Sly. The Lord who started the trick has some players, or traveling actors, come and perform a play for him. This is important because the rest of the play is based on the fact that it is a play within a play and the whole thing is a practical joke. This passage is also ironic because they refer to the fact that Sly was found drunk, a state that might be considered a "frenzy", and they are "trying" to keep him sane and treating him like a lord.