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*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE COMPLETE WORKS OF WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE *** The Complete Works of William Shakespeare

by William Shakespeare

Contents

THE SONNETS ALL’S WELL THAT ENDS WELL THE TRAGEDY OF ANTONY AND CLEOPATRA AS YOU LIKE IT THE COMEDY OF ERRORS THE TRAGEDY OF CORIOLANUS CYMBELINE THE TRAGEDY OF HAMLET, PRINCE OF DENMARK THE FIRST PART OF KING HENRY THE FOURTH THE SECOND PART OF KING HENRY THE FOURTH THE LIFE OF KING HENRY THE FIFTH THE FIRST PART OF HENRY THE SIXTH THE SECOND PART OF KING HENRY THE SIXTH THE THIRD PART OF KING HENRY THE SIXTH KING HENRY THE EIGHTH THE LIFE AND DEATH OF KING JOHN THE TRAGEDY OF JULIUS CAESAR THE TRAGEDY OF KING LEAR LOVE’S LABOUR’S LOST THE TRAGEDY OF MACBETH MEASURE FOR MEASURE THE MERCHANT OF VENICE THE MERRY WIVES OF WINDSOR A MIDSUMMER NIGHT’S DREAM MUCH ADO ABOUT NOTHING THE TRAGEDY OF OTHELLO, THE MOOR OF VENICE PERICLES, PRINCE OF TYRE KING RICHARD THE SECOND KING RICHARD THE THIRD THE TRAGEDY OF ROMEO AND JULIET THE TAMING OF THE SHREW THE TEMPEST THE LIFE OF TIMON OF ATHENS THE TRAGEDY OF TITUS ANDRONICUS TROILUS AND CRESSIDA TWELFTH NIGHT; OR, WHAT YOU WILL THE TWO GENTLEMEN OF VERONA THE TWO NOBLE KINSMEN THE WINTER’S TALE A LOVER’S COMPLAINT THE PASSIONATE PILGRIM THE PHOENIX AND THE TURTLE THE RAPE OF LUCRECE VENUS AND ADONIS

THE SONNETS

From fairest creatures we desire increase, That thereby beauty’s rose might never die, But as the riper should by time decease, His tender heir might bear his memory: But thou contracted to thine own bright eyes, Feed’st thy light’s flame with self-substantial fuel, Making a famine where abundance lies, Thyself thy foe, to thy sweet self too cruel: Thou that art now the world’s fresh ornament, And only herald to the gaudy spring, Within thine own bud buriest thy content, And, tender churl, mak’st waste in niggarding: Pity the world, or else this glutton be, To eat the world’s due, by the grave and thee.

When forty winters shall besiege thy brow, And dig deep trenches in thy beauty’s field, Thy youth’s proud livery so gazed on now, Will be a tattered weed of small worth held: Then being asked, where all thy beauty lies, Where all the treasure of thy lusty days; To say, within thine own deep sunken eyes, Were an all-eating shame, and thriftless praise. How much more praise deserv’d thy beauty’s use, If thou couldst answer ‘This fair child of mine Shall sum my count, and make my old excuse,’ Proving his beauty by succession thine. This were to be new made when thou art old, And see thy blood warm when thou feel’st it cold.

Look in thy glass and tell the face thou viewest, Now is the time that face should form another, Whose fresh repair if now thou not renewest, Thou dost beguile the world, unbless some mother. For where is she so fair whose uneared womb Disdains the tillage of thy husbandry? Or who is he so fond will be the tomb Of his self-love to stop posterity? Thou art thy mother’s glass and she in thee Calls back the lovely April of her prime, So thou through windows of thine age shalt see, Despite of wrinkles this thy golden time. But if thou live remembered not to be, Die single and thine image dies with thee.

Unthrifty loveliness why dost thou spend, Upon thyself thy beauty’s legacy? Nature’s bequest gives nothing but doth lend, And being frank she lends to those are free: Then beauteous niggard why dost thou abuse, The bounteous largess given thee to give? Profitless usurer why dost thou use So great a sum of sums yet canst not live? For having traffic with thyself alone, Thou of thyself thy sweet self dost deceive, Then how when nature calls thee to be gone, What acceptable audit canst thou leave? Thy unused beauty must be tombed with thee, Which used lives th’ executor to be.

Those hours that with gentle work did frame The lovely gaze where every eye doth dwell Will play the tyrants to the very same, And that unfair which fairly doth excel: For never-resting time leads summer on To hideous winter and confounds him there, Sap checked with frost and lusty leaves quite gone, Beauty o’er-snowed and bareness every where: Then were not summer’s distillation left A liquid prisoner pent in walls of glass, Beauty’s effect with beauty were bereft, Nor it nor no remembrance what it was. But flowers distilled though they with winter meet, Leese but their show, their substance still lives sweet.

Then let not winter’s ragged hand deface, In thee thy summer ere thou be distilled: Make sweet some vial; treasure thou some place, With beauty’s treasure ere it be self-killed: That use is not forbidden usury, Which happies those that pay the willing loan; That’s for thyself to breed another thee, Or ten times happier be it ten for one, Ten times thyself were happier than thou art, If ten of thine ten times refigured thee: Then what could death do if thou shouldst depart, Leaving thee living in posterity? Be not self-willed for thou art much too fair, To be death’s conquest and make worms thine heir.

Lo in the orient when the gracious light Lifts up his burning head, each under eye Doth homage to his new-appearing sight, Serving with looks his sacred majesty, And having climbed the steep-up heavenly hill, Resembling strong youth in his middle age, Yet mortal looks adore his beauty still, Attending on his golden pilgrimage: But when from highmost pitch with weary car, Like feeble age he reeleth from the day, The eyes (fore duteous) now converted are From his low tract and look another way: So thou, thyself out-going in thy noon: Unlooked on diest unless thou get a son.

Music to hear, why hear’st thou music sadly? Sweets with sweets war not, joy delights in joy: Why lov’st thou that which thou receiv’st not gladly, Or else receiv’st with pleasure thine annoy? If the true concord of well-tuned sounds, By unions married do offend thine ear, They do but sweetly chide thee, who confounds In singleness the parts that thou shouldst bear: Mark how one string sweet husband to another, Strikes each in each by mutual ordering; Resembling sire, and child, and happy mother, Who all in one, one pleasing note do sing: Whose speechless song being many, seeming one, Sings this to thee, ‘Thou single wilt prove none’.

Is it for fear to wet a widow’s eye, That thou consum’st thyself in single life? Ah, if thou issueless shalt hap to die, The world will wail thee like a makeless wife, The world will be thy widow and still weep, That thou no form of thee hast left behind, When every private widow well may keep, By children’s eyes, her husband’s shape in mind: Look what an unthrift in the world doth spend Shifts but his place, for still the world enjoys it; But beauty’s waste hath in the world an end, And kept unused the user so destroys it: No love toward others in that bosom sits That on himself such murd’rous shame commits.

For shame deny that thou bear’st love to any Who for thyself art so unprovident. Grant if thou wilt, thou art beloved of many, But that thou none lov’st is most evident: For thou art so possessed with murd’rous hate, That ’gainst thyself thou stick’st not to conspire, Seeking that beauteous roof to ruinate Which to repair should be thy chief desire: O change thy thought, that I may change my mind, Shall hate be fairer lodged than gentle love? Be as thy presence is gracious and kind, Or to thyself at least kind-hearted prove, Make thee another self for love of me, That beauty still may live in thine or thee.

As fast as thou shalt wane so fast thou grow’st, In one of thine, from that which thou departest, And that fresh blood which youngly thou bestow’st, Thou mayst call thine, when thou from youth convertest, Herein lives wisdom, beauty, and increase, Without this folly, age, and cold decay, If all were minded so, the times should cease, And threescore year would make the world away: Let those whom nature hath not made for store, Harsh, featureless, and rude, barrenly perish: Look whom she best endowed, she gave thee more; Which bounteous gift thou shouldst in bounty cherish: She carved thee for her seal, and meant thereby, Thou shouldst print more, not let that copy die.

When I do count the clock that tells the time, And see the brave day sunk in hideous night, When I behold the violet past prime, And sable curls all silvered o’er with white: When lofty trees I see barren of leaves, Which erst from heat did canopy the herd And summer’s green all girded up in sheaves Borne on the bier with white and bristly beard: Then of thy beauty do I question make That thou among the wastes of time must go, Since sweets and beauties do themselves forsake, And die as fast as they see others grow, And nothing ’gainst Time’s scythe can make defence Save breed to brave him, when he takes thee hence.

O that you were your self, but love you are No longer yours, than you yourself here live, Against this coming end you should prepare, And your sweet semblance to some other give. So should that beauty which you hold in lease Find no determination, then you were Yourself again after yourself’s decease, When your sweet issue your sweet form should bear. Who lets so fair a house fall to decay, Which husbandry in honour might uphold, Against the stormy gusts of winter’s day And barren rage of death’s eternal cold? O none but unthrifts, dear my love you know, You had a father, let your son say so.

Not from the stars do I my judgement pluck, And yet methinks I have astronomy, But not to tell of good, or evil luck, Of plagues, of dearths, or seasons’ quality, Nor can I fortune to brief minutes tell; Pointing to each his thunder, rain and wind, Or say with princes if it shall go well By oft predict that I in heaven find. But from thine eyes my knowledge I derive, And constant stars in them I read such art As truth and beauty shall together thrive If from thyself, to store thou wouldst convert: Or else of thee this I prognosticate, Thy end is truth’s and beauty’s doom and date.

When I consider everything that grows Holds in perfection but a little moment. That this huge stage presenteth nought but shows Whereon the stars in secret influence comment. When I perceive that men as plants increase, Cheered and checked even by the self-same sky: Vaunt in their youthful sap, at height decrease, And wear their brave state out of memory. Then the conceit of this inconstant stay, Sets you most rich in youth before my sight, Where wasteful Time debateth with Decay To change your day of youth to sullied night, And all in war with Time for love of you, As he takes from you, I engraft you new.

But wherefore do not you a mightier way Make war upon this bloody tyrant Time? And fortify yourself in your decay With means more blessed than my barren rhyme? Now stand you on the top of happy hours, And many maiden gardens yet unset, With virtuous wish would bear you living flowers, Much liker than your painted counterfeit: So should the lines of life that life repair Which this (Time’s pencil) or my pupil pen Neither in inward worth nor outward fair Can make you live yourself in eyes of men. To give away yourself, keeps yourself still, And you must live drawn by your own sweet skill.

Who will believe my verse in time to come If it were filled with your most high deserts? Though yet heaven knows it is but as a tomb Which hides your life, and shows not half your parts: If I could write the beauty of your eyes, And in fresh numbers number all your graces, The age to come would say this poet lies, Such heavenly touches ne’er touched earthly faces. So should my papers (yellowed with their age) Be scorned, like old men of less truth than tongue, And your true rights be termed a poet’s rage, And stretched metre of an antique song. But were some child of yours alive that time, You should live twice,—in it, and in my rhyme.

Shall I compare thee to a summer’s day? Thou art more lovely and more temperate: Rough winds do shake the darling buds of May, And summer’s lease hath all too short a date: Sometime too hot the eye of heaven shines, And often is his gold complexion dimmed, And every fair from fair sometime declines, By chance, or nature’s changing course untrimmed: But thy eternal summer shall not fade, Nor lose possession of that fair thou ow’st, Nor shall death brag thou wand’rest in his shade, When in eternal lines to time thou grow’st, So long as men can breathe or eyes can see, So long lives this, and this gives life to thee.

Devouring Time blunt thou the lion’s paws, And make the earth devour her own sweet brood, Pluck the keen teeth from the fierce tiger’s jaws, And burn the long-lived phoenix, in her blood, Make glad and sorry seasons as thou fleet’st, And do whate’er thou wilt swift-footed Time To the wide world and all her fading sweets: But I forbid thee one most heinous crime, O carve not with thy hours my love’s fair brow, Nor draw no lines there with thine antique pen, Him in thy course untainted do allow, For beauty’s pattern to succeeding men. Yet do thy worst, old Time; despite thy wrong, My love shall in my verse ever live young.

A woman’s face with nature’s own hand painted, Hast thou the master mistress of my passion, A woman’s gentle heart but not acquainted With shifting change as is false women’s fashion, An eye more bright than theirs, less false in rolling: Gilding the object whereupon it gazeth, A man in hue all hues in his controlling, Which steals men’s eyes and women’s souls amazeth. And for a woman wert thou first created, Till nature as she wrought thee fell a-doting, And by addition me of thee defeated, By adding one thing to my purpose nothing. But since she pricked thee out for women’s pleasure, Mine be thy love and thy love’s use their treasure.

So is it not with me as with that muse, Stirred by a painted beauty to his verse, Who heaven it self for ornament doth use, And every fair with his fair doth rehearse, Making a couplement of proud compare With sun and moon, with earth and sea’s rich gems: With April’s first-born flowers and all things rare, That heaven’s air in this huge rondure hems. O let me true in love but truly write, And then believe me, my love is as fair, As any mother’s child, though not so bright As those gold candles fixed in heaven’s air: Let them say more that like of hearsay well, I will not praise that purpose not to sell.

My glass shall not persuade me I am old, So long as youth and thou are of one date, But when in thee time’s furrows I behold, Then look I death my days should expiate. For all that beauty that doth cover thee, Is but the seemly raiment of my heart, Which in thy breast doth live, as thine in me, How can I then be elder than thou art? O therefore love be of thyself so wary, As I not for my self, but for thee will, Bearing thy heart which I will keep so chary As tender nurse her babe from faring ill. Presume not on thy heart when mine is slain, Thou gav’st me thine not to give back again.

As an unperfect actor on the stage, Who with his fear is put beside his part, Or some fierce thing replete with too much rage, Whose strength’s abundance weakens his own heart; So I for fear of trust, forget to say, The perfect ceremony of love’s rite, And in mine own love’s strength seem to decay, O’ercharged with burthen of mine own love’s might: O let my looks be then the eloquence, And dumb presagers of my speaking breast, Who plead for love, and look for recompense, More than that tongue that more hath more expressed. O learn to read what silent love hath writ, To hear with eyes belongs to love’s fine wit.

Mine eye hath played the painter and hath stelled, Thy beauty’s form in table of my heart, My body is the frame wherein ’tis held, And perspective it is best painter’s art. For through the painter must you see his skill, To find where your true image pictured lies, Which in my bosom’s shop is hanging still, That hath his windows glazed with thine eyes: Now see what good turns eyes for eyes have done, Mine eyes have drawn thy shape, and thine for me Are windows to my breast, where-through the sun Delights to peep, to gaze therein on thee; Yet eyes this cunning want to grace their art, They draw but what they see, know not the heart.

Let those who are in favour with their stars, Of public honour and proud titles boast, Whilst I whom fortune of such triumph bars Unlooked for joy in that I honour most; Great princes’ favourites their fair leaves spread, But as the marigold at the sun’s eye, And in themselves their pride lies buried, For at a frown they in their glory die. The painful warrior famoused for fight, After a thousand victories once foiled, Is from the book of honour razed quite, And all the rest forgot for which he toiled: Then happy I that love and am beloved Where I may not remove nor be removed.

Lord of my love, to whom in vassalage Thy merit hath my duty strongly knit; To thee I send this written embassage To witness duty, not to show my wit. Duty so great, which wit so poor as mine May make seem bare, in wanting words to show it; But that I hope some good conceit of thine In thy soul’s thought (all naked) will bestow it: Till whatsoever star that guides my moving, Points on me graciously with fair aspect, And puts apparel on my tattered loving, To show me worthy of thy sweet respect, Then may I dare to boast how I do love thee, Till then, not show my head where thou mayst prove me.

Weary with toil, I haste me to my bed, The dear respose for limbs with travel tired, But then begins a journey in my head To work my mind, when body’s work’s expired. For then my thoughts, from far where I abide, Intend a zealous pilgrimage to thee, And keep my drooping eyelids open wide, Looking on darkness which the blind do see. Save that my soul’s imaginary sight Presents thy shadow to my sightless view, Which like a jewel (hung in ghastly night) Makes black night beauteous, and her old face new. Lo thus by day my limbs, by night my mind, For thee, and for my self, no quiet find.

How can I then return in happy plight That am debarred the benefit of rest? When day’s oppression is not eased by night, But day by night and night by day oppressed. And each (though enemies to either’s reign) Do in consent shake hands to torture me, The one by toil, the other to complain How far I toil, still farther off from thee. I tell the day to please him thou art bright, And dost him grace when clouds do blot the heaven: So flatter I the swart-complexioned night, When sparkling stars twire not thou gild’st the even. But day doth daily draw my sorrows longer, And night doth nightly make grief’s length seem stronger

When in disgrace with fortune and men’s eyes, I all alone beweep my outcast state, And trouble deaf heaven with my bootless cries, And look upon my self and curse my fate, Wishing me like to one more rich in hope, Featured like him, like him with friends possessed, Desiring this man’s art, and that man’s scope, With what I most enjoy contented least, Yet in these thoughts my self almost despising, Haply I think on thee, and then my state, (Like to the lark at break of day arising From sullen earth) sings hymns at heaven’s gate, For thy sweet love remembered such wealth brings, That then I scorn to change my state with kings.

When to the sessions of sweet silent thought, I summon up remembrance of things past, I sigh the lack of many a thing I sought, And with old woes new wail my dear time’s waste: Then can I drown an eye (unused to flow) For precious friends hid in death’s dateless night, And weep afresh love’s long since cancelled woe, And moan th’ expense of many a vanished sight. Then can I grieve at grievances foregone, And heavily from woe to woe tell o’er The sad account of fore-bemoaned moan, Which I new pay as if not paid before. But if the while I think on thee (dear friend) All losses are restored, and sorrows end.

Thy bosom is endeared with all hearts, Which I by lacking have supposed dead, And there reigns love and all love’s loving parts, And all those friends which I thought buried. How many a holy and obsequious tear Hath dear religious love stol’n from mine eye, As interest of the dead, which now appear, But things removed that hidden in thee lie. Thou art the grave where buried love doth live, Hung with the trophies of my lovers gone, Who all their parts of me to thee did give, That due of many, now is thine alone. Their images I loved, I view in thee, And thou, all they, hast all the all of me.

If thou survive my well-contented day, When that churl death my bones with dust shall cover And shalt by fortune once more re-survey These poor rude lines of thy deceased lover: Compare them with the bett’ring of the time, And though they be outstripped by every pen, Reserve them for my love, not for their rhyme, Exceeded by the height of happier men. O then vouchsafe me but this loving thought, ’Had my friend’s Muse grown with this growing age, A dearer birth than this his love had brought To march in ranks of better equipage: But since he died and poets better prove, Theirs for their style I’ll read, his for his love’.

Full many a glorious morning have I seen, Flatter the mountain tops with sovereign eye, Kissing with golden face the meadows green; Gilding pale streams with heavenly alchemy: Anon permit the basest clouds to ride, With ugly rack on his celestial face, And from the forlorn world his visage hide Stealing unseen to west with this disgrace: Even so my sun one early morn did shine, With all triumphant splendour on my brow, But out alack, he was but one hour mine, The region cloud hath masked him from me now. Yet him for this, my love no whit disdaineth, Suns of the world may stain, when heaven’s sun staineth.

Why didst thou promise such a beauteous day, And make me travel forth without my cloak, To let base clouds o’ertake me in my way, Hiding thy brav’ry in their rotten smoke? ’Tis not enough that through the cloud thou break, To dry the rain on my storm-beaten face, For no man well of such a salve can speak, That heals the wound, and cures not the disgrace: Nor can thy shame give physic to my grief, Though thou repent, yet I have still the loss, Th’ offender’s sorrow lends but weak relief To him that bears the strong offence’s cross. Ah but those tears are pearl which thy love sheds, And they are rich, and ransom all ill deeds.

No more be grieved at that which thou hast done, Roses have thorns, and silver fountains mud, Clouds and eclipses stain both moon and sun, And loathsome canker lives in sweetest bud. All men make faults, and even I in this, Authorizing thy trespass with compare, My self corrupting salving thy amiss, Excusing thy sins more than thy sins are: For to thy sensual fault I bring in sense; Thy adverse party is thy advocate, And ’gainst my self a lawful plea commence: Such civil war is in my love and hate, That I an accessary needs must be, To that sweet thief which sourly robs from me.

Let me confess that we two must be twain, Although our undivided loves are one: So shall those blots that do with me remain, Without thy help, by me be borne alone. In our two loves there is but one respect, Though in our lives a separable spite, Which though it alter not love’s sole effect, Yet doth it steal sweet hours from love’s delight. I may not evermore acknowledge thee, Lest my bewailed guilt should do thee shame, Nor thou with public kindness honour me, Unless thou take that honour from thy name: But do not so, I love thee in such sort, As thou being mine, mine is thy good report.

As a decrepit father takes delight, To see his active child do deeds of youth, So I, made lame by Fortune’s dearest spite Take all my comfort of thy worth and truth. For whether beauty, birth, or wealth, or wit, Or any of these all, or all, or more Entitled in thy parts, do crowned sit, I make my love engrafted to this store: So then I am not lame, poor, nor despised, Whilst that this shadow doth such substance give, That I in thy abundance am sufficed, And by a part of all thy glory live: Look what is best, that best I wish in thee, This wish I have, then ten times happy me.

How can my Muse want subject to invent While thou dost breathe that pour’st into my verse, Thine own sweet argument, too excellent, For every vulgar paper to rehearse? O give thyself the thanks if aught in me, Worthy perusal stand against thy sight, For who’s so dumb that cannot write to thee, When thou thyself dost give invention light? Be thou the tenth Muse, ten times more in worth Than those old nine which rhymers invocate, And he that calls on thee, let him bring forth Eternal numbers to outlive long date. If my slight Muse do please these curious days, The pain be mine, but thine shall be the praise.

O how thy worth with manners may I sing, When thou art all the better part of me? What can mine own praise to mine own self bring: And what is’t but mine own when I praise thee? Even for this, let us divided live, And our dear love lose name of single one, That by this separation I may give: That due to thee which thou deserv’st alone: O absence what a torment wouldst thou prove, Were it not thy sour leisure gave sweet leave, To entertain the time with thoughts of love, Which time and thoughts so sweetly doth deceive. And that thou teachest how to make one twain, By praising him here who doth hence remain.

Take all my loves, my love, yea take them all, What hast thou then more than thou hadst before? No love, my love, that thou mayst true love call, All mine was thine, before thou hadst this more: Then if for my love, thou my love receivest, I cannot blame thee, for my love thou usest, But yet be blamed, if thou thyself deceivest By wilful taste of what thyself refusest. I do forgive thy robbery gentle thief Although thou steal thee all my poverty: And yet love knows it is a greater grief To bear greater wrong, than hate’s known injury. Lascivious grace, in whom all ill well shows, Kill me with spites yet we must not be foes.

Those pretty wrongs that liberty commits, When I am sometime absent from thy heart, Thy beauty, and thy years full well befits, For still temptation follows where thou art. Gentle thou art, and therefore to be won, Beauteous thou art, therefore to be assailed. And when a woman woos, what woman’s son, Will sourly leave her till he have prevailed? Ay me, but yet thou mightst my seat forbear, And chide thy beauty, and thy straying youth, Who lead thee in their riot even there Where thou art forced to break a twofold truth: Hers by thy beauty tempting her to thee, Thine by thy beauty being false to me.

That thou hast her it is not all my grief, And yet it may be said I loved her dearly, That she hath thee is of my wailing chief, A loss in love that touches me more nearly. Loving offenders thus I will excuse ye, Thou dost love her, because thou know’st I love her, And for my sake even so doth she abuse me, Suff’ring my friend for my sake to approve her. If I lose thee, my loss is my love’s gain, And losing her, my friend hath found that loss, Both find each other, and I lose both twain, And both for my sake lay on me this cross, But here’s the joy, my friend and I are one, Sweet flattery, then she loves but me alone.

When most I wink then do mine eyes best see, For all the day they view things unrespected, But when I sleep, in dreams they look on thee, And darkly bright, are bright in dark directed. Then thou whose shadow shadows doth make bright How would thy shadow’s form, form happy show, To the clear day with thy much clearer light, When to unseeing eyes thy shade shines so! How would (I say) mine eyes be blessed made, By looking on thee in the living day, When in dead night thy fair imperfect shade, Through heavy sleep on sightless eyes doth stay! All days are nights to see till I see thee, And nights bright days when dreams do show thee me.

If the dull substance of my flesh were thought, Injurious distance should not stop my way, For then despite of space I would be brought, From limits far remote, where thou dost stay, No matter then although my foot did stand Upon the farthest earth removed from thee, For nimble thought can jump both sea and land, As soon as think the place where he would be. But ah, thought kills me that I am not thought To leap large lengths of miles when thou art gone, But that so much of earth and water wrought, I must attend, time’s leisure with my moan. Receiving nought by elements so slow, But heavy tears, badges of either’s woe.

The other two, slight air, and purging fire, Are both with thee, wherever I abide, The first my thought, the other my desire, These present-absent with swift motion slide. For when these quicker elements are gone In tender embassy of love to thee, My life being made of four, with two alone, Sinks down to death, oppressed with melancholy. Until life’s composition be recured, By those swift messengers returned from thee, Who even but now come back again assured, Of thy fair health, recounting it to me. This told, I joy, but then no longer glad, I send them back again and straight grow sad.

Mine eye and heart are at a mortal war, How to divide the conquest of thy sight, Mine eye, my heart thy picture’s sight would bar, My heart, mine eye the freedom of that right, My heart doth plead that thou in him dost lie, A closet never pierced with crystal eyes; But the defendant doth that plea deny, And says in him thy fair appearance lies. To side this title is impanelled A quest of thoughts, all tenants to the heart, And by their verdict is determined The clear eye’s moiety, and the dear heart’s part. As thus, mine eye’s due is thy outward part, And my heart’s right, thy inward love of heart.

Betwixt mine eye and heart a league is took, And each doth good turns now unto the other, When that mine eye is famished for a look, Or heart in love with sighs himself doth smother; With my love’s picture then my eye doth feast, And to the painted banquet bids my heart: Another time mine eye is my heart’s guest, And in his thoughts of love doth share a part. So either by thy picture or my love, Thyself away, art present still with me, For thou not farther than my thoughts canst move, And I am still with them, and they with thee. Or if they sleep, thy picture in my sight Awakes my heart, to heart’s and eye’s delight.

How careful was I when I took my way, Each trifle under truest bars to thrust, That to my use it might unused stay From hands of falsehood, in sure wards of trust! But thou, to whom my jewels trifles are, Most worthy comfort, now my greatest grief, Thou best of dearest, and mine only care, Art left the prey of every vulgar thief. Thee have I not locked up in any chest, Save where thou art not, though I feel thou art, Within the gentle closure of my breast, From whence at pleasure thou mayst come and part, And even thence thou wilt be stol’n I fear, For truth proves thievish for a prize so dear.

Against that time (if ever that time come) When I shall see thee frown on my defects, When as thy love hath cast his utmost sum, Called to that audit by advised respects, Against that time when thou shalt strangely pass, And scarcely greet me with that sun thine eye, When love converted from the thing it was Shall reasons find of settled gravity; Against that time do I ensconce me here Within the knowledge of mine own desert, And this my hand, against my self uprear, To guard the lawful reasons on thy part, To leave poor me, thou hast the strength of laws, Since why to love, I can allege no cause.

How heavy do I journey on the way, When what I seek (my weary travel’s end) Doth teach that case and that repose to say ’Thus far the miles are measured from thy friend.’ The beast that bears me, tired with my woe, Plods dully on, to bear that weight in me, As if by some instinct the wretch did know His rider loved not speed being made from thee: The bloody spur cannot provoke him on, That sometimes anger thrusts into his hide, Which heavily he answers with a groan, More sharp to me than spurring to his side, For that same groan doth put this in my mind, My grief lies onward and my joy behind.

Thus can my love excuse the slow offence, Of my dull bearer, when from thee I speed, From where thou art, why should I haste me thence? Till I return of posting is no need. O what excuse will my poor beast then find, When swift extremity can seem but slow? Then should I spur though mounted on the wind, In winged speed no motion shall I know, Then can no horse with my desire keep pace, Therefore desire (of perfect’st love being made) Shall neigh no dull flesh in his fiery race, But love, for love, thus shall excuse my jade: Since from thee going, he went wilful-slow, Towards thee I’ll run, and give him leave to go.

So am I as the rich whose blessed key, Can bring him to his sweet up-locked treasure, The which he will not every hour survey, For blunting the fine point of seldom pleasure. Therefore are feasts so solemn and so rare, Since seldom coming in that long year set, Like stones of worth they thinly placed are, Or captain jewels in the carcanet. So is the time that keeps you as my chest Or as the wardrobe which the robe doth hide, To make some special instant special-blest, By new unfolding his imprisoned pride. Blessed are you whose worthiness gives scope, Being had to triumph, being lacked to hope.

What is your substance, whereof are you made, That millions of strange shadows on you tend? Since every one, hath every one, one shade, And you but one, can every shadow lend: Describe Adonis and the counterfeit, Is poorly imitated after you, On Helen’s cheek all art of beauty set, And you in Grecian tires are painted new: Speak of the spring, and foison of the year, The one doth shadow of your beauty show, The other as your bounty doth appear, And you in every blessed shape we know. In all external grace you have some part, But you like none, none you for constant heart.

O how much more doth beauty beauteous seem, By that sweet ornament which truth doth give! The rose looks fair, but fairer we it deem For that sweet odour, which doth in it live: The canker blooms have full as deep a dye, As the perfumed tincture of the roses, Hang on such thorns, and play as wantonly, When summer’s breath their masked buds discloses: But for their virtue only is their show, They live unwooed, and unrespected fade, Die to themselves. Sweet roses do not so, Of their sweet deaths, are sweetest odours made: And so of you, beauteous and lovely youth, When that shall fade, my verse distills your truth.

Not marble, nor the gilded monuments Of princes shall outlive this powerful rhyme, But you shall shine more bright in these contents Than unswept stone, besmeared with sluttish time. When wasteful war shall statues overturn, And broils root out the work of masonry, Nor Mars his sword, nor war’s quick fire shall burn: The living record of your memory. ’Gainst death, and all-oblivious enmity Shall you pace forth, your praise shall still find room, Even in the eyes of all posterity That wear this world out to the ending doom. So till the judgement that yourself arise, You live in this, and dwell in lovers’ eyes.

Sweet love renew thy force, be it not said Thy edge should blunter be than appetite, Which but to-day by feeding is allayed, To-morrow sharpened in his former might. So love be thou, although to-day thou fill Thy hungry eyes, even till they wink with fulness, To-morrow see again, and do not kill The spirit of love, with a perpetual dulness: Let this sad interim like the ocean be Which parts the shore, where two contracted new, Come daily to the banks, that when they see: Return of love, more blest may be the view. Or call it winter, which being full of care, Makes summer’s welcome, thrice more wished, more rare.

Being your slave what should I do but tend, Upon the hours, and times of your desire? I have no precious time at all to spend; Nor services to do till you require. Nor dare I chide the world-without-end hour, Whilst I (my sovereign) watch the clock for you, Nor think the bitterness of absence sour, When you have bid your servant once adieu. Nor dare I question with my jealous thought, Where you may be, or your affairs suppose, But like a sad slave stay and think of nought Save where you are, how happy you make those. So true a fool is love, that in your will, (Though you do any thing) he thinks no ill.

That god forbid, that made me first your slave, I should in thought control your times of pleasure, Or at your hand th’ account of hours to crave, Being your vassal bound to stay your leisure. O let me suffer (being at your beck) Th’ imprisoned absence of your liberty, And patience tame to sufferance bide each check, Without accusing you of injury. Be where you list, your charter is so strong, That you yourself may privilage your time To what you will, to you it doth belong, Yourself to pardon of self-doing crime. I am to wait, though waiting so be hell, Not blame your pleasure be it ill or well.

If there be nothing new, but that which is, Hath been before, how are our brains beguiled, Which labouring for invention bear amiss The second burthen of a former child! O that record could with a backward look, Even of five hundred courses of the sun, Show me your image in some antique book, Since mind at first in character was done. That I might see what the old world could say, To this composed wonder of your frame, Whether we are mended, or whether better they, Or whether revolution be the same. O sure I am the wits of former days, To subjects worse have given admiring praise.

Like as the waves make towards the pebbled shore, So do our minutes hasten to their end, Each changing place with that which goes before, In sequent toil all forwards do contend. Nativity once in the main of light, Crawls to maturity, wherewith being crowned, Crooked eclipses ’gainst his glory fight, And Time that gave, doth now his gift confound. Time doth transfix the flourish set on youth, And delves the parallels in beauty’s brow, Feeds on the rarities of nature’s truth, And nothing stands but for his scythe to mow. And yet to times in hope, my verse shall stand Praising thy worth, despite his cruel hand.

Is it thy will, thy image should keep open My heavy eyelids to the weary night? Dost thou desire my slumbers should be broken, While shadows like to thee do mock my sight? Is it thy spirit that thou send’st from thee So far from home into my deeds to pry, To find out shames and idle hours in me, The scope and tenure of thy jealousy? O no, thy love though much, is not so great, It is my love that keeps mine eye awake, Mine own true love that doth my rest defeat, To play the watchman ever for thy sake. For thee watch I, whilst thou dost wake elsewhere, From me far off, with others all too near.

Sin of self-love possesseth all mine eye, And all my soul, and all my every part; And for this sin there is no remedy, It is so grounded inward in my heart. Methinks no face so gracious is as mine, No shape so true, no truth of such account, And for my self mine own worth do define, As I all other in all worths surmount. But when my glass shows me my self indeed beated and chopt with tanned antiquity, Mine own self-love quite contrary I read: Self, so self-loving were iniquity. ’Tis thee, myself, that for myself I praise, Painting my age with beauty of thy days.

Against my love shall be as I am now With Time’s injurious hand crushed and o’erworn, When hours have drained his blood and filled his brow With lines and wrinkles, when his youthful morn Hath travelled on to age’s steepy night, And all those beauties whereof now he’s king Are vanishing, or vanished out of sight, Stealing away the treasure of his spring: For such a time do I now fortify Against confounding age’s cruel knife, That he shall never cut from memory My sweet love’s beauty, though my lover’s life. His beauty shall in these black lines be seen, And they shall live, and he in them still green.

When I have seen by Time’s fell hand defaced The rich-proud cost of outworn buried age, When sometime lofty towers I see down-rased, And brass eternal slave to mortal rage. When I have seen the hungry ocean gain Advantage on the kingdom of the shore, And the firm soil win of the watery main, Increasing store with loss, and loss with store. When I have seen such interchange of State, Or state it self confounded, to decay, Ruin hath taught me thus to ruminate: That Time will come and take my love away. This thought is as a death which cannot choose But weep to have, that which it fears to lose.

Since brass, nor stone, nor earth, nor boundless sea, But sad mortality o’ersways their power, How with this rage shall beauty hold a plea, Whose action is no stronger than a flower? O how shall summer’s honey breath hold out, Against the wrackful siege of batt’ring days, When rocks impregnable are not so stout, Nor gates of steel so strong but time decays? O fearful meditation, where alack, Shall Time’s best jewel from Time’s chest lie hid? Or what strong hand can hold his swift foot back, Or who his spoil of beauty can forbid? O none, unless this miracle have might, That in black ink my love may still shine bright.

Tired with all these, for restful death I cry: As to behold desert a beggar born, And needy nothing trimmed in jollity, And purest faith unhappily forsworn, And gilded honour shamefully misplaced, And maiden virtue rudely strumpeted, And right perfection wrongfully disgraced, And strength by limping sway disabled And art made tongue-tied by authority, And folly, doctor-like, controlling skill, And simple truth miscalled simplicity, And captive good attending captain ill. Tired with all these, from these would I be gone, Save that to die, I leave my love alone.

Ah wherefore with infection should he live, And with his presence grace impiety, That sin by him advantage should achieve, And lace it self with his society? Why should false painting imitate his cheek, And steal dead seeming of his living hue? Why should poor beauty indirectly seek, Roses of shadow, since his rose is true? Why should he live, now nature bankrupt is, Beggared of blood to blush through lively veins, For she hath no exchequer now but his, And proud of many, lives upon his gains? O him she stores, to show what wealth she had, In days long since, before these last so bad.

Thus is his cheek the map of days outworn, When beauty lived and died as flowers do now, Before these bastard signs of fair were born, Or durst inhabit on a living brow: Before the golden tresses of the dead, The right of sepulchres, were shorn away, To live a second life on second head, Ere beauty’s dead fleece made another gay: In him those holy antique hours are seen, Without all ornament, it self and true, Making no summer of another’s green, Robbing no old to dress his beauty new, And him as for a map doth Nature store, To show false Art what beauty was of yore.

Those parts of thee that the world’s eye doth view, Want nothing that the thought of hearts can mend: All tongues, the voice of souls, give thee that due, Uttering bare truth, even so as foes commend. Thy outward thus with outward praise is crowned, But those same tongues that give thee so thine own, In other accents do this praise confound By seeing farther than the eye hath shown. They look into the beauty of thy mind, And that in guess they measure by thy deeds, Then churls their thoughts (although their eyes were kind) To thy fair flower add the rank smell of weeds: But why thy odour matcheth not thy show, The soil is this, that thou dost common grow.

That thou art blamed shall not be thy defect, For slander’s mark was ever yet the fair, The ornament of beauty is suspect, A crow that flies in heaven’s sweetest air. So thou be good, slander doth but approve, Thy worth the greater being wooed of time, For canker vice the sweetest buds doth love, And thou present’st a pure unstained prime. Thou hast passed by the ambush of young days, Either not assailed, or victor being charged, Yet this thy praise cannot be so thy praise, To tie up envy, evermore enlarged, If some suspect of ill masked not thy show, Then thou alone kingdoms of hearts shouldst owe.

No longer mourn for me when I am dead, Than you shall hear the surly sullen bell Give warning to the world that I am fled From this vile world with vilest worms to dwell: Nay if you read this line, remember not, The hand that writ it, for I love you so, That I in your sweet thoughts would be forgot, If thinking on me then should make you woe. O if, I say, you look upon this verse, When I (perhaps) compounded am with clay, Do not so much as my poor name rehearse; But let your love even with my life decay. Lest the wise world should look into your moan, And mock you with me after I am gone.

O lest the world should task you to recite, What merit lived in me that you should love After my death, dear love, forget me quite, For you in me can nothing worthy prove. Unless you would devise some virtuous lie, To do more for me than mine own desert, And hang more praise upon deceased I, Than niggard truth would willingly impart: O lest your true love may seem false in this, That you for love speak well of me untrue, My name be buried where my body is, And live no more to shame nor me, nor you. For I am shamed by that which I bring forth, And so should you, to love things nothing worth.

That time of year thou mayst in me behold, When yellow leaves, or none, or few do hang Upon those boughs which shake against the cold, Bare ruined choirs, where late the sweet birds sang. In me thou seest the twilight of such day, As after sunset fadeth in the west, Which by and by black night doth take away, Death’s second self that seals up all in rest. In me thou seest the glowing of such fire, That on the ashes of his youth doth lie, As the death-bed, whereon it must expire, Consumed with that which it was nourished by. This thou perceiv’st, which makes thy love more strong, To love that well, which thou must leave ere long.

But be contented when that fell arrest, Without all bail shall carry me away, My life hath in this line some interest, Which for memorial still with thee shall stay. When thou reviewest this, thou dost review, The very part was consecrate to thee, The earth can have but earth, which is his due, My spirit is thine the better part of me, So then thou hast but lost the dregs of life, The prey of worms, my body being dead, The coward conquest of a wretch’s knife, Too base of thee to be remembered, The worth of that, is that which it contains, And that is this, and this with thee remains.

So are you to my thoughts as food to life, Or as sweet-seasoned showers are to the ground; And for the peace of you I hold such strife As ’twixt a miser and his wealth is found. Now proud as an enjoyer, and anon Doubting the filching age will steal his treasure, Now counting best to be with you alone, Then bettered that the world may see my pleasure, Sometime all full with feasting on your sight, And by and by clean starved for a look, Possessing or pursuing no delight Save what is had, or must from you be took. Thus do I pine and surfeit day by day, Or gluttoning on all, or all away.

Why is my verse so barren of new pride? So far from variation or quick change? Why with the time do I not glance aside To new-found methods, and to compounds strange? Why write I still all one, ever the same, And keep invention in a noted weed, That every word doth almost tell my name, Showing their birth, and where they did proceed? O know sweet love I always write of you, And you and love are still my argument: So all my best is dressing old words new, Spending again what is already spent: For as the sun is daily new and old, So is my love still telling what is told.

Thy glass will show thee how thy beauties wear, Thy dial how thy precious minutes waste, These vacant leaves thy mind’s imprint will bear, And of this book, this learning mayst thou taste. The wrinkles which thy glass will truly show, Of mouthed graves will give thee memory, Thou by thy dial’s shady stealth mayst know, Time’s thievish progress to eternity. Look what thy memory cannot contain, Commit to these waste blanks, and thou shalt find Those children nursed, delivered from thy brain, To take a new acquaintance of thy mind. These offices, so oft as thou wilt look, Shall profit thee, and much enrich thy book.

So oft have I invoked thee for my muse, And found such fair assistance in my verse, As every alien pen hath got my use, And under thee their poesy disperse. Thine eyes, that taught the dumb on high to sing, And heavy ignorance aloft to fly, Have added feathers to the learned’s wing, And given grace a double majesty. Yet be most proud of that which I compile, Whose influence is thine, and born of thee, In others’ works thou dost but mend the style, And arts with thy sweet graces graced be. But thou art all my art, and dost advance As high as learning, my rude ignorance.

Whilst I alone did call upon thy aid, My verse alone had all thy gentle grace, But now my gracious numbers are decayed, And my sick muse doth give an other place. I grant (sweet love) thy lovely argument Deserves the travail of a worthier pen, Yet what of thee thy poet doth invent, He robs thee of, and pays it thee again, He lends thee virtue, and he stole that word, From thy behaviour, beauty doth he give And found it in thy cheek: he can afford No praise to thee, but what in thee doth live. Then thank him not for that which he doth say, Since what he owes thee, thou thyself dost pay.

O how I faint when I of you do write, Knowing a better spirit doth use your name, And in the praise thereof spends all his might, To make me tongue-tied speaking of your fame. But since your worth, wide as the ocean is, The humble as the proudest sail doth bear, My saucy bark (inferior far to his) On your broad main doth wilfully appear. Your shallowest help will hold me up afloat, Whilst he upon your soundless deep doth ride, Or (being wrecked) I am a worthless boat, He of tall building, and of goodly pride. Then if he thrive and I be cast away, The worst was this: my love was my decay.

Or I shall live your epitaph to make, Or you survive when I in earth am rotten, From hence your memory death cannot take, Although in me each part will be forgotten. Your name from hence immortal life shall have, Though I (once gone) to all the world must die, The earth can yield me but a common grave, When you entombed in men’s eyes shall lie, Your monument shall be my gentle verse, Which eyes not yet created shall o’er-read, And tongues to be, your being shall rehearse, When all the breathers of this world are dead, You still shall live, such virtue hath my pen, Where breath most breathes, even in the mouths of men.

I grant thou wert not married to my muse, And therefore mayst without attaint o’erlook The dedicated words which writers use Of their fair subject, blessing every book. Thou art as fair in knowledge as in hue, Finding thy worth a limit past my praise, And therefore art enforced to seek anew, Some fresher stamp of the time-bettering days. And do so love, yet when they have devised, What strained touches rhetoric can lend, Thou truly fair, wert truly sympathized, In true plain words, by thy true-telling friend. And their gross painting might be better used, Where cheeks need blood, in thee it is abused.

I never saw that you did painting need, And therefore to your fair no painting set, I found (or thought I found) you did exceed, That barren tender of a poet’s debt: And therefore have I slept in your report, That you yourself being extant well might show, How far a modern quill doth come too short, Speaking of worth, what worth in you doth grow. This silence for my sin you did impute, Which shall be most my glory being dumb, For I impair not beauty being mute, When others would give life, and bring a tomb. There lives more life in one of your fair eyes, Than both your poets can in praise devise.

Who is it that says most, which can say more, Than this rich praise: that you alone are you, In whose confine immured is the store, Which should example where your equal grew. Lean penury within that pen doth dwell, That to his subject lends not some small glory, But he that writes of you, if he can tell, That you are you, so dignifies his story. Let him but copy what in you is writ, Not making worse what nature made so clear, And such a counterpart shall fame his wit, Making his style admired every where. You to your beauteous blessings add a curse, Being fond on praise, which makes your praises worse.

My tongue-tied muse in manners holds her still, While comments of your praise richly compiled, Reserve their character with golden quill, And precious phrase by all the Muses filed. I think good thoughts, whilst other write good words, And like unlettered clerk still cry Amen, To every hymn that able spirit affords, In polished form of well refined pen. Hearing you praised, I say ’tis so, ’tis true, And to the most of praise add something more, But that is in my thought, whose love to you (Though words come hindmost) holds his rank before, Then others, for the breath of words respect, Me for my dumb thoughts, speaking in effect.

Was it the proud full sail of his great verse, Bound for the prize of (all too precious) you, That did my ripe thoughts in my brain inhearse, Making their tomb the womb wherein they grew? Was it his spirit, by spirits taught to write, Above a mortal pitch, that struck me dead? No, neither he, nor his compeers by night Giving him aid, my verse astonished. He nor that affable familiar ghost Which nightly gulls him with intelligence, As victors of my silence cannot boast, I was not sick of any fear from thence. But when your countenance filled up his line, Then lacked I matter, that enfeebled mine.

Farewell! thou art too dear for my possessing, And like enough thou know’st thy estimate, The charter of thy worth gives thee releasing: My bonds in thee are all determinate. For how do I hold thee but by thy granting, And for that riches where is my deserving? The cause of this fair gift in me is wanting, And so my patent back again is swerving. Thyself thou gav’st, thy own worth then not knowing, Or me to whom thou gav’st it, else mistaking, So thy great gift upon misprision growing, Comes home again, on better judgement making. Thus have I had thee as a dream doth flatter, In sleep a king, but waking no such matter.

When thou shalt be disposed to set me light, And place my merit in the eye of scorn, Upon thy side, against my self I’ll fight, And prove thee virtuous, though thou art forsworn: With mine own weakness being best acquainted, Upon thy part I can set down a story Of faults concealed, wherein I am attainted: That thou in losing me, shalt win much glory: And I by this will be a gainer too, For bending all my loving thoughts on thee, The injuries that to my self I do, Doing thee vantage, double-vantage me. Such is my love, to thee I so belong, That for thy right, my self will bear all wrong.

Say that thou didst forsake me for some fault, And I will comment upon that offence, Speak of my lameness, and I straight will halt: Against thy reasons making no defence. Thou canst not (love) disgrace me half so ill, To set a form upon desired change, As I’ll my self disgrace, knowing thy will, I will acquaintance strangle and look strange: Be absent from thy walks and in my tongue, Thy sweet beloved name no more shall dwell, Lest I, too much profane, should do it wrong, And haply of our old acquaintance tell. For thee, against my self I’ll vow debate, For I must ne’er love him whom thou dost hate.

Then hate me when thou wilt, if ever, now, Now while the world is bent my deeds to cross, join with the spite of fortune, make me bow, And do not drop in for an after-loss: Ah do not, when my heart hath ’scaped this sorrow, Come in the rearward of a conquered woe, Give not a windy night a rainy morrow, To linger out a purposed overthrow. If thou wilt leave me, do not leave me last, When other petty griefs have done their spite, But in the onset come, so shall I taste At first the very worst of fortune’s might. And other strains of woe, which now seem woe, Compared with loss of thee, will not seem so.

Some glory in their birth, some in their skill, Some in their wealth, some in their body’s force, Some in their garments though new-fangled ill: Some in their hawks and hounds, some in their horse. And every humour hath his adjunct pleasure, Wherein it finds a joy above the rest, But these particulars are not my measure, All these I better in one general best. Thy love is better than high birth to me, Richer than wealth, prouder than garments’ costs, Of more delight than hawks and horses be: And having thee, of all men’s pride I boast. Wretched in this alone, that thou mayst take, All this away, and me most wretched make.

But do thy worst to steal thyself away, For term of life thou art assured mine, And life no longer than thy love will stay, For it depends upon that love of thine. Then need I not to fear the worst of wrongs, When in the least of them my life hath end, I see, a better state to me belongs Than that, which on thy humour doth depend. Thou canst not vex me with inconstant mind, Since that my life on thy revolt doth lie, O what a happy title do I find, Happy to have thy love, happy to die! But what’s so blessed-fair that fears no blot? Thou mayst be false, and yet I know it not.

So shall I live, supposing thou art true, Like a deceived husband, so love’s face, May still seem love to me, though altered new: Thy looks with me, thy heart in other place. For there can live no hatred in thine eye, Therefore in that I cannot know thy change, In many’s looks, the false heart’s history Is writ in moods and frowns and wrinkles strange. But heaven in thy creation did decree, That in thy face sweet love should ever dwell, Whate’er thy thoughts, or thy heart’s workings be, Thy looks should nothing thence, but sweetness tell. How like Eve’s apple doth thy beauty grow, If thy sweet virtue answer not thy show.

They that have power to hurt, and will do none, That do not do the thing, they most do show, Who moving others, are themselves as stone, Unmoved, cold, and to temptation slow: They rightly do inherit heaven’s graces, And husband nature’s riches from expense, They are the lords and owners of their faces, Others, but stewards of their excellence: The summer’s flower is to the summer sweet, Though to it self, it only live and die, But if that flower with base infection meet, The basest weed outbraves his dignity: For sweetest things turn sourest by their deeds, Lilies that fester, smell far worse than weeds.

How sweet and lovely dost thou make the shame, Which like a canker in the fragrant rose, Doth spot the beauty of thy budding name! O in what sweets dost thou thy sins enclose! That tongue that tells the story of thy days, (Making lascivious comments on thy sport) Cannot dispraise, but in a kind of praise, Naming thy name, blesses an ill report. O what a mansion have those vices got, Which for their habitation chose out thee, Where beauty’s veil doth cover every blot, And all things turns to fair, that eyes can see! Take heed (dear heart) of this large privilege, The hardest knife ill-used doth lose his edge.

Some say thy fault is youth, some wantonness, Some say thy grace is youth and gentle sport, Both grace and faults are loved of more and less: Thou mak’st faults graces, that to thee resort: As on the finger of a throned queen, The basest jewel will be well esteemed: So are those errors that in thee are seen, To truths translated, and for true things deemed. How many lambs might the stern wolf betray, If like a lamb he could his looks translate! How many gazers mightst thou lead away, If thou wouldst use the strength of all thy state! But do not so, I love thee in such sort, As thou being mine, mine is thy good report.

How like a winter hath my absence been From thee, the pleasure of the fleeting year! What freezings have I felt, what dark days seen! What old December’s bareness everywhere! And yet this time removed was summer’s time, The teeming autumn big with rich increase, Bearing the wanton burden of the prime, Like widowed wombs after their lords’ decease: Yet this abundant issue seemed to me But hope of orphans, and unfathered fruit, For summer and his pleasures wait on thee, And thou away, the very birds are mute. Or if they sing, ’tis with so dull a cheer, That leaves look pale, dreading the winter’s near.

From you have I been absent in the spring, When proud-pied April (dressed in all his trim) Hath put a spirit of youth in every thing: That heavy Saturn laughed and leaped with him. Yet nor the lays of birds, nor the sweet smell Of different flowers in odour and in hue, Could make me any summer’s story tell: Or from their proud lap pluck them where they grew: Nor did I wonder at the lily’s white, Nor praise the deep vermilion in the rose, They were but sweet, but figures of delight: Drawn after you, you pattern of all those. Yet seemed it winter still, and you away, As with your shadow I with these did play.

The forward violet thus did I chide, Sweet thief, whence didst thou steal thy sweet that smells, If not from my love’s breath? The purple pride Which on thy soft cheek for complexion dwells, In my love’s veins thou hast too grossly dyed. The lily I condemned for thy hand, And buds of marjoram had stol’n thy hair, The roses fearfully on thorns did stand, One blushing shame, another white despair: A third nor red, nor white, had stol’n of both, And to his robbery had annexed thy breath, But for his theft in pride of all his growth A vengeful canker eat him up to death. More flowers I noted, yet I none could see, But sweet, or colour it had stol’n from thee.

100

Where art thou Muse that thou forget’st so long, To speak of that which gives thee all thy might? Spend’st thou thy fury on some worthless song, Darkening thy power to lend base subjects light? Return forgetful Muse, and straight redeem, In gentle numbers time so idly spent, Sing to the ear that doth thy lays esteem, And gives thy pen both skill and argument. Rise resty Muse, my love’s sweet face survey, If time have any wrinkle graven there, If any, be a satire to decay, And make time’s spoils despised everywhere. Give my love fame faster than Time wastes life, So thou prevent’st his scythe, and crooked knife.

101

O truant Muse what shall be thy amends, For thy neglect of truth in beauty dyed? Both truth and beauty on my love depends: So dost thou too, and therein dignified: Make answer Muse, wilt thou not haply say, ’Truth needs no colour with his colour fixed, Beauty no pencil, beauty’s truth to lay: But best is best, if never intermixed’? Because he needs no praise, wilt thou be dumb? Excuse not silence so, for’t lies in thee, To make him much outlive a gilded tomb: And to be praised of ages yet to be. Then do thy office Muse, I teach thee how, To make him seem long hence, as he shows now.

102

My love is strengthened though more weak in seeming, I love not less, though less the show appear, That love is merchandized, whose rich esteeming, The owner’s tongue doth publish every where. Our love was new, and then but in the spring, When I was wont to greet it with my lays, As Philomel in summer’s front doth sing, And stops her pipe in growth of riper days: Not that the summer is less pleasant now Than when her mournful hymns did hush the night, But that wild music burthens every bough, And sweets grown common lose their dear delight. Therefore like her, I sometime hold my tongue: Because I would not dull you with my song.

103

Alack what poverty my muse brings forth, That having such a scope to show her pride, The argument all bare is of more worth Than when it hath my added praise beside. O blame me not if I no more can write! Look in your glass and there appears a face, That over-goes my blunt invention quite, Dulling my lines, and doing me disgrace. Were it not sinful then striving to mend, To mar the subject that before was well? For to no other pass my verses tend, Than of your graces and your gifts to tell. And more, much more than in my verse can sit, Your own glass shows you, when you look in it.

104

To me fair friend you never can be old, For as you were when first your eye I eyed, Such seems your beauty still: three winters cold, Have from the forests shook three summers’ pride, Three beauteous springs to yellow autumn turned, In process of the seasons have I seen, Three April perfumes in three hot Junes burned, Since first I saw you fresh which yet are green. Ah yet doth beauty like a dial hand, Steal from his figure, and no pace perceived, So your sweet hue, which methinks still doth stand Hath motion, and mine eye may be deceived. For fear of which, hear this thou age unbred, Ere you were born was beauty’s summer dead.

105

Let not my love be called idolatry, Nor my beloved as an idol show, Since all alike my songs and praises be To one, of one, still such, and ever so. Kind is my love to-day, to-morrow kind, Still constant in a wondrous excellence, Therefore my verse to constancy confined, One thing expressing, leaves out difference. Fair, kind, and true, is all my argument, Fair, kind, and true, varying to other words, And in this change is my invention spent, Three themes in one, which wondrous scope affords. Fair, kind, and true, have often lived alone. Which three till now, never kept seat in one.

106

When in the chronicle of wasted time, I see descriptions of the fairest wights, And beauty making beautiful old rhyme, In praise of ladies dead, and lovely knights, Then in the blazon of sweet beauty’s best, Of hand, of foot, of lip, of eye, of brow, I see their antique pen would have expressed, Even such a beauty as you master now. So all their praises are but prophecies Of this our time, all you prefiguring, And for they looked but with divining eyes, They had not skill enough your worth to sing: For we which now behold these present days, Have eyes to wonder, but lack tongues to praise.

107

Not mine own fears, nor the prophetic soul, Of the wide world, dreaming on things to come, Can yet the lease of my true love control, Supposed as forfeit to a confined doom. The mortal moon hath her eclipse endured, And the sad augurs mock their own presage, Incertainties now crown themselves assured, And peace proclaims olives of endless age. Now with the drops of this most balmy time, My love looks fresh, and death to me subscribes, Since spite of him I’ll live in this poor rhyme, While he insults o’er dull and speechless tribes. And thou in this shalt find thy monument, When tyrants’ crests and tombs of brass are spent.

108

What’s in the brain that ink may character, Which hath not figured to thee my true spirit, What’s new to speak, what now to register, That may express my love, or thy dear merit? Nothing sweet boy, but yet like prayers divine, I must each day say o’er the very same, Counting no old thing old, thou mine, I thine, Even as when first I hallowed thy fair name. So that eternal love in love’s fresh case, Weighs not the dust and injury of age, Nor gives to necessary wrinkles place, But makes antiquity for aye his page, Finding the first conceit of love there bred, Where time and outward form would show it dead.

109

O never say that I was false of heart, Though absence seemed my flame to qualify, As easy might I from my self depart, As from my soul which in thy breast doth lie: That is my home of love, if I have ranged, Like him that travels I return again, Just to the time, not with the time exchanged, So that my self bring water for my stain, Never believe though in my nature reigned, All frailties that besiege all kinds of blood, That it could so preposterously be stained, To leave for nothing all thy sum of good: For nothing this wide universe I call, Save thou my rose, in it thou art my all.

110

Alas ’tis true, I have gone here and there, And made my self a motley to the view, Gored mine own thoughts, sold cheap what is most dear, Made old offences of affections new. Most true it is, that I have looked on truth Askance and strangely: but by all above, These blenches gave my heart another youth, And worse essays proved thee my best of love. Now all is done, have what shall have no end, Mine appetite I never more will grind On newer proof, to try an older friend, A god in love, to whom I am confined. Then give me welcome, next my heaven the best, Even to thy pure and most most loving breast.

111

O for my sake do you with Fortune chide, The guilty goddess of my harmful deeds, That did not better for my life provide, Than public means which public manners breeds. Thence comes it that my name receives a brand, And almost thence my nature is subdued To what it works in, like the dyer’s hand: Pity me then, and wish I were renewed, Whilst like a willing patient I will drink, Potions of eisel ’gainst my strong infection, No bitterness that I will bitter think, Nor double penance to correct correction. Pity me then dear friend, and I assure ye, Even that your pity is enough to cure me.

112

Your love and pity doth th’ impression fill, Which vulgar scandal stamped upon my brow, For what care I who calls me well or ill, So you o’er-green my bad, my good allow? You are my all the world, and I must strive, To know my shames and praises from your tongue, None else to me, nor I to none alive, That my steeled sense or changes right or wrong. In so profound abysm I throw all care Of others’ voices, that my adder’s sense, To critic and to flatterer stopped are: Mark how with my neglect I do dispense. You are so strongly in my purpose bred, That all the world besides methinks are dead.

113

Since I left you, mine eye is in my mind, And that which governs me to go about, Doth part his function, and is partly blind, Seems seeing, but effectually is out: For it no form delivers to the heart Of bird, of flower, or shape which it doth latch, Of his quick objects hath the mind no part, Nor his own vision holds what it doth catch: For if it see the rud’st or gentlest sight, The most sweet favour or deformed’st creature, The mountain, or the sea, the day, or night: The crow, or dove, it shapes them to your feature. Incapable of more, replete with you, My most true mind thus maketh mine untrue.

114

Or whether doth my mind being crowned with you Drink up the monarch’s plague this flattery? Or whether shall I say mine eye saith true, And that your love taught it this alchemy? To make of monsters, and things indigest, Such cherubins as your sweet self resemble, Creating every bad a perfect best As fast as objects to his beams assemble: O ’tis the first, ’tis flattery in my seeing, And my great mind most kingly drinks it up, Mine eye well knows what with his gust is ’greeing, And to his palate doth prepare the cup. If it be poisoned, ’tis the lesser sin, That mine eye loves it and doth first begin.

115

Those lines that I before have writ do lie, Even those that said I could not love you dearer, Yet then my judgement knew no reason why, My most full flame should afterwards burn clearer, But reckoning time, whose millioned accidents Creep in ’twixt vows, and change decrees of kings, Tan sacred beauty, blunt the sharp’st intents, Divert strong minds to the course of alt’ring things: Alas why fearing of time’s tyranny, Might I not then say ‘Now I love you best,’ When I was certain o’er incertainty, Crowning the present, doubting of the rest? Love is a babe, then might I not say so To give full growth to that which still doth grow.

116

Let me not to the marriage of true minds Admit impediments, love is not love Which alters when it alteration finds, Or bends with the remover to remove. O no, it is an ever-fixed mark That looks on tempests and is never shaken; It is the star to every wand’ring bark, Whose worth’s unknown, although his height be taken. Love’s not Time’s fool, though rosy lips and cheeks Within his bending sickle’s compass come, Love alters not with his brief hours and weeks, But bears it out even to the edge of doom: If this be error and upon me proved, I never writ, nor no man ever loved.

117

Accuse me thus, that I have scanted all, Wherein I should your great deserts repay, Forgot upon your dearest love to call, Whereto all bonds do tie me day by day, That I have frequent been with unknown minds, And given to time your own dear-purchased right, That I have hoisted sail to all the winds Which should transport me farthest from your sight. Book both my wilfulness and errors down, And on just proof surmise, accumulate, Bring me within the level of your frown, But shoot not at me in your wakened hate: Since my appeal says I did strive to prove The constancy and virtue of your love.

118

Like as to make our appetite more keen With eager compounds we our palate urge, As to prevent our maladies unseen, We sicken to shun sickness when we purge. Even so being full of your ne’er-cloying sweetness, To bitter sauces did I frame my feeding; And sick of welfare found a kind of meetness, To be diseased ere that there was true needing. Thus policy in love t’ anticipate The ills that were not, grew to faults assured, And brought to medicine a healthful state Which rank of goodness would by ill be cured. But thence I learn and find the lesson true, Drugs poison him that so fell sick of you.

119

What potions have I drunk of Siren tears Distilled from limbecks foul as hell within, Applying fears to hopes, and hopes to fears, Still losing when I saw my self to win! What wretched errors hath my heart committed, Whilst it hath thought it self so blessed never! How have mine eyes out of their spheres been fitted In the distraction of this madding fever! O benefit of ill, now I find true That better is, by evil still made better. And ruined love when it is built anew Grows fairer than at first, more strong, far greater. So I return rebuked to my content, And gain by ills thrice more than I have spent.

120

That you were once unkind befriends me now, And for that sorrow, which I then did feel, Needs must I under my transgression bow, Unless my nerves were brass or hammered steel. For if you were by my unkindness shaken As I by yours, y’have passed a hell of time, And I a tyrant have no leisure taken To weigh how once I suffered in your crime. O that our night of woe might have remembered My deepest sense, how hard true sorrow hits, And soon to you, as you to me then tendered The humble salve, which wounded bosoms fits! But that your trespass now becomes a fee, Mine ransoms yours, and yours must ransom me.

121

’Tis better to be vile than vile esteemed, When not to be, receives reproach of being, And the just pleasure lost, which is so deemed, Not by our feeling, but by others’ seeing. For why should others’ false adulterate eyes Give salutation to my sportive blood? Or on my frailties why are frailer spies, Which in their wills count bad what I think good? No, I am that I am, and they that level At my abuses, reckon up their own, I may be straight though they themselves be bevel; By their rank thoughts, my deeds must not be shown Unless this general evil they maintain, All men are bad and in their badness reign.

122

Thy gift, thy tables, are within my brain Full charactered with lasting memory, Which shall above that idle rank remain Beyond all date even to eternity. Or at the least, so long as brain and heart Have faculty by nature to subsist, Till each to razed oblivion yield his part Of thee, thy record never can be missed: That poor retention could not so much hold, Nor need I tallies thy dear love to score, Therefore to give them from me was I bold, To trust those tables that receive thee more: To keep an adjunct to remember thee Were to import forgetfulness in me.

123

No! Time, thou shalt not boast that I do change, Thy pyramids built up with newer might To me are nothing novel, nothing strange, They are but dressings of a former sight: Our dates are brief, and therefore we admire, What thou dost foist upon us that is old, And rather make them born to our desire, Than think that we before have heard them told: Thy registers and thee I both defy, Not wond’ring at the present, nor the past, For thy records, and what we see doth lie, Made more or less by thy continual haste: This I do vow and this shall ever be, I will be true despite thy scythe and thee.

124

If my dear love were but the child of state, It might for Fortune’s bastard be unfathered, As subject to time’s love or to time’s hate, Weeds among weeds, or flowers with flowers gathered. No it was builded far from accident, It suffers not in smiling pomp, nor falls Under the blow of thralled discontent, Whereto th’ inviting time our fashion calls: It fears not policy that heretic, Which works on leases of short-numbered hours, But all alone stands hugely politic, That it nor grows with heat, nor drowns with showers. To this I witness call the fools of time, Which die for goodness, who have lived for crime.

125

Were’t aught to me I bore the canopy, With my extern the outward honouring, Or laid great bases for eternity, Which proves more short than waste or ruining? Have I not seen dwellers on form and favour Lose all, and more by paying too much rent For compound sweet; forgoing simple savour, Pitiful thrivers in their gazing spent? No, let me be obsequious in thy heart, And take thou my oblation, poor but free, Which is not mixed with seconds, knows no art, But mutual render, only me for thee. Hence, thou suborned informer, a true soul When most impeached, stands least in thy control.

126

O thou my lovely boy who in thy power, Dost hold Time’s fickle glass his fickle hour: Who hast by waning grown, and therein show’st, Thy lovers withering, as thy sweet self grow’st. If Nature (sovereign mistress over wrack) As thou goest onwards still will pluck thee back, She keeps thee to this purpose, that her skill May time disgrace, and wretched minutes kill. Yet fear her O thou minion of her pleasure, She may detain, but not still keep her treasure! Her audit (though delayed) answered must be, And her quietus is to render thee.

127

In the old age black was not counted fair, Or if it were it bore not beauty’s name: But now is black beauty’s successive heir, And beauty slandered with a bastard shame, For since each hand hath put on nature’s power, Fairing the foul with art’s false borrowed face, Sweet beauty hath no name, no holy bower, But is profaned, if not lives in disgrace. Therefore my mistress’ eyes are raven black, Her eyes so suited, and they mourners seem At such who not born fair no beauty lack, Slandering creation with a false esteem, Yet so they mourn becoming of their woe, That every tongue says beauty should look so.

128

How oft when thou, my music, music play’st, Upon that blessed wood whose motion sounds With thy sweet fingers when thou gently sway’st The wiry concord that mine ear confounds, Do I envy those jacks that nimble leap, To kiss the tender inward of thy hand, Whilst my poor lips which should that harvest reap, At the wood’s boldness by thee blushing stand. To be so tickled they would change their state And situation with those dancing chips, O’er whom thy fingers walk with gentle gait, Making dead wood more blest than living lips, Since saucy jacks so happy are in this, Give them thy fingers, me thy lips to kiss.

129

Th’ expense of spirit in a waste of shame Is lust in action, and till action, lust Is perjured, murd’rous, bloody full of blame, Savage, extreme, rude, cruel, not to trust, Enjoyed no sooner but despised straight, Past reason hunted, and no sooner had Past reason hated as a swallowed bait, On purpose laid to make the taker mad. Mad in pursuit and in possession so, Had, having, and in quest, to have extreme, A bliss in proof, and proved, a very woe; Before a joy proposed behind a dream. All this the world well knows yet none knows well, To shun the heaven that leads men to this hell.

130

My mistress’ eyes are nothing like the sun, Coral is far more red, than her lips red, If snow be white, why then her breasts are dun: If hairs be wires, black wires grow on her head: I have seen roses damasked, red and white, But no such roses see I in her cheeks, And in some perfumes is there more delight, Than in the breath that from my mistress reeks. I love to hear her speak, yet well I know, That music hath a far more pleasing sound: I grant I never saw a goddess go; My mistress when she walks treads on the ground. And yet by heaven I think my love as rare, As any she belied with false compare.

131

Thou art as tyrannous, so as thou art, As those whose beauties proudly make them cruel; For well thou know’st to my dear doting heart Thou art the fairest and most precious jewel. Yet in good faith some say that thee behold, Thy face hath not the power to make love groan; To say they err, I dare not be so bold, Although I swear it to my self alone. And to be sure that is not false I swear, A thousand groans but thinking on thy face, One on another’s neck do witness bear Thy black is fairest in my judgement’s place. In nothing art thou black save in thy deeds, And thence this slander as I think proceeds.

132

Thine eyes I love, and they as pitying me, Knowing thy heart torment me with disdain, Have put on black, and loving mourners be, Looking with pretty ruth upon my pain. And truly not the morning sun of heaven Better becomes the grey cheeks of the east, Nor that full star that ushers in the even Doth half that glory to the sober west As those two mourning eyes become thy face: O let it then as well beseem thy heart To mourn for me since mourning doth thee grace, And suit thy pity like in every part. Then will I swear beauty herself is black, And all they foul that thy complexion lack.

133

Beshrew that heart that makes my heart to groan For that deep wound it gives my friend and me; Is’t not enough to torture me alone, But slave to slavery my sweet’st friend must be? Me from my self thy cruel eye hath taken, And my next self thou harder hast engrossed, Of him, my self, and thee I am forsaken, A torment thrice three-fold thus to be crossed: Prison my heart in thy steel bosom’s ward, But then my friend’s heart let my poor heart bail, Whoe’er keeps me, let my heart be his guard, Thou canst not then use rigour in my gaol. And yet thou wilt, for I being pent in thee, Perforce am thine and all that is in me.

134

So now I have confessed that he is thine, And I my self am mortgaged to thy will, My self I’ll forfeit, so that other mine, Thou wilt restore to be my comfort still: But thou wilt not, nor he will not be free, For thou art covetous, and he is kind, He learned but surety-like to write for me, Under that bond that him as fist doth bind. The statute of thy beauty thou wilt take, Thou usurer that put’st forth all to use, And sue a friend, came debtor for my sake, So him I lose through my unkind abuse. Him have I lost, thou hast both him and me, He pays the whole, and yet am I not free.

135

Whoever hath her wish, thou hast thy will, And Will to boot, and Will in overplus, More than enough am I that vex thee still, To thy sweet will making addition thus. Wilt thou whose will is large and spacious, Not once vouchsafe to hide my will in thine? Shall will in others seem right gracious, And in my will no fair acceptance shine? The sea all water, yet receives rain still, And in abundance addeth to his store, So thou being rich in will add to thy will One will of mine to make thy large will more. Let no unkind, no fair beseechers kill, Think all but one, and me in that one Will.

136

If thy soul check thee that I come so near, Swear to thy blind soul that I was thy Will, And will thy soul knows is admitted there, Thus far for love, my love-suit sweet fulfil. Will will fulfil the treasure of thy love, Ay, fill it full with wills, and my will one, In things of great receipt with case we prove, Among a number one is reckoned none. Then in the number let me pass untold, Though in thy store’s account I one must be, For nothing hold me, so it please thee hold, That nothing me, a something sweet to thee. Make but my name thy love, and love that still, And then thou lov’st me for my name is Will.

137

Thou blind fool Love, what dost thou to mine eyes, That they behold and see not what they see? They know what beauty is, see where it lies, Yet what the best is, take the worst to be. If eyes corrupt by over-partial looks, Be anchored in the bay where all men ride, Why of eyes’ falsehood hast thou forged hooks, Whereto the judgement of my heart is tied? Why should my heart think that a several plot, Which my heart knows the wide world’s common place? Or mine eyes seeing this, say this is not To put fair truth upon so foul a face? In things right true my heart and eyes have erred, And to this false plague are they now transferred.

138

When my love swears that she is made of truth, I do believe, her though I know she lies, That she might think me some untutored youth, Unlearned in the world’s false subtleties. Thus vainly thinking that she thinks me young, Although she knows my days are past the best, Simply I credit her false-speaking tongue; On both sides thus is simple truth suppressed. But wherefore says she not she is unjust? And wherefore say not I that I am old? O love’s best habit is in seeming trust, And age in love loves not to have years told. Therefore I lie with her, and she with me, And in our faults by lies we flattered be.

139

O call not me to justify the wrong, That thy unkindness lays upon my heart, Wound me not with thine eye but with thy tongue, Use power with power, and slay me not by art, Tell me thou lov’st elsewhere; but in my sight, Dear heart forbear to glance thine eye aside, What need’st thou wound with cunning when thy might Is more than my o’erpressed defence can bide? Let me excuse thee, ah my love well knows, Her pretty looks have been mine enemies, And therefore from my face she turns my foes, That they elsewhere might dart their injuries: Yet do not so, but since I am near slain, Kill me outright with looks, and rid my pain.

140

Be wise as thou art cruel, do not press My tongue-tied patience with too much disdain: Lest sorrow lend me words and words express, The manner of my pity-wanting pain. If I might teach thee wit better it were, Though not to love, yet love to tell me so, As testy sick men when their deaths be near, No news but health from their physicians know. For if I should despair I should grow mad, And in my madness might speak ill of thee, Now this ill-wresting world is grown so bad, Mad slanderers by mad ears believed be. That I may not be so, nor thou belied, Bear thine eyes straight, though thy proud heart go wide.

141

In faith I do not love thee with mine eyes, For they in thee a thousand errors note, But ’tis my heart that loves what they despise, Who in despite of view is pleased to dote. Nor are mine ears with thy tongue’s tune delighted, Nor tender feeling to base touches prone, Nor taste, nor smell, desire to be invited To any sensual feast with thee alone: But my five wits, nor my five senses can Dissuade one foolish heart from serving thee, Who leaves unswayed the likeness of a man, Thy proud heart’s slave and vassal wretch to be: Only my plague thus far I count my gain, That she that makes me sin, awards me pain.

142

Love is my sin, and thy dear virtue hate, Hate of my sin, grounded on sinful loving, O but with mine, compare thou thine own state, And thou shalt find it merits not reproving, Or if it do, not from those lips of thine, That have profaned their scarlet ornaments, And sealed false bonds of love as oft as mine, Robbed others’ beds’ revenues of their rents. Be it lawful I love thee as thou lov’st those, Whom thine eyes woo as mine importune thee, Root pity in thy heart that when it grows, Thy pity may deserve to pitied be. If thou dost seek to have what thou dost hide, By self-example mayst thou be denied.

143

Lo as a careful huswife runs to catch, One of her feathered creatures broke away, Sets down her babe and makes all swift dispatch In pursuit of the thing she would have stay: Whilst her neglected child holds her in chase, Cries to catch her whose busy care is bent, To follow that which flies before her face: Not prizing her poor infant’s discontent; So run’st thou after that which flies from thee, Whilst I thy babe chase thee afar behind, But if thou catch thy hope turn back to me: And play the mother’s part, kiss me, be kind. So will I pray that thou mayst have thy Will, If thou turn back and my loud crying still.

144

Two loves I have, of comfort and despair, Which, like two spirits, do suggest me still: The better angel is a man right fair, The worser spirit a woman coloured ill. To win me soon to hell my female evil Tempteth my better angel from my side, And would corrupt my saint to be a devil, Wooing his purity with her foul pride. And whether that my angel be turned fiend Suspect I may, yet not directly tell; But being both from me both to each friend, I guess one angel in another’s hell. Yet this shall I ne’er know, but live in doubt, Till my bad angel fire my good one out.

145

Those lips that Love’s own hand did make, Breathed forth the sound that said ‘I hate’, To me that languished for her sake: But when she saw my woeful state, Straight in her heart did mercy come, Chiding that tongue that ever sweet, Was used in giving gentle doom: And taught it thus anew to greet: ‘I hate’ she altered with an end, That followed it as gentle day, Doth follow night who like a fiend From heaven to hell is flown away. ‘I hate’, from hate away she threw, And saved my life saying ‘not you’.

146

Poor soul the centre of my sinful earth, My sinful earth these rebel powers array, Why dost thou pine within and suffer dearth Painting thy outward walls so costly gay? Why so large cost having so short a lease, Dost thou upon thy fading mansion spend? Shall worms inheritors of this excess Eat up thy charge? is this thy body’s end? Then soul live thou upon thy servant’s loss, And let that pine to aggravate thy store; Buy terms divine in selling hours of dross; Within be fed, without be rich no more, So shall thou feed on death, that feeds on men, And death once dead, there’s no more dying then.

147

My love is as a fever longing still, For that which longer nurseth the disease, Feeding on that which doth preserve the ill, Th’ uncertain sickly appetite to please: My reason the physician to my love, Angry that his prescriptions are not kept Hath left me, and I desperate now approve, Desire is death, which physic did except. Past cure I am, now reason is past care, And frantic-mad with evermore unrest, My thoughts and my discourse as mad men’s are, At random from the truth vainly expressed. For I have sworn thee fair, and thought thee bright, Who art as black as hell, as dark as night.

148

O me! what eyes hath love put in my head, Which have no correspondence with true sight, Or if they have, where is my judgement fled, That censures falsely what they see aright? If that be fair whereon my false eyes dote, What means the world to say it is not so? If it be not, then love doth well denote, Love’s eye is not so true as all men’s: no, How can it? O how can love’s eye be true, That is so vexed with watching and with tears? No marvel then though I mistake my view, The sun it self sees not, till heaven clears. O cunning love, with tears thou keep’st me blind, Lest eyes well-seeing thy foul faults should find.

149

Canst thou O cruel, say I love thee not, When I against my self with thee partake? Do I not think on thee when I forgot Am of my self, all-tyrant, for thy sake? Who hateth thee that I do call my friend, On whom frown’st thou that I do fawn upon, Nay if thou lour’st on me do I not spend Revenge upon my self with present moan? What merit do I in my self respect, That is so proud thy service to despise, When all my best doth worship thy defect, Commanded by the motion of thine eyes? But love hate on for now I know thy mind, Those that can see thou lov’st, and I am blind.

150

O from what power hast thou this powerful might, With insufficiency my heart to sway, To make me give the lie to my true sight, And swear that brightness doth not grace the day? Whence hast thou this becoming of things ill, That in the very refuse of thy deeds, There is such strength and warrantise of skill, That in my mind thy worst all best exceeds? Who taught thee how to make me love thee more, The more I hear and see just cause of hate? O though I love what others do abhor, With others thou shouldst not abhor my state. If thy unworthiness raised love in me, More worthy I to be beloved of thee.

151

Love is too young to know what conscience is, Yet who knows not conscience is born of love? Then gentle cheater urge not my amiss, Lest guilty of my faults thy sweet self prove. For thou betraying me, I do betray My nobler part to my gross body’s treason, My soul doth tell my body that he may, Triumph in love, flesh stays no farther reason, But rising at thy name doth point out thee, As his triumphant prize, proud of this pride, He is contented thy poor drudge to be, To stand in thy affairs, fall by thy side. No want of conscience hold it that I call, Her love, for whose dear love I rise and fall.

152

In loving thee thou know’st I am forsworn, But thou art twice forsworn to me love swearing, In act thy bed-vow broke and new faith torn, In vowing new hate after new love bearing: But why of two oaths’ breach do I accuse thee, When I break twenty? I am perjured most, For all my vows are oaths but to misuse thee: And all my honest faith in thee is lost. For I have sworn deep oaths of thy deep kindness: Oaths of thy love, thy truth, thy constancy, And to enlighten thee gave eyes to blindness, Or made them swear against the thing they see. For I have sworn thee fair: more perjured I, To swear against the truth so foul a lie.

153

Cupid laid by his brand and fell asleep, A maid of Dian’s this advantage found, And his love-kindling fire did quickly steep In a cold valley-fountain of that ground: Which borrowed from this holy fire of Love, A dateless lively heat still to endure, And grew a seething bath which yet men prove, Against strange maladies a sovereign cure: But at my mistress’ eye Love’s brand new-fired, The boy for trial needs would touch my breast, I sick withal the help of bath desired, And thither hied a sad distempered guest. But found no cure, the bath for my help lies, Where Cupid got new fire; my mistress’ eyes.

154

The little Love-god lying once asleep, Laid by his side his heart-inflaming brand, Whilst many nymphs that vowed chaste life to keep, Came tripping by, but in her maiden hand, The fairest votary took up that fire, Which many legions of true hearts had warmed, And so the general of hot desire, Was sleeping by a virgin hand disarmed. This brand she quenched in a cool well by, Which from Love’s fire took heat perpetual, Growing a bath and healthful remedy, For men diseased; but I, my mistress’ thrall, Came there for cure and this by that I prove, Love’s fire heats water, water cools not love.

THE END

ALL’S WELL THAT ENDS WELL

ACT I Scene I. Rossillon. A room in the Countess’s palace. Scene II. Paris. A room in the King’s palace. Scene III. Rossillon. A Room in the Palace.

ACT II Scene I. Paris. A room in the King’s palace. Scene II. Rossillon. A room in the Countess’s palace. Scene III. Paris. The King’s palace. Scene IV. Paris. The King’s palace. Scene V. Another room in the same.

ACT III Scene I. Florence. A room in the Duke’s palace. Scene II. Rossillon. A room in the Countess’s palace. Scene III. Florence. Before the Duke’s palace. Scene IV. Rossillon. A room in the Countess’s palace. Scene V. Without the walls of Florence. Scene VI. Camp before Florence. Scene VII. Florence. A room in the Widow’s house.

ACT IV Scene I. Without the Florentine camp. Scene II. Florence. A room in the Widow’s house. Scene III. The Florentine camp. Scene IV. Florence. A room in the Widow’s house. Scene V. Rossillon. A room in the Countess’s palace.

ACT V Scene I. Marseilles. A street. Scene II. Rossillon. The inner court of the Countess’s palace. Scene III. The same. A room in the Countess’s palace.

Dramatis Personæ

KING OF FRANCE. THE DUKE OF FLORENCE. BERTRAM, Count of Rossillon. LAFEW, an old Lord. PAROLLES, a follower of Bertram. Several young French Lords, that serve with Bertram in the Florentine War. RYNALDO, servant to the Countess of Rossillon. Clown, servant to the Countess of Rossillon. A Page, servant to the Countess of Rossillon. COUNTESS OF ROSSILLON, mother to Bertram. HELENA, a Gentlewoman protected by the Countess. An old WIDOW of Florence. DIANA, daughter to the Widow. VIOLENTA, neighbour and friend to the Widow. MARIANA, neighbour and friend to the Widow.

Lords attending on the KING; Officers; Soldiers, &c., French and Florentine.

SCENE: Partly in France, and partly in Tuscany.

ACT I

SCENE I. Rossillon. A room in the Countess’s palace.

Enter Bertram, the Countess of Rossillon, Helena, and Lafew, all in black.

COUNTESS. In delivering my son from me, I bury a second husband.

BERTRAM. And I in going, madam, weep o’er my father’s death anew; but I must attend his majesty’s command, to whom I am now in ward, evermore in subjection.

LAFEW. You shall find of the king a husband, madam; you, sir, a father. He that so generally is at all times good, must of necessity hold his virtue to you, whose worthiness would stir it up where it wanted, rather than lack it where there is such abundance.

COUNTESS. What hope is there of his majesty’s amendment?

LAFEW. He hath abandon’d his physicians, madam; under whose practices he hath persecuted time with hope, and finds no other advantage in the process but only the losing of hope by time.

COUNTESS. This young gentlewoman had a father—O that “had!”, how sad a passage ’tis!—whose skill was almost as great as his honesty; had it stretch’d so far, would have made nature immortal, and death should have play for lack of work. Would for the king’s sake he were living! I think it would be the death of the king’s disease.

LAFEW. How called you the man you speak of, madam?

COUNTESS. He was famous, sir, in his profession, and it was his great right to be so: Gerard de Narbon.

LAFEW. He was excellent indeed, madam; the king very lately spoke of him admiringly, and mourningly; he was skilful enough to have liv’d still, if knowledge could be set up against mortality.

BERTRAM. What is it, my good lord, the king languishes of?

LAFEW. A fistula, my lord.

BERTRAM. I heard not of it before.

LAFEW. I would it were not notorious. Was this gentlewoman the daughter of Gerard de Narbon?

COUNTESS. His sole child, my lord, and bequeathed to my overlooking. I have those hopes of her good that her education promises her dispositions she inherits, which makes fair gifts fairer; for where an unclean mind carries virtuous qualities, there commendations go with pity, they are virtues and traitors too. In her they are the better for their simpleness; she derives her honesty, and achieves her goodness.

LAFEW. Your commendations, madam, get from her tears.

COUNTESS. ’Tis the best brine a maiden can season her praise in. The remembrance of her father never approaches her heart but the tyranny of her sorrows takes all livelihood from her cheek. No more of this, Helena; go to, no more, lest it be rather thought you affect a sorrow than to have.

HELENA. I do affect a sorrow indeed, but I have it too.

LAFEW. Moderate lamentation is the right of the dead; excessive grief the enemy to the living.

COUNTESS. If the living be enemy to the grief, the excess makes it soon mortal.

BERTRAM. Madam, I desire your holy wishes.

LAFEW. How understand we that?

COUNTESS. Be thou blest, Bertram, and succeed thy father In manners, as in shape! Thy blood and virtue Contend for empire in thee, and thy goodness Share with thy birthright! Love all, trust a few, Do wrong to none. Be able for thine enemy Rather in power than use; and keep thy friend Under thy own life’s key. Be check’d for silence, But never tax’d for speech. What heaven more will, That thee may furnish and my prayers pluck down, Fall on thy head! Farewell. My lord, ’Tis an unseason’d courtier; good my lord, Advise him.

LAFEW. He cannot want the best That shall attend his love.

COUNTESS. Heaven bless him! Farewell, Bertram.

[Exit Countess.]

BERTRAM. The best wishes that can be forg’d in your thoughts be servants to you! [To Helena.] Be comfortable to my mother, your mistress, and make much of her.

LAFEW. Farewell, pretty lady, you must hold the credit of your father.

[Exeunt Bertram and Lafew.]

HELENA. O, were that all! I think not on my father, And these great tears grace his remembrance more Than those I shed for him. What was he like? I have forgot him; my imagination Carries no favour in’t but Bertram’s. I am undone: there is no living, none, If Bertram be away. ’Twere all one That I should love a bright particular star, And think to wed it, he is so above me. In his bright radiance and collateral light Must I be comforted, not in his sphere. Th’ambition in my love thus plagues itself: The hind that would be mated by the lion Must die for love. ’Twas pretty, though a plague, To see him every hour; to sit and draw His arched brows, his hawking eye, his curls, In our heart’s table,—heart too capable Of every line and trick of his sweet favour. But now he’s gone, and my idolatrous fancy Must sanctify his relics. Who comes here?

Enter Parolles.

One that goes with him: I love him for his sake, And yet I know him a notorious liar, Think him a great way fool, solely a coward; Yet these fix’d evils sit so fit in him That they take place when virtue’s steely bones Looks bleak i’ th’ cold wind: withal, full oft we see Cold wisdom waiting on superfluous folly.

PAROLLES. Save you, fair queen!

HELENA. And you, monarch!

PAROLLES. No.

HELENA. And no.

PAROLLES. Are you meditating on virginity?

HELENA. Ay. You have some stain of soldier in you; let me ask you a question. Man is enemy to virginity; how may we barricado it against him?

PAROLLES. Keep him out.

HELENA. But he assails; and our virginity, though valiant, in the defence, yet is weak. Unfold to us some warlike resistance.

PAROLLES. There is none. Man setting down before you will undermine you and blow you up.

HELENA. Bless our poor virginity from underminers and blowers-up! Is there no military policy how virgins might blow up men?

PAROLLES. Virginity being blown down, man will quicklier be blown up; marry, in blowing him down again, with the breach yourselves made, you lose your city. It is not politic in the commonwealth of nature to preserve virginity. Loss of virginity is rational increase, and there was never virgin got till virginity was first lost. That you were made of is metal to make virgins. Virginity, by being once lost, may be ten times found; by being ever kept, it is ever lost. ’Tis too cold a companion. Away with it!

HELENA. I will stand for’t a little, though therefore I die a virgin.

PAROLLES. There’s little can be said in’t; ’tis against the rule of nature. To speak on the part of virginity is to accuse your mothers; which is most infallible disobedience. He that hangs himself is a virgin: virginity murders itself, and should be buried in highways out of all sanctified limit, as a desperate offendress against nature. Virginity breeds mites, much like a cheese; consumes itself to the very paring, and so dies with feeding his own stomach. Besides, virginity is peevish, proud, idle, made of self-love, which is the most inhibited sin in the canon. Keep it not; you cannot choose but lose by’t. Out with’t! Within the year it will make itself two, which is a goodly increase, and the principal itself not much the worse. Away with it!

HELENA. How might one do, sir, to lose it to her own liking?

PAROLLES. Let me see. Marry, ill, to like him that ne’er it likes. ’Tis a commodity will lose the gloss with lying; the longer kept, the less worth. Off with’t while ’tis vendible; answer the time of request. Virginity, like an old courtier, wears her cap out of fashion, richly suited, but unsuitable, just like the brooch and the toothpick, which wear not now. Your date is better in your pie and your porridge than in your cheek. And your virginity, your old virginity, is like one of our French wither’d pears; it looks ill, it eats drily; marry, ’tis a wither’d pear; it was formerly better; marry, yet ’tis a wither’d pear. Will you anything with it?

HELENA. Not my virginity yet. There shall your master have a thousand loves, A mother, and a mistress, and a friend, A phoenix, captain, and an enemy, A guide, a goddess, and a sovereign, A counsellor, a traitress, and a dear: His humble ambition, proud humility, His jarring concord, and his discord dulcet, His faith, his sweet disaster; with a world Of pretty, fond, adoptious christendoms That blinking Cupid gossips. Now shall he— I know not what he shall. God send him well! The court’s a learning-place; and he is one.

PAROLLES. What one, i’ faith?

HELENA. That I wish well. ’Tis pity—

PAROLLES. What’s pity?

HELENA. That wishing well had not a body in’t Which might be felt, that we, the poorer born, Whose baser stars do shut us up in wishes, Might with effects of them follow our friends, And show what we alone must think, which never Returns us thanks.

Enter a Page.

PAGE. Monsieur Parolles, my lord calls for you.

[Exit Page.]

PAROLLES. Little Helen, farewell. If I can remember thee, I will think of thee at court.

HELENA. Monsieur Parolles, you were born under a charitable star.

PAROLLES. Under Mars, I.

HELENA. I especially think, under Mars.

PAROLLES. Why under Mars?

HELENA. The wars hath so kept you under, that you must needs be born under Mars.

PAROLLES. When he was predominant.

HELENA. When he was retrograde, I think rather.

PAROLLES. Why think you so?

HELENA. You go so much backward when you fight.

PAROLLES. That’s for advantage.

HELENA. So is running away, when fear proposes the safety: but the composition that your valour and fear makes in you is a virtue of a good wing, and I like the wear well.

PAROLLES. I am so full of business I cannot answer thee acutely. I will return perfect courtier; in the which my instruction shall serve to naturalize thee, so thou wilt be capable of a courtier’s counsel, and understand what advice shall thrust upon thee; else thou diest in thine unthankfulness, and thine ignorance makes thee away. Farewell. When thou hast leisure, say thy prayers; when thou hast none, remember thy friends. Get thee a good husband, and use him as he uses thee. So, farewell.

[Exit.]

HELENA. Our remedies oft in ourselves do lie, Which we ascribe to heaven: the fated sky Gives us free scope; only doth backward pull Our slow designs when we ourselves are dull. What power is it which mounts my love so high, That makes me see, and cannot feed mine eye? The mightiest space in fortune nature brings To join like likes, and kiss like native things. Impossible be strange attempts to those That weigh their pains in sense, and do suppose What hath been cannot be. Who ever strove To show her merit that did miss her love? The king’s disease,—my project may deceive me, But my intents are fix’d, and will not leave me.

SCENE II. Paris. A room in the King’s palace.

Flourish of cornets. Enter the King of France, with letters; Lords and others attending.

KING. The Florentines and Senoys are by th’ ears; Have fought with equal fortune, and continue A braving war.

FIRST LORD. So ’tis reported, sir.

KING. Nay, ’tis most credible, we here receive it, A certainty, vouch’d from our cousin Austria, With caution, that the Florentine will move us For speedy aid; wherein our dearest friend Prejudicates the business, and would seem To have us make denial.

FIRST LORD. His love and wisdom, Approv’d so to your majesty, may plead For amplest credence.

KING. He hath arm’d our answer, And Florence is denied before he comes: Yet, for our gentlemen that mean to see The Tuscan service, freely have they leave To stand on either part.

SECOND LORD. It well may serve A nursery to our gentry, who are sick For breathing and exploit.

KING. What’s he comes here?

Enter Bertram, Lafew and Parolles.

FIRST LORD. It is the Count Rossillon, my good lord, Young Bertram.

KING. Youth, thou bear’st thy father’s face; Frank nature, rather curious than in haste, Hath well compos’d thee. Thy father’s moral parts Mayst thou inherit too! Welcome to Paris.

BERTRAM. My thanks and duty are your majesty’s.

KING. I would I had that corporal soundness now, As when thy father and myself in friendship First tried our soldiership. He did look far Into the service of the time, and was Discipled of the bravest. He lasted long, But on us both did haggish age steal on, And wore us out of act. It much repairs me To talk of your good father; in his youth He had the wit which I can well observe Today in our young lords; but they may jest Till their own scorn return to them unnoted Ere they can hide their levity in honour So like a courtier, contempt nor bitterness Were in his pride or sharpness; if they were, His equal had awak’d them, and his honour, Clock to itself, knew the true minute when Exception bid him speak, and at this time His tongue obey’d his hand. Who were below him He us’d as creatures of another place, And bow’d his eminent top to their low ranks, Making them proud of his humility, In their poor praise he humbled. Such a man Might be a copy to these younger times; Which, followed well, would demonstrate them now But goers backward.

BERTRAM. His good remembrance, sir, Lies richer in your thoughts than on his tomb; So in approof lives not his epitaph As in your royal speech.

KING. Would I were with him! He would always say,— Methinks I hear him now; his plausive words He scatter’d not in ears, but grafted them To grow there and to bear,—“Let me not live,” This his good melancholy oft began On the catastrophe and heel of pastime, When it was out,—“Let me not live” quoth he, “After my flame lacks oil, to be the snuff Of younger spirits, whose apprehensive senses All but new things disdain; whose judgments are Mere fathers of their garments; whose constancies Expire before their fashions.” This he wish’d. I, after him, do after him wish too, Since I nor wax nor honey can bring home, I quickly were dissolved from my hive To give some labourers room.

SECOND LORD. You’re lov’d, sir; They that least lend it you shall lack you first.

KING. I fill a place, I know’t. How long is’t, Count, Since the physician at your father’s died? He was much fam’d.

BERTRAM. Some six months since, my lord.

KING. If he were living, I would try him yet;— Lend me an arm;—the rest have worn me out With several applications; nature and sickness Debate it at their leisure. Welcome, Count; My son’s no dearer.

BERTRAM. Thank your majesty.

[Exeunt. Flourish.]

SCENE III. Rossillon. A Room in the Palace.

Enter Countess, Steward and Clown.

COUNTESS. I will now hear. What say you of this gentlewoman?

STEWARD. Madam, the care I have had to even your content, I wish might be found in the calendar of my past endeavours; for then we wound our modesty, and make foul the clearness of our deservings, when of ourselves we publish them.

COUNTESS. What does this knave here? Get you gone, sirrah. The complaints I have heard of you I do not all believe; ’tis my slowness that I do not; for I know you lack not folly to commit them, and have ability enough to make such knaveries yours.

CLOWN. ’Tis not unknown to you, madam, I am a poor fellow.

COUNTESS. Well, sir.

CLOWN. No, madam, ’tis not so well that I am poor, though many of the rich are damned; but if I may have your ladyship’s good will to go to the world, Isbel the woman and I will do as we may.

COUNTESS. Wilt thou needs be a beggar?

CLOWN. I do beg your good will in this case.

COUNTESS. In what case?

CLOWN. In Isbel’s case and mine own. Service is no heritage, and I think I shall never have the blessing of God till I have issue of my body; for they say barnes are blessings.

COUNTESS. Tell me thy reason why thou wilt marry.

CLOWN. My poor body, madam, requires it; I am driven on by the flesh, and he must needs go that the devil drives.

COUNTESS. Is this all your worship’s reason?

CLOWN. Faith, madam, I have other holy reasons, such as they are.

COUNTESS. May the world know them?

CLOWN. I have been, madam, a wicked creature, as you and all flesh and blood are; and indeed I do marry that I may repent.

COUNTESS. Thy marriage, sooner than thy wickedness.

CLOWN. I am out of friends, madam, and I hope to have friends for my wife’s sake.

COUNTESS. Such friends are thine enemies, knave.

CLOWN. Y’are shallow, madam, in great friends; for the knaves come to do that for me which I am a-weary of. He that ears my land spares my team, and gives me leave to in the crop: if I be his cuckold, he’s my drudge. He that comforts my wife is the cherisher of my flesh and blood; he that cherishes my flesh and blood loves my flesh and blood; he that loves my flesh and blood is my friend; ergo, he that kisses my wife is my friend. If men could be contented to be what they are, there were no fear in marriage; for young Charbon the puritan and old Poysam the papist, howsome’er their hearts are sever’d in religion, their heads are both one; they may jowl horns together like any deer i’ the herd.

COUNTESS. Wilt thou ever be a foul-mouth’d and calumnious knave?

CLOWN. A prophet I, madam; and I speak the truth the next way: For I the ballad will repeat, Which men full true shall find; Your marriage comes by destiny, Your cuckoo sings by kind.

COUNTESS. Get you gone, sir; I’ll talk with you more anon.

STEWARD. May it please you, madam, that he bid Helen come to you; of her I am to speak.

COUNTESS. Sirrah, tell my gentlewoman I would speak with her; Helen I mean.

CLOWN. [Sings.] Was this fair face the cause, quoth she, Why the Grecians sacked Troy? Fond done, done fond, Was this King Priam’s joy? With that she sighed as she stood, With that she sighed as she stood, And gave this sentence then: Among nine bad if one be good, Among nine bad if one be good, There’s yet one good in ten.

COUNTESS. What, one good in ten? You corrupt the song, sirrah.

CLOWN. One good woman in ten, madam, which is a purifying o’ the song. Would God would serve the world so all the year! We’d find no fault with the tithe-woman, if I were the parson. One in ten, quoth ’a! And we might have a good woman born but or every blazing star, or at an earthquake, ’twould mend the lottery well; a man may draw his heart out ere he pluck one.

COUNTESS. You’ll be gone, sir knave, and do as I command you!

CLOWN. That man should be at woman’s command, and yet no hurt done! Though honesty be no puritan, yet it will do no hurt; it will wear the surplice of humility over the black gown of a big heart. I am going, forsooth; the business is for Helen to come hither.

COUNTESS. Well, now.

STEWARD. I know, madam, you love your gentlewoman entirely.

COUNTESS. Faith I do. Her father bequeath’d her to me, and she herself, without other advantage, may lawfully make title to as much love as she finds; there is more owing her than is paid, and more shall be paid her than she’ll demand.

STEWARD. Madam, I was very late more near her than I think she wish’d me; alone she was, and did communicate to herself her own words to her own ears; she thought, I dare vow for her, they touch’d not any stranger sense. Her matter was, she loved your son. Fortune, she said, was no goddess, that had put such difference betwixt their two estates; Love no god, that would not extend his might only where qualities were level; Diana no queen of virgins, that would suffer her poor knight surpris’d, without rescue in the first assault or ransom afterward. This she deliver’d in the most bitter touch of sorrow that e’er I heard virgin exclaim in, which I held my duty speedily to acquaint you withal; sithence, in the loss that may happen, it concerns you something to know it.

COUNTESS. You have discharg’d this honestly; keep it to yourself; many likelihoods inform’d me of this before, which hung so tottering in the balance that I could neither believe nor misdoubt. Pray you leave me; stall this in your bosom; and I thank you for your honest care. I will speak with you further anon.

[Exit Steward.]

Enter Helena.

Even so it was with me when I was young; If ever we are nature’s, these are ours; this thorn Doth to our rose of youth rightly belong; Our blood to us, this to our blood is born; It is the show and seal of nature’s truth, Where love’s strong passion is impress’d in youth. By our remembrances of days foregone, Such were our faults, or then we thought them none. Her eye is sick on’t; I observe her now.

HELENA. What is your pleasure, madam?

COUNTESS. You know, Helen, I am a mother to you.

HELENA. Mine honourable mistress.

COUNTESS. Nay, a mother. Why not a mother? When I said a mother, Methought you saw a serpent. What’s in mother, That you start at it? I say I am your mother, And put you in the catalogue of those That were enwombed mine. ’Tis often seen Adoption strives with nature, and choice breeds A native slip to us from foreign seeds. You ne’er oppress’d me with a mother’s groan, Yet I express to you a mother’s care. God’s mercy, maiden! does it curd thy blood To say I am thy mother? What’s the matter, That this distempered messenger of wet, The many-colour’d Iris, rounds thine eye? —Why, that you are my daughter?

HELENA. That I am not.

COUNTESS. I say, I am your mother.

HELENA. Pardon, madam; The Count Rossillon cannot be my brother. I am from humble, he from honoured name; No note upon my parents, his all noble, My master, my dear lord he is; and I His servant live, and will his vassal die. He must not be my brother.

COUNTESS. Nor I your mother?

HELENA. You are my mother, madam; would you were— So that my lord your son were not my brother,— Indeed my mother! or were you both our mothers, I care no more for than I do for heaven, So I were not his sister. Can’t no other, But, I your daughter, he must be my brother?

COUNTESS. Yes, Helen, you might be my daughter-in-law. God shield you mean it not! daughter and mother So strive upon your pulse. What! pale again? My fear hath catch’d your fondness; now I see The mystery of your loneliness, and find Your salt tears’ head. Now to all sense ’tis gross You love my son; invention is asham’d, Against the proclamation of thy passion To say thou dost not. Therefore tell me true; But tell me then, ’tis so; for, look, thy cheeks Confess it, t’one to th’other; and thine eyes See it so grossly shown in thy behaviours, That in their kind they speak it; only sin And hellish obstinacy tie thy tongue, That truth should be suspected. Speak, is’t so? If it be so, you have wound a goodly clew; If it be not, forswear’t: howe’er, I charge thee, As heaven shall work in me for thine avail, To tell me truly.

HELENA. Good madam, pardon me.

COUNTESS. Do you love my son?

HELENA. Your pardon, noble mistress.

COUNTESS. Love you my son?

HELENA. Do not you love him, madam?

COUNTESS. Go not about; my love hath in’t a bond Whereof the world takes note. Come, come, disclose The state of your affection, for your passions Have to the full appeach’d.

HELENA. Then I confess, Here on my knee, before high heaven and you, That before you, and next unto high heaven, I love your son. My friends were poor, but honest; so’s my love. Be not offended; for it hurts not him That he is lov’d of me; I follow him not By any token of presumptuous suit, Nor would I have him till I do deserve him; Yet never know how that desert should be. I know I love in vain, strive against hope; Yet in this captious and inteemable sieve I still pour in the waters of my love And lack not to lose still. Thus, Indian-like, Religious in mine error, I adore The sun that looks upon his worshipper, But knows of him no more. My dearest madam, Let not your hate encounter with my love, For loving where you do; but if yourself, Whose aged honour cites a virtuous youth, Did ever, in so true a flame of liking, Wish chastely, and love dearly, that your Dian Was both herself and love; O then, give pity To her whose state is such that cannot choose But lend and give where she is sure to lose; That seeks not to find that her search implies, But riddle-like, lives sweetly where she dies!

COUNTESS. Had you not lately an intent,—speak truly,— To go to Paris?

HELENA. Madam, I had.

COUNTESS. Wherefore? tell true.

HELENA. I will tell truth; by grace itself I swear. You know my father left me some prescriptions Of rare and prov’d effects, such as his reading And manifest experience had collected For general sovereignty; and that he will’d me In heedfull’st reservation to bestow them, As notes whose faculties inclusive were More than they were in note. Amongst the rest There is a remedy, approv’d, set down, To cure the desperate languishings whereof The king is render’d lost.

COUNTESS. This was your motive For Paris, was it? Speak.

HELENA. My lord your son made me to think of this; Else Paris, and the medicine, and the king, Had from the conversation of my thoughts Haply been absent then.

COUNTESS. But think you, Helen, If you should tender your supposed aid, He would receive it? He and his physicians Are of a mind; he, that they cannot help him; They, that they cannot help. How shall they credit A poor unlearned virgin, when the schools, Embowell’d of their doctrine, have let off The danger to itself?

HELENA. There’s something in’t More than my father’s skill, which was the great’st Of his profession, that his good receipt Shall for my legacy be sanctified By th’ luckiest stars in heaven; and would your honour But give me leave to try success, I’d venture The well-lost life of mine on his grace’s cure. By such a day, an hour.

COUNTESS. Dost thou believe’t?

HELENA. Ay, madam, knowingly.

COUNTESS. Why, Helen, thou shalt have my leave and love, Means and attendants, and my loving greetings To those of mine in court. I’ll stay at home, And pray God’s blessing into thy attempt. Be gone tomorrow; and be sure of this, What I can help thee to, thou shalt not miss.

[Exeunt.]

ACT II.

SCENE I. Paris. A room in the King’s palace.

Flourish. Enter the King with young Lords taking leave for the Florentine war; Bertram, Parolles and Attendants.

KING. Farewell, young lords; these warlike principles Do not throw from you; and you, my lords, farewell; Share the advice betwixt you; if both gain all, The gift doth stretch itself as ’tis receiv’d, And is enough for both.

FIRST LORD. ’Tis our hope, sir, After well-ent’red soldiers, to return And find your grace in health.

KING. No, no, it cannot be; and yet my heart Will not confess he owes the malady That doth my life besiege. Farewell, young lords. Whether I live or die, be you the sons Of worthy Frenchmen; let higher Italy,— Those bated that inherit but the fall Of the last monarchy—see that you come Not to woo honour, but to wed it, when The bravest questant shrinks: find what you seek, That fame may cry you loud. I say farewell.

SECOND LORD. Health, at your bidding serve your majesty!

KING. Those girls of Italy, take heed of them; They say our French lack language to deny If they demand; beware of being captives Before you serve.

BOTH. Our hearts receive your warnings.

KING. Farewell.—Come hither to me.

[The King retires to a couch.]

FIRST LORD. O my sweet lord, that you will stay behind us!

PAROLLES. ’Tis not his fault; the spark.

SECOND LORD. O, ’tis brave wars!

PAROLLES. Most admirable! I have seen those wars.

BERTRAM. I am commanded here, and kept a coil with, “Too young”, and “the next year” and “’tis too early”.

PAROLLES. An thy mind stand to’t, boy, steal away bravely.

BERTRAM. I shall stay here the forehorse to a smock, Creaking my shoes on the plain masonry, Till honour be bought up, and no sword worn But one to dance with. By heaven, I’ll steal away.

FIRST LORD. There’s honour in the theft.

PAROLLES. Commit it, count.

SECOND LORD. I am your accessary; and so farewell.

BERTRAM. I grow to you, and our parting is a tortur’d body.

FIRST LORD. Farewell, captain.

SECOND LORD. Sweet Monsieur Parolles!

PAROLLES. Noble heroes, my sword and yours are kin. Good sparks and lustrous, a word, good metals. You shall find in the regiment of the Spinii one Captain Spurio, with his cicatrice, an emblem of war, here on his sinister cheek; it was this very sword entrench’d it. Say to him I live; and observe his reports for me.

FIRST LORD. We shall, noble captain.

PAROLLES. Mars dote on you for his novices!

[Exeunt Lords.]

What will ye do?

BERTRAM. Stay the king.

PAROLLES. Use a more spacious ceremony to the noble lords; you have restrain’d yourself within the list of too cold an adieu. Be more expressive to them; for they wear themselves in the cap of the time; there do muster true gait; eat, speak, and move, under the influence of the most receiv’d star; and though the devil lead the measure, such are to be followed. After them, and take a more dilated farewell.

BERTRAM. And I will do so.

PAROLLES. Worthy fellows, and like to prove most sinewy sword-men.

[Exeunt Bertram and Parolles.]

Enter Lafew.

LAFEW. Pardon, my lord [kneeling], for me and for my tidings.

KING. I’ll fee thee to stand up.

LAFEW. Then here’s a man stands that has brought his pardon. I would you had kneel’d, my lord, to ask me mercy, And that at my bidding you could so stand up.

KING. I would I had; so I had broke thy pate, And ask’d thee mercy for’t.

LAFEW. Good faith, across; But, my good lord, ’tis thus: will you be cur’d Of your infirmity?

KING. No.

LAFEW. O, will you eat No grapes, my royal fox? Yes, but you will My noble grapes, and if my royal fox Could reach them. I have seen a medicine That’s able to breathe life into a stone, Quicken a rock, and make you dance canary With sprightly fire and motion; whose simple touch Is powerful to araise King Pippen, nay, To give great Charlemain a pen in’s hand And write to her a love-line.

KING. What ‘her’ is this?

LAFEW. Why, doctor ‘she’! My lord, there’s one arriv’d, If you will see her. Now, by my faith and honour, If seriously I may convey my thoughts In this my light deliverance, I have spoke With one that in her sex, her years, profession, Wisdom, and constancy, hath amaz’d me more Than I dare blame my weakness. Will you see her, For that is her demand, and know her business? That done, laugh well at me.

KING. Now, good Lafew, Bring in the admiration; that we with thee May spend our wonder too, or take off thine By wond’ring how thou took’st it.

LAFEW. Nay, I’ll fit you, And not be all day neither.

[Exit Lafew.]

KING. Thus he his special nothing ever prologues.

Enter Lafew with Helena.

LAFEW. Nay, come your ways.

KING. This haste hath wings indeed.

LAFEW. Nay, come your ways. This is his majesty, say your mind to him. A traitor you do look like, but such traitors His majesty seldom fears; I am Cressid’s uncle, That dare leave two together. Fare you well.

KING. Now, fair one, does your business follow us?

HELENA. Ay, my good lord. Gerard de Narbon was my father, In what he did profess, well found.

KING. I knew him.

HELENA. The rather will I spare my praises towards him. Knowing him is enough. On his bed of death Many receipts he gave me; chiefly one, Which, as the dearest issue of his practice, And of his old experience the only darling, He bade me store up as a triple eye, Safer than mine own two; more dear I have so, And hearing your high majesty is touch’d With that malignant cause, wherein the honour Of my dear father’s gift stands chief in power, I come to tender it, and my appliance, With all bound humbleness.

KING. We thank you, maiden, But may not be so credulous of cure, When our most learned doctors leave us, and The congregated college have concluded That labouring art can never ransom nature From her inaidable estate. I say we must not So stain our judgment, or corrupt our hope, To prostitute our past-cure malady To empirics, or to dissever so Our great self and our credit, to esteem A senseless help, when help past sense we deem.

HELENA. My duty then shall pay me for my pains. I will no more enforce mine office on you, Humbly entreating from your royal thoughts A modest one to bear me back again.

KING. I cannot give thee less, to be call’d grateful. Thou thought’st to help me; and such thanks I give As one near death to those that wish him live. But what at full I know, thou know’st no part; I knowing all my peril, thou no art.

HELENA. What I can do can do no hurt to try, Since you set up your rest ’gainst remedy. He that of greatest works is finisher Oft does them by the weakest minister. So holy writ in babes hath judgment shown, When judges have been babes. Great floods have flown From simple sources, and great seas have dried When miracles have by the great’st been denied. Oft expectation fails, and most oft there Where most it promises; and oft it hits Where hope is coldest, and despair most fits.

KING. I must not hear thee. Fare thee well, kind maid. Thy pains, not us’d, must by thyself be paid; Proffers, not took, reap thanks for their reward.

HELENA. Inspired merit so by breath is barr’d. It is not so with Him that all things knows As ’tis with us that square our guess by shows; But most it is presumption in us when The help of heaven we count the act of men. Dear sir, to my endeavours give consent; Of heaven, not me, make an experiment. I am not an impostor, that proclaim Myself against the level of mine aim, But know I think, and think I know most sure, My art is not past power nor you past cure.

KING. Art thou so confident? Within what space Hop’st thou my cure?

HELENA. The greatest grace lending grace. Ere twice the horses of the sun shall bring Their fiery torcher his diurnal ring, Ere twice in murk and occidental damp Moist Hesperus hath quench’d her sleepy lamp; Or four and twenty times the pilot’s glass Hath told the thievish minutes how they pass; What is infirm from your sound parts shall fly, Health shall live free, and sickness freely die.

KING. Upon thy certainty and confidence What dar’st thou venture?

HELENA. Tax of impudence, A strumpet’s boldness, a divulged shame, Traduc’d by odious ballads; my maiden’s name Sear’d otherwise; nay worse of worst extended With vilest torture, let my life be ended.

KING. Methinks in thee some blessed spirit doth speak His powerful sound within an organ weak; And what impossibility would slay In common sense, sense saves another way. Thy life is dear, for all that life can rate Worth name of life in thee hath estimate: Youth, beauty, wisdom, courage, all That happiness and prime can happy call. Thou this to hazard needs must intimate Skill infinite, or monstrous desperate. Sweet practiser, thy physic I will try, That ministers thine own death if I die.

HELENA. If I break time, or flinch in property Of what I spoke, unpitied let me die, And well deserv’d. Not helping, death’s my fee; But if I help, what do you promise me?

KING. Make thy demand.

HELENA. But will you make it even?

KING. Ay, by my sceptre and my hopes of heaven.

HELENA. Then shalt thou give me, with thy kingly hand What husband in thy power I will command: Exempted be from me the arrogance To choose from forth the royal blood of France, My low and humble name to propagate With any branch or image of thy state; But such a one, thy vassal, whom I know Is free for me to ask, thee to bestow.

KING. Here is my hand; the premises observ’d, Thy will by my performance shall be serv’d; So make the choice of thy own time, for I, Thy resolv’d patient, on thee still rely. More should I question thee, and more I must, Though more to know could not be more to trust: From whence thou cam’st, how tended on; but rest Unquestion’d welcome, and undoubted bless’d. Give me some help here, ho! If thou proceed As high as word, my deed shall match thy deed.

[Flourish. Exeunt.]

SCENE II. Rossillon. A room in the Countess’s palace.

Enter Countess and Clown.

COUNTESS. Come on, sir; I shall now put you to the height of your breeding.

CLOWN. I will show myself highly fed and lowly taught. I know my business is but to the court.

COUNTESS. To the court! Why, what place make you special, when you put off that with such contempt? But to the court!

CLOWN. Truly, madam, if God have lent a man any manners, he may easily put it off at court: he that cannot make a leg, put off’s cap, kiss his hand, and say nothing, has neither leg, hands, lip, nor cap; and indeed such a fellow, to say precisely, were not for the court; but for me, I have an answer will serve all men.

COUNTESS. Marry, that’s a bountiful answer that fits all questions.

CLOWN. It is like a barber’s chair, that fits all buttocks—the pin-buttock, the quatch-buttock, the brawn-buttock, or any buttock.

COUNTESS. Will your answer serve fit to all questions?

CLOWN. As fit as ten groats is for the hand of an attorney, as your French crown for your taffety punk, as Tib’s rush for Tom’s forefinger, as a pancake for Shrove-Tuesday, a morris for May-day, as the nail to his hole, the cuckold to his horn, as a scolding quean to a wrangling knave, as the nun’s lip to the friar’s mouth; nay, as the pudding to his skin.

COUNTESS. Have you, I say, an answer of such fitness for all questions?

CLOWN. From below your duke to beneath your constable, it will fit any question.

COUNTESS. It must be an answer of most monstrous size that must fit all demands.

CLOWN. But a trifle neither, in good faith, if the learned should speak truth of it. Here it is, and all that belongs to’t. Ask me if I am a courtier; it shall do you no harm to learn.

COUNTESS. To be young again, if we could: I will be a fool in question, hoping to be the wiser by your answer. I pray you, sir, are you a courtier?

CLOWN. O Lord, sir! There’s a simple putting off. More, more, a hundred of them.

COUNTESS. Sir, I am a poor friend of yours, that loves you.

CLOWN. O Lord, sir! Thick, thick; spare not me.

COUNTESS. I think, sir, you can eat none of this homely meat.

CLOWN. O Lord, sir! Nay, put me to’t, I warrant you.

COUNTESS. You were lately whipp’d, sir, as I think.

CLOWN. O Lord, sir! Spare not me.

COUNTESS. Do you cry ‘O Lord, sir!’ at your whipping, and ‘spare not me’? Indeed your ‘O Lord, sir!’ is very sequent to your whipping. You would answer very well to a whipping, if you were but bound to’t.

CLOWN. I ne’er had worse luck in my life in my ‘O Lord, sir!’ I see things may serve long, but not serve ever.

COUNTESS. I play the noble housewife with the time, to entertain it so merrily with a fool.

CLOWN. O Lord, sir! Why, there’t serves well again.

COUNTESS. An end, sir! To your business. Give Helen this, And urge her to a present answer back. Commend me to my kinsmen and my son. This is not much.

CLOWN. Not much commendation to them?

COUNTESS. Not much employment for you. You understand me?

CLOWN. Most fruitfully. I am there before my legs.

COUNTESS. Haste you again.

[Exeunt severally.]

SCENE III. Paris. The King’s palace.

LAFEW. They say miracles are past; and we have our philosophical persons to make modern and familiar things supernatural and causeless. Hence is it that we make trifles of terrors, ensconcing ourselves into seeming knowledge when we should submit ourselves to an unknown fear.

PAROLLES. Why, ’tis the rarest argument of wonder that hath shot out in our latter times.

BERTRAM. And so ’tis.

LAFEW. To be relinquish’d of the artists,—

PAROLLES. So I say; both of Galen and Paracelsus.

LAFEW. Of all the learned and authentic fellows,—

PAROLLES. Right; so I say.

LAFEW. That gave him out incurable,—

PAROLLES. Why, there ’tis; so say I too.

LAFEW. Not to be helped.

PAROLLES. Right; as ’twere a man assur’d of a—

LAFEW. Uncertain life and sure death.

PAROLLES. Just; you say well. So would I have said.

LAFEW. I may truly say, it is a novelty to the world.

PAROLLES. It is indeed; if you will have it in showing, you shall read it in what do you call there?

LAFEW. A showing of a heavenly effect in an earthly actor.

PAROLLES. That’s it; I would have said the very same.

LAFEW. Why, your dolphin is not lustier; fore me, I speak in respect—

PAROLLES. Nay, ’tis strange, ’tis very strange; that is the brief and the tedious of it; and he’s of a most facinerious spirit that will not acknowledge it to be the—

LAFEW. Very hand of heaven.

PAROLLES. Ay, so I say.

LAFEW. In a most weak—

PAROLLES. And debile minister, great power, great transcendence, which should indeed give us a further use to be made than alone the recov’ry of the king, as to be—

LAFEW. Generally thankful.

PAROLLES. I would have said it; you say well. Here comes the king.

Enter King, Helena and Attendants.

LAFEW. Lustique, as the Dutchman says. I’ll like a maid the better, whilst I have a tooth in my head. Why, he’s able to lead her a coranto.

PAROLLES. Mor du vinager! is not this Helen?

LAFEW. Fore God, I think so.

KING. Go, call before me all the lords in court.

[Exit an Attendant.]

Sit, my preserver, by thy patient’s side, And with this healthful hand, whose banish’d sense Thou has repeal’d, a second time receive The confirmation of my promis’d gift, Which but attends thy naming.

Enter several Lords.

Fair maid, send forth thine eye. This youthful parcel Of noble bachelors stand at my bestowing, O’er whom both sovereign power and father’s voice I have to use. Thy frank election make; Thou hast power to choose, and they none to forsake.

HELENA. To each of you one fair and virtuous mistress Fall, when love please! Marry, to each but one!

LAFEW. I’d give bay curtal and his furniture My mouth no more were broken than these boys’, And writ as little beard.

KING. Peruse them well. Not one of those but had a noble father.

She addresses her to a Lord.

HELENA. Gentlemen, Heaven hath through me restor’d the king to health.

ALL. We understand it, and thank heaven for you.

HELENA. I am a simple maid, and therein wealthiest That I protest I simply am a maid. Please it, your majesty, I have done already. The blushes in my cheeks thus whisper me: “We blush that thou shouldst choose; but, be refused, Let the white death sit on thy cheek for ever, We’ll ne’er come there again.”

KING. Make choice; and, see, Who shuns thy love shuns all his love in me.

HELENA. Now, Dian, from thy altar do I fly, And to imperial Love, that god most high, Do my sighs stream. [To first Lord.] Sir, will you hear my suit?

FIRST LORD. And grant it.

HELENA. Thanks, sir; all the rest is mute.

LAFEW. I had rather be in this choice than throw ames-ace for my life.

HELENA. [To second Lord.] The honour, sir, that flames in your fair eyes, Before I speak, too threat’ningly replies. Love make your fortunes twenty times above Her that so wishes, and her humble love!

SECOND LORD. No better, if you please.

HELENA. My wish receive, Which great Love grant; and so I take my leave.

LAFEW. Do all they deny her? An they were sons of mine I’d have them whipp’d; or I would send them to th’ Turk to make eunuchs of.

HELENA. [To third Lord.] Be not afraid that I your hand should take; I’ll never do you wrong for your own sake. Blessing upon your vows, and in your bed Find fairer fortune, if you ever wed!

LAFEW. These boys are boys of ice, they’ll none have her. Sure, they are bastards to the English; the French ne’er got ’em.

HELENA. [To fourth Lord.] You are too young, too happy, and too good, To make yourself a son out of my blood.

FOURTH LORD. Fair one, I think not so.

LAFEW. There’s one grape yet. I am sure thy father drank wine. But if thou beest not an ass, I am a youth of fourteen; I have known thee already.

HELENA. [To Bertram.] I dare not say I take you, but I give Me and my service, ever whilst I live, Into your guiding power. This is the man.

KING. Why, then, young Bertram, take her; she’s thy wife.

BERTRAM. My wife, my liege! I shall beseech your highness, In such a business give me leave to use The help of mine own eyes.

KING. Know’st thou not, Bertram, What she has done for me?

BERTRAM. Yes, my good lord, But never hope to know why I should marry her.

KING. Thou know’st she has rais’d me from my sickly bed.

BERTRAM. But follows it, my lord, to bring me down Must answer for your raising? I know her well; She had her breeding at my father’s charge: A poor physician’s daughter my wife! Disdain Rather corrupt me ever!

KING. ’Tis only title thou disdain’st in her, the which I can build up. Strange is it that our bloods, Of colour, weight, and heat, pour’d all together, Would quite confound distinction, yet stands off In differences so mighty. If she be All that is virtuous, save what thou dislik’st, A poor physician’s daughter,—thou dislik’st— Of virtue for the name. But do not so. From lowest place when virtuous things proceed, The place is dignified by the doer’s deed. Where great additions swell’s, and virtue none, It is a dropsied honour. Good alone Is good without a name; vileness is so: The property by what it is should go, Not by the title. She is young, wise, fair; In these to nature she’s immediate heir; And these breed honour: that is honour’s scorn Which challenges itself as honour’s born, And is not like the sire. Honours thrive When rather from our acts we them derive Than our fore-goers. The mere word’s a slave, Debauch’d on every tomb, on every grave A lying trophy, and as oft is dumb Where dust and damn’d oblivion is the tomb Of honour’d bones indeed. What should be said? If thou canst like this creature as a maid, I can create the rest. Virtue and she Is her own dower; honour and wealth from me.

BERTRAM. I cannot love her, nor will strive to do ’t.

KING. Thou wrong’st thyself, if thou shouldst strive to choose.

HELENA. That you are well restor’d, my lord, I am glad. Let the rest go.

KING. My honour’s at the stake, which to defeat, I must produce my power. Here, take her hand, Proud scornful boy, unworthy this good gift, That dost in vile misprision shackle up My love and her desert; that canst not dream We, poising us in her defective scale, Shall weigh thee to the beam; that wilt not know It is in us to plant thine honour where We please to have it grow. Check thy contempt; Obey our will, which travails in thy good; Believe not thy disdain, but presently Do thine own fortunes that obedient right Which both thy duty owes and our power claims; Or I will throw thee from my care for ever Into the staggers and the careless lapse Of youth and ignorance; both my revenge and hate Loosing upon thee in the name of justice, Without all terms of pity. Speak! Thine answer!

BERTRAM. Pardon, my gracious lord; for I submit My fancy to your eyes. When I consider What great creation, and what dole of honour Flies where you bid it, I find that she, which late Was in my nobler thoughts most base, is now The praised of the king; who, so ennobled, Is as ’twere born so.

KING. Take her by the hand, And tell her she is thine; to whom I promise A counterpoise; if not to thy estate, A balance more replete.

BERTRAM. I take her hand.

KING. Good fortune and the favour of the king Smile upon this contract; whose ceremony Shall seem expedient on the now-born brief, And be perform’d tonight. The solemn feast Shall more attend upon the coming space, Expecting absent friends. As thou lov’st her, Thy love’s to me religious; else, does err.

[Exeunt King, Bertram, Helena, Lords, and Attendants.]

LAFEW. Do you hear, monsieur? A word with you.

PAROLLES. Your pleasure, sir.

LAFEW. Your lord and master did well to make his recantation.

PAROLLES. Recantation! My lord! My master!

LAFEW. Ay. Is it not a language I speak?

PAROLLES. A most harsh one, and not to be understood without bloody succeeding. My master!

LAFEW. Are you companion to the Count Rossillon?

PAROLLES. To any count; to all counts; to what is man.

LAFEW. To what is count’s man: count’s master is of another style.

PAROLLES. You are too old, sir; let it satisfy you, you are too old.

LAFEW. I must tell thee, sirrah, I write man; to which title age cannot bring thee.

PAROLLES. What I dare too well do, I dare not do.

LAFEW. I did think thee, for two ordinaries, to be a pretty wise fellow; thou didst make tolerable vent of thy travel; it might pass. Yet the scarfs and the bannerets about thee did manifoldly dissuade me from believing thee a vessel of too great a burden. I have now found thee; when I lose thee again I care not. Yet art thou good for nothing but taking up, and that thou art scarce worth.

PAROLLES. Hadst thou not the privilege of antiquity upon thee—

LAFEW. Do not plunge thyself too far in anger, lest thou hasten thy trial; which if—Lord have mercy on thee for a hen! So, my good window of lattice, fare thee well; thy casement I need not open, for I look through thee. Give me thy hand.

PAROLLES. My lord, you give me most egregious indignity.

LAFEW. Ay, with all my heart; and thou art worthy of it.

PAROLLES. I have not, my lord, deserv’d it.

LAFEW. Yes, good faith, every dram of it; and I will not bate thee a scruple.

PAROLLES. Well, I shall be wiser.

LAFEW. Ev’n as soon as thou canst, for thou hast to pull at a smack o’ th’ contrary. If ever thou beest bound in thy scarf and beaten, thou shalt find what it is to be proud of thy bondage. I have a desire to hold my acquaintance with thee, or rather my knowledge, that I may say in the default, “He is a man I know.”

PAROLLES. My lord, you do me most insupportable vexation.

LAFEW. I would it were hell-pains for thy sake, and my poor doing eternal; for doing I am past, as I will by thee, in what motion age will give me leave.

PAROLLES. Well, thou hast a son shall take this disgrace off me; scurvy, old, filthy, scurvy lord! Well, I must be patient; there is no fettering of authority. I’ll beat him, by my life, if I can meet him with any convenience, an he were double and double a lord. I’ll have no more pity of his age than I would have of—I’ll beat him, and if I could but meet him again.

LAFEW. Sirrah, your lord and master’s married; there’s news for you; you have a new mistress.

PAROLLES. I most unfeignedly beseech your lordship to make some reservation of your wrongs. He is my good lord; whom I serve above is my master.

LAFEW. Who? God?

PAROLLES. Ay, sir.

LAFEW. The devil it is that’s thy master. Why dost thou garter up thy arms o’ this fashion? Dost make hose of thy sleeves? Do other servants so? Thou wert best set thy lower part where thy nose stands. By mine honour, if I were but two hours younger, I’d beat thee. Methink’st thou art a general offence, and every man should beat thee. I think thou wast created for men to breathe themselves upon thee.

PAROLLES. This is hard and undeserved measure, my lord.

LAFEW. Go to, sir; you were beaten in Italy for picking a kernel out of a pomegranate; you are a vagabond, and no true traveller. You are more saucy with lords and honourable personages than the commission of your birth and virtue gives you heraldry. You are not worth another word, else I’d call you knave. I leave you.

Enter Bertram.

PAROLLES. Good, very good, it is so then. Good, very good; let it be conceal’d awhile.

BERTRAM. Undone, and forfeited to cares for ever!

PAROLLES. What’s the matter, sweetheart?

BERTRAM. Although before the solemn priest I have sworn, I will not bed her.

PAROLLES. What, what, sweetheart?

BERTRAM. O my Parolles, they have married me! I’ll to the Tuscan wars, and never bed her.

PAROLLES. France is a dog-hole, and it no more merits The tread of a man’s foot: to the wars!

BERTRAM. There’s letters from my mother; what th’ import is I know not yet.

PAROLLES. Ay, that would be known. To th’ wars, my boy, to th’ wars! He wears his honour in a box unseen That hugs his kicky-wicky here at home, Spending his manly marrow in her arms, Which should sustain the bound and high curvet Of Mars’s fiery steed. To other regions! France is a stable; we that dwell in’t, jades, Therefore, to th’ war!

BERTRAM. It shall be so; I’ll send her to my house, Acquaint my mother with my hate to her, And wherefore I am fled; write to the king That which I durst not speak. His present gift Shall furnish me to those Italian fields Where noble fellows strike. War is no strife To the dark house and the detested wife.

PAROLLES. Will this caprichio hold in thee, art sure?

BERTRAM. Go with me to my chamber and advise me. I’ll send her straight away. Tomorrow I’ll to the wars, she to her single sorrow.

PAROLLES. Why, these balls bound; there’s noise in it. ’Tis hard: A young man married is a man that’s marr’d. Therefore away, and leave her bravely; go. The king has done you wrong; but hush ’tis so.

SCENE IV. Paris. The King’s palace.

Enter Helena and Clown.

HELENA. My mother greets me kindly: is she well?

CLOWN. She is not well, but yet she has her health; she’s very merry, but yet she is not well. But thanks be given, she’s very well, and wants nothing i’ the world; but yet she is not well.

HELENA. If she be very well, what does she ail that she’s not very well?

CLOWN. Truly, she’s very well indeed, but for two things.

HELENA. What two things?

CLOWN. One, that she’s not in heaven, whither God send her quickly! The other, that she’s in earth, from whence God send her quickly!

PAROLLES. Bless you, my fortunate lady!

HELENA. I hope, sir, I have your good will to have mine own good fortune.

PAROLLES. You had my prayers to lead them on; and to keep them on, have them still. O, my knave how does my old lady?

CLOWN. So that you had her wrinkles and I her money, I would she did as you say.

PAROLLES. Why, I say nothing.

CLOWN. Marry, you are the wiser man; for many a man’s tongue shakes out his master’s undoing. To say nothing, to do nothing, to know nothing, and to have nothing, is to be a great part of your title; which is within a very little of nothing.

PAROLLES. Away! Thou art a knave.

CLOWN. You should have said, sir, before a knave thou art a knave; that is before me thou art a knave. This had been truth, sir.

PAROLLES. Go to, thou art a witty fool; I have found thee.

CLOWN. Did you find me in yourself, sir? or were you taught to find me? The search, sir, was profitable; and much fool may you find in you, even to the world’s pleasure and the increase of laughter.

PAROLLES. A good knave, i’ faith, and well fed. Madam, my lord will go away tonight; A very serious business calls on him. The great prerogative and right of love, Which, as your due, time claims, he does acknowledge; But puts it off to a compell’d restraint; Whose want, and whose delay, is strew’d with sweets; Which they distil now in the curbed time, To make the coming hour o’erflow with joy And pleasure drown the brim.

HELENA. What’s his will else?

PAROLLES. That you will take your instant leave o’ the king, And make this haste as your own good proceeding, Strengthen’d with what apology you think May make it probable need.

HELENA. What more commands he?

PAROLLES. That, having this obtain’d, you presently Attend his further pleasure.

HELENA. In everything I wait upon his will.

PAROLLES. I shall report it so.

HELENA. I pray you. Come, sirrah.

SCENE V. Another room in the same.

Enter Lafew and Bertram.

LAFEW. But I hope your lordship thinks not him a soldier.

BERTRAM. Yes, my lord, and of very valiant approof.

LAFEW. You have it from his own deliverance.

BERTRAM. And by other warranted testimony.

LAFEW. Then my dial goes not true; I took this lark for a bunting.

BERTRAM. I do assure you, my lord, he is very great in knowledge, and accordingly valiant.

LAFEW. I have, then, sinned against his experience and transgressed against his valour; and my state that way is dangerous, since I cannot yet find in my heart to repent. Here he comes; I pray you make us friends; I will pursue the amity.

PAROLLES. [To Bertram.] These things shall be done, sir.

LAFEW. Pray you, sir, who’s his tailor?

PAROLLES. Sir!

LAFEW. O, I know him well, I, sir; he, sir, is a good workman, a very good tailor.

BERTRAM. [Aside to Parolles.] Is she gone to the king?

PAROLLES. She is.

BERTRAM. Will she away tonight?

PAROLLES. As you’ll have her.

BERTRAM. I have writ my letters, casketed my treasure, Given order for our horses; and tonight, When I should take possession of the bride, End ere I do begin.

LAFEW. A good traveller is something at the latter end of a dinner; but one that lies three-thirds and uses a known truth to pass a thousand nothings with, should be once heard and thrice beaten.— God save you, Captain.

BERTRAM. Is there any unkindness between my lord and you, monsieur?

PAROLLES. I know not how I have deserved to run into my lord’s displeasure.

LAFEW. You have made shift to run into ’t, boots and spurs and all, like him that leapt into the custard; and out of it you’ll run again, rather than suffer question for your residence.

BERTRAM. It may be you have mistaken him, my lord.

LAFEW. And shall do so ever, though I took him at his prayers. Fare you well, my lord; and believe this of me, there can be no kernal in this light nut; the soul of this man is his clothes; trust him not in matter of heavy consequence; I have kept of them tame, and know their natures. Farewell, monsieur; I have spoken better of you than you have or will to deserve at my hand; but we must do good against evil.

PAROLLES. An idle lord, I swear.

BERTRAM. I think so.

PAROLLES. Why, do you not know him?

BERTRAM. Yes, I do know him well; and common speech Gives him a worthy pass. Here comes my clog.

HELENA. I have, sir, as I was commanded from you, Spoke with the king, and have procur’d his leave For present parting; only he desires Some private speech with you.

BERTRAM. I shall obey his will. You must not marvel, Helen, at my course, Which holds not colour with the time, nor does The ministration and required office On my particular. Prepared I was not For such a business; therefore am I found So much unsettled: this drives me to entreat you; That presently you take your way for home, And rather muse than ask why I entreat you: For my respects are better than they seem; And my appointments have in them a need Greater than shows itself at the first view To you that know them not. This to my mother.

[Giving a letter.]

’Twill be two days ere I shall see you; so I leave you to your wisdom.

HELENA. Sir, I can nothing say But that I am your most obedient servant.

BERTRAM. Come, come, no more of that.

HELENA. And ever shall With true observance seek to eke out that Wherein toward me my homely stars have fail’d To equal my great fortune.

BERTRAM. Let that go. My haste is very great. Farewell; hie home.

HELENA. Pray, sir, your pardon.

BERTRAM. Well, what would you say?

HELENA. I am not worthy of the wealth I owe; Nor dare I say ’tis mine, and yet it is; But, like a timorous thief, most fain would steal What law does vouch mine own.

BERTRAM. What would you have?

HELENA. Something; and scarce so much; nothing indeed. I would not tell you what I would, my lord. Faith, yes, Strangers and foes do sunder and not kiss.

BERTRAM. I pray you, stay not, but in haste to horse.

HELENA. I shall not break your bidding, good my lord. Where are my other men, monsieur? Farewell,

[Exit Helena.]

BERTRAM. Go thou toward home, where I will never come Whilst I can shake my sword or hear the drum. Away, and for our flight.

PAROLLES. Bravely, coragio!

ACT III.

SCENE I. Florence. A room in the Duke’s palace.

Flourish. Enter the Duke of Florence attended; two French Lords, and Soldiers.

DUKE. So that, from point to point, now have you heard The fundamental reasons of this war, Whose great decision hath much blood let forth, And more thirsts after.

FIRST LORD. Holy seems the quarrel Upon your Grace’s part; black and fearful On the opposer.

DUKE. Therefore we marvel much our cousin France Would, in so just a business, shut his bosom Against our borrowing prayers.

SECOND LORD. Good my lord, The reasons of our state I cannot yield, But like a common and an outward man That the great figure of a council frames By self-unable motion; therefore dare not Say what I think of it, since I have found Myself in my incertain grounds to fail As often as I guess’d.

DUKE. Be it his pleasure.

FIRST LORD. But I am sure the younger of our nature, That surfeit on their ease, will day by day Come here for physic.

DUKE. Welcome shall they be; And all the honours that can fly from us Shall on them settle. You know your places well; When better fall, for your avails they fell. Tomorrow to the field.

COUNTESS. It hath happen’d all as I would have had it, save that he comes not along with her.

CLOWN. By my troth, I take my young lord to be a very melancholy man.

COUNTESS. By what observance, I pray you?

CLOWN. Why, he will look upon his boot and sing; mend the ruff and sing; ask questions and sing; pick his teeth and sing. I know a man that had this trick of melancholy sold a goodly manor for a song.

COUNTESS. Let me see what he writes, and when he means to come.

[Opening a letter.]

CLOWN. I have no mind to Isbel since I was at court. Our old lings and our Isbels o’ th’ country are nothing like your old ling and your Isbels o’ th’ court. The brains of my Cupid’s knock’d out, and I begin to love, as an old man loves money, with no stomach.

COUNTESS. What have we here?

CLOWN. E’en that you have there.

COUNTESS. [Reads.] I have sent you a daughter-in-law; she hath recovered the king and undone me. I have wedded her, not bedded her, and sworn to make the “not” eternal. You shall hear I am run away; know it before the report come. If there be breadth enough in the world, I will hold a long distance. My duty to you. Your unfortunate son, BERTRAM.

This is not well, rash and unbridled boy, To fly the favours of so good a king, To pluck his indignation on thy head By the misprizing of a maid too virtuous For the contempt of empire.

Enter Clown.

CLOWN. O madam, yonder is heavy news within between two soldiers and my young lady.

COUNTESS. What is the matter?

CLOWN. Nay, there is some comfort in the news, some comfort; your son will not be kill’d so soon as I thought he would.

COUNTESS. Why should he be kill’d?

CLOWN. So say I, madam, if he run away, as I hear he does; the danger is in standing to’t; that’s the loss of men, though it be the getting of children. Here they come will tell you more. For my part, I only hear your son was run away.

Enter Helena and the two Gentlemen.

FIRST GENTLEMAN. Save you, good madam.

HELENA. Madam, my lord is gone, for ever gone.

SECOND GENTLEMAN. Do not say so.

COUNTESS. Think upon patience. Pray you, gentlemen,— I have felt so many quirks of joy and grief That the first face of neither on the start Can woman me unto ’t. Where is my son, I pray you?

SECOND GENTLEMAN. Madam, he’s gone to serve the Duke of Florence; We met him thitherward, for thence we came, And, after some despatch in hand at court, Thither we bend again.

HELENA. Look on this letter, madam; here’s my passport.

[Reads.] When thou canst get the ring upon my finger, which never shall come off, and show me a child begotten of thy body that I am father to, then call me husband; but in such a “then” I write a “never”. This is a dreadful sentence.

COUNTESS. Brought you this letter, gentlemen?

FIRST GENTLEMAN. Ay, madam; And for the contents’ sake, are sorry for our pains.

COUNTESS. I pr’ythee, lady, have a better cheer; If thou engrossest all the griefs are thine, Thou robb’st me of a moiety. He was my son, But I do wash his name out of my blood, And thou art all my child. Towards Florence is he?

SECOND GENTLEMAN. Ay, madam.

COUNTESS. And to be a soldier?

SECOND GENTLEMAN. Such is his noble purpose, and, believe’t, The duke will lay upon him all the honour That good convenience claims.

COUNTESS. Return you thither?

FIRST GENTLEMAN. Ay, madam, with the swiftest wing of speed.

HELENA. [Reads.] Till I have no wife, I have nothing in France. ’Tis bitter.

COUNTESS. Find you that there?

HELENA. Ay, madam.

FIRST GENTLEMAN. ’Tis but the boldness of his hand haply, which his heart was not consenting to.

COUNTESS. Nothing in France until he have no wife! There’s nothing here that is too good for him But only she, and she deserves a lord That twenty such rude boys might tend upon, And call her hourly mistress. Who was with him?

FIRST GENTLEMAN. A servant only, and a gentleman which I have sometime known.

COUNTESS. Parolles, was it not?

FIRST GENTLEMAN. Ay, my good lady, he.

COUNTESS. A very tainted fellow, and full of wickedness. My son corrupts a well-derived nature With his inducement.

FIRST GENTLEMAN. Indeed, good lady, The fellow has a deal of that too much, Which holds him much to have.

COUNTESS. Y’are welcome, gentlemen. I will entreat you, when you see my son, To tell him that his sword can never win The honour that he loses: more I’ll entreat you Written to bear along.

SECOND GENTLEMAN. We serve you, madam, In that and all your worthiest affairs.

COUNTESS. Not so, but as we change our courtesies. Will you draw near?

[Exeunt Countess and Gentlemen.]

HELENA. “Till I have no wife, I have nothing in France.” Nothing in France until he has no wife! Thou shalt have none, Rossillon, none in France; Then hast thou all again. Poor lord, is’t I That chase thee from thy country, and expose Those tender limbs of thine to the event Of the none-sparing war? And is it I That drive thee from the sportive court, where thou Wast shot at with fair eyes, to be the mark Of smoky muskets? O you leaden messengers, That ride upon the violent speed of fire, Fly with false aim; move the still-peering air, That sings with piercing; do not touch my lord. Whoever shoots at him, I set him there; Whoever charges on his forward breast, I am the caitiff that do hold him to’t; And though I kill him not, I am the cause His death was so effected. Better ’twere I met the ravin lion when he roar’d With sharp constraint of hunger; better ’twere That all the miseries which nature owes Were mine at once. No; come thou home, Rossillon, Whence honour but of danger wins a scar, As oft it loses all. I will be gone; My being here it is that holds thee hence. Shall I stay here to do’t? No, no, although The air of paradise did fan the house, And angels offic’d all. I will be gone, That pitiful rumour may report my flight To consolate thine ear. Come, night; end, day; For with the dark, poor thief, I’ll steal away.

SCENE III. Florence. Before the Duke’s palace.

Flourish. Enter the Duke of Florence, Bertram, drum and trumpets, Soldiers, Parolles.

DUKE. The general of our horse thou art, and we, Great in our hope, lay our best love and credence Upon thy promising fortune.

BERTRAM. Sir, it is A charge too heavy for my strength; but yet We’ll strive to bear it for your worthy sake To th’extreme edge of hazard.

DUKE. Then go thou forth; And fortune play upon thy prosperous helm, As thy auspicious mistress!

BERTRAM. This very day, Great Mars, I put myself into thy file; Make me but like my thoughts, and I shall prove A lover of thy drum, hater of love.

SCENE IV. Rossillon. A room in the Countess’s palace.

Enter Countess and Steward.

COUNTESS. Alas! and would you take the letter of her? Might you not know she would do as she has done, By sending me a letter? Read it again.

STEWARD. [Reads.] I am Saint Jaques’ pilgrim, thither gone. Ambitious love hath so in me offended That barefoot plod I the cold ground upon, With sainted vow my faults to have amended. Write, write, that from the bloody course of war My dearest master, your dear son, may hie. Bless him at home in peace, whilst I from far His name with zealous fervour sanctify. His taken labours bid him me forgive; I, his despiteful Juno, sent him forth From courtly friends, with camping foes to live, Where death and danger dog the heels of worth. He is too good and fair for death and me; Whom I myself embrace to set him free.

COUNTESS. Ah, what sharp stings are in her mildest words! Rynaldo, you did never lack advice so much As letting her pass so; had I spoke with her, I could have well diverted her intents, Which thus she hath prevented.

STEWARD. Pardon me, madam; If I had given you this at over-night, She might have been o’erta’en; and yet she writes Pursuit would be but vain.

COUNTESS. What angel shall Bless this unworthy husband? He cannot thrive, Unless her prayers, whom heaven delights to hear And loves to grant, reprieve him from the wrath Of greatest justice. Write, write, Rynaldo, To this unworthy husband of his wife; Let every word weigh heavy of her worth, That he does weigh too light; my greatest grief, Though little he do feel it, set down sharply. Dispatch the most convenient messenger. When haply he shall hear that she is gone He will return; and hope I may that she, Hearing so much, will speed her foot again, Led hither by pure love. Which of them both Is dearest to me I have no skill in sense To make distinction. Provide this messenger. My heart is heavy, and mine age is weak; Grief would have tears, and sorrow bids me speak.

SCENE V. Without the walls of Florence.

Enter an old Widow of Florence, Diana, Violenta, Mariana and other Citizens.

WIDOW. Nay, come; for if they do approach the city, we shall lose all the sight.

DIANA. They say the French count has done most honourable service.

WIDOW. It is reported that he has taken their great’st commander, and that with his own hand he slew the duke’s brother.

[A tucket afar off.]

We have lost our labour; they are gone a contrary way. Hark! you may know by their trumpets.

MARIANA. Come, let’s return again, and suffice ourselves with the report of it. Well, Diana, take heed of this French earl; the honour of a maid is her name; and no legacy is so rich as honesty.

WIDOW. I have told my neighbour how you have been solicited by a gentleman his companion.

MARIANA. I know that knave; hang him! one Parolles; a filthy officer he is in those suggestions for the young earl. Beware of them, Diana; their promises, enticements, oaths, tokens, and all these engines of lust, are not the things they go under; many a maid hath been seduced by them; and the misery is, example, that so terrible shows in the wreck of maidenhood, cannot for all that dissuade succession, but that they are limed with the twigs that threaten them. I hope I need not to advise you further; but I hope your own grace will keep you where you are, though there were no further danger known but the modesty which is so lost.

DIANA. You shall not need to fear me.

Enter Helena in the dress of a pilgrim.

WIDOW. I hope so. Look, here comes a pilgrim. I know she will lie at my house; thither they send one another; I’ll question her. God save you, pilgrim! Whither are bound?

HELENA. To Saint Jaques le Grand. Where do the palmers lodge, I do beseech you?

WIDOW. At the Saint Francis here, beside the port.

HELENA. Is this the way?

[A march afar.]

WIDOW. Ay, marry, is’t. Hark you, they come this way. If you will tarry, holy pilgrim, But till the troops come by, I will conduct you where you shall be lodg’d; The rather for I think I know your hostess As ample as myself.

HELENA. Is it yourself?

WIDOW. If you shall please so, pilgrim.

HELENA. I thank you, and will stay upon your leisure.

WIDOW. You came, I think, from France?

HELENA. I did so.

WIDOW. Here you shall see a countryman of yours That has done worthy service.

HELENA. His name, I pray you.

DIANA. The Count Rossillon. Know you such a one?

HELENA. But by the ear, that hears most nobly of him; His face I know not.

DIANA. Whatsome’er he is, He’s bravely taken here. He stole from France, As ’tis reported, for the king had married him Against his liking. Think you it is so?

HELENA. Ay, surely, mere the truth; I know his lady.

DIANA. There is a gentleman that serves the count Reports but coarsely of her.

HELENA. What’s his name?

DIANA. Monsieur Parolles.

HELENA. O, I believe with him, In argument of praise, or to the worth Of the great count himself, she is too mean To have her name repeated; all her deserving Is a reserved honesty, and that I have not heard examin’d.

DIANA. Alas, poor lady! ’Tis a hard bondage to become the wife Of a detesting lord.

WIDOW. Ay, right; good creature, wheresoe’er she is, Her heart weighs sadly. This young maid might do her A shrewd turn, if she pleas’d.

HELENA. How do you mean? Maybe the amorous count solicits her In the unlawful purpose.

WIDOW. He does indeed, And brokes with all that can in such a suit Corrupt the tender honour of a maid; But she is arm’d for him, and keeps her guard In honestest defence.

Enter, with a drum and colours, a party of the Florentine army, Bertram and Parolles.

MARIANA. The gods forbid else!

WIDOW. So, now they come. That is Antonio, the Duke’s eldest son; That Escalus.

HELENA. Which is the Frenchman?

DIANA. He; That with the plume; ’tis a most gallant fellow. I would he lov’d his wife; if he were honester He were much goodlier. Is’t not a handsome gentleman?

HELENA. I like him well.

DIANA. ’Tis pity he is not honest. Yond’s that same knave That leads him to these places. Were I his lady I would poison that vile rascal.

HELENA. Which is he?

DIANA. That jack-an-apes with scarfs. Why is he melancholy?

HELENA. Perchance he’s hurt i’ the battle.

PAROLLES. Lose our drum! Well.

MARIANA. He’s shrewdly vex’d at something. Look, he has spied us.

WIDOW. Marry, hang you!

MARIANA. And your courtesy, for a ring-carrier!

[Exeunt Bertram, Parolles, Officers and Soldiers.]

WIDOW. The troop is past. Come, pilgrim, I will bring you Where you shall host; of enjoin’d penitents There’s four or five, to great Saint Jaques bound, Already at my house.

HELENA. I humbly thank you. Please it this matron and this gentle maid To eat with us tonight; the charge and thanking Shall be for me; and, to requite you further, I will bestow some precepts of this virgin, Worthy the note.

BOTH. We’ll take your offer kindly.

SCENE VI. Camp before Florence.

Enter Bertram and the two French Lords.

FIRST LORD. Nay, good my lord, put him to’t; let him have his way.

SECOND LORD. If your lordship find him not a hilding, hold me no more in your respect.

FIRST LORD. On my life, my lord, a bubble.

BERTRAM. Do you think I am so far deceived in him?

FIRST LORD. Believe it, my lord, in mine own direct knowledge, without any malice, but to speak of him as my kinsman, he’s a most notable coward, an infinite and endless liar, an hourly promise-breaker, the owner of no one good quality worthy your lordship’s entertainment.

SECOND LORD. It were fit you knew him; lest, reposing too far in his virtue, which he hath not, he might at some great and trusty business, in a main danger fail you.

BERTRAM. I would I knew in what particular action to try him.

SECOND LORD. None better than to let him fetch off his drum, which you hear him so confidently undertake to do.

FIRST LORD. I with a troop of Florentines will suddenly surprise him; such I will have whom I am sure he knows not from the enemy; we will bind and hoodwink him so that he shall suppose no other but that he is carried into the leaguer of the adversaries when we bring him to our own tents. Be but your lordship present at his examination; if he do not for the promise of his life, and in the highest compulsion of base fear, offer to betray you, and deliver all the intelligence in his power against you, and that with the divine forfeit of his soul upon oath, never trust my judgment in anything.

SECOND LORD. O, for the love of laughter, let him fetch his drum; he says he has a stratagem for’t. When your lordship sees the bottom of his success in’t, and to what metal this counterfeit lump of ore will be melted, if you give him not John Drum’s entertainment, your inclining cannot be removed. Here he comes.

FIRST LORD. O, for the love of laughter, hinder not the honour of his design: let him fetch off his drum in any hand.

BERTRAM. How now, monsieur! This drum sticks sorely in your disposition.

SECOND LORD. A pox on ’t; let it go; ’tis but a drum.

PAROLLES. But a drum! Is’t but a drum? A drum so lost! There was excellent command, to charge in with our horse upon our own wings, and to rend our own soldiers.

SECOND LORD. That was not to be blam’d in the command of the service; it was a disaster of war that Caesar himself could not have prevented, if he had been there to command.

BERTRAM. Well, we cannot greatly condemn our success: some dishonour we had in the loss of that drum, but it is not to be recovered.

PAROLLES. It might have been recovered.

BERTRAM. It might, but it is not now.

PAROLLES. It is to be recovered. But that the merit of service is seldom attributed to the true and exact performer, I would have that drum or another, or hic jacet.

BERTRAM. Why, if you have a stomach, to’t, monsieur, if you think your mystery in stratagem can bring this instrument of honour again into his native quarter, be magnanimous in the enterprise, and go on; I will grace the attempt for a worthy exploit; if you speed well in it, the duke shall both speak of it and extend to you what further becomes his greatness, even to the utmost syllable of your worthiness.

PAROLLES. By the hand of a soldier, I will undertake it.

BERTRAM. But you must not now slumber in it.

PAROLLES. I’ll about it this evening; and I will presently pen down my dilemmas, encourage myself in my certainty, put myself into my mortal preparation; and by midnight look to hear further from me.

BERTRAM. May I be bold to acquaint his grace you are gone about it?

PAROLLES. I know not what the success will be, my lord, but the attempt I vow.

BERTRAM. I know th’art valiant; and to the possibility of thy soldiership, will subscribe for thee. Farewell.

PAROLLES. I love not many words.

FIRST LORD. No more than a fish loves water. Is not this a strange fellow, my lord, that so confidently seems to undertake this business, which he knows is not to be done; damns himself to do, and dares better be damn’d than to do’t.

SECOND LORD. You do not know him, my lord, as we do; certain it is that he will steal himself into a man’s favour, and for a week escape a great deal of discoveries, but when you find him out, you have him ever after.

BERTRAM. Why, do you think he will make no deed at all of this, that so seriously he does address himself unto?

FIRST LORD. None in the world; but return with an invention, and clap upon you two or three probable lies; but we have almost embossed him; you shall see his fall tonight; for indeed he is not for your lordship’s respect.

SECOND LORD. We’ll make you some sport with the fox ere we case him. He was first smok’d by the old Lord Lafew; when his disguise and he is parted, tell me what a sprat you shall find him; which you shall see this very night.

FIRST LORD. I must go look my twigs. He shall be caught.

BERTRAM. Your brother, he shall go along with me.

FIRST LORD. As’t please your lordship. I’ll leave you.

BERTRAM. Now will I lead you to the house, and show you The lass I spoke of.

SECOND LORD. But you say she’s honest.

BERTRAM. That’s all the fault. I spoke with her but once, And found her wondrous cold, but I sent to her By this same coxcomb that we have i’ the wind Tokens and letters which she did re-send, And this is all I have done. She’s a fair creature; Will you go see her?

SECOND LORD. With all my heart, my lord.

SCENE VII. Florence. A room in the Widow’s house.

Enter Helena and Widow.

HELENA. If you misdoubt me that I am not she, I know not how I shall assure you further, But I shall lose the grounds I work upon.

WIDOW. Though my estate be fall’n, I was well born, Nothing acquainted with these businesses, And would not put my reputation now In any staining act.

HELENA. Nor would I wish you. First give me trust, the count he is my husband, And what to your sworn counsel I have spoken Is so from word to word; and then you cannot, By the good aid that I of you shall borrow, Err in bestowing it.

WIDOW. I should believe you, For you have show’d me that which well approves Y’are great in fortune.

HELENA. Take this purse of gold, And let me buy your friendly help thus far, Which I will over-pay, and pay again When I have found it. The count he woos your daughter Lays down his wanton siege before her beauty, Resolv’d to carry her; let her in fine consent, As we’ll direct her how ’tis best to bear it. Now his important blood will naught deny That she’ll demand; a ring the county wears, That downward hath succeeded in his house From son to son, some four or five descents Since the first father wore it. This ring he holds In most rich choice; yet, in his idle fire, To buy his will, it would not seem too dear, Howe’er repented after.

WIDOW. Now I see The bottom of your purpose.

HELENA. You see it lawful then; it is no more But that your daughter, ere she seems as won, Desires this ring; appoints him an encounter; In fine, delivers me to fill the time, Herself most chastely absent. After, To marry her, I’ll add three thousand crowns To what is pass’d already.

WIDOW. I have yielded. Instruct my daughter how she shall persever, That time and place with this deceit so lawful May prove coherent. Every night he comes With musics of all sorts, and songs compos’d To her unworthiness: it nothing steads us To chide him from our eaves; for he persists As if his life lay on ’t.

HELENA. Why then tonight Let us assay our plot; which, if it speed, Is wicked meaning in a lawful deed, And lawful meaning in a lawful act, Where both not sin, and yet a sinful fact. But let’s about it.

ACT IV.

SCENE I. Without the Florentine camp.

Enter first Lord with five or six Soldiers in ambush.

FIRST LORD. He can come no other way but by this hedge-corner. When you sally upon him, speak what terrible language you will; though you understand it not yourselves, no matter; for we must not seem to understand him, unless someone among us, whom we must produce for an interpreter.

FIRST SOLDIER. Good captain, let me be th’ interpreter.

FIRST LORD. Art not acquainted with him? Knows he not thy voice?

FIRST SOLDIER. No sir, I warrant you.

FIRST LORD. But what linsey-woolsey has thou to speak to us again?

FIRST SOLDIER. E’en such as you speak to me.

FIRST LORD. He must think us some band of strangers i’ the adversary’s entertainment. Now he hath a smack of all neighbouring languages, therefore we must every one be a man of his own fancy; not to know what we speak one to another, so we seem to know, is to know straight our purpose: choughs’ language, gabble enough, and good enough. As for you, interpreter, you must seem very politic. But couch, ho! Here he comes; to beguile two hours in a sleep, and then to return and swear the lies he forges.

PAROLLES. Ten o’clock. Within these three hours ’twill be time enough to go home. What shall I say I have done? It must be a very plausive invention that carries it. They begin to smoke me, and disgraces have of late knock’d too often at my door. I find my tongue is too foolhardy, but my heart hath the fear of Mars before it, and of his creatures, not daring the reports of my tongue.

FIRST LORD. [Aside.] This is the first truth that e’er thine own tongue was guilty of.

PAROLLES. What the devil should move me to undertake the recovery of this drum, being not ignorant of the impossibility, and knowing I had no such purpose? I must give myself some hurts, and say I got them in exploit; yet slight ones will not carry it. They will say “Came you off with so little?” and great ones I dare not give. Wherefore, what’s the instance? Tongue, I must put you into a butter-woman’s mouth, and buy myself another of Bajazet’s mule, if you prattle me into these perils.

FIRST LORD. [Aside.] Is it possible he should know what he is, and be that he is?

PAROLLES. I would the cutting of my garments would serve the turn, or the breaking of my Spanish sword.

FIRST LORD. [Aside.] We cannot afford you so.

PAROLLES. Or the baring of my beard, and to say it was in stratagem.

FIRST LORD. [Aside.] ’Twould not do.

PAROLLES. Or to drown my clothes, and say I was stripped.

FIRST LORD. [Aside.] Hardly serve.

PAROLLES. Though I swore I leap’d from the window of the citadel,—

FIRST LORD. [Aside.] How deep?

PAROLLES. Thirty fathom.

FIRST LORD. [Aside.] Three great oaths would scarce make that be believed.

PAROLLES. I would I had any drum of the enemy’s; I would swear I recover’d it.

FIRST LORD. [Aside.] You shall hear one anon.

PAROLLES. A drum now of the enemy’s!

[Alarum within.]

FIRST LORD. Throca movousus, cargo, cargo, cargo.

ALL. Cargo, cargo, cargo, villianda par corbo, cargo.

[They seize and blindfold him.]

PAROLLES. O, ransom, ransom! Do not hide mine eyes.

FIRST SOLDIER. Boskos thromuldo boskos.

PAROLLES. I know you are the Muskos’ regiment, And I shall lose my life for want of language. If there be here German, or Dane, Low Dutch, Italian, or French, let him speak to me, I’ll discover that which shall undo the Florentine.

FIRST SOLDIER. Boskos vauvado. I understand thee, and can speak thy tongue. Kerelybonto. Sir, Betake thee to thy faith, for seventeen poniards are at thy bosom.

PAROLLES. O!

FIRST SOLDIER. O, pray, pray, pray! Manka revania dulche.

FIRST LORD. Oscorbidulchos volivorco.

FIRST SOLDIER. The General is content to spare thee yet; And, hoodwink’d as thou art, will lead thee on To gather from thee. Haply thou mayst inform Something to save thy life.

PAROLLES. O, let me live, And all the secrets of our camp I’ll show, Their force, their purposes; nay, I’ll speak that Which you will wonder at.

FIRST SOLDIER. But wilt thou faithfully?

PAROLLES. If I do not, damn me.

FIRST SOLDIER. Acordo linta. Come on; thou art granted space.

[Exit, with Parolles guarded.]

A short alarum within.

FIRST LORD. Go tell the Count Rossillon and my brother We have caught the woodcock, and will keep him muffled Till we do hear from them.

SECOND SOLDIER. Captain, I will.

FIRST LORD. ’A will betray us all unto ourselves; Inform on that.

SECOND SOLDIER. So I will, sir.

FIRST LORD. Till then I’ll keep him dark, and safely lock’d.

SCENE II. Florence. A room in the Widow’s house.

Enter Bertram and Diana.

BERTRAM. They told me that your name was Fontybell.

DIANA. No, my good lord, Diana.

BERTRAM. Titled goddess; And worth it, with addition! But, fair soul, In your fine frame hath love no quality? If the quick fire of youth light not your mind, You are no maiden but a monument; When you are dead, you should be such a one As you are now; for you are cold and stern, And now you should be as your mother was When your sweet self was got.

DIANA. She then was honest.

BERTRAM. So should you be.

DIANA. No. My mother did but duty; such, my lord, As you owe to your wife.

BERTRAM. No more a’ that! I pr’ythee do not strive against my vows; I was compell’d to her; but I love thee By love’s own sweet constraint, and will for ever Do thee all rights of service.

DIANA. Ay, so you serve us Till we serve you; but when you have our roses, You barely leave our thorns to prick ourselves, And mock us with our bareness.

BERTRAM. How have I sworn?

DIANA. ’Tis not the many oaths that makes the truth, But the plain single vow that is vow’d true. What is not holy, that we swear not by, But take the highest to witness: then, pray you, tell me, If I should swear by Jove’s great attributes I lov’d you dearly, would you believe my oaths When I did love you ill? This has no holding, To swear by him whom I protest to love That I will work against him. Therefore your oaths Are words and poor conditions; but unseal’d,— At least in my opinion.

BERTRAM. Change it, change it. Be not so holy-cruel. Love is holy; And my integrity ne’er knew the crafts That you do charge men with. Stand no more off, But give thyself unto my sick desires, Who then recovers. Say thou art mine, and ever My love as it begins shall so persever.

DIANA. I see that men make hopes in such a case, That we’ll forsake ourselves. Give me that ring.

BERTRAM. I’ll lend it thee, my dear, but have no power To give it from me.

DIANA. Will you not, my lord?

BERTRAM. It is an honour ’longing to our house, Bequeathed down from many ancestors, Which were the greatest obloquy i’ the world In me to lose.

DIANA. Mine honour’s such a ring; My chastity’s the jewel of our house, Bequeathed down from many ancestors, Which were the greatest obloquy i’ the world In me to lose. Thus your own proper wisdom Brings in the champion honour on my part Against your vain assault.

BERTRAM. Here, take my ring; My house, mine honour, yea, my life be thine, And I’ll be bid by thee.

DIANA. When midnight comes, knock at my chamber window; I’ll order take my mother shall not hear. Now will I charge you in the band of truth, When you have conquer’d my yet maiden-bed, Remain there but an hour, nor speak to me. My reasons are most strong; and you shall know them When back again this ring shall be deliver’d; And on your finger in the night, I’ll put Another ring, that what in time proceeds May token to the future our past deeds. Adieu till then; then fail not. You have won A wife of me, though there my hope be done.

BERTRAM. A heaven on earth I have won by wooing thee.

DIANA. For which live long to thank both heaven and me! You may so in the end. My mother told me just how he would woo, As if she sat in’s heart. She says all men Have the like oaths. He had sworn to marry me When his wife’s dead; therefore I’ll lie with him When I am buried. Since Frenchmen are so braid, Marry that will, I live and die a maid. Only, in this disguise, I think’t no sin To cozen him that would unjustly win.

SCENE III. The Florentine camp.

Enter the two French Lords and two or three Soldiers.

FIRST LORD. You have not given him his mother’s letter?

SECOND LORD. I have deliv’red it an hour since; there is something in’t that stings his nature; for on the reading it, he chang’d almost into another man.

FIRST LORD. He has much worthy blame laid upon him for shaking off so good a wife and so sweet a lady.

SECOND LORD. Especially he hath incurred the everlasting displeasure of the king, who had even tun’d his bounty to sing happiness to him. I will tell you a thing, but you shall let it dwell darkly with you.

FIRST LORD. When you have spoken it, ’tis dead, and I am the grave of it.

SECOND LORD. He hath perverted a young gentlewoman here in Florence, of a most chaste renown, and this night he fleshes his will in the spoil of her honour; he hath given her his monumental ring, and thinks himself made in the unchaste composition.

FIRST LORD. Now, God delay our rebellion! As we are ourselves, what things are we!

SECOND LORD. Merely our own traitors. And as in the common course of all treasons, we still see them reveal themselves till they attain to their abhorr’d ends; so he that in this action contrives against his own nobility, in his proper stream, o’erflows himself.

FIRST LORD. Is it not meant damnable in us to be trumpeters of our unlawful intents? We shall not then have his company tonight?

SECOND LORD. Not till after midnight; for he is dieted to his hour.

FIRST LORD. That approaches apace. I would gladly have him see his company anatomized, that he might take a measure of his own judgments, wherein so curiously he had set this counterfeit.

SECOND LORD. We will not meddle with him till he come; for his presence must be the whip of the other.

FIRST LORD. In the meantime, what hear you of these wars?

SECOND LORD. I hear there is an overture of peace.

FIRST LORD. Nay, I assure you, a peace concluded.

SECOND LORD. What will Count Rossillon do then? Will he travel higher, or return again into France?

FIRST LORD. I perceive by this demand, you are not altogether of his council.

SECOND LORD. Let it be forbid, sir! So should I be a great deal of his act.

FIRST LORD. Sir, his wife some two months since fled from his house. Her pretence is a pilgrimage to Saint Jaques le Grand; which holy undertaking with most austere sanctimony she accomplished; and there residing, the tenderness of her nature became as a prey to her grief; in fine, made a groan of her last breath, and now she sings in heaven.

SECOND LORD. How is this justified?

FIRST LORD. The stronger part of it by her own letters, which makes her story true, even to the point of her death. Her death itself, which could not be her office to say is come, was faithfully confirm’d by the rector of the place.

SECOND LORD. Hath the count all this intelligence?

FIRST LORD. Ay, and the particular confirmations, point from point, to the full arming of the verity.

SECOND LORD. I am heartily sorry that he’ll be glad of this.

FIRST LORD. How mightily sometimes we make us comforts of our losses!

SECOND LORD. And how mightily some other times we drown our gain in tears! The great dignity that his valour hath here acquir’d for him shall at home be encountered with a shame as ample.

FIRST LORD. The web of our life is of a mingled yarn, good and ill together; our virtues would be proud if our faults whipped them not; and our crimes would despair if they were not cherish’d by our virtues.

Enter a Messenger.

How now? Where’s your master?

MESSENGER. He met the duke in the street, sir; of whom he hath taken a solemn leave: his lordship will next morning for France. The duke hath offered him letters of commendations to the king.

SECOND LORD. They shall be no more than needful there, if they were more than they can commend.

FIRST LORD. They cannot be too sweet for the king’s tartness. Here’s his lordship now. How now, my lord, is’t not after midnight?

BERTRAM. I have tonight despatch’d sixteen businesses, a month’s length apiece; by an abstract of success: I have congied with the duke, done my adieu with his nearest; buried a wife, mourn’d for her, writ to my lady mother I am returning, entertained my convoy, and between these main parcels of despatch effected many nicer needs: the last was the greatest, but that I have not ended yet.

SECOND LORD. If the business be of any difficulty and this morning your departure hence, it requires haste of your lordship.

BERTRAM. I mean the business is not ended, as fearing to hear of it hereafter. But shall we have this dialogue between the Fool and the Soldier? Come, bring forth this counterfeit module has deceiv’d me like a double-meaning prophesier.

SECOND LORD. Bring him forth.

[Exeunt Soldiers.]

Has sat i’ the stocks all night, poor gallant knave.

BERTRAM. No matter; his heels have deserv’d it, in usurping his spurs so long. How does he carry himself?

FIRST LORD. I have told your lordship already; the stocks carry him. But to answer you as you would be understood: he weeps like a wench that had shed her milk; he hath confessed himself to Morgan, whom he supposes to be a friar, from the time of his remembrance to this very instant disaster of his setting i’ the stocks. And what think you he hath confessed?

BERTRAM. Nothing of me, has he?

SECOND LORD. His confession is taken, and it shall be read to his face; if your lordship be in’t, as I believe you are, you must have the patience to hear it.

Enter Soldiers with Parolles.

BERTRAM. A plague upon him! muffled! he can say nothing of me; hush, hush!

FIRST LORD. Hoodman comes! Portotartarossa.

FIRST SOLDIER. He calls for the tortures. What will you say without ’em?

PAROLLES. I will confess what I know without constraint. If ye pinch me like a pasty I can say no more.

FIRST SOLDIER. Bosko chimurcho.

FIRST LORD. Boblibindo chicurmurco.

FIRST SOLDIER. You are a merciful general. Our general bids you answer to what I shall ask you out of a note.

PAROLLES. And truly, as I hope to live.

FIRST SOLDIER. ‘First demand of him how many horse the duke is strong.’ What say you to that?

PAROLLES. Five or six thousand; but very weak and unserviceable: the troops are all scattered, and the commanders very poor rogues, upon my reputation and credit, and as I hope to live.

FIRST SOLDIER. Shall I set down your answer so?

PAROLLES. Do. I’ll take the sacrament on ’t, how and which way you will.

BERTRAM. All’s one to him. What a past-saving slave is this!

FIRST LORD. You are deceived, my lord; this is Monsieur Parolles, the gallant militarist (that was his own phrase), that had the whole theoric of war in the knot of his scarf, and the practice in the chape of his dagger.

SECOND LORD. I will never trust a man again for keeping his sword clean, nor believe he can have everything in him by wearing his apparel neatly.

FIRST SOLDIER. Well, that’s set down.

PAROLLES. ‘Five or six thousand horse’ I said—I will say true—or thereabouts, set down,—for I’ll speak truth.

FIRST LORD. He’s very near the truth in this.

BERTRAM. But I con him no thanks for’t in the nature he delivers it.

PAROLLES. Poor rogues, I pray you say.

PAROLLES. I humbly thank you, sir; a truth’s a truth, the rogues are marvellous poor.

FIRST SOLDIER. ‘Demand of him of what strength they are a-foot.’ What say you to that?

PAROLLES. By my troth, sir, if I were to live this present hour, I will tell true. Let me see: Spurio, a hundred and fifty, Sebastian, so many; Corambus, so many; Jaques, so many; Guiltian, Cosmo, Lodowick, and Gratii, two hundred fifty each; mine own company, Chitopher, Vaumond, Bentii, two hundred fifty each: so that the muster-file, rotten and sound, upon my life, amounts not to fifteen thousand poll; half of the which dare not shake the snow from off their cassocks lest they shake themselves to pieces.

BERTRAM. What shall be done to him?

FIRST LORD. Nothing, but let him have thanks. Demand of him my condition, and what credit I have with the duke.

FIRST SOLDIER. Well, that’s set down. ‘You shall demand of him whether one Captain Dumaine be i’ the camp, a Frenchman; what his reputation is with the duke, what his valour, honesty and expertness in wars; or whether he thinks it were not possible with well-weighing sums of gold to corrupt him to a revolt.’ What say you to this? What do you know of it?

PAROLLES. I beseech you, let me answer to the particular of the inter’gatories. Demand them singly.

FIRST SOLDIER. Do you know this Captain Dumaine?

PAROLLES. I know him: he was a botcher’s ’prentice in Paris, from whence he was whipped for getting the shrieve’s fool with child, a dumb innocent that could not say him nay.

[First Lord lifts up his hand in anger.]

BERTRAM. Nay, by your leave, hold your hands; though I know his brains are forfeit to the next tile that falls.

FIRST SOLDIER. Well, is this captain in the Duke of Florence’s camp?

PAROLLES. Upon my knowledge, he is, and lousy.

FIRST LORD. Nay, look not so upon me; we shall hear of your lordship anon.

FIRST SOLDIER. What is his reputation with the duke?

PAROLLES. The duke knows him for no other but a poor officer of mine, and writ to me this other day to turn him out o’ the band. I think I have his letter in my pocket.

FIRST SOLDIER. Marry, we’ll search.

PAROLLES. In good sadness, I do not know; either it is there or it is upon a file, with the duke’s other letters, in my tent.

FIRST SOLDIER. Here ’tis; here’s a paper; shall I read it to you?

PAROLLES. I do not know if it be it or no.

BERTRAM. Our interpreter does it well.

FIRST LORD. Excellently.

FIRST SOLDIER. [Reads.] Dian, the Count’s a fool, and full of gold.

PAROLLES. That is not the duke’s letter, sir; that is an advertisement to a proper maid in Florence, one Diana, to take heed of the allurement of one Count Rossillon, a foolish idle boy, but for all that very ruttish. I pray you, sir, put it up again.

FIRST SOLDIER. Nay, I’ll read it first by your favour.

PAROLLES. My meaning in’t, I protest, was very honest in the behalf of the maid; for I knew the young count to be a dangerous and lascivious boy, who is a whale to virginity, and devours up all the fry it finds.

BERTRAM. Damnable both sides rogue!

FIRST SOLDIER. [Reads.] When he swears oaths, bid him drop gold, and take it; After he scores, he never pays the score. Half won is match well made; match, and well make it; He ne’er pays after-debts, take it before. And say a soldier, ‘Dian,’ told thee this: Men are to mell with, boys are not to kiss; For count of this, the count’s a fool, I know it, Who pays before, but not when he does owe it. Thine, as he vow’d to thee in thine ear, PAROLLES.

BERTRAM. He shall be whipped through the army with this rhyme in’s forehead.

SECOND LORD. This is your devoted friend, sir, the manifold linguist, and the armipotent soldier.

BERTRAM. I could endure anything before but a cat, and now he’s a cat to me.

FIRST SOLDIER. I perceive, sir, by our general’s looks we shall be fain to hang you.

PAROLLES. My life, sir, in any case. Not that I am afraid to die, but that, my offences being many, I would repent out the remainder of nature. Let me live, sir, in a dungeon, i’ the stocks, or anywhere, so I may live.

FIRST SOLDIER. We’ll see what may be done, so you confess freely. Therefore, once more to this Captain Dumaine: you have answer’d to his reputation with the duke, and to his valour. What is his honesty?

PAROLLES. He will steal, sir, an egg out of a cloister: for rapes and ravishments he parallels Nessus. He professes not keeping of oaths; in breaking them he is stronger than Hercules. He will lie, sir, with such volubility that you would think truth were a fool: drunkenness is his best virtue, for he will be swine-drunk, and in his sleep he does little harm, save to his bedclothes about him; but they know his conditions and lay him in straw. I have but little more to say, sir, of his honesty; he has everything that an honest man should not have; what an honest man should have, he has nothing.

FIRST LORD. I begin to love him for this.

BERTRAM. For this description of thine honesty? A pox upon him for me, he’s more and more a cat.

FIRST SOLDIER. What say you to his expertness in war?

PAROLLES. Faith, sir, has led the drum before the English tragedians,—to belie him I will not,—and more of his soldiership I know not, except in that country he had the honour to be the officer at a place there called Mile-end, to instruct for the doubling of files. I would do the man what honour I can, but of this I am not certain.

FIRST LORD. He hath out-villain’d villainy so far that the rarity redeems him.

BERTRAM. A pox on him! He’s a cat still.

FIRST SOLDIER. His qualities being at this poor price, I need not to ask you if gold will corrupt him to revolt.

PAROLLES. Sir, for a quart d’ecu he will sell the fee-simple of his salvation, the inheritance of it, and cut the entail from all remainders, and a perpetual succession for it perpetually.

FIRST SOLDIER. What’s his brother, the other Captain Dumaine?

SECOND LORD. Why does he ask him of me?

FIRST SOLDIER. What’s he?

PAROLLES. E’en a crow o’ the same nest; not altogether so great as the first in goodness, but greater a great deal in evil. He excels his brother for a coward, yet his brother is reputed one of the best that is. In a retreat he outruns any lackey; marry, in coming on he has the cramp.

FIRST SOLDIER. If your life be saved, will you undertake to betray the Florentine?

PAROLLES. Ay, and the captain of his horse, Count Rossillon.

FIRST SOLDIER. I’ll whisper with the general, and know his pleasure.

PAROLLES. [Aside.] I’ll no more drumming; a plague of all drums! Only to seem to deserve well, and to beguile the supposition of that lascivious young boy the count, have I run into this danger: yet who would have suspected an ambush where I was taken?

FIRST SOLDIER. There is no remedy, sir, but you must die. The general says you that have so traitorously discovered the secrets of your army, and made such pestiferous reports of men very nobly held, can serve the world for no honest use; therefore you must die. Come, headsman, off with his head.

PAROLLES. O Lord! sir, let me live, or let me see my death.

FIRST SOLDIER. That shall you, and take your leave of all your friends.

[Unmuffling him.]

So, look about you; know you any here?

BERTRAM. Good morrow, noble captain.

SECOND LORD. God bless you, Captain Parolles.

FIRST LORD. God save you, noble captain.

SECOND LORD. Captain, what greeting will you to my Lord Lafew? I am for France.

FIRST LORD. Good Captain, will you give me a copy of the sonnet you writ to Diana in behalf of the Count Rossillon? And I were not a very coward I’d compel it of you; but fare you well.

[Exeunt Bertram, Lords &c.]

FIRST SOLDIER. You are undone, captain: all but your scarf; that has a knot on’t yet.

PAROLLES. Who cannot be crushed with a plot?

FIRST SOLDIER. If you could find out a country where but women were that had received so much shame, you might begin an impudent nation. Fare ye well, sir. I am for France too; we shall speak of you there.

PAROLLES. Yet am I thankful. If my heart were great ’Twould burst at this. Captain I’ll be no more, But I will eat, and drink, and sleep as soft As captain shall. Simply the thing I am Shall make me live. Who knows himself a braggart, Let him fear this; for it will come to pass That every braggart shall be found an ass. Rust, sword; cool, blushes; and, Parolles live Safest in shame; being fool’d, by foolery thrive. There’s place and means for every man alive. I’ll after them.

SCENE IV. Florence. A room in the Widow’s house.

Enter Helena, Widow and Diana.

HELENA. That you may well perceive I have not wrong’d you One of the greatest in the Christian world Shall be my surety; fore whose throne ’tis needful, Ere I can perfect mine intents, to kneel. Time was I did him a desired office, Dear almost as his life; which gratitude Through flinty Tartar’s bosom would peep forth, And answer thanks. I duly am inform’d His grace is at Marseilles; to which place We have convenient convoy. You must know I am supposed dead. The army breaking, My husband hies him home, where, heaven aiding, And by the leave of my good lord the king, We’ll be before our welcome.

WIDOW. Gentle madam, You never had a servant to whose trust Your business was more welcome.

HELENA. Nor you, mistress, Ever a friend whose thoughts more truly labour To recompense your love. Doubt not but heaven Hath brought me up to be your daughter’s dower, As it hath fated her to be my motive And helper to a husband. But, O strange men! That can such sweet use make of what they hate, When saucy trusting of the cozen’d thoughts Defiles the pitchy night; so lust doth play With what it loathes, for that which is away. But more of this hereafter. You, Diana, Under my poor instructions yet must suffer Something in my behalf.

DIANA. Let death and honesty Go with your impositions, I am yours Upon your will to suffer.

HELENA. Yet, I pray you; But with the word the time will bring on summer, When briers shall have leaves as well as thorns, And be as sweet as sharp. We must away; Our waggon is prepar’d, and time revives us. All’s well that ends well; still the fine’s the crown. Whate’er the course, the end is the renown.

SCENE V. Rossillon. A room in the Countess’s palace.

Enter Clown, Countess and Lafew.

LAFEW. No, no, no, your son was misled with a snipt-taffeta fellow there, whose villanous saffron would have made all the unbak’d and doughy youth of a nation in his colour. Your daughter-in-law had been alive at this hour, and your son here at home, more advanc’d by the king than by that red-tail’d humble-bee I speak of.

COUNTESS. I would I had not known him; it was the death of the most virtuous gentlewoman that ever nature had praise for creating. If she had partaken of my flesh and cost me the dearest groans of a mother, I could not have owed her a more rooted love.

LAFEW. ’Twas a good lady, ’twas a good lady. We may pick a thousand salads ere we light on such another herb.

CLOWN. Indeed, sir, she was the sweet marjoram of the salad, or, rather, the herb of grace.

LAFEW. They are not herbs, you knave; they are nose-herbs.

CLOWN. I am no great Nebuchadnezzar, sir; I have not much skill in grass.

LAFEW. Whether dost thou profess thyself,—a knave or a fool?

CLOWN. A fool, sir, at a woman’s service, and a knave at a man’s.

LAFEW. Your distinction?

CLOWN. I would cozen the man of his wife, and do his service.

LAFEW. So you were a knave at his service indeed.

CLOWN. And I would give his wife my bauble, sir, to do her service.

LAFEW. I will subscribe for thee; thou art both knave and fool.

CLOWN. At your service.

LAFEW. No, no, no.

CLOWN. Why, sir, if I cannot serve you, I can serve as great a prince as you are.

LAFEW. Who’s that? a Frenchman?

CLOWN. Faith, sir, ’a has an English name; but his phisnomy is more hotter in France than there.

LAFEW. What prince is that?

CLOWN. The black prince, sir; alias the prince of darkness; alias the devil.

LAFEW. Hold thee, there’s my purse. I give thee not this to suggest thee from thy master thou talk’st of; serve him still.

CLOWN. I am a woodland fellow, sir, that always loved a great fire, and the master I speak of ever keeps a good fire. But sure he is the prince of the world; let his nobility remain in’s court. I am for the house with the narrow gate, which I take to be too little for pomp to enter: some that humble themselves may, but the many will be too chill and tender, and they’ll be for the flow’ry way that leads to the broad gate and the great fire.

LAFEW. Go thy ways, I begin to be a-weary of thee; and I tell thee so before, because I would not fall out with thee. Go thy ways; let my horses be well look’d to, without any tricks.

CLOWN. If I put any tricks upon ’em, sir, they shall be jades’ tricks, which are their own right by the law of nature.

LAFEW. A shrewd knave, and an unhappy.

COUNTESS. So he is. My lord that’s gone made himself much sport out of him; by his authority he remains here, which he thinks is a patent for his sauciness; and indeed he has no pace, but runs where he will.

LAFEW. I like him well; ’tis not amiss. And I was about to tell you, since I heard of the good lady’s death, and that my lord your son was upon his return home, I moved the king my master to speak in the behalf of my daughter; which, in the minority of them both, his majesty out of a self-gracious remembrance did first propose. His highness hath promis’d me to do it; and, to stop up the displeasure he hath conceived against your son, there is no fitter matter. How does your ladyship like it?

COUNTESS. With very much content, my lord, and I wish it happily effected.

LAFEW. His highness comes post from Marseilles, of as able body as when he number’d thirty; he will be here tomorrow, or I am deceived by him that in such intelligence hath seldom fail’d.

COUNTESS. It rejoices me that I hope I shall see him ere I die. I have letters that my son will be here tonight. I shall beseech your lordship to remain with me till they meet together.

LAFEW. Madam, I was thinking with what manners I might safely be admitted.

COUNTESS. You need but plead your honourable privilege.

LAFEW. Lady, of that I have made a bold charter; but, I thank my God, it holds yet.

CLOWN. O madam, yonder’s my lord your son with a patch of velvet on’s face; whether there be a scar under’t or no, the velvet knows; but ’tis a goodly patch of velvet. His left cheek is a cheek of two pile and a half, but his right cheek is worn bare.

LAFEW. A scar nobly got, or a noble scar, is a good livery of honour; so belike is that.

CLOWN. But it is your carbonado’d face.

LAFEW. Let us go see your son, I pray you. I long to talk with the young noble soldier.

CLOWN. Faith, there’s a dozen of ’em, with delicate fine hats, and most courteous feathers, which bow the head and nod at every man.

ACT V.

SCENE I. Marseilles. A street.

Enter Helena, Widow and Diana with two Attendants.

HELENA. But this exceeding posting day and night Must wear your spirits low. We cannot help it. But since you have made the days and nights as one, To wear your gentle limbs in my affairs, Be bold you do so grow in my requital As nothing can unroot you. In happy time;—

Enter a Gentleman.

This man may help me to his majesty’s ear, If he would spend his power. God save you, sir.

GENTLEMAN. And you.

HELENA. Sir, I have seen you in the court of France.

GENTLEMAN. I have been sometimes there.

HELENA. I do presume, sir, that you are not fallen From the report that goes upon your goodness; And therefore, goaded with most sharp occasions, Which lay nice manners by, I put you to The use of your own virtues, for the which I shall continue thankful.

GENTLEMAN. What’s your will?

HELENA. That it will please you To give this poor petition to the king, And aid me with that store of power you have To come into his presence.

GENTLEMAN. The king’s not here.

HELENA. Not here, sir?

GENTLEMAN. Not indeed. He hence remov’d last night, and with more haste Than is his use.

WIDOW. Lord, how we lose our pains!

HELENA. All’s well that ends well yet, Though time seem so adverse and means unfit. I do beseech you, whither is he gone?

GENTLEMAN. Marry, as I take it, to Rossillon; Whither I am going.

HELENA. I do beseech you, sir, Since you are like to see the king before me, Commend the paper to his gracious hand, Which I presume shall render you no blame, But rather make you thank your pains for it. I will come after you with what good speed Our means will make us means.

GENTLEMAN. This I’ll do for you.

HELENA. And you shall find yourself to be well thank’d, Whate’er falls more. We must to horse again. Go, go, provide.

SCENE II. Rossillon. The inner court of the Countess’s palace.

Enter Clown and Parolles.

PAROLLES. Good Monsieur Lavache, give my Lord Lafew this letter; I have ere now, sir, been better known to you, when I have held familiarity with fresher clothes; but I am now, sir, muddied in Fortune’s mood, and smell somewhat strong of her strong displeasure.

CLOWN. Truly, Fortune’s displeasure is but sluttish, if it smell so strongly as thou speak’st of. I will henceforth eat no fish of Fortune’s buttering. Pr’ythee, allow the wind.

PAROLLES. Nay, you need not to stop your nose, sir. I spake but by a metaphor.

CLOWN. Indeed, sir, if your metaphor stink, I will stop my nose, or against any man’s metaphor. Pr’ythee, get thee further.

PAROLLES. Pray you, sir, deliver me this paper.

CLOWN. Foh, pr’ythee stand away. A paper from Fortune’s close-stool to give to a nobleman! Look here he comes himself.

Here is a pur of Fortune’s, sir, or of Fortune’s cat, but not a musk-cat, that has fallen into the unclean fishpond of her displeasure, and as he says, is muddied withal. Pray you, sir, use the carp as you may, for he looks like a poor, decayed, ingenious, foolish, rascally knave. I do pity his distress in my similes of comfort, and leave him to your lordship.

PAROLLES. My lord, I am a man whom Fortune hath cruelly scratch’d.

LAFEW. And what would you have me to do? ’Tis too late to pare her nails now. Wherein have you played the knave with Fortune that she should scratch you, who of herself is a good lady, and would not have knaves thrive long under her? There’s a quart d’ecu for you. Let the justices make you and Fortune friends; I am for other business.

PAROLLES. I beseech your honour to hear me one single word.

LAFEW. You beg a single penny more. Come, you shall ha’t; save your word.

PAROLLES. My name, my good lord, is Parolles.

LAFEW. You beg more than word then. Cox my passion! Give me your hand. How does your drum?

PAROLLES. O my good lord, you were the first that found me.

LAFEW. Was I, in sooth? And I was the first that lost thee.

PAROLLES. It lies in you, my lord, to bring me in some grace, for you did bring me out.

LAFEW. Out upon thee, knave! dost thou put upon me at once both the office of God and the devil? One brings thee in grace, and the other brings thee out.

[Trumpets sound.]

The king’s coming; I know by his trumpets. Sirrah, inquire further after me. I had talk of you last night; though you are a fool and a knave, you shall eat. Go to; follow.

PAROLLES. I praise God for you.

SCENE III. The same. A room in the Countess’s palace.

Flourish. Enter King, Countess, Lafew, Lords, Gentlemen, Guards &c.

KING. We lost a jewel of her, and our esteem Was made much poorer by it; but your son, As mad in folly, lack’d the sense to know Her estimation home.

COUNTESS. ’Tis past, my liege, And I beseech your majesty to make it Natural rebellion, done i’ the blaze of youth, When oil and fire, too strong for reason’s force, O’erbears it and burns on.

KING. My honour’d lady, I have forgiven and forgotten all, Though my revenges were high bent upon him, And watch’d the time to shoot.

LAFEW. This I must say,— But first, I beg my pardon,—the young lord Did to his majesty, his mother, and his lady, Offence of mighty note; but to himself The greatest wrong of all. He lost a wife Whose beauty did astonish the survey Of richest eyes; whose words all ears took captive; Whose dear perfection hearts that scorn’d to serve Humbly call’d mistress.

KING. Praising what is lost Makes the remembrance dear. Well, call him hither; We are reconcil’d, and the first view shall kill All repetition. Let him not ask our pardon; The nature of his great offence is dead, And deeper than oblivion do we bury Th’ incensing relics of it. Let him approach A stranger, no offender; and inform him So ’tis our will he should.

GENTLEMAN. I shall, my liege.

[Exit Gentleman.]

KING. What says he to your daughter? Have you spoke?

LAFEW. All that he is hath reference to your highness.

KING. Then shall we have a match. I have letters sent me That sets him high in fame.

LAFEW. He looks well on ’t.

KING. I am not a day of season, For thou mayst see a sunshine and a hail In me at once. But to the brightest beams Distracted clouds give way; so stand thou forth; The time is fair again.

BERTRAM. My high-repented blames Dear sovereign, pardon to me.

KING. All is whole. Not one word more of the consumed time. Let’s take the instant by the forward top; For we are old, and on our quick’st decrees Th’inaudible and noiseless foot of time Steals ere we can effect them. You remember The daughter of this lord?

BERTRAM. Admiringly, my liege. At first I stuck my choice upon her, ere my heart Durst make too bold herald of my tongue: Where the impression of mine eye infixing, Contempt his scornful perspective did lend me, Which warp’d the line of every other favour, Scorn’d a fair colour, or express’d it stolen, Extended or contracted all proportions To a most hideous object. Thence it came That she whom all men prais’d, and whom myself, Since I have lost, have lov’d, was in mine eye The dust that did offend it.

KING. Well excus’d: That thou didst love her, strikes some scores away From the great compt: but love that comes too late, Like a remorseful pardon slowly carried, To the great sender turns a sour offence, Crying, That’s good that’s gone. Our rash faults Make trivial price of serious things we have, Not knowing them until we know their grave. Oft our displeasures, to ourselves unjust, Destroy our friends, and after weep their dust: Our own love waking cries to see what’s done, While shameful hate sleeps out the afternoon. Be this sweet Helen’s knell, and now forget her. Send forth your amorous token for fair Maudlin. The main consents are had, and here we’ll stay To see our widower’s second marriage-day.

COUNTESS. Which better than the first, O dear heaven, bless! Or, ere they meet, in me, O nature, cesse!

LAFEW. Come on, my son, in whom my house’s name Must be digested; give a favour from you, To sparkle in the spirits of my daughter, That she may quickly come.

[Bertram gives a ring to Lafew.]

By my old beard, And ev’ry hair that’s on ’t, Helen that’s dead Was a sweet creature: such a ring as this, The last that e’er I took her leave at court, I saw upon her finger.

BERTRAM. Hers it was not.

KING. Now, pray you, let me see it; for mine eye, While I was speaking, oft was fasten’d to it. This ring was mine; and when I gave it Helen I bade her, if her fortunes ever stood Necessitied to help, that by this token I would relieve her. Had you that craft to ’reave her Of what should stead her most?

BERTRAM. My gracious sovereign, Howe’er it pleases you to take it so, The ring was never hers.

COUNTESS. Son, on my life, I have seen her wear it; and she reckon’d it At her life’s rate.

LAFEW. I am sure I saw her wear it.

BERTRAM. You are deceiv’d, my lord; she never saw it. In Florence was it from a casement thrown me, Wrapp’d in a paper, which contain’d the name Of her that threw it. Noble she was, and thought I stood engag’d; but when I had subscrib’d To mine own fortune, and inform’d her fully I could not answer in that course of honour As she had made the overture, she ceas’d, In heavy satisfaction, and would never Receive the ring again.

KING. Plutus himself, That knows the tinct and multiplying medicine, Hath not in nature’s mystery more science Than I have in this ring. ’Twas mine, ’twas Helen’s, Whoever gave it you. Then if you know That you are well acquainted with yourself, Confess ’twas hers, and by what rough enforcement You got it from her. She call’d the saints to surety That she would never put it from her finger Unless she gave it to yourself in bed, Where you have never come, or sent it us Upon her great disaster.

BERTRAM. She never saw it.

KING. Thou speak’st it falsely, as I love mine honour, And mak’st conjectural fears to come into me Which I would fain shut out. If it should prove That thou art so inhuman,—’twill not prove so: And yet I know not, thou didst hate her deadly. And she is dead; which nothing but to close Her eyes myself, could win me to believe More than to see this ring. Take him away.

[Guards seize Bertram.]

My fore-past proofs, howe’er the matter fall, Shall tax my fears of little vanity, Having vainly fear’d too little. Away with him. We’ll sift this matter further.

BERTRAM. If you shall prove This ring was ever hers, you shall as easy Prove that I husbanded her bed in Florence, Where she yet never was.

[Exit, guarded.]

KING. I am wrapp’d in dismal thinkings.

GENTLEMAN. Gracious sovereign, Whether I have been to blame or no, I know not: Here’s a petition from a Florentine, Who hath for four or five removes come short To tender it herself. I undertook it, Vanquish’d thereto by the fair grace and speech Of the poor suppliant, who by this, I know, Is here attending: her business looks in her With an importing visage, and she told me In a sweet verbal brief, it did concern Your highness with herself.

KING. [Reads.] Upon his many protestations to marry me when his wife was dead, I blush to say it, he won me. Now is the Count Rossillon a widower; his vows are forfeited to me, and my honour’s paid to him. He stole from Florence, taking no leave, and I follow him to his country for justice. Grant it me, O king, in you it best lies; otherwise a seducer flourishes, and a poor maid is undone. DIANA CAPILET.

LAFEW. I will buy me a son-in-law in a fair, and toll for this. I’ll none of him.

KING. The heavens have thought well on thee, Lafew, To bring forth this discovery. Seek these suitors. Go speedily, and bring again the count.

[Exeunt Gentleman and some Attendants.]

I am afeard the life of Helen, lady, Was foully snatch’d.

COUNTESS. Now, justice on the doers!

Enter Bertram, guarded.

KING. I wonder, sir, since wives are monsters to you, And that you fly them as you swear them lordship, Yet you desire to marry. What woman’s that?

Enter Widow and Diana.

DIANA. I am, my lord, a wretched Florentine, Derived from the ancient Capilet; My suit, as I do understand, you know, And therefore know how far I may be pitied.

WIDOW. I am her mother, sir, whose age and honour Both suffer under this complaint we bring, And both shall cease, without your remedy.

KING. Come hither, count; do you know these women?

BERTRAM. My lord, I neither can nor will deny But that I know them. Do they charge me further?

DIANA. Why do you look so strange upon your wife?

BERTRAM. She’s none of mine, my lord.

DIANA. If you shall marry, You give away this hand, and that is mine, You give away heaven’s vows, and those are mine, You give away myself, which is known mine; For I by vow am so embodied yours That she which marries you must marry me, Either both or none.

LAFEW. [To Bertram] Your reputation comes too short for my daughter; you are no husband for her.

BERTRAM. My lord, this is a fond and desperate creature Whom sometime I have laugh’d with. Let your highness Lay a more noble thought upon mine honour Than for to think that I would sink it here.

KING. Sir, for my thoughts, you have them ill to friend Till your deeds gain them; fairer prove your honour Than in my thought it lies!

DIANA. Good my lord, Ask him upon his oath, if he does think He had not my virginity.

KING. What say’st thou to her?

BERTRAM. She’s impudent, my lord, And was a common gamester to the camp.

DIANA. He does me wrong, my lord; if I were so He might have bought me at a common price. Do not believe him. O, behold this ring, Whose high respect and rich validity Did lack a parallel; yet for all that He gave it to a commoner o’ the camp, If I be one.

COUNTESS. He blushes, and ’tis it. Of six preceding ancestors, that gem Conferr’d by testament to th’ sequent issue, Hath it been owed and worn. This is his wife; That ring’s a thousand proofs.

KING. Methought you said You saw one here in court could witness it.

DIANA. I did, my lord, but loath am to produce So bad an instrument; his name’s Parolles.

LAFEW. I saw the man today, if man he be.

KING. Find him, and bring him hither.

BERTRAM. What of him? He’s quoted for a most perfidious slave, With all the spots o’ the world tax’d and debauch’d: Whose nature sickens but to speak a truth. Am I or that or this for what he’ll utter, That will speak anything?

KING. She hath that ring of yours.

BERTRAM. I think she has. Certain it is I lik’d her And boarded her i’ the wanton way of youth. She knew her distance, and did angle for me, Madding my eagerness with her restraint, As all impediments in fancy’s course Are motives of more fancy; and in fine, Her infinite cunning with her modern grace, Subdu’d me to her rate; she got the ring, And I had that which any inferior might At market-price have bought.

DIANA. I must be patient. You that have turn’d off a first so noble wife May justly diet me. I pray you yet,— Since you lack virtue, I will lose a husband— Send for your ring, I will return it home, And give me mine again.

BERTRAM. I have it not.

KING. What ring was yours, I pray you?

DIANA. Sir, much like The same upon your finger.

KING. Know you this ring? This ring was his of late.

DIANA. And this was it I gave him, being abed.

KING. The story then goes false you threw it him Out of a casement.

DIANA. I have spoke the truth.

Enter Attendant with Parolles.

BERTRAM. My lord, I do confess the ring was hers.

KING. You boggle shrewdly; every feather starts you. Is this the man you speak of?

DIANA. Ay, my lord.

KING. Tell me, sirrah, but tell me true I charge you, Not fearing the displeasure of your master, Which on your just proceeding, I’ll keep off,— By him and by this woman here what know you?

PAROLLES. So please your majesty, my master hath been an honourable gentleman. Tricks he hath had in him, which gentlemen have.

KING. Come, come, to the purpose. Did he love this woman?

PAROLLES. Faith, sir, he did love her; but how?

KING. How, I pray you?

PAROLLES. He did love her, sir, as a gentleman loves a woman.

KING. How is that?

PAROLLES. He lov’d her, sir, and lov’d her not.

KING. As thou art a knave and no knave. What an equivocal companion is this!

PAROLLES. I am a poor man, and at your majesty’s command.

LAFEW. He’s a good drum, my lord, but a naughty orator.

DIANA. Do you know he promised me marriage?

PAROLLES. Faith, I know more than I’ll speak.

KING. But wilt thou not speak all thou know’st?

PAROLLES. Yes, so please your majesty. I did go between them as I said; but more than that, he loved her, for indeed he was mad for her, and talked of Satan, and of Limbo, and of furies, and I know not what: yet I was in that credit with them at that time that I knew of their going to bed; and of other motions, as promising her marriage, and things which would derive me ill will to speak of; therefore I will not speak what I know.

KING. Thou hast spoken all already, unless thou canst say they are married; but thou art too fine in thy evidence; therefore stand aside. This ring, you say, was yours?

DIANA. Ay, my good lord.

KING. Where did you buy it? Or who gave it you?

DIANA. It was not given me, nor I did not buy it.

KING. Who lent it you?

DIANA. It was not lent me neither.

KING. Where did you find it then?

DIANA. I found it not.

KING. If it were yours by none of all these ways, How could you give it him?

DIANA. I never gave it him.

LAFEW. This woman’s an easy glove, my lord; she goes off and on at pleasure.

KING. This ring was mine, I gave it his first wife.

DIANA. It might be yours or hers for ought I know.

KING. Take her away, I do not like her now. To prison with her. And away with him. Unless thou tell’st me where thou hadst this ring, Thou diest within this hour.

DIANA. I’ll never tell you.

KING. Take her away.

DIANA. I’ll put in bail, my liege.

KING. I think thee now some common customer.

DIANA. By Jove, if ever I knew man, ’twas you.

KING. Wherefore hast thou accus’d him all this while?

DIANA. Because he’s guilty, and he is not guilty. He knows I am no maid, and he’ll swear to’t: I’ll swear I am a maid, and he knows not. Great King, I am no strumpet, by my life; I am either maid, or else this old man’s wife.

[Pointing to Lafew.]

KING. She does abuse our ears; to prison with her.

DIANA. Good mother, fetch my bail. Stay, royal sir;

[Exit Widow.]

The jeweller that owes the ring is sent for, And he shall surety me. But for this lord Who hath abus’d me as he knows himself, Though yet he never harm’d me, here I quit him. He knows himself my bed he hath defil’d; And at that time he got his wife with child. Dead though she be, she feels her young one kick; So there’s my riddle: one that’s dead is quick, And now behold the meaning.

Enter Widow with Helena.

KING. Is there no exorcist Beguiles the truer office of mine eyes? Is’t real that I see?

HELENA. No, my good lord; ’Tis but the shadow of a wife you see, The name, and not the thing.

BERTRAM. Both, both. O, pardon!

HELENA. O, my good lord, when I was like this maid; I found you wondrous kind. There is your ring, And, look you, here’s your letter. This it says, ‘When from my finger you can get this ring, And is by me with child, &c.’ This is done; Will you be mine now you are doubly won?

BERTRAM. If she, my liege, can make me know this clearly, I’ll love her dearly, ever, ever dearly.

HELENA. If it appear not plain, and prove untrue, Deadly divorce step between me and you! O my dear mother, do I see you living?

LAFEW. Mine eyes smell onions; I shall weep anon. [to Parolles] Good Tom Drum, lend me a handkercher. So, I thank thee. Wait on me home, I’ll make sport with thee. Let thy courtesies alone, they are scurvy ones.

KING. Let us from point to point this story know, To make the even truth in pleasure flow. [To Diana.] If thou beest yet a fresh uncropped flower, Choose thou thy husband, and I’ll pay thy dower; For I can guess that by thy honest aid, Thou kept’st a wife herself, thyself a maid. Of that and all the progress more and less, Resolvedly more leisure shall express. All yet seems well, and if it end so meet, The bitter past, more welcome is the sweet.

[Flourish.]

[EPILOGUE]

The king’s a beggar, now the play is done; All is well ended if this suit be won, That you express content; which we will pay With strife to please you, day exceeding day. Ours be your patience then, and yours our parts; Your gentle hands lend us, and take our hearts.

[Exeunt omnes.]

THE TRAGEDY OF ANTONY AND CLEOPATRA

ACT I Scene I. Alexandria. A Room in Cleopatra’s palace. Scene II. Alexandria. Another Room in Cleopatra’s palace. Scene III. Alexandria. A Room in Cleopatra’s palace. Scene IV. Rome. An Apartment in Caesar’s House Scene V. Alexandria. A Room in the Palace.

ACT II Scene I. Messina. A Room in Pompey’s house. Scene II. Rome. A Room in the House of Lepidus. Scene III. Rome. A Room in Caesar’s House. Scene IV. Rome. A street. Scene V. Alexandria. A Room in the Palace. Scene VI. Near Misenum. Scene VII. On board Pompey’s Galley, lying near Misenum.

ACT III Scene I. A plain in Syria. Scene II. Rome. An Ante-chamber in Caesar’s house. Scene III. Alexandria. A Room in the Palace. Scene IV. Athens. A Room in Antony’s House. Scene V. Athens. Another Room in Antony’s House. Scene VI. Rome. A Room in Caesar’s House. Scene VII. Antony’s Camp near the Promontory of Actium. Scene VIII. A plain near Actium. Scene IX. Another part of the Plain. Scene X. Another part of the Plain. Scene XI. Alexandria. A Room in the Palace. Scene XII. Caesar’s camp in Egypt. Scene XIII. Alexandria. A Room in the Palace.

ACT IV Scene I. Caesar’s Camp at Alexandria. Scene II. Alexandria. A Room in the Palace. Scene III. Alexandria. Before the Palace. Scene IV. Alexandria. A Room in the Palace. Scene V. Antony’s camp near Alexandria. Scene VI. Alexandria. Caesar’s camp. Scene VII. Field of battle between the Camps. Scene VIII. Under the Walls of Alexandria. Scene IX. Caesar’s camp. Scene X. Ground between the two Camps. Scene XI. Another part of the Ground. Scene XII. Another part of the Ground. Scene XIII. Alexandria. A Room in the Palace. Scene XIV. Alexandria. Another Room. Scene XV. Alexandria. A monument.

ACT V Scene I. Caesar’s Camp before Alexandria. Scene II. Alexandria. A Room in the Monument.

MARK ANTONY, Triumvir OCTAVIUS CAESAR, Triumvir LEPIDUS, Triumvir SEXTUS POMPEIUS, DOMITIUS ENOBARBUS, friend to Antony VENTIDIUS, friend to Antony EROS, friend to Antony SCARUS, friend to Antony DERCETUS, friend to Antony DEMETRIUS, friend to Antony PHILO, friend to Antony MAECENAS, friend to Caesar AGRIPPA, friend to Caesar DOLABELLA, friend to Caesar PROCULEIUS, friend to Caesar THIDIAS, friend to Caesar GALLUS, friend to Caesar MENAS, friend to Pompey MENECRATES, friend to Pompey VARRIUS, friend to Pompey TAURUS, Lieutenant-General to Caesar CANIDIUS, Lieutenant-General to Antony SILIUS, an Officer in Ventidius’s army EUPHRONIUS, an Ambassador from Antony to Caesar ALEXAS, attendant on Cleopatra MARDIAN, attendant on Cleopatra SELEUCUS, attendant on Cleopatra DIOMEDES, attendant on Cleopatra A SOOTHSAYER A CLOWN

CLEOPATRA, Queen of Egypt OCTAVIA, sister to Caesar and wife to Antony CHARMIAN, Attendant on Cleopatra IRAS, Attendant on Cleopatra

Officers, Soldiers, Messengers, and other Attendants

SCENE: Dispersed, in several parts of the Roman Empire.

SCENE I. Alexandria. A Room in Cleopatra’s palace.

Enter Demetrius and Philo.

PHILO. Nay, but this dotage of our general’s O’erflows the measure. Those his goodly eyes, That o’er the files and musters of the war Have glowed like plated Mars, now bend, now turn The office and devotion of their view Upon a tawny front. His captain’s heart, Which in the scuffles of great fights hath burst The buckles on his breast, reneges all temper And is become the bellows and the fan To cool a gipsy’s lust.

Flourish. Enter Antony and Cleopatra, her Ladies, the Train, with Eunuchs fanning her.

Look where they come: Take but good note, and you shall see in him The triple pillar of the world transform’d Into a strumpet’s fool. Behold and see.

CLEOPATRA. If it be love indeed, tell me how much.

ANTONY. There’s beggary in the love that can be reckoned.

CLEOPATRA. I’ll set a bourn how far to be beloved.

ANTONY. Then must thou needs find out new heaven, new earth.

MESSENGER. News, my good lord, from Rome.

ANTONY. Grates me, the sum.

CLEOPATRA. Nay, hear them, Antony. Fulvia perchance is angry; or who knows If the scarce-bearded Caesar have not sent His powerful mandate to you: “Do this or this; Take in that kingdom and enfranchise that. Perform’t, or else we damn thee.”

ANTONY. How, my love?

CLEOPATRA. Perchance! Nay, and most like. You must not stay here longer; your dismission Is come from Caesar; therefore hear it, Antony. Where’s Fulvia’s process?—Caesar’s I would say? Both? Call in the messengers. As I am Egypt’s queen, Thou blushest, Antony, and that blood of thine Is Caesar’s homager; else so thy cheek pays shame When shrill-tongued Fulvia scolds. The messengers!

ANTONY. Let Rome in Tiber melt, and the wide arch Of the ranged empire fall! Here is my space. Kingdoms are clay. Our dungy earth alike Feeds beast as man. The nobleness of life Is to do thus [Embracing]; when such a mutual pair And such a twain can do’t, in which I bind, On pain of punishment, the world to weet We stand up peerless.

CLEOPATRA. Excellent falsehood! Why did he marry Fulvia, and not love her? I’ll seem the fool I am not. Antony Will be himself.

ANTONY. But stirred by Cleopatra. Now, for the love of Love and her soft hours, Let’s not confound the time with conference harsh. There’s not a minute of our lives should stretch Without some pleasure now. What sport tonight?

CLEOPATRA. Hear the ambassadors.

ANTONY. Fie, wrangling queen! Whom everything becomes—to chide, to laugh, To weep; whose every passion fully strives To make itself, in thee fair and admired! No messenger but thine, and all alone Tonight we’ll wander through the streets and note The qualities of people. Come, my queen, Last night you did desire it. Speak not to us.

[Exeunt Antony and Cleopatra with the Train.]

DEMETRIUS. Is Caesar with Antonius prized so slight?

PHILO. Sir, sometimes when he is not Antony, He comes too short of that great property Which still should go with Antony.

DEMETRIUS. I am full sorry That he approves the common liar who Thus speaks of him at Rome, but I will hope Of better deeds tomorrow. Rest you happy!

SCENE II. Alexandria. Another Room in Cleopatra’s palace.

Enter Enobarbus, a Soothsayer, Charmian, Iras, Mardian and Alexas.

CHARMIAN. Lord Alexas, sweet Alexas, most anything Alexas, almost most absolute Alexas, where’s the soothsayer that you praised so to th’ queen? O, that I knew this husband which you say must charge his horns with garlands!

ALEXAS. Soothsayer!

SOOTHSAYER. Your will?

CHARMIAN. Is this the man? Is’t you, sir, that know things?

SOOTHSAYER. In nature’s infinite book of secrecy A little I can read.

ALEXAS. Show him your hand.

ENOBARBUS. Bring in the banquet quickly; wine enough Cleopatra’s health to drink.

CHARMIAN. Good, sir, give me good fortune.

SOOTHSAYER. I make not, but foresee.

CHARMIAN. Pray, then, foresee me one.

SOOTHSAYER. You shall be yet far fairer than you are.

CHARMIAN. He means in flesh.

IRAS. No, you shall paint when you are old.

CHARMIAN. Wrinkles forbid!

ALEXAS. Vex not his prescience. Be attentive.

CHARMIAN. Hush!

SOOTHSAYER. You shall be more beloving than beloved.

CHARMIAN. I had rather heat my liver with drinking.

ALEXAS. Nay, hear him.

CHARMIAN. Good now, some excellent fortune! Let me be married to three kings in a forenoon and widow them all. Let me have a child at fifty, to whom Herod of Jewry may do homage. Find me to marry me with Octavius Caesar, and companion me with my mistress.

SOOTHSAYER. You shall outlive the lady whom you serve.

CHARMIAN. O, excellent! I love long life better than figs.

SOOTHSAYER. You have seen and proved a fairer former fortune Than that which is to approach.

CHARMIAN. Then belike my children shall have no names. Prithee, how many boys and wenches must I have?

SOOTHSAYER. If every of your wishes had a womb, And fertile every wish, a million.

CHARMIAN. Out, fool! I forgive thee for a witch.

ALEXAS. You think none but your sheets are privy to your wishes.

CHARMIAN. Nay, come, tell Iras hers.

ALEXAS. We’ll know all our fortunes.

ENOBARBUS. Mine, and most of our fortunes tonight, shall be drunk to bed.

IRAS. There’s a palm presages chastity, if nothing else.

CHARMIAN. E’en as the o’erflowing Nilus presageth famine.

IRAS. Go, you wild bedfellow, you cannot soothsay.

CHARMIAN. Nay, if an oily palm be not a fruitful prognostication, I cannot scratch mine ear. Prithee, tell her but workaday fortune.

SOOTHSAYER. Your fortunes are alike.

IRAS. But how, but how? give me particulars.

SOOTHSAYER. I have said.

IRAS. Am I not an inch of fortune better than she?

CHARMIAN. Well, if you were but an inch of fortune better than I, where would you choose it?

IRAS. Not in my husband’s nose.

CHARMIAN. Our worser thoughts heavens mend! Alexas—come, his fortune! his fortune! O, let him marry a woman that cannot go, sweet Isis, I beseech thee, and let her die too, and give him a worse, and let worse follow worse, till the worst of all follow him laughing to his grave, fiftyfold a cuckold! Good Isis, hear me this prayer, though thou deny me a matter of more weight; good Isis, I beseech thee!

IRAS. Amen. Dear goddess, hear that prayer of the people! For, as it is a heartbreaking to see a handsome man loose-wived, so it is a deadly sorrow to behold a foul knave uncuckolded. Therefore, dear Isis, keep decorum and fortune him accordingly!

CHARMIAN. Amen.

ALEXAS. Lo now, if it lay in their hands to make me a cuckold, they would make themselves whores but they’d do’t!

Enter Cleopatra.

ENOBARBUS. Hush, Here comes Antony.

CHARMIAN. Not he, the queen.

CLEOPATRA. Saw you my lord?

ENOBARBUS. No, lady.

CLEOPATRA. Was he not here?

CHARMIAN. No, madam.

CLEOPATRA. He was disposed to mirth; but on the sudden A Roman thought hath struck him. Enobarbus!

ENOBARBUS. Madam?

CLEOPATRA. Seek him and bring him hither. Where’s Alexas?

ALEXAS. Here, at your service. My lord approaches.

Enter Antony with a Messenger.

CLEOPATRA. We will not look upon him. Go with us.

[Exeunt Cleopatra, Enobarbus, Charmian, Iras, Alexas and Soothsayer.]

MESSENGER. Fulvia thy wife first came into the field.

ANTONY. Against my brother Lucius.

MESSENGER. Ay. But soon that war had end, and the time’s state Made friends of them, jointing their force ’gainst Caesar, Whose better issue in the war from Italy Upon the first encounter drave them.

ANTONY. Well, what worst?

MESSENGER. The nature of bad news infects the teller.

ANTONY. When it concerns the fool or coward. On. Things that are past are done with me. ’Tis thus: Who tells me true, though in his tale lie death, I hear him as he flattered.

MESSENGER. Labienus— This is stiff news—hath with his Parthian force Extended Asia from Euphrates His conquering banner shook from Syria To Lydia and to Ionia, Whilst—

ANTONY. “Antony”, thou wouldst say—

MESSENGER. O, my lord!

ANTONY. Speak to me home; mince not the general tongue. Name Cleopatra as she is called in Rome; Rail thou in Fulvia’s phrase, and taunt my faults With such full licence as both truth and malice Have power to utter. O, then we bring forth weeds When our quick minds lie still, and our ills told us Is as our earing. Fare thee well awhile.

MESSENGER. At your noble pleasure.

[Exit Messenger.]

Enter another Messenger.

ANTONY. From Sicyon, ho, the news? Speak there!

SECOND MESSENGER. The man from Sicyon—

ANTONY. Is there such a one?

SECOND MESSENGER. He stays upon your will.

ANTONY. Let him appear.

[Exit second Messenger.]

These strong Egyptian fetters I must break, Or lose myself in dotage.

Enter another Messenger with a letter.

What are you?

THIRD MESSENGER. Fulvia thy wife is dead.

ANTONY. Where died she?

THIRD MESSENGER. In Sicyon: Her length of sickness, with what else more serious Importeth thee to know, this bears.

[Gives a letter.]

ANTONY. Forbear me.

[Exit third Messenger.]

There’s a great spirit gone! Thus did I desire it. What our contempts doth often hurl from us, We wish it ours again. The present pleasure, By revolution lowering, does become The opposite of itself. She’s good, being gone. The hand could pluck her back that shoved her on. I must from this enchanting queen break off. Ten thousand harms, more than the ills I know, My idleness doth hatch. How now, Enobarbus!

Enter Enobarbus.

ENOBARBUS. What’s your pleasure, sir?

ANTONY. I must with haste from hence.

ENOBARBUS. Why then we kill all our women. We see how mortal an unkindness is to them. If they suffer our departure, death’s the word.

ANTONY. I must be gone.

ENOBARBUS. Under a compelling occasion, let women die. It were pity to cast them away for nothing, though, between them and a great cause they should be esteemed nothing. Cleopatra, catching but the least noise of this, dies instantly. I have seen her die twenty times upon far poorer moment. I do think there is mettle in death which commits some loving act upon her, she hath such a celerity in dying.

ANTONY. She is cunning past man’s thought.

ENOBARBUS. Alack, sir, no; her passions are made of nothing but the finest part of pure love. We cannot call her winds and waters sighs and tears; they are greater storms and tempests than almanacs can report. This cannot be cunning in her; if it be, she makes a shower of rain as well as Jove.

ANTONY. Would I had never seen her!

ENOBARBUS. O, sir, you had then left unseen a wonderful piece of work, which not to have been blest withal would have discredited your travel.

ANTONY. Fulvia is dead.

ENOBARBUS. Sir?

ENOBARBUS. Fulvia?

ANTONY. Dead.

ENOBARBUS. Why, sir, give the gods a thankful sacrifice. When it pleaseth their deities to take the wife of a man from him, it shows to man the tailors of the earth; comforting therein that when old robes are worn out, there are members to make new. If there were no more women but Fulvia, then had you indeed a cut, and the case to be lamented. This grief is crowned with consolation; your old smock brings forth a new petticoat: and indeed the tears live in an onion that should water this sorrow.

ANTONY. The business she hath broached in the state Cannot endure my absence.

ENOBARBUS. And the business you have broached here cannot be without you, especially that of Cleopatra’s, which wholly depends on your abode.

ANTONY. No more light answers. Let our officers Have notice what we purpose. I shall break The cause of our expedience to the Queen, And get her leave to part. For not alone The death of Fulvia, with more urgent touches, Do strongly speak to us, but the letters too Of many our contriving friends in Rome Petition us at home. Sextus Pompeius Hath given the dare to Caesar, and commands The empire of the sea. Our slippery people, Whose love is never linked to the deserver Till his deserts are past, begin to throw Pompey the Great and all his dignities Upon his son, who, high in name and power, Higher than both in blood and life, stands up For the main soldier; whose quality, going on, The sides o’ th’ world may danger. Much is breeding Which, like the courser’s hair, hath yet but life And not a serpent’s poison. Say our pleasure To such whose place is under us, requires Our quick remove from hence.

ENOBARBUS. I shall do’t.

SCENE III. Alexandria. A Room in Cleopatra’s palace.

Enter Cleopatra, Charmian, Alexas and Iras.

CLEOPATRA. Where is he?

CHARMIAN. I did not see him since.

CLEOPATRA. See where he is, who’s with him, what he does. I did not send you. If you find him sad, Say I am dancing; if in mirth, report That I am sudden sick. Quick, and return.

[Exit Alexas.]

CHARMIAN. Madam, methinks, if you did love him dearly, You do not hold the method to enforce The like from him.

CLEOPATRA. What should I do I do not?

CHARMIAN. In each thing give him way; cross him in nothing.

CLEOPATRA. Thou teachest like a fool: the way to lose him.

CHARMIAN. Tempt him not so too far; I wish, forbear. In time we hate that which we often fear. But here comes Antony.

Enter Antony.

CLEOPATRA. I am sick and sullen.

ANTONY. I am sorry to give breathing to my purpose—

CLEOPATRA. Help me away, dear Charmian! I shall fall. It cannot be thus long; the sides of nature Will not sustain it.

ANTONY. Now, my dearest queen—

CLEOPATRA. Pray you, stand farther from me.

ANTONY. What’s the matter?

CLEOPATRA. I know by that same eye there’s some good news. What, says the married woman you may go? Would she had never given you leave to come! Let her not say ’tis I that keep you here. I have no power upon you; hers you are.

ANTONY. The gods best know—

CLEOPATRA. O, never was there queen So mightily betrayed! Yet at the first I saw the treasons planted.

ANTONY. Cleopatra—

CLEOPATRA. Why should I think you can be mine and true, Though you in swearing shake the throned gods, Who have been false to Fulvia? Riotous madness, To be entangled with those mouth-made vows Which break themselves in swearing!

ANTONY. Most sweet queen—

CLEOPATRA. Nay, pray you seek no colour for your going, But bid farewell and go. When you sued staying, Then was the time for words. No going then, Eternity was in our lips and eyes, Bliss in our brows’ bent; none our parts so poor But was a race of heaven. They are so still, Or thou, the greatest soldier of the world, Art turned the greatest liar.

ANTONY. How now, lady!

CLEOPATRA. I would I had thy inches, thou shouldst know There were a heart in Egypt.

ANTONY. Hear me, queen: The strong necessity of time commands Our services awhile, but my full heart Remains in use with you. Our Italy Shines o’er with civil swords; Sextus Pompeius Makes his approaches to the port of Rome; Equality of two domestic powers Breed scrupulous faction; the hated, grown to strength, Are newly grown to love; the condemned Pompey, Rich in his father’s honour, creeps apace Into the hearts of such as have not thrived Upon the present state, whose numbers threaten; And quietness, grown sick of rest, would purge By any desperate change. My more particular, And that which most with you should safe my going, Is Fulvia’s death.

CLEOPATRA. Though age from folly could not give me freedom, It does from childishness. Can Fulvia die?

ANTONY. She’s dead, my queen. Look here, and at thy sovereign leisure read The garboils she awaked; at the last, best, See when and where she died.

CLEOPATRA. O most false love! Where be the sacred vials thou shouldst fill With sorrowful water? Now I see, I see, In Fulvia’s death how mine received shall be.

ANTONY. Quarrel no more, but be prepared to know The purposes I bear; which are, or cease, As you shall give th’ advice. By the fire That quickens Nilus’ slime, I go from hence Thy soldier, servant, making peace or war As thou affects.

CLEOPATRA. Cut my lace, Charmian, come! But let it be; I am quickly ill and well, So Antony loves.

ANTONY. My precious queen, forbear, And give true evidence to his love, which stands An honourable trial.

CLEOPATRA. So Fulvia told me. I prithee, turn aside and weep for her, Then bid adieu to me, and say the tears Belong to Egypt. Good now, play one scene Of excellent dissembling, and let it look Like perfect honour.

ANTONY. You’ll heat my blood. No more.

CLEOPATRA. You can do better yet, but this is meetly.

ANTONY. Now, by my sword—

CLEOPATRA. And target. Still he mends. But this is not the best. Look, prithee, Charmian, How this Herculean Roman does become The carriage of his chafe.

ANTONY. I’ll leave you, lady.

CLEOPATRA. Courteous lord, one word. Sir, you and I must part, but that’s not it; Sir, you and I have loved, but there’s not it; That you know well. Something it is I would— O, my oblivion is a very Antony, And I am all forgotten.

ANTONY. But that your royalty Holds idleness your subject, I should take you For idleness itself.

CLEOPATRA. ’Tis sweating labour To bear such idleness so near the heart As Cleopatra this. But, sir, forgive me, Since my becomings kill me when they do not Eye well to you. Your honour calls you hence; Therefore be deaf to my unpitied folly, And all the gods go with you! Upon your sword Sit laurel victory, and smooth success Be strewed before your feet!

ANTONY. Let us go. Come. Our separation so abides and flies That thou, residing here, goes yet with me, And I, hence fleeting, here remain with thee. Away!

SCENE IV. Rome. An Apartment in Caesar’s House.

Enter Octavius [Caesar], Lepidus and their train.

CAESAR. You may see, Lepidus, and henceforth know, It is not Caesar’s natural vice to hate Our great competitor. From Alexandria This is the news: he fishes, drinks, and wastes The lamps of night in revel: is not more manlike Than Cleopatra, nor the queen of Ptolemy More womanly than he; hardly gave audience, or Vouchsafed to think he had partners. You shall find there A man who is the abstract of all faults That all men follow.

LEPIDUS. I must not think there are Evils enough to darken all his goodness. His faults in him seem as the spots of heaven, More fiery by night’s blackness; hereditary Rather than purchased; what he cannot change Than what he chooses.

CAESAR. You are too indulgent. Let’s grant it is not Amiss to tumble on the bed of Ptolemy, To give a kingdom for a mirth, to sit And keep the turn of tippling with a slave, To reel the streets at noon, and stand the buffet With knaves that smell of sweat. Say this becomes him— As his composure must be rare indeed Whom these things cannot blemish—yet must Antony No way excuse his foils when we do bear So great weight in his lightness. If he filled His vacancy with his voluptuousness, Full surfeits and the dryness of his bones Call on him for’t. But to confound such time That drums him from his sport, and speaks as loud As his own state and ours, ’tis to be chid As we rate boys who, being mature in knowledge, Pawn their experience to their present pleasure And so rebel to judgment.

LEPIDUS. Here’s more news.

MESSENGER. Thy biddings have been done, and every hour, Most noble Caesar, shalt thou have report How ’tis abroad. Pompey is strong at sea, And it appears he is beloved of those That only have feared Caesar. To the ports The discontents repair, and men’s reports Give him much wronged.

CAESAR. I should have known no less. It hath been taught us from the primal state That he which is was wished until he were, And the ebbed man, ne’er loved till ne’er worth love, Comes deared by being lacked. This common body, Like to a vagabond flag upon the stream, Goes to and back, lackeying the varying tide, To rot itself with motion.

Enter a second Messenger.

SECOND MESSENGER. Caesar, I bring thee word Menecrates and Menas, famous pirates, Make the sea serve them, which they ear and wound With keels of every kind. Many hot inroads They make in Italy—the borders maritime Lack blood to think on’t—and flush youth revolt. No vessel can peep forth but ’tis as soon Taken as seen; for Pompey’s name strikes more Than could his war resisted.

CAESAR. Antony, Leave thy lascivious wassails. When thou once Was beaten from Modena, where thou slew’st Hirtius and Pansa, consuls, at thy heel Did famine follow, whom thou fought’st against, Though daintily brought up, with patience more Than savages could suffer. Thou didst drink The stale of horses and the gilded puddle Which beasts would cough at. Thy palate then did deign The roughest berry on the rudest hedge. Yea, like the stag when snow the pasture sheets, The barks of trees thou browsed. On the Alps It is reported thou didst eat strange flesh Which some did die to look on. And all this— It wounds thine honour that I speak it now— Was borne so like a soldier that thy cheek So much as lanked not.

LEPIDUS. ’Tis pity of him.

CAESAR. Let his shames quickly Drive him to Rome. ’Tis time we twain Did show ourselves i’ th’ field, and to that end Assemble we immediate council. Pompey Thrives in our idleness.

LEPIDUS. Tomorrow, Caesar, I shall be furnished to inform you rightly Both what by sea and land I can be able To front this present time.

CAESAR. Till which encounter It is my business too. Farewell.

LEPIDUS. Farewell, my lord. What you shall know meantime Of stirs abroad, I shall beseech you, sir, To let me be partaker.

CAESAR. Doubt not, sir. I knew it for my bond.

SCENE V. Alexandria. A Room in the Palace.

Enter Cleopatra, Charmian, Iras and Mardian.

CLEOPATRA. Charmian!

CHARMIAN. Madam?

CLEOPATRA. Ha, ha! Give me to drink mandragora.

CHARMIAN. Why, madam?

CLEOPATRA. That I might sleep out this great gap of time My Antony is away.

CHARMIAN. You think of him too much.

CLEOPATRA. O, ’tis treason!

CHARMIAN. Madam, I trust not so.

CLEOPATRA. Thou, eunuch Mardian!

MARDIAN. What’s your highness’ pleasure?

CLEOPATRA. Not now to hear thee sing. I take no pleasure In aught an eunuch has. ’Tis well for thee That, being unseminared, thy freer thoughts May not fly forth of Egypt. Hast thou affections?

MARDIAN. Yes, gracious madam.

CLEOPATRA. Indeed?

MARDIAN. Not in deed, madam, for I can do nothing But what indeed is honest to be done. Yet have I fierce affections, and think What Venus did with Mars.

CLEOPATRA. O, Charmian, Where think’st thou he is now? Stands he, or sits he? Or does he walk? Or is he on his horse? O happy horse, to bear the weight of Antony! Do bravely, horse, for wot’st thou whom thou mov’st? The demi-Atlas of this earth, the arm And burgonet of men. He’s speaking now, Or murmuring “Where’s my serpent of old Nile?” For so he calls me. Now I feed myself With most delicious poison. Think on me That am with Phœbus’ amorous pinches black, And wrinkled deep in time? Broad-fronted Caesar, When thou wast here above the ground, I was A morsel for a monarch. And great Pompey Would stand and make his eyes grow in my brow; There would he anchor his aspect, and die With looking on his life.

Enter Alexas.

ALEXAS. Sovereign of Egypt, hail!

CLEOPATRA. How much unlike art thou Mark Antony! Yet, coming from him, that great medicine hath With his tinct gilded thee. How goes it with my brave Mark Antony?

ALEXAS. Last thing he did, dear queen, He kissed—the last of many doubled kisses— This orient pearl. His speech sticks in my heart.

CLEOPATRA. Mine ear must pluck it thence.

ALEXAS. “Good friend,” quoth he, “Say, the firm Roman to great Egypt sends This treasure of an oyster; at whose foot, To mend the petty present, I will piece Her opulent throne with kingdoms. All the east, Say thou, shall call her mistress.” So he nodded And soberly did mount an arm-gaunt steed, Who neighed so high that what I would have spoke Was beastly dumbed by him.

CLEOPATRA. What, was he sad or merry?

ALEXAS. Like to the time o’ th’ year between the extremes Of hot and cold, he was nor sad nor merry.

CLEOPATRA. O well-divided disposition!—Note him, Note him, good Charmian, ’tis the man; but note him: He was not sad, for he would shine on those That make their looks by his; he was not merry, Which seemed to tell them his remembrance lay In Egypt with his joy; but between both. O heavenly mingle!—Be’st thou sad or merry, The violence of either thee becomes, So does it no man else.—Met’st thou my posts?

ALEXAS. Ay, madam, twenty several messengers. Why do you send so thick?

CLEOPATRA. Who’s born that day When I forget to send to Antony Shall die a beggar.—Ink and paper, Charmian.— Welcome, my good Alexas.—Did I, Charmian, Ever love Caesar so?

CHARMIAN. O that brave Caesar!

CLEOPATRA. Be choked with such another emphasis! Say “the brave Antony.”

CHARMIAN. The valiant Caesar!

CLEOPATRA. By Isis, I will give thee bloody teeth If thou with Caesar paragon again My man of men.

CHARMIAN. By your most gracious pardon, I sing but after you.

CLEOPATRA. My salad days, When I was green in judgment, cold in blood, To say as I said then. But come, away, Get me ink and paper. He shall have every day a several greeting, Or I’ll unpeople Egypt.

ACT II

SCENE I. Messina. A Room in Pompey’s house.

Enter Pompey, Menecrates and Menas in warlike manner.

POMPEY. If the great gods be just, they shall assist The deeds of justest men.

MENECRATES. Know, worthy Pompey, That what they do delay they not deny.

POMPEY. Whiles we are suitors to their throne, decays The thing we sue for.

MENECRATES. We, ignorant of ourselves, Beg often our own harms, which the wise powers Deny us for our good; so find we profit By losing of our prayers.

POMPEY. I shall do well. The people love me, and the sea is mine; My powers are crescent, and my auguring hope Says it will come to th’ full. Mark Antony In Egypt sits at dinner, and will make No wars without doors. Caesar gets money where He loses hearts. Lepidus flatters both, Of both is flattered; but he neither loves Nor either cares for him.

MENAS. Caesar and Lepidus Are in the field. A mighty strength they carry.

POMPEY. Where have you this? ’Tis false.

MENAS. From Silvius, sir.

POMPEY. He dreams. I know they are in Rome together, Looking for Antony. But all the charms of love, Salt Cleopatra, soften thy waned lip! Let witchcraft join with beauty, lust with both; Tie up the libertine in a field of feasts; Keep his brain fuming. Epicurean cooks Sharpen with cloyless sauce his appetite, That sleep and feeding may prorogue his honour Even till a Lethe’d dullness—

Enter Varrius.

How now, Varrius!

VARRIUS. This is most certain that I shall deliver: Mark Antony is every hour in Rome Expected. Since he went from Egypt ’tis A space for farther travel.

POMPEY. I could have given less matter A better ear.—Menas, I did not think This amorous surfeiter would have donned his helm For such a petty war. His soldiership Is twice the other twain. But let us rear The higher our opinion, that our stirring Can from the lap of Egypt’s widow pluck The ne’er lust-wearied Antony.

MENAS. I cannot hope Caesar and Antony shall well greet together. His wife that’s dead did trespasses to Caesar; His brother warred upon him, although I think, Not moved by Antony.

POMPEY. I know not, Menas, How lesser enmities may give way to greater. Were’t not that we stand up against them all, ’Twere pregnant they should square between themselves, For they have entertained cause enough To draw their swords. But how the fear of us May cement their divisions, and bind up The petty difference, we yet not know. Be’t as our gods will have’t! It only stands Our lives upon to use our strongest hands. Come, Menas.

SCENE II. Rome. A Room in the House of Lepidus.

Enter Enobarbus and Lepidus.

LEPIDUS. Good Enobarbus, ’tis a worthy deed, And shall become you well, to entreat your captain To soft and gentle speech.

ENOBARBUS. I shall entreat him To answer like himself. If Caesar move him, Let Antony look over Caesar’s head And speak as loud as Mars. By Jupiter, Were I the wearer of Antonius’ beard, I would not shave’t today.

LEPIDUS. ’Tis not a time For private stomaching.

ENOBARBUS. Every time Serves for the matter that is then born in’t.

LEPIDUS. But small to greater matters must give way.

ENOBARBUS. Not if the small come first.

LEPIDUS. Your speech is passion; But pray you stir no embers up. Here comes The noble Antony.

Enter Antony and Ventidius.

ENOBARBUS. And yonder Caesar.

Enter Caesar, Maecenas and Agrippa.

ANTONY. If we compose well here, to Parthia. Hark, Ventidius.

CAESAR. I do not know, Maecenas. Ask Agrippa.

LEPIDUS. Noble friends, That which combined us was most great, and let not A leaner action rend us. What’s amiss, May it be gently heard. When we debate Our trivial difference loud, we do commit Murder in healing wounds. Then, noble partners, The rather for I earnestly beseech, Touch you the sourest points with sweetest terms, Nor curstness grow to th’ matter.

ANTONY. ’Tis spoken well. Were we before our armies, and to fight, I should do thus.

CAESAR. Welcome to Rome.

ANTONY. Thank you.

CAESAR. Sit.

ANTONY. Sit, sir.

CAESAR. Nay, then.

ANTONY. I learn you take things ill which are not so, Or being, concern you not.

CAESAR. I must be laughed at If, or for nothing or a little, I Should say myself offended, and with you Chiefly i’ th’ world; more laughed at that I should Once name you derogately when to sound your name It not concerned me.

ANTONY. My being in Egypt, Caesar, What was’t to you?

CAESAR. No more than my residing here at Rome Might be to you in Egypt. Yet if you there Did practise on my state, your being in Egypt Might be my question.

ANTONY. How intend you, practised?

CAESAR. You may be pleased to catch at mine intent By what did here befall me. Your wife and brother Made wars upon me, and their contestation Was theme for you; you were the word of war.

ANTONY. You do mistake your business. My brother never Did urge me in his act. I did inquire it, And have my learning from some true reports That drew their swords with you. Did he not rather Discredit my authority with yours, And make the wars alike against my stomach, Having alike your cause? Of this my letters Before did satisfy you. If you’ll patch a quarrel, As matter whole you have not to make it with, It must not be with this.

CAESAR. You praise yourself By laying defects of judgment to me; but You patched up your excuses.

ANTONY. Not so, not so. I know you could not lack—I am certain on’t— Very necessity of this thought, that I, Your partner in the cause ’gainst which he fought, Could not with graceful eyes attend those wars Which fronted mine own peace. As for my wife, I would you had her spirit in such another. The third o’ th’ world is yours, which with a snaffle You may pace easy, but not such a wife.

ENOBARBUS. Would we had all such wives, that the men Might go to wars with the women.

ANTONY. So much uncurbable, her garboils, Caesar, Made out of her impatience—which not wanted Shrewdness of policy too—I grieving grant Did you too much disquiet. For that you must But say I could not help it.

CAESAR. I wrote to you When rioting in Alexandria; you Did pocket up my letters, and with taunts Did gibe my missive out of audience.

ANTONY. Sir, He fell upon me ere admitted, then. Three kings I had newly feasted, and did want Of what I was i’ th’ morning. But next day I told him of myself, which was as much As to have asked him pardon. Let this fellow Be nothing of our strife; if we contend, Out of our question wipe him.

CAESAR. You have broken The article of your oath, which you shall never Have tongue to charge me with.

LEPIDUS. Soft, Caesar!

ANTONY. No, Lepidus, let him speak. The honour is sacred which he talks on now, Supposing that I lacked it. But on, Caesar: The article of my oath?

CAESAR. To lend me arms and aid when I required them, The which you both denied.

ANTONY. Neglected, rather; And then when poisoned hours had bound me up From mine own knowledge. As nearly as I may I’ll play the penitent to you. But mine honesty Shall not make poor my greatness, nor my power Work without it. Truth is that Fulvia, To have me out of Egypt, made wars here, For which myself, the ignorant motive, do So far ask pardon as befits mine honour To stoop in such a case.

LEPIDUS. ’Tis noble spoken.

MAECENAS. If it might please you to enforce no further The griefs between ye; to forget them quite Were to remember that the present need Speaks to atone you.

LEPIDUS. Worthily spoken, Maecenas.

ENOBARBUS. Or, if you borrow one another’s love for the instant, you may, when you hear no more words of Pompey, return it again. You shall have time to wrangle in when you have nothing else to do.

ANTONY. Thou art a soldier only. Speak no more.

ENOBARBUS. That truth should be silent I had almost forgot.

ANTONY. You wrong this presence; therefore speak no more.

ENOBARBUS. Go to, then. Your considerate stone!

CAESAR. I do not much dislike the matter, but The manner of his speech; for’t cannot be We shall remain in friendship, our conditions So differing in their acts. Yet if I knew What hoop should hold us staunch, from edge to edge O’ th’ world I would pursue it.

AGRIPPA. Give me leave, Caesar.

CAESAR. Speak, Agrippa.

AGRIPPA. Thou hast a sister by the mother’s side, Admired Octavia. Great Mark Antony Is now a widower.

CAESAR. Say not so, Agrippa. If Cleopatra heard you, your reproof Were well deserved of rashness.

ANTONY. I am not married, Caesar. Let me hear Agrippa further speak.

AGRIPPA. To hold you in perpetual amity, To make you brothers, and to knit your hearts With an unslipping knot, take Antony Octavia to his wife; whose beauty claims No worse a husband than the best of men; Whose virtue and whose general graces speak That which none else can utter. By this marriage All little jealousies, which now seem great, And all great fears, which now import their dangers, Would then be nothing. Truths would be tales, Where now half-tales be truths. Her love to both Would each to other, and all loves to both, Draw after her. Pardon what I have spoke, For ’tis a studied, not a present thought, By duty ruminated.

ANTONY. Will Caesar speak?

CAESAR. Not till he hears how Antony is touched With what is spoke already.

ANTONY. What power is in Agrippa, If I would say “Agrippa, be it so,” To make this good?

CAESAR. The power of Caesar, and His power unto Octavia.

ANTONY. May I never To this good purpose, that so fairly shows, Dream of impediment! Let me have thy hand. Further this act of grace; and from this hour The heart of brothers govern in our loves And sway our great designs!

CAESAR. There’s my hand. A sister I bequeath you, whom no brother Did ever love so dearly. Let her live To join our kingdoms and our hearts; and never Fly off our loves again!

LEPIDUS. Happily, amen!

ANTONY. I did not think to draw my sword ’gainst Pompey, For he hath laid strange courtesies and great Of late upon me. I must thank him only, Lest my remembrance suffer ill report; At heel of that, defy him.

LEPIDUS. Time calls upon ’s. Of us must Pompey presently be sought, Or else he seeks out us.

ANTONY. Where lies he?

CAESAR. About the Mount Misena.

ANTONY. What is his strength by land?

CAESAR. Great and increasing; but by sea He is an absolute master.

ANTONY. So is the fame. Would we had spoke together! Haste we for it. Yet, ere we put ourselves in arms, dispatch we The business we have talked of.

CAESAR. With most gladness, And do invite you to my sister’s view, Whither straight I’ll lead you.

ANTONY. Let us, Lepidus, not lack your company.

LEPIDUS. Noble Antony, not sickness should detain me.

[Flourish. Exeunt all except Enobarbus, Agrippa and Maecenas.]

MAECENAS. Welcome from Egypt, sir.

ENOBARBUS. Half the heart of Caesar, worthy Maecenas! My honourable friend, Agrippa!

AGRIPPA. Good Enobarbus!

MAECENAS. We have cause to be glad that matters are so well digested. You stayed well by ’t in Egypt.

ENOBARBUS. Ay, sir, we did sleep day out of countenance and made the night light with drinking.

MAECENAS. Eight wild boars roasted whole at a breakfast, and but twelve persons there. Is this true?

ENOBARBUS. This was but as a fly by an eagle. We had much more monstrous matter of feast, which worthily deserved noting.

MAECENAS. She’s a most triumphant lady, if report be square to her.

ENOBARBUS. When she first met Mark Antony, she pursed up his heart upon the river of Cydnus.

AGRIPPA. There she appeared indeed, or my reporter devised well for her.

ENOBARBUS. I will tell you. The barge she sat in, like a burnished throne, Burned on the water. The poop was beaten gold; Purple the sails, and so perfumed that The winds were love-sick with them; the oars were silver, Which to the tune of flutes kept stroke, and made The water which they beat to follow faster, As amorous of their strokes. For her own person, It beggared all description: she did lie In her pavilion, cloth-of-gold of tissue, O’erpicturing that Venus where we see The fancy outwork nature. On each side her Stood pretty dimpled boys, like smiling Cupids, With divers-coloured fans, whose wind did seem To glow the delicate cheeks which they did cool, And what they undid did.

AGRIPPA. O, rare for Antony!

ENOBARBUS. Her gentlewomen, like the Nereides, So many mermaids, tended her i’ th’ eyes, And made their bends adornings. At the helm A seeming mermaid steers. The silken tackle Swell with the touches of those flower-soft hands That yarely frame the office. From the barge A strange invisible perfume hits the sense Of the adjacent wharfs. The city cast Her people out upon her, and Antony, Enthroned i’ th’ market-place, did sit alone, Whistling to th’ air, which, but for vacancy, Had gone to gaze on Cleopatra too, And made a gap in nature.

AGRIPPA. Rare Egyptian!

ENOBARBUS. Upon her landing, Antony sent to her, Invited her to supper. She replied It should be better he became her guest, Which she entreated. Our courteous Antony, Whom ne’er the word of “No” woman heard speak, Being barbered ten times o’er, goes to the feast, And, for his ordinary, pays his heart For what his eyes eat only.

AGRIPPA. Royal wench! She made great Caesar lay his sword to bed. He ploughed her, and she cropped.

ENOBARBUS. I saw her once Hop forty paces through the public street And, having lost her breath, she spoke and panted, That she did make defect perfection, And, breathless, pour breath forth.

MAECENAS. Now Antony must leave her utterly.

ENOBARBUS. Never. He will not. Age cannot wither her, nor custom stale Her infinite variety. Other women cloy The appetites they feed, but she makes hungry Where most she satisfies. For vilest things Become themselves in her, that the holy priests Bless her when she is riggish.

MAECENAS. If beauty, wisdom, modesty can settle The heart of Antony, Octavia is A blessed lottery to him.

AGRIPPA. Let us go. Good Enobarbus, make yourself my guest Whilst you abide here.

ENOBARBUS. Humbly, sir, I thank you.

SCENE III. Rome. A Room in Caesar’s House.

Enter Antony, Caesar, Octavia between them.

ANTONY. The world and my great office will sometimes Divide me from your bosom.

OCTAVIA. All which time Before the gods my knee shall bow my prayers To them for you.

ANTONY. Good night, sir.—My Octavia, Read not my blemishes in the world’s report. I have not kept my square, but that to come Shall all be done by th’ rule. Good night, dear lady.

OCTAVIA. Good night, sir.

CAESAR. Good night.

[Exeunt Caesar and Octavia.]

Enter Soothsayer.

ANTONY. Now, sirrah, you do wish yourself in Egypt?

SOOTHSAYER. Would I had never come from thence, nor you thither!

ANTONY. If you can, your reason.

SOOTHSAYER. I see it in my motion, have it not in my tongue. But yet hie you to Egypt again.

ANTONY. Say to me, Whose fortunes shall rise higher, Caesar’s or mine?

SOOTHSAYER. Caesar’s. Therefore, O Antony, stay not by his side. Thy dæmon—that thy spirit which keeps thee—is Noble, courageous, high, unmatchable, Where Caesar’s is not. But near him, thy angel Becomes afeard, as being o’erpowered. Therefore Make space enough between you.

ANTONY. Speak this no more.

SOOTHSAYER. To none but thee; no more but when to thee. If thou dost play with him at any game, Thou art sure to lose; and of that natural luck He beats thee ’gainst the odds. Thy lustre thickens When he shines by. I say again, thy spirit Is all afraid to govern thee near him; But, he away, ’tis noble.

ANTONY. Get thee gone. Say to Ventidius I would speak with him.

[Exit Soothsayer.]

He shall to Parthia. Be it art or hap, He hath spoken true. The very dice obey him, And in our sports my better cunning faints Under his chance. If we draw lots, he speeds; His cocks do win the battle still of mine When it is all to naught, and his quails ever Beat mine, inhooped, at odds. I will to Egypt: And though I make this marriage for my peace, I’ th’ East my pleasure lies.

Enter Ventidius.

O, come, Ventidius, You must to Parthia. Your commission’s ready. Follow me and receive ’t.

SCENE IV. Rome. A street.

Enter Lepidus, Maecenas and Agrippa.

LEPIDUS. Trouble yourselves no further. Pray you hasten Your generals after.

AGRIPPA. Sir, Mark Antony Will e’en but kiss Octavia, and we’ll follow.

LEPIDUS. Till I shall see you in your soldier’s dress, Which will become you both, farewell.

MAECENAS. We shall, As I conceive the journey, be at the Mount Before you, Lepidus.

LEPIDUS. Your way is shorter; My purposes do draw me much about. You’ll win two days upon me.

BOTH. Sir, good success!

LEPIDUS. Farewell.

Enter Cleopatra, Charmian, Iras, Alexas.

CLEOPATRA. Give me some music—music, moody food Of us that trade in love.

ALL. The music, ho!

Enter Mardian, the eunuch.

CLEOPATRA. Let it alone. Let’s to billiards. Come, Charmian.

CHARMIAN. My arm is sore. Best play with Mardian.

CLEOPATRA. As well a woman with an eunuch played As with a woman. Come, you’ll play with me, sir?

MARDIAN. As well as I can, madam.

CLEOPATRA. And when good will is showed, though’t come too short, The actor may plead pardon. I’ll none now. Give me mine angle; we’ll to the river. There, My music playing far off, I will betray Tawny-finned fishes. My bended hook shall pierce Their slimy jaws, and as I draw them up I’ll think them every one an Antony, And say “Ah, ha! You’re caught.”

CHARMIAN. ’Twas merry when You wagered on your angling; when your diver Did hang a salt fish on his hook, which he With fervency drew up.

CLEOPATRA. That time?—O times!— I laughed him out of patience; and that night I laughed him into patience, and next morn, Ere the ninth hour, I drunk him to his bed, Then put my tires and mantles on him, whilst I wore his sword Philippan.

Enter Messenger.

O! from Italy! Ram thou thy fruitful tidings in mine ears, That long time have been barren.

MESSENGER. Madam, madam—

CLEOPATRA. Antony’s dead! If thou say so, villain, Thou kill’st thy mistress. But well and free, If thou so yield him, there is gold, and here My bluest veins to kiss, a hand that kings Have lipped, and trembled kissing.

MESSENGER. First, madam, he’s well.

CLEOPATRA. Why, there’s more gold. But sirrah, mark, we use To say the dead are well. Bring it to that, The gold I give thee will I melt and pour Down thy ill-uttering throat.

MESSENGER. Good madam, hear me.

CLEOPATRA. Well, go to, I will. But there’s no goodness in thy face if Antony Be free and healthful. So tart a favour To trumpet such good tidings! If not well, Thou shouldst come like a Fury crowned with snakes, Not like a formal man.

MESSENGER. Will’t please you hear me?

CLEOPATRA. I have a mind to strike thee ere thou speak’st. Yet if thou say Antony lives, is well, Or friends with Caesar, or not captive to him, I’ll set thee in a shower of gold and hail Rich pearls upon thee.

MESSENGER. Madam, he’s well.

CLEOPATRA. Well said.

MESSENGER. And friends with Caesar.

CLEOPATRA. Th’ art an honest man.

MESSENGER. Caesar and he are greater friends than ever.

CLEOPATRA. Make thee a fortune from me.

MESSENGER. But yet, madam—

CLEOPATRA. I do not like “But yet”, it does allay The good precedence. Fie upon “But yet”! “But yet” is as a gaoler to bring forth Some monstrous malefactor. Prithee, friend, Pour out the pack of matter to mine ear, The good and bad together: he’s friends with Caesar, In state of health, thou say’st; and, thou say’st, free.

MESSENGER. Free, madam? No. I made no such report. He’s bound unto Octavia.

CLEOPATRA. For what good turn?

MESSENGER. For the best turn i’ th’ bed.

CLEOPATRA. I am pale, Charmian.

MESSENGER. Madam, he’s married to Octavia.

CLEOPATRA. The most infectious pestilence upon thee!

[Strikes him down.]

MESSENGER. Good madam, patience.

CLEOPATRA. What say you?

[Strikes him again.]

Hence, horrible villain, or I’ll spurn thine eyes Like balls before me! I’ll unhair thy head!

[She hales him up and down.]

Thou shalt be whipped with wire and stewed in brine, Smarting in ling’ring pickle.

MESSENGER. Gracious madam, I that do bring the news made not the match.

CLEOPATRA. Say ’tis not so, a province I will give thee, And make thy fortunes proud. The blow thou hadst Shall make thy peace for moving me to rage, And I will boot thee with what gift beside Thy modesty can beg.

MESSENGER. He’s married, madam.

CLEOPATRA. Rogue, thou hast lived too long.

[Draws a knife.]

MESSENGER. Nay then I’ll run. What mean you, madam? I have made no fault.

CHARMIAN. Good madam, keep yourself within yourself. The man is innocent.

CLEOPATRA. Some innocents ’scape not the thunderbolt. Melt Egypt into Nile, and kindly creatures Turn all to serpents! Call the slave again. Though I am mad, I will not bite him. Call!

CHARMIAN. He is afeard to come.

CLEOPATRA. I will not hurt him.

[Exit Charmian.]

These hands do lack nobility that they strike A meaner than myself, since I myself Have given myself the cause.

Enter the Messenger again with Charmian.

Come hither, sir. Though it be honest, it is never good To bring bad news. Give to a gracious message An host of tongues, but let ill tidings tell Themselves when they be felt.

MESSENGER. I have done my duty.

CLEOPATRA. Is he married? I cannot hate thee worser than I do If thou again say “Yes.”

CLEOPATRA. The gods confound thee! Dost thou hold there still!

MESSENGER. Should I lie, madam?

CLEOPATRA. O, I would thou didst, So half my Egypt were submerged and made A cistern for scaled snakes! Go, get thee hence. Hadst thou Narcissus in thy face, to me Thou wouldst appear most ugly. He is married?

MESSENGER. I crave your highness’ pardon.

CLEOPATRA. He is married?

MESSENGER. Take no offence that I would not offend you. To punish me for what you make me do Seems much unequal. He’s married to Octavia.

CLEOPATRA. O, that his fault should make a knave of thee That art not what thou’rt sure of! Get thee hence! The merchandise which thou hast brought from Rome Are all too dear for me. Lie they upon thy hand, And be undone by ’em!

CHARMIAN. Good your highness, patience.

CLEOPATRA. In praising Antony I have dispraised Caesar.

CHARMIAN. Many times, madam.

CLEOPATRA. I am paid for’t now. Lead me from hence; I faint. O Iras, Charmian! ’Tis no matter. Go to the fellow, good Alexas, bid him Report the feature of Octavia, her years, Her inclination; let him not leave out The colour of her hair. Bring me word quickly.

Let him for ever go—let him not, Charmian. Though he be painted one way like a Gorgon, The other way ’s a Mars. [To Mardian] Bid you Alexas Bring me word how tall she is. Pity me, Charmian, But do not speak to me. Lead me to my chamber.

SCENE VI. Near Misenum.

Flourish. Enter Pompey and Menas at one door, with drum and trumpet; at another, Caesar, Lepidus, Antony, Enobarbus, Maecenas, Agrippa, with Soldiers marching.

POMPEY. Your hostages I have, so have you mine, And we shall talk before we fight.

CAESAR. Most meet That first we come to words, and therefore have we Our written purposes before us sent, Which if thou hast considered, let us know If ’twill tie up thy discontented sword And carry back to Sicily much tall youth That else must perish here.

POMPEY. To you all three, The senators alone of this great world, Chief factors for the gods: I do not know Wherefore my father should revengers want, Having a son and friends, since Julius Caesar, Who at Philippi the good Brutus ghosted, There saw you labouring for him. What was’t That moved pale Cassius to conspire? And what Made the all-honoured, honest Roman, Brutus, With the armed rest, courtiers of beauteous freedom, To drench the Capitol, but that they would Have one man but a man? And that is it Hath made me rig my navy, at whose burden The angered ocean foams, with which I meant To scourge th’ ingratitude that despiteful Rome Cast on my noble father.

CAESAR. Take your time.

ANTONY. Thou canst not fear us, Pompey, with thy sails. We’ll speak with thee at sea. At land thou know’st How much we do o’ercount thee.

POMPEY. At land indeed Thou dost o’ercount me of my father’s house; But since the cuckoo builds not for himself, Remain in’t as thou mayst.

LEPIDUS. Be pleased to tell us— For this is from the present—how you take The offers we have sent you.

CAESAR. There’s the point.

ANTONY. Which do not be entreated to, but weigh What it is worth embraced.

CAESAR. And what may follow To try a larger fortune.

POMPEY. You have made me offer Of Sicily, Sardinia; and I must Rid all the sea of pirates; then to send Measures of wheat to Rome. This ’greed upon, To part with unhacked edges and bear back Our targes undinted.

CAESAR, ANTONY, and LEPIDUS. That’s our offer.

POMPEY. Know, then, I came before you here a man prepared To take this offer. But Mark Antony Put me to some impatience. Though I lose The praise of it by telling, you must know When Caesar and your brother were at blows, Your mother came to Sicily and did find Her welcome friendly.

ANTONY. I have heard it, Pompey, And am well studied for a liberal thanks Which I do owe you.

POMPEY. Let me have your hand. I did not think, sir, to have met you here.

ANTONY. The beds i’ th’ East are soft; and thanks to you, That called me timelier than my purpose hither, For I have gained by ’t.

CAESAR. Since I saw you last, There is a change upon you.

POMPEY. Well, I know not What counts harsh Fortune casts upon my face, But in my bosom shall she never come To make my heart her vassal.

LEPIDUS. Well met here.

POMPEY. I hope so, Lepidus. Thus we are agreed. I crave our composition may be written And sealed between us.

CAESAR. That’s the next to do.

POMPEY. We’ll feast each other ere we part, and let’s Draw lots who shall begin.

ANTONY. That will I, Pompey.

POMPEY. No, Antony, take the lot. But, first or last, your fine Egyptian cookery Shall have the fame. I have heard that Julius Caesar Grew fat with feasting there.

ANTONY. You have heard much.

POMPEY. I have fair meanings, sir.

ANTONY. And fair words to them.

POMPEY. Then so much have I heard. And I have heard Apollodorus carried—

ENOBARBUS. No more of that. He did so.

POMPEY. What, I pray you?

ENOBARBUS. A certain queen to Caesar in a mattress.

POMPEY. I know thee now. How far’st thou, soldier?

ENOBARBUS. Well; And well am like to do, for I perceive Four feasts are toward.

POMPEY. Let me shake thy hand. I never hated thee. I have seen thee fight When I have envied thy behaviour.

ENOBARBUS. Sir, I never loved you much, but I ha’ praised ye When you have well deserved ten times as much As I have said you did.

POMPEY. Enjoy thy plainness; It nothing ill becomes thee. Aboard my galley I invite you all. Will you lead, lords?

CAESAR, ANTONY, and LEPIDUS. Show’s the way, sir.

POMPEY. Come.

[Exeunt all but Enobarbus and Menas.]

MENAS. [Aside.] Thy father, Pompey, would ne’er have made this treaty.— You and I have known, sir.

ENOBARBUS. At sea, I think.

MENAS. We have, sir.

ENOBARBUS. You have done well by water.

MENAS. And you by land.

ENOBARBUS. I will praise any man that will praise me, though it cannot be denied what I have done by land.

MENAS. Nor what I have done by water.

ENOBARBUS. Yes, something you can deny for your own safety: you have been a great thief by sea.

ENOBARBUS. There I deny my land service. But give me your hand, Menas. If our eyes had authority, here they might take two thieves kissing.

MENAS. All men’s faces are true, whatsome’er their hands are.

ENOBARBUS. But there is never a fair woman has a true face.

MENAS. No slander. They steal hearts.

ENOBARBUS. We came hither to fight with you.

MENAS. For my part, I am sorry it is turned to a drinking. Pompey doth this day laugh away his fortune.

ENOBARBUS. If he do, sure he cannot weep ’t back again.

MENAS. You have said, sir. We looked not for Mark Antony here. Pray you, is he married to Cleopatra?

ENOBARBUS. Caesar’s sister is called Octavia.

MENAS. True, sir. She was the wife of Caius Marcellus.

ENOBARBUS. But she is now the wife of Marcus Antonius.

MENAS. Pray you, sir?

ENOBARBUS. ’Tis true.

MENAS. Then is Caesar and he for ever knit together.

ENOBARBUS. If I were bound to divine of this unity, I would not prophesy so.

MENAS. I think the policy of that purpose made more in the marriage than the love of the parties.

ENOBARBUS. I think so too. But you shall find the band that seems to tie their friendship together will be the very strangler of their amity. Octavia is of a holy, cold, and still conversation.

MENAS. Who would not have his wife so?

ENOBARBUS. Not he that himself is not so; which is Mark Antony. He will to his Egyptian dish again. Then shall the sighs of Octavia blow the fire up in Caesar, and, as I said before, that which is the strength of their amity shall prove the immediate author of their variance. Antony will use his affection where it is. He married but his occasion here.

MENAS. And thus it may be. Come, sir, will you aboard? I have a health for you.

ENOBARBUS. I shall take it, sir. We have used our throats in Egypt.

MENAS. Come, let’s away.

SCENE VII. On board Pompey’s Galley, lying near Misenum.

Music. Enter two or three Servants with a banquet.

FIRST SERVANT. Here they’ll be, man. Some o’ their plants are ill-rooted already; the least wind i’ th’ world will blow them down.

SECOND SERVANT. Lepidus is high-coloured.

FIRST SERVANT. They have made him drink alms-drink.

SECOND SERVANT. As they pinch one another by the disposition, he cries out “no more”, reconciles them to his entreaty and himself to th’ drink.

FIRST SERVANT. But it raises the greater war between him and his discretion.

SECOND SERVANT. Why, this it is to have a name in great men’s fellowship. I had as lief have a reed that will do me no service as a partisan I could not heave.

FIRST SERVANT. To be called into a huge sphere, and not to be seen to move in ’t, are the holes where eyes should be, which pitifully disaster the cheeks.

A sennet sounded. Enter Caesar, Antony, Pompey, Lepidus, Agrippa, Maecenas, Enobarbus, Menas with other Captains.

ANTONY. [To Caesar.] Thus do they, sir: they take the flow o’ th’ Nile By certain scales i’ th’ pyramid; they know By th’ height, the lowness, or the mean, if dearth Or foison follow. The higher Nilus swells, The more it promises. As it ebbs, the seedsman Upon the slime and ooze scatters his grain, And shortly comes to harvest.

LEPIDUS. You’ve strange serpents there?

ANTONY. Ay, Lepidus.

LEPIDUS. Your serpent of Egypt is bred now of your mud by the operation of your sun; so is your crocodile.

ANTONY. They are so.

POMPEY. Sit, and some wine! A health to Lepidus!

LEPIDUS. I am not so well as I should be, but I’ll ne’er out.

ENOBARBUS. Not till you have slept. I fear me you’ll be in till then.

LEPIDUS. Nay, certainly, I have heard the Ptolemies’ pyramises are very goodly things. Without contradiction I have heard that.

MENAS. [Aside to Pompey.] Pompey, a word.

POMPEY. [Aside to Menas.] Say in mine ear what is ’t?

MENAS. [Whispers in ’s ear.] Forsake thy seat, I do beseech thee, captain, And hear me speak a word.

POMPEY. [Aside to Menas.] Forbear me till anon.— This wine for Lepidus!

LEPIDUS. What manner o’ thing is your crocodile?

ANTONY. It is shaped, sir, like itself, and it is as broad as it hath breadth. It is just so high as it is, and moves with it own organs. It lives by that which nourisheth it, and the elements once out of it, it transmigrates.

LEPIDUS. What colour is it of?

ANTONY. Of its own colour too.

LEPIDUS. ’Tis a strange serpent.

ANTONY. ’Tis so, and the tears of it are wet.

CAESAR. Will this description satisfy him?

ANTONY. With the health that Pompey gives him, else he is a very epicure.

POMPEY. [Aside to Menas.] Go hang, sir, hang! Tell me of that? Away! Do as I bid you.—Where’s this cup I called for?

MENAS. [Aside to Pompey.] If for the sake of merit thou wilt hear me, Rise from thy stool.

POMPEY. [Aside to Menas.] I think thou’rt mad.

[Rises and walks aside.]

The matter?

MENAS. I have ever held my cap off to thy fortunes.

POMPEY. Thou hast served me with much faith. What’s else to say?— Be jolly, lords.

ANTONY. These quicksands, Lepidus, Keep off them, for you sink.

MENAS. Wilt thou be lord of all the world?

POMPEY. What sayst thou?

MENAS. Wilt thou be lord of the whole world? That’s twice.

POMPEY. How should that be?

MENAS. But entertain it, And though you think me poor, I am the man Will give thee all the world.

POMPEY. Hast thou drunk well?

MENAS. No, Pompey, I have kept me from the cup. Thou art, if thou dar’st be, the earthly Jove. Whate’er the ocean pales or sky inclips Is thine, if thou wilt have’t.

POMPEY. Show me which way.

MENAS. These three world-sharers, these competitors, Are in thy vessel. Let me cut the cable, And when we are put off, fall to their throats. All then is thine.

POMPEY. Ah, this thou shouldst have done And not have spoke on ’t! In me ’tis villainy; In thee ’t had been good service. Thou must know ’Tis not my profit that does lead mine honour; Mine honour it. Repent that e’er thy tongue Hath so betray’d thine act. Being done unknown, I should have found it afterwards well done, But must condemn it now. Desist, and drink.

MENAS. [Aside.] For this, I’ll never follow thy palled fortunes more. Who seeks, and will not take when once ’tis offered, Shall never find it more.

POMPEY. This health to Lepidus!

ANTONY. Bear him ashore. I’ll pledge it for him, Pompey.

ENOBARBUS. Here’s to thee, Menas!

MENAS. Enobarbus, welcome!

POMPEY. Fill till the cup be hid.

ENOBARBUS. There’s a strong fellow, Menas.

[Pointing to the servant who carries off Lepidus.]

MENAS. Why?

ENOBARBUS. ’A bears the third part of the world, man. Seest not?

MENAS. The third part, then, is drunk. Would it were all, That it might go on wheels!

ENOBARBUS. Drink thou. Increase the reels.

MENAS. Come.

POMPEY. This is not yet an Alexandrian feast.

ANTONY. It ripens towards it. Strike the vessels, ho! Here is to Caesar!

CAESAR. I could well forbear’t. It’s monstrous labour when I wash my brain And it grows fouler.

ANTONY. Be a child o’ the time.

CAESAR. Possess it, I’ll make answer. But I had rather fast from all, four days, Than drink so much in one.

ENOBARBUS. [To Antony.] Ha, my brave emperor, Shall we dance now the Egyptian Bacchanals And celebrate our drink?

POMPEY. Let’s ha’t, good soldier.

ANTONY. Come, let’s all take hands Till that the conquering wine hath steeped our sense In soft and delicate Lethe.

ENOBARBUS. All take hands. Make battery to our ears with the loud music, The while I’ll place you; then the boy shall sing. The holding every man shall beat as loud As his strong sides can volley.

Music plays. Enobarbus places them hand in hand.

THE SONG. Come, thou monarch of the vine, Plumpy Bacchus with pink eyne! In thy vats our cares be drowned, With thy grapes our hairs be crowned. Cup us till the world go round, Cup us till the world go round!

CAESAR. What would you more? Pompey, good night. Good brother, Let me request you off. Our graver business Frowns at this levity.—Gentle lords, let’s part. You see we have burnt our cheeks. Strong Enobarb Is weaker than the wine, and mine own tongue Splits what it speaks. The wild disguise hath almost Anticked us all. What needs more words. Good night. Good Antony, your hand.

POMPEY. I’ll try you on the shore.

ANTONY. And shall, sir. Give’s your hand.

POMPEY. O Antony, You have my father’s house. But, what? We are friends. Come, down into the boat.

ENOBARBUS. Take heed you fall not.

[Exeunt Pompey, Caesar, Antony and Attendants.]

Menas, I’ll not on shore.

MENAS. No, to my cabin. These drums, these trumpets, flutes! What! Let Neptune hear we bid a loud farewell To these great fellows. Sound and be hanged, sound out!

[Sound a flourish with drums.]

ENOBARBUS. Hoo, says ’a! There’s my cap!

MENAS. Hoo! Noble captain, come.

ACT III

SCENE I. A plain in Syria.

Enter Ventidius as it were in triumph, with Silius and other Romans, Officers and Soldiers; the dead body of Pacorus borne before him.

VENTIDIUS. Now, darting Parthia, art thou struck, and now Pleased Fortune does of Marcus Crassus’ death Make me revenger. Bear the king’s son’s body Before our army. Thy Pacorus, Orodes, Pays this for Marcus Crassus.

SILIUS. Noble Ventidius, Whilst yet with Parthian blood thy sword is warm, The fugitive Parthians follow. Spur through Media, Mesopotamia, and the shelters whither The routed fly. So thy grand captain Antony Shall set thee on triumphant chariots, and Put garlands on thy head.

VENTIDIUS. O Silius, Silius, I have done enough. A lower place, note well, May make too great an act. For learn this, Silius: Better to leave undone than by our deed Acquire too high a fame when him we serve’s away. Caesar and Antony have ever won More in their officer, than person. Sossius, One of my place in Syria, his lieutenant, For quick accumulation of renown, Which he achieved by th’ minute, lost his favour. Who does i’ th’ wars more than his captain can Becomes his captain’s captain; and ambition, The soldier’s virtue, rather makes choice of loss Than gain which darkens him. I could do more to do Antonius good, But ’twould offend him, and in his offence Should my performance perish.

SILIUS. Thou hast, Ventidius, that Without the which a soldier and his sword Grants scarce distinction. Thou wilt write to Antony?

VENTIDIUS. I’ll humbly signify what in his name, That magical word of war, we have effected; How, with his banners, and his well-paid ranks, The ne’er-yet-beaten horse of Parthia We have jaded out o’ th’ field.

SILIUS. Where is he now?

VENTIDIUS. He purposeth to Athens, whither, with what haste The weight we must convey with ’s will permit, We shall appear before him.—On there, pass along!

SCENE II. Rome. An Ante-chamber in Caesar’s house.

Enter Agrippa at one door, Enobarbus at another.

AGRIPPA. What, are the brothers parted?

ENOBARBUS. They have dispatched with Pompey; he is gone. The other three are sealing. Octavia weeps To part from Rome. Caesar is sad, and Lepidus, Since Pompey’s feast, as Menas says, is troubled With the greensickness.

AGRIPPA. ’Tis a noble Lepidus.

ENOBARBUS. A very fine one. O, how he loves Caesar!

AGRIPPA. Nay, but how dearly he adores Mark Antony!

ENOBARBUS. Caesar? Why he’s the Jupiter of men.

AGRIPPA. What’s Antony? The god of Jupiter.

ENOBARBUS. Spake you of Caesar? How, the nonpareil!

AGRIPPA. O, Antony! O thou Arabian bird!

ENOBARBUS. Would you praise Caesar, say “Caesar”. Go no further.

AGRIPPA. Indeed, he plied them both with excellent praises.

ENOBARBUS. But he loves Caesar best, yet he loves Antony. Hoo! Hearts, tongues, figures, scribes, bards, poets, cannot Think, speak, cast, write, sing, number—hoo!— His love to Antony. But as for Caesar, Kneel down, kneel down, and wonder.

AGRIPPA. Both he loves.

ENOBARBUS. They are his shards, and he their beetle.

[Trumpets within.]

So, This is to horse. Adieu, noble Agrippa.

AGRIPPA. Good fortune, worthy soldier, and farewell.

Enter Caesar, Antony, Lepidus and Octavia.

ANTONY. No further, sir.

CAESAR. You take from me a great part of myself. Use me well in’t. Sister, prove such a wife As my thoughts make thee, and as my farthest bond Shall pass on thy approof. Most noble Antony, Let not the piece of virtue which is set Betwixt us, as the cement of our love To keep it builded, be the ram to batter The fortress of it. For better might we Have loved without this mean, if on both parts This be not cherished.

ANTONY. Make me not offended In your distrust.

CAESAR. I have said.

ANTONY. You shall not find, Though you be therein curious, the least cause For what you seem to fear. So the gods keep you, And make the hearts of Romans serve your ends. We will here part.

CAESAR. Farewell, my dearest sister, fare thee well. The elements be kind to thee, and make Thy spirits all of comfort! Fare thee well.

OCTAVIA. My noble brother!

ANTONY. The April’s in her eyes. It is love’s spring, And these the showers to bring it on.—Be cheerful.

OCTAVIA. Sir, look well to my husband’s house, and—

CAESAR. What, Octavia?

OCTAVIA. I’ll tell you in your ear.

ANTONY. Her tongue will not obey her heart, nor can Her heart inform her tongue—the swan’s-down feather, That stands upon the swell at the full of tide, And neither way inclines.

ENOBARBUS. [Aside to Agrippa.] Will Caesar weep?

AGRIPPA. [Aside to Enobarbus.] He has a cloud in ’s face.

ENOBARBUS. [Aside to Agrippa.] He were the worse for that were he a horse; So is he, being a man.

AGRIPPA. [Aside to Enobarbus.] Why, Enobarbus, When Antony found Julius Caesar dead, He cried almost to roaring, and he wept When at Philippi he found Brutus slain.

ENOBARBUS. [Aside to Agrippa.] That year, indeed, he was troubled with a rheum; What willingly he did confound he wailed, Believe ’t, till I weep too.

CAESAR. No, sweet Octavia, You shall hear from me still. The time shall not Outgo my thinking on you.

ANTONY. Come, sir, come, I’ll wrestle with you in my strength of love. Look, here I have you, thus I let you go, And give you to the gods.

CAESAR. Adieu, be happy!

LEPIDUS. Let all the number of the stars give light To thy fair way!

CAESAR. Farewell, farewell!

[Kisses Octavia.]

ANTONY. Farewell!

[Trumpets sound. Exeunt.]

SCENE III. Alexandria. A Room in the Palace.

Enter Cleopatra, Charmian, Iras and Alexas.

CLEOPATRA. Where is the fellow?

ALEXAS. Half afeared to come.

CLEOPATRA. Go to, go to.

Enter a Messenger as before.

Come hither, sir.

ALEXAS. Good majesty, Herod of Jewry dare not look upon you But when you are well pleased.

CLEOPATRA. That Herod’s head I’ll have! But how, when Antony is gone, Through whom I might command it?—Come thou near.

MESSENGER. Most gracious majesty!

CLEOPATRA. Didst thou behold Octavia?

MESSENGER. Ay, dread queen.

CLEOPATRA. Where?

MESSENGER. Madam, in Rome I looked her in the face, and saw her led Between her brother and Mark Antony.

CLEOPATRA. Is she as tall as me?

MESSENGER. She is not, madam.

CLEOPATRA. Didst hear her speak? Is she shrill-tongued or low?

MESSENGER. Madam, I heard her speak. She is low-voiced.

CLEOPATRA. That’s not so good. He cannot like her long.

CHARMIAN. Like her? O Isis! ’Tis impossible.

CLEOPATRA. I think so, Charmian: dull of tongue and dwarfish! What majesty is in her gait? Remember, If e’er thou look’dst on majesty.

MESSENGER. She creeps. Her motion and her station are as one. She shows a body rather than a life, A statue than a breather.

CLEOPATRA. Is this certain?

MESSENGER. Or I have no observance.

CHARMIAN. Three in Egypt Cannot make better note.

CLEOPATRA. He’s very knowing; I do perceive’t. There’s nothing in her yet. The fellow has good judgment.

CHARMIAN. Excellent.

CLEOPATRA. Guess at her years, I prithee.

MESSENGER. Madam, She was a widow.

CLEOPATRA. Widow! Charmian, hark!

MESSENGER. And I do think she’s thirty.

CLEOPATRA. Bear’st thou her face in mind? Is’t long or round?

MESSENGER. Round even to faultiness.

CLEOPATRA. For the most part, too, they are foolish that are so. Her hair, what colour?

MESSENGER. Brown, madam, and her forehead As low as she would wish it.

CLEOPATRA. There’s gold for thee. Thou must not take my former sharpness ill. I will employ thee back again; I find thee Most fit for business. Go make thee ready; Our letters are prepared.

CHARMIAN. A proper man.

CLEOPATRA. Indeed, he is so. I repent me much That so I harried him. Why, methinks, by him, This creature’s no such thing.

CHARMIAN. Nothing, madam.

CLEOPATRA. The man hath seen some majesty, and should know.

CHARMIAN. Hath he seen majesty? Isis else defend, And serving you so long!

CLEOPATRA. I have one thing more to ask him yet, good Charmian. But ’tis no matter; thou shalt bring him to me Where I will write. All may be well enough.

CHARMIAN. I warrant you, madam.

SCENE IV. Athens. A Room in Antony’s House.

Enter Antony and Octavia.

ANTONY. Nay, nay, Octavia, not only that— That were excusable, that and thousands more Of semblable import—but he hath waged New wars ’gainst Pompey; made his will, and read it To public ear; Spoke scantly of me; when perforce he could not But pay me terms of honour, cold and sickly He vented them; most narrow measure lent me; When the best hint was given him, he not took ’t, Or did it from his teeth.

OCTAVIA. O, my good lord, Believe not all, or if you must believe, Stomach not all. A more unhappy lady, If this division chance, ne’er stood between, Praying for both parts. The good gods will mock me presently When I shall pray “O, bless my lord and husband!” Undo that prayer by crying out as loud “O, bless my brother!” Husband win, win brother, Prays and destroys the prayer; no midway ’Twixt these extremes at all.

ANTONY. Gentle Octavia, Let your best love draw to that point which seeks Best to preserve it. If I lose mine honour, I lose myself; better I were not yours Than yours so branchless. But, as you requested, Yourself shall go between’s. The meantime, lady, I’ll raise the preparation of a war Shall stain your brother. Make your soonest haste, So your desires are yours.

OCTAVIA. Thanks to my lord. The Jove of power make me, most weak, most weak, Your reconciler! Wars ’twixt you twain would be As if the world should cleave, and that slain men Should solder up the rift.

ANTONY. When it appears to you where this begins, Turn your displeasure that way, for our faults Can never be so equal that your love Can equally move with them. Provide your going; Choose your own company, and command what cost Your heart has mind to.

SCENE V. Athens. Another Room in Antony’s House.

Enter Enobarbus and Eros meeting.

ENOBARBUS. How now, friend Eros?

EROS. There’s strange news come, sir.

ENOBARBUS. What, man?

EROS. Caesar and Lepidus have made wars upon Pompey.

ENOBARBUS. This is old. What is the success?

EROS. Caesar, having made use of him in the wars ’gainst Pompey, presently denied him rivality; would not let him partake in the glory of the action, and, not resting here, accuses him of letters he had formerly wrote to Pompey; upon his own appeal, seizes him. So the poor third is up, till death enlarge his confine.

ENOBARBUS. Then, world, thou hast a pair of chaps, no more, And throw between them all the food thou hast, They’ll grind the one the other. Where’s Antony?

EROS. He’s walking in the garden, thus, and spurns The rush that lies before him; cries “Fool Lepidus!” And threats the throat of that his officer That murdered Pompey.

ENOBARBUS. Our great navy’s rigged.

EROS. For Italy and Caesar. More, Domitius: My lord desires you presently. My news I might have told hereafter.

ENOBARBUS. ’Twill be naught, But let it be. Bring me to Antony.

EROS. Come, sir.

SCENE VI. Rome. A Room in Caesar’s House.

Enter Agrippa, Maecenas and Caesar.

CAESAR. Contemning Rome, he has done all this, and more In Alexandria. Here’s the manner of ’t: I’ th’ market-place, on a tribunal silvered, Cleopatra and himself in chairs of gold Were publicly enthroned. At the feet sat Caesarion, whom they call my father’s son, And all the unlawful issue that their lust Since then hath made between them. Unto her He gave the stablishment of Egypt; made her Of lower Syria, Cyprus, Lydia, Absolute queen.

MAECENAS. This in the public eye?

CAESAR. I’ th’ common showplace where they exercise. His sons he there proclaimed the kings of kings: Great Media, Parthia, and Armenia He gave to Alexander; to Ptolemy he assigned Syria, Cilicia, and Phoenicia. She In th’ habiliments of the goddess Isis That day appeared, and oft before gave audience, As ’tis reported, so.

MAECENAS. Let Rome be thus informed.

AGRIPPA. Who, queasy with his insolence already, Will their good thoughts call from him.

CAESAR. The people knows it and have now received His accusations.

AGRIPPA. Who does he accuse?

CAESAR. Caesar, and that, having in Sicily Sextus Pompeius spoiled, we had not rated him His part o’ th’ isle. Then does he say he lent me Some shipping, unrestored. Lastly, he frets That Lepidus of the triumvirate Should be deposed and, being, that we detain All his revenue.

AGRIPPA. Sir, this should be answered.

CAESAR. ’Tis done already, and messenger gone. I have told him Lepidus was grown too cruel, That he his high authority abused, And did deserve his change. For what I have conquered I grant him part; but then in his Armenia And other of his conquered kingdoms, I Demand the like.

MAECENAS. He’ll never yield to that.

CAESAR. Nor must not then be yielded to in this.

Enter Octavia with her train.

OCTAVIA. Hail, Caesar, and my lord! Hail, most dear Caesar!

CAESAR. That ever I should call thee castaway!

OCTAVIA. You have not called me so, nor have you cause.

CAESAR. Why have you stolen upon us thus? You come not Like Caesar’s sister. The wife of Antony Should have an army for an usher, and The neighs of horse to tell of her approach Long ere she did appear. The trees by th’ way Should have borne men, and expectation fainted, Longing for what it had not. Nay, the dust Should have ascended to the roof of heaven, Raised by your populous troops. But you are come A market-maid to Rome, and have prevented The ostentation of our love, which, left unshown, Is often left unloved. We should have met you By sea and land, supplying every stage With an augmented greeting.

OCTAVIA. Good my lord, To come thus was I not constrained, but did it On my free will. My lord, Mark Antony, Hearing that you prepared for war, acquainted My grieved ear withal, whereon I begged His pardon for return.

CAESAR. Which soon he granted, Being an abstract ’tween his lust and him.

OCTAVIA. Do not say so, my lord.

CAESAR. I have eyes upon him, And his affairs come to me on the wind. Where is he now?

OCTAVIA. My lord, in Athens.

CAESAR. No, my most wronged sister. Cleopatra Hath nodded him to her. He hath given his empire Up to a whore, who now are levying The kings o’ th’ earth for war. He hath assembled Bocchus, the king of Libya; Archelaus Of Cappadocia; Philadelphos, king Of Paphlagonia; the Thracian king, Adallas; King Manchus of Arabia; King of Pont; Herod of Jewry; Mithridates, king Of Comagene; Polemon and Amyntas, The kings of Mede and Lycaonia, With a more larger list of sceptres.

OCTAVIA. Ay me, most wretched, That have my heart parted betwixt two friends That does afflict each other!

CAESAR. Welcome hither. Your letters did withhold our breaking forth Till we perceived both how you were wrong led And we in negligent danger. Cheer your heart. Be you not troubled with the time, which drives O’er your content these strong necessities, But let determined things to destiny Hold unbewailed their way. Welcome to Rome, Nothing more dear to me. You are abused Beyond the mark of thought, and the high gods, To do you justice, make their ministers Of us and those that love you. Best of comfort, And ever welcome to us.

AGRIPPA. Welcome, lady.

MAECENAS. Welcome, dear madam. Each heart in Rome does love and pity you. Only th’ adulterous Antony, most large In his abominations, turns you off And gives his potent regiment to a trull That noises it against us.

OCTAVIA. Is it so, sir?

CAESAR. Most certain. Sister, welcome. Pray you Be ever known to patience. My dear’st sister!

SCENE VII. Antony’s Camp near the Promontory of Actium.

Enter Cleopatra and Enobarbus.

CLEOPATRA. I will be even with thee, doubt it not.

ENOBARBUS. But why, why, why?

CLEOPATRA. Thou hast forspoke my being in these wars And say’st it is not fit.

ENOBARBUS. Well, is it, is it?

CLEOPATRA. Is ’t not denounced against us? Why should not we Be there in person?

ENOBARBUS. Well, I could reply: If we should serve with horse and mares together, The horse were merely lost. The mares would bear A soldier and his horse.

CLEOPATRA. What is’t you say?

ENOBARBUS. Your presence needs must puzzle Antony, Take from his heart, take from his brain, from ’s time, What should not then be spared. He is already Traduced for levity, and ’tis said in Rome That Photinus, an eunuch, and your maids Manage this war.

CLEOPATRA. Sink Rome, and their tongues rot That speak against us! A charge we bear i’ th’ war, And, as the president of my kingdom, will Appear there for a man. Speak not against it. I will not stay behind.

Enter Antony and Canidius.

ENOBARBUS. Nay, I have done. Here comes the Emperor.

ANTONY. Is it not strange, Canidius, That from Tarentum and Brundusium He could so quickly cut the Ionian sea And take in Toryne?—You have heard on ’t, sweet?

CLEOPATRA. Celerity is never more admired Than by the negligent.

ANTONY. A good rebuke, Which might have well becomed the best of men To taunt at slackness.—Canidius, we Will fight with him by sea.

CLEOPATRA. By sea, what else?

CANIDIUS. Why will my lord do so?

ANTONY. For that he dares us to ’t.

ENOBARBUS. So hath my lord dared him to single fight.

CANIDIUS. Ay, and to wage this battle at Pharsalia, Where Caesar fought with Pompey. But these offers, Which serve not for his vantage, he shakes off, And so should you.

ENOBARBUS. Your ships are not well manned, Your mariners are muleteers, reapers, people Engrossed by swift impress. In Caesar’s fleet Are those that often have ’gainst Pompey fought. Their ships are yare, yours heavy. No disgrace Shall fall you for refusing him at sea, Being prepared for land.

ANTONY. By sea, by sea.

ENOBARBUS. Most worthy sir, you therein throw away The absolute soldiership you have by land; Distract your army, which doth most consist Of war-marked footmen; leave unexecuted Your own renowned knowledge; quite forgo The way which promises assurance; and Give up yourself merely to chance and hazard From firm security.

ANTONY. I’ll fight at sea.

CLEOPATRA. I have sixty sails, Caesar none better.

ANTONY. Our overplus of shipping will we burn, And with the rest full-manned, from th’ head of Actium Beat th’ approaching Caesar. But if we fail, We then can do ’t at land.

Thy business?

MESSENGER. The news is true, my lord; he is descried. Caesar has taken Toryne.

ANTONY. Can he be there in person? ’Tis impossible; Strange that his power should be. Canidius, Our nineteen legions thou shalt hold by land, And our twelve thousand horse. We’ll to our ship. Away, my Thetis!

Enter a Soldier.

How now, worthy soldier?

SOLDIER. O noble emperor, do not fight by sea. Trust not to rotten planks. Do you misdoubt This sword and these my wounds? Let th’ Egyptians And the Phoenicians go a-ducking. We Have used to conquer standing on the earth And fighting foot to foot.

ANTONY. Well, well, away.

[Exeunt Antony, Cleopatra and Enobarbus.]

SOLDIER. By Hercules, I think I am i’ th’ right.

CANIDIUS. Soldier, thou art. But his whole action grows Not in the power on ’t. So our leader’s led, And we are women’s men.

SOLDIER. You keep by land The legions and the horse whole, do you not?

CANIDIUS. Marcus Octavius, Marcus Justeius, Publicola, and Caelius are for sea, But we keep whole by land. This speed of Caesar’s Carries beyond belief.

SOLDIER. While he was yet in Rome, His power went out in such distractions as Beguiled all spies.

CANIDIUS. Who’s his lieutenant, hear you?

SOLDIER. They say one Taurus.

CANIDIUS. Well I know the man.

MESSENGER. The Emperor calls Canidius.

CANIDIUS. With news the time’s with labour, and throes forth Each minute some.

SCENE VIII. A plain near Actium.

Enter Caesar with his army and Taurus marching.

CAESAR. Taurus!

TAURUS. My lord?

CAESAR. Strike not by land; keep whole; provoke not battle Till we have done at sea. Do not exceed The prescript of this scroll. Our fortune lies Upon this jump.

SCENE IX. Another part of the Plain.

Enter Antony and Enobarbus.

ANTONY. Set we our squadrons on yon side o’ th’ hill In eye of Caesar’s battle, from which place We may the number of the ships behold And so proceed accordingly.

SCENE X. Another part of the Plain.

Canidius marching with his land army one way over the stage, and Taurus, the Lieutenant of Caesar, with his Army, the other way. After their going in, is heard the noise of a sea fight.

Alarum. Enter Enobarbus.

ENOBARBUS. Naught, naught, all naught! I can behold no longer. Th’ Antoniad, the Egyptian admiral, With all their sixty, fly and turn the rudder. To see ’t mine eyes are blasted.

Enter Scarus.

SCARUS. Gods and goddesses, All the whole synod of them!

ENOBARBUS. What’s thy passion?

SCARUS. The greater cantle of the world is lost With very ignorance. We have kissed away Kingdoms and provinces.

ENOBARBUS. How appears the fight?

SCARUS. On our side, like the tokened pestilence, Where death is sure. Yon ribaudred nag of Egypt, Whom leprosy o’ertake, i’ th’ midst o’ th’ fight, When vantage like a pair of twins appeared, Both as the same—or, rather, ours the elder— The breeze upon her, like a cow in June, Hoists sails and flies.

ENOBARBUS. That I beheld. Mine eyes did sicken at the sight and could not Endure a further view.

SCARUS. She once being loofed, The noble ruin of her magic, Antony, Claps on his sea-wing and, like a doting mallard, Leaving the fight in height, flies after her. I never saw an action of such shame. Experience, manhood, honour, ne’er before Did violate so itself.

ENOBARBUS. Alack, alack!

Enter Canidius.

CANIDIUS. Our fortune on the sea is out of breath And sinks most lamentably. Had our general Been what he knew himself, it had gone well. O, he has given example for our flight Most grossly by his own!

ENOBARBUS. Ay, are you thereabouts? Why, then, good night indeed.

CANIDIUS. Toward Peloponnesus are they fled.

SCARUS. ’Tis easy to’t, and there I will attend What further comes.

CANIDIUS. To Caesar will I render My legions and my horse. Six kings already Show me the way of yielding.

ENOBARBUS. I’ll yet follow The wounded chance of Antony, though my reason Sits in the wind against me.

SCENE XI. Alexandria. A Room in the Palace.

Enter Antony with attendants.

ANTONY. Hark, the land bids me tread no more upon’t. It is ashamed to bear me. Friends, come hither. I am so lated in the world that I Have lost my way for ever. I have a ship Laden with gold. Take that, divide it. Fly, And make your peace with Caesar.

ALL. Fly? Not we.

ANTONY. I have fled myself, and have instructed cowards To run and show their shoulders. Friends, be gone. I have myself resolved upon a course Which has no need of you. Be gone. My treasure’s in the harbour. Take it. O, I followed that I blush to look upon. My very hairs do mutiny, for the white Reprove the brown for rashness, and they them For fear and doting. Friends, be gone. You shall Have letters from me to some friends that will Sweep your way for you. Pray you, look not sad, Nor make replies of loathness. Take the hint Which my despair proclaims. Let that be left Which leaves itself. To the sea-side straightway. I will possess you of that ship and treasure. Leave me, I pray, a little—pray you, now, Nay, do so; for indeed I have lost command. Therefore I pray you. I’ll see you by and by.

[Sits down.]

Enter Cleopatra led by Charmian, Iras and Eros.

EROS. Nay, gentle madam, to him! Comfort him.

IRAS. Do, most dear queen.

CHARMIAN. Do! Why, what else?

CLEOPATRA. Let me sit down. O Juno!

ANTONY. No, no, no, no, no.

EROS. See you here, sir?

ANTONY. O, fie, fie, fie!

CHARMIAN. Madam.

IRAS. Madam, O good empress!

EROS. Sir, sir!

ANTONY. Yes, my lord, yes. He at Philippi kept His sword e’en like a dancer, while I struck The lean and wrinkled Cassius, and ’twas I That the mad Brutus ended. He alone Dealt on lieutenantry, and no practice had In the brave squares of war. Yet now—no matter.

CLEOPATRA. Ah, stand by.

EROS. The Queen, my lord, the Queen!

IRAS. Go to him, madam; speak to him. He is unqualitied with very shame.

CLEOPATRA. Well then, sustain me. O!

EROS. Most noble sir, arise. The Queen approaches. Her head’s declined, and death will seize her but Your comfort makes the rescue.

ANTONY. I have offended reputation, A most unnoble swerving.

EROS. Sir, the Queen.

ANTONY. O, whither hast thou led me, Egypt? See How I convey my shame out of thine eyes By looking back what I have left behind ’Stroyed in dishonour.

CLEOPATRA. O my lord, my lord, Forgive my fearful sails! I little thought You would have followed.

ANTONY. Egypt, thou knew’st too well My heart was to thy rudder tied by th’ strings, And thou shouldst tow me after. O’er my spirit Thy full supremacy thou knew’st, and that Thy beck might from the bidding of the gods Command me.

CLEOPATRA. O, my pardon!

ANTONY. Now I must To the young man send humble treaties, dodge And palter in the shifts of lowness, who With half the bulk o’ th’ world played as I pleased, Making and marring fortunes. You did know How much you were my conqueror, and that My sword, made weak by my affection, would Obey it on all cause.

CLEOPATRA. Pardon, pardon!

ANTONY. Fall not a tear, I say; one of them rates All that is won and lost. Give me a kiss. Even this repays me. We sent our schoolmaster. Is he come back? Love, I am full of lead. Some wine Within there, and our viands! Fortune knows We scorn her most when most she offers blows.

SCENE XII. Caesar’s camp in Egypt.

Enter Caesar, Agrippa, Dolabella with others.

CAESAR. Let him appear that’s come from Antony. Know you him?

DOLABELLA. Caesar, ’tis his schoolmaster— An argument that he is plucked, when hither He sends so poor a pinion of his wing, Which had superfluous kings for messengers Not many moons gone by.

Enter Ambassador from Anthony.

CAESAR. Approach, and speak.

AMBASSADOR. Such as I am, I come from Antony. I was of late as petty to his ends As is the morn-dew on the myrtle leaf To his grand sea.

CAESAR. Be’t so. Declare thine office.

AMBASSADOR. Lord of his fortunes he salutes thee, and Requires to live in Egypt, which not granted, He lessens his requests, and to thee sues To let him breathe between the heavens and earth, A private man in Athens. This for him. Next, Cleopatra does confess thy greatness, Submits her to thy might, and of thee craves The circle of the Ptolemies for her heirs, Now hazarded to thy grace.

CAESAR. For Antony, I have no ears to his request. The queen Of audience nor desire shall fail, so she From Egypt drive her all-disgraced friend, Or take his life there. This if she perform, She shall not sue unheard. So to them both.

AMBASSADOR. Fortune pursue thee!

CAESAR. Bring him through the bands.

[Exit Ambassador, attended.]

[To Thidias.] To try thy eloquence now ’tis time. Dispatch. From Antony win Cleopatra. Promise, And in our name, what she requires; add more, From thine invention, offers. Women are not In their best fortunes strong, but want will perjure The ne’er-touch’d vestal. Try thy cunning, Thidias; Make thine own edict for thy pains, which we Will answer as a law.

THIDIAS. Caesar, I go.

CAESAR. Observe how Antony becomes his flaw, And what thou think’st his very action speaks In every power that moves.

THIDIAS. Caesar, I shall.

SCENE XIII. Alexandria. A Room in the Palace.

Enter Cleopatra, Enobarbus, Charmian and Iras.

CLEOPATRA. What shall we do, Enobarbus?

ENOBARBUS. Think, and die.

CLEOPATRA. Is Antony or we in fault for this?

ENOBARBUS. Antony only, that would make his will Lord of his reason. What though you fled From that great face of war, whose several ranges Frighted each other? Why should he follow? The itch of his affection should not then Have nicked his captainship, at such a point, When half to half the world opposed, he being The mered question. ’Twas a shame no less Than was his loss, to course your flying flags And leave his navy gazing.

CLEOPATRA. Prithee, peace.

Enter the Ambassador with Antony.

ANTONY. Is that his answer?

AMBASSADOR. Ay, my lord.

ANTONY. The Queen shall then have courtesy, so she Will yield us up.

AMBASSADOR. He says so.

ANTONY. Let her know’t.— To the boy Caesar send this grizzled head, And he will fill thy wishes to the brim With principalities.

CLEOPATRA. That head, my lord?

ANTONY. To him again. Tell him he wears the rose Of youth upon him, from which the world should note Something particular: his coin, ships, legions, May be a coward’s; whose ministers would prevail Under the service of a child as soon As i’ th’ command of Caesar. I dare him therefore To lay his gay comparisons apart, And answer me declined, sword against sword, Ourselves alone. I’ll write it. Follow me.

[Exeunt Antony and Ambassador.]

ENOBARBUS. Yes, like enough high-battled Caesar will Unstate his happiness, and be staged to th’ show Against a sworder! I see men’s judgments are A parcel of their fortunes, and things outward Do draw the inward quality after them To suffer all alike. That he should dream, Knowing all measures, the full Caesar will Answer his emptiness! Caesar, thou hast subdued His judgment too.

Enter a Servant.

SERVANT. A messenger from Caesar.

CLEOPATRA. What, no more ceremony? See, my women, Against the blown rose may they stop their nose That kneeled unto the buds. Admit him, sir.

[Exit Servant.]

ENOBARBUS. [Aside.] Mine honesty and I begin to square. The loyalty well held to fools does make Our faith mere folly. Yet he that can endure To follow with allegiance a fallen lord Does conquer him that did his master conquer, And earns a place i’ th’ story.

Enter Thidias.

CLEOPATRA. Caesar’s will?

THIDIAS. Hear it apart.

CLEOPATRA. None but friends. Say boldly.

THIDIAS. So haply are they friends to Antony.

ENOBARBUS. He needs as many, sir, as Caesar has, Or needs not us. If Caesar please, our master Will leap to be his friend. For us, you know Whose he is we are, and that is Caesar’s.

THIDIAS. So.— Thus then, thou most renowned: Caesar entreats Not to consider in what case thou stand’st Further than he is Caesar.

CLEOPATRA. Go on; right royal.

THIDIAS. He knows that you embrace not Antony As you did love, but as you feared him.

CLEOPATRA. O!

THIDIAS. The scars upon your honour, therefore, he Does pity as constrained blemishes, Not as deserved.

CLEOPATRA. He is a god and knows What is most right. Mine honour was not yielded, But conquered merely.

ENOBARBUS. [Aside.] To be sure of that, I will ask Antony. Sir, sir, thou art so leaky That we must leave thee to thy sinking, for Thy dearest quit thee.

[Exit Enobarbus.]

THIDIAS. Shall I say to Caesar What you require of him? For he partly begs To be desired to give. It much would please him That of his fortunes you should make a staff To lean upon. But it would warm his spirits To hear from me you had left Antony, And put yourself under his shroud, The universal landlord.

CLEOPATRA. What’s your name?

THIDIAS. My name is Thidias.

CLEOPATRA. Most kind messenger, Say to great Caesar this in deputation: I kiss his conqu’ring hand. Tell him I am prompt To lay my crown at’s feet, and there to kneel. Tell him, from his all-obeying breath I hear The doom of Egypt.

THIDIAS. ’Tis your noblest course. Wisdom and fortune combating together, If that the former dare but what it can, No chance may shake it. Give me grace to lay My duty on your hand.

CLEOPATRA. Your Caesar’s father oft, When he hath mused of taking kingdoms in, Bestowed his lips on that unworthy place As it rained kisses.

ANTONY. Favours, by Jove that thunders! What art thou, fellow?

THIDIAS. One that but performs The bidding of the fullest man and worthiest To have command obeyed.

ENOBARBUS. [Aside.] You will be whipped.

ANTONY. Approach there.—Ah, you kite!—Now, gods and devils, Authority melts from me. Of late when I cried “Ho!” Like boys unto a muss, kings would start forth And cry “Your will?” Have you no ears? I am Antony yet.

Enter Servants.

Take hence this jack and whip him.

ENOBARBUS. ’Tis better playing with a lion’s whelp Than with an old one dying.

ANTONY. Moon and stars! Whip him. Were’t twenty of the greatest tributaries That do acknowledge Caesar, should I find them So saucy with the hand of she here—what’s her name Since she was Cleopatra? Whip him, fellows, Till like a boy you see him cringe his face And whine aloud for mercy. Take him hence.

THIDIAS. Mark Antony—

ANTONY. Tug him away. Being whipp’d, Bring him again. This jack of Caesar’s shall Bear us an errand to him.

[Exeunt Servants with Thidias.]

You were half blasted ere I knew you. Ha! Have I my pillow left unpressed in Rome, Forborne the getting of a lawful race, And by a gem of women, to be abused By one that looks on feeders?

CLEOPATRA. Good my lord—

ANTONY. You have been a boggler ever. But when we in our viciousness grow hard— O misery on’t!—the wise gods seal our eyes, In our own filth drop our clear judgments, make us Adore our errors, laugh at’s while we strut To our confusion.

CLEOPATRA. O, is’t come to this?

ANTONY. I found you as a morsel cold upon Dead Caesar’s trencher; nay, you were a fragment Of Gneius Pompey’s, besides what hotter hours, Unregistered in vulgar fame, you have Luxuriously pick’d out. For I am sure, Though you can guess what temperance should be, You know not what it is.

CLEOPATRA. Wherefore is this?

ANTONY. To let a fellow that will take rewards And say “God quit you!” be familiar with My playfellow, your hand, this kingly seal And plighter of high hearts! O that I were Upon the hill of Basan, to outroar The horned herd! For I have savage cause, And to proclaim it civilly were like A haltered neck which does the hangman thank For being yare about him.

Enter a Servant with Thidias.

Is he whipped?

SERVANT. Soundly, my lord.

ANTONY. Cried he? And begged he pardon?

SERVANT. He did ask favour.

ANTONY. If that thy father live, let him repent Thou wast not made his daughter; and be thou sorry To follow Caesar in his triumph, since Thou hast been whipped for following him. Henceforth The white hand of a lady fever thee; Shake thou to look on’t. Get thee back to Caesar; Tell him thy entertainment. Look thou say He makes me angry with him; for he seems Proud and disdainful, harping on what I am, Not what he knew I was. He makes me angry, And at this time most easy ’tis to do’t, When my good stars that were my former guides Have empty left their orbs and shot their fires Into th’ abysm of hell. If he mislike My speech and what is done, tell him he has Hipparchus, my enfranched bondman, whom He may at pleasure whip, or hang, or torture, As he shall like, to quit me. Urge it thou. Hence with thy stripes, be gone.

[Exit Thidias.]

CLEOPATRA. Have you done yet?

ANTONY. Alack, our terrene moon is now eclipsed, And it portends alone the fall of Antony.

CLEOPATRA. I must stay his time.

ANTONY. To flatter Caesar, would you mingle eyes With one that ties his points?

CLEOPATRA. Not know me yet?

ANTONY. Cold-hearted toward me?

CLEOPATRA. Ah, dear, if I be so, From my cold heart let heaven engender hail And poison it in the source, and the first stone Drop in my neck; as it determines, so Dissolve my life! The next Caesarion smite, Till, by degrees the memory of my womb, Together with my brave Egyptians all, By the discandying of this pelleted storm, Lie graveless, till the flies and gnats of Nile Have buried them for prey!

ANTONY. I am satisfied. Caesar sits down in Alexandria, where I will oppose his fate. Our force by land Hath nobly held; our severed navy too Have knit again, and fleet, threat’ning most sea-like. Where hast thou been, my heart? Dost thou hear, lady? If from the field I shall return once more To kiss these lips, I will appear in blood. I and my sword will earn our chronicle. There’s hope in’t yet.

CLEOPATRA. That’s my brave lord!

ANTONY. I will be treble-sinewed, hearted, breathed, And fight maliciously. For when mine hours Were nice and lucky, men did ransom lives Of me for jests. But now I’ll set my teeth And send to darkness all that stop me. Come, Let’s have one other gaudy night. Call to me All my sad captains. Fill our bowls once more Let’s mock the midnight bell.

CLEOPATRA. It is my birthday. I had thought t’have held it poor, but since my lord Is Antony again, I will be Cleopatra.

ANTONY. We will yet do well.

CLEOPATRA. Call all his noble captains to my lord.

ANTONY. Do so; we’ll speak to them; and tonight I’ll force The wine peep through their scars. Come on, my queen, There’s sap in’t yet. The next time I do fight I’ll make Death love me, for I will contend Even with his pestilent scythe.

[Exeunt all but Enobarbus.]

ENOBARBUS. Now he’ll outstare the lightning. To be furious Is to be frighted out of fear, and in that mood The dove will peck the estridge; and I see still A diminution in our captain’s brain Restores his heart. When valour preys on reason, It eats the sword it fights with. I will seek Some way to leave him.

ACT IV

SCENE I. Caesar’s Camp at Alexandria.

Enter Caesar, Agrippa, and Maecenas, with his army. Caesar reading a letter.

CAESAR. He calls me boy, and chides as he had power To beat me out of Egypt. My messenger He hath whipped with rods; dares me to personal combat, Caesar to Antony. Let the old ruffian know I have many other ways to die; meantime Laugh at his challenge.

MAECENAS. Caesar must think, When one so great begins to rage, he’s hunted Even to falling. Give him no breath, but now Make boot of his distraction. Never anger Made good guard for itself.

CAESAR. Let our best heads Know that tomorrow the last of many battles We mean to fight. Within our files there are, Of those that served Mark Antony but late, Enough to fetch him in. See it done, And feast the army; we have store to do’t, And they have earned the waste. Poor Antony!

SCENE II. Alexandria. A Room in the Palace.

Enter Antony, Cleopatra, Enobarbus, Charmian, Iras, Alexas with others.

ANTONY. He will not fight with me, Domitius?

ENOBARBUS. No.

ANTONY. Why should he not?

ENOBARBUS. He thinks, being twenty times of better fortune, He is twenty men to one.

ANTONY. Tomorrow, soldier, By sea and land I’ll fight. Or I will live, Or bathe my dying honour in the blood Shall make it live again. Woo’t thou fight well?

ENOBARBUS. I’ll strike, and cry “Take all.”

ANTONY. Well said. Come on. Call forth my household servants. Let’s tonight Be bounteous at our meal.—

Give me thy hand. Thou has been rightly honest; so hast thou, Thou, and thou, and thou. You have served me well, And kings have been your fellows.

CLEOPATRA. [Aside to Enobarbus.] What means this?

ENOBARBUS. [Aside to Cleopatra.] ’Tis one of those odd tricks which sorrow shoots Out of the mind.

ANTONY. And thou art honest too. I wish I could be made so many men, And all of you clapped up together in An Antony, that I might do you service So good as you have done.

ALL THE SERVANTS. The gods forbid!

ANTONY. Well, my good fellows, wait on me tonight. Scant not my cups, and make as much of me As when mine empire was your fellow too And suffered my command.

CLEOPATRA. [Aside to Enobarbus.] What does he mean?

ENOBARBUS. [Aside to Cleopatra.] To make his followers weep.

ANTONY. Tend me tonight; May be it is the period of your duty. Haply you shall not see me more, or if, A mangled shadow. Perchance tomorrow You’ll serve another master. I look on you As one that takes his leave. Mine honest friends, I turn you not away, but, like a master Married to your good service, stay till death. Tend me tonight two hours, I ask no more, And the gods yield you for’t!

ENOBARBUS. What mean you, sir, To give them this discomfort? Look, they weep, And I, an ass, am onion-eyed. For shame, Transform us not to women.

ANTONY. Ho, ho, ho! Now the witch take me if I meant it thus! Grace grow where those drops fall! My hearty friends, You take me in too dolorous a sense, For I spake to you for your comfort, did desire you To burn this night with torches. Know, my hearts, I hope well of tomorrow, and will lead you Where rather I’ll expect victorious life Than death and honour. Let’s to supper, come, And drown consideration.

SCENE III. Alexandria. Before the Palace.

Enter a Company of Soldiers.

FIRST SOLDIER. Brother, good night. Tomorrow is the day.

SECOND SOLDIER. It will determine one way. Fare you well. Heard you of nothing strange about the streets?

FIRST SOLDIER. Nothing. What news?

SECOND SOLDIER. Belike ’tis but a rumour. Good night to you.

FIRST SOLDIER. Well, sir, good night.

Enter two other Soldiers.

SECOND SOLDIER. Soldiers, have careful watch.

THIRD SOLDIER. And you. Good night, good night.

[They place themselves in every corner of the stage.]

SECOND SOLDIER. Here we. And if tomorrow Our navy thrive, I have an absolute hope Our landmen will stand up.

FIRST SOLDIER. ’Tis a brave army, and full of purpose.

[Music of the hautboys under the stage.]

SECOND SOLDIER. Peace, what noise?

FIRST SOLDIER. List, list!

SECOND SOLDIER. Hark!

FIRST SOLDIER. Music i’ th’ air.

THIRD SOLDIER. Under the earth.

FOURTH SOLDIER. It signs well, does it not?

THIRD SOLDIER. No.

FIRST SOLDIER. Peace, I say! What should this mean?

SECOND SOLDIER. ’Tis the god Hercules, whom Antony loved, Now leaves him.

FIRST SOLDIER. Walk. Let’s see if other watchmen Do hear what we do.

[They advance to another post.]

SECOND SOLDIER. How now, masters!

ALL. How now! How now! Do you hear this?

FIRST SOLDIER. Ay. Is’t not strange?

THIRD SOLDIER. Do you hear, masters? Do you hear?

FIRST SOLDIER. Follow the noise so far as we have quarter. Let’s see how it will give off.

ALL. Content. ’Tis strange.

SCENE IV. Alexandria. A Room in the Palace.

Enter Antony and Cleopatra with others.

ANTONY. Eros! Mine armour, Eros!

CLEOPATRA. Sleep a little.

ANTONY. No, my chuck.—Eros! Come, mine armour, Eros!

Enter Eros with armour.

Come, good fellow, put thine iron on. If fortune be not ours today, it is Because we brave her. Come.

CLEOPATRA. Nay, I’ll help too. What’s this for?

ANTONY. Ah, let be, let be! Thou art The armourer of my heart. False, false. This, this!

CLEOPATRA. Sooth, la, I’ll help. Thus it must be.

ANTONY. Well, well, We shall thrive now. Seest thou, my good fellow? Go put on thy defences.

EROS. Briefly, sir.

CLEOPATRA. Is not this buckled well?

ANTONY. Rarely, rarely. He that unbuckles this, till we do please To daff’t for our repose, shall hear a storm. Thou fumblest, Eros, and my queen’s a squire More tight at this than thou. Dispatch. O love, That thou couldst see my wars today, and knew’st The royal occupation, thou shouldst see A workman in’t.

Enter an Officer, armed.

Good morrow to thee. Welcome. Thou look’st like him that knows a warlike charge. To business that we love we rise betime And go to’t with delight.

OFFICER. A thousand, sir, Early though’t be, have on their riveted trim And at the port expect you.

[Shout. Trumpets flourish.]

Enter other Captains and Soldiers.

CAPTAIN. The morn is fair. Good morrow, general.

ALL. Good morrow, general.

ANTONY. ’Tis well blown, lads. This morning, like the spirit of a youth That means to be of note, begins betimes. So, so. Come, give me that. This way. Well said. Fare thee well, dame. Whate’er becomes of me, This is a soldier’s kiss. [Kisses her.] Rebukeable And worthy shameful check it were, to stand On more mechanic compliment. I’ll leave thee Now like a man of steel.—You that will fight, Follow me close, I’ll bring you to’t. Adieu.

[Exeunt Antony, Eros, Captains and Soldiers.]

CHARMIAN. Please you, retire to your chamber.

CLEOPATRA. Lead me. He goes forth gallantly. That he and Caesar might Determine this great war in single fight! Then Antony—but now—. Well, on.

SCENE V. Antony’s camp near Alexandria.

Trumpets sound. Enter Antony and Eros, a Soldier meeting them.

SOLDIER. The gods make this a happy day to Antony!

ANTONY. Would thou and those thy scars had once prevailed To make me fight at land!

SOLDIER. Hadst thou done so, The kings that have revolted and the soldier That has this morning left thee would have still Followed thy heels.

ANTONY. Who’s gone this morning?

SOLDIER. Who? One ever near thee. Call for Enobarbus, He shall not hear thee, or from Caesar’s camp Say “I am none of thine.”

ANTONY. What sayest thou?

SOLDIER. Sir, He is with Caesar.

EROS. Sir, his chests and treasure He has not with him.

ANTONY. Is he gone?

SOLDIER. Most certain.

ANTONY. Go, Eros, send his treasure after. Do it. Detain no jot, I charge thee. Write to him— I will subscribe—gentle adieus and greetings. Say that I wish he never find more cause To change a master. O, my fortunes have Corrupted honest men! Dispatch.—Enobarbus!

SCENE VI. Alexandria. Caesar’s camp.

Flourish. Enter Agrippa, Caesar with Enobarbus and Dolabella.

CAESAR. Go forth, Agrippa, and begin the fight. Our will is Antony be took alive; Make it so known.

AGRIPPA. Caesar, I shall.

CAESAR. The time of universal peace is near. Prove this a prosp’rous day, the three-nooked world Shall bear the olive freely.

MESSENGER. Antony Is come into the field.

CAESAR. Go charge Agrippa Plant those that have revolted in the van That Antony may seem to spend his fury Upon himself.

[Exeunt Caesar and his Train.]

ENOBARBUS. Alexas did revolt and went to Jewry on Affairs of Antony; there did dissuade Great Herod to incline himself to Caesar And leave his master Antony. For this pains Caesar hath hanged him. Canidius and the rest That fell away have entertainment but No honourable trust. I have done ill, Of which I do accuse myself so sorely That I will joy no more.

Enter a Soldier of Caesar’s.

SOLDIER. Enobarbus, Antony Hath after thee sent all thy treasure, with His bounty overplus. The messenger Came on my guard, and at thy tent is now Unloading of his mules.

ENOBARBUS. I give it you.

SOLDIER. Mock not, Enobarbus. I tell you true. Best you safed the bringer Out of the host. I must attend mine office, Or would have done’t myself. Your emperor Continues still a Jove.

ENOBARBUS. I am alone the villain of the earth, And feel I am so most. O Antony, Thou mine of bounty, how wouldst thou have paid My better service, when my turpitude Thou dost so crown with gold! This blows my heart. If swift thought break it not, a swifter mean Shall outstrike thought, but thought will do’t, I feel. I fight against thee! No, I will go seek Some ditch wherein to die; the foul’st best fits My latter part of life.

SCENE VII. Field of battle between the Camps.

Alarum. Drums and Trumpets. Enter Agrippa and others.

AGRIPPA. Retire! We have engaged ourselves too far. Caesar himself has work, and our oppression Exceeds what we expected.

Alarums. Enter Antony and Scarus wounded.

SCARUS. O my brave emperor, this is fought indeed! Had we done so at first, we had droven them home With clouts about their heads.

ANTONY. Thou bleed’st apace.

SCARUS. I had a wound here that was like a T, But now ’tis made an H.

Sounds retreat far off. ANTONY. They do retire.

SCARUS. We’ll beat ’em into bench-holes. I have yet Room for six scotches more.

Enter Eros.

EROS. They are beaten, sir, and our advantage serves For a fair victory.

SCARUS. Let us score their backs And snatch ’em up as we take hares, behind. ’Tis sport to maul a runner.

ANTONY. I will reward thee Once for thy sprightly comfort, and tenfold For thy good valour. Come thee on.

SCARUS. I’ll halt after.

SCENE VIII. Under the Walls of Alexandria.

Alarum. Enter Antony again in a march; Scarus with others.

ANTONY. We have beat him to his camp. Run one before And let the Queen know of our gests. Tomorrow, Before the sun shall see’s, we’ll spill the blood That has today escaped. I thank you all, For doughty-handed are you, and have fought Not as you served the cause, but as’t had been Each man’s like mine. You have shown all Hectors. Enter the city, clip your wives, your friends, Tell them your feats; whilst they with joyful tears Wash the congealment from your wounds and kiss The honoured gashes whole.

[To Scarus.] Give me thy hand. To this great fairy I’ll commend thy acts, Make her thanks bless thee. O thou day o’ th’ world, Chain mine armed neck. Leap thou, attire and all, Through proof of harness to my heart, and there Ride on the pants triumphing.

CLEOPATRA. Lord of lords! O infinite virtue, com’st thou smiling from The world’s great snare uncaught?

ANTONY. Mine nightingale, We have beat them to their beds. What, girl! Though grey Do something mingle with our younger brown, yet ha’ we A brain that nourishes our nerves and can Get goal for goal of youth. Behold this man. Commend unto his lips thy favouring hand.— Kiss it, my warrior. He hath fought today As if a god, in hate of mankind, had Destroyed in such a shape.

CLEOPATRA. I’ll give thee, friend, An armour all of gold. It was a king’s.

ANTONY. He has deserved it, were it carbuncled Like holy Phœbus’ car. Give me thy hand. Through Alexandria make a jolly march; Bear our hacked targets like the men that owe them. Had our great palace the capacity To camp this host, we all would sup together And drink carouses to the next day’s fate, Which promises royal peril.—Trumpeters, With brazen din blast you the city’s ear; Make mingle with our rattling tabourines, That heaven and earth may strike their sounds together, Applauding our approach.

SCENE IX. Caesar’s camp.

Enter a Sentry and his company. Enobarbus follows.

SENTRY. If we be not relieved within this hour, We must return to th’ court of guard. The night Is shiny, and they say we shall embattle By th’ second hour i’ th’ morn.

FIRST WATCH. This last day was a shrewd one to’s.

ENOBARBUS. O, bear me witness, night.—

SECOND WATCH. What man is this?

FIRST WATCH. Stand close and list him.

ENOBARBUS. Be witness to me, O thou blessed moon, When men revolted shall upon record Bear hateful memory, poor Enobarbus did Before thy face repent.

SENTRY. Enobarbus?

SECOND WATCH. Peace! Hark further.

ENOBARBUS. O sovereign mistress of true melancholy, The poisonous damp of night disponge upon me, That life, a very rebel to my will, May hang no longer on me. Throw my heart Against the flint and hardness of my fault, Which, being dried with grief, will break to powder And finish all foul thoughts. O Antony, Nobler than my revolt is infamous, Forgive me in thine own particular, But let the world rank me in register A master-leaver and a fugitive. O Antony! O Antony!

[Dies.]

FIRST WATCH. Let’s speak to him.

SENTRY. Let’s hear him, for the things he speaks may concern Caesar.

SECOND WATCH. Let’s do so. But he sleeps.

SENTRY. Swoons rather, for so bad a prayer as his Was never yet for sleep.

FIRST WATCH. Go we to him.

SECOND WATCH. Awake, sir, awake! Speak to us.

FIRST WATCH. Hear you, sir?

SENTRY. The hand of death hath raught him.

[Drums afar off.]

Hark! The drums Demurely wake the sleepers. Let us bear him To th’ court of guard; he is of note. Our hour Is fully out.

SECOND WATCH. Come on, then. He may recover yet.

[Exeunt with the body.]

SCENE X. Ground between the two Camps.

Enter Antony and Scarus with their army.

ANTONY. Their preparation is today by sea; We please them not by land.

SCARUS. For both, my lord.

ANTONY. I would they’d fight i’ th’ fire or i’ th’ air; We’d fight there too. But this it is: our foot Upon the hills adjoining to the city Shall stay with us—order for sea is given; They have put forth the haven— Where their appointment we may best discover And look on their endeavour.

SCENE XI. Another part of the Ground.

Enter Caesar and his army.

CAESAR. But being charged, we will be still by land, Which, as I take’t, we shall, for his best force Is forth to man his galleys. To the vales, And hold our best advantage.

SCENE XII. Another part of the Ground.

Alarum afar off, as at a sea fight. Enter Antony and Scarus.

ANTONY. Yet they are not joined. Where yond pine does stand I shall discover all. I’ll bring thee word Straight how ’tis like to go.

SCARUS. Swallows have built In Cleopatra’s sails their nests. The augurs Say they know not, they cannot tell; look grimly, And dare not speak their knowledge. Antony Is valiant and dejected, and by starts His fretted fortunes give him hope and fear Of what he has and has not.

ANTONY. All is lost! This foul Egyptian hath betrayed me. My fleet hath yielded to the foe, and yonder They cast their caps up and carouse together Like friends long lost. Triple-turned whore! ’Tis thou Hast sold me to this novice, and my heart Makes only wars on thee. Bid them all fly; For when I am revenged upon my charm, I have done all. Bid them all fly! Be gone!

[Exit Scarus.]

O sun, thy uprise shall I see no more. Fortune and Antony part here; even here Do we shake hands. All come to this! The hearts That spanieled me at heels, to whom I gave Their wishes, do discandy, melt their sweets On blossoming Caesar, and this pine is barked That overtopped them all. Betray’d I am: O this false soul of Egypt! This grave charm, Whose eye becked forth my wars and called them home, Whose bosom was my crownet, my chief end, Like a right gypsy hath at fast and loose Beguiled me to the very heart of loss. What, Eros, Eros!

Ah, thou spell! Avaunt!

CLEOPATRA. Why is my lord enraged against his love?

ANTONY. Vanish, or I shall give thee thy deserving And blemish Caesar’s triumph. Let him take thee And hoist thee up to the shouting plebeians! Follow his chariot, like the greatest spot Of all thy sex; most monster-like be shown For poor’st diminutives, for dolts, and let Patient Octavia plough thy visage up With her prepared nails.

[Exit Cleopatra.]

’Tis well thou’rt gone, If it be well to live; but better ’twere Thou fell’st into my fury, for one death Might have prevented many.—Eros, ho!— The shirt of Nessus is upon me. Teach me, Alcides, thou mine ancestor, thy rage. Let me lodge Lichas on the horns o’ th’ moon, And with those hands that grasped the heaviest club Subdue my worthiest self. The witch shall die. To the young Roman boy she hath sold me, and I fall Under this plot. She dies for’t.—Eros, ho!

CLEOPATRA. Help me, my women! O, he is more mad Than Telamon for his shield; the boar of Thessaly Was never so embossed.

CHARMIAN. To th’ monument! There lock yourself and send him word you are dead. The soul and body rive not more in parting Than greatness going off.

CLEOPATRA. To th’ monument! Mardian, go tell him I have slain myself. Say that the last I spoke was “Antony”, And word it, prithee, piteously. Hence, Mardian, And bring me how he takes my death.—To th’ monument!

SCENE XIV. Alexandria. Another Room.

Enter Antony and Eros.

ANTONY. Eros, thou yet behold’st me?

EROS. Ay, noble lord.

ANTONY. Sometime we see a cloud that’s dragonish, A vapour sometime like a bear or lion, A towered citadel, a pendant rock, A forked mountain, or blue promontory With trees upon’t, that nod unto the world And mock our eyes with air. Thou hast seen these signs. They are black vesper’s pageants.

EROS. Ay, my lord.

ANTONY. That which is now a horse, even with a thought The rack dislimns and makes it indistinct As water is in water.

EROS. It does, my lord.

ANTONY. My good knave Eros, now thy captain is Even such a body. Here I am Antony, Yet cannot hold this visible shape, my knave. I made these wars for Egypt, and the Queen, Whose heart I thought I had, for she had mine, Which, whilst it was mine, had annexed unto’t A million more, now lost—she, Eros, has Packed cards with Caesar, and false-played my glory Unto an enemy’s triumph. Nay, weep not, gentle Eros. There is left us Ourselves to end ourselves.

Enter Mardian.

O, thy vile lady! She has robbed me of my sword.

MARDIAN. No, Antony, My mistress loved thee and her fortunes mingled With thine entirely.

ANTONY. Hence, saucy eunuch! Peace! She hath betrayed me and shall die the death.

MARDIAN. Death of one person can be paid but once, And that she has discharged. What thou wouldst do Is done unto thy hand. The last she spake Was “Antony! Most noble Antony!” Then in the midst a tearing groan did break The name of Antony; it was divided Between her heart and lips. She rendered life, Thy name so buried in her.

ANTONY. Dead, then?

MARDIAN. Dead.

ANTONY. Unarm, Eros. The long day’s task is done, And we must sleep.—That thou depart’st hence safe Does pay thy labour richly. Go.

[Exit Mardian.]

Off, pluck off! The sevenfold shield of Ajax cannot keep The battery from my heart. O, cleave, my sides! Heart, once be stronger than thy continent; Crack thy frail case! Apace, Eros, apace! No more a soldier. Bruised pieces, go; You have been nobly borne. From me awhile.

[Exit Eros.]

I will o’ertake thee, Cleopatra, and Weep for my pardon. So it must be, for now All length is torture. Since the torch is out, Lie down, and stray no farther. Now all labour Mars what it does; yea, very force entangles Itself with strength. Seal then, and all is done. Eros!—I come, my queen.—Eros!—Stay for me. Where souls do couch on flowers, we’ll hand in hand, And with our sprightly port make the ghosts gaze. Dido and her Aeneas shall want troops, And all the haunt be ours.—Come, Eros, Eros!

EROS. What would my lord?

ANTONY. Since Cleopatra died, I have lived in such dishonour that the gods Detest my baseness. I, that with my sword Quartered the world, and o’er green Neptune’s back With ships made cities, condemn myself to lack The courage of a woman; less noble mind Than she which, by her death, our Caesar tells “I am conqueror of myself.” Thou art sworn, Eros, That when the exigent should come, which now Is come indeed, when I should see behind me Th’ inevitable prosecution of Disgrace and horror, that on my command Thou then wouldst kill me. Do’t. The time is come. Thou strik’st not me; ’tis Caesar thou defeat’st. Put colour in thy cheek.

EROS. The gods withhold me! Shall I do that which all the Parthian darts, Though enemy, lost aim and could not?

ANTONY. Eros, Wouldst thou be windowed in great Rome and see Thy master thus with pleached arms, bending down His corrigible neck, his face subdued To penetrative shame, whilst the wheeled seat Of fortunate Caesar, drawn before him, branded His baseness that ensued?

EROS. I would not see’t.

ANTONY. Come, then, for with a wound I must be cured. Draw that thy honest sword, which thou hast worn Most useful for thy country.

EROS. O, sir, pardon me!

ANTONY. When I did make thee free, swor’st thou not then To do this when I bade thee? Do it at once, Or thy precedent services are all But accidents unpurposed. Draw, and come.

EROS. Turn from me then that noble countenance Wherein the worship of the whole world lies.

ANTONY. Lo thee!

[Turning from him.]

EROS. My sword is drawn.

ANTONY. Then let it do at once The thing why thou hast drawn it.

EROS. My dear master, My captain and my emperor, let me say, Before I strike this bloody stroke, farewell.

ANTONY. ’Tis said, man, and farewell.

EROS. Farewell, great chief. Shall I strike now?

ANTONY. Now, Eros.

EROS. Why, there then! [kills himself] Thus do I escape the sorrow Of Antony’s death.

ANTONY. Thrice nobler than myself! Thou teachest me, O valiant Eros, what I should and thou couldst not. My queen and Eros Have by their brave instruction got upon me A nobleness in record. But I will be A bridegroom in my death and run into’t As to a lover’s bed. Come then, and, Eros, Thy master dies thy scholar. To do thus

[Falling on his sword.]

I learned of thee. How? Not dead? Not dead? The guard, ho! O, dispatch me!

Enter a company of the Guard, one of them Dercetus.

FIRST GUARD. What’s the noise?

ANTONY. I have done my work ill, friends. O, make an end Of what I have begun.

SECOND GUARD. The star is fallen.

FIRST GUARD. And time is at his period.

ALL. Alas, and woe!

ANTONY. Let him that loves me strike me dead.

FIRST GUARD. Not I.

SECOND GUARD. Nor I.

THIRD GUARD. Nor anyone.

[Exeunt guard.]

DERCETUS. Thy death and fortunes bid thy followers fly. This sword but shown to Caesar with this tidings, Shall enter me with him.

Enter Diomedes.

DIOMEDES. Where’s Antony?

DERCETUS. There, Diomed, there.

DIOMEDES. Lives he? Wilt thou not answer, man?

[Exit Dercetus.]

ANTONY. Art thou there, Diomed? Draw thy sword and give me Sufficing strokes for death.

DIOMEDES. Most absolute lord, My mistress Cleopatra sent me to thee.

ANTONY. When did she send thee?

DIOMEDES. Now, my lord.

ANTONY. Where is she?

DIOMEDES. Locked in her monument. She had a prophesying fear Of what hath come to pass. For when she saw— Which never shall be found—you did suspect She had disposed with Caesar, and that your rage Would not be purged, she sent you word she was dead; But fearing since how it might work, hath sent Me to proclaim the truth, and I am come, I dread, too late.

ANTONY. Too late, good Diomed. Call my guard, I prithee.

DIOMEDES. What, ho! The emperor’s guard! The guard, what ho! Come, your lord calls!

Enter four or five of the Guard of Antony.

ANTONY. Bear me, good friends, where Cleopatra bides. ’Tis the last service that I shall command you.

FIRST GUARD. Woe, woe are we, sir, you may not live to wear All your true followers out.

ALL. Most heavy day!

ANTONY. Nay, good my fellows, do not please sharp fate To grace it with your sorrows. Bid that welcome Which comes to punish us, and we punish it, Seeming to bear it lightly. Take me up. I have led you oft; carry me now, good friends, And have my thanks for all.

[Exeunt, bearing Antony.]

SCENE XV. Alexandria. A monument.

Enter Cleopatra and her maids aloft, with Charmian and Iras.

CLEOPATRA. O Charmian, I will never go from hence.

CHARMIAN. Be comforted, dear madam.

CLEOPATRA. No, I will not. All strange and terrible events are welcome, But comforts we despise. Our size of sorrow, Proportioned to our cause, must be as great As that which makes it.

Enter, below Diomedes.

How now! Is he dead?

DIOMEDES. His death’s upon him, but not dead. Look out o’ th’ other side your monument; His guard have brought him thither.

Enter, below Antony borne by the Guard.

CLEOPATRA. O sun, Burn the great sphere thou mov’st in! Darkling stand The varying shore o’ th’ world. O Antony, Antony, Antony! Help, Charmian! Help, Iras, help! Help, friends below! Let’s draw him hither.

ANTONY. Peace! Not Caesar’s valour hath o’erthrown Antony, But Antony’s hath triumphed on itself.

CLEOPATRA. So it should be, that none but Antony Should conquer Antony, but woe ’tis so!

ANTONY. I am dying, Egypt, dying. Only I here importune death awhile until Of many thousand kisses the poor last I lay upon thy lips.

CLEOPATRA. I dare not, dear Dear my lord, pardon. I dare not, Lest I be taken. Not th’ imperious show Of the full-fortuned Caesar ever shall Be brooched with me; if knife, drugs, serpents, have Edge, sting, or operation, I am safe. Your wife Octavia, with her modest eyes And still conclusion, shall acquire no honour Demuring upon me. But come, come, Antony— Help me, my women—we must draw thee up. Assist, good friends.

ANTONY. O, quick, or I am gone.

CLEOPATRA. Here’s sport indeed! How heavy weighs my lord! Our strength is all gone into heaviness; That makes the weight. Had I great Juno’s power, The strong-winged Mercury should fetch thee up And set thee by Jove’s side. Yet come a little; Wishers were ever fools. O come, come come,

[They heave Antony aloft to Cleopatra.]

And welcome, welcome! Die where thou hast lived; Quicken with kissing. Had my lips that power, Thus would I wear them out.

ALL. A heavy sight!

ANTONY. I am dying, Egypt, dying. Give me some wine, and let me speak a little.

CLEOPATRA. No, let me speak, and let me rail so high That the false huswife Fortune break her wheel, Provoked by my offence.

ANTONY. One word, sweet queen: Of Caesar seek your honour, with your safety. O!

CLEOPATRA. They do not go together.

ANTONY. Gentle, hear me. None about Caesar trust but Proculeius.

CLEOPATRA. My resolution and my hands I’ll trust; None about Caesar.

ANTONY. The miserable change now at my end Lament nor sorrow at, but please your thoughts In feeding them with those my former fortunes Wherein I lived the greatest prince o’ th’ world, The noblest; and do now not basely die, Not cowardly put off my helmet to My countryman; a Roman by a Roman Valiantly vanquished. Now my spirit is going; I can no more.

CLEOPATRA. Noblest of men, woo’t die? Hast thou no care of me? Shall I abide In this dull world, which in thy absence is No better than a sty? O, see, my women,

[ Antony dies.]

The crown o’ th’ earth doth melt.—My lord! O, withered is the garland of the war, The soldier’s pole is fallen; young boys and girls Are level now with men. The odds is gone, And there is nothing left remarkable Beneath the visiting moon.

[Faints.]

CHARMIAN. O, quietness, lady!

IRAS. She is dead too, our sovereign.

CHARMIAN. Lady!

IRAS. Madam!

CHARMIAN. O madam, madam, madam!

IRAS. Royal Egypt, Empress!

CHARMIAN. Peace, peace, Iras!

CLEOPATRA. No more but e’en a woman, and commanded By such poor passion as the maid that milks And does the meanest chares. It were for me To throw my sceptre at the injurious gods, To tell them that this world did equal theirs Till they had stolen our jewel. All’s but naught; Patience is sottish, and impatience does Become a dog that’s mad. Then is it sin To rush into the secret house of death Ere death dare come to us? How do you, women? What, what! good cheer! Why, how now, Charmian? My noble girls! Ah, women, women! Look, Our lamp is spent, it’s out! Good sirs, take heart. We’ll bury him; and then, what’s brave, what’s noble, Let’s do it after the high Roman fashion And make death proud to take us. Come, away. This case of that huge spirit now is cold. Ah, women, women! Come, we have no friend But resolution and the briefest end.

[Exeunt, bearing off Antony’s body.]

ACT V

SCENE I. Caesar’s Camp before Alexandria.

Enter Caesar, Agrippa, Dolabella, Maecenas, Gallus, Proculeius with his council of war.

CAESAR. Go to him, Dolabella, bid him yield. Being so frustrate, tell him, he mocks The pauses that he makes.

DOLABELLA. Caesar, I shall.

Enter Dercetus with the sword of Antony.

CAESAR. Wherefore is that? And what art thou that dar’st Appear thus to us?

DERCETUS. I am called Dercetus. Mark Antony I served, who best was worthy Best to be served. Whilst he stood up and spoke, He was my master, and I wore my life To spend upon his haters. If thou please To take me to thee, as I was to him I’ll be to Caesar; if thou pleasest not, I yield thee up my life.

CAESAR. What is’t thou say’st?

DERCETUS. I say, O Caesar, Antony is dead.

CAESAR. The breaking of so great a thing should make A greater crack. The round world Should have shook lions into civil streets, And citizens to their dens. The death of Antony Is not a single doom; in the name lay A moiety of the world.

DERCETUS. He is dead, Caesar, Not by a public minister of justice, Nor by a hired knife, but that self hand Which writ his honour in the acts it did Hath, with the courage which the heart did lend it, Splitted the heart. This is his sword. I robbed his wound of it. Behold it stained With his most noble blood.

CAESAR. Look you sad, friends? The gods rebuke me, but it is tidings To wash the eyes of kings.

AGRIPPA. And strange it is That nature must compel us to lament Our most persisted deeds.

MAECENAS. His taints and honours Waged equal with him.

AGRIPPA. A rarer spirit never Did steer humanity, but you gods will give us Some faults to make us men. Caesar is touched.

MAECENAS. When such a spacious mirror’s set before him, He needs must see himself.

CAESAR. O Antony, I have followed thee to this, but we do lance Diseases in our bodies. I must perforce Have shown to thee such a declining day Or look on thine. We could not stall together In the whole world. But yet let me lament With tears as sovereign as the blood of hearts, That thou, my brother, my competitor In top of all design, my mate in empire, Friend and companion in the front of war, The arm of mine own body, and the heart Where mine his thoughts did kindle, that our stars, Unreconciliable, should divide Our equalness to this. Hear me, good friends—

Enter an Egyptian.

But I will tell you at some meeter season. The business of this man looks out of him; We’ll hear him what he says. Whence are you?

EGYPTIAN. A poor Egyptian yet. The queen, my mistress, Confined in all she has, her monument, Of thy intents desires instruction, That she preparedly may frame herself To the way she’s forced to.

CAESAR. Bid her have good heart. She soon shall know of us, by some of ours, How honourable and how kindly we Determine for her. For Caesar cannot lean To be ungentle.

EGYPTIAN. So the gods preserve thee!

CAESAR. Come hither, Proculeius. Go and say We purpose her no shame. Give her what comforts The quality of her passion shall require, Lest, in her greatness, by some mortal stroke She do defeat us, for her life in Rome Would be eternal in our triumph. Go, And with your speediest bring us what she says And how you find of her.

PROCULEIUS. Caesar, I shall.

[Exit Proculeius.]

CAESAR. Gallus, go you along.

[Exit Gallus.]

Where’s Dolabella, to second Proculeius?

ALL. Dolabella!

CAESAR. Let him alone, for I remember now How he’s employed. He shall in time be ready. Go with me to my tent, where you shall see How hardly I was drawn into this war, How calm and gentle I proceeded still In all my writings. Go with me and see What I can show in this.

SCENE II. Alexandria. A Room in the Monument.

Enter Cleopatra, Charmian and Iras.

CLEOPATRA. My desolation does begin to make A better life. ’Tis paltry to be Caesar; Not being Fortune, he’s but Fortune’s knave, A minister of her will. And it is great To do that thing that ends all other deeds, Which shackles accidents and bolts up change, Which sleeps and never palates more the dung, The beggar’s nurse and Caesar’s.

Enter Proculeius.

PROCULEIUS. Caesar sends greetings to the queen of Egypt, And bids thee study on what fair demands Thou mean’st to have him grant thee.

CLEOPATRA. What’s thy name?

PROCULEIUS. My name is Proculeius.

CLEOPATRA. Antony Did tell me of you, bade me trust you, but I do not greatly care to be deceived That have no use for trusting. If your master Would have a queen his beggar, you must tell him That majesty, to keep decorum, must No less beg than a kingdom. If he please To give me conquered Egypt for my son, He gives me so much of mine own as I Will kneel to him with thanks.

PROCULEIUS. Be of good cheer. You are fallen into a princely hand; fear nothing. Make your full reference freely to my lord, Who is so full of grace that it flows over On all that need. Let me report to him Your sweet dependency, and you shall find A conqueror that will pray in aid for kindness Where he for grace is kneeled to.

CLEOPATRA. Pray you tell him I am his fortune’s vassal and I send him The greatness he has got. I hourly learn A doctrine of obedience, and would gladly Look him i’ th’ face.

PROCULEIUS. This I’ll report, dear lady. Have comfort, for I know your plight is pitied Of him that caused it.

Enter Gallus and Roman Soldiers.

You see how easily she may be surprised. Guard her till Caesar come.

IRAS. Royal queen!

CHARMIAN. O Cleopatra, thou art taken, queen!

CLEOPATRA. Quick, quick, good hands.

[Drawing a dagger.]

PROCULEIUS. Hold, worthy lady, hold!

[Seizes and disarms her.]

Do not yourself such wrong, who are in this Relieved, but not betrayed.

CLEOPATRA. What, of death too, That rids our dogs of languish?

PROCULEIUS. Cleopatra, Do not abuse my master’s bounty by Th’ undoing of yourself. Let the world see His nobleness well acted, which your death Will never let come forth.

CLEOPATRA. Where art thou, Death? Come hither, come! Come, come, and take a queen Worth many babes and beggars!

PROCULEIUS. O, temperance, lady!

CLEOPATRA. Sir, I will eat no meat; I’ll not drink, sir; If idle talk will once be necessary, I’ll not sleep neither. This mortal house I’ll ruin, Do Caesar what he can. Know, sir, that I Will not wait pinioned at your master’s court, Nor once be chastised with the sober eye Of dull Octavia. Shall they hoist me up And show me to the shouting varletry Of censuring Rome? Rather a ditch in Egypt Be gentle grave unto me! Rather on Nilus’ mud Lay me stark-naked, and let the water-flies Blow me into abhorring! Rather make My country’s high pyramides my gibbet And hang me up in chains!

PROCULEIUS. You do extend These thoughts of horror further than you shall Find cause in Caesar.

Enter Dolabella.

DOLABELLA. Proculeius, What thou hast done thy master Caesar knows, And he hath sent for thee. For the queen, I’ll take her to my guard.

PROCULEIUS. So, Dolabella, It shall content me best. Be gentle to her. [To Cleopatra.] To Caesar I will speak what you shall please, If you’ll employ me to him.

CLEOPATRA. Say I would die.

[Exeunt Proculeius and Soldiers.]

DOLABELLA. Most noble empress, you have heard of me?

CLEOPATRA. I cannot tell.

DOLABELLA. Assuredly you know me.

CLEOPATRA. No matter, sir, what I have heard or known. You laugh when boys or women tell their dreams; Is’t not your trick?

DOLABELLA. I understand not, madam.

CLEOPATRA. I dreamt there was an Emperor Antony. O, such another sleep, that I might see But such another man!

DOLABELLA. If it might please you—

CLEOPATRA. His face was as the heavens, and therein stuck A sun and moon, which kept their course, and lighted The little O, the earth.

DOLABELLA. Most sovereign creature—

CLEOPATRA. His legs bestrid the ocean; his reared arm Crested the world; his voice was propertied As all the tuned spheres, and that to friends; But when he meant to quail and shake the orb, He was as rattling thunder. For his bounty, There was no winter in’t; an autumn ’twas That grew the more by reaping. His delights Were dolphin-like; they showed his back above The element they lived in. In his livery Walked crowns and crownets; realms and islands were As plates dropped from his pocket.

DOLABELLA. Cleopatra—

CLEOPATRA. Think you there was or might be such a man As this I dreamt of?

DOLABELLA. Gentle madam, no.

CLEOPATRA. You lie up to the hearing of the gods! But if there be nor ever were one such, It’s past the size of dreaming. Nature wants stuff To vie strange forms with fancy; yet t’ imagine An Antony were nature’s piece ’gainst fancy, Condemning shadows quite.

DOLABELLA. Hear me, good madam. Your loss is, as yourself, great; and you bear it As answering to the weight. Would I might never O’ertake pursued success, but I do feel, By the rebound of yours, a grief that smites My very heart at root.

CLEOPATRA. I thank you, sir. Know you what Caesar means to do with me?

DOLABELLA. I am loath to tell you what I would you knew.

CLEOPATRA. Nay, pray you, sir.

DOLABELLA. Though he be honourable—

CLEOPATRA. He’ll lead me, then, in triumph.

DOLABELLA. Madam, he will. I know it.

Flourish. Enter Caesar, Proculeius, Gallus, Maecenas and others of his train.

ALL. Make way there! Caesar!

CAESAR. Which is the Queen of Egypt?

DOLABELLA. It is the Emperor, madam.

[Cleopatra kneels.]

CAESAR. Arise, you shall not kneel. I pray you, rise. Rise, Egypt.

CLEOPATRA. Sir, the gods Will have it thus. My master and my lord I must obey.

CAESAR. Take to you no hard thoughts. The record of what injuries you did us, Though written in our flesh, we shall remember As things but done by chance.

CLEOPATRA. Sole sir o’ th’ world, I cannot project mine own cause so well To make it clear, but do confess I have Been laden with like frailties which before Have often shamed our sex.

CAESAR. Cleopatra, know We will extenuate rather than enforce. If you apply yourself to our intents, Which towards you are most gentle, you shall find A benefit in this change; but if you seek To lay on me a cruelty by taking Antony’s course, you shall bereave yourself Of my good purposes, and put your children To that destruction which I’ll guard them from If thereon you rely. I’ll take my leave.

CLEOPATRA. And may, through all the world. ’Tis yours, and we, Your scutcheons and your signs of conquest, shall Hang in what place you please. Here, my good lord.

CAESAR. You shall advise me in all for Cleopatra.

CLEOPATRA. This is the brief of money, plate, and jewels I am possessed of. ’Tis exactly valued, Not petty things admitted. Where’s Seleucus?

Enter Seleucus.

SELEUCUS. Here, madam.

CLEOPATRA. This is my treasurer. Let him speak, my lord, Upon his peril, that I have reserved To myself nothing. Speak the truth, Seleucus.

SELEUCUS. Madam, I had rather seal my lips Than to my peril speak that which is not.

CLEOPATRA. What have I kept back?

SELEUCUS. Enough to purchase what you have made known.

CAESAR. Nay, blush not, Cleopatra. I approve Your wisdom in the deed.

CLEOPATRA. See, Caesar! O, behold, How pomp is followed! Mine will now be yours And should we shift estates, yours would be mine. The ingratitude of this Seleucus does Even make me wild. O slave, of no more trust Than love that’s hired! What, goest thou back? Thou shalt Go back, I warrant thee! But I’ll catch thine eyes Though they had wings. Slave, soulless villain, dog! O rarely base!

CAESAR. Good queen, let us entreat you.

CLEOPATRA. O Caesar, what a wounding shame is this, That thou vouchsafing here to visit me, Doing the honour of thy lordliness To one so meek, that mine own servant should Parcel the sum of my disgraces by Addition of his envy! Say, good Caesar, That I some lady trifles have reserved, Immoment toys, things of such dignity As we greet modern friends withal; and say Some nobler token I have kept apart For Livia and Octavia, to induce Their mediation, must I be unfolded With one that I have bred? The gods! It smites me Beneath the fall I have. [To Seleucus.] Prithee go hence, Or I shall show the cinders of my spirits Through th’ ashes of my chance. Wert thou a man, Thou wouldst have mercy on me.

CAESAR. Forbear, Seleucus.

[Exit Seleucus.]

CLEOPATRA. Be it known that we, the greatest, are misthought For things that others do; and when we fall, We answer others’ merits in our name, Are therefore to be pitied.

CAESAR. Cleopatra, Not what you have reserved nor what acknowledged Put we i’ th’ roll of conquest. Still be’t yours; Bestow it at your pleasure, and believe Caesar’s no merchant to make prize with you Of things that merchants sold. Therefore be cheered; Make not your thoughts your prisons. No, dear queen; For we intend so to dispose you as Yourself shall give us counsel. Feed and sleep. Our care and pity is so much upon you That we remain your friend; and so, adieu.

CLEOPATRA. My master and my lord!

CAESAR. Not so. Adieu.

[Flourish. Exeunt Caesar and his train.]

CLEOPATRA. He words me, girls, he words me, that I should not Be noble to myself. But hark thee, Charmian!

[Whispers to Charmian.]

IRAS. Finish, good lady. The bright day is done, And we are for the dark.

CLEOPATRA. Hie thee again. I have spoke already, and it is provided. Go put it to the haste.

CHARMIAN. Madam, I will.

DOLABELLA. Where’s the Queen?

CHARMIAN. Behold, sir.

CLEOPATRA. Dolabella!

DOLABELLA. Madam, as thereto sworn by your command, Which my love makes religion to obey, I tell you this: Caesar through Syria Intends his journey, and within three days You with your children will he send before. Make your best use of this. I have performed Your pleasure and my promise.

CLEOPATRA. Dolabella, I shall remain your debtor.

DOLABELLA. I your servant. Adieu, good queen. I must attend on Caesar.

CLEOPATRA. Farewell, and thanks.

[Exit Dolabella.]

Now, Iras, what think’st thou? Thou an Egyptian puppet shall be shown In Rome as well as I. Mechanic slaves With greasy aprons, rules, and hammers shall Uplift us to the view. In their thick breaths, Rank of gross diet, shall we be enclouded, And forced to drink their vapour.

IRAS. The gods forbid!

CLEOPATRA. Nay, ’tis most certain, Iras. Saucy lictors Will catch at us like strumpets, and scald rhymers Ballad us out o’ tune. The quick comedians Extemporally will stage us and present Our Alexandrian revels; Antony Shall be brought drunken forth, and I shall see Some squeaking Cleopatra boy my greatness I’ th’ posture of a whore.

IRAS. O the good gods!

CLEOPATRA. Nay, that’s certain.

IRAS. I’ll never see’t, for I am sure mine nails Are stronger than mine eyes.

CLEOPATRA. Why, that’s the way To fool their preparation and to conquer Their most absurd intents.

Enter Charmian.

Now, Charmian! Show me, my women, like a queen. Go fetch My best attires. I am again for Cydnus To meet Mark Antony. Sirrah, Iras, go. Now, noble Charmian, we’ll dispatch indeed, And when thou hast done this chare, I’ll give thee leave To play till doomsday. Bring our crown and all.

[Exit Iras. A noise within.]

Wherefore’s this noise?

Enter a Guardsman.

GUARDSMAN. Here is a rural fellow That will not be denied your highness’ presence. He brings you figs.

CLEOPATRA. Let him come in.

[Exit Guardsman.]

What poor an instrument May do a noble deed! He brings me liberty. My resolution’s placed, and I have nothing Of woman in me. Now from head to foot I am marble-constant. Now the fleeting moon No planet is of mine.

Enter Guardsman and Clown with a basket.

GUARDSMAN. This is the man.

CLEOPATRA. Avoid, and leave him.

Hast thou the pretty worm of Nilus there That kills and pains not?

CLOWN. Truly, I have him, but I would not be the party that should desire you to touch him, for his biting is immortal. Those that do die of it do seldom or never recover.

CLEOPATRA. Remember’st thou any that have died on’t?

CLOWN. Very many, men and women too. I heard of one of them no longer than yesterday—a very honest woman, but something given to lie; as a woman should not do but in the way of honesty—how she died of the biting of it, what pain she felt. Truly she makes a very good report o’ th’ worm; but he that will believe all that they say shall never be saved by half that they do. But this is most falliable, the worm’s an odd worm.

CLEOPATRA. Get thee hence. Farewell.

CLOWN. I wish you all joy of the worm.

[Sets down the basket.]

CLEOPATRA. Farewell.

CLOWN. You must think this, look you, that the worm will do his kind.

CLEOPATRA. Ay, ay, farewell.

CLOWN. Look you, the worm is not to be trusted but in the keeping of wise people; for indeed there is no goodness in the worm.

CLEOPATRA. Take thou no care; it shall be heeded.

CLOWN. Very good. Give it nothing, I pray you, for it is not worth the feeding.

CLEOPATRA. Will it eat me?

CLOWN. You must not think I am so simple but I know the devil himself will not eat a woman. I know that a woman is a dish for the gods if the devil dress her not. But truly, these same whoreson devils do the gods great harm in their women, for in every ten that they make, the devils mar five.

CLEOPATRA. Well, get thee gone. Farewell.

CLOWN. Yes, forsooth. I wish you joy o’ th’ worm.

Enter Iras with a robe, crown, &c.

CLEOPATRA. Give me my robe. Put on my crown. I have Immortal longings in me. Now no more The juice of Egypt’s grape shall moist this lip. Yare, yare, good Iras; quick. Methinks I hear Antony call. I see him rouse himself To praise my noble act. I hear him mock The luck of Caesar, which the gods give men To excuse their after wrath. Husband, I come! Now to that name my courage prove my title! I am fire and air; my other elements I give to baser life.—So, have you done? Come then, and take the last warmth of my lips. Farewell, kind Charmian. Iras, long farewell.

[Kisses them. Iras falls and dies.]

Have I the aspic in my lips? Dost fall? If thou and nature can so gently part, The stroke of death is as a lover’s pinch, Which hurts and is desired. Dost thou lie still? If thus thou vanishest, thou tell’st the world It is not worth leave-taking.

CHARMIAN. Dissolve, thick cloud, and rain, that I may say The gods themselves do weep!

CLEOPATRA. This proves me base. If she first meet the curled Antony, He’ll make demand of her, and spend that kiss Which is my heaven to have.—Come, thou mortal wretch,

[To an asp, which she applies to her breast.]

With thy sharp teeth this knot intrinsicate Of life at once untie. Poor venomous fool, Be angry and dispatch. O couldst thou speak, That I might hear thee call great Caesar ass Unpolicied!

CHARMIAN. O eastern star!

CLEOPATRA. Peace, peace! Dost thou not see my baby at my breast That sucks the nurse asleep?

CHARMIAN. O, break! O, break!

CLEOPATRA. As sweet as balm, as soft as air, as gentle— O Antony!—Nay, I will take thee too.

[Applying another asp to her arm.]

What should I stay—

CHARMIAN. In this vile world? So, fare thee well. Now boast thee, Death, in thy possession lies A lass unparalleled. Downy windows, close, And golden Phœbus never be beheld Of eyes again so royal! Your crown’s awry; I’ll mend it and then play.

Enter the Guard rustling in.

FIRST GUARD. Where’s the queen?

CHARMIAN. Speak softly. Wake her not.

FIRST GUARD. Caesar hath sent—

CHARMIAN. Too slow a messenger.

[Applies an asp.]

O, come apace, dispatch! I partly feel thee.

FIRST GUARD. Approach, ho! All’s not well. Caesar’s beguiled.

SECOND GUARD. There’s Dolabella sent from Caesar. Call him.

FIRST GUARD. What work is here, Charmian? Is this well done?

CHARMIAN. It is well done, and fitting for a princess Descended of so many royal kings. Ah, soldier!

[Charmian dies.]

DOLABELLA. How goes it here?

SECOND GUARD. All dead.

DOLABELLA. Caesar, thy thoughts Touch their effects in this. Thyself art coming To see performed the dreaded act which thou So sought’st to hinder.

Enter Caesar and all his train, marching.

ALL. A way there, a way for Caesar!

DOLABELLA. O sir, you are too sure an augurer: That you did fear is done.

CAESAR. Bravest at the last, She levelled at our purposes and, being royal, Took her own way. The manner of their deaths? I do not see them bleed.

DOLABELLA. Who was last with them?

FIRST GUARD. A simple countryman that brought her figs. This was his basket.

CAESAR. Poisoned then.

FIRST GUARD. O Caesar, This Charmian lived but now; she stood and spake. I found her trimming up the diadem On her dead mistress; tremblingly she stood, And on the sudden dropped.

CAESAR. O noble weakness! If they had swallowed poison ’twould appear By external swelling; but she looks like sleep, As she would catch another Antony In her strong toil of grace.

DOLABELLA. Here on her breast There is a vent of blood, and something blown. The like is on her arm.

FIRST GUARD. This is an aspic’s trail, and these fig leaves Have slime upon them, such as th’ aspic leaves Upon the caves of Nile.

CAESAR. Most probable That so she died, for her physician tells me She hath pursued conclusions infinite Of easy ways to die. Take up her bed, And bear her women from the monument. She shall be buried by her Antony. No grave upon the earth shall clip in it A pair so famous. High events as these Strike those that make them; and their story is No less in pity than his glory which Brought them to be lamented. Our army shall In solemn show attend this funeral, And then to Rome. Come, Dolabella, see High order in this great solemnity.

AS YOU LIKE IT

ACT I Scene I. An Orchard near Oliver’s house Scene II. A Lawn before the Duke’s Palace Scene III. A Room in the Palace

ACT II Scene I. The Forest of Arden Scene II. A Room in the Palace Scene III. Before Oliver’s House Scene IV. The Forest of Arden Scene V. Another part of the Forest Scene VI. Another part of the Forest Scene VII. Another part of the Forest

ACT III Scene I. A Room in the Palace Scene II. The Forest of Arden Scene III. Another part of the Forest Scene IV. Another part of the Forest. Before a Cottage Scene V. Another part of the Forest

ACT IV Scene I. The Forest of Arden Scene II. Another part of the Forest Scene III. Another part of the Forest

ACT V Scene I. The Forest of Arden Scene II. Another part of the Forest Scene III. Another part of the Forest Scene IV. Another part of the Forest Epilogue

ORLANDO, youngest son of Sir Rowland de Boys OLIVER, eldest son of Sir Rowland de Boys JAQUES DE BOYS, second son of Sir Rowland de Boys ADAM, Servant to Oliver DENNIS, Servant to Oliver

ROSALIND, Daughter of Duke Senior CELIA, Daughter of Duke Frederick TOUCHSTONE, a Clown

DUKE SENIOR (Ferdinand), living in exile

JAQUES, Lord attending on the Duke Senior AMIENS, Lord attending on the Duke Senior

DUKE FREDERICK, Brother to the Duke, and Usurper of his Dominions CHARLES, his Wrestler LE BEAU, a Courtier attending upon Frederick

CORIN, Shepherd SILVIUS, Shepherd PHOEBE, a Shepherdess AUDREY, a Country Wench WILLIAM, a Country Fellow, in love with Audrey SIR OLIVER MARTEXT, a Vicar

A person representing HYMEN

Lords belonging to the two Dukes; Pages, Foresters, and other Attendants.

The scene lies first near Oliver’s house; afterwards partly in the Usurper’s court and partly in the Forest of Arden.

SCENE I. An Orchard near Oliver’s house

Enter Orlando and Adam.

ORLANDO. As I remember, Adam, it was upon this fashion bequeathed me by will but poor a thousand crowns, and, as thou sayst, charged my brother, on his blessing, to breed me well; and there begins my sadness. My brother Jaques he keeps at school, and report speaks goldenly of his profit. For my part, he keeps me rustically at home, or, to speak more properly, stays me here at home unkept; for call you that keeping, for a gentleman of my birth, that differs not from the stalling of an ox? His horses are bred better, for, besides that they are fair with their feeding, they are taught their manage and to that end riders dearly hired; but I, his brother, gain nothing under him but growth, for the which his animals on his dunghills are as much bound to him as I. Besides this nothing that he so plentifully gives me, the something that nature gave me his countenance seems to take from me. He lets me feed with his hinds, bars me the place of a brother, and as much as in him lies, mines my gentility with my education. This is it, Adam, that grieves me, and the spirit of my father, which I think is within me, begins to mutiny against this servitude. I will no longer endure it, though yet I know no wise remedy how to avoid it.

Enter Oliver.

ADAM. Yonder comes my master, your brother.

ORLANDO. Go apart, Adam, and thou shalt hear how he will shake me up.

[Adam retires.]

OLIVER. Now, sir, what make you here?

ORLANDO. Nothing. I am not taught to make anything.

OLIVER. What mar you then, sir?

ORLANDO. Marry, sir, I am helping you to mar that which God made, a poor unworthy brother of yours, with idleness.

OLIVER. Marry, sir, be better employed, and be naught awhile.

ORLANDO. Shall I keep your hogs, and eat husks with them? What prodigal portion have I spent that I should come to such penury?

OLIVER. Know you where you are, sir?

ORLANDO. O, sir, very well: here in your orchard.

OLIVER. Know you before whom, sir?

ORLANDO. Ay, better than him I am before knows me. I know you are my eldest brother, and in the gentle condition of blood you should so know me. The courtesy of nations allows you my better in that you are the first-born, but the same tradition takes not away my blood, were there twenty brothers betwixt us. I have as much of my father in me as you, albeit I confess your coming before me is nearer to his reverence.

OLIVER. What, boy!

ORLANDO. Come, come, elder brother, you are too young in this.

OLIVER. Wilt thou lay hands on me, villain?

ORLANDO. I am no villain. I am the youngest son of Sir Rowland de Boys; he was my father, and he is thrice a villain that says such a father begot villains. Wert thou not my brother, I would not take this hand from thy throat till this other had pulled out thy tongue for saying so. Thou has railed on thyself.

ADAM. [Coming forward.] Sweet masters, be patient. For your father’s remembrance, be at accord.

OLIVER. Let me go, I say.

ORLANDO. I will not till I please. You shall hear me. My father charged you in his will to give me good education. You have trained me like a peasant, obscuring and hiding from me all gentleman-like qualities. The spirit of my father grows strong in me, and I will no longer endure it. Therefore allow me such exercises as may become a gentleman, or give me the poor allottery my father left me by testament; with that I will go buy my fortunes.

OLIVER. And what wilt thou do? Beg when that is spent? Well, sir, get you in. I will not long be troubled with you. You shall have some part of your will. I pray you leave me.

ORLANDO. I no further offend you than becomes me for my good.

OLIVER. Get you with him, you old dog.

ADAM. Is “old dog” my reward? Most true, I have lost my teeth in your service. God be with my old master. He would not have spoke such a word.

[Exeunt Orlando and Adam.]

Enter Dennis.

DENNIS Calls your worship?

OLIVER. Is it even so? Begin you to grow upon me? I will physic your rankness, and yet give no thousand crowns neither. Holla, Dennis!

OLIVER. Was not Charles, the Duke’s wrestler, here to speak with me?

DENNIS So please you, he is here at the door and importunes access to you.

OLIVER. Call him in.

[Exit Dennis.]

’Twill be a good way, and tomorrow the wrestling is.

Enter Charles.

CHARLES. Good morrow to your worship.

OLIVER. Good Monsieur Charles. What’s the new news at the new court?

CHARLES. There’s no news at the court, sir, but the old news. That is, the old Duke is banished by his younger brother the new Duke, and three or four loving lords have put themselves into voluntary exile with him, whose lands and revenues enrich the new Duke; therefore he gives them good leave to wander.

OLIVER. Can you tell if Rosalind, the Duke’s daughter, be banished with her father?

CHARLES. O, no; for the Duke’s daughter, her cousin, so loves her, being ever from their cradles bred together, that she would have followed her exile or have died to stay behind her. She is at the court and no less beloved of her uncle than his own daughter, and never two ladies loved as they do.

OLIVER. Where will the old Duke live?

CHARLES. They say he is already in the Forest of Arden, and a many merry men with him; and there they live like the old Robin Hood of England. They say many young gentlemen flock to him every day and fleet the time carelessly, as they did in the golden world.

OLIVER. What, you wrestle tomorrow before the new Duke?

CHARLES. Marry, do I, sir, and I came to acquaint you with a matter. I am given, sir, secretly to understand that your younger brother Orlando hath a disposition to come in disguised against me to try a fall. Tomorrow, sir, I wrestle for my credit, and he that escapes me without some broken limb shall acquit him well. Your brother is but young and tender, and for your love I would be loath to foil him, as I must for my own honour if he come in. Therefore, out of my love to you, I came hither to acquaint you withal, that either you might stay him from his intendment, or brook such disgrace well as he shall run into, in that it is a thing of his own search and altogether against my will.

OLIVER. Charles, I thank thee for thy love to me, which thou shalt find I will most kindly requite. I had myself notice of my brother’s purpose herein, and have by underhand means laboured to dissuade him from it; but he is resolute. I’ll tell thee, Charles, it is the stubbornest young fellow of France, full of ambition, an envious emulator of every man’s good parts, a secret and villainous contriver against me his natural brother. Therefore use thy discretion. I had as lief thou didst break his neck as his finger. And thou wert best look to’t; for if thou dost him any slight disgrace, or if he do not mightily grace himself on thee, he will practise against thee by poison, entrap thee by some treacherous device, and never leave thee till he hath ta’en thy life by some indirect means or other. For I assure thee (and almost with tears I speak it) there is not one so young and so villainous this day living. I speak but brotherly of him, but should I anatomize him to thee as he is, I must blush and weep, and thou must look pale and wonder.

CHARLES. I am heartily glad I came hither to you. If he come tomorrow I’ll give him his payment. If ever he go alone again I’ll never wrestle for prize more. And so, God keep your worship.

OLIVER. Farewell, good Charles. Now will I stir this gamester. I hope I shall see an end of him; for my soul—yet I know not why—hates nothing more than he. Yet he’s gentle, never schooled and yet learned, full of noble device, of all sorts enchantingly beloved, and indeed so much in the heart of the world, and especially of my own people, who best know him, that I am altogether misprized. But it shall not be so long; this wrestler shall clear all. Nothing remains but that I kindle the boy thither, which now I’ll go about.

SCENE II. A Lawn before the Duke’s Palace

Enter Rosalind and Celia.

CELIA. I pray thee, Rosalind, sweet my coz, be merry.

ROSALIND. Dear Celia, I show more mirth than I am mistress of, and would you yet I were merrier? Unless you could teach me to forget a banished father, you must not learn me how to remember any extraordinary pleasure.

CELIA. Herein I see thou lov’st me not with the full weight that I love thee. If my uncle, thy banished father, had banished thy uncle, the Duke my father, so thou hadst been still with me, I could have taught my love to take thy father for mine. So wouldst thou, if the truth of thy love to me were so righteously tempered as mine is to thee.

ROSALIND. Well, I will forget the condition of my estate to rejoice in yours.

CELIA. You know my father hath no child but I, nor none is like to have; and truly, when he dies thou shalt be his heir, for what he hath taken away from thy father perforce, I will render thee again in affection. By mine honour I will! And when I break that oath, let me turn monster. Therefore, my sweet Rose, my dear Rose, be merry.

ROSALIND. From henceforth I will, coz, and devise sports. Let me see—what think you of falling in love?

CELIA. Marry, I prithee do, to make sport withal; but love no man in good earnest, nor no further in sport neither than with safety of a pure blush thou mayst in honour come off again.

ROSALIND. What shall be our sport, then?

CELIA. Let us sit and mock the good housewife Fortune from her wheel, that her gifts may henceforth be bestowed equally.

ROSALIND. I would we could do so, for her benefits are mightily misplaced, and the bountiful blind woman doth most mistake in her gifts to women.

CELIA. ’Tis true, for those that she makes fair she scarce makes honest, and those that she makes honest she makes very ill-favouredly.

ROSALIND. Nay, now thou goest from Fortune’s office to Nature’s. Fortune reigns in gifts of the world, not in the lineaments of Nature.

Enter Touchstone.

CELIA. No? When Nature hath made a fair creature, may she not by Fortune fall into the fire? Though Nature hath given us wit to flout at Fortune, hath not Fortune sent in this fool to cut off the argument?

ROSALIND. Indeed, there is Fortune too hard for Nature, when Fortune makes Nature’s natural the cutter-off of Nature’s wit.

CELIA. Peradventure this is not Fortune’s work neither, but Nature’s, who perceiveth our natural wits too dull to reason of such goddesses, and hath sent this natural for our whetstone; for always the dullness of the fool is the whetstone of the wits.—How now, wit, whither wander you?

TOUCHSTONE. Mistress, you must come away to your father.

CELIA. Were you made the messenger?

TOUCHSTONE. No, by mine honour, but I was bid to come for you.

ROSALIND. Where learned you that oath, fool?

TOUCHSTONE. Of a certain knight that swore by his honour they were good pancakes, and swore by his honour the mustard was naught. Now, I’ll stand to it, the pancakes were naught and the mustard was good, and yet was not the knight forsworn.

CELIA. How prove you that in the great heap of your knowledge?

ROSALIND. Ay, marry, now unmuzzle your wisdom.

TOUCHSTONE. Stand you both forth now: stroke your chins, and swear by your beards that I am a knave.

CELIA. By our beards, if we had them, thou art.

TOUCHSTONE. By my knavery, if I had it, then I were. But if you swear by that that is not, you are not forsworn. No more was this knight swearing by his honour, for he never had any; or if he had, he had sworn it away before ever he saw those pancackes or that mustard.

CELIA. Prithee, who is’t that thou mean’st?

TOUCHSTONE. One that old Frederick, your father, loves.

CELIA. My father’s love is enough to honour him. Enough! Speak no more of him. You’ll be whipped for taxation one of these days.

TOUCHSTONE. The more pity that fools may not speak wisely what wise men do foolishly.

CELIA. By my troth, thou sayest true. For since the little wit that fools have was silenced, the little foolery that wise men have makes a great show. Here comes Monsieur Le Beau.

Enter Le Beau.

ROSALIND. With his mouth full of news.

CELIA. Which he will put on us as pigeons feed their young.

ROSALIND. Then shall we be news-crammed.

CELIA. All the better; we shall be the more marketable. Bonjour, Monsieur Le Beau. What’s the news?

LE BEAU. Fair princess, you have lost much good sport.

CELIA. Sport! Of what colour?

LE BEAU. What colour, madam? How shall I answer you?

ROSALIND. As wit and fortune will.

TOUCHSTONE. Or as the destinies decrees.

CELIA. Well said. That was laid on with a trowel.

TOUCHSTONE. Nay, if I keep not my rank—

ROSALIND. Thou losest thy old smell.

LE BEAU. You amaze me, ladies. I would have told you of good wrestling, which you have lost the sight of.

ROSALIND. Yet tell us the manner of the wrestling.

LE BEAU. I will tell you the beginning and, if it please your ladyships, you may see the end, for the best is yet to do; and here, where you are, they are coming to perform it.

CELIA. Well, the beginning that is dead and buried.

LE BEAU. There comes an old man and his three sons—

CELIA. I could match this beginning with an old tale.

LE BEAU. Three proper young men of excellent growth and presence.

ROSALIND. With bills on their necks: “Be it known unto all men by these presents.”

LE BEAU. The eldest of the three wrestled with Charles, the Duke’s wrestler, which Charles in a moment threw him and broke three of his ribs, that there is little hope of life in him. So he served the second, and so the third. Yonder they lie, the poor old man their father making such pitiful dole over them that all the beholders take his part with weeping.

ROSALIND. Alas!

TOUCHSTONE. But what is the sport, monsieur, that the ladies have lost?

LE BEAU. Why, this that I speak of.

TOUCHSTONE. Thus men may grow wiser every day. It is the first time that ever I heard breaking of ribs was sport for ladies.

CELIA. Or I, I promise thee.

ROSALIND. But is there any else longs to see this broken music in his sides? Is there yet another dotes upon rib-breaking? Shall we see this wrestling, cousin?

LE BEAU. You must if you stay here, for here is the place appointed for the wrestling, and they are ready to perform it.

CELIA. Yonder, sure, they are coming. Let us now stay and see it.

Flourish. Enter Duke Frederick, Lords, Orlando, Charles and Attendants.

DUKE FREDERICK. Come on. Since the youth will not be entreated, his own peril on his forwardness.

ROSALIND. Is yonder the man?

LE BEAU. Even he, madam.

CELIA. Alas, he is too young. Yet he looks successfully.

DUKE FREDERICK. How now, daughter and cousin? Are you crept hither to see the wrestling?

ROSALIND. Ay, my liege, so please you give us leave.

DUKE FREDERICK. You will take little delight in it, I can tell you, there is such odds in the man. In pity of the challenger’s youth I would fain dissuade him, but he will not be entreated. Speak to him, ladies; see if you can move him.

CELIA. Call him hither, good Monsieur Le Beau.

DUKE FREDERICK. Do so; I’ll not be by.

[Duke Frederick steps aside.]

LE BEAU. Monsieur the challenger, the Princess calls for you.

ORLANDO. I attend them with all respect and duty.

ROSALIND. Young man, have you challenged Charles the wrestler?

ORLANDO. No, fair princess. He is the general challenger. I come but in as others do, to try with him the strength of my youth.

CELIA. Young gentleman, your spirits are too bold for your years. You have seen cruel proof of this man’s strength. If you saw yourself with your eyes or knew yourself with your judgement, the fear of your adventure would counsel you to a more equal enterprise. We pray you for your own sake to embrace your own safety and give over this attempt.

ROSALIND. Do, young sir. Your reputation shall not therefore be misprized. We will make it our suit to the Duke that the wrestling might not go forward.

ORLANDO. I beseech you, punish me not with your hard thoughts, wherein I confess me much guilty to deny so fair and excellent ladies anything. But let your fair eyes and gentle wishes go with me to my trial, wherein if I be foiled there is but one shamed that was never gracious; if killed, but one dead that is willing to be so. I shall do my friends no wrong, for I have none to lament me; the world no injury, for in it I have nothing. Only in the world I fill up a place, which may be better supplied when I have made it empty.

ROSALIND. The little strength that I have, I would it were with you.

CELIA. And mine to eke out hers.

ROSALIND. Fare you well. Pray heaven I be deceived in you.

CELIA. Your heart’s desires be with you.

CHARLES. Come, where is this young gallant that is so desirous to lie with his mother earth?

ORLANDO. Ready, sir; but his will hath in it a more modest working.

DUKE FREDERICK. You shall try but one fall.

CHARLES. No, I warrant your grace you shall not entreat him to a second, that have so mightily persuaded him from a first.

ORLANDO. You mean to mock me after; you should not have mocked me before. But come your ways.

ROSALIND. Now, Hercules be thy speed, young man!

CELIA. I would I were invisible, to catch the strong fellow by the leg.

[Orlando and Charles wrestle.]

ROSALIND. O excellent young man!

CELIA. If I had a thunderbolt in mine eye, I can tell who should down.

[Charles is thrown. Shout.]

DUKE FREDERICK. No more, no more.

ORLANDO. Yes, I beseech your grace. I am not yet well breathed.

DUKE FREDERICK. How dost thou, Charles?

LE BEAU. He cannot speak, my lord.

DUKE FREDERICK. Bear him away.

[Charles is carried off by Attendants.]

What is thy name, young man?

ORLANDO. Orlando, my liege, the youngest son of Sir Rowland de Boys.

DUKE FREDERICK. I would thou hadst been son to some man else. The world esteemed thy father honourable, But I did find him still mine enemy. Thou shouldst have better pleased me with this deed Hadst thou descended from another house. But fare thee well, thou art a gallant youth. I would thou hadst told me of another father.

[Exeunt Duke Frederick, Le Beau and Lords.]

CELIA. Were I my father, coz, would I do this?

ORLANDO. I am more proud to be Sir Rowland’s son, His youngest son, and would not change that calling To be adopted heir to Frederick.

ROSALIND. My father loved Sir Rowland as his soul, And all the world was of my father’s mind. Had I before known this young man his son, I should have given him tears unto entreaties Ere he should thus have ventured.

CELIA. Gentle cousin, Let us go thank him and encourage him. My father’s rough and envious disposition Sticks me at heart.—Sir, you have well deserved. If you do keep your promises in love But justly, as you have exceeded promise, Your mistress shall be happy.

ROSALIND. Gentleman,

[Giving him a chain from her neck.]

Wear this for me—one out of suits with Fortune, That could give more but that her hand lacks means.— Shall we go, coz?

CELIA. Ay.—Fare you well, fair gentleman.

ORLANDO. Can I not say, I thank you? My better parts Are all thrown down, and that which here stands up Is but a quintain, a mere lifeless block.

ROSALIND. He calls us back. My pride fell with my fortunes. I’ll ask him what he would.—Did you call, sir?— Sir, you have wrestled well and overthrown More than your enemies.

CELIA. Will you go, coz?

ROSALIND. Have with you.—Fare you well.

[Exeunt Rosalind and Celia.]

ORLANDO. What passion hangs these weights upon my tongue? I cannot speak to her, yet she urged conference. O poor Orlando, thou art overthrown. Or Charles or something weaker masters thee.

LE BEAU. Good sir, I do in friendship counsel you To leave this place. Albeit you have deserved High commendation, true applause, and love, Yet such is now the Duke’s condition That he misconsters all that you have done. The Duke is humorous; what he is indeed More suits you to conceive than I to speak of.

ORLANDO. I thank you, sir; and pray you tell me this: Which of the two was daughter of the Duke That here was at the wrestling?

LE BEAU. Neither his daughter, if we judge by manners, But yet indeed the smaller is his daughter. The other is daughter to the banished Duke, And here detained by her usurping uncle To keep his daughter company, whose loves Are dearer than the natural bond of sisters. But I can tell you that of late this Duke Hath ta’en displeasure ’gainst his gentle niece, Grounded upon no other argument But that the people praise her for her virtues And pity her for her good father’s sake; And, on my life, his malice ’gainst the lady Will suddenly break forth. Sir, fare you well. Hereafter, in a better world than this, I shall desire more love and knowledge of you.

ORLANDO. I rest much bounden to you; fare you well!

[Exit Le Beau.]

Thus must I from the smoke into the smother, From tyrant Duke unto a tyrant brother. But heavenly Rosalind!

SCENE III. A Room in the Palace

Enter Celia and Rosalind.

CELIA. Why, cousin, why, Rosalind! Cupid have mercy! Not a word?

ROSALIND. Not one to throw at a dog.

CELIA. No, thy words are too precious to be cast away upon curs. Throw some of them at me. Come, lame me with reasons.

ROSALIND. Then there were two cousins laid up, when the one should be lamed with reasons and the other mad without any.

CELIA. But is all this for your father?

ROSALIND. No, some of it is for my child’s father. O, how full of briers is this working-day world!

CELIA. They are but burs, cousin, thrown upon thee in holiday foolery. If we walk not in the trodden paths, our very petticoats will catch them.

ROSALIND. I could shake them off my coat; these burs are in my heart.

CELIA. Hem them away.

ROSALIND. I would try, if I could cry “hem” and have him.

CELIA. Come, come, wrestle with thy affections.

ROSALIND. O, they take the part of a better wrestler than myself.

CELIA. O, a good wish upon you! You will try in time, in despite of a fall. But turning these jests out of service, let us talk in good earnest. Is it possible on such a sudden you should fall into so strong a liking with old Sir Rowland’s youngest son?

ROSALIND. The Duke my father loved his father dearly.

CELIA. Doth it therefore ensue that you should love his son dearly? By this kind of chase I should hate him, for my father hated his father dearly; yet I hate not Orlando.

ROSALIND. No, faith, hate him not, for my sake.

CELIA. Why should I not? Doth he not deserve well?

Enter Duke Frederick with Lords.

ROSALIND. Let me love him for that, and do you love him because I do.—Look, here comes the Duke.

CELIA. With his eyes full of anger.

DUKE FREDERICK. Mistress, dispatch you with your safest haste, And get you from our court.

ROSALIND. Me, uncle?

DUKE FREDERICK. You, cousin. Within these ten days if that thou be’st found So near our public court as twenty miles, Thou diest for it.

ROSALIND. I do beseech your Grace, Let me the knowledge of my fault bear with me. If with myself I hold intelligence, Or have acquaintance with mine own desires, If that I do not dream, or be not frantic— As I do trust I am not—then, dear uncle, Never so much as in a thought unborn Did I offend your Highness.

DUKE FREDERICK. Thus do all traitors. If their purgation did consist in words, They are as innocent as grace itself. Let it suffice thee that I trust thee not.

ROSALIND. Yet your mistrust cannot make me a traitor. Tell me whereon the likelihood depends.

DUKE FREDERICK. Thou art thy father’s daughter, there’s enough.

ROSALIND. So was I when your highness took his dukedom; So was I when your highness banished him. Treason is not inherited, my lord, Or, if we did derive it from our friends, What’s that to me? My father was no traitor. Then, good my liege, mistake me not so much To think my poverty is treacherous.

CELIA. Dear sovereign, hear me speak.

DUKE FREDERICK. Ay, Celia, we stayed her for your sake, Else had she with her father ranged along.

CELIA. I did not then entreat to have her stay; It was your pleasure and your own remorse. I was too young that time to value her, But now I know her. If she be a traitor, Why, so am I. We still have slept together, Rose at an instant, learned, played, ate together, And wheresoe’er we went, like Juno’s swans, Still we went coupled and inseparable.

DUKE FREDERICK. She is too subtle for thee, and her smoothness, Her very silence, and her patience Speak to the people, and they pity her. Thou art a fool. She robs thee of thy name, And thou wilt show more bright and seem more virtuous When she is gone. Then open not thy lips. Firm and irrevocable is my doom Which I have passed upon her. She is banished.

CELIA. Pronounce that sentence then on me, my liege. I cannot live out of her company.

DUKE FREDERICK. You are a fool. You, niece, provide yourself. If you outstay the time, upon mine honour And in the greatness of my word, you die.

[Exeunt Duke Frederick and Lords.]

CELIA. O my poor Rosalind, whither wilt thou go? Wilt thou change fathers? I will give thee mine. I charge thee, be not thou more grieved than I am.

ROSALIND. I have more cause.

CELIA. Thou hast not, cousin. Prithee be cheerful. Know’st thou not the Duke Hath banished me, his daughter?

ROSALIND. That he hath not.

CELIA. No, hath not? Rosalind lacks then the love Which teacheth thee that thou and I am one. Shall we be sundered? Shall we part, sweet girl? No, let my father seek another heir. Therefore devise with me how we may fly, Whither to go, and what to bear with us, And do not seek to take your change upon you, To bear your griefs yourself and leave me out. For, by this heaven, now at our sorrows pale, Say what thou canst, I’ll go along with thee.

ROSALIND. Why, whither shall we go?

CELIA. To seek my uncle in the Forest of Arden.

ROSALIND. Alas, what danger will it be to us, Maids as we are, to travel forth so far? Beauty provoketh thieves sooner than gold.

CELIA. I’ll put myself in poor and mean attire, And with a kind of umber smirch my face. The like do you; so shall we pass along And never stir assailants.

ROSALIND. Were it not better, Because that I am more than common tall, That I did suit me all points like a man? A gallant curtal-axe upon my thigh, A boar-spear in my hand, and in my heart Lie there what hidden woman’s fear there will, We’ll have a swashing and a martial outside, As many other mannish cowards have That do outface it with their semblances.

CELIA. What shall I call thee when thou art a man?

ROSALIND. I’ll have no worse a name than Jove’s own page, And therefore look you call me Ganymede. But what will you be called?

CELIA. Something that hath a reference to my state: No longer Celia, but Aliena.

ROSALIND. But, cousin, what if we assayed to steal The clownish fool out of your father’s court? Would he not be a comfort to our travel?

CELIA. He’ll go along o’er the wide world with me. Leave me alone to woo him. Let’s away, And get our jewels and our wealth together, Devise the fittest time and safest way To hide us from pursuit that will be made After my flight. Now go we in content To liberty, and not to banishment.

SCENE I. The Forest of Arden

Enter Duke Senior, Amiens and two or three Lords, dressed as foresters.

DUKE SENIOR. Now, my co-mates and brothers in exile, Hath not old custom made this life more sweet Than that of painted pomp? Are not these woods More free from peril than the envious court? Here feel we not the penalty of Adam, The seasons’ difference, as the icy fang And churlish chiding of the winter’s wind, Which when it bites and blows upon my body Even till I shrink with cold, I smile and say: “This is no flattery. These are counsellors That feelingly persuade me what I am.” Sweet are the uses of adversity, Which, like the toad, ugly and venomous, Wears yet a precious jewel in his head; And this our life, exempt from public haunt, Finds tongues in trees, books in the running brooks, Sermons in stones, and good in everything.

AMIENS. I would not change it. Happy is your grace, That can translate the stubbornness of fortune Into so quiet and so sweet a style.

DUKE SENIOR. Come, shall we go and kill us venison? And yet it irks me the poor dappled fools, Being native burghers of this desert city, Should in their own confines with forked heads Have their round haunches gored.

FIRST LORD. Indeed, my lord, The melancholy Jaques grieves at that, And in that kind swears you do more usurp Than doth your brother that hath banished you. Today my lord of Amiens and myself Did steal behind him as he lay along Under an oak, whose antique root peeps out Upon the brook that brawls along this wood; To the which place a poor sequestered stag, That from the hunter’s aim had ta’en a hurt, Did come to languish; and indeed, my lord, The wretched animal heaved forth such groans That their discharge did stretch his leathern coat Almost to bursting, and the big round tears Coursed one another down his innocent nose In piteous chase. And thus the hairy fool, Much marked of the melancholy Jaques, Stood on th’ extremest verge of the swift brook, Augmenting it with tears.

DUKE SENIOR. But what said Jaques? Did he not moralize this spectacle?

FIRST LORD. O yes, into a thousand similes. First, for his weeping into the needless stream: “Poor deer,” quoth he “thou mak’st a testament As worldlings do, giving thy sum of more To that which had too much.” Then, being there alone, Left and abandoned of his velvet friends: “’Tis right”; quoth he, “thus misery doth part The flux of company.” Anon a careless herd, Full of the pasture, jumps along by him And never stays to greet him. “Ay,” quoth Jaques, “Sweep on, you fat and greasy citizens! ’Tis just the fashion. Wherefore do you look Upon that poor and broken bankrupt there?” Thus most invectively he pierceth through The body of the country, city, court, Yea, and of this our life, swearing that we Are mere usurpers, tyrants, and what’s worse, To fright the animals and to kill them up In their assigned and native dwelling-place.

DUKE SENIOR. And did you leave him in this contemplation?

SECOND LORD. We did, my lord, weeping and commenting Upon the sobbing deer.

DUKE SENIOR. Show me the place. I love to cope him in these sullen fits, For then he’s full of matter.

FIRST LORD. I’ll bring you to him straight.

SCENE II. A Room in the Palace

DUKE FREDERICK. Can it be possible that no man saw them? It cannot be! Some villains of my court Are of consent and sufferance in this.

FIRST LORD. I cannot hear of any that did see her. The ladies, her attendants of her chamber, Saw her abed, and in the morning early They found the bed untreasured of their mistress.

SECOND LORD. My lord, the roynish clown, at whom so oft Your grace was wont to laugh, is also missing. Hesperia, the princess’ gentlewoman, Confesses that she secretly o’erheard Your daughter and her cousin much commend The parts and graces of the wrestler That did but lately foil the sinewy Charles; And she believes wherever they are gone That youth is surely in their company.

DUKE FREDERICK. Send to his brother; fetch that gallant hither. If he be absent, bring his brother to me. I’ll make him find him. Do this suddenly! And let not search and inquisition quail To bring again these foolish runaways.

SCENE III. Before Oliver’s House

Enter Orlando and Adam, meeting.

ORLANDO. Who’s there?

ADAM. What, my young master? O my gentle master, O my sweet master, O you memory Of old Sir Rowland! Why, what make you here? Why are you virtuous? Why do people love you? And wherefore are you gentle, strong, and valiant? Why would you be so fond to overcome The bonny prizer of the humorous Duke? Your praise is come too swiftly home before you. Know you not, master, to some kind of men Their graces serve them but as enemies? No more do yours. Your virtues, gentle master, Are sanctified and holy traitors to you. O, what a world is this, when what is comely Envenoms him that bears it!

ORLANDO. Why, what’s the matter?

ADAM. O unhappy youth, Come not within these doors! Within this roof The enemy of all your graces lives. Your brother—no, no brother, yet the son— Yet not the son; I will not call him son— Of him I was about to call his father, Hath heard your praises, and this night he means To burn the lodging where you use to lie, And you within it. If he fail of that, He will have other means to cut you off; I overheard him and his practices. This is no place; this house is but a butchery. Abhor it, fear it, do not enter it.

ORLANDO. Why, whither, Adam, wouldst thou have me go?

ADAM. No matter whither, so you come not here.

ORLANDO. What, wouldst thou have me go and beg my food, Or with a base and boisterous sword enforce A thievish living on the common road? This I must do, or know not what to do. Yet this I will not do, do how I can. I rather will subject me to the malice Of a diverted blood and bloody brother.

ADAM. But do not so. I have five hundred crowns, The thrifty hire I saved under your father, Which I did store to be my foster-nurse, When service should in my old limbs lie lame, And unregarded age in corners thrown. Take that, and He that doth the ravens feed, Yea, providently caters for the sparrow, Be comfort to my age. Here is the gold. All this I give you. Let me be your servant. Though I look old, yet I am strong and lusty, For in my youth I never did apply Hot and rebellious liquors in my blood, Nor did not with unbashful forehead woo The means of weakness and debility. Therefore my age is as a lusty winter, Frosty but kindly. Let me go with you. I’ll do the service of a younger man In all your business and necessities.

ORLANDO. O good old man, how well in thee appears The constant service of the antique world, When service sweat for duty, not for meed. Thou art not for the fashion of these times, Where none will sweat but for promotion, And having that do choke their service up Even with the having. It is not so with thee. But, poor old man, thou prun’st a rotten tree, That cannot so much as a blossom yield In lieu of all thy pains and husbandry. But come thy ways, we’ll go along together, And ere we have thy youthful wages spent We’ll light upon some settled low content.

ADAM. Master, go on and I will follow thee To the last gasp with truth and loyalty. From seventeen years till now almost fourscore Here lived I, but now live here no more. At seventeen years many their fortunes seek, But at fourscore it is too late a week. Yet fortune cannot recompense me better Than to die well and not my master’s debtor.

SCENE IV. The Forest of Arden

Enter Rosalind as Ganymede, Celia as Aliena, and Touchstone.

ROSALIND. O Jupiter, how weary are my spirits!

TOUCHSTONE. I care not for my spirits, if my legs were not weary.

ROSALIND. I could find in my heart to disgrace my man’s apparel, and to cry like a woman, but I must comfort the weaker vessel, as doublet and hose ought to show itself courageous to petticoat. Therefore, courage, good Aliena.

CELIA. I pray you bear with me, I cannot go no further.

TOUCHSTONE. For my part, I had rather bear with you than bear you. Yet I should bear no cross if I did bear you, for I think you have no money in your purse.

ROSALIND. Well, this is the forest of Arden.

TOUCHSTONE. Ay, now am I in Arden, the more fool I! When I was at home I was in a better place, but travellers must be content.

Enter Corin and Silvius.

ROSALIND. Ay, be so, good Touchstone. Look you, who comes here? A young man and an old in solemn talk.

CORIN. That is the way to make her scorn you still.

SILVIUS. O Corin, that thou knew’st how I do love her!

CORIN. I partly guess, for I have loved ere now.

SILVIUS. No, Corin, being old, thou canst not guess, Though in thy youth thou wast as true a lover As ever sighed upon a midnight pillow. But if thy love were ever like to mine— As sure I think did never man love so— How many actions most ridiculous Hast thou been drawn to by thy fantasy?

CORIN. Into a thousand that I have forgotten.

SILVIUS. O, thou didst then never love so heartily! If thou rememb’rest not the slightest folly That ever love did make thee run into, Thou hast not loved. Or if thou hast not sat as I do now, Wearing thy hearer in thy mistress’ praise, Thou hast not loved. Or if thou hast not broke from company Abruptly, as my passion now makes me, Thou hast not loved. O Phoebe, Phoebe, Phoebe!

[Exit Silvius.]

ROSALIND. Alas, poor shepherd, searching of thy wound, I have by hard adventure found mine own.

TOUCHSTONE. And I mine. I remember when I was in love I broke my sword upon a stone and bid him take that for coming a-night to Jane Smile; and I remember the kissing of her batlet, and the cow’s dugs that her pretty chopped hands had milked; and I remember the wooing of a peascod instead of her, from whom I took two cods, and, giving her them again, said with weeping tears, “Wear these for my sake.” We that are true lovers run into strange capers. But as all is mortal in nature, so is all nature in love mortal in folly.

ROSALIND. Thou speak’st wiser than thou art ware of.

TOUCHSTONE. Nay, I shall ne’er be ware of mine own wit till I break my shins against it.

ROSALIND. Jove, Jove, this shepherd’s passion Is much upon my fashion.

TOUCHSTONE. And mine, but it grows something stale with me.

CELIA. I pray you, one of you question yond man If he for gold will give us any food. I faint almost to death.

TOUCHSTONE. Holla, you clown!

ROSALIND. Peace, fool, he’s not thy kinsman.

CORIN. Who calls?

TOUCHSTONE. Your betters, sir.

CORIN. Else are they very wretched.

ROSALIND. Peace, I say.—Good even to you, friend.

CORIN. And to you, gentle sir, and to you all.

ROSALIND. I prithee, shepherd, if that love or gold Can in this desert place buy entertainment, Bring us where we may rest ourselves and feed. Here’s a young maid with travel much oppressed, And faints for succour.

CORIN. Fair sir, I pity her And wish, for her sake more than for mine own, My fortunes were more able to relieve her. But I am shepherd to another man And do not shear the fleeces that I graze. My master is of churlish disposition And little recks to find the way to heaven By doing deeds of hospitality. Besides, his cote, his flocks, and bounds of feed Are now on sale, and at our sheepcote now, By reason of his absence, there is nothing That you will feed on. But what is, come see, And in my voice most welcome shall you be.

ROSALIND. What is he that shall buy his flock and pasture?

CORIN. That young swain that you saw here but erewhile, That little cares for buying anything.

ROSALIND. I pray thee, if it stand with honesty, Buy thou the cottage, pasture, and the flock, And thou shalt have to pay for it of us.

CELIA. And we will mend thy wages. I like this place, And willingly could waste my time in it.

CORIN. Assuredly the thing is to be sold. Go with me. If you like upon report The soil, the profit, and this kind of life, I will your very faithful feeder be, And buy it with your gold right suddenly.

SCENE V. Another part of the Forest

Enter Amiens, Jaques and others.

AMIENS. [Sings.]

Under the greenwood tree, Who loves to lie with me And turn his merry note Unto the sweet bird’s throat, Come hither, come hither, come hither! Here shall he see No enemy But winter and rough weather.

JAQUES. More, more, I prithee, more.

AMIENS. It will make you melancholy, Monsieur Jaques.

JAQUES. I thank it. More, I prithee, more. I can suck melancholy out of a song as a weasel sucks eggs. More, I prithee, more.

AMIENS. My voice is ragged. I know I cannot please you.

JAQUES. I do not desire you to please me; I do desire you to sing. Come, more, another stanzo. Call you ’em stanzos?

AMIENS. What you will, Monsieur Jaques.

JAQUES. Nay, I care not for their names. They owe me nothing. Will you sing?

AMIENS. More at your request than to please myself.

JAQUES. Well then, if ever I thank any man, I’ll thank you; but that they call compliment is like th’ encounter of two dog-apes. And when a man thanks me heartily, methinks I have given him a penny and he renders me the beggarly thanks. Come, sing; and you that will not, hold your tongues.

AMIENS. Well, I’ll end the song.—Sirs, cover the while. The Duke will drink under this tree; he hath been all this day to look you.

JAQUES. And I have been all this day to avoid him. He is too disputable for my company. I think of as many matters as he, but I give heaven thanks and make no boast of them. Come, warble, come.

Who doth ambition shun And loves to live i’ th’ sun, Seeking the food he eats And pleased with what he gets, Come hither, come hither, come hither. Here shall he see No enemy But winter and rough weather.

JAQUES. I’ll give you a verse to this note that I made yesterday in despite of my invention.

AMIENS. And I’ll sing it.

JAQUES. Thus it goes:

If it do come to pass That any man turn ass, Leaving his wealth and ease A stubborn will to please, Ducdame, ducdame, ducdame; Here shall he see Gross fools as he, An if he will come to me.

AMIENS. What’s that “ducdame?”

JAQUES. ’Tis a Greek invocation to call fools into a circle. I’ll go sleep if I can; if I cannot, I’ll rail against all the first-born of Egypt.

AMIENS. And I’ll go seek the Duke; his banquet is prepared.

SCENE VI. Another part of the Forest

ADAM. Dear master, I can go no further. O, I die for food! Here lie I down and measure out my grave. Farewell, kind master.

ORLANDO. Why, how now, Adam? No greater heart in thee? Live a little, comfort a little, cheer thyself a little. If this uncouth forest yield anything savage, I will either be food for it or bring it for food to thee. Thy conceit is nearer death than thy powers. For my sake, be comfortable. Hold death awhile at the arm’s end. I will here be with thee presently, and if I bring thee not something to eat, I’ll give thee leave to die. But if thou diest before I come, thou art a mocker of my labour. Well said, thou look’st cheerly, and I’ll be with thee quickly. Yet thou liest in the bleak air. Come, I will bear thee to some shelter and thou shalt not die for lack of a dinner if there live anything in this desert. Cheerly, good Adam!

SCENE VII. Another part of the Forest

Enter Duke Senior, Amiens and Lords as outlaws.

DUKE SENIOR. I think he be transformed into a beast, For I can nowhere find him like a man.

FIRST LORD. My lord, he is but even now gone hence; Here was he merry, hearing of a song.

DUKE SENIOR. If he, compact of jars, grow musical, We shall have shortly discord in the spheres. Go seek him, tell him I would speak with him.

Enter Jaques.

FIRST LORD. He saves my labour by his own approach.

DUKE SENIOR. Why, how now, monsieur? What a life is this That your poor friends must woo your company? What, you look merrily.

JAQUES. A fool, a fool! I met a fool i’ th’ forest, A motley fool. A miserable world! As I do live by food, I met a fool, Who laid him down and basked him in the sun, And railed on Lady Fortune in good terms, In good set terms, and yet a motley fool. “Good morrow, fool,” quoth I. “No, sir,” quoth he, “Call me not fool till heaven hath sent me fortune.” And then he drew a dial from his poke, And, looking on it with lack-lustre eye, Says very wisely, “It is ten o’clock. Thus we may see,” quoth he, “how the world wags. ’Tis but an hour ago since it was nine, And after one hour more ’twill be eleven. And so from hour to hour we ripe and ripe, And then from hour to hour we rot and rot, And thereby hangs a tale.” When I did hear The motley fool thus moral on the time, My lungs began to crow like chanticleer, That fools should be so deep-contemplative, And I did laugh sans intermission An hour by his dial. O noble fool! A worthy fool! Motley’s the only wear.

DUKE SENIOR. What fool is this?

JAQUES. O worthy fool!—One that hath been a courtier, And says if ladies be but young and fair, They have the gift to know it. And in his brain, Which is as dry as the remainder biscuit After a voyage, he hath strange places crammed With observation, the which he vents In mangled forms. O that I were a fool! I am ambitious for a motley coat.

DUKE SENIOR. Thou shalt have one.

JAQUES. It is my only suit, Provided that you weed your better judgements Of all opinion that grows rank in them That I am wise. I must have liberty Withal, as large a charter as the wind, To blow on whom I please, for so fools have. And they that are most galled with my folly, They most must laugh. And why, sir, must they so? The “why” is plain as way to parish church. He that a fool doth very wisely hit Doth very foolishly, although he smart, Not to seem senseless of the bob. If not, The wise man’s folly is anatomized Even by the squandering glances of the fool. Invest me in my motley. Give me leave To speak my mind, and I will through and through Cleanse the foul body of th’ infected world, If they will patiently receive my medicine.

DUKE SENIOR. Fie on thee! I can tell what thou wouldst do.

JAQUES. What, for a counter, would I do but good?

DUKE SENIOR. Most mischievous foul sin, in chiding sin; For thou thyself hast been a libertine, As sensual as the brutish sting itself, And all th’ embossed sores and headed evils That thou with license of free foot hast caught Wouldst thou disgorge into the general world.

JAQUES. Why, who cries out on pride That can therein tax any private party? Doth it not flow as hugely as the sea Till that the weary very means do ebb? What woman in the city do I name When that I say the city-woman bears The cost of princes on unworthy shoulders? Who can come in and say that I mean her, When such a one as she, such is her neighbour? Or what is he of basest function That says his bravery is not on my cost, Thinking that I mean him, but therein suits His folly to the mettle of my speech? There then. How then, what then? Let me see wherein My tongue hath wronged him. If it do him right, Then he hath wronged himself. If he be free, Why then my taxing like a wild-goose flies Unclaimed of any man. But who comes here?

Enter Orlando with sword drawn.

ORLANDO. Forbear, and eat no more.

JAQUES. Why, I have eat none yet.

ORLANDO. Nor shalt not till necessity be served.

JAQUES. Of what kind should this cock come of?

DUKE SENIOR. Art thou thus boldened, man, by thy distress? Or else a rude despiser of good manners, That in civility thou seem’st so empty?

ORLANDO. You touched my vein at first. The thorny point Of bare distress hath ta’en from me the show Of smooth civility; yet am I inland bred And know some nurture. But forbear, I say! He dies that touches any of this fruit Till I and my affairs are answered.

JAQUES. An you will not be answered with reason, I must die.

DUKE SENIOR. What would you have? Your gentleness shall force More than your force move us to gentleness.

ORLANDO. I almost die for food, and let me have it.

DUKE SENIOR. Sit down and feed, and welcome to our table.

ORLANDO. Speak you so gently? Pardon me, I pray you. I thought that all things had been savage here And therefore put I on the countenance Of stern commandment. But whate’er you are That in this desert inaccessible, Under the shade of melancholy boughs, Lose and neglect the creeping hours of time, If ever you have looked on better days, If ever been where bells have knolled to church, If ever sat at any good man’s feast, If ever from your eyelids wiped a tear, And know what ’tis to pity and be pitied, Let gentleness my strong enforcement be, In the which hope I blush and hide my sword.

DUKE SENIOR. True is it that we have seen better days, And have with holy bell been knolled to church, And sat at good men’s feasts, and wiped our eyes Of drops that sacred pity hath engendered. And therefore sit you down in gentleness, And take upon command what help we have That to your wanting may be ministered.

ORLANDO. Then but forbear your food a little while, Whiles, like a doe, I go to find my fawn, And give it food. There is an old poor man Who after me hath many a weary step Limped in pure love. Till he be first sufficed, Oppressed with two weak evils, age and hunger, I will not touch a bit.

DUKE SENIOR. Go find him out, And we will nothing waste till you return.

ORLANDO. I thank ye, and be blest for your good comfort.

DUKE SENIOR. Thou seest we are not all alone unhappy. This wide and universal theatre Presents more woeful pageants than the scene Wherein we play in.

JAQUES. All the world’s a stage, And all the men and women merely players; They have their exits and their entrances, And one man in his time plays many parts, His acts being seven ages. At first the infant, Mewling and puking in the nurse’s arms; Then the whining schoolboy, with his satchel And shining morning face, creeping like snail Unwillingly to school. And then the lover, Sighing like furnace, with a woeful ballad Made to his mistress’ eyebrow. Then a soldier, Full of strange oaths and bearded like the pard, Jealous in honour, sudden and quick in quarrel, Seeking the bubble reputation Even in the cannon’s mouth. And then the justice, In fair round belly with good capon lined, With eyes severe and beard of formal cut, Full of wise saws and modern instances; And so he plays his part. The sixth age shifts Into the lean and slippered pantaloon, With spectacles on nose and pouch on side, His youthful hose, well saved, a world too wide For his shrunk shank, and his big manly voice, Turning again toward childish treble, pipes And whistles in his sound. Last scene of all, That ends this strange eventful history, Is second childishness and mere oblivion, Sans teeth, sans eyes, sans taste, sans everything.

Enter Orlando bearing Adam.

DUKE SENIOR. Welcome. Set down your venerable burden, And let him feed.

ORLANDO. I thank you most for him.

ADAM. So had you need; I scarce can speak to thank you for myself.

DUKE SENIOR. Welcome, fall to. I will not trouble you As yet to question you about your fortunes. Give us some music, and good cousin, sing.

SONG.

AMIENS. (Sings.) Blow, blow, thou winter wind, Thou art not so unkind As man’s ingratitude. Thy tooth is not so keen, Because thou art not seen, Although thy breath be rude. Heigh-ho, sing heigh-ho, unto the green holly. Most friendship is feigning, most loving mere folly. Then, heigh-ho, the holly! This life is most jolly.

Freeze, freeze, thou bitter sky, That dost not bite so nigh As benefits forgot. Though thou the waters warp, Thy sting is not so sharp As friend remembered not. Heigh-ho, sing heigh-ho, unto the green holly. Most friendship is feigning, most loving mere folly. Then, heigh-ho, the holly! This life is most jolly.

DUKE SENIOR. If that you were the good Sir Rowland’s son, As you have whispered faithfully you were, And as mine eye doth his effigies witness Most truly limned and living in your face, Be truly welcome hither. I am the Duke That loved your father. The residue of your fortune Go to my cave and tell me.—Good old man, Thou art right welcome as thy master is. Support him by the arm. [To Orlando.] Give me your hand, And let me all your fortunes understand.

SCENE I. A Room in the Palace

Enter Duke Frederick, Lords and Oliver.

DUKE FREDERICK. Not see him since? Sir, sir, that cannot be. But were I not the better part made mercy, I should not seek an absent argument Of my revenge, thou present. But look to it: Find out thy brother wheresoe’er he is. Seek him with candle. Bring him dead or living Within this twelvemonth, or turn thou no more To seek a living in our territory. Thy lands, and all things that thou dost call thine Worth seizure, do we seize into our hands, Till thou canst quit thee by thy brother’s mouth Of what we think against thee.

OLIVER. O that your highness knew my heart in this: I never loved my brother in my life.

DUKE FREDERICK. More villain thou. Well, push him out of doors, And let my officers of such a nature Make an extent upon his house and lands. Do this expediently, and turn him going.

SCENE II. The Forest of Arden

Enter Orlando with a paper.

ORLANDO. Hang there, my verse, in witness of my love. And thou, thrice-crowned queen of night, survey With thy chaste eye, from thy pale sphere above, Thy huntress’ name that my full life doth sway. O Rosalind, these trees shall be my books, And in their barks my thoughts I’ll character, That every eye which in this forest looks Shall see thy virtue witnessed everywhere. Run, run, Orlando, carve on every tree The fair, the chaste, and unexpressive she.

Enter Corin and Touchstone.

CORIN. And how like you this shepherd’s life, Master Touchstone?

TOUCHSTONE. Truly, shepherd, in respect of itself, it is a good life; but in respect that it is a shepherd’s life, it is naught. In respect that it is solitary, I like it very well; but in respect that it is private, it is a very vile life. Now in respect it is in the fields, it pleaseth me well; but in respect it is not in the court, it is tedious. As it is a spare life, look you, it fits my humour well; but as there is no more plenty in it, it goes much against my stomach. Hast any philosophy in thee, shepherd?

CORIN. No more but that I know the more one sickens, the worse at ease he is; and that he that wants money, means, and content is without three good friends; that the property of rain is to wet, and fire to burn; that good pasture makes fat sheep; and that a great cause of the night is lack of the sun; that he that hath learned no wit by nature nor art may complain of good breeding or comes of a very dull kindred.

TOUCHSTONE. Such a one is a natural philosopher. Wast ever in court, shepherd?

CORIN. No, truly.

TOUCHSTONE. Then thou art damned.

CORIN. Nay, I hope.

TOUCHSTONE. Truly, thou art damned, like an ill-roasted egg, all on one side.

CORIN. For not being at court? Your reason.

TOUCHSTONE. Why, if thou never wast at court, thou never saw’st good manners; if thou never saw’st good manners, then thy manners must be wicked, and wickedness is sin, and sin is damnation. Thou art in a parlous state, shepherd.

CORIN. Not a whit, Touchstone. Those that are good manners at the court are as ridiculous in the country as the behaviour of the country is most mockable at the court. You told me you salute not at the court but you kiss your hands. That courtesy would be uncleanly if courtiers were shepherds.

TOUCHSTONE. Instance, briefly. Come, instance.

CORIN. Why, we are still handling our ewes, and their fells, you know, are greasy.

TOUCHSTONE. Why, do not your courtier’s hands sweat? And is not the grease of a mutton as wholesome as the sweat of a man? Shallow, shallow. A better instance, I say. Come.

CORIN. Besides, our hands are hard.

TOUCHSTONE. Your lips will feel them the sooner. Shallow again. A more sounder instance, come.

CORIN. And they are often tarred over with the surgery of our sheep; and would you have us kiss tar? The courtier’s hands are perfumed with civet.

TOUCHSTONE. Most shallow man! Thou worm’s meat in respect of a good piece of flesh indeed! Learn of the wise and perpend. Civet is of a baser birth than tar, the very uncleanly flux of a cat. Mend the instance, shepherd.

CORIN. You have too courtly a wit for me. I’ll rest.

TOUCHSTONE. Wilt thou rest damned? God help thee, shallow man! God make incision in thee, thou art raw.

CORIN. Sir, I am a true labourer. I earn that I eat, get that I wear, owe no man hate, envy no man’s happiness, glad of other men’s good, content with my harm; and the greatest of my pride is to see my ewes graze and my lambs suck.

TOUCHSTONE. That is another simple sin in you, to bring the ewes and the rams together and to offer to get your living by the copulation of cattle; to be bawd to a bell-wether and to betray a she-lamb of a twelvemonth to crooked-pated, old, cuckoldly ram, out of all reasonable match. If thou be’st not damned for this, the devil himself will have no shepherds. I cannot see else how thou shouldst ’scape.

Enter Rosalind as Ganymede.

CORIN. Here comes young Master Ganymede, my new mistress’s brother.

ROSALIND. [Reads.] From the east to western Inde No jewel is like Rosalind. Her worth being mounted on the wind, Through all the world bears Rosalind. All the pictures fairest lined Are but black to Rosalind. Let no face be kept in mind But the fair of Rosalind.

TOUCHSTONE. I’ll rhyme you so eight years together, dinners and suppers and sleeping hours excepted. It is the right butter-women’s rank to market.

ROSALIND. Out, fool!

TOUCHSTONE. For a taste: If a hart do lack a hind, Let him seek out Rosalind. If the cat will after kind, So be sure will Rosalind. Winter garments must be lined, So must slender Rosalind. They that reap must sheaf and bind, Then to cart with Rosalind. Sweetest nut hath sourest rind, Such a nut is Rosalind. He that sweetest rose will find Must find love’s prick, and Rosalind. This is the very false gallop of verses. Why do you infect yourself with them?

ROSALIND. Peace, you dull fool, I found them on a tree.

TOUCHSTONE. Truly, the tree yields bad fruit.

ROSALIND. I’ll graft it with you, and then I shall graft it with a medlar. Then it will be the earliest fruit i’ th’ country, for you’ll be rotten ere you be half ripe, and that’s the right virtue of the medlar.

TOUCHSTONE. You have said, but whether wisely or no, let the forest judge.

Enter Celia as Aliena, reading a paper.

ROSALIND. Peace, here comes my sister, reading. Stand aside.

CELIA. [Reads.] Why should this a desert be? For it is unpeopled? No! Tongues I’ll hang on every tree That shall civil sayings show. Some, how brief the life of man Runs his erring pilgrimage, That the streching of a span Buckles in his sum of age; Some, of violated vows ’Twixt the souls of friend and friend. But upon the fairest boughs, Or at every sentence’ end, Will I “Rosalinda” write, Teaching all that read to know The quintessence of every sprite Heaven would in little show. Therefore heaven nature charged That one body should be filled With all graces wide-enlarged. Nature presently distilled Helen’s cheek, but not her heart, Cleopatra’s majesty; Atalanta’s better part, Sad Lucretia’s modesty. Thus Rosalind of many parts By heavenly synod was devised, Of many faces, eyes, and hearts To have the touches dearest prized. Heaven would that she these gifts should have, And I to live and die her slave.

ROSALIND. O most gentle Jupiter, what tedious homily of love have you wearied your parishioners withal, and never cried “Have patience, good people!”

CELIA. How now! Back, friends. Shepherd, go off a little. Go with him, sirrah.

TOUCHSTONE. Come, shepherd, let us make an honourable retreat, though not with bag and baggage, yet with scrip and scrippage.

[Exeunt Corin and Touchstone.]

CELIA. Didst thou hear these verses?

ROSALIND. O yes, I heard them all, and more too, for some of them had in them more feet than the verses would bear.

CELIA. That’s no matter. The feet might bear the verses.

ROSALIND. Ay, but the feet were lame and could not bear themselves without the verse, and therefore stood lamely in the verse.

CELIA. But didst thou hear without wondering how thy name should be hanged and carved upon these trees?

ROSALIND. I was seven of the nine days out of the wonder before you came; for look here what I found on a palm-tree. I was never so berhymed since Pythagoras’ time that I was an Irish rat, which I can hardly remember.

CELIA. Trow you who hath done this?

ROSALIND. Is it a man?

CELIA. And a chain, that you once wore, about his neck. Change you colour?

ROSALIND. I prithee, who?

CELIA. O Lord, Lord, it is a hard matter for friends to meet; but mountains may be removed with earthquakes and so encounter.

ROSALIND. Nay, but who is it?

CELIA. Is it possible?

ROSALIND. Nay, I prithee now, with most petitionary vehemence, tell me who it is.

CELIA. O wonderful, wonderful, most wonderful wonderful, and yet again wonderful, and after that, out of all whooping!

ROSALIND. Good my complexion! Dost thou think, though I am caparisoned like a man, I have a doublet and hose in my disposition? One inch of delay more is a South Sea of discovery. I prithee tell me who is it quickly, and speak apace. I would thou couldst stammer, that thou mightst pour this concealed man out of thy mouth, as wine comes out of narrow-mouthed bottle—either too much at once or none at all. I prithee take the cork out of thy mouth that I may drink thy tidings.

CELIA. So you may put a man in your belly.

ROSALIND. Is he of God’s making? What manner of man? Is his head worth a hat, or his chin worth a beard?

CELIA. Nay, he hath but a little beard.

ROSALIND. Why, God will send more if the man will be thankful. Let me stay the growth of his beard, if thou delay me not the knowledge of his chin.

CELIA. It is young Orlando, that tripped up the wrestler’s heels and your heart both in an instant.

ROSALIND. Nay, but the devil take mocking! Speak sad brow and true maid.

CELIA. I’ faith, coz, ’tis he.

ROSALIND. Orlando?

CELIA. Orlando.

ROSALIND. Alas the day, what shall I do with my doublet and hose? What did he when thou saw’st him? What said he? How looked he? Wherein went he? What makes he here? Did he ask for me? Where remains he? How parted he with thee? And when shalt thou see him again? Answer me in one word.

CELIA. You must borrow me Gargantua’s mouth first. ’Tis a word too great for any mouth of this age’s size. To say ay and no to these particulars is more than to answer in a catechism.

ROSALIND. But doth he know that I am in this forest and in man’s apparel? Looks he as freshly as he did the day he wrestled?

CELIA. It is as easy to count atomies as to resolve the propositions of a lover. But take a taste of my finding him, and relish it with good observance. I found him under a tree, like a dropped acorn.

ROSALIND. It may well be called Jove’s tree when it drops forth such fruit.

CELIA. Give me audience, good madam.

ROSALIND. Proceed.

CELIA. There lay he, stretched along like a wounded knight.

ROSALIND. Though it be pity to see such a sight, it well becomes the ground.

CELIA. Cry “holla!” to thy tongue, I prithee. It curvets unseasonably. He was furnished like a hunter.

ROSALIND. O, ominous! He comes to kill my heart.

CELIA. I would sing my song without a burden. Thou bring’st me out of tune.

ROSALIND. Do you not know I am a woman? When I think, I must speak. Sweet, say on.

Enter Orlando and Jaques.

CELIA. You bring me out. Soft, comes he not here?

ROSALIND. ’Tis he! Slink by, and note him.

[Rosalind and Celia step aside.]

JAQUES. I thank you for your company but, good faith, I had as lief have been myself alone.

ORLANDO. And so had I, but yet, for fashion sake, I thank you too for your society.

JAQUES. God be wi’ you, let’s meet as little as we can.

ORLANDO. I do desire we may be better strangers.

JAQUES. I pray you, mar no more trees with writing love songs in their barks.

ORLANDO. I pray you, mar no more of my verses with reading them ill-favouredly.

JAQUES. Rosalind is your love’s name?

ORLANDO. Yes, just.

JAQUES. I do not like her name.

ORLANDO. There was no thought of pleasing you when she was christened.

JAQUES. What stature is she of?

ORLANDO. Just as high as my heart.

JAQUES. You are full of pretty answers. Have you not been acquainted with goldsmiths’ wives, and conned them out of rings?

ORLANDO. Not so; but I answer you right painted cloth, from whence you have studied your questions.

JAQUES. You have a nimble wit. I think ’twas made of Atalanta’s heels. Will you sit down with me? And we two will rail against our mistress the world and all our misery.

ORLANDO. I will chide no breather in the world but myself, against whom I know most faults.

JAQUES. The worst fault you have is to be in love.

ORLANDO. ’Tis a fault I will not change for your best virtue. I am weary of you.

JAQUES. By my troth, I was seeking for a fool when I found you.

ORLANDO. He is drowned in the brook. Look but in, and you shall see him.

JAQUES. There I shall see mine own figure.

ORLANDO. Which I take to be either a fool or a cipher.

JAQUES. I’ll tarry no longer with you. Farewell, good Signior Love.

ORLANDO. I am glad of your departure. Adieu, good Monsieur Melancholy.

[Exit Jaques.—Celia and Rosalind come forward.]

ROSALIND. I will speak to him like a saucy lackey, and under that habit play the knave with him. Do you hear, forester?

ORLANDO. Very well. What would you?

ROSALIND. I pray you, what is’t o’clock?

ORLANDO. You should ask me what time o’ day. There’s no clock in the forest.

ROSALIND. Then there is no true lover in the forest, else sighing every minute and groaning every hour would detect the lazy foot of time as well as a clock.

ORLANDO. And why not the swift foot of time? Had not that been as proper?

ROSALIND. By no means, sir. Time travels in divers paces with divers persons. I’ll tell you who time ambles withal, who time trots withal, who time gallops withal, and who he stands still withal.

ORLANDO. I prithee, who doth he trot withal?

ROSALIND. Marry, he trots hard with a young maid between the contract of her marriage and the day it is solemnized. If the interim be but a se’nnight, time’s pace is so hard that it seems the length of seven year.

ORLANDO. Who ambles time withal?

ROSALIND. With a priest that lacks Latin and a rich man that hath not the gout; for the one sleeps easily because he cannot study, and the other lives merrily because he feels no pain; the one lacking the burden of lean and wasteful learning, the other knowing no burden of heavy tedious penury. These time ambles withal.

ORLANDO. Who doth he gallop withal?

ROSALIND. With a thief to the gallows; for though he go as softly as foot can fall, he thinks himself too soon there.

ORLANDO. Who stays it still withal?

ROSALIND. With lawyers in the vacation; for they sleep between term and term, and then they perceive not how time moves.

ORLANDO. Where dwell you, pretty youth?

ROSALIND. With this shepherdess, my sister, here in the skirts of the forest, like fringe upon a petticoat.

ORLANDO. Are you native of this place?

ROSALIND. As the coney that you see dwell where she is kindled.

ORLANDO. Your accent is something finer than you could purchase in so removed a dwelling.

ROSALIND. I have been told so of many. But indeed an old religious uncle of mine taught me to speak, who was in his youth an inland man, one that knew courtship too well, for there he fell in love. I have heard him read many lectures against it, and I thank God I am not a woman, to be touched with so many giddy offences as he hath generally taxed their whole sex withal.

ORLANDO. Can you remember any of the principal evils that he laid to the charge of women?

ROSALIND. There were none principal. They were all like one another as halfpence are, every one fault seeming monstrous till his fellow fault came to match it.

ORLANDO. I prithee recount some of them.

ROSALIND. No. I will not cast away my physic but on those that are sick. There is a man haunts the forest that abuses our young plants with carving “Rosalind” on their barks; hangs odes upon hawthorns and elegies on brambles; all, forsooth, deifying the name of Rosalind. If I could meet that fancy-monger, I would give him some good counsel, for he seems to have the quotidian of love upon him.

ORLANDO. I am he that is so love-shaked. I pray you tell me your remedy.

ROSALIND. There is none of my uncle’s marks upon you. He taught me how to know a man in love, in which cage of rushes I am sure you are not prisoner.

ORLANDO. What were his marks?

ROSALIND. A lean cheek, which you have not; a blue eye and sunken, which you have not; an unquestionable spirit, which you have not; a beard neglected, which you have not—but I pardon you for that, for simply your having in beard is a younger brother’s revenue. Then your hose should be ungartered, your bonnet unbanded, your sleeve unbuttoned, your shoe untied, and everything about you demonstrating a careless desolation. But you are no such man. You are rather point-device in your accoutrements, as loving yourself than seeming the lover of any other.

ORLANDO. Fair youth, I would I could make thee believe I love.

ROSALIND. Me believe it? You may as soon make her that you love believe it, which I warrant she is apter to do than to confess she does. That is one of the points in the which women still give the lie to their consciences. But, in good sooth, are you he that hangs the verses on the trees, wherein Rosalind is so admired?

ORLANDO. I swear to thee, youth, by the white hand of Rosalind, I am that he, that unfortunate he.

ROSALIND. But are you so much in love as your rhymes speak?

ORLANDO. Neither rhyme nor reason can express how much.

ROSALIND. Love is merely a madness, and, I tell you, deserves as well a dark house and a whip as madmen do; and the reason why they are not so punished and cured is that the lunacy is so ordinary that the whippers are in love too. Yet I profess curing it by counsel.

ORLANDO. Did you ever cure any so?

ROSALIND. Yes, one, and in this manner. He was to imagine me his love, his mistress, and I set him every day to woo me; at which time would I, being but a moonish youth, grieve, be effeminate, changeable, longing and liking, proud, fantastical, apish, shallow, inconstant, full of tears, full of smiles; for every passion something and for no passion truly anything, as boys and women are for the most part cattle of this colour; would now like him, now loathe him; then entertain him, then forswear him; now weep for him, then spit at him; that I drave my suitor from his mad humour of love to a living humour of madness, which was to forswear the full stream of the world and to live in a nook merely monastic. And thus I cured him, and this way will I take upon me to wash your liver as clean as a sound sheep’s heart, that there shall not be one spot of love in ’t.

ORLANDO. I would not be cured, youth.

ROSALIND. I would cure you, if you would but call me Rosalind and come every day to my cote and woo me.

ORLANDO. Now, by the faith of my love, I will. Tell me where it is.

ROSALIND. Go with me to it, and I’ll show it you; and by the way you shall tell me where in the forest you live. Will you go?

ORLANDO. With all my heart, good youth.

ROSALIND. Nay, you must call me Rosalind. Come, sister, will you go?

SCENE III. Another part of the Forest

Enter Touchstone and Audrey; Jaques at a distance observing them.

TOUCHSTONE. Come apace, good Audrey. I will fetch up your goats, Audrey. And how, Audrey? Am I the man yet? Doth my simple feature content you?

AUDREY. Your features, Lord warrant us! What features?

TOUCHSTONE. I am here with thee and thy goats, as the most capricious poet, honest Ovid, was among the Goths.

JAQUES. [Aside.] O knowledge ill-inhabited, worse than Jove in a thatched house!

TOUCHSTONE. When a man’s verses cannot be understood, nor a man’s good wit seconded with the forward child, understanding, it strikes a man more dead than a great reckoning in a little room. Truly, I would the gods had made thee poetical.

AUDREY. I do not know what “poetical” is. Is it honest in deed and word? Is it a true thing?

TOUCHSTONE. No, truly; for the truest poetry is the most feigning, and lovers are given to poetry, and what they swear in poetry may be said, as lovers, they do feign.

AUDREY. Do you wish, then, that the gods had made me poetical?

TOUCHSTONE. I do, truly, for thou swear’st to me thou art honest. Now if thou wert a poet, I might have some hope thou didst feign.

AUDREY. Would you not have me honest?

TOUCHSTONE. No, truly, unless thou wert hard-favoured; for honesty coupled to beauty is to have honey a sauce to sugar.

JAQUES. [Aside.] A material fool!

AUDREY. Well, I am not fair, and therefore I pray the gods make me honest.

TOUCHSTONE. Truly, and to cast away honesty upon a foul slut were to put good meat into an unclean dish.

AUDREY. I am not a slut, though I thank the gods I am foul.

TOUCHSTONE. Well, praised be the gods for thy foulness; sluttishness may come hereafter. But be it as it may be, I will marry thee. And to that end I have been with Sir Oliver Martext, the vicar of the next village, who hath promised to meet me in this place of the forest and to couple us.

JAQUES. [Aside.] I would fain see this meeting.

AUDREY. Well, the gods give us joy!

TOUCHSTONE. Amen. A man may, if he were of a fearful heart, stagger in this attempt, for here we have no temple but the wood, no assembly but horn-beasts. But what though? Courage! As horns are odious, they are necessary. It is said, “Many a man knows no end of his goods.” Right. Many a man has good horns and knows no end of them. Well, that is the dowry of his wife; ’tis none of his own getting. Horns? Even so. Poor men alone? No, no, the noblest deer hath them as huge as the rascal. Is the single man therefore blessed? No. As a walled town is more worthier than a village, so is the forehead of a married man more honourable than the bare brow of a bachelor. And by how much defence is better than no skill, by so much is horn more precious than to want.

Enter Sir Oliver Martext.

Here comes Sir Oliver. Sir Oliver Martext, you are well met. Will you dispatch us here under this tree, or shall we go with you to your chapel?

MARTEXT. Is there none here to give the woman?

TOUCHSTONE. I will not take her on gift of any man.

MARTEXT. Truly, she must be given, or the marriage is not lawful.

JAQUES. [Coming forward.] Proceed, proceed. I’ll give her.

TOUCHSTONE. Good even, good Master What-ye-call’t, how do you, sir? You are very well met. God ’ild you for your last company. I am very glad to see you. Even a toy in hand here, sir. Nay, pray be covered.

JAQUES. Will you be married, motley?

TOUCHSTONE. As the ox hath his bow, sir, the horse his curb, and the falcon her bells, so man hath his desires; and as pigeons bill, so wedlock would be nibbling.

JAQUES. And will you, being a man of your breeding, be married under a bush like a beggar? Get you to church, and have a good priest that can tell you what marriage is. This fellow will but join you together as they join wainscot; then one of you will prove a shrunk panel, and like green timber, warp, warp.

TOUCHSTONE. [Aside.] I am not in the mind but I were better to be married of him than of another, for he is not like to marry me well, and not being well married, it will be a good excuse for me hereafter to leave my wife.

JAQUES. Go thou with me, and let me counsel thee.

TOUCHSTONE. Come, sweet Audrey. We must be married, or we must live in bawdry. Farewell, good Master Oliver. Not O sweet Oliver, O brave Oliver, Leave me not behind thee. But Wind away,— Begone, I say, I will not to wedding with thee.

[Exeunt Touchstone, Audrey and Jaques.]

MARTEXT. ’Tis no matter. Ne’er a fantastical knave of them all shall flout me out of my calling.

SCENE IV. Another part of the Forest. Before a Cottage

ROSALIND. Never talk to me, I will weep.

CELIA. Do, I prithee, but yet have the grace to consider that tears do not become a man.

ROSALIND. But have I not cause to weep?

CELIA. As good cause as one would desire; therefore weep.

ROSALIND. His very hair is of the dissembling colour.

CELIA. Something browner than Judas’s. Marry, his kisses are Judas’s own children.

ROSALIND. I’ faith, his hair is of a good colour.

CELIA. An excellent colour. Your chestnut was ever the only colour.

ROSALIND. And his kissing is as full of sanctity as the touch of holy bread.

CELIA. He hath bought a pair of cast lips of Diana. A nun of winter’s sisterhood kisses not more religiously; the very ice of chastity is in them.

ROSALIND. But why did he swear he would come this morning, and comes not?

CELIA. Nay, certainly, there is no truth in him.

ROSALIND. Do you think so?

CELIA. Yes. I think he is not a pick-purse nor a horse-stealer, but for his verity in love, I do think him as concave as a covered goblet or a worm-eaten nut.

ROSALIND. Not true in love?

CELIA. Yes, when he is in, but I think he is not in.

ROSALIND. You have heard him swear downright he was.

CELIA. “Was” is not “is”. Besides, the oath of a lover is no stronger than the word of a tapster. They are both the confirmer of false reckonings. He attends here in the forest on the Duke your father.

ROSALIND. I met the Duke yesterday, and had much question with him. He asked me of what parentage I was. I told him, of as good as he, so he laughed and let me go. But what talk we of fathers when there is such a man as Orlando?

CELIA. O, that’s a brave man! He writes brave verses, speaks brave words, swears brave oaths, and breaks them bravely, quite traverse, athwart the heart of his lover, as a puny tilter, that spurs his horse but on one side, breaks his staff like a noble goose. But all’s brave that youth mounts and folly guides. Who comes here?

Enter Corin.

CORIN. Mistress and master, you have oft enquired After the shepherd that complained of love, Who you saw sitting by me on the turf, Praising the proud disdainful shepherdess That was his mistress.

CELIA. Well, and what of him?

CORIN. If you will see a pageant truly played Between the pale complexion of true love And the red glow of scorn and proud disdain, Go hence a little, and I shall conduct you, If you will mark it.

ROSALIND. O, come, let us remove. The sight of lovers feedeth those in love. Bring us to this sight, and you shall say I’ll prove a busy actor in their play.

Enter Silvius and Phoebe.

SILVIUS. Sweet Phoebe, do not scorn me, do not, Phoebe. Say that you love me not, but say not so In bitterness. The common executioner, Whose heart th’ accustomed sight of death makes hard, Falls not the axe upon the humbled neck But first begs pardon. Will you sterner be Than he that dies and lives by bloody drops?

Enter Rosalind, Celia and Corin, at a distance.

PHOEBE. I would not be thy executioner; I fly thee, for I would not injure thee. Thou tell’st me there is murder in mine eye. ’Tis pretty, sure, and very probable That eyes, that are the frail’st and softest things, Who shut their coward gates on atomies, Should be called tyrants, butchers, murderers. Now I do frown on thee with all my heart, And if mine eyes can wound, now let them kill thee. Now counterfeit to swoon; why, now fall down; Or if thou canst not, O, for shame, for shame, Lie not, to say mine eyes are murderers. Now show the wound mine eye hath made in thee. Scratch thee but with a pin, and there remains Some scar of it; lean upon a rush, The cicatrice and capable impressure Thy palm some moment keeps. But now mine eyes, Which I have darted at thee, hurt thee not; Nor I am sure there is not force in eyes That can do hurt.

SILVIUS. O dear Phoebe, If ever—as that ever may be near— You meet in some fresh cheek the power of fancy, Then shall you know the wounds invisible That love’s keen arrows make.

PHOEBE. But till that time Come not thou near me. And when that time comes, Afflict me with thy mocks, pity me not, As till that time I shall not pity thee.

ROSALIND. [Advancing.] And why, I pray you? Who might be your mother, That you insult, exult, and all at once, Over the wretched? What though you have no beauty— As, by my faith, I see no more in you Than without candle may go dark to bed— Must you be therefore proud and pitiless? Why, what means this? Why do you look on me? I see no more in you than in the ordinary Of nature’s sale-work. ’Od’s my little life, I think she means to tangle my eyes too! No, faith, proud mistress, hope not after it. ’Tis not your inky brows, your black silk hair, Your bugle eyeballs, nor your cheek of cream, That can entame my spirits to your worship. You foolish shepherd, wherefore do you follow her, Like foggy south, puffing with wind and rain? You are a thousand times a properer man Than she a woman. ’Tis such fools as you That makes the world full of ill-favoured children. ’Tis not her glass but you that flatters her, And out of you she sees herself more proper Than any of her lineaments can show her. But, mistress, know yourself; down on your knees, And thank heaven, fasting, for a good man’s love. For I must tell you friendly in your ear, Sell when you can; you are not for all markets. Cry the man mercy, love him, take his offer; Foul is most foul, being foul to be a scoffer. So take her to thee, shepherd. Fare you well.

PHOEBE. Sweet youth, I pray you chide a year together! I had rather hear you chide than this man woo.

ROSALIND. He’s fall’n in love with your foulness, and she’ll fall in love with my anger. If it be so, as fast as she answers thee with frowning looks, I’ll sauce her with bitter words. Why look you so upon me?

PHOEBE. For no ill will I bear you.

ROSALIND. I pray you do not fall in love with me, For I am falser than vows made in wine. Besides, I like you not. If you will know my house, ’Tis at the tuft of olives here hard by. Will you go, sister? Shepherd, ply her hard. Come, sister. Shepherdess, look on him better, And be not proud. Though all the world could see, None could be so abused in sight as he. Come, to our flock.

[Exeunt Rosalind, Celia and Corin.]

PHOEBE. Dead shepherd, now I find thy saw of might: “Who ever loved that loved not at first sight?”

SILVIUS. Sweet Phoebe—

PHOEBE. Ha, what sayst thou, Silvius?

SILVIUS. Sweet Phoebe, pity me.

PHOEBE. Why, I am sorry for thee, gentle Silvius.

SILVIUS. Wherever sorrow is, relief would be. If you do sorrow at my grief in love, By giving love your sorrow and my grief Were both extermined.

PHOEBE. Thou hast my love. Is not that neighbourly?

SILVIUS. I would have you.

PHOEBE. Why, that were covetousness. Silvius, the time was that I hated thee; And yet it is not that I bear thee love; But since that thou canst talk of love so well, Thy company, which erst was irksome to me, I will endure, and I’ll employ thee too. But do not look for further recompense Than thine own gladness that thou art employed.

SILVIUS. So holy and so perfect is my love, And I in such a poverty of grace, That I shall think it a most plenteous crop To glean the broken ears after the man That the main harvest reaps. Loose now and then A scattered smile, and that I’ll live upon.

PHOEBE. Know’st thou the youth that spoke to me erewhile?

SILVIUS. Not very well, but I have met him oft, And he hath bought the cottage and the bounds That the old carlot once was master of.

PHOEBE. Think not I love him, though I ask for him. ’Tis but a peevish boy—yet he talks well. But what care I for words? Yet words do well When he that speaks them pleases those that hear. It is a pretty youth—not very pretty— But sure he’s proud, and yet his pride becomes him. He’ll make a proper man. The best thing in him Is his complexion; and faster than his tongue Did make offence, his eye did heal it up. He is not very tall, yet for his years he’s tall; His leg is but so-so, and yet ’tis well. There was a pretty redness in his lip, A little riper and more lusty red Than that mixed in his cheek. ’Twas just the difference Betwixt the constant red and mingled damask. There be some women, Silvius, had they marked him In parcels as I did, would have gone near To fall in love with him; but for my part I love him not nor hate him not; and yet I have more cause to hate him than to love him. For what had he to do to chide at me? He said mine eyes were black and my hair black, And now I am remembered, scorned at me. I marvel why I answered not again. But that’s all one: omittance is no quittance. I’ll write to him a very taunting letter, And thou shalt bear it. Wilt thou, Silvius?

SILVIUS. Phoebe, with all my heart.

PHOEBE. I’ll write it straight, The matter’s in my head and in my heart. I will be bitter with him and passing short. Go with me, Silvius.

Enter Rosalind, Celia and Jaques.

JAQUES. I prithee, pretty youth, let me be better acquainted with thee.

ROSALIND. They say you are a melancholy fellow.

JAQUES. I am so; I do love it better than laughing.

ROSALIND. Those that are in extremity of either are abominable fellows, and betray themselves to every modern censure worse than drunkards.

JAQUES. Why, ’tis good to be sad and say nothing.

ROSALIND. Why then, ’tis good to be a post.

JAQUES. I have neither the scholar’s melancholy, which is emulation; nor the musician’s, which is fantastical; nor the courtier’s, which is proud; nor the soldier’s, which is ambitious; nor the lawyer’s, which is politic; nor the lady’s, which is nice; nor the lover’s, which is all these; but it is a melancholy of mine own, compounded of many simples, extracted from many objects, and indeed the sundry contemplation of my travels, in which my often rumination wraps me in a most humorous sadness.

ROSALIND. A traveller! By my faith, you have great reason to be sad. I fear you have sold your own lands to see other men’s. Then to have seen much and to have nothing is to have rich eyes and poor hands.

JAQUES. Yes, I have gained my experience.

ROSALIND. And your experience makes you sad. I had rather have a fool to make me merry than experience to make me sad—and to travel for it too.

Enter Orlando.

ORLANDO. Good day and happiness, dear Rosalind!

JAQUES. Nay, then, God be wi’ you, an you talk in blank verse.

ROSALIND. Farewell, Monsieur Traveller. Look you lisp and wear strange suits; disable all the benefits of your own country; be out of love with your nativity, and almost chide God for making you that countenance you are, or I will scarce think you have swam in a gondola.

[Exit Jaques.]

Why, how now, Orlando, where have you been all this while? You a lover! An you serve me such another trick, never come in my sight more.

ORLANDO. My fair Rosalind, I come within an hour of my promise.

ROSALIND. Break an hour’s promise in love? He that will divide a minute into a thousand parts, and break but a part of the thousand part of a minute in the affairs of love, it may be said of him that Cupid hath clapped him o’ the shoulder, but I’ll warrant him heart-whole.

ORLANDO. Pardon me, dear Rosalind.

ROSALIND. Nay, an you be so tardy, come no more in my sight. I had as lief be wooed of a snail.

ORLANDO. Of a snail?

ROSALIND. Ay, of a snail, for though he comes slowly, he carries his house on his head—a better jointure, I think, than you make a woman. Besides, he brings his destiny with him.

ORLANDO. What’s that?

ROSALIND. Why, horns, which such as you are fain to be beholding to your wives for. But he comes armed in his fortune and prevents the slander of his wife.

ORLANDO. Virtue is no horn-maker and my Rosalind is virtuous.

ROSALIND. And I am your Rosalind.

CELIA. It pleases him to call you so, but he hath a Rosalind of a better leer than you.

ROSALIND. Come, woo me, woo me, for now I am in a holiday humour, and like enough to consent. What would you say to me now, an I were your very, very Rosalind?

ORLANDO. I would kiss before I spoke.

ROSALIND. Nay, you were better speak first, and when you were gravelled for lack of matter, you might take occasion to kiss. Very good orators, when they are out, they will spit; and for lovers lacking—God warn us—matter, the cleanliest shift is to kiss.

ORLANDO. How if the kiss be denied?

ROSALIND. Then she puts you to entreaty, and there begins new matter.

ORLANDO. Who could be out, being before his beloved mistress?

ROSALIND. Marry, that should you, if I were your mistress, or I should think my honesty ranker than my wit.

ORLANDO. What, of my suit?

ROSALIND. Not out of your apparel, and yet out of your suit. Am not I your Rosalind?

ORLANDO. I take some joy to say you are because I would be talking of her.

ROSALIND. Well, in her person, I say I will not have you.

ORLANDO. Then, in mine own person, I die.

ROSALIND. No, faith, die by attorney. The poor world is almost six thousand years old, and in all this time there was not any man died in his own person, videlicet, in a love-cause. Troilus had his brains dashed out with a Grecian club, yet he did what he could to die before, and he is one of the patterns of love. Leander, he would have lived many a fair year though Hero had turned nun, if it had not been for a hot midsummer night; for, good youth, he went but forth to wash him in the Hellespont and, being taken with the cramp, was drowned; and the foolish chroniclers of that age found it was Hero of Sestos. But these are all lies. Men have died from time to time and worms have eaten them, but not for love.

ORLANDO. I would not have my right Rosalind of this mind, for I protest her frown might kill me.

ROSALIND. By this hand, it will not kill a fly. But come, now I will be your Rosalind in a more coming-on disposition, and ask me what you will, I will grant it.

ORLANDO. Then love me, Rosalind.

ROSALIND. Yes, faith, will I, Fridays and Saturdays and all.

ORLANDO. And wilt thou have me?

ROSALIND. Ay, and twenty such.

ORLANDO. What sayest thou?

ROSALIND. Are you not good?

ORLANDO. I hope so.

ROSALIND. Why then, can one desire too much of a good thing?—Come, sister, you shall be the priest and marry us.—Give me your hand, Orlando.—What do you say, sister?

ORLANDO. Pray thee, marry us.

CELIA. I cannot say the words.

ROSALIND. You must begin “Will you, Orlando—”

CELIA. Go to.—Will you, Orlando, have to wife this Rosalind?

ORLANDO. I will.

ROSALIND. Ay, but when?

ORLANDO. Why now, as fast as she can marry us.

ROSALIND. Then you must say “I take thee, Rosalind, for wife.”

ORLANDO. I take thee, Rosalind, for wife.

ROSALIND. I might ask you for your commission. But I do take thee, Orlando, for my husband. There’s a girl goes before the priest, and certainly a woman’s thought runs before her actions.

ORLANDO. So do all thoughts. They are winged.

ROSALIND. Now tell me how long you would have her after you have possessed her.

ORLANDO. For ever and a day.

ROSALIND. Say “a day” without the “ever.” No, no, Orlando, men are April when they woo, December when they wed. Maids are May when they are maids, but the sky changes when they are wives. I will be more jealous of thee than a Barbary cock-pigeon over his hen, more clamorous than a parrot against rain, more new-fangled than an ape, more giddy in my desires than a monkey. I will weep for nothing, like Diana in the fountain, and I will do that when you are disposed to be merry. I will laugh like a hyena, and that when thou are inclined to sleep.

ORLANDO. But will my Rosalind do so?

ROSALIND. By my life, she will do as I do.

ORLANDO. O, but she is wise.

ROSALIND. Or else she could not have the wit to do this. The wiser, the waywarder. Make the doors upon a woman’s wit, and it will out at the casement. Shut that, and ’twill out at the keyhole. Stop that, ’twill fly with the smoke out at the chimney.

ORLANDO. A man that had a wife with such a wit, he might say, “Wit, whither wilt?”

ROSALIND. Nay, you might keep that check for it till you met your wife’s wit going to your neighbour’s bed.

ORLANDO. And what wit could wit have to excuse that?

ROSALIND. Marry, to say she came to seek you there. You shall never take her without her answer unless you take her without her tongue. O, that woman that cannot make her fault her husband’s occasion, let her never nurse her child herself, for she will breed it like a fool.

ORLANDO. For these two hours, Rosalind, I will leave thee.

ROSALIND. Alas, dear love, I cannot lack thee two hours.

ORLANDO. I must attend the Duke at dinner. By two o’clock I will be with thee again.

ROSALIND. Ay, go your ways, go your ways. I knew what you would prove. My friends told me as much, and I thought no less. That flattering tongue of yours won me. ’Tis but one cast away, and so, come death! Two o’clock is your hour?

ORLANDO. Ay, sweet Rosalind.

ROSALIND. By my troth, and in good earnest, and so God mend me, and by all pretty oaths that are not dangerous, if you break one jot of your promise or come one minute behind your hour, I will think you the most pathetical break-promise, and the most hollow lover, and the most unworthy of her you call Rosalind that may be chosen out of the gross band of the unfaithful. Therefore beware my censure, and keep your promise.

ORLANDO. With no less religion than if thou wert indeed my Rosalind. So, adieu.

ROSALIND. Well, Time is the old justice that examines all such offenders, and let time try. Adieu.

[Exit Orlando.]

CELIA. You have simply misused our sex in your love-prate! We must have your doublet and hose plucked over your head and show the world what the bird hath done to her own nest.

ROSALIND. O coz, coz, coz, my pretty little coz, that thou didst know how many fathom deep I am in love! But it cannot be sounded; my affection hath an unknown bottom, like the Bay of Portugal.

CELIA. Or rather, bottomless, that as fast as you pour affection in, it runs out.

ROSALIND. No, that same wicked bastard of Venus, that was begot of thought, conceived of spleen, and born of madness, that blind rascally boy that abuses everyone’s eyes because his own are out, let him be judge how deep I am in love. I’ll tell thee, Aliena, I cannot be out of the sight of Orlando. I’ll go find a shadow and sigh till he come.

CELIA. And I’ll sleep.

SCENE II. Another part of the Forest

Enter Jaques and Lords, like foresters.

JAQUES. Which is he that killed the deer?

FIRST LORD. Sir, it was I.

JAQUES. Let’s present him to the Duke, like a Roman conqueror, and it would do well to set the deer’s horns upon his head for a branch of victory. Have you no song, forester, for this purpose?

SECOND LORD. Yes, sir.

JAQUES. Sing it. ’Tis no matter how it be in tune, so it make noise enough.

SONG

SECOND LORD. [Sings.] What shall he have that killed the deer? His leather skin and horns to wear. Then sing him home: [The rest shall bear this burden.] Take thou no scorn to wear the horn. It was a crest ere thou wast born. Thy father’s father wore it And thy father bore it. The horn, the horn, the lusty horn Is not a thing to laugh to scorn.

ROSALIND. How say you now? Is it not past two o’clock? And here much Orlando.

CELIA. I warrant you, with pure love and troubled brain he hath ta’en his bow and arrows and is gone forth to sleep.

Enter Silvius.

Look who comes here.

SILVIUS. My errand is to you, fair youth. My gentle Phoebe did bid me give you this.

I know not the contents, but, as I guess By the stern brow and waspish action Which she did use as she was writing of it, It bears an angry tenor. Pardon me, I am but as a guiltless messenger.

ROSALIND. Patience herself would startle at this letter And play the swaggerer. Bear this, bear all! She says I am not fair, that I lack manners; She calls me proud, and that she could not love me, Were man as rare as phoenix. ’Od’s my will, Her love is not the hare that I do hunt. Why writes she so to me? Well, shepherd, well, This is a letter of your own device.

SILVIUS. No, I protest, I know not the contents. Phoebe did write it.

ROSALIND. Come, come, you are a fool, And turned into the extremity of love. I saw her hand. She has a leathern hand, A freestone-coloured hand. I verily did think That her old gloves were on, but ’twas her hands. She has a huswife’s hand—but that’s no matter. I say she never did invent this letter; This is a man’s invention, and his hand.

SILVIUS. Sure, it is hers.

ROSALIND. Why, ’tis a boisterous and a cruel style, A style for challengers. Why, she defies me, Like Turk to Christian. Women’s gentle brain Could not drop forth such giant-rude invention, Such Ethiop words, blacker in their effect Than in their countenance. Will you hear the letter?

SILVIUS. So please you, for I never heard it yet, Yet heard too much of Phoebe’s cruelty.

ROSALIND. She Phoebes me. Mark how the tyrant writes.

[Reads.]

Art thou god to shepherd turned, That a maiden’s heart hath burned? Can a woman rail thus?

SILVIUS. Call you this railing?

ROSALIND. Why, thy godhead laid apart, Warr’st thou with a woman’s heart? Did you ever hear such railing? Whiles the eye of man did woo me, That could do no vengeance to me. Meaning me a beast. If the scorn of your bright eyne Have power to raise such love in mine, Alack, in me what strange effect Would they work in mild aspect? Whiles you chid me, I did love, How then might your prayers move? He that brings this love to thee Little knows this love in me; And by him seal up thy mind, Whether that thy youth and kind Will the faithful offer take Of me, and all that I can make, Or else by him my love deny, And then I’ll study how to die.

SILVIUS. Call you this chiding?

CELIA. Alas, poor shepherd.

ROSALIND. Do you pity him? No, he deserves no pity.—Wilt thou love such a woman? What, to make thee an instrument and play false strains upon thee? Not to be endured! Well, go your way to her, for I see love hath made thee a tame snake, and say this to her: that if she love me, I charge her to love thee; if she will not, I will never have her unless thou entreat for her. If you be a true lover, hence, and not a word, for here comes more company.

OLIVER. Good morrow, fair ones. Pray you, if you know, Where in the purlieus of this forest stands A sheepcote fenced about with olive trees?

CELIA. West of this place, down in the neighbour bottom; The rank of osiers, by the murmuring stream, Left on your right hand, brings you to the place. But at this hour the house doth keep itself. There’s none within.

OLIVER. If that an eye may profit by a tongue, Then should I know you by description, Such garments, and such years. “The boy is fair, Of female favour, and bestows himself Like a ripe sister; the woman low, And browner than her brother.” Are not you The owner of the house I did inquire for?

CELIA. It is no boast, being asked, to say we are.

OLIVER. Orlando doth commend him to you both, And to that youth he calls his Rosalind He sends this bloody napkin. Are you he?

ROSALIND. I am. What must we understand by this?

OLIVER. Some of my shame, if you will know of me What man I am, and how, and why, and where This handkerchief was stained.

CELIA. I pray you tell it.

OLIVER. When last the young Orlando parted from you, He left a promise to return again Within an hour, and pacing through the forest, Chewing the food of sweet and bitter fancy, Lo, what befell. He threw his eye aside, And mark what object did present itself. Under an oak, whose boughs were mossed with age And high top bald with dry antiquity, A wretched ragged man, o’ergrown with hair, Lay sleeping on his back; about his neck A green and gilded snake had wreathed itself, Who with her head, nimble in threats, approached The opening of his mouth. But suddenly, Seeing Orlando, it unlinked itself And with indented glides did slip away Into a bush; under which bush’s shade A lioness, with udders all drawn dry, Lay couching, head on ground, with catlike watch When that the sleeping man should stir. For ’tis The royal disposition of that beast To prey on nothing that doth seem as dead. This seen, Orlando did approach the man And found it was his brother, his elder brother.

CELIA. O, I have heard him speak of that same brother, And he did render him the most unnatural That lived amongst men.

OLIVER. And well he might so do, For well I know he was unnatural.

ROSALIND. But, to Orlando: did he leave him there, Food to the sucked and hungry lioness?

OLIVER. Twice did he turn his back and purposed so; But kindness, nobler ever than revenge, And nature, stronger than his just occasion, Made him give battle to the lioness, Who quickly fell before him; in which hurtling From miserable slumber I awaked.

CELIA. Are you his brother?

ROSALIND. Was it you he rescued?

CELIA. Was’t you that did so oft contrive to kill him?

OLIVER. ’Twas I; but ’tis not I. I do not shame To tell you what I was, since my conversion So sweetly tastes, being the thing I am.

ROSALIND. But, for the bloody napkin?

OLIVER. By and by. When from the first to last betwixt us two Tears our recountments had most kindly bathed— As how I came into that desert place— In brief, he led me to the gentle Duke, Who gave me fresh array and entertainment, Committing me unto my brother’s love, Who led me instantly unto his cave, There stripped himself, and here upon his arm The lioness had torn some flesh away, Which all this while had bled; and now he fainted, And cried in fainting upon Rosalind. Brief, I recovered him, bound up his wound, And after some small space, being strong at heart, He sent me hither, stranger as I am, To tell this story, that you might excuse His broken promise, and to give this napkin, Dyed in his blood, unto the shepherd youth That he in sport doth call his Rosalind.

[Rosalind faints.]

CELIA. Why, how now, Ganymede, sweet Ganymede!

OLIVER. Many will swoon when they do look on blood.

CELIA. There is more in it. Cousin—Ganymede!

OLIVER. Look, he recovers.

ROSALIND. I would I were at home.

CELIA. We’ll lead you thither. I pray you, will you take him by the arm?

OLIVER. Be of good cheer, youth. You a man? You lack a man’s heart.

ROSALIND. I do so, I confess it. Ah, sirrah, a body would think this was well counterfeited. I pray you tell your brother how well I counterfeited. Heigh-ho.

OLIVER. This was not counterfeit. There is too great testimony in your complexion that it was a passion of earnest.

ROSALIND. Counterfeit, I assure you.

OLIVER. Well then, take a good heart, and counterfeit to be a man.

ROSALIND. So I do. But, i’ faith, I should have been a woman by right.

CELIA. Come, you look paler and paler. Pray you draw homewards. Good sir, go with us.

OLIVER. That will I, for I must bear answer back How you excuse my brother, Rosalind.

ROSALIND. I shall devise something. But I pray you commend my counterfeiting to him. Will you go?

Enter Touchstone and Audrey.

TOUCHSTONE. We shall find a time, Audrey; patience, gentle Audrey.

AUDREY. Faith, the priest was good enough, for all the old gentleman’s saying.

TOUCHSTONE. A most wicked Sir Oliver, Audrey, a most vile Martext. But Audrey, there is a youth here in the forest lays claim to you.

AUDREY. Ay, I know who ’tis. He hath no interest in me in the world.

Enter William.

Here comes the man you mean.

TOUCHSTONE. It is meat and drink to me to see a clown. By my troth, we that have good wits have much to answer for. We shall be flouting; we cannot hold.

WILLIAM. Good ev’n, Audrey.

AUDREY. God ye good ev’n, William.

WILLIAM. And good ev’n to you, sir.

TOUCHSTONE. Good ev’n, gentle friend. Cover thy head, cover thy head. Nay, prithee, be covered. How old are you, friend?

WILLIAM. Five-and-twenty, sir.

TOUCHSTONE. A ripe age. Is thy name William?

WILLIAM. William, sir.

TOUCHSTONE. A fair name. Wast born i’ th’ forest here?

WILLIAM. Ay, sir, I thank God.

TOUCHSTONE. “Thank God.” A good answer. Art rich?

WILLIAM. Faith, sir, so-so.

TOUCHSTONE. “So-so” is good, very good, very excellent good. And yet it is not, it is but so-so. Art thou wise?

WILLIAM. Ay, sir, I have a pretty wit.

TOUCHSTONE. Why, thou sayst well. I do now remember a saying: “The fool doth think he is wise, but the wise man knows himself to be a fool.” The heathen philosopher, when he had a desire to eat a grape, would open his lips when he put it into his mouth, meaning thereby that grapes were made to eat and lips to open. You do love this maid?

WILLIAM. I do, sir.

TOUCHSTONE. Give me your hand. Art thou learned?

WILLIAM. No, sir.

TOUCHSTONE. Then learn this of me: to have is to have. For it is a figure in rhetoric that drink, being poured out of cup into a glass, by filling the one doth empty the other. For all your writers do consent that ipse is “he.” Now, you are not ipse, for I am he.

WILLIAM. Which he, sir?

TOUCHSTONE. He, sir, that must marry this woman. Therefore, you clown, abandon—which is in the vulgar, “leave”—the society—which in the boorish is “company”—of this female—which in the common is “woman”; which together is, abandon the society of this female, or, clown, thou perishest; or, to thy better understanding, diest; or, to wit, I kill thee, make thee away, translate thy life into death, thy liberty into bondage. I will deal in poison with thee, or in bastinado, or in steel. I will bandy with thee in faction; will o’errun thee with policy. I will kill thee a hundred and fifty ways! Therefore tremble and depart.

AUDREY. Do, good William.

WILLIAM. God rest you merry, sir.

CORIN. Our master and mistress seek you. Come away, away.

TOUCHSTONE. Trip, Audrey, trip, Audrey! I attend, I attend.

Enter Orlando and Oliver.

ORLANDO. Is’t possible that on so little acquaintance you should like her? That but seeing, you should love her? And loving woo? And wooing, she should grant? And will you persever to enjoy her?

OLIVER. Neither call the giddiness of it in question, the poverty of her, the small acquaintance, my sudden wooing, nor her sudden consenting. But say with me, I love Aliena; say with her that she loves me; consent with both that we may enjoy each other. It shall be to your good, for my father’s house and all the revenue that was old Sir Rowland’s will I estate upon you, and here live and die a shepherd.

Enter Rosalind.

ORLANDO. You have my consent. Let your wedding be tomorrow. Thither will I invite the Duke and all’s contented followers. Go you and prepare Aliena; for, look you, here comes my Rosalind.

ROSALIND. God save you, brother.

OLIVER. And you, fair sister.

ROSALIND. O my dear Orlando, how it grieves me to see thee wear thy heart in a scarf!

ORLANDO. It is my arm.

ROSALIND. I thought thy heart had been wounded with the claws of a lion.

ORLANDO. Wounded it is, but with the eyes of a lady.

ROSALIND. Did your brother tell you how I counterfeited to swoon when he showed me your handkercher?

ORLANDO. Ay, and greater wonders than that.

ROSALIND. O, I know where you are. Nay, ’tis true. There was never anything so sudden but the fight of two rams, and Caesar’s thrasonical brag of “I came, saw and overcame.” For your brother and my sister no sooner met but they looked; no sooner looked but they loved; no sooner loved but they sighed; no sooner sighed but they asked one another the reason; no sooner knew the reason but they sought the remedy; and in these degrees have they made pair of stairs to marriage, which they will climb incontinent, or else be incontinent before marriage. They are in the very wrath of love, and they will together. Clubs cannot part them.

ORLANDO. They shall be married tomorrow, and I will bid the Duke to the nuptial. But O, how bitter a thing it is to look into happiness through another man’s eyes! By so much the more shall I tomorrow be at the height of heart-heaviness, by how much I shall think my brother happy in having what he wishes for.

ROSALIND. Why, then, tomorrow I cannot serve your turn for Rosalind?

ORLANDO. I can live no longer by thinking.

ROSALIND. I will weary you then no longer with idle talking. Know of me then—for now I speak to some purpose—that I know you are a gentleman of good conceit. I speak not this that you should bear a good opinion of my knowledge, insomuch I say I know you are. Neither do I labour for a greater esteem than may in some little measure draw a belief from you, to do yourself good, and not to grace me. Believe then, if you please, that I can do strange things. I have, since I was three year old, conversed with a magician, most profound in his art and yet not damnable. If you do love Rosalind so near the heart as your gesture cries it out, when your brother marries Aliena shall you marry her. I know into what straits of fortune she is driven and it is not impossible to me, if it appear not inconvenient to you, to set her before your eyes tomorrow, human as she is, and without any danger.

ORLANDO. Speak’st thou in sober meanings?

ROSALIND. By my life, I do, which I tender dearly, though I say I am a magician. Therefore put you in your best array, bid your friends; for if you will be married tomorrow, you shall, and to Rosalind, if you will.

Look, here comes a lover of mine and a lover of hers.

PHOEBE. Youth, you have done me much ungentleness To show the letter that I writ to you.

ROSALIND. I care not if I have; it is my study To seem despiteful and ungentle to you. You are there followed by a faithful shepherd. Look upon him, love him; he worships you.

PHOEBE. Good shepherd, tell this youth what ’tis to love.

SILVIUS. It is to be all made of sighs and tears, And so am I for Phoebe.

PHOEBE. And I for Ganymede.

ORLANDO. And I for Rosalind.

ROSALIND. And I for no woman.

SILVIUS. It is to be all made of faith and service, And so am I for Phoebe.

SILVIUS. It is to be all made of fantasy, All made of passion, and all made of wishes, All adoration, duty, and observance, All humbleness, all patience, and impatience, All purity, all trial, all observance, And so am I for Phoebe.

PHOEBE. And so am I for Ganymede.

ORLANDO. And so am I for Rosalind.

ROSALIND. And so am I for no woman.

PHOEBE. [To Rosalind.] If this be so, why blame you me to love you?

SILVIUS. [To Phoebe.] If this be so, why blame you me to love you?

ORLANDO. If this be so, why blame you me to love you?

ROSALIND. Why do you speak too, “Why blame you me to love you?”

ORLANDO. To her that is not here, nor doth not hear.

ROSALIND. Pray you, no more of this, ’tis like the howling of Irish wolves against the moon. [to Silvius.] I will help you if I can. [to Phoebe.] I would love you if I could.—Tomorrow meet me all together. [to Phoebe.] I will marry you, if ever I marry woman, and I’ll be married tomorrow. [to Orlando.] I will satisfy you if ever I satisfied man, and you shall be married tomorrow. [to Silvius.] I will content you, if what pleases you contents you, and you shall be married tomorrow. [to Orlando.] As you love Rosalind, meet. [to Silvius.] As you love Phoebe, meet.—And as I love no woman, I’ll meet. So fare you well. I have left you commands.

SILVIUS. I’ll not fail, if I live.

PHOEBE. Nor I.

ORLANDO. Nor I.

TOUCHSTONE. Tomorrow is the joyful day, Audrey, tomorrow will we be married.

AUDREY. I do desire it with all my heart; and I hope it is no dishonest desire to desire to be a woman of the world.

Enter two Pages.

Here come two of the banished Duke’s pages.

FIRST PAGE. Well met, honest gentleman.

TOUCHSTONE. By my troth, well met. Come sit, sit, and a song.

SECOND PAGE. We are for you, sit i’ th’ middle.

FIRST PAGE. Shall we clap into’t roundly, without hawking or spitting or saying we are hoarse, which are the only prologues to a bad voice?

SECOND PAGE. I’faith, i’faith, and both in a tune like two gipsies on a horse.

PAGES. [Sing.] It was a lover and his lass, With a hey, and a ho, and a hey nonino, That o’er the green cornfield did pass In the spring-time, the only pretty ring time, When birds do sing, hey ding a ding, ding. Sweet lovers love the spring.

Between the acres of the rye, With a hey, and a ho, and a hey nonino, These pretty country folks would lie, In the spring-time, the only pretty ring time, When birds do sing, hey ding a ding, ding. Sweet lovers love the spring.

This carol they began that hour, With a hey, and a ho, and a hey nonino, How that a life was but a flower, In the spring-time, the only pretty ring time, When birds do sing, hey ding a ding, ding. Sweet lovers love the spring.

And therefore take the present time, With a hey, and a ho, and a hey nonino, For love is crowned with the prime, In the spring-time, the only pretty ring time, When birds do sing, hey ding a ding, ding. Sweet lovers love the spring.

TOUCHSTONE Truly, young gentlemen, though there was no great matter in the ditty, yet the note was very untuneable.

FIRST PAGE. You are deceived, sir, we kept time, we lost not our time.

TOUCHSTONE. By my troth, yes. I count it but time lost to hear such a foolish song. God be wi’ you, and God mend your voices. Come, Audrey.

SCENE IV. Another part of the Forest

Enter Duke Senior, Amiens, Jaques, Orlando, Oliver and Celia.

DUKE SENIOR. Dost thou believe, Orlando, that the boy Can do all this that he hath promised?

ORLANDO. I sometimes do believe and sometimes do not, As those that fear they hope, and know they fear.

Enter Rosalind, Silvius and Phoebe.

ROSALIND. Patience once more whiles our compact is urged. [To the Duke.] You say, if I bring in your Rosalind, You will bestow her on Orlando here?

DUKE SENIOR. That would I, had I kingdoms to give with her.

ROSALIND. [To Orlando.] And you say you will have her when I bring her?

ORLANDO. That would I, were I of all kingdoms king.

ROSALIND. [To Phoebe.] You say you’ll marry me if I be willing?

PHOEBE. That will I, should I die the hour after.

ROSALIND. But if you do refuse to marry me, You’ll give yourself to this most faithful shepherd?

PHOEBE. So is the bargain.

ROSALIND. [To Silvius.] You say that you’ll have Phoebe if she will?

SILVIUS. Though to have her and death were both one thing.

ROSALIND. I have promised to make all this matter even. Keep you your word, O Duke, to give your daughter, You yours, Orlando, to receive his daughter. Keep your word, Phoebe, that you’ll marry me, Or else, refusing me, to wed this shepherd. Keep your word, Silvius, that you’ll marry her If she refuse me. And from hence I go To make these doubts all even.

DUKE SENIOR. I do remember in this shepherd boy Some lively touches of my daughter’s favour.

ORLANDO. My lord, the first time that I ever saw him Methought he was a brother to your daughter. But, my good lord, this boy is forest-born And hath been tutored in the rudiments Of many desperate studies by his uncle, Whom he reports to be a great magician, Obscured in the circle of this forest.

JAQUES. There is sure another flood toward, and these couples are coming to the ark. Here comes a pair of very strange beasts, which in all tongues are called fools.

TOUCHSTONE. Salutation and greeting to you all.

JAQUES. Good my lord, bid him welcome. This is the motley-minded gentleman that I have so often met in the forest. He hath been a courtier, he swears.

TOUCHSTONE. If any man doubt that, let him put me to my purgation. I have trod a measure; I have flattered a lady; I have been politic with my friend, smooth with mine enemy; I have undone three tailors; I have had four quarrels, and like to have fought one.

JAQUES. And how was that ta’en up?

TOUCHSTONE. Faith, we met, and found the quarrel was upon the seventh cause.

JAQUES. How seventh cause?—Good my lord, like this fellow?

DUKE SENIOR. I like him very well.

TOUCHSTONE. God ’ild you, sir, I desire you of the like. I press in here, sir, amongst the rest of the country copulatives, to swear and to forswear according as marriage binds and blood breaks. A poor virgin, sir, an ill-favoured thing, sir, but mine own; a poor humour of mine, sir, to take that that no man else will. Rich honesty dwells like a miser, sir, in a poor house, as your pearl in your foul oyster.

DUKE SENIOR. By my faith, he is very swift and sententious.

TOUCHSTONE. According to the fool’s bolt, sir, and such dulcet diseases.

JAQUES. But, for the seventh cause. How did you find the quarrel on the seventh cause?

TOUCHSTONE. Upon a lie seven times removed—bear your body more seeming, Audrey—as thus, sir. I did dislike the cut of a certain courtier’s beard. He sent me word if I said his beard was not cut well, he was in the mind it was. This is called the “retort courteous”. If I sent him word again it was not well cut, he would send me word he cut it to please himself. This is called the “quip modest”. If again it was not well cut, he disabled my judgement. This is called the “reply churlish”. If again it was not well cut, he would answer I spake not true. This is called the “reproof valiant”. If again it was not well cut, he would say I lie. This is called the “countercheck quarrelsome”, and so, to the “lie circumstantial”, and the “lie direct”.

JAQUES. And how oft did you say his beard was not well cut?

TOUCHSTONE. I durst go no further than the lie circumstantial, nor he durst not give me the lie direct; and so we measured swords and parted.

JAQUES. Can you nominate in order now the degrees of the lie?

TOUCHSTONE. O sir, we quarrel in print, by the book, as you have books for good manners. I will name you the degrees: the first, the retort courteous; the second, the quip modest; the third, the reply churlish; the fourth, the reproof valiant; the fifth, the countercheck quarrelsome; the sixth, the lie with circumstance; the seventh, the lie direct. All these you may avoid but the lie direct and you may avoid that too with an “if”. I knew when seven justices could not take up a quarrel, but when the parties were met themselves, one of them thought but of an “if”, as, “if you said so, then I said so;” and they shook hands, and swore brothers. Your “if” is the only peacemaker; much virtue in “if.”

JAQUES. Is not this a rare fellow, my lord? He’s as good at anything, and yet a fool.

DUKE SENIOR. He uses his folly like a stalking-horse, and under the presentation of that he shoots his wit.

Enter Hymen, Rosalind in woman’s clothes, and Celia. Still music.

HYMEN. Then is there mirth in heaven When earthly things made even Atone together. Good Duke, receive thy daughter. Hymen from heaven brought her, Yea, brought her hither, That thou mightst join her hand with his, Whose heart within his bosom is.

ROSALIND. [To Duke Senior.] To you I give myself, for I am yours. [To Orlando.] To you I give myself, for I am yours.

DUKE SENIOR. If there be truth in sight, you are my daughter.

ORLANDO. If there be truth in sight, you are my Rosalind.

PHOEBE. If sight and shape be true, Why then, my love adieu.

ROSALIND. [To Duke Senior.] I’ll have no father, if you be not he. [To Orlando.] I’ll have no husband, if you be not he. [To Phoebe.] Nor ne’er wed woman, if you be not she.

HYMEN. Peace, ho! I bar confusion. ’Tis I must make conclusion Of these most strange events. Here’s eight that must take hands To join in Hymen’s bands, If truth holds true contents. [To Orlando and Rosalind.] You and you no cross shall part. [To Celia and Oliver.] You and you are heart in heart. [To Phoebe.] You to his love must accord Or have a woman to your lord. [To Audrey and Touchstone.] You and you are sure together As the winter to foul weather. Whiles a wedlock hymn we sing, Feed yourselves with questioning, That reason wonder may diminish How thus we met, and these things finish.

SONG Wedding is great Juno’s crown, O blessed bond of board and bed. ’Tis Hymen peoples every town, High wedlock then be honoured. Honour, high honour, and renown To Hymen, god of every town.

DUKE SENIOR. O my dear niece, welcome thou art to me Even daughter, welcome in no less degree.

PHOEBE. [To Silvius.] I will not eat my word, now thou art mine, Thy faith my fancy to thee doth combine.

Enter Jaques de Boys.

JAQUES DE BOYS. Let me have audience for a word or two. I am the second son of old Sir Rowland, That bring these tidings to this fair assembly. Duke Frederick, hearing how that every day Men of great worth resorted to this forest, Addressed a mighty power, which were on foot In his own conduct, purposely to take His brother here and put him to the sword; And to the skirts of this wild wood he came, Where, meeting with an old religious man, After some question with him, was converted Both from his enterprise and from the world, His crown bequeathing to his banished brother, And all their lands restored to them again That were with him exiled. This to be true I do engage my life.

DUKE SENIOR. Welcome, young man. Thou offer’st fairly to thy brother’s wedding: To one his lands withheld, and to the other A land itself at large, a potent dukedom. First, in this forest let us do those ends That here were well begun and well begot; And after, every of this happy number That have endured shrewd days and nights with us Shall share the good of our returned fortune, According to the measure of their states. Meantime, forget this new-fall’n dignity, And fall into our rustic revelry. Play, music! And you brides and bridegrooms all, With measure heaped in joy to th’ measures fall.

JAQUES. Sir, by your patience. If I heard you rightly, The Duke hath put on a religious life And thrown into neglect the pompous court.

JAQUES DE BOYS. He hath.

JAQUES. To him will I. Out of these convertites There is much matter to be heard and learned. [To Duke Senior.] You to your former honour I bequeath; Your patience and your virtue well deserves it. [To Orlando.] You to a love that your true faith doth merit. [To Oliver.] You to your land, and love, and great allies. [To Silvius.] You to a long and well-deserved bed. [To Touchstone.] And you to wrangling, for thy loving voyage Is but for two months victualled.—So to your pleasures, I am for other than for dancing measures.

DUKE SENIOR. Stay, Jaques, stay.

JAQUES. To see no pastime, I. What you would have I’ll stay to know at your abandoned cave.

DUKE SENIOR. Proceed, proceed! We will begin these rites, As we do trust they’ll end, in true delights.

[Dance. Exeunt all but Rosalind.]

EPILOGUE

ROSALIND. It is not the fashion to see the lady the epilogue, but it is no more unhandsome than to see the lord the prologue. If it be true that good wine needs no bush, ’tis true that a good play needs no epilogue. Yet to good wine they do use good bushes, and good plays prove the better by the help of good epilogues. What a case am I in then, that am neither a good epilogue nor cannot insinuate with you in the behalf of a good play! I am not furnished like a beggar; therefore to beg will not become me. My way is to conjure you, and I’ll begin with the women. I charge you, O women, for the love you bear to men, to like as much of this play as please you. And I charge you, O men, for the love you bear to women—as I perceive by your simpering, none of you hates them—that between you and the women the play may please. If I were a woman, I would kiss as many of you as had beards that pleased me, complexions that liked me, and breaths that I defied not. And I am sure as many as have good beards, or good faces, or sweet breaths will for my kind offer, when I make curtsy, bid me farewell.

THE COMEDY OF ERRORS

ACT I Scene I. A hall in the Duke’s palace Scene II. A public place

ACT II Scene I. A public place Scene II. The same

ACT III Scene I. The same Scene II. The same

ACT IV Scene I. The same Scene II. The same Scene III. The same Scene IV. The same

ACT V Scene I. The same

SOLINUS, Duke of Ephesus. EGEON, a Merchant of Syracuse.

ANTIPHOLUS OF EPHESUS, Twin brothers and sons to Egeon and ANTIPHOLUS OF SYRACUSE, Emilia, but unknown to each other.

DROMIO OF EPHESUS, Twin brothers, and attendants on DROMIO OF SYRACUSE, the two Antipholuses.

BALTHASAR, a Merchant. ANGELO, a Goldsmith. A MERCHANT, friend to Antipholus of Syracuse. PINCH, a Schoolmaster and a Conjurer. EMILIA, Wife to Egeon, an Abbess at Ephesus. ADRIANA, Wife to Antipholus of Ephesus. LUCIANA, her Sister. LUCE, her Servant. A COURTESAN Messenger, Jailer, Officers, Attendants

SCENE: Ephesus

SCENE I. A hall in the Duke’s palace

Enter Duke, Egeon, Jailer, Officers and other Attendants.

EGEON. Proceed, Solinus, to procure my fall, And by the doom of death end woes and all.

DUKE. Merchant of Syracusa, plead no more. I am not partial to infringe our laws. The enmity and discord which of late Sprung from the rancorous outrage of your Duke To merchants, our well-dealing countrymen, Who, wanting guilders to redeem their lives, Have seal’d his rigorous statutes with their bloods, Excludes all pity from our threat’ning looks. For since the mortal and intestine jars ’Twixt thy seditious countrymen and us, It hath in solemn synods been decreed, Both by the Syracusians and ourselves, To admit no traffic to our adverse towns; Nay more, if any born at Ephesus Be seen at Syracusian marts and fairs; Again, if any Syracusian born Come to the bay of Ephesus, he dies, His goods confiscate to the Duke’s dispose, Unless a thousand marks be levied To quit the penalty and to ransom him. Thy substance, valued at the highest rate, Cannot amount unto a hundred marks; Therefore by law thou art condemn’d to die.

EGEON. Yet this my comfort; when your words are done, My woes end likewise with the evening sun.

DUKE. Well, Syracusian, say in brief the cause Why thou departedst from thy native home, And for what cause thou cam’st to Ephesus.

EGEON. A heavier task could not have been impos’d Than I to speak my griefs unspeakable; Yet, that the world may witness that my end Was wrought by nature, not by vile offence, I’ll utter what my sorrow gives me leave. In Syracusa was I born, and wed Unto a woman happy but for me, And by me, had not our hap been bad. With her I liv’d in joy; our wealth increas’d By prosperous voyages I often made To Epidamnum, till my factor’s death, And the great care of goods at random left, Drew me from kind embracements of my spouse; From whom my absence was not six months old Before herself (almost at fainting under The pleasing punishment that women bear) Had made provision for her following me, And soon and safe arrived where I was. There had she not been long but she became A joyful mother of two goodly sons, And, which was strange, the one so like the other As could not be distinguish’d but by names. That very hour, and in the self-same inn, A mean woman was delivered Of such a burden, male twins, both alike. Those, for their parents were exceeding poor, I bought, and brought up to attend my sons. My wife, not meanly proud of two such boys, Made daily motions for our home return. Unwilling I agreed; alas, too soon We came aboard. A league from Epidamnum had we sail’d Before the always-wind-obeying deep Gave any tragic instance of our harm; But longer did we not retain much hope; For what obscured light the heavens did grant Did but convey unto our fearful minds A doubtful warrant of immediate death, Which though myself would gladly have embrac’d, Yet the incessant weepings of my wife, Weeping before for what she saw must come, And piteous plainings of the pretty babes, That mourn’d for fashion, ignorant what to fear, Forc’d me to seek delays for them and me. And this it was (for other means was none). The sailors sought for safety by our boat, And left the ship, then sinking-ripe, to us. My wife, more careful for the latter-born, Had fast’ned him unto a small spare mast, Such as sea-faring men provide for storms. To him one of the other twins was bound, Whilst I had been like heedful of the other. The children thus dispos’d, my wife and I, Fixing our eyes on whom our care was fix’d, Fast’ned ourselves at either end the mast, And, floating straight, obedient to the stream, Was carried towards Corinth, as we thought. At length the sun, gazing upon the earth, Dispers’d those vapours that offended us, And by the benefit of his wished light The seas wax’d calm, and we discovered Two ships from far, making amain to us, Of Corinth that, of Epidaurus this. But ere they came—O, let me say no more! Gather the sequel by that went before.

DUKE. Nay, forward, old man, do not break off so, For we may pity, though not pardon thee.

EGEON. O, had the gods done so, I had not now Worthily term’d them merciless to us. For, ere the ships could meet by twice five leagues, We were encountered by a mighty rock, Which being violently borne upon, Our helpful ship was splitted in the midst; So that, in this unjust divorce of us, Fortune had left to both of us alike What to delight in, what to sorrow for. Her part, poor soul, seeming as burdened With lesser weight, but not with lesser woe, Was carried with more speed before the wind, And in our sight they three were taken up By fishermen of Corinth, as we thought. At length another ship had seiz’d on us; And, knowing whom it was their hap to save, Gave healthful welcome to their ship-wrack’d guests, And would have reft the fishers of their prey, Had not their bark been very slow of sail; And therefore homeward did they bend their course. Thus have you heard me sever’d from my bliss, That by misfortunes was my life prolong’d To tell sad stories of my own mishaps.

DUKE. And for the sake of them thou sorrowest for, Do me the favour to dilate at full What have befall’n of them and thee till now.

EGEON. My youngest boy, and yet my eldest care, At eighteen years became inquisitive After his brother, and importun’d me That his attendant, so his case was like, Reft of his brother, but retain’d his name, Might bear him company in the quest of him; Whom whilst I laboured of a love to see, I hazarded the loss of whom I lov’d. Five summers have I spent in farthest Greece, Roaming clean through the bounds of Asia, And, coasting homeward, came to Ephesus, Hopeless to find, yet loath to leave unsought Or that or any place that harbours men. But here must end the story of my life; And happy were I in my timely death, Could all my travels warrant me they live.

DUKE. Hapless Egeon, whom the fates have mark’d To bear the extremity of dire mishap; Now, trust me, were it not against our laws, Against my crown, my oath, my dignity, Which princes, would they, may not disannul, My soul should sue as advocate for thee. But though thou art adjudged to the death, And passed sentence may not be recall’d But to our honour’s great disparagement, Yet will I favour thee in what I can. Therefore, merchant, I’ll limit thee this day To seek thy health by beneficial help. Try all the friends thou hast in Ephesus; Beg thou, or borrow, to make up the sum, And live; if no, then thou art doom’d to die. Jailer, take him to thy custody.

JAILER. I will, my lord.

EGEON. Hopeless and helpless doth Egeon wend, But to procrastinate his lifeless end.

SCENE II. A public place

Enter Antipholus and Dromio of Syracuse and a Merchant.

MERCHANT. Therefore give out you are of Epidamnum, Lest that your goods too soon be confiscate. This very day a Syracusian merchant Is apprehended for arrival here, And, not being able to buy out his life, According to the statute of the town Dies ere the weary sun set in the west. There is your money that I had to keep.

ANTIPHOLUS OF SYRACUSE. Go bear it to the Centaur, where we host, And stay there, Dromio, till I come to thee. Within this hour it will be dinnertime; Till that, I’ll view the manners of the town, Peruse the traders, gaze upon the buildings, And then return and sleep within mine inn, For with long travel I am stiff and weary. Get thee away.

DROMIO OF SYRACUSE. Many a man would take you at your word, And go indeed, having so good a mean.

[Exit Dromio.]

ANTIPHOLUS OF SYRACUSE. A trusty villain, sir, that very oft, When I am dull with care and melancholy, Lightens my humour with his merry jests. What, will you walk with me about the town, And then go to my inn and dine with me?

MERCHANT. I am invited, sir, to certain merchants, Of whom I hope to make much benefit. I crave your pardon. Soon, at five o’clock, Please you, I’ll meet with you upon the mart, And afterward consort you till bedtime. My present business calls me from you now.

ANTIPHOLUS OF SYRACUSE. Farewell till then: I will go lose myself, And wander up and down to view the city.

MERCHANT. Sir, I commend you to your own content.

[Exit Merchant.]

ANTIPHOLUS OF SYRACUSE. He that commends me to mine own content Commends me to the thing I cannot get. I to the world am like a drop of water That in the ocean seeks another drop, Who, failing there to find his fellow forth, Unseen, inquisitive, confounds himself. So I, to find a mother and a brother, In quest of them, unhappy, lose myself.

Enter Dromio of Ephesus.

Here comes the almanac of my true date. What now? How chance thou art return’d so soon?

DROMIO OF EPHESUS. Return’d so soon? rather approach’d too late. The capon burns, the pig falls from the spit; The clock hath strucken twelve upon the bell; My mistress made it one upon my cheek. She is so hot because the meat is cold; The meat is cold because you come not home; You come not home because you have no stomach; You have no stomach, having broke your fast; But we that know what ’tis to fast and pray, Are penitent for your default today.

ANTIPHOLUS OF SYRACUSE. Stop in your wind, sir, tell me this, I pray: Where have you left the money that I gave you?

DROMIO OF EPHESUS. O, sixpence that I had o’ Wednesday last To pay the saddler for my mistress’ crupper: The saddler had it, sir, I kept it not.

ANTIPHOLUS OF SYRACUSE. I am not in a sportive humour now. Tell me, and dally not, where is the money? We being strangers here, how dar’st thou trust So great a charge from thine own custody?

DROMIO OF EPHESUS. I pray you jest, sir, as you sit at dinner: I from my mistress come to you in post; If I return, I shall be post indeed, For she will score your fault upon my pate. Methinks your maw, like mine, should be your clock, And strike you home without a messenger.

ANTIPHOLUS OF SYRACUSE. Come, Dromio, come, these jests are out of season, Reserve them till a merrier hour than this. Where is the gold I gave in charge to thee?

DROMIO OF EPHESUS. To me, sir? why, you gave no gold to me!

ANTIPHOLUS OF SYRACUSE. Come on, sir knave, have done your foolishness, And tell me how thou hast dispos’d thy charge.

DROMIO OF EPHESUS. My charge was but to fetch you from the mart Home to your house, the Phoenix, sir, to dinner. My mistress and her sister stay for you.

ANTIPHOLUS OF SYRACUSE. Now, as I am a Christian, answer me In what safe place you have bestow’d my money, Or I shall break that merry sconce of yours That stands on tricks when I am undispos’d; Where is the thousand marks thou hadst of me?

DROMIO OF EPHESUS. I have some marks of yours upon my pate, Some of my mistress’ marks upon my shoulders, But not a thousand marks between you both. If I should pay your worship those again, Perchance you will not bear them patiently.

ANTIPHOLUS OF SYRACUSE. Thy mistress’ marks? what mistress, slave, hast thou?

DROMIO OF EPHESUS. Your worship’s wife, my mistress at the Phoenix; She that doth fast till you come home to dinner, And prays that you will hie you home to dinner.

ANTIPHOLUS OF SYRACUSE. What, wilt thou flout me thus unto my face, Being forbid? There, take you that, sir knave.

DROMIO OF EPHESUS. What mean you, sir? for God’s sake hold your hands. Nay, an you will not, sir, I’ll take my heels.

ANTIPHOLUS OF SYRACUSE. Upon my life, by some device or other The villain is o’er-raught of all my money. They say this town is full of cozenage, As nimble jugglers that deceive the eye, Dark-working sorcerers that change the mind, Soul-killing witches that deform the body, Disguised cheaters, prating mountebanks, And many such-like liberties of sin: If it prove so, I will be gone the sooner. I’ll to the Centaur to go seek this slave. I greatly fear my money is not safe.

SCENE I. A public place

Enter Adriana, wife to Antipholus (of Ephesus) with Luciana her sister.

ADRIANA. Neither my husband nor the slave return’d That in such haste I sent to seek his master? Sure, Luciana, it is two o’clock.

LUCIANA. Perhaps some merchant hath invited him, And from the mart he’s somewhere gone to dinner. Good sister, let us dine, and never fret; A man is master of his liberty; Time is their master, and when they see time, They’ll go or come. If so, be patient, sister.

ADRIANA. Why should their liberty than ours be more?

LUCIANA. Because their business still lies out o’ door.

ADRIANA. Look when I serve him so, he takes it ill.

LUCIANA. O, know he is the bridle of your will.

ADRIANA. There’s none but asses will be bridled so.

LUCIANA. Why, headstrong liberty is lash’d with woe. There’s nothing situate under heaven’s eye But hath his bound in earth, in sea, in sky. The beasts, the fishes, and the winged fowls Are their males’ subjects, and at their controls. Man, more divine, the masters of all these, Lord of the wide world and wild wat’ry seas, Indued with intellectual sense and souls, Of more pre-eminence than fish and fowls, Are masters to their females, and their lords: Then let your will attend on their accords.

ADRIANA. This servitude makes you to keep unwed.

LUCIANA. Not this, but troubles of the marriage-bed.

ADRIANA. But, were you wedded, you would bear some sway.

LUCIANA. Ere I learn love, I’ll practise to obey.

ADRIANA. How if your husband start some other where?

LUCIANA. Till he come home again, I would forbear.

ADRIANA. Patience unmov’d! No marvel though she pause; They can be meek that have no other cause. A wretched soul bruis’d with adversity, We bid be quiet when we hear it cry; But were we burd’ned with like weight of pain, As much, or more, we should ourselves complain: So thou, that hast no unkind mate to grieve thee, With urging helpless patience would relieve me: But if thou live to see like right bereft, This fool-begg’d patience in thee will be left.

LUCIANA. Well, I will marry one day, but to try. Here comes your man, now is your husband nigh.

ADRIANA. Say, is your tardy master now at hand?

DROMIO OF EPHESUS. Nay, he’s at two hands with me, and that my two ears can witness.

ADRIANA. Say, didst thou speak with him? know’st thou his mind?

DROMIO OF EPHESUS. Ay, ay, he told his mind upon mine ear. Beshrew his hand, I scarce could understand it.

LUCIANA. Spake he so doubtfully thou couldst not feel his meaning?

DROMIO OF EPHESUS. Nay, he struck so plainly I could too well feel his blows; and withal so doubtfully that I could scarce understand them.

ADRIANA. But say, I prithee, is he coming home? It seems he hath great care to please his wife.

DROMIO OF EPHESUS. Why, mistress, sure my master is horn-mad.

ADRIANA. Horn-mad, thou villain?

DROMIO OF EPHESUS. I mean not cuckold-mad, But sure he’s stark mad. When I desir’d him to come home to dinner, He ask’d me for a thousand marks in gold. “’Tis dinner time,” quoth I. “My gold,” quoth he. “Your meat doth burn” quoth I. “My gold,” quoth he. “Will you come home?” quoth I. “My gold,” quoth he. “Where is the thousand marks I gave thee, villain?” “The pig” quoth I “is burn’d”. “My gold,” quoth he. “My mistress, sir,” quoth I. “Hang up thy mistress; I know not thy mistress; out on thy mistress!”

LUCIANA. Quoth who?

DROMIO OF EPHESUS. Quoth my master. “I know,” quoth he, “no house, no wife, no mistress.” So that my errand, due unto my tongue, I thank him, I bare home upon my shoulders; For, in conclusion, he did beat me there.

ADRIANA. Go back again, thou slave, and fetch him home.

DROMIO OF EPHESUS. Go back again, and be new beaten home? For God’s sake, send some other messenger.

ADRIANA. Back slave, or I will break thy pate across.

DROMIO OF EPHESUS. And he will bless that cross with other beating. Between you I shall have a holy head.

ADRIANA. Hence, prating peasant. Fetch thy master home.

DROMIO OF EPHESUS. Am I so round with you, as you with me, That like a football you do spurn me thus? You spurn me hence, and he will spurn me hither. If I last in this service, you must case me in leather.

LUCIANA. Fie, how impatience loureth in your face.

ADRIANA. His company must do his minions grace, Whilst I at home starve for a merry look. Hath homely age th’ alluring beauty took From my poor cheek? then he hath wasted it. Are my discourses dull? barren my wit? If voluble and sharp discourse be marr’d, Unkindness blunts it more than marble hard. Do their gay vestments his affections bait? That’s not my fault; he’s master of my state. What ruins are in me that can be found By him not ruin’d? Then is he the ground Of my defeatures. My decayed fair A sunny look of his would soon repair; But, too unruly deer, he breaks the pale And feeds from home; poor I am but his stale.

LUCIANA. Self-harming jealousy! fie, beat it hence.

ADRIANA. Unfeeling fools can with such wrongs dispense. I know his eye doth homage otherwhere, Or else what lets it but he would be here? Sister, you know he promis’d me a chain; Would that alone, a love he would detain, So he would keep fair quarter with his bed. I see the jewel best enamelled Will lose his beauty; yet the gold bides still That others touch, yet often touching will Wear gold; and no man that hath a name By falsehood and corruption doth it shame. Since that my beauty cannot please his eye, I’ll weep what’s left away, and weeping die.

LUCIANA. How many fond fools serve mad jealousy!

SCENE II. The same

Enter Antipholus of Syracuse.

ANTIPHOLUS OF SYRACUSE. The gold I gave to Dromio is laid up Safe at the Centaur, and the heedful slave Is wander’d forth in care to seek me out. By computation and mine host’s report. I could not speak with Dromio since at first I sent him from the mart. See, here he comes.

Enter Dromio of Syracuse.

How now, sir! is your merry humour alter’d? As you love strokes, so jest with me again. You know no Centaur? you receiv’d no gold? Your mistress sent to have me home to dinner? My house was at the Phoenix? Wast thou mad, That thus so madly thou didst answer me?

DROMIO OF SYRACUSE. What answer, sir? when spake I such a word?

ANTIPHOLUS OF SYRACUSE. Even now, even here, not half an hour since.

DROMIO OF SYRACUSE. I did not see you since you sent me hence, Home to the Centaur with the gold you gave me.

ANTIPHOLUS OF SYRACUSE. Villain, thou didst deny the gold’s receipt, And told’st me of a mistress and a dinner, For which I hope thou felt’st I was displeas’d.

DROMIO OF SYRACUSE. I am glad to see you in this merry vein. What means this jest, I pray you, master, tell me?

ANTIPHOLUS OF SYRACUSE. Yea, dost thou jeer and flout me in the teeth? Think’st thou I jest? Hold, take thou that, and that.

[Beats Dromio.]

DROMIO OF SYRACUSE. Hold, sir, for God’s sake, now your jest is earnest. Upon what bargain do you give it me?

ANTIPHOLUS OF SYRACUSE. Because that I familiarly sometimes Do use you for my fool, and chat with you, Your sauciness will jest upon my love, And make a common of my serious hours. When the sun shines let foolish gnats make sport, But creep in crannies when he hides his beams. If you will jest with me, know my aspect, And fashion your demeanour to my looks, Or I will beat this method in your sconce.

DROMIO OF SYRACUSE. Sconce, call you it? so you would leave battering, I had rather have it a head. And you use these blows long, I must get a sconce for my head, and ensconce it too, or else I shall seek my wit in my shoulders. But I pray, sir, why am I beaten?

ANTIPHOLUS OF SYRACUSE. Dost thou not know?

DROMIO OF SYRACUSE. Nothing, sir, but that I am beaten.

ANTIPHOLUS OF SYRACUSE. Shall I tell you why?

DROMIO OF SYRACUSE. Ay, sir, and wherefore; for they say, every why hath a wherefore.

ANTIPHOLUS OF SYRACUSE. Why, first, for flouting me; and then wherefore, For urging it the second time to me.

DROMIO OF SYRACUSE. Was there ever any man thus beaten out of season, When in the why and the wherefore is neither rhyme nor reason? Well, sir, I thank you.

ANTIPHOLUS OF SYRACUSE. Thank me, sir, for what?

DROMIO OF SYRACUSE. Marry, sir, for this something that you gave me for nothing.

ANTIPHOLUS OF SYRACUSE. I’ll make you amends next, to give you nothing for something. But say, sir, is it dinner-time?

DROMIO OF SYRACUSE. No, sir; I think the meat wants that I have.

ANTIPHOLUS OF SYRACUSE. In good time, sir, what’s that?

DROMIO OF SYRACUSE. Basting.

ANTIPHOLUS OF SYRACUSE. Well, sir, then ’twill be dry.

DROMIO OF SYRACUSE. If it be, sir, I pray you eat none of it.

ANTIPHOLUS OF SYRACUSE. Your reason?

DROMIO OF SYRACUSE. Lest it make you choleric, and purchase me another dry basting.

ANTIPHOLUS OF SYRACUSE. Well, sir, learn to jest in good time. There’s a time for all things.

DROMIO OF SYRACUSE. I durst have denied that before you were so choleric.

ANTIPHOLUS OF SYRACUSE. By what rule, sir?

DROMIO OF SYRACUSE. Marry, sir, by a rule as plain as the plain bald pate of Father Time himself.

ANTIPHOLUS OF SYRACUSE. Let’s hear it.

DROMIO OF SYRACUSE. There’s no time for a man to recover his hair that grows bald by nature.

ANTIPHOLUS OF SYRACUSE. May he not do it by fine and recovery?

DROMIO OF SYRACUSE. Yes, to pay a fine for a periwig, and recover the lost hair of another man.

ANTIPHOLUS OF SYRACUSE. Why is Time such a niggard of hair, being, as it is, so plentiful an excrement?

DROMIO OF SYRACUSE. Because it is a blessing that he bestows on beasts, and what he hath scanted men in hair he hath given them in wit.

ANTIPHOLUS OF SYRACUSE. Why, but there’s many a man hath more hair than wit.

DROMIO OF SYRACUSE. Not a man of those but he hath the wit to lose his hair.

ANTIPHOLUS OF SYRACUSE. Why, thou didst conclude hairy men plain dealers without wit.

DROMIO OF SYRACUSE. The plainer dealer, the sooner lost. Yet he loseth it in a kind of jollity.

ANTIPHOLUS OF SYRACUSE. For what reason?

DROMIO OF SYRACUSE. For two, and sound ones too.

ANTIPHOLUS OF SYRACUSE. Nay, not sound, I pray you.

DROMIO OF SYRACUSE. Sure ones, then.

ANTIPHOLUS OF SYRACUSE. Nay, not sure, in a thing falsing.

DROMIO OF SYRACUSE. Certain ones, then.

ANTIPHOLUS OF SYRACUSE. Name them.

DROMIO OF SYRACUSE. The one, to save the money that he spends in tiring; the other, that at dinner they should not drop in his porridge.

ANTIPHOLUS OF SYRACUSE. You would all this time have proved there is no time for all things.

DROMIO OF SYRACUSE. Marry, and did, sir; namely, e’en no time to recover hair lost by nature.

ANTIPHOLUS OF SYRACUSE. But your reason was not substantial why there is no time to recover.

DROMIO OF SYRACUSE. Thus I mend it: Time himself is bald, and therefore, to the world’s end will have bald followers.

ANTIPHOLUS OF SYRACUSE. I knew ’twould be a bald conclusion. But soft! who wafts us yonder?

Enter Adriana and Luciana.

ADRIANA. Ay, ay, Antipholus, look strange and frown, Some other mistress hath thy sweet aspects. I am not Adriana, nor thy wife. The time was once when thou unurg’d wouldst vow That never words were music to thine ear, That never object pleasing in thine eye, That never touch well welcome to thy hand, That never meat sweet-savour’d in thy taste, Unless I spake, or look’d, or touch’d, or carv’d to thee. How comes it now, my husband, O, how comes it, That thou art then estranged from thyself? Thyself I call it, being strange to me, That, undividable, incorporate, Am better than thy dear self’s better part. Ah, do not tear away thyself from me; For know, my love, as easy mayst thou fall A drop of water in the breaking gulf, And take unmingled thence that drop again Without addition or diminishing, As take from me thyself, and not me too. How dearly would it touch thee to the quick, Should’st thou but hear I were licentious? And that this body, consecrate to thee, By ruffian lust should be contaminate? Wouldst thou not spit at me, and spurn at me, And hurl the name of husband in my face, And tear the stain’d skin off my harlot brow, And from my false hand cut the wedding-ring, And break it with a deep-divorcing vow? I know thou canst; and therefore, see thou do it. I am possess’d with an adulterate blot; My blood is mingled with the crime of lust; For if we two be one, and thou play false, I do digest the poison of thy flesh, Being strumpeted by thy contagion. Keep then fair league and truce with thy true bed, I live distain’d, thou undishonoured.

ANTIPHOLUS OF SYRACUSE. Plead you to me, fair dame? I know you not. In Ephesus I am but two hours old, As strange unto your town as to your talk, Who, every word by all my wit being scann’d, Wants wit in all one word to understand.

LUCIANA. Fie, brother, how the world is chang’d with you. When were you wont to use my sister thus? She sent for you by Dromio home to dinner.

ANTIPHOLUS OF SYRACUSE. By Dromio?

DROMIO OF SYRACUSE. By me?

ADRIANA. By thee; and this thou didst return from him, That he did buffet thee, and in his blows Denied my house for his, me for his wife.

ANTIPHOLUS OF SYRACUSE. Did you converse, sir, with this gentlewoman? What is the course and drift of your compact?

DROMIO OF SYRACUSE. I, sir? I never saw her till this time.

ANTIPHOLUS OF SYRACUSE. Villain, thou liest, for even her very words Didst thou deliver to me on the mart.

DROMIO OF SYRACUSE. I never spake with her in all my life.

ANTIPHOLUS OF SYRACUSE. How can she thus, then, call us by our names? Unless it be by inspiration.

ADRIANA. How ill agrees it with your gravity To counterfeit thus grossly with your slave, Abetting him to thwart me in my mood; Be it my wrong, you are from me exempt, But wrong not that wrong with a more contempt. Come, I will fasten on this sleeve of thine. Thou art an elm, my husband, I a vine, Whose weakness, married to thy stronger state, Makes me with thy strength to communicate: If aught possess thee from me, it is dross, Usurping ivy, brier, or idle moss, Who all, for want of pruning, with intrusion Infect thy sap, and live on thy confusion.

ANTIPHOLUS OF SYRACUSE. To me she speaks; she moves me for her theme. What, was I married to her in my dream? Or sleep I now, and think I hear all this? What error drives our eyes and ears amiss? Until I know this sure uncertainty I’ll entertain the offer’d fallacy.

LUCIANA. Dromio, go bid the servants spread for dinner.

DROMIO OF SYRACUSE. O, for my beads! I cross me for a sinner. This is the fairy land; O spite of spites! We talk with goblins, owls, and sprites; If we obey them not, this will ensue: They’ll suck our breath, or pinch us black and blue.

LUCIANA. Why prat’st thou to thyself, and answer’st not? Dromio, thou drone, thou snail, thou slug, thou sot.

DROMIO OF SYRACUSE. I am transformed, master, am I not?

ANTIPHOLUS OF SYRACUSE. I think thou art in mind, and so am I.

DROMIO OF SYRACUSE. Nay, master, both in mind and in my shape.

ANTIPHOLUS OF SYRACUSE. Thou hast thine own form.

DROMIO OF SYRACUSE. No, I am an ape.

LUCIANA. If thou art chang’d to aught, ’tis to an ass.

DROMIO OF SYRACUSE. ’Tis true; she rides me, and I long for grass. ’Tis so, I am an ass; else it could never be But I should know her as well as she knows me.

ADRIANA. Come, come, no longer will I be a fool, To put the finger in the eye and weep Whilst man and master laughs my woes to scorn. Come, sir, to dinner; Dromio, keep the gate. Husband, I’ll dine above with you today, And shrive you of a thousand idle pranks. Sirrah, if any ask you for your master, Say he dines forth, and let no creature enter. Come, sister; Dromio, play the porter well.

ANTIPHOLUS OF SYRACUSE. Am I in earth, in heaven, or in hell? Sleeping or waking, mad, or well-advis’d? Known unto these, and to myself disguis’d! I’ll say as they say, and persever so, And in this mist at all adventures go.

DROMIO OF SYRACUSE. Master, shall I be porter at the gate?

ADRIANA. Ay; and let none enter, lest I break your pate.

LUCIANA. Come, come, Antipholus, we dine too late.

SCENE I. The same

Enter Antipholus of Ephesus, his man Dromio of Ephesus, Angelo the goldsmith and Balthasar the merchant.

ANTIPHOLUS OF EPHESUS. Good Signior Angelo, you must excuse us all, My wife is shrewish when I keep not hours. Say that I linger’d with you at your shop To see the making of her carcanet, And that tomorrow you will bring it home. But here’s a villain that would face me down. He met me on the mart, and that I beat him, And charg’d him with a thousand marks in gold, And that I did deny my wife and house. Thou drunkard, thou, what didst thou mean by this?

DROMIO OF EPHESUS. Say what you will, sir, but I know what I know. That you beat me at the mart I have your hand to show; If the skin were parchment, and the blows you gave were ink, Your own handwriting would tell you what I think.

ANTIPHOLUS OF EPHESUS. I think thou art an ass.

DROMIO OF EPHESUS. Marry, so it doth appear By the wrongs I suffer and the blows I bear. I should kick, being kick’d; and being at that pass, You would keep from my heels, and beware of an ass.

ANTIPHOLUS OF EPHESUS. You’re sad, Signior Balthasar; pray God our cheer May answer my good will and your good welcome here.

BALTHASAR. I hold your dainties cheap, sir, and your welcome dear.

ANTIPHOLUS OF EPHESUS. O, Signior Balthasar, either at flesh or fish A table full of welcome makes scarce one dainty dish.

BALTHASAR. Good meat, sir, is common; that every churl affords.

ANTIPHOLUS OF EPHESUS. And welcome more common, for that’s nothing but words.

BALTHASAR Small cheer and great welcome makes a merry feast.

ANTIPHOLUS OF EPHESUS. Ay, to a niggardly host and more sparing guest. But though my cates be mean, take them in good part; Better cheer may you have, but not with better heart. But soft; my door is lock’d. Go bid them let us in.

DROMIO OF EPHESUS. Maud, Bridget, Marian, Cicely, Gillian, Ginn!

DROMIO OF SYRACUSE. [Within.] Mome, malt-horse, capon, coxcomb, idiot, patch! Either get thee from the door or sit down at the hatch: Dost thou conjure for wenches, that thou call’st for such store When one is one too many? Go, get thee from the door.

DROMIO OF EPHESUS. What patch is made our porter? My master stays in the street.

DROMIO OF SYRACUSE. Let him walk from whence he came, lest he catch cold on’s feet.

ANTIPHOLUS OF EPHESUS. Who talks within there? Ho, open the door.

DROMIO OF SYRACUSE. Right, sir, I’ll tell you when an you’ll tell me wherefore.

ANTIPHOLUS OF EPHESUS. Wherefore? For my dinner. I have not dined today.

DROMIO OF SYRACUSE. Nor today here you must not; come again when you may.

ANTIPHOLUS OF EPHESUS. What art thou that keep’st me out from the house I owe?

DROMIO OF SYRACUSE. The porter for this time, sir, and my name is Dromio.

DROMIO OF EPHESUS. O villain, thou hast stolen both mine office and my name; The one ne’er got me credit, the other mickle blame. If thou hadst been Dromio today in my place, Thou wouldst have chang’d thy face for a name, or thy name for an ass.

Enter Luce concealed from Antipholus of Ephesus and his companions.

LUCE. [Within.] What a coil is there, Dromio, who are those at the gate?

DROMIO OF EPHESUS. Let my master in, Luce.

LUCE. Faith, no, he comes too late, And so tell your master.

DROMIO OF EPHESUS. O Lord, I must laugh; Have at you with a proverb:—Shall I set in my staff?

LUCE. Have at you with another: that’s—When? can you tell?

DROMIO OF SYRACUSE. If thy name be called Luce,—Luce, thou hast answer’d him well.

ANTIPHOLUS OF EPHESUS. Do you hear, you minion? you’ll let us in, I hope?

LUCE. I thought to have ask’d you.

DROMIO OF SYRACUSE. And you said no.

DROMIO OF EPHESUS. So, come, help. Well struck, there was blow for blow.

ANTIPHOLUS OF EPHESUS. Thou baggage, let me in.

LUCE. Can you tell for whose sake?

DROMIO OF EPHESUS. Master, knock the door hard.

LUCE. Let him knock till it ache.

ANTIPHOLUS OF EPHESUS. You’ll cry for this, minion, if I beat the door down.

LUCE. What needs all that, and a pair of stocks in the town?

Enter Adriana concealed from Antipholus of Ephesus and his companions.

ADRIANA. [Within.] Who is that at the door that keeps all this noise?

DROMIO OF SYRACUSE. By my troth, your town is troubled with unruly boys.

ANTIPHOLUS OF EPHESUS. Are you there, wife? you might have come before.

ADRIANA. Your wife, sir knave? go, get you from the door.

DROMIO OF EPHESUS. If you went in pain, master, this knave would go sore.

ANGELO. Here is neither cheer, sir, nor welcome. We would fain have either.

BALTHASAR. In debating which was best, we shall part with neither.

DROMIO OF EPHESUS. They stand at the door, master; bid them welcome hither.

ANTIPHOLUS OF EPHESUS. There is something in the wind, that we cannot get in.

DROMIO OF EPHESUS. You would say so, master, if your garments were thin. Your cake here is warm within; you stand here in the cold. It would make a man mad as a buck to be so bought and sold.

ANTIPHOLUS OF EPHESUS. Go, fetch me something, I’ll break ope the gate.

DROMIO OF SYRACUSE. Break any breaking here, and I’ll break your knave’s pate.

DROMIO OF EPHESUS. A man may break a word with you, sir, and words are but wind; Ay, and break it in your face, so he break it not behind.

DROMIO OF SYRACUSE. It seems thou want’st breaking; out upon thee, hind!

DROMIO OF EPHESUS. Here’s too much “out upon thee”; I pray thee, let me in.

DROMIO OF SYRACUSE. Ay, when fowls have no feathers and fish have no fin.

ANTIPHOLUS OF EPHESUS. Well, I’ll break in; go, borrow me a crow.

DROMIO OF EPHESUS. A crow without feather; master, mean you so? For a fish without a fin, there’s a fowl without a feather. If a crow help us in, sirrah, we’ll pluck a crow together.

ANTIPHOLUS OF EPHESUS. Go, get thee gone; fetch me an iron crow.

BALTHASAR. Have patience, sir. O, let it not be so: Herein you war against your reputation, And draw within the compass of suspect The unviolated honour of your wife. Once this,—your long experience of her wisdom, Her sober virtue, years, and modesty, Plead on her part some cause to you unknown; And doubt not, sir, but she will well excuse Why at this time the doors are made against you. Be rul’d by me; depart in patience, And let us to the Tiger all to dinner, And about evening, come yourself alone To know the reason of this strange restraint. If by strong hand you offer to break in Now in the stirring passage of the day, A vulgar comment will be made of it; And that supposed by the common rout Against your yet ungalled estimation That may with foul intrusion enter in, And dwell upon your grave when you are dead; For slander lives upon succession, For ever hous’d where it gets possession.

ANTIPHOLUS OF EPHESUS. You have prevail’d. I will depart in quiet, And, in despite of mirth, mean to be merry. I know a wench of excellent discourse, Pretty and witty; wild, and yet, too, gentle; There will we dine. This woman that I mean, My wife (but, I protest, without desert) Hath oftentimes upbraided me withal; To her will we to dinner.—Get you home And fetch the chain, by this I know ’tis made. Bring it, I pray you, to the Porpentine, For there’s the house. That chain will I bestow (Be it for nothing but to spite my wife) Upon mine hostess there. Good sir, make haste. Since mine own doors refuse to entertain me, I’ll knock elsewhere, to see if they’ll disdain me.

ANGELO. I’ll meet you at that place some hour hence.

ANTIPHOLUS OF EPHESUS. Do so; this jest shall cost me some expense.

Enter Luciana with Antipholus of Syracuse.

LUCIANA. And may it be that you have quite forgot A husband’s office? Shall, Antipholus, Even in the spring of love, thy love-springs rot? Shall love, in building, grow so ruinous? If you did wed my sister for her wealth, Then for her wealth’s sake use her with more kindness; Or if you like elsewhere, do it by stealth, Muffle your false love with some show of blindness. Let not my sister read it in your eye; Be not thy tongue thy own shame’s orator; Look sweet, speak fair, become disloyalty; Apparel vice like virtue’s harbinger; Bear a fair presence though your heart be tainted; Teach sin the carriage of a holy saint, Be secret-false. What need she be acquainted? What simple thief brags of his own attaint? ’Tis double wrong to truant with your bed And let her read it in thy looks at board. Shame hath a bastard fame, well managed; Ill deeds is doubled with an evil word. Alas, poor women, make us but believe, Being compact of credit, that you love us. Though others have the arm, show us the sleeve; We in your motion turn, and you may move us. Then, gentle brother, get you in again; Comfort my sister, cheer her, call her wife. ’Tis holy sport to be a little vain When the sweet breath of flattery conquers strife.

ANTIPHOLUS OF SYRACUSE. Sweet mistress, what your name is else, I know not, Nor by what wonder you do hit on mine; Less in your knowledge and your grace you show not Than our earth’s wonder, more than earth divine. Teach me, dear creature, how to think and speak; Lay open to my earthy gross conceit, Smother’d in errors, feeble, shallow, weak, The folded meaning of your words’ deceit. Against my soul’s pure truth why labour you To make it wander in an unknown field? Are you a god? would you create me new? Transform me, then, and to your power I’ll yield. But if that I am I, then well I know Your weeping sister is no wife of mine, Nor to her bed no homage do I owe. Far more, far more, to you do I decline. O, train me not, sweet mermaid, with thy note To drown me in thy sister’s flood of tears. Sing, siren, for thyself, and I will dote; Spread o’er the silver waves thy golden hairs, And as a bed I’ll take thee, and there lie, And, in that glorious supposition think He gains by death that hath such means to die. Let love, being light, be drowned if she sink!

LUCIANA. What, are you mad, that you do reason so?

ANTIPHOLUS OF SYRACUSE. Not mad, but mated; how, I do not know.

LUCIANA. It is a fault that springeth from your eye.

ANTIPHOLUS OF SYRACUSE. For gazing on your beams, fair sun, being by.

LUCIANA. Gaze where you should, and that will clear your sight.

ANTIPHOLUS OF SYRACUSE. As good to wink, sweet love, as look on night.

LUCIANA. Why call you me love? Call my sister so.

ANTIPHOLUS OF SYRACUSE. Thy sister’s sister.

LUCIANA. That’s my sister.

ANTIPHOLUS OF SYRACUSE. No, It is thyself, mine own self’s better part, Mine eye’s clear eye, my dear heart’s dearer heart, My food, my fortune, and my sweet hope’s aim, My sole earth’s heaven, and my heaven’s claim.

LUCIANA. All this my sister is, or else should be.

ANTIPHOLUS OF SYRACUSE. Call thyself sister, sweet, for I aim thee; Thee will I love, and with thee lead my life; Thou hast no husband yet, nor I no wife. Give me thy hand.

LUCIANA. O, soft, sir, hold you still; I’ll fetch my sister to get her goodwill.

[Exit Luciana.]

ANTIPHOLUS OF SYRACUSE. Why, how now, Dromio? where runn’st thou so fast?

DROMIO OF SYRACUSE. Do you know me, sir? Am I Dromio? Am I your man? Am I myself?

ANTIPHOLUS OF SYRACUSE. Thou art Dromio, thou art my man, thou art thyself.

DROMIO OF SYRACUSE. I am an ass, I am a woman’s man, and besides myself.

ANTIPHOLUS OF SYRACUSE. What woman’s man? and how besides thyself?

DROMIO OF SYRACUSE. Marry, sir, besides myself, I am due to a woman, one that claims me, one that haunts me, one that will have me.

ANTIPHOLUS OF SYRACUSE. What claim lays she to thee?

DROMIO OF SYRACUSE. Marry, sir, such claim as you would lay to your horse, and she would have me as a beast; not that I being a beast she would have me, but that she being a very beastly creature lays claim to me.

ANTIPHOLUS OF SYRACUSE. What is she?

DROMIO OF SYRACUSE. A very reverent body; ay, such a one as a man may not speak of without he say “sir-reverence”. I have but lean luck in the match, and yet is she a wondrous fat marriage.

ANTIPHOLUS OF SYRACUSE. How dost thou mean a “fat marriage”?

DROMIO OF SYRACUSE. Marry, sir, she’s the kitchen wench, and all grease, and I know not what use to put her to but to make a lamp of her and run from her by her own light. I warrant her rags and the tallow in them will burn a Poland winter. If she lives till doomsday, she’ll burn a week longer than the whole world.

ANTIPHOLUS OF SYRACUSE. What complexion is she of?

DROMIO OF SYRACUSE. Swart like my shoe, but her face nothing like so clean kept. For why? she sweats, a man may go overshoes in the grime of it.

ANTIPHOLUS OF SYRACUSE. That’s a fault that water will mend.

DROMIO OF SYRACUSE. No, sir, ’tis in grain; Noah’s flood could not do it.

ANTIPHOLUS OF SYRACUSE. What’s her name?

DROMIO OF SYRACUSE. Nell, sir; but her name and three quarters, that’s an ell and three quarters, will not measure her from hip to hip.

ANTIPHOLUS OF SYRACUSE. Then she bears some breadth?

DROMIO OF SYRACUSE. No longer from head to foot than from hip to hip. She is spherical, like a globe. I could find out countries in her.

ANTIPHOLUS OF SYRACUSE. In what part of her body stands Ireland?

DROMIO OF SYRACUSE. Marry, sir, in her buttocks; I found it out by the bogs.

ANTIPHOLUS OF SYRACUSE. Where Scotland?

DROMIO OF SYRACUSE. I found it by the barrenness, hard in the palm of the hand.

ANTIPHOLUS OF SYRACUSE. Where France?

DROMIO OF SYRACUSE. In her forehead; armed and reverted, making war against her hair.

ANTIPHOLUS OF SYRACUSE. Where England?

DROMIO OF SYRACUSE. I looked for the chalky cliffs, but I could find no whiteness in them. But I guess it stood in her chin, by the salt rheum that ran between France and it.

ANTIPHOLUS OF SYRACUSE. Where Spain?

DROMIO OF SYRACUSE. Faith, I saw it not; but I felt it hot in her breath.

ANTIPHOLUS OF SYRACUSE. Where America, the Indies?

DROMIO OF SYRACUSE. O, sir, upon her nose, all o’er-embellished with rubies, carbuncles, sapphires, declining their rich aspect to the hot breath of Spain, who sent whole armadoes of carracks to be ballast at her nose.

ANTIPHOLUS OF SYRACUSE. Where stood Belgia, the Netherlands?

DROMIO OF SYRACUSE. O, sir, I did not look so low. To conclude: this drudge or diviner laid claim to me, called me Dromio, swore I was assured to her, told me what privy marks I had about me, as the mark of my shoulder, the mole in my neck, the great wart on my left arm, that I, amazed, ran from her as a witch. And, I think, if my breast had not been made of faith, and my heart of steel, she had transformed me to a curtal dog, and made me turn i’ the wheel.

ANTIPHOLUS OF SYRACUSE. Go, hie thee presently, post to the road; And if the wind blow any way from shore, I will not harbour in this town tonight. If any bark put forth, come to the mart, Where I will walk till thou return to me. If everyone knows us, and we know none, ’Tis time, I think, to trudge, pack and be gone.

DROMIO OF SYRACUSE. As from a bear a man would run for life, So fly I from her that would be my wife.

ANTIPHOLUS OF SYRACUSE. There’s none but witches do inhabit here, And therefore ’tis high time that I were hence. She that doth call me husband, even my soul Doth for a wife abhor. But her fair sister, Possess’d with such a gentle sovereign grace, Of such enchanting presence and discourse, Hath almost made me traitor to myself. But lest myself be guilty to self-wrong, I’ll stop mine ears against the mermaid’s song.

Enter Angelo with the chain.

ANGELO. Master Antipholus.

ANTIPHOLUS OF SYRACUSE. Ay, that’s my name.

ANGELO. I know it well, sir. Lo, here is the chain; I thought to have ta’en you at the Porpentine, The chain unfinish’d made me stay thus long.

ANTIPHOLUS OF SYRACUSE. What is your will that I shall do with this?

ANGELO. What please yourself, sir; I have made it for you.

ANTIPHOLUS OF SYRACUSE. Made it for me, sir! I bespoke it not.

ANGELO. Not once, nor twice, but twenty times you have. Go home with it, and please your wife withal, And soon at supper-time I’ll visit you, And then receive my money for the chain.

ANTIPHOLUS OF SYRACUSE. I pray you, sir, receive the money now, For fear you ne’er see chain nor money more.

ANGELO. You are a merry man, sir; fare you well.

ANTIPHOLUS OF SYRACUSE. What I should think of this I cannot tell, But this I think, there’s no man is so vain That would refuse so fair an offer’d chain. I see a man here needs not live by shifts, When in the streets he meets such golden gifts. I’ll to the mart, and there for Dromio stay; If any ship put out, then straight away.

Enter Merchant, Angelo and an Officer.

MERCHANT. You know since Pentecost the sum is due, And since I have not much importun’d you, Nor now I had not, but that I am bound To Persia, and want guilders for my voyage; Therefore make present satisfaction, Or I’ll attach you by this officer.

ANGELO. Even just the sum that I do owe to you Is growing to me by Antipholus, And in the instant that I met with you He had of me a chain; at five o’clock I shall receive the money for the same. Pleaseth you walk with me down to his house, I will discharge my bond, and thank you too.

Enter Antipholus of Ephesus and Dromio of Ephesus from the Courtesan’s.

OFFICER. That labour may you save. See where he comes.

ANTIPHOLUS OF EPHESUS. While I go to the goldsmith’s house, go thou And buy a rope’s end; that will I bestow Among my wife and her confederates For locking me out of my doors by day. But soft, I see the goldsmith; get thee gone; Buy thou a rope, and bring it home to me.

DROMIO OF EPHESUS. I buy a thousand pound a year! I buy a rope!

ANTIPHOLUS OF EPHESUS. A man is well holp up that trusts to you, I promised your presence and the chain, But neither chain nor goldsmith came to me. Belike you thought our love would last too long If it were chain’d together, and therefore came not.

ANGELO. Saving your merry humour, here’s the note How much your chain weighs to the utmost carat, The fineness of the gold, and chargeful fashion, Which doth amount to three odd ducats more Than I stand debted to this gentleman. I pray you, see him presently discharg’d, For he is bound to sea, and stays but for it.

ANTIPHOLUS OF EPHESUS. I am not furnished with the present money; Besides, I have some business in the town. Good signior, take the stranger to my house, And with you take the chain, and bid my wife Disburse the sum on the receipt thereof; Perchance I will be there as soon as you.

ANGELO. Then you will bring the chain to her yourself.

ANTIPHOLUS OF EPHESUS. No, bear it with you, lest I come not time enough.

ANGELO. Well, sir, I will. Have you the chain about you?

ANTIPHOLUS OF EPHESUS. And if I have not, sir, I hope you have, Or else you may return without your money.

ANGELO. Nay, come, I pray you, sir, give me the chain; Both wind and tide stays for this gentleman, And I, to blame, have held him here too long.

ANTIPHOLUS OF EPHESUS. Good Lord, you use this dalliance to excuse Your breach of promise to the Porpentine. I should have chid you for not bringing it, But, like a shrew, you first begin to brawl.

MERCHANT. The hour steals on; I pray you, sir, dispatch.

ANGELO. You hear how he importunes me. The chain!

ANTIPHOLUS OF EPHESUS. Why, give it to my wife, and fetch your money.

ANGELO. Come, come, you know I gave it you even now. Either send the chain or send by me some token.

ANTIPHOLUS OF EPHESUS. Fie, now you run this humour out of breath. Come, where’s the chain? I pray you, let me see it.

MERCHANT. My business cannot brook this dalliance. Good sir, say whe’er you’ll answer me or no; If not, I’ll leave him to the officer.

ANTIPHOLUS OF EPHESUS. I answer you? What should I answer you?

ANGELO. The money that you owe me for the chain.

ANTIPHOLUS OF EPHESUS. I owe you none till I receive the chain.

ANGELO. You know I gave it you half an hour since.

ANTIPHOLUS OF EPHESUS. You gave me none. You wrong me much to say so.

ANGELO. You wrong me more, sir, in denying it. Consider how it stands upon my credit.

MERCHANT. Well, officer, arrest him at my suit.

OFFICER. I do, and charge you in the duke’s name to obey me.

ANGELO. This touches me in reputation. Either consent to pay this sum for me, Or I attach you by this officer.

ANTIPHOLUS OF EPHESUS. Consent to pay thee that I never had? Arrest me, foolish fellow, if thou dar’st.

ANGELO. Here is thy fee; arrest him, officer. I would not spare my brother in this case If he should scorn me so apparently.

OFFICER. I do arrest you, sir. You hear the suit.

ANTIPHOLUS OF EPHESUS. I do obey thee till I give thee bail. But, sirrah, you shall buy this sport as dear As all the metal in your shop will answer.

ANGELO. Sir, sir, I shall have law in Ephesus, To your notorious shame, I doubt it not.

Enter Dromio of Syracuse from the bay.

DROMIO OF SYRACUSE. Master, there’s a bark of Epidamnum That stays but till her owner comes aboard, And then, sir, bears away. Our fraughtage, sir, I have convey’d aboard, and I have bought The oil, the balsamum, and aqua-vitae. The ship is in her trim; the merry wind Blows fair from land; they stay for nought at all But for their owner, master, and yourself.

ANTIPHOLUS OF EPHESUS. How now? a madman? Why, thou peevish sheep, What ship of Epidamnum stays for me?

DROMIO OF SYRACUSE. A ship you sent me to, to hire waftage.

ANTIPHOLUS OF EPHESUS. Thou drunken slave, I sent thee for a rope, And told thee to what purpose and what end.

DROMIO OF SYRACUSE. You sent me for a rope’s end as soon. You sent me to the bay, sir, for a bark.

ANTIPHOLUS OF EPHESUS. I will debate this matter at more leisure, And teach your ears to list me with more heed. To Adriana, villain, hie thee straight: Give her this key, and tell her in the desk That’s cover’d o’er with Turkish tapestry There is a purse of ducats; let her send it. Tell her I am arrested in the street, And that shall bail me. Hie thee, slave; be gone. On, officer, to prison till it come.

[Exeunt Merchant, Angelo, Officer and Antipholus of Ephesus.]

DROMIO OF SYRACUSE. To Adriana, that is where we din’d, Where Dowsabel did claim me for her husband. She is too big, I hope, for me to compass. Thither I must, although against my will, For servants must their masters’ minds fulfil.

ADRIANA. Ah, Luciana, did he tempt thee so? Might’st thou perceive austerely in his eye That he did plead in earnest, yea or no? Look’d he or red or pale, or sad or merrily? What observation mad’st thou in this case Of his heart’s meteors tilting in his face?

LUCIANA. First he denied you had in him no right.

ADRIANA. He meant he did me none; the more my spite.

LUCIANA. Then swore he that he was a stranger here.

ADRIANA. And true he swore, though yet forsworn he were.

LUCIANA. Then pleaded I for you.

ADRIANA. And what said he?

LUCIANA. That love I begg’d for you he begg’d of me.

ADRIANA. With what persuasion did he tempt thy love?

LUCIANA. With words that in an honest suit might move. First he did praise my beauty, then my speech.

ADRIANA. Did’st speak him fair?

LUCIANA. Have patience, I beseech.

ADRIANA. I cannot, nor I will not hold me still. My tongue, though not my heart, shall have his will. He is deformed, crooked, old, and sere, Ill-fac’d, worse bodied, shapeless everywhere; Vicious, ungentle, foolish, blunt, unkind, Stigmatical in making, worse in mind.

LUCIANA. Who would be jealous then of such a one? No evil lost is wail’d when it is gone.

ADRIANA. Ah, but I think him better than I say, And yet would herein others’ eyes were worse: Far from her nest the lapwing cries away; My heart prays for him, though my tongue do curse.

DROMIO OF SYRACUSE. Here, go; the desk, the purse, sweet now, make haste.

LUCIANA. How hast thou lost thy breath?

DROMIO OF SYRACUSE. By running fast.

ADRIANA. Where is thy master, Dromio? is he well?

DROMIO OF SYRACUSE. No, he’s in Tartar limbo, worse than hell. A devil in an everlasting garment hath him, One whose hard heart is button’d up with steel; A fiend, a fairy, pitiless and rough; A wolf, nay worse, a fellow all in buff; A back-friend, a shoulder-clapper, one that countermands The passages of alleys, creeks, and narrow lands; A hound that runs counter, and yet draws dryfoot well, One that, before the judgement, carries poor souls to hell.

ADRIANA. Why, man, what is the matter?

DROMIO OF SYRACUSE. I do not know the matter. He is ’rested on the case.

ADRIANA. What, is he arrested? Tell me at whose suit?

DROMIO OF SYRACUSE. I know not at whose suit he is arrested, well; But he’s in a suit of buff which ’rested him, that can I tell. Will you send him, mistress, redemption, the money in his desk?

ADRIANA. Go fetch it, sister. This I wonder at,

Thus he unknown to me should be in debt. Tell me, was he arrested on a band?

DROMIO OF SYRACUSE. Not on a band, but on a stronger thing; A chain, a chain. Do you not hear it ring?

ADRIANA. What, the chain?

DROMIO OF SYRACUSE. No, no, the bell, ’tis time that I were gone. It was two ere I left him, and now the clock strikes one.

ADRIANA. The hours come back! That did I never hear.

DROMIO OF SYRACUSE. O yes, if any hour meet a sergeant, ’a turns back for very fear.

ADRIANA. As if time were in debt. How fondly dost thou reason!

DROMIO OF SYRACUSE. Time is a very bankrupt, and owes more than he’s worth to season. Nay, he’s a thief too. Have you not heard men say That time comes stealing on by night and day? If he be in debt and theft, and a sergeant in the way, Hath he not reason to turn back an hour in a day?

Enter Luciana.

ADRIANA. Go, Dromio, there’s the money, bear it straight, And bring thy master home immediately. Come, sister, I am press’d down with conceit; Conceit, my comfort and my injury.

SCENE III. The same

ANTIPHOLUS OF SYRACUSE. There’s not a man I meet but doth salute me As if I were their well-acquainted friend, And everyone doth call me by my name. Some tender money to me, some invite me; Some other give me thanks for kindnesses; Some offer me commodities to buy. Even now a tailor call’d me in his shop, And show’d me silks that he had bought for me, And therewithal took measure of my body. Sure, these are but imaginary wiles, And Lapland sorcerers inhabit here.

DROMIO OF SYRACUSE. Master, here’s the gold you sent me for. What, have you got the picture of old Adam new apparelled?

ANTIPHOLUS OF SYRACUSE. What gold is this? What Adam dost thou mean?

DROMIO OF SYRACUSE. Not that Adam that kept the paradise, but that Adam that keeps the prison; he that goes in the calf’s skin that was killed for the Prodigal; he that came behind you, sir, like an evil angel, and bid you forsake your liberty.

ANTIPHOLUS OF SYRACUSE. I understand thee not.

DROMIO OF SYRACUSE. No? Why, ’tis a plain case: he that went like a bass-viol in a case of leather; the man, sir, that, when gentlemen are tired, gives them a sob, and ’rests them; he, sir, that takes pity on decayed men and gives them suits of durance; he that sets up his rest to do more exploits with his mace than a morris-pike.

ANTIPHOLUS OF SYRACUSE. What! thou mean’st an officer?

DROMIO OF SYRACUSE. Ay, sir, the sergeant of the band; he that brings any man to answer it that breaks his band; one that thinks a man always going to bed, and says, “God give you good rest.”

ANTIPHOLUS OF SYRACUSE. Well, sir, there rest in your foolery. Is there any ship puts forth tonight? may we be gone?

DROMIO OF SYRACUSE. Why, sir, I brought you word an hour since that the bark Expedition put forth tonight, and then were you hindered by the sergeant to tarry for the hoy Delay. Here are the angels that you sent for to deliver you.

ANTIPHOLUS OF SYRACUSE. The fellow is distract, and so am I, And here we wander in illusions. Some blessed power deliver us from hence!

Enter a Courtesan.

COURTESAN. Well met, well met, Master Antipholus. I see, sir, you have found the goldsmith now. Is that the chain you promis’d me today?

ANTIPHOLUS OF SYRACUSE. Satan, avoid! I charge thee, tempt me not.

DROMIO OF SYRACUSE. Master, is this Mistress Satan?

ANTIPHOLUS OF SYRACUSE. It is the devil.

DROMIO OF SYRACUSE. Nay, she is worse, she is the devil’s dam; and here she comes in the habit of a light wench, and thereof comes that the wenches say “God damn me”, that’s as much to say, “God make me a light wench.” It is written they appear to men like angels of light. Light is an effect of fire, and fire will burn; ergo, light wenches will burn. Come not near her.

COURTESAN. Your man and you are marvellous merry, sir. Will you go with me? We’ll mend our dinner here.

DROMIO OF SYRACUSE. Master, if you do, expect spoon-meat, or bespeak a long spoon.

ANTIPHOLUS OF SYRACUSE. Why, Dromio?

DROMIO OF SYRACUSE. Marry, he must have a long spoon that must eat with the devil.

ANTIPHOLUS OF SYRACUSE. Avoid then, fiend! What tell’st thou me of supping? Thou art, as you are all, a sorceress. I conjure thee to leave me and be gone.

COURTESAN. Give me the ring of mine you had at dinner, Or, for my diamond, the chain you promis’d, And I’ll be gone, sir, and not trouble you.

DROMIO OF SYRACUSE. Some devils ask but the paring of one’s nail, A rush, a hair, a drop of blood, a pin, A nut, a cherry-stone; but she, more covetous, Would have a chain. Master, be wise; and if you give it her, The devil will shake her chain and fright us with it.

COURTESAN. I pray you, sir, my ring, or else the chain; I hope you do not mean to cheat me so.

ANTIPHOLUS OF SYRACUSE. Avaunt, thou witch! Come, Dromio, let us go.

DROMIO OF SYRACUSE. Fly pride, says the peacock. Mistress, that you know.

[Exeunt Antipholus of Syracuse and Dromio of Syracuse.]

COURTESAN. Now, out of doubt Antipholus is mad, Else would he never so demean himself. A ring he hath of mine worth forty ducats, And for the same he promis’d me a chain; Both one and other he denies me now. The reason that I gather he is mad, Besides this present instance of his rage, Is a mad tale he told today at dinner Of his own doors being shut against his entrance. Belike his wife, acquainted with his fits, On purpose shut the doors against his way. My way is now to hie home to his house, And tell his wife that, being lunatic, He rush’d into my house and took perforce My ring away. This course I fittest choose, For forty ducats is too much to lose.

SCENE IV. The same

Enter Antipholus of Ephesus with an Officer.

ANTIPHOLUS OF EPHESUS. Fear me not, man, I will not break away: I’ll give thee ere I leave thee so much money, To warrant thee, as I am ’rested for. My wife is in a wayward mood today, And will not lightly trust the messenger That I should be attach’d in Ephesus; I tell you ’twill sound harshly in her ears.

Enter Dromio of Ephesus with a rope’s end.

Here comes my man. I think he brings the money. How now, sir! have you that I sent you for?

DROMIO OF EPHESUS. Here’s that, I warrant you, will pay them all.

ANTIPHOLUS OF EPHESUS. But where’s the money?

DROMIO OF EPHESUS. Why, sir, I gave the money for the rope.

ANTIPHOLUS OF EPHESUS. Five hundred ducats, villain, for a rope?

DROMIO OF EPHESUS. I’ll serve you, sir, five hundred at the rate.

ANTIPHOLUS OF EPHESUS. To what end did I bid thee hie thee home?

DROMIO OF EPHESUS. To a rope’s end, sir; and to that end am I return’d.

ANTIPHOLUS OF EPHESUS. And to that end, sir, I will welcome you.

[Beating him.]

OFFICER. Good sir, be patient.

DROMIO OF EPHESUS. Nay, ’tis for me to be patient. I am in adversity.

OFFICER. Good now, hold thy tongue.

DROMIO OF EPHESUS. Nay, rather persuade him to hold his hands.

ANTIPHOLUS OF EPHESUS. Thou whoreson, senseless villain.

DROMIO OF EPHESUS. I would I were senseless, sir, that I might not feel your blows.

ANTIPHOLUS OF EPHESUS. Thou art sensible in nothing but blows, and so is an ass.

DROMIO OF EPHESUS. I am an ass indeed; you may prove it by my long ears. I have served him from the hour of my nativity to this instant, and have nothing at his hands for my service but blows. When I am cold, he heats me with beating; when I am warm he cools me with beating. I am waked with it when I sleep, raised with it when I sit, driven out of doors with it when I go from home, welcomed home with it when I return. Nay, I bear it on my shoulders as a beggar wont her brat; and I think when he hath lamed me, I shall beg with it from door to door.

Enter Adriana, Luciana, Courtesan and a Schoolmaster called Pinch.

ANTIPHOLUS OF EPHESUS. Come, go along, my wife is coming yonder.

DROMIO OF EPHESUS. Mistress, respice finem, respect your end, or rather, the prophesy like the parrot, “Beware the rope’s end.”

ANTIPHOLUS OF EPHESUS. Wilt thou still talk?

[Beats him.]

COURTESAN. How say you now? Is not your husband mad?

ADRIANA. His incivility confirms no less. Good Doctor Pinch, you are a conjurer; Establish him in his true sense again, And I will please you what you will demand.

LUCIANA. Alas, how fiery and how sharp he looks!

COURTESAN. Mark how he trembles in his ecstasy.

PINCH. Give me your hand, and let me feel your pulse.

ANTIPHOLUS OF EPHESUS. There is my hand, and let it feel your ear.

PINCH. I charge thee, Satan, hous’d within this man, To yield possession to my holy prayers, And to thy state of darkness hie thee straight. I conjure thee by all the saints in heaven.

ANTIPHOLUS OF EPHESUS. Peace, doting wizard, peace; I am not mad.

ADRIANA. O, that thou wert not, poor distressed soul!

ANTIPHOLUS OF EPHESUS. You minion, you, are these your customers? Did this companion with the saffron face Revel and feast it at my house today, Whilst upon me the guilty doors were shut, And I denied to enter in my house?

ADRIANA. O husband, God doth know you din’d at home, Where would you had remain’d until this time, Free from these slanders and this open shame.

ANTIPHOLUS OF EPHESUS. Din’d at home? Thou villain, what sayest thou?

DROMIO OF EPHESUS. Sir, sooth to say, you did not dine at home.

ANTIPHOLUS OF EPHESUS. Were not my doors lock’d up and I shut out?

DROMIO OF EPHESUS. Perdy, your doors were lock’d, and you shut out.

ANTIPHOLUS OF EPHESUS. And did not she herself revile me there?

DROMIO OF EPHESUS. Sans fable, she herself revil’d you there.

ANTIPHOLUS OF EPHESUS. Did not her kitchen-maid rail, taunt, and scorn me?

DROMIO OF EPHESUS. Certes, she did, the kitchen-vestal scorn’d you.

ANTIPHOLUS OF EPHESUS. And did not I in rage depart from thence?

DROMIO OF EPHESUS. In verity, you did; my bones bear witness, That since have felt the vigour of his rage.

ADRIANA. Is’t good to soothe him in these contraries?

PINCH. It is no shame; the fellow finds his vein, And yielding to him, humours well his frenzy.

ANTIPHOLUS OF EPHESUS. Thou hast suborn’d the goldsmith to arrest me.

ADRIANA. Alas! I sent you money to redeem you By Dromio here, who came in haste for it.

DROMIO OF EPHESUS. Money by me? Heart and goodwill you might, But surely, master, not a rag of money.

ANTIPHOLUS OF EPHESUS. Went’st not thou to her for a purse of ducats?

ADRIANA. He came to me, and I deliver’d it.

LUCIANA. And I am witness with her that she did.

DROMIO OF EPHESUS. God and the rope-maker bear me witness That I was sent for nothing but a rope.

PINCH. Mistress, both man and master is possess’d, I know it by their pale and deadly looks. They must be bound and laid in some dark room.

ANTIPHOLUS OF EPHESUS. Say, wherefore didst thou lock me forth today, And why dost thou deny the bag of gold?

ADRIANA. I did not, gentle husband, lock thee forth.

DROMIO OF EPHESUS. And gentle master, I receiv’d no gold; But I confess, sir, that we were lock’d out.

ADRIANA. Dissembling villain, thou speak’st false in both.

ANTIPHOLUS OF EPHESUS. Dissembling harlot, thou art false in all, And art confederate with a damned pack To make a loathsome abject scorn of me. But with these nails I’ll pluck out these false eyes That would behold in me this shameful sport.

[Enter three or four, and offer to bind him. He strives. ]

ADRIANA. O, bind him, bind him; let him not come near me.

PINCH. More company; the fiend is strong within him.

LUCIANA. Ay me, poor man, how pale and wan he looks!

ANTIPHOLUS OF EPHESUS. What, will you murder me? Thou jailer, thou, I am thy prisoner. Wilt thou suffer them To make a rescue?

OFFICER. Masters, let him go. He is my prisoner, and you shall not have him.

PINCH. Go, bind this man, for he is frantic too.

ADRIANA. What wilt thou do, thou peevish officer? Hast thou delight to see a wretched man Do outrage and displeasure to himself?

OFFICER. He is my prisoner. If I let him go, The debt he owes will be requir’d of me.

ADRIANA. I will discharge thee ere I go from thee; Bear me forthwith unto his creditor, And knowing how the debt grows, I will pay it. Good master doctor, see him safe convey’d Home to my house. O most unhappy day!

ANTIPHOLUS OF EPHESUS. O most unhappy strumpet!

DROMIO OF EPHESUS. Master, I am here enter’d in bond for you.

ANTIPHOLUS OF EPHESUS. Out on thee, villain! wherefore dost thou mad me?

DROMIO OF EPHESUS. Will you be bound for nothing? Be mad, good master; cry, “the devil”.

LUCIANA. God help, poor souls, how idly do they talk!

ADRIANA. Go bear him hence. Sister, go you with me.

[Exeunt Pinch and Assistants, with Antipholus of Ephesus and Dromio of Ephesus.]

Say now, whose suit is he arrested at?

OFFICER. One Angelo, a goldsmith; do you know him?

ADRIANA. I know the man. What is the sum he owes?

OFFICER. Two hundred ducats.

ADRIANA. Say, how grows it due?

OFFICER. Due for a chain your husband had of him.

ADRIANA. He did bespeak a chain for me, but had it not.

COURTESAN. When as your husband, all in rage, today Came to my house and took away my ring, The ring I saw upon his finger now, Straight after did I meet him with a chain.

ADRIANA. It may be so, but I did never see it. Come, jailer, bring me where the goldsmith is, I long to know the truth hereof at large.

Enter Antipholus of Syracuse with his rapier drawn, and Dromio of Syracuse.

LUCIANA. God, for thy mercy, they are loose again!

ADRIANA. And come with naked swords. Let’s call more help To have them bound again.

OFFICER. Away, they’ll kill us.

[Exeunt, as fast as may be, frighted.]

ANTIPHOLUS OF SYRACUSE. I see these witches are afraid of swords.

DROMIO OF SYRACUSE. She that would be your wife now ran from you.

ANTIPHOLUS OF SYRACUSE. Come to the Centaur, fetch our stuff from thence. I long that we were safe and sound aboard.

DROMIO OF SYRACUSE. Faith, stay here this night, they will surely do us no harm; you saw they speak us fair, give us gold. Methinks they are such a gentle nation that, but for the mountain of mad flesh that claims marriage of me, I could find in my heart to stay here still and turn witch.

ANTIPHOLUS OF SYRACUSE. I will not stay tonight for all the town; Therefore away, to get our stuff aboard.

Enter Merchant and Angelo.

ANGELO. I am sorry, sir, that I have hinder’d you, But I protest he had the chain of me, Though most dishonestly he doth deny it.

MERCHANT. How is the man esteem’d here in the city?

ANGELO. Of very reverend reputation, sir, Of credit infinite, highly belov’d, Second to none that lives here in the city. His word might bear my wealth at any time.

MERCHANT. Speak softly. Yonder, as I think, he walks.

Enter Antipholus of Syracuse and Dromio of Syracuse.

ANGELO. ’Tis so; and that self chain about his neck Which he forswore most monstrously to have. Good sir, draw near to me, I’ll speak to him. Signior Antipholus, I wonder much That you would put me to this shame and trouble, And not without some scandal to yourself, With circumstance and oaths so to deny This chain, which now you wear so openly. Beside the charge, the shame, imprisonment, You have done wrong to this my honest friend, Who, but for staying on our controversy, Had hoisted sail and put to sea today. This chain you had of me, can you deny it?

ANTIPHOLUS OF SYRACUSE. I think I had: I never did deny it.

MERCHANT. Yes, that you did, sir, and forswore it too.

ANTIPHOLUS OF SYRACUSE. Who heard me to deny it or forswear it?

MERCHANT. These ears of mine, thou know’st, did hear thee. Fie on thee, wretch. ’Tis pity that thou liv’st To walk where any honest men resort.

ANTIPHOLUS OF SYRACUSE. Thou art a villain to impeach me thus; I’ll prove mine honour and mine honesty Against thee presently, if thou dar’st stand.

MERCHANT. I dare, and do defy thee for a villain.

[They draw.]

Enter Adriana, Luciana, Courtesan and others.

ADRIANA. Hold, hurt him not, for God’s sake, he is mad. Some get within him, take his sword away. Bind Dromio too, and bear them to my house.

DROMIO OF SYRACUSE. Run, master, run, for God’s sake, take a house. This is some priory; in, or we are spoil’d.

[Exeunt Antipholus of Syracuse and Dromio of Syracuse to the priory.]

Enter Lady Abbess.

ABBESS. Be quiet, people. Wherefore throng you hither?

ADRIANA. To fetch my poor distracted husband hence. Let us come in, that we may bind him fast And bear him home for his recovery.

ANGELO. I knew he was not in his perfect wits.

MERCHANT. I am sorry now that I did draw on him.

ABBESS. How long hath this possession held the man?

ADRIANA. This week he hath been heavy, sour, sad, And much different from the man he was. But till this afternoon his passion Ne’er brake into extremity of rage.

ABBESS. Hath he not lost much wealth by wreck of sea? Buried some dear friend? Hath not else his eye Stray’d his affection in unlawful love? A sin prevailing much in youthful men Who give their eyes the liberty of gazing? Which of these sorrows is he subject to?

ADRIANA. To none of these, except it be the last, Namely, some love that drew him oft from home.

ABBESS. You should for that have reprehended him.

ADRIANA. Why, so I did.

ABBESS. Ay, but not rough enough.

ADRIANA. As roughly as my modesty would let me.

ABBESS. Haply in private.

ADRIANA. And in assemblies too.

ABBESS. Ay, but not enough.

ADRIANA. It was the copy of our conference. In bed he slept not for my urging it; At board he fed not for my urging it; Alone, it was the subject of my theme; In company I often glanced it; Still did I tell him it was vile and bad.

ABBESS. And thereof came it that the man was mad. The venom clamours of a jealous woman Poisons more deadly than a mad dog’s tooth. It seems his sleeps were hindered by thy railing, And thereof comes it that his head is light. Thou say’st his meat was sauc’d with thy upbraidings. Unquiet meals make ill digestions; Thereof the raging fire of fever bred, And what’s a fever but a fit of madness? Thou say’st his sports were hinder’d by thy brawls. Sweet recreation barr’d, what doth ensue But moody and dull melancholy, Kinsman to grim and comfortless despair, And at her heels a huge infectious troop Of pale distemperatures and foes to life? In food, in sport, and life-preserving rest To be disturb’d would mad or man or beast. The consequence is, then, thy jealous fits Hath scar’d thy husband from the use of’s wits.

LUCIANA. She never reprehended him but mildly, When he demean’d himself rough, rude, and wildly. Why bear you these rebukes and answer not?

ADRIANA. She did betray me to my own reproof. Good people, enter and lay hold on him.

ABBESS. No, not a creature enters in my house.

ADRIANA. Then let your servants bring my husband forth.

ABBESS. Neither. He took this place for sanctuary, And it shall privilege him from your hands Till I have brought him to his wits again, Or lose my labour in assaying it.

ADRIANA. I will attend my husband, be his nurse, Diet his sickness, for it is my office, And will have no attorney but myself; And therefore let me have him home with me.

ABBESS. Be patient, for I will not let him stir Till I have used the approved means I have, With wholesome syrups, drugs, and holy prayers, To make of him a formal man again. It is a branch and parcel of mine oath, A charitable duty of my order; Therefore depart, and leave him here with me.

ADRIANA. I will not hence and leave my husband here; And ill it doth beseem your holiness To separate the husband and the wife.

ABBESS. Be quiet and depart. Thou shalt not have him.

[Exit Abbess.]

LUCIANA. Complain unto the duke of this indignity.

ADRIANA. Come, go. I will fall prostrate at his feet, And never rise until my tears and prayers Have won his grace to come in person hither And take perforce my husband from the abbess.

MERCHANT. By this, I think, the dial points at five. Anon, I’m sure, the Duke himself in person Comes this way to the melancholy vale, The place of death and sorry execution Behind the ditches of the abbey here.

ANGELO. Upon what cause?

MERCHANT. To see a reverend Syracusian merchant, Who put unluckily into this bay Against the laws and statutes of this town, Beheaded publicly for his offence.

ANGELO. See where they come. We will behold his death.

LUCIANA. Kneel to the Duke before he pass the abbey.

Enter the Duke, attended; Egeon, bareheaded; with the Headsman and other Officers.

DUKE. Yet once again proclaim it publicly, If any friend will pay the sum for him, He shall not die; so much we tender him.

ADRIANA. Justice, most sacred duke, against the abbess!

DUKE. She is a virtuous and a reverend lady, It cannot be that she hath done thee wrong.

ADRIANA. May it please your grace, Antipholus, my husband, Who I made lord of me and all I had At your important letters, this ill day A most outrageous fit of madness took him; That desp’rately he hurried through the street, With him his bondman all as mad as he, Doing displeasure to the citizens By rushing in their houses, bearing thence Rings, jewels, anything his rage did like. Once did I get him bound and sent him home, Whilst to take order for the wrongs I went, That here and there his fury had committed. Anon, I wot not by what strong escape, He broke from those that had the guard of him, And with his mad attendant and himself, Each one with ireful passion, with drawn swords, Met us again, and, madly bent on us, Chased us away; till raising of more aid, We came again to bind them. Then they fled Into this abbey, whither we pursued them. And here the abbess shuts the gates on us, And will not suffer us to fetch him out, Nor send him forth that we may bear him hence. Therefore, most gracious duke, with thy command Let him be brought forth and borne hence for help.

DUKE. Long since thy husband serv’d me in my wars, And I to thee engag’d a prince’s word, When thou didst make him master of thy bed, To do him all the grace and good I could. Go, some of you, knock at the abbey gate, And bid the lady abbess come to me. I will determine this before I stir.

MESSENGER. O mistress, mistress, shift and save yourself. My master and his man are both broke loose, Beaten the maids a-row, and bound the doctor, Whose beard they have singed off with brands of fire, And ever as it blazed they threw on him Great pails of puddled mire to quench the hair. My master preaches patience to him, and the while His man with scissors nicks him like a fool; And sure (unless you send some present help) Between them they will kill the conjurer.

ADRIANA. Peace, fool, thy master and his man are here, And that is false thou dost report to us.

MESSENGER. Mistress, upon my life, I tell you true. I have not breath’d almost since I did see it. He cries for you, and vows, if he can take you, To scorch your face and to disfigure you.

[Cry within.]

Hark, hark, I hear him, mistress. Fly, be gone!

DUKE. Come, stand by me, fear nothing. Guard with halberds.

ADRIANA. Ay me, it is my husband. Witness you That he is borne about invisible. Even now we hous’d him in the abbey here, And now he’s there, past thought of human reason.

Enter Antipholus and Dromio of Ephesus.

ANTIPHOLUS OF EPHESUS. Justice, most gracious duke; O, grant me justice! Even for the service that long since I did thee When I bestrid thee in the wars, and took Deep scars to save thy life; even for the blood That then I lost for thee, now grant me justice.

EGEON. Unless the fear of death doth make me dote, I see my son Antipholus and Dromio.

ANTIPHOLUS OF EPHESUS. Justice, sweet prince, against that woman there. She whom thou gav’st to me to be my wife; That hath abused and dishonour’d me Even in the strength and height of injury. Beyond imagination is the wrong That she this day hath shameless thrown on me.

DUKE. Discover how, and thou shalt find me just.

ANTIPHOLUS OF EPHESUS. This day, great duke, she shut the doors upon me While she with harlots feasted in my house.

DUKE. A grievous fault. Say, woman, didst thou so?

ADRIANA. No, my good lord. Myself, he, and my sister Today did dine together. So befall my soul As this is false he burdens me withal.

LUCIANA. Ne’er may I look on day nor sleep on night But she tells to your highness simple truth.

ANGELO. O perjur’d woman! They are both forsworn. In this the madman justly chargeth them.

ANTIPHOLUS OF EPHESUS. My liege, I am advised what I say, Neither disturb’d with the effect of wine, Nor heady-rash, provok’d with raging ire, Albeit my wrongs might make one wiser mad. This woman lock’d me out this day from dinner. That goldsmith there, were he not pack’d with her, Could witness it, for he was with me then, Who parted with me to go fetch a chain, Promising to bring it to the Porpentine, Where Balthasar and I did dine together. Our dinner done, and he not coming thither, I went to seek him. In the street I met him, And in his company that gentleman. There did this perjur’d goldsmith swear me down That I this day of him receiv’d the chain, Which, God he knows, I saw not. For the which He did arrest me with an officer. I did obey, and sent my peasant home For certain ducats. He with none return’d. Then fairly I bespoke the officer To go in person with me to my house. By th’ way we met My wife, her sister, and a rabble more Of vile confederates. Along with them They brought one Pinch, a hungry lean-faced villain, A mere anatomy, a mountebank, A threadbare juggler, and a fortune-teller; A needy, hollow-ey’d, sharp-looking wretch; A living dead man. This pernicious slave, Forsooth, took on him as a conjurer, And gazing in mine eyes, feeling my pulse, And with no face (as ’twere) outfacing me, Cries out, I was possess’d. Then altogether They fell upon me, bound me, bore me thence, And in a dark and dankish vault at home There left me and my man, both bound together, Till gnawing with my teeth my bonds in sunder, I gain’d my freedom and immediately Ran hither to your Grace, whom I beseech To give me ample satisfaction For these deep shames and great indignities.

ANGELO. My lord, in truth, thus far I witness with him, That he din’d not at home, but was lock’d out.

DUKE. But had he such a chain of thee, or no?

ANGELO. He had, my lord, and when he ran in here These people saw the chain about his neck.

MERCHANT. Besides, I will be sworn these ears of mine Heard you confess you had the chain of him, After you first forswore it on the mart, And thereupon I drew my sword on you; And then you fled into this abbey here, From whence I think you are come by miracle.

ANTIPHOLUS OF EPHESUS. I never came within these abbey walls, Nor ever didst thou draw thy sword on me. I never saw the chain, so help me heaven; And this is false you burden me withal.

DUKE. Why, what an intricate impeach is this! I think you all have drunk of Circe’s cup. If here you hous’d him, here he would have been. If he were mad, he would not plead so coldly. You say he din’d at home, the goldsmith here Denies that saying. Sirrah, what say you?

DROMIO OF EPHESUS. Sir, he dined with her there, at the Porpentine.

COURTESAN. He did, and from my finger snatch’d that ring.

ANTIPHOLUS OF EPHESUS. ’Tis true, my liege, this ring I had of her.

DUKE. Saw’st thou him enter at the abbey here?

COURTESAN. As sure, my liege, as I do see your grace.

DUKE. Why, this is strange. Go call the abbess hither. I think you are all mated, or stark mad.

[Exit one to the Abbess.]

EGEON. Most mighty Duke, vouchsafe me speak a word; Haply I see a friend will save my life And pay the sum that may deliver me.

DUKE. Speak freely, Syracusian, what thou wilt.

EGEON. Is not your name, sir, call’d Antipholus? And is not that your bondman Dromio?

DROMIO OF EPHESUS. Within this hour I was his bondman, sir, But he, I thank him, gnaw’d in two my cords. Now am I Dromio, and his man, unbound.

EGEON. I am sure you both of you remember me.

DROMIO OF EPHESUS. Ourselves we do remember, sir, by you. For lately we were bound as you are now. You are not Pinch’s patient, are you, sir?

EGEON. Why look you strange on me? you know me well.

ANTIPHOLUS OF EPHESUS. I never saw you in my life till now.

EGEON. O! grief hath chang’d me since you saw me last, And careful hours with time’s deformed hand, Have written strange defeatures in my face. But tell me yet, dost thou not know my voice?

ANTIPHOLUS OF EPHESUS. Neither.

EGEON. Dromio, nor thou?

DROMIO OF EPHESUS. No, trust me, sir, nor I.

EGEON. I am sure thou dost.

DROMIO OF EPHESUS. Ay, sir, but I am sure I do not, and whatsoever a man denies, you are now bound to believe him.

EGEON. Not know my voice! O time’s extremity, Hast thou so crack’d and splitted my poor tongue In seven short years that here my only son Knows not my feeble key of untun’d cares? Though now this grained face of mine be hid In sap-consuming winter’s drizzled snow, And all the conduits of my blood froze up, Yet hath my night of life some memory, My wasting lamps some fading glimmer left, My dull deaf ears a little use to hear. All these old witnesses, I cannot err, Tell me thou art my son Antipholus.

ANTIPHOLUS OF EPHESUS. I never saw my father in my life.

EGEON. But seven years since, in Syracusa, boy, Thou know’st we parted; but perhaps, my son, Thou sham’st to acknowledge me in misery.

ANTIPHOLUS OF EPHESUS. The duke and all that know me in the city, Can witness with me that it is not so. I ne’er saw Syracusa in my life.

DUKE. I tell thee, Syracusian, twenty years Have I been patron to Antipholus, During which time he ne’er saw Syracusa. I see thy age and dangers make thee dote.

Enter the Abbess with Antipholus of Syracuse and Dromio of Syracuse.

ABBESS. Most mighty duke, behold a man much wrong’d.

[All gather to see them.]

ADRIANA. I see two husbands, or mine eyes deceive me.

DUKE. One of these men is genius to the other; And so of these, which is the natural man, And which the spirit? Who deciphers them?

DROMIO OF SYRACUSE. I, sir, am Dromio, command him away.

DROMIO OF EPHESUS. I, sir, am Dromio, pray let me stay.

ANTIPHOLUS OF SYRACUSE. Egeon, art thou not? or else his ghost?

DROMIO OF SYRACUSE. O, my old master, who hath bound him here?

ABBESS. Whoever bound him, I will loose his bonds, And gain a husband by his liberty. Speak, old Egeon, if thou be’st the man That hadst a wife once called Emilia, That bore thee at a burden two fair sons. O, if thou be’st the same Egeon, speak, And speak unto the same Emilia!

DUKE. Why, here begins his morning story right: These two Antipholus’, these two so like, And these two Dromios, one in semblance, Besides her urging of her wreck at sea. These are the parents to these children, Which accidentally are met together.

EGEON. If I dream not, thou art Emilia. If thou art she, tell me where is that son That floated with thee on the fatal raft?

ABBESS. By men of Epidamnum, he and I And the twin Dromio, all were taken up; But, by and by, rude fishermen of Corinth By force took Dromio and my son from them, And me they left with those of Epidamnum. What then became of them I cannot tell; I to this fortune that you see me in.

DUKE. Antipholus, thou cam’st from Corinth first?

ANTIPHOLUS OF SYRACUSE. No, sir, not I, I came from Syracuse.

DUKE. Stay, stand apart, I know not which is which.

ANTIPHOLUS OF EPHESUS. I came from Corinth, my most gracious lord.

DROMIO OF EPHESUS. And I with him.

ANTIPHOLUS OF EPHESUS. Brought to this town by that most famous warrior, Duke Menaphon, your most renowned uncle.

ADRIANA. Which of you two did dine with me today?

ANTIPHOLUS OF SYRACUSE. I, gentle mistress.

ADRIANA. And are not you my husband?

ANTIPHOLUS OF EPHESUS. No, I say nay to that.

ANTIPHOLUS OF SYRACUSE. And so do I, yet did she call me so; And this fair gentlewoman, her sister here, Did call me brother. What I told you then, I hope I shall have leisure to make good, If this be not a dream I see and hear.

ANGELO. That is the chain, sir, which you had of me.

ANTIPHOLUS OF SYRACUSE. I think it be, sir. I deny it not.

ANTIPHOLUS OF EPHESUS. And you, sir, for this chain arrested me.

ANGELO. I think I did, sir. I deny it not.

ADRIANA. I sent you money, sir, to be your bail By Dromio, but I think he brought it not.

DROMIO OF EPHESUS. No, none by me.

ANTIPHOLUS OF SYRACUSE. This purse of ducats I receiv’d from you, And Dromio my man did bring them me. I see we still did meet each other’s man, And I was ta’en for him, and he for me, And thereupon these errors are arose.

ANTIPHOLUS OF EPHESUS. These ducats pawn I for my father here.

DUKE. It shall not need, thy father hath his life.

COURTESAN. Sir, I must have that diamond from you.

ANTIPHOLUS OF EPHESUS. There, take it, and much thanks for my good cheer.

ABBESS. Renowned duke, vouchsafe to take the pains To go with us into the abbey here, And hear at large discoursed all our fortunes; And all that are assembled in this place, That by this sympathised one day’s error Have suffer’d wrong, go, keep us company, And we shall make full satisfaction. Thirty-three years have I but gone in travail Of you, my sons, and till this present hour My heavy burden ne’er delivered. The duke, my husband, and my children both, And you, the calendars of their nativity, Go to a gossips’ feast, and go with me. After so long grief, such nativity.

DUKE. With all my heart, I’ll gossip at this feast.

[Exeunt except the two Dromios and two Brothers.]

DROMIO OF SYRACUSE. Master, shall I fetch your stuff from shipboard?

ANTIPHOLUS OF EPHESUS. Dromio, what stuff of mine hast thou embark’d?

DROMIO OF SYRACUSE. Your goods that lay at host, sir, in the Centaur.

ANTIPHOLUS OF SYRACUSE. He speaks to me; I am your master, Dromio. Come, go with us. We’ll look to that anon. Embrace thy brother there, rejoice with him.

[Exeunt Antipholus of Syracuse and Antipholus of Ephesus.]

DROMIO OF SYRACUSE. There is a fat friend at your master’s house, That kitchen’d me for you today at dinner. She now shall be my sister, not my wife.

DROMIO OF EPHESUS. Methinks you are my glass, and not my brother. I see by you I am a sweet-faced youth. Will you walk in to see their gossiping?

DROMIO OF SYRACUSE. Not I, sir, you are my elder.

DROMIO OF EPHESUS. That’s a question, how shall we try it?

DROMIO OF SYRACUSE. We’ll draw cuts for the senior. Till then, lead thou first.

DROMIO OF EPHESUS. Nay, then, thus: We came into the world like brother and brother, And now let’s go hand in hand, not one before another.

THE TRAGEDY OF CORIOLANUS

ACT I Scene I. Rome. A street Scene II. Corioles. The Senate House Scene III. Rome. An apartment in Martius’ house Scene IV. Before Corioles Scene V. Within Corioles. A street Scene VI. Near the camp of Cominius Scene VII. The gates of Corioles Scene VIII. A field of battle between the Roman and the Volscian camps Scene IX. The Roman camp Scene X. The camp of the Volsces

ACT II Scene I. Rome. A public place Scene II. Rome. The Capitol Scene III. Rome. The Forum

ACT III Scene I. Rome. A street Scene II. Rome. A room in Coriolanus’s house Scene III. Rome. The Forum

ACT IV Scene I. Rome. Before a gate of the city Scene II. Rome. A street near the gate Scene III. A highway between Rome and Antium Scene IV. Antium. Before Aufidius’s house Scene V. Antium. A hall in Aufidius’s house Scene VI. Rome. A public place Scene VII. A camp at a short distance from Rome

ACT V Scene I. Rome. A public place Scene II. An Advanced post of the Volscian camp before Rome. Scene III. The tent of Coriolanus Scene IV. Rome. A public place Scene V. Rome. A street near the gate Scene VI. Antium. A public place

CAIUS MARTIUS CORIOLANUS, a noble Roman VOLUMNIA, his mother VIRGILIA, his wife YOUNG MARTIUS, their son VALERIA, friend to Volumnia and Virgilia A GENTLEWOMAN, Volumnia’s attendant

MENENIUS AGRIPPA, Friend to Coriolanus COMINIUS, General against the Volscians TITUS LARTIUS, General against the Volscians SICINIUS VELUTUS, Tribune of the People JUNIUS BRUTUS, Tribune of the People A ROMAN HERALD

TULLUS AUFIDIUS, General of the Volscians LIEUTENANT, to Aufidius Conspirators with Aufidius A CITIZEN of Antium TWO VOLSCIAN GUARDS

Roman and Volscian Senators, Patricians, Aediles, Lictors, Soldiers, Citizens, Messengers, Servants to Aufidius, and other Attendants

SCENE: Partly in Rome, and partly in the territories of the Volscians and Antiates.

SCENE I. Rome. A street

Enter a company of mutinous Citizens, with staves, clubs, and other weapons.

FIRST CITIZEN. Before we proceed any further, hear me speak.

ALL. Speak, speak!

FIRST CITIZEN. You are all resolved rather to die than to famish?

ALL. Resolved, resolved!

FIRST CITIZEN. First, you know Caius Martius is chief enemy to the people.

ALL. We know’t, we know’t!

FIRST CITIZEN. Let us kill him, and we’ll have corn at our own price. Is’t a verdict?

ALL. No more talking on’t; let it be done. Away, away!

SECOND CITIZEN. One word, good citizens.

FIRST CITIZEN. We are accounted poor citizens, the patricians good. What authority surfeits on would relieve us. If they would yield us but the superfluity while it were wholesome, we might guess they relieved us humanely. But they think we are too dear. The leanness that afflicts us, the object of our misery, is as an inventory to particularize their abundance; our sufferance is a gain to them. Let us revenge this with our pikes ere we become rakes; for the gods know I speak this in hunger for bread, not in thirst for revenge.

SECOND CITIZEN. Would you proceed especially against Caius Martius?

FIRST CITIZEN. Against him first. He’s a very dog to the commonalty.

SECOND CITIZEN. Consider you what services he has done for his country?

FIRST CITIZEN. Very well, and could be content to give him good report for’t, but that he pays himself with being proud.

SECOND CITIZEN. Nay, but speak not maliciously.

FIRST CITIZEN. I say unto you, what he hath done famously he did it to that end. Though soft-conscienced men can be content to say it was for his country, he did it to please his mother and to be partly proud, which he is, even to the altitude of his virtue.

SECOND CITIZEN. What he cannot help in his nature you account a vice in him. You must in no way say he is covetous.

FIRST CITIZEN. If I must not, I need not be barren of accusations. He hath faults, with surplus, to tire in repetition. [Shouts within.] What shouts are these? The other side o’ th’ city is risen. Why stay we prating here? To th’ Capitol!

ALL. Come, come!

Enter Menenius Agrippa.

FIRST CITIZEN. Soft, who comes here?

SECOND CITIZEN. Worthy Menenius Agrippa, one that hath always loved the people.

FIRST CITIZEN. He’s one honest enough. Would all the rest were so!

MENENIUS. What work’s, my countrymen, in hand? Where go you With bats and clubs? The matter? Speak, I pray you.

FIRST CITIZEN. Our business is not unknown to th’ Senate. They have had inkling this fortnight what we intend to do, which now we’ll show ’em in deeds. They say poor suitors have strong breaths; they shall know we have strong arms too.

MENENIUS. Why, masters, my good friends, mine honest neighbours, Will you undo yourselves?

FIRST CITIZEN. We cannot, sir; we are undone already.

MENENIUS. I tell you, friends, most charitable care Have the patricians of you. For your wants, Your suffering in this dearth, you may as well Strike at the heaven with your staves as lift them Against the Roman state, whose course will on The way it takes, cracking ten thousand curbs Of more strong link asunder than can ever Appear in your impediment. For the dearth, The gods, not the patricians, make it, and Your knees to them, not arms, must help. Alack, You are transported by calamity Thither where more attends you, and you slander The helms o’ th’ state, who care for you like fathers, When you curse them as enemies.

FIRST CITIZEN. Care for us? True, indeed! They ne’er cared for us yet. Suffer us to famish, and their storehouses crammed with grain; make edicts for usury to support usurers; repeal daily any wholesome act established against the rich, and provide more piercing statutes daily to chain up and restrain the poor. If the wars eat us not up, they will; and there’s all the love they bear us.

MENENIUS. Either you must confess yourselves wondrous malicious Or be accused of folly. I shall tell you A pretty tale. It may be you have heard it, But since it serves my purpose, I will venture To stale’t a little more.

FIRST CITIZEN. Well, I’ll hear it, sir; yet you must not think to fob off our disgrace with a tale. But, an’t please you, deliver.

MENENIUS. There was a time when all the body’s members Rebelled against the belly, thus accused it: That only like a gulf it did remain I’ th’ midst o’ th’ body, idle and unactive, Still cupboarding the viand, never bearing Like labour with the rest, where th’ other instruments Did see and hear, devise, instruct, walk, feel, And, mutually participate, did minister Unto the appetite and affection common Of the whole body. The belly answered—

FIRST CITIZEN. Well, sir, what answer made the belly?

MENENIUS. Sir, I shall tell you. With a kind of smile, Which ne’er came from the lungs, but even thus— For, look you, I may make the belly smile As well as speak—it tauntingly replied To th’ discontented members, the mutinous parts That envied his receipt; even so most fitly As you malign our senators for that They are not such as you.

FIRST CITIZEN. Your belly’s answer—what? The kingly crowned head, the vigilant eye, The counsellor heart, the arm our soldier, Our steed the leg, the tongue our trumpeter, With other muniments and petty helps Is this our fabric, if that they—

MENENIUS. What then? ’Fore me, this fellow speaks. What then? What then?

FIRST CITIZEN. Should by the cormorant belly be restrained, Who is the sink o’ th’ body—

MENENIUS. Well, what then?

FIRST CITIZEN. The former agents, if they did complain, What could the belly answer?

MENENIUS. I will tell you, If you’ll bestow a small—of what you have little— Patience awhile, you’st hear the belly’s answer.

FIRST CITIZEN. You are long about it.

MENENIUS. Note me this, good friend; Your most grave belly was deliberate, Not rash like his accusers, and thus answered: “True is it, my incorporate friends,” quoth he, “That I receive the general food at first Which you do live upon; and fit it is, Because I am the storehouse and the shop Of the whole body. But, if you do remember, I send it through the rivers of your blood Even to the court, the heart, to th’ seat o’ th’ brain; And, through the cranks and offices of man, The strongest nerves and small inferior veins From me receive that natural competency Whereby they live. And though that all at once, You, my good friends”—this says the belly, mark me—

FIRST CITIZEN. Ay, sir, well, well.

MENENIUS. “Though all at once cannot See what I do deliver out to each, Yet I can make my audit up, that all From me do back receive the flour of all, And leave me but the bran.” What say you to’t?

FIRST CITIZEN. It was an answer. How apply you this?

MENENIUS. The senators of Rome are this good belly, And you the mutinous members. For examine Their counsels and their cares, digest things rightly Touching the weal o’ th’ common, you shall find No public benefit which you receive But it proceeds or comes from them to you And no way from yourselves. What do you think, You, the great toe of this assembly?

FIRST CITIZEN. I the great toe? Why the great toe?

MENENIUS. For that, being one o’ th’ lowest, basest, poorest, Of this most wise rebellion, thou goest foremost. Thou rascal, that art worst in blood to run, Lead’st first to win some vantage. But make you ready your stiff bats and clubs. Rome and her rats are at the point of battle; The one side must have bale.

Enter Caius Martius.

Hail, noble Martius.

MARTIUS. Thanks.—What’s the matter, you dissentious rogues, That, rubbing the poor itch of your opinion, Make yourselves scabs?

FIRST CITIZEN. We have ever your good word.

MARTIUS. He that will give good words to thee will flatter Beneath abhorring. What would you have, you curs, That like nor peace nor war? The one affrights you; The other makes you proud. He that trusts to you, Where he should find you lions, finds you hares; Where foxes, geese. You are no surer, no, Than is the coal of fire upon the ice Or hailstone in the sun. Your virtue is To make him worthy whose offence subdues him, And curse that justice did it. Who deserves greatness Deserves your hate; and your affections are A sick man’s appetite, who desires most that Which would increase his evil. He that depends Upon your favours swims with fins of lead, And hews down oaks with rushes. Hang ye! Trust ye? With every minute you do change a mind And call him noble that was now your hate, Him vile that was your garland. What’s the matter, That in these several places of the city You cry against the noble senate, who, Under the gods, keep you in awe, which else Would feed on one another?—What’s their seeking?

MENENIUS. For corn at their own rates, whereof they say The city is well stored.

MARTIUS. Hang ’em! They say? They’ll sit by th’ fire and presume to know What’s done i’ th’ Capitol, who’s like to rise, Who thrives and who declines; side factions and give out Conjectural marriages, making parties strong And feebling such as stand not in their liking Below their cobbled shoes. They say there’s grain enough? Would the nobility lay aside their ruth And let me use my sword, I’d make a quarry With thousands of these quartered slaves as high As I could pick my lance.

MENENIUS. Nay, these are almost thoroughly persuaded; For though abundantly they lack discretion, Yet are they passing cowardly. But I beseech you, What says the other troop?

MARTIUS. They are dissolved. Hang ’em! They said they were an-hungry, sighed forth proverbs That hunger broke stone walls, that dogs must eat, That meat was made for mouths, that the gods sent not Corn for the rich men only. With these shreds They vented their complainings, which being answered And a petition granted them—a strange one, To break the heart of generosity And make bold power look pale—they threw their caps As they would hang them on the horns o’ th’ moon, Shouting their emulation.

MENENIUS. What is granted them?

MARTIUS. Five tribunes to defend their vulgar wisdoms, Of their own choice. One’s Junius Brutus, Sicinius Velutus, and I know not. ’Sdeath! The rabble should have first unroofed the city Ere so prevailed with me. It will in time Win upon power and throw forth greater themes For insurrection’s arguing.

MENENIUS. This is strange.

MARTIUS. Go get you home, you fragments.

Enter a Messenger hastily.

MESSENGER. Where’s Caius Martius?

MARTIUS. Here. What’s the matter?

MESSENGER. The news is, sir, the Volsces are in arms.

MARTIUS. I am glad on’t. Then we shall ha’ means to vent Our musty superfluity.

Enter Sicinius Velutus, Junius Brutus, two Tribunes; Cominius, Titus Lartius with other Senators.

See, our best elders.

FIRST SENATOR. Martius, ’tis true that you have lately told us: The Volsces are in arms.

MARTIUS. They have a leader, Tullus Aufidius, that will put you to’t. I sin in envying his nobility, And, were I anything but what I am, I would wish me only he.

COMINIUS. You have fought together.

MARTIUS. Were half to half the world by th’ ears and he Upon my party, I’d revolt, to make Only my wars with him. He is a lion That I am proud to hunt.

FIRST SENATOR. Then, worthy Martius, Attend upon Cominius to these wars.

COMINIUS. It is your former promise.

MARTIUS. Sir, it is, And I am constant.—Titus Lartius, thou Shalt see me once more strike at Tullus’ face. What, art thou stiff? Stand’st out?

TITUS LARTIUS. No, Caius Martius, I’ll lean upon one crutch and fight with th’ other Ere stay behind this business.

MENENIUS. O, true bred!

FIRST SENATOR. Your company to th’ Capitol, where I know Our greatest friends attend us.

TITUS LARTIUS. Lead you on. Follow Cominius. We must follow you; Right worthy your priority.

COMINIUS. Noble Martius.

FIRST SENATOR. [To the Citizens.] Hence to your homes, begone.

MARTIUS. Nay, let them follow. The Volsces have much corn; take these rats thither To gnaw their garners. Worshipful mutineers, Your valour puts well forth. Pray follow.

[Exeunt. Sicinius and Brutus remain.]

SICINIUS. Was ever man so proud as is this Martius?

BRUTUS. He has no equal.

SICINIUS. When we were chosen tribunes for the people—

BRUTUS. Marked you his lip and eyes?

SICINIUS. Nay, but his taunts.

BRUTUS. Being moved, he will not spare to gird the gods.

SICINIUS. Bemock the modest moon.

BRUTUS. The present wars devour him! He is grown Too proud to be so valiant.

SICINIUS. Such a nature, Tickled with good success, disdains the shadow Which he treads on at noon. But I do wonder His insolence can brook to be commanded Under Cominius.

BRUTUS. Fame, at the which he aims, In whom already he’s well graced, cannot Better be held nor more attained than by A place below the first; for what miscarries Shall be the General’s fault, though he perform To th’ utmost of a man, and giddy censure Will then cry out of Martius “O, if he Had borne the business!”

SICINIUS. Besides, if things go well, Opinion that so sticks on Martius shall Of his demerits rob Cominius.

BRUTUS. Come. Half all Cominius’ honours are to Martius, Though Martius earned them not, and all his faults To Martius shall be honours, though indeed In aught he merit not.

SICINIUS. Let’s hence and hear How the dispatch is made, and in what fashion, More than in singularity, he goes Upon this present action.

BRUTUS. Let’s along.

SCENE II. Corioles. The Senate House

Enter Tullus Aufidius with Senators of Corioles.

FIRST SENATOR. So, your opinion is, Aufidius, That they of Rome are entered in our counsels And know how we proceed.

AUFIDIUS. Is it not yours? What ever have been thought on in this state That could be brought to bodily act ere Rome Had circumvention? ’Tis not four days gone Since I heard thence. These are the words—I think I have the letter here. Yes, here it is. [Reads.] They have pressed a power, but it is not known Whether for east or west. The dearth is great. The people mutinous; and, it is rumoured, Cominius, Martius your old enemy, Who is of Rome worse hated than of you,— And Titus Lartius, a most valiant Roman, These three lead on this preparation Whither ’tis bent. Most likely ’tis for you. Consider of it.

FIRST SENATOR. Our army’s in the field. We never yet made doubt but Rome was ready To answer us.

AUFIDIUS. Nor did you think it folly To keep your great pretences veiled till when They needs must show themselves, which, in the hatching, It seemed, appeared to Rome. By the discovery We shall be shortened in our aim, which was To take in many towns ere almost Rome Should know we were afoot.

SECOND SENATOR. Noble Aufidius, Take your commission; hie you to your bands. Let us alone to guard Corioles. If they set down before’s, for the remove Bring up your army. But I think you’ll find They’ve not prepared for us.

AUFIDIUS. O, doubt not that; I speak from certainties. Nay, more, Some parcels of their power are forth already, And only hitherward. I leave your Honours. If we and Caius Martius chance to meet, ’Tis sworn between us we shall ever strike Till one can do no more.

ALL. The gods assist you!

AUFIDIUS. And keep your Honours safe!

FIRST SENATOR. Farewell.

SECOND SENATOR. Farewell.

ALL. Farewell.

SCENE III. Rome. An apartment in Martius’ house

Enter Volumnia and Virgilia, mother and wife to Martius. They set them down on two low stools and sew.

VOLUMNIA. I pray you, daughter, sing, or express yourself in a more comfortable sort. If my son were my husband, I should freelier rejoice in that absence wherein he won honour than in the embracements of his bed where he would show most love. When yet he was but tender-bodied and the only son of my womb, when youth with comeliness plucked all gaze his way, when for a day of kings’ entreaties a mother should not sell him an hour from her beholding, I, considering how honour would become such a person—that it was no better than picture-like to hang by th’ wall, if renown made it not stir—was pleased to let him seek danger where he was like to find fame. To a cruel war I sent him, from whence he returned, his brows bound with oak. I tell thee, daughter, I sprang not more in joy at first hearing he was a man-child than now in first seeing he had proved himself a man.

VIRGILIA. But had he died in the business, madam, how then?

VOLUMNIA. Then his good report should have been my son; I therein would have found issue. Hear me profess sincerely: had I a dozen sons, each in my love alike and none less dear than thine and my good Martius, I had rather had eleven die nobly for their country than one voluptuously surfeit out of action.

Enter a Gentlewoman.

GENTLEWOMAN. Madam, the Lady Valeria is come to visit you.

VIRGILIA. Beseech you, give me leave to retire myself.

VOLUMNIA. Indeed you shall not. Methinks I hear hither your husband’s drum, See him pluck Aufidius down by th’ hair; As children from a bear, the Volsces shunning him. Methinks I see him stamp thus and call thus: “Come on, you cowards! You were got in fear, Though you were born in Rome.” His bloody brow With his mailed hand then wiping, forth he goes Like to a harvestman that’s tasked to mow Or all or lose his hire.

VIRGILIA. His bloody brow? O Jupiter, no blood!

VOLUMNIA. Away, you fool! It more becomes a man Than gilt his trophy. The breasts of Hecuba, When she did suckle Hector, looked not lovelier Than Hector’s forehead when it spit forth blood At Grecian sword, contemning.—Tell Valeria We are fit to bid her welcome.

[Exit Gentlewoman.]

VIRGILIA. Heavens bless my lord from fell Aufidius!

VOLUMNIA. He’ll beat Aufidius’ head below his knee And tread upon his neck.

Enter Valeria with an Usher and a Gentlewoman.

VALERIA. My ladies both, good day to you.

VOLUMNIA. Sweet madam.

VIRGILIA. I am glad to see your Ladyship.

VALERIA. How do you both? You are manifest housekeepers. What are you sewing here? A fine spot, in good faith. How does your little son?

VIRGILIA. I thank your Ladyship; well, good madam.

VOLUMNIA. He had rather see the swords and hear a drum than look upon his schoolmaster.

VALERIA. O’ my word, the father’s son! I’ll swear ’tis a very pretty boy. O’ my troth, I looked upon him o’ Wednesday half an hour together. H’as such a confirmed countenance. I saw him run after a gilded butterfly, and when he caught it, he let it go again, and after it again, and over and over he comes, and up again, catched it again. Or whether his fall enraged him or how ’twas, he did so set his teeth and tear it. O, I warrant how he mammocked it!

VOLUMNIA. One on’s father’s moods.

VALERIA. Indeed, la, ’tis a noble child.

VIRGILIA. A crack, madam.

VALERIA. Come, lay aside your stitchery. I must have you play the idle huswife with me this afternoon.

VIRGILIA. No, good madam, I will not out of doors.

VALERIA. Not out of doors?

VOLUMNIA. She shall, she shall.

VIRGILIA. Indeed, no, by your patience. I’ll not over the threshold till my lord return from the wars.

VALERIA. Fie, you confine yourself most unreasonably. Come, you must go visit the good lady that lies in.

VIRGILIA. I will wish her speedy strength and visit her with my prayers, but I cannot go thither.

VOLUMNIA. Why, I pray you?

VIRGILIA. ’Tis not to save labour, nor that I want love.

VALERIA. You would be another Penelope. Yet they say all the yarn she spun in Ulysses’ absence did but fill Ithaca full of moths. Come, I would your cambric were sensible as your finger, that you might leave pricking it for pity. Come, you shall go with us.

VIRGILIA. No, good madam, pardon me; indeed, I will not forth.

VALERIA. In truth, la, go with me, and I’ll tell you excellent news of your husband.

VIRGILIA. O, good madam, there can be none yet.

VALERIA. Verily, I do not jest with you. There came news from him last night.

VIRGILIA. Indeed, madam!

VALERIA. In earnest, it’s true. I heard a senator speak it. Thus it is: the Volsces have an army forth, against whom Cominius the General is gone with one part of our Roman power. Your lord and Titus Lartius are set down before their city Corioles. They nothing doubt prevailing, and to make it brief wars. This is true, on mine honour, and so, I pray, go with us.

VIRGILIA. Give me excuse, good madam. I will obey you in everything hereafter.

VOLUMNIA. Let her alone, lady. As she is now, she will but disease our better mirth.

VALERIA. In troth, I think she would.—Fare you well, then.—Come, good sweet lady.—Prithee, Virgilia, turn thy solemness out o’ door, and go along with us.

VIRGILIA. No, at a word, madam. Indeed I must not. I wish you much mirth.

VALERIA. Well then, farewell.

SCENE IV. Before Corioles

Enter Martius, Titus Lartius, with drum and colours, with Captains and Soldiers, as before the city of Corioles. To them a Messenger.

MARTIUS. Yonder comes news. A wager they have met.

LARTIUS. My horse to yours, no.

MARTIUS. ’Tis done.

LARTIUS. Agreed.

MARTIUS. [To Messenger.] Say, has our general met the enemy?

MESSENGER. They lie in view but have not spoke as yet.

LARTIUS. So the good horse is mine.

MARTIUS. I’ll buy him of you.

LARTIUS. No, I’ll nor sell nor give him. Lend you him I will For half a hundred years.—Summon the town.

MARTIUS. How far off lie these armies?

MESSENGER. Within this mile and half.

MARTIUS. Then shall we hear their ’larum, and they ours. Now, Mars, I prithee, make us quick in work, That we with smoking swords may march from hence To help our fielded friends!—Come, blow thy blast.

[They sound a parley.]

Enter two Senators with others on the walls of Corioles.

Tullus Aufidius, is he within your walls?

FIRST SENATOR. No, nor a man that fears you less than he: That’s lesser than a little. [Drum afar off.] Hark, our drums Are bringing forth our youth. We’ll break our walls Rather than they shall pound us up. Our gates, Which yet seem shut, we have but pinned with rushes. They’ll open of themselves. [Alarum far off.] Hark you, far off! There is Aufidius. List what work he makes Amongst your cloven army.

MARTIUS. O, they are at it!

LARTIUS. Their noise be our instruction.—Ladders, ho!

Enter the Army of the Volsces as through the city gates.

MARTIUS. They fear us not but issue forth their city.— Now put your shields before your hearts, and fight With hearts more proof than shields.—Advance, brave Titus. They do disdain us much beyond our thoughts, Which makes me sweat with wrath.—Come on, my fellows! He that retires, I’ll take him for a Volsce, And he shall feel mine edge.

[Alarums. The Romans are beat back to their trenches. They exit, with the Volsces following.]

Enter Martius cursing, with Roman soldiers.

MARTIUS. All the contagion of the south light on you, You shames of Rome! You herd of—Boils and plagues Plaster you o’er, that you may be abhorred Farther than seen, and one infect another Against the wind a mile! You souls of geese, That bear the shapes of men, how have you run From slaves that apes would beat! Pluto and hell! All hurt behind. Backs red, and faces pale With flight and agued fear! Mend, and charge home, Or, by the fires of heaven, I’ll leave the foe And make my wars on you. Look to’t. Come on! If you’ll stand fast we’ll beat them to their wives, As they us to our trenches. Follow’s!

[Another alarum. The Volsces re-enter and are driven back to the gates of Corioles, which open to admit them.]

So, now the gates are ope. Now prove good seconds! ’Tis for the followers fortune widens them, Not for the fliers. Mark me, and do the like.

[Martius follows the fleeing Volsces through the gates, and is shut in.]

FIRST SOLDIER. Foolhardiness, not I.

SECOND SOLDIER. Nor I.

FIRST SOLDIER. See, they have shut him in.

[Alarum continues.]

ALL. To th’ pot, I warrant him.

Enter Titus Lartius.

LARTIUS. What is become of Martius?

ALL. Slain, sir, doubtless.

FIRST SOLDIER. Following the fliers at the very heels, With them he enters, who upon the sudden Clapped to their gates. He is himself alone, To answer all the city.

LARTIUS. O noble fellow, Who sensibly outdares his senseless sword, And when it bows, stand’st up! Thou art left, Martius. A carbuncle entire, as big as thou art, Were not so rich a jewel. Thou wast a soldier Even to Cato’s wish, not fierce and terrible Only in strokes, but with thy grim looks and The thunderlike percussion of thy sounds Thou mad’st thine enemies shake, as if the world Were feverous and did tremble.

Enter Martius, bleeding, assaulted by the enemy.

FIRST SOLDIER. Look, sir.

LARTIUS. O, ’tis Martius! Let’s fetch him off or make remain alike.

[They fight, and all enter the city.]

SCENE V. Within Corioles. A street

Enter certain Romans, with spoils.

FIRST ROMAN. This will I carry to Rome.

SECOND ROMAN. And I this.

THIRD ROMAN. A murrain on’t! I took this for silver.

Enter Martius and Titus Lartius with a Trumpet.

MARTIUS. See here these movers that do prize their hours At a cracked drachma. Cushions, leaden spoons, Irons of a doit, doublets that hangmen would Bury with those that wore them, these base slaves, Ere yet the fight be done, pack up. Down with them!

[Exit the Romans with spoils.]

[Alarum continues still afar off.]

And hark, what noise the General makes! To him! There is the man of my soul’s hate, Aufidius, Piercing our Romans. Then, valiant Titus, take Convenient numbers to make good the city, Whilst I, with those that have the spirit, will haste To help Cominius.

LARTIUS. Worthy sir, thou bleed’st. Thy exercise hath been too violent For a second course of fight.

MARTIUS. Sir, praise me not. My work hath yet not warmed me. Fare you well. The blood I drop is rather physical Than dangerous to me. To Aufidius thus I will appear and fight.

LARTIUS. Now the fair goddess Fortune Fall deep in love with thee, and her great charms Misguide thy opposers’ swords! Bold gentleman, Prosperity be thy page!

MARTIUS. Thy friend no less Than those she placeth highest! So farewell.

LARTIUS. Thou worthiest Martius!

[Exit Martius.]

Go sound thy trumpet in the marketplace. Call thither all the officers o’ th’ town, Where they shall know our mind. Away!

SCENE VI. Near the camp of Cominius

Enter Cominius as it were in retire, with Soldiers.

COMINIUS. Breathe you, my friends. Well fought! We are come off Like Romans, neither foolish in our stands Nor cowardly in retire. Believe me, sirs, We shall be charged again. Whiles we have struck, By interims and conveying gusts we have heard The charges of our friends. The Roman gods Lead their successes as we wish our own, That both our powers, with smiling fronts encount’ring, May give you thankful sacrifice!

Thy news?

MESSENGER. The citizens of Corioles have issued, And given to Lartius and to Martius battle. I saw our party to their trenches driven, And then I came away.

COMINIUS. Though thou speakest truth, Methinks thou speak’st not well. How long is’t since?

MESSENGER. Above an hour, my lord.

COMINIUS. ’Tis not a mile; briefly we heard their drums. How couldst thou in a mile confound an hour And bring thy news so late?

MESSENGER. Spies of the Volsces Held me in chase, that I was forced to wheel Three or four miles about; else had I, sir, Half an hour since brought my report.

Enter Martius, bloody.

COMINIUS. Who’s yonder, That does appear as he were flayed? O gods, He has the stamp of Martius, and I have Before-time seen him thus.

MARTIUS. Come I too late?

COMINIUS. The shepherd knows not thunder from a tabor More than I know the sound of Martius’ tongue From every meaner man.

COMINIUS. Ay, if you come not in the blood of others, But mantled in your own.

MARTIUS. O, let me clip you In arms as sound as when I wooed, in heart As merry as when our nuptial day was done And tapers burned to bedward!

COMINIUS. Flower of warriors, how is’t with Titus Lartius?

MARTIUS. As with a man busied about decrees, Condemning some to death and some to exile; Ransoming him or pitying, threat’ning the other; Holding Corioles in the name of Rome Even like a fawning greyhound in the leash, To let him slip at will.

COMINIUS. Where is that slave Which told me they had beat you to your trenches? Where’s he? Call him hither.

MARTIUS. Let him alone. He did inform the truth. But for our gentlemen, The common file—a plague! Tribunes for them!— The mouse ne’er shunned the cat as they did budge From rascals worse than they.

COMINIUS. But how prevailed you?

MARTIUS. Will the time serve to tell? I do not think. Where is the enemy? Are you lords o’ th’ field? If not, why cease you till you are so?

COMINIUS. Martius, we have at disadvantage fought, And did retire to win our purpose.

MARTIUS. How lies their battle? Know you on which side They have placed their men of trust?

COMINIUS. As I guess, Martius, Their bands i’ th’ vaward are the Antiates, Of their best trust; o’er them Aufidius, Their very heart of hope.

MARTIUS. I do beseech you, By all the battles wherein we have fought, By th’ blood we have shed together, by th’ vows we have made To endure friends, that you directly set me Against Aufidius and his Antiates, And that you not delay the present, but, Filling the air with swords advanced and darts, We prove this very hour.

COMINIUS. Though I could wish You were conducted to a gentle bath And balms applied to you, yet dare I never Deny your asking. Take your choice of those That best can aid your action.

MARTIUS. Those are they That most are willing. If any such be here— As it were sin to doubt—that love this painting Wherein you see me smeared; if any fear Lesser his person than an ill report; If any think brave death outweighs bad life, And that his country’s dearer than himself; Let him alone, or so many so minded, Wave thus to express his disposition And follow Martius.

[He waves his sword.]

[They all shout and wave their swords, take him up in their arms, and cast up their caps.]

O, me alone! Make you a sword of me? If these shows be not outward, which of you But is four Volsces? None of you but is Able to bear against the great Aufidius A shield as hard as his. A certain number, Though thanks to all, must I select from all. The rest shall bear the business in some other fight, As cause will be obeyed. Please you to march, And I shall quickly draw out my command, Which men are best inclined.

COMINIUS. March on, my fellows. Make good this ostentation, and you shall Divide in all with us.

SCENE VII. The gates of Corioles

LARTIUS. So, let the ports be guarded. Keep your duties As I have set them down. If I do send, dispatch Those centuries to our aid; the rest will serve For a short holding. If we lose the field, We cannot keep the town.

Titus Lartius, having set a guard upon Corioles, going with drum and trumpet toward Cominius and Caius Martius, enters with a Lieutenant, other Soldiers, and a Scout.

LIEUTENANT. Fear not our care, sir.

LARTIUS. Hence, and shut your gates upon’s. Our guider, come. To th’ Roman camp conduct us.

SCENE VIII. A field of battle between the Roman and the Volscian camps

Alarum, as in battle. Enter Martius and Aufidius at several doors.

MARTIUS. I’ll fight with none but thee, for I do hate thee Worse than a promise-breaker.

AUFIDIUS. We hate alike. Not Afric owns a serpent I abhor More than thy fame and envy. Fix thy foot.

MARTIUS. Let the first budger die the other’s slave, And the gods doom him after!

AUFIDIUS. If I fly, Martius, Hollo me like a hare.

MARTIUS. Within these three hours, Tullus, Alone I fought in your Corioles’ walls, And made what work I pleased. ’Tis not my blood Wherein thou seest me masked. For thy revenge Wrench up thy power to th’ highest.

AUFIDIUS. Wert thou the Hector That was the whip of your bragged progeny, Thou shouldst not scape me here.

[Here they fight, and certain Volsces come to the aid of Aufidius.]

Officious and not valiant, you have shamed me In your condemned seconds.

[Martius fights till they be driven in breathless. Aufidius and Martius exit, separately.]

SCENE IX. The Roman camp

Alarum. A retreat is sounded. Flourish. Enter, at one door, Cominius with the Romans; at another door, Martius, with his arm in a scarf.

COMINIUS. If I should tell thee o’er this thy day’s work, Thou’t not believe thy deeds. But I’ll report it Where senators shall mingle tears with smiles; Where great patricians shall attend and shrug, I’ th’ end admire; where ladies shall be frighted And, gladly quaked, hear more; where the dull tribunes, That with the fusty plebeians hate thine honours, Shall say against their hearts “We thank the gods Our Rome hath such a soldier.” Yet cam’st thou to a morsel of this feast, Having fully dined before.

Enter Titus Lartius with his power, from the pursuit.

LARTIUS. O general, Here is the steed, we the caparison. Hadst thou beheld—

MARTIUS. Pray now, no more. My mother, Who has a charter to extol her blood, When she does praise me grieves me. I have done As you have done—that’s what I can; Induced as you have been—that’s for my country. He that has but effected his good will Hath overta’en mine act.

COMINIUS. You shall not be The grave of your deserving. Rome must know The value of her own. ’Twere a concealment Worse than a theft, no less than a traducement, To hide your doings and to silence that Which, to the spire and top of praises vouched, Would seem but modest. Therefore, I beseech you— In sign of what you are, not to reward What you have done—before our army hear me.

MARTIUS. I have some wounds upon me, and they smart To hear themselves remembered.

COMINIUS. Should they not, Well might they fester ’gainst ingratitude And tent themselves with death. Of all the horses— Whereof we have ta’en good and good store—of all The treasure in this field achieved and city, We render you the tenth, to be ta’en forth Before the common distribution At your only choice.

MARTIUS. I thank you, general, But cannot make my heart consent to take A bribe to pay my sword. I do refuse it; And stand upon my common part with those That have beheld the doing.

[A long flourish. They all cry “Martius, Martius!” and cast up their caps and lances. Cominius and Lartius stand bare.]

May these same instruments which, you profane, Never sound more! When drums and trumpets shall I’ th’ field prove flatterers, let courts and cities be Made all of false-faced soothing! When steel grows soft Soft as the parasite’s silk, let him be made An ovator for the wars! No more, I say. For that I have not washed my nose that bled, Or foiled some debile wretch—which, without note, Here’s many else have done—you shout me forth In acclamations hyperbolical, As if I loved my little should be dieted In praises sauced with lies.

COMINIUS. Too modest are you, More cruel to your good report than grateful To us that give you truly. By your patience, If ’gainst yourself you be incensed, we’ll put you, Like one that means his proper harm, in manacles, Then reason safely with you. Therefore be it known, As to us to all the world, that Caius Martius Wears this war’s garland, in token of the which My noble steed, known to the camp, I give him, With all his trim belonging. And from this time, For what he did before Corioles, call him, With all th’ applause and clamour of the host, Caius Martius Coriolanus! Bear Th’ addition nobly ever!

[Flourish. Trumpets sound, and drums.]

ALL. Caius Martius Coriolanus!

CORIOLANUS. I will go wash; And when my face is fair, you shall perceive Whether I blush or no. Howbeit, I thank you. I mean to stride your steed and at all times To undercrest your good addition To th’ fairness of my power.

COMINIUS. So, to our tent, Where, ere we do repose us, we will write To Rome of our success.—You, Titus Lartius, Must to Corioles back. Send us to Rome The best, with whom we may articulate For their own good and ours.

LARTIUS. I shall, my lord.

CORIOLANUS. The gods begin to mock me. I, that now Refused most princely gifts, am bound to beg Of my lord general.

COMINIUS. Take’t, ’tis yours. What is’t?

CORIOLANUS. I sometime lay here in Corioles At a poor man’s house; he used me kindly. He cried to me; I saw him prisoner; But then Aufidius was within my view, And wrath o’erwhelmed my pity. I request you To give my poor host freedom.

COMINIUS. O, well begged! Were he the butcher of my son, he should Be free as is the wind.—Deliver him, Titus.

LARTIUS. Martius, his name?

CORIOLANUS. By Jupiter, forgot! I am weary; yea, my memory is tired. Have we no wine here?

COMINIUS. Go we to our tent. The blood upon your visage dries; ’tis time It should be looked to. Come.

[A flourish of cornets. Exeunt.]

SCENE X. The camp of the Volsces

A flourish. Cornets. Enter Tullus Aufidius, bloody, with two or three soldiers.

AUFIDIUS. The town is ta’en.

SOLDIER. ’Twill be delivered back on good condition.

AUFIDIUS. Condition? I would I were a Roman, for I cannot, Being a Volsce, be that I am. Condition? What good condition can a treaty find I’ th’ part that is at mercy? Five times, Martius, I have fought with thee; so often hast thou beat me And wouldst do so, I think, should we encounter As often as we eat. By th’ elements, If e’er again I meet him beard to beard, He’s mine or I am his. Mine emulation Hath not that honour in’t it had; for where I thought to crush him in an equal force, True sword to sword, I’ll potch at him some way, Or wrath or craft may get him.

SOLDIER. He’s the devil.

AUFIDIUS. Bolder, though not so subtle. My valour’s poisoned With only suff’ring stain by him; for him Shall fly out of itself. Nor sleep nor sanctuary, Being naked, sick, nor fane nor Capitol, The prayers of priests nor times of sacrifice, Embarquements all of fury, shall lift up Their rotten privilege and custom ’gainst My hate to Martius. Where I find him, were it At home, upon my brother’s guard, even there, Against the hospitable canon, would I Wash my fierce hand in’s heart. Go you to th’ city; Learn how ’tis held and what they are that must Be hostages for Rome.

SOLDIER. Will not you go?

AUFIDIUS. I am attended at the cypress grove. I pray you— ’Tis south the city mills,—bring me word thither How the world goes, that to the pace of it I may spur on my journey.

SOLDIER. I shall, sir.

SCENE I. Rome. A public place

Enter Menenius with the two Tribunes of the people, Sicinius and Brutus.

MENENIUS. The augurer tells me we shall have news tonight.

BRUTUS. Good or bad?

MENENIUS. Not according to the prayer of the people, for they love not Martius.

SICINIUS. Nature teaches beasts to know their friends.

MENENIUS. Pray you, who does the wolf love?

SICINIUS. The lamb.

MENENIUS. Ay, to devour him, as the hungry plebeians would the noble Martius.

BRUTUS. He’s a lamb indeed, that baas like a bear.

MENENIUS. He’s a bear indeed, that lives like a lamb. You two are old men; tell me one thing that I shall ask you.

BOTH TRIBUNES. Well, sir.

MENENIUS. In what enormity is Martius poor in, that you two have not in abundance?

BRUTUS. He’s poor in no one fault, but stored with all.

SICINIUS. Especially in pride.

BRUTUS. And topping all others in boasting.

MENENIUS. This is strange now. Do you two know how you are censured here in the city, I mean of us o’ th’ right-hand file, do you?

BOTH TRIBUNES. Why, how are we censured?

MENENIUS. Because you talk of pride now, will you not be angry?

BOTH TRIBUNES. Well, well, sir, well?

MENENIUS. Why, ’tis no great matter; for a very little thief of occasion will rob you of a great deal of patience. Give your dispositions the reins, and be angry at your pleasures, at the least, if you take it as a pleasure to you in being so. You blame Martius for being proud.

BRUTUS. We do it not alone, sir.

MENENIUS. I know you can do very little alone, for your helps are many, or else your actions would grow wondrous single. Your abilities are too infantlike for doing much alone. You talk of pride. O that you could turn your eyes toward the napes of your necks and make but an interior survey of your good selves! O, that you could!

BOTH TRIBUNES. What then, sir?

MENENIUS. Why, then you should discover a brace of unmeriting, proud, violent, testy magistrates, alias fools, as any in Rome.

SICINIUS. Menenius, you are known well enough, too.

MENENIUS. I am known to be a humorous patrician and one that loves a cup of hot wine with not a drop of allaying Tiber in’t; said to be something imperfect in favouring the first complaint, hasty and tinder-like upon too trivial motion; one that converses more with the buttock of the night than with the forehead of the morning. What I think I utter, and spend my malice in my breath. Meeting two such wealsmen as you are—I cannot call you Lycurguses—if the drink you give me touch my palate adversely, I make a crooked face at it. I cannot say your Worships have delivered the matter well when I find the ass in compound with the major part of your syllables. And though I must be content to bear with those that say you are reverend grave men, yet they lie deadly that tell you have good faces. If you see this in the map of my microcosm, follows it that I am known well enough too? What harm can your bisson conspectuities glean out of this character, if I be known well enough, too?

BRUTUS. Come, sir, come; we know you well enough.

MENENIUS. You know neither me, yourselves, nor anything. You are ambitious for poor knaves’ caps and legs. You wear out a good wholesome forenoon in hearing a cause between an orange-wife and a faucet-seller, and then rejourn the controversy of threepence to a second day of audience. When you are hearing a matter between party and party, if you chance to be pinched with the colic, you make faces like mummers, set up the bloody flag against all patience, and, in roaring for a chamber pot, dismiss the controversy bleeding, the more entangled by your hearing. All the peace you make in their cause is calling both the parties knaves. You are a pair of strange ones.

BRUTUS. Come, come. You are well understood to be a perfecter giber for the table than a necessary bencher in the Capitol.

MENENIUS. Our very priests must become mockers if they shall encounter such ridiculous subjects as you are. When you speak best unto the purpose, it is not worth the wagging of your beards, and your beards deserve not so honourable a grave as to stuff a botcher’s cushion or to be entombed in an ass’s packsaddle. Yet you must be saying Martius is proud, who, in a cheap estimation, is worth all your predecessors since Deucalion, though peradventure some of the best of ’em were hereditary hangmen. Good e’en to your Worships. More of your conversation would infect my brain, being the herdsmen of the beastly plebeians. I will be bold to take my leave of you.

[He begins to exit. Brutus and Sicinius stand aside.]

Enter Volumnia, Virgilia and Valeria

How now, my as fair as noble ladies—and the moon, were she earthly, no nobler—whither do you follow your eyes so fast?

VOLUMNIA. Honourable Menenius, my boy Martius approaches. For the love of Juno, let’s go!

MENENIUS. Ha? Martius coming home?

VOLUMNIA. Ay, worthy Menenius, and with most prosperous approbation.

MENENIUS. Take my cap, Jupiter, and I thank thee! Hoo! Martius coming home?

VALERIA, VIRGILIA. Nay, ’tis true.

VOLUMNIA. Look, here’s a letter from him. The state hath another, his wife another, and I think there’s one at home for you.

MENENIUS. I will make my very house reel tonight. A letter for me?

VIRGILIA. Yes, certain, there’s a letter for you; I saw it.

MENENIUS. A letter for me? It gives me an estate of seven years’ health, in which time I will make a lip at the physician. The most sovereign prescription in Galen is but empiricutic and, to this preservative, of no better report than a horse drench. Is he not wounded? He was wont to come home wounded.

VIRGILIA. O, no, no, no!

VOLUMNIA. O, he is wounded, I thank the gods for’t.

MENENIUS. So do I too, if it be not too much. Brings he victory in his pocket, the wounds become him.

VOLUMNIA. On’s brows, Menenius. He comes the third time home with the oaken garland.

MENENIUS. Has he disciplined Aufidius soundly?

VOLUMNIA. Titus Lartius writes they fought together, but Aufidius got off.

MENENIUS. And ’twas time for him too, I’ll warrant him that. An he had stayed by him, I would not have been so ’fidiused for all the chests in Corioles and the gold that’s in them. Is the Senate possessed of this?

VOLUMNIA. Good ladies, let’s go.—Yes, yes, yes. The Senate has letters from the General, wherein he gives my son the whole name of the war. He hath in this action outdone his former deeds doubly.

VALERIA. In troth, there’s wondrous things spoke of him.

MENENIUS. Wondrous? Ay, I warrant you, and not without his true purchasing.

VIRGILIA. The gods grant them true.

VOLUMNIA. True? Pow, waw!

MENENIUS. True? I’ll be sworn they are true. Where is he wounded? [To the Tribunes.] God save your good Worships! Martius is coming home; he has more cause to be proud.—Where is he wounded?

VOLUMNIA. I’ th’ shoulder and i’ th’ left arm. There will be large cicatrices to show the people when he shall stand for his place. He received in the repulse of Tarquin seven hurts i’ th’ body.

MENENIUS. One i’ th’ neck and two i’ th’ thigh—there’s nine that I know.

VOLUMNIA. He had, before this last expedition, twenty-five wounds upon him.

MENENIUS. Now it’s twenty-seven. Every gash was an enemy’s grave.

[A shout and flourish.]

Hark, the trumpets!

VOLUMNIA. These are the ushers of Martius: before him he carries noise, and behind him he leaves tears. Death, that dark spirit, in’s nervy arm doth lie, Which, being advanced, declines, and then men die.

[A sennet.]

Enter Cominius the General and Titus Lartius, between them Coriolanus crowned with an oaken garland, with Captains and Soldiers and a Herald. Trumpets sound.

HERALD. Know, Rome, that all alone Martius did fight Within Corioles’ gates, where he hath won, With fame, a name to Caius Martius; these In honour follows “Coriolanus.” Welcome to Rome, renowned Coriolanus.

[Sound flourish.]

ALL. Welcome to Rome, renowned Coriolanus!

CORIOLANUS. No more of this, it does offend my heart. Pray now, no more.

COMINIUS. Look, sir, your mother.

CORIOLANUS. O, You have, I know, petitioned all the gods For my prosperity.

[Kneels.]

VOLUMNIA. Nay, my good soldier, up.

[He stands.]

My gentle Martius, worthy Caius, and By deed-achieving honour newly named— What is it? Coriolanus must I call thee? But, O, thy wife—

CORIOLANUS. My gracious silence, hail. Wouldst thou have laughed had I come coffined home, That weep’st to see me triumph? Ah, my dear, Such eyes the widows in Corioles wear And mothers that lack sons.

MENENIUS. Now the gods crown thee!

CORIOLANUS. And live you yet? [To Valeria] O my sweet lady, pardon.

VOLUMNIA. I know not where to turn. O, welcome home! And welcome, general.—And you’re welcome all.

MENENIUS. A hundred thousand welcomes! I could weep, And I could laugh; I am light and heavy. Welcome. A curse begin at very root on’s heart That is not glad to see thee! You are three That Rome should dote on; yet, by the faith of men, We have some old crab trees here at home that will not Be grafted to your relish. Yet welcome, warriors! We call a nettle but a nettle, and The faults of fools but folly.

COMINIUS. Ever right.

CORIOLANUS. Menenius ever, ever.

HERALD. Give way there, and go on!

CORIOLANUS. [To Volumnia and Virgilia.] Your hand, and yours. Ere in our own house I do shade my head, The good patricians must be visited, From whom I have received not only greetings, But with them change of honours.

VOLUMNIA. I have lived To see inherited my very wishes And the buildings of my fancy. Only There’s one thing wanting, which I doubt not but Our Rome will cast upon thee.

CORIOLANUS. Know, good mother, I had rather be their servant in my way Than sway with them in theirs.

COMINIUS. On, to the Capitol.

[Flourish of cornets. Exeunt in state, as before.]

Brutus and Sicinius come forward.

BRUTUS. All tongues speak of him, and the bleared sights Are spectacled to see him. Your prattling nurse Into a rapture lets her baby cry While she chats him. The kitchen malkin pins Her richest lockram ’bout her reechy neck, Clamb’ring the walls to eye him. Stalls, bulks, windows Are smothered up, leads filled, and ridges horsed With variable complexions, all agreeing In earnestness to see him. Seld-shown flamens Do press among the popular throngs and puff To win a vulgar station. Our veiled dames Commit the war of white and damask in Their nicely-gauded cheeks to th’ wanton spoil Of Phoebus’ burning kisses. Such a pother, As if that whatsoever god who leads him Were slyly crept into his human powers And gave him graceful posture.

SICINIUS. On the sudden I warrant him consul.

BRUTUS. Then our office may, During his power, go sleep.

SICINIUS. He cannot temp’rately transport his honours From where he should begin and end, but will Lose those he hath won.

BRUTUS. In that there’s comfort.

SICINIUS. Doubt not the commoners, for whom we stand, But they, upon their ancient malice will forget With the least cause these his new honours—which That he will give them make as little question As he is proud to do’t.

BRUTUS. I heard him swear, Were he to stand for consul, never would he Appear i’ th’ marketplace nor on him put The napless vesture of humility, Nor showing, as the manner is, his wounds To th’ people, beg their stinking breaths.

SICINIUS. ’Tis right.

BRUTUS. It was his word. O, he would miss it rather Than carry it but by the suit of the gentry to him And the desire of the nobles.

SICINIUS. I wish no better Than have him hold that purpose and to put it In execution.

BRUTUS. ’Tis most like he will.

SICINIUS. It shall be to him then, as our good wills, A sure destruction.

BRUTUS. So it must fall out To him, or our authorities for an end. We must suggest the people in what hatred He still hath held them; that to’s power he would Have made them mules, silenced their pleaders, and Dispropertied their freedoms; holding them In human action and capacity Of no more soul nor fitness for the world Than camels in their war, who have their provand Only for bearing burdens, and sore blows For sinking under them.

SICINIUS. This, as you say, suggested At some time when his soaring insolence Shall touch the people—which time shall not want If it be put upon’t, and that’s as easy As to set dogs on sheep—will be his fire To kindle their dry stubble, and their blaze Shall darken him for ever.

BRUTUS. What’s the matter?

MESSENGER. You are sent for to the Capitol. ’Tis thought That Martius shall be consul. I have seen The dumb men throng to see him, and the blind to hear him speak; matrons flung gloves, Ladies and maids their scarves and handkerchiefs, Upon him as he passed; the nobles bended As to Jove’s statue, and the Commons made A shower and thunder with their caps and shouts. I never saw the like.

BRUTUS. Let’s to the Capitol; And carry with us ears and eyes for th’ time, But hearts for the event.

SICINIUS. Have with you.

SCENE II. Rome. The Capitol

Enter two Officers, to lay cushions, as it were in the Capitol.

FIRST OFFICER. Come, come. They are almost here. How many stand for consulships?

SECOND OFFICER. Three, they say; but ’tis thought of everyone Coriolanus will carry it.

FIRST OFFICER. That’s a brave fellow, but he’s vengeance proud and loves not the common people.

SECOND OFFICER. ’Faith, there have been many great men that have flattered the people who ne’er loved them; and there be many that they have loved they know not wherefore; so that, if they love they know not why, they hate upon no better a ground. Therefore, for Coriolanus neither to care whether they love or hate him manifests the true knowledge he has in their disposition and, out of his noble carelessness, lets them plainly see’t.

FIRST OFFICER. If he did not care whether he had their love or no, he waved indifferently ’twixt doing them neither good nor harm; but he seeks their hate with greater devotion than they can render it him and leaves nothing undone that may fully discover him their opposite. Now, to seem to affect the malice and displeasure of the people is as bad as that which he dislikes, to flatter them for their love.

SECOND OFFICER. He hath deserved worthily of his country, and his ascent is not by such easy degrees as those who, having been supple and courteous to the people, bonnetted, without any further deed to have them at all into their estimation and report; but he hath so planted his honours in their eyes and his actions in their hearts that for their tongues to be silent and not confess so much were a kind of ingrateful injury. To report otherwise were a malice that, giving itself the lie, would pluck reproof and rebuke from every ear that heard it.

FIRST OFFICER. No more of him; he’s a worthy man. Make way. They are coming.

A sennet. Enter the Patricians and the Tribunes of the people, Lictors before them; Coriolanus, Menenius, Cominius the consul. The Patricians sit. Sicinius and Brutus take their places by themselves. Coriolanus stands.

MENENIUS. Having determined of the Volsces and To send for Titus Lartius, it remains, As the main point of this our after-meeting, To gratify his noble service that Hath thus stood for his country. Therefore please you, Most reverend and grave elders, to desire The present consul and last general In our well-found successes to report A little of that worthy work performed By Martius Caius Coriolanus, whom We met here both to thank and to remember With honours like himself.

[Coriolanus sits.]

FIRST SENATOR. Speak, good Cominius. Leave nothing out for length, and make us think Rather our state’s defective for requital, Than we to stretch it out. Masters o’ th’ people, We do request your kindest ears and, after, Your loving motion toward the common body To yield what passes here.

SICINIUS. We are convented Upon a pleasing treaty and have hearts Inclinable to honour and advance The theme of our assembly.

BRUTUS. Which the rather We shall be blest to do if he remember A kinder value of the people than He hath hereto prized them at.

MENENIUS. That’s off, that’s off! I would you rather had been silent. Please you To hear Cominius speak?

BRUTUS. Most willingly. But yet my caution was more pertinent Than the rebuke you give it.

MENENIUS. He loves your people, But tie him not to be their bedfellow.— Worthy Cominius, speak.

[Coriolanus rises, and offers to go away.]

Nay, keep your place.

FIRST SENATOR. Sit, Coriolanus. Never shame to hear What you have nobly done.

CORIOLANUS. Your Honours, pardon. I had rather have my wounds to heal again Than hear say how I got them.

BRUTUS. Sir, I hope My words disbenched you not?

CORIOLANUS. No, sir. Yet oft, When blows have made me stay, I fled from words. You soothed not, therefore hurt not; but your people, I love them as they weigh.

MENENIUS. Pray now, sit down.

CORIOLANUS. I had rather have one scratch my head i’ th’ sun When the alarum were struck than idly sit To hear my nothings monstered.

MENENIUS. Masters of the people, Your multiplying spawn how can he flatter— That’s thousand to one good one—when you now see He had rather venture all his limbs for honour Than one on’s ears to hear it?—Proceed, Cominius.

COMINIUS. I shall lack voice. The deeds of Coriolanus Should not be uttered feebly. It is held That valour is the chiefest virtue and Most dignifies the haver; if it be, The man I speak of cannot in the world Be singly counterpoised. At sixteen years, When Tarquin made a head for Rome, he fought Beyond the mark of others. Our then dictator, Whom with all praise I point at, saw him fight When with his Amazonian chin he drove The bristled lips before him. He bestrid An o’erpressed Roman and i’ th’ Consul’s view Slew three opposers. Tarquin’s self he met And struck him on his knee. In that day’s feats, When he might act the woman in the scene, He proved best man i’ th’ field and for his meed Was brow-bound with the oak. His pupil age Man-entered thus, he waxed like a sea, And in the brunt of seventeen battles since He lurched all swords of the garland. For this last, Before and in Corioles, let me say, I cannot speak him home. He stopped the flyers And by his rare example made the coward Turn terror into sport. As weeds before A vessel under sail, so men obeyed And fell below his stem. His sword, Death’s stamp, Where it did mark, it took; from face to foot He was a thing of blood, whose every motion Was timed with dying cries. Alone he entered The mortal gate o’ th’ city, which he painted With shunless destiny; aidless came off And with a sudden reinforcement struck Corioles like a planet. Now all’s his, When by and by the din of war gan pierce His ready sense; then straight his doubled spirit Requickened what in flesh was fatigate, And to the battle came he, where he did Run reeking o’er the lives of men as if ’Twere a perpetual spoil; and till we called Both field and city ours, he never stood To ease his breast with panting.

MENENIUS. Worthy man!

FIRST SENATOR. He cannot but with measure fit the honours Which we devise him.

COMINIUS. Our spoils he kicked at; And looked upon things precious as they were The common muck of the world. He covets less Than misery itself would give, rewards His deeds with doing them, and is content To spend the time to end it.

MENENIUS. He’s right noble. Let him be called for.

FIRST SENATOR. Call Coriolanus.

OFFICER. He doth appear.

Enter Coriolanus.

MENENIUS. The Senate, Coriolanus, are well pleased To make thee consul.

CORIOLANUS. I do owe them still My life and services.

MENENIUS. It then remains That you do speak to the people.

CORIOLANUS. I do beseech you Let me o’erleap that custom, for I cannot Put on the gown, stand naked, and entreat them For my wounds’ sake to give their suffrage. Please you That I may pass this doing.

SICINIUS. Sir, the people Must have their voices; neither will they bate One jot of ceremony.

MENENIUS. Put them not to’t. Pray you, go fit you to the custom, and Take to you, as your predecessors have, Your honour with your form.

CORIOLANUS. It is a part That I shall blush in acting, and might well Be taken from the people.

BRUTUS. Mark you that?

CORIOLANUS. To brag unto them, “thus I did, and thus!” Show them th’ unaching scars which I should hide, As if I had received them for the hire Of their breath only!

MENENIUS. Do not stand upon’t.— We recommend to you, tribunes of the people, Our purpose to them, and to our noble consul Wish we all joy and honour.

SENATORS. To Coriolanus come all joy and honour!

[Flourish cornets. Exeunt all but Sicinius and Brutus.]

BRUTUS. You see how he intends to use the people.

SICINIUS. May they perceive’s intent! He will require them As if he did contemn what he requested Should be in them to give.

BRUTUS. Come, we’ll inform them Of our proceedings here. On th’ marketplace I know they do attend us.

SCENE III. Rome. The Forum

Enter seven or eight Citizens.

FIRST CITIZEN. Once, if he do require our voices, we ought not to deny him.

SECOND CITIZEN. We may, sir, if we will.

THIRD CITIZEN. We have power in ourselves to do it, but it is a power that we have no power to do; for, if he show us his wounds and tell us his deeds, we are to put our tongues into those wounds and speak for them. So, if he tell us his noble deeds, we must also tell him our noble acceptance of them. Ingratitude is monstrous, and for the multitude to be ingrateful were to make a monster of the multitude, of the which we being members, should bring ourselves to be monstrous members.

FIRST CITIZEN. And to make us no better thought of, a little help will serve; for once we stood up about the corn, he himself stuck not to call us the many-headed multitude.

THIRD CITIZEN. We have been called so of many; not that our heads are some brown, some black, some auburn, some bald, but that our wits are so diversely coloured; and truly I think if all our wits were to issue out of one skull, they would fly east, west, north, south, and their consent of one direct way should be at once to all the points o’ th’ compass.

SECOND CITIZEN. Think you so? Which way do you judge my wit would fly?

THIRD CITIZEN. Nay, your wit will not so soon out as another man’s will; ’tis strongly wedged up in a blockhead. But if it were at liberty, ’twould, sure, southward.

SECOND CITIZEN. Why that way?

THIRD CITIZEN. To lose itself in a fog, where being three parts melted away with rotten dews, the fourth would return for conscience’ sake, to help to get thee a wife.

SECOND CITIZEN. You are never without your tricks. You may, you may.

THIRD CITIZEN. Are you all resolved to give your voices? But that’s no matter; the greater part carries it. I say, if he would incline to the people, there was never a worthier man.

Enter Coriolanus in a gown of humility, with Menenius.

Here he comes, and in the gown of humility. Mark his behaviour. We are not to stay all together, but to come by him where he stands, by ones, by twos, and by threes. He’s to make his requests by particulars, wherein everyone of us has a single honour in giving him our own voices with our own tongues. Therefore follow me, and I’ll direct you how you shall go by him.

ALL. Content, content.

MENENIUS. O sir, you are not right. Have you not known The worthiest men have done’t?

CORIOLANUS. What must I say? “I pray, sir”—plague upon’t! I cannot bring My tongue to such a pace. “Look, sir, my wounds! I got them in my country’s service when Some certain of your brethren roared and ran From th’ noise of our own drums.”

MENENIUS. O me, the gods! You must not speak of that. You must desire them To think upon you.

CORIOLANUS. Think upon me! Hang ’em! I would they would forget me, like the virtues Which our divines lose by ’em.

MENENIUS. You’ll mar all. I’ll leave you. Pray you speak to ’em, I pray you, In wholesome manner.

[Exit Menenius.]

CORIOLANUS. Bid them wash their faces And keep their teeth clean.

Enter three of the Citizens.

So, here comes a brace. You know the cause, sirs, of my standing here.

THIRD CITIZEN. We do, sir. Tell us what hath brought you to’t.

CORIOLANUS. Mine own desert.

SECOND CITIZEN. Your own desert?

CORIOLANUS. Ay, but not mine own desire.

THIRD CITIZEN. How, not your own desire?

CORIOLANUS. No, sir, ’twas never my desire yet to trouble the poor with begging.

THIRD CITIZEN. You must think if we give you anything, we hope to gain by you.

CORIOLANUS. Well then, I pray, your price o’ th’ consulship?

FIRST CITIZEN. The price is to ask it kindly.

CORIOLANUS. Kindly, sir, I pray, let me ha’t. I have wounds to show you, which shall be yours in private.—Your good voice, sir. What say you?

SECOND CITIZEN. You shall ha’ it, worthy sir.

CORIOLANUS. A match, sir. There’s in all two worthy voices begged. I have your alms. Adieu.

THIRD CITIZEN. But this is something odd.

SECOND CITIZEN. An ’twere to give again—but ’tis no matter.

[Exeunt two citizens.]

Enter two other Citizens.

CORIOLANUS. Pray you now, if it may stand with the tune of your voices that I may be consul, I have here the customary gown.

FOURTH CITIZEN. You have deserved nobly of your country, and you have not deserved nobly.

CORIOLANUS. Your enigma?

FOURTH CITIZEN. You have been a scourge to her enemies; you have been a rod to her friends. You have not indeed loved the common people.

CORIOLANUS. You should account me the more virtuous that I have not been common in my love. I will, sir, flatter my sworn brother, the people, to earn a dearer estimation of them; ’tis a condition they account gentle. And since the wisdom of their choice is rather to have my hat than my heart, I will practise the insinuating nod and be off to them most counterfeitly. That is, sir, I will counterfeit the bewitchment of some popular man and give it bountiful to the desirers. Therefore, beseech you, I may be consul.

FIFTH CITIZEN. We hope to find you our friend, and therefore give you our voices heartily.

FOURTH CITIZEN. You have received many wounds for your country.

CORIOLANUS. I will not seal your knowledge with showing them. I will make much of your voices and so trouble you no farther.

BOTH CITIZENS. The gods give you joy, sir, heartily.

[Exeunt citizens.]

CORIOLANUS. Most sweet voices! Better it is to die, better to starve, Than crave the hire which first we do deserve. Why in this wolvish toge should I stand here To beg of Hob and Dick that does appear Their needless vouches? Custom calls me to’t. What custom wills, in all things should we do’t? The dust on antique time would lie unswept And mountainous error be too highly heaped For truth to o’erpeer. Rather than fool it so, Let the high office and the honour go To one that would do thus. I am half through; The one part suffered, the other will I do.

Enter three Citizens more.

Here come more voices. Your voices! For your voices I have fought; Watched for your voices; for your voices bear Of wounds two dozen odd. Battles thrice six I have seen and heard of; for your voices have Done many things, some less, some more. Your voices! Indeed, I would be consul.

SIXTH CITIZEN. He has done nobly, and cannot go without any honest man’s voice.

SEVENTH CITIZEN. Therefore let him be consul. The gods give him joy, and make him good friend to the people!

ALL THREE CITIZENS. Amen, amen. God save thee, noble consul.

CORIOLANUS. Worthy voices!

Enter Menenius with Brutus and Sicinius.

MENENIUS. You have stood your limitation, and the Tribunes Endue you with the people’s voice. Remains That in th’ official marks invested, you Anon do meet the Senate.

CORIOLANUS. Is this done?

SICINIUS. The custom of request you have discharged. The people do admit you, and are summoned To meet anon upon your approbation.

CORIOLANUS. Where? At the Senate House?

SICINIUS. There, Coriolanus.

CORIOLANUS. May I change these garments?

SICINIUS. You may, sir.

CORIOLANUS. That I’ll straight do and, knowing myself again, Repair to th’ Senate House.

MENENIUS. I’ll keep you company.—Will you along?

BRUTUS. We stay here for the people.

SICINIUS. Fare you well.

[Exeunt Coriolanus and Menenius.]

He has it now; and by his looks, methinks, ’Tis warm at his heart.

BRUTUS. With a proud heart he wore His humble weeds. Will you dismiss the people?

Enter the Pebleians.

SICINIUS. How now, my masters, have you chose this man?

FIRST CITIZEN. He has our voices, sir.

BRUTUS. We pray the gods he may deserve your loves.

SECOND CITIZEN. Amen, sir. To my poor unworthy notice, He mocked us when he begged our voices.

THIRD CITIZEN. Certainly, he flouted us downright.

FIRST CITIZEN. No, ’tis his kind of speech. He did not mock us.

SECOND CITIZEN. Not one amongst us, save yourself, but says He used us scornfully. He should have showed us His marks of merit, wounds received for’s country.

SICINIUS. Why, so he did, I am sure.

ALL. No, no. No man saw ’em.

THIRD CITIZEN. He said he had wounds, which he could show in private, And with his hat, thus waving it in scorn, “I would be consul,” says he; “aged custom, But by your voices, will not so permit me; Your voices therefore.” When we granted that, Here was “I thank you for your voices. Thank you. Your most sweet voices! Now you have left your voices, I have no further with you.” Was not this mockery?

SICINIUS. Why either were you ignorant to see’t Or, seeing it, of such childish friendliness To yield your voices?

BRUTUS. Could you not have told him As you were lessoned? When he had no power, But was a petty servant to the state, He was your enemy, ever spake against Your liberties and the charters that you bear I’ th’ body of the weal; and, now arriving A place of potency and sway o’ th’ state, If he should still malignantly remain Fast foe to th’ plebeii, your voices might Be curses to yourselves. You should have said That as his worthy deeds did claim no less Than what he stood for, so his gracious nature Would think upon you for your voices, and Translate his malice towards you into love, Standing your friendly lord.

SICINIUS. Thus to have said, As you were fore-advised, had touched his spirit And tried his inclination; from him plucked Either his gracious promise, which you might, As cause had called you up, have held him to; Or else it would have galled his surly nature, Which easily endures not article Tying him to aught. So putting him to rage, You should have ta’en th’ advantage of his choler And passed him unelected.

BRUTUS. Did you perceive He did solicit you in free contempt When he did need your loves, and do you think That his contempt shall not be bruising to you When he hath power to crush? Why, had your bodies No heart among you? Or had you tongues to cry Against the rectorship of judgment?

SICINIUS. Have you ere now denied the asker, and now Again, of him that did not ask but mock, Bestow your sued-for tongues?

THIRD CITIZEN. He’s not confirmed. We may deny him yet.

SECOND CITIZEN. And will deny him. I’ll have five hundred voices of that sound.

FIRST CITIZEN. I twice five hundred, and their friends to piece ’em.

BRUTUS. Get you hence instantly, and tell those friends They have chose a consul that will from them take Their liberties, make them of no more voice Than dogs that are as often beat for barking As therefore kept to do so.

SICINIUS. Let them assemble And, on a safer judgment, all revoke Your ignorant election. Enforce his pride And his old hate unto you. Besides, forget not With what contempt he wore the humble weed, How in his suit he scorned you; but your loves, Thinking upon his services, took from you Th’ apprehension of his present portance, Which most gibingly, ungravely, he did fashion After the inveterate hate he bears you.

BRUTUS. Lay A fault on us, your tribunes, that we laboured, No impediment between, but that you must Cast your election on him.

SICINIUS. Say you chose him More after our commandment than as guided By your own true affections, and that your minds, Preoccupied with what you rather must do Than what you should, made you against the grain To voice him consul. Lay the fault on us.

BRUTUS. Ay, spare us not. Say we read lectures to you, How youngly he began to serve his country, How long continued, and what stock he springs of, The noble house o’ th’ Martians, from whence came That Ancus Martius, Numa’s daughter’s son, Who, after great Hostilius here was king, Of the same house Publius and Quintus were, That our best water brought by conduits hither; And Censorinus, that was so surnamed, And nobly named so, twice being censor, Was his great ancestor.

SICINIUS. One thus descended, That hath beside well in his person wrought To be set high in place, we did commend To your remembrances; but you have found, Scaling his present bearing with his past, That he’s your fixed enemy, and revoke Your sudden approbation.

BRUTUS. Say you ne’er had done’t— Harp on that still—but by our putting on. And presently when you have drawn your number, Repair to th’ Capitol.

ALL. We will so. Almost all Repent in their election.

[Exeunt Plebeians.]

BRUTUS. Let them go on. This mutiny were better put in hazard Than stay, past doubt, for greater. If, as his nature is, he fall in rage With their refusal, both observe and answer The vantage of his anger.

SICINIUS. To th’ Capitol, come. We will be there before the stream o’ th’ people, And this shall seem, as partly ’tis, their own, Which we have goaded onward.

Cornets. Enter Coriolanus, Menenius, all the Gentry, Cominius, Titus Lartius and other Senators.

CORIOLANUS. Tullus Aufidius then had made new head?

LARTIUS. He had, my lord, and that it was which caused Our swifter composition.

CORIOLANUS. So then the Volsces stand but as at first, Ready, when time shall prompt them, to make road Upon’s again.

COMINIUS. They are worn, lord consul, so That we shall hardly in our ages see Their banners wave again.

CORIOLANUS. Saw you Aufidius?

LARTIUS. On safeguard he came to me, and did curse Against the Volsces, for they had so vilely Yielded the town. He is retired to Antium.

CORIOLANUS. Spoke he of me?

LARTIUS. He did, my lord.

CORIOLANUS. How? What?

LARTIUS. How often he had met you sword to sword; That of all things upon the earth he hated Your person most; that he would pawn his fortunes To hopeless restitution, so he might Be called your vanquisher.

CORIOLANUS. At Antium lives he?

LARTIUS. At Antium.

CORIOLANUS. I wish I had a cause to seek him there, To oppose his hatred fully. Welcome home.

Enter Sicinius and Brutus.

Behold, these are the tribunes of the people, The tongues o’ th’ common mouth. I do despise them, For they do prank them in authority Against all noble sufferance.

SICINIUS. Pass no further.

CORIOLANUS. Ha? What is that?

BRUTUS. It will be dangerous to go on. No further.

CORIOLANUS. What makes this change?

MENENIUS. The matter?

COMINIUS. Hath he not passed the noble and the common?

BRUTUS. Cominius, no.

CORIOLANUS. Have I had children’s voices?

FIRST SENATOR. Tribunes, give way. He shall to the marketplace.

BRUTUS. The people are incensed against him.

SICINIUS. Stop, Or all will fall in broil.

CORIOLANUS. Are these your herd? Must these have voices, that can yield them now And straight disclaim their tongues? What are your offices? You being their mouths, why rule you not their teeth? Have you not set them on?

MENENIUS. Be calm, be calm.

CORIOLANUS. It is a purposed thing, and grows by plot, To curb the will of the nobility. Suffer’t, and live with such as cannot rule Nor ever will be ruled.

BRUTUS. Call’t not a plot. The people cry you mocked them; and, of late, When corn was given them gratis, you repined, Scandaled the suppliants for the people, called them Timepleasers, flatterers, foes to nobleness.

CORIOLANUS. Why, this was known before.

BRUTUS. Not to them all.

CORIOLANUS. Have you informed them sithence?

BRUTUS. How? I inform them?

COMINIUS. You are like to do such business.

BRUTUS. Not unlike, each way, to better yours.

CORIOLANUS. Why then should I be consul? By yond clouds, Let me deserve so ill as you, and make me Your fellow tribune.

SICINIUS. You show too much of that For which the people stir. If you will pass To where you are bound, you must inquire your way, Which you are out of, with a gentler spirit, Or never be so noble as a consul, Nor yoke with him for tribune.

MENENIUS. Let’s be calm.

COMINIUS. The people are abused, set on. This palt’ring Becomes not Rome, nor has Coriolanus Deserved this so dishonoured rub, laid falsely I’ th’ plain way of his merit.

CORIOLANUS. Tell me of corn? This was my speech, and I will speak’t again.

MENENIUS. Not now, not now.

FIRST SENATOR. Not in this heat, sir, now.

CORIOLANUS. Now, as I live, I will. My nobler friends, I crave their pardons. For The mutable, rank-scented many, let them Regard me, as I do not flatter, and Therein behold themselves. I say again, In soothing them we nourish ’gainst our senate The cockle of rebellion, insolence, sedition, Which we ourselves have ploughed for, sowed, and scattered By mingling them with us, the honoured number, Who lack not virtue, no, nor power, but that Which they have given to beggars.

MENENIUS. Well, no more.

FIRST SENATOR. No more words, we beseech you.

CORIOLANUS. How? No more? As for my country I have shed my blood, Not fearing outward force, so shall my lungs Coin words till their decay against those measles Which we disdain should tetter us, yet sought The very way to catch them.

BRUTUS. You speak o’ th’ people As if you were a god to punish, not A man of their infirmity.

SICINIUS. ’Twere well We let the people know’t.

MENENIUS. What, what? His choler?

CORIOLANUS. Choler? Were I as patient as the midnight sleep, By Jove, ’twould be my mind.

SICINIUS. It is a mind That shall remain a poison where it is, Not poison any further.

CORIOLANUS. “Shall remain”? Hear you this Triton of the minnows? Mark you His absolute “shall”?

COMINIUS. ’Twas from the canon.

CORIOLANUS. “Shall”? O good but most unwise patricians, why, You grave but reckless senators, have you thus Given Hydra leave to choose an officer, That with his peremptory “shall,” being but The horn and noise o’ th’ monster’s, wants not spirit To say he’ll turn your current in a ditch And make your channel his? If he have power, Then vail your ignorance; if none, awake Your dangerous lenity. If you are learned, Be not as common fools; if you are not, Let them have cushions by you. You are plebeians, If they be senators; and they are no less When, both your voices blended, the great’st taste Most palates theirs. They choose their magistrate, And such a one as he, who puts his “shall,” His popular “shall,” against a graver bench Than ever frowned in Greece. By Jove himself, It makes the consuls base! And my soul aches To know, when two authorities are up, Neither supreme, how soon confusion May enter ’twixt the gap of both and take The one by th’ other.

COMINIUS. Well, on to th’ marketplace.

CORIOLANUS. Whoever gave that counsel to give forth The corn o’ th’ storehouse gratis, as ’twas used Sometime in Greece—

MENENIUS. Well, well, no more of that.

CORIOLANUS. Though there the people had more absolute power, I say they nourished disobedience, fed The ruin of the state.

BRUTUS. Why shall the people give One that speaks thus their voice?

CORIOLANUS. I’ll give my reasons, More worthier than their voices. They know the corn Was not our recompense, resting well assured They ne’er did service for’t. Being pressed to th’ war, Even when the navel of the state was touched, They would not thread the gates. This kind of service Did not deserve corn gratis. Being i’ th’ war, Their mutinies and revolts, wherein they showed Most valour, spoke not for them. Th’ accusation Which they have often made against the Senate, All cause unborn, could never be the native Of our so frank donation. Well, what then? How shall this bosom multitude digest The senate’s courtesy? Let deeds express What’s like to be their words: “We did request it; We are the greater poll, and in true fear They gave us our demands.” Thus we debase The nature of our seats and make the rabble Call our cares fears, which will in time Break ope the locks o’ th’ Senate and bring in The crows to peck the eagles.

MENENIUS. Come, enough.

BRUTUS. Enough, with over-measure.

CORIOLANUS. No, take more! What may be sworn by, both divine and human, Seal what I end withal! This double worship— Where one part does disdain with cause, the other Insult without all reason, where gentry, title, wisdom Cannot conclude but by the yea and no Of general ignorance—it must omit Real necessities and give way the while To unstable slightness. Purpose so barred, it follows Nothing is done to purpose. Therefore, beseech you— You that will be less fearful than discreet, That love the fundamental part of state More than you doubt the change on’t, that prefer A noble life before a long, and wish To jump a body with a dangerous physic That’s sure of death without it—at once pluck out The multitudinous tongue; let them not lick The sweet which is their poison. Your dishonour Mangles true judgment and bereaves the state Of that integrity which should become’t, Not having the power to do the good it would For th’ ill which doth control’t.

BRUTUS. ’Has said enough.

SICINIUS. ’Has spoken like a traitor, and shall answer As traitors do.

CORIOLANUS. Thou wretch, despite o’erwhelm thee! What should the people do with these bald tribunes, On whom depending, their obedience fails To th’ greater bench. In a rebellion, When what’s not meet but what must be was law, Then were they chosen. In a better hour, Let what is meet be said it must be meet, And throw their power i’ th’ dust.

BRUTUS. Manifest treason.

SICINIUS. This a consul? No.

BRUTUS. The aediles, ho! Let him be apprehended.

Enter an Aedile.

SICINIUS. Go call the people;

[Exit Aedile.]

in whose name myself Attach thee as a traitorous innovator, A foe to th’ public weal. Obey, I charge thee, And follow to thine answer.

CORIOLANUS. Hence, old goat.

ALL PATRICIANS. We’ll surety him.

COMINIUS. [to Sicinius.] Aged sir, hands off.

CORIOLANUS. [to Sicinius.] Hence, rotten thing, or I shall shake thy bones Out of thy garments.

SICINIUS. Help, ye citizens!

Enter a rabble of Plebeians with the Aediles.

MENENIUS. On both sides more respect!

SICINIUS. Here’s he that would take from you all your power.

BRUTUS. Seize him, aediles.

ALL PLEBEIANS. Down with him, down with him!

SECOND SENATOR. Weapons, weapons, weapons!

[They all bustle about Coriolanus.]

Tribunes, patricians, citizens, what, ho! Sicinius, Brutus, Coriolanus, citizens!

ALL. Peace, peace, peace! Stay, hold, peace!

MENENIUS. What is about to be? I am out of breath. Confusion’s near. I cannot speak. You tribunes To th’ people!—Coriolanus, patience!— Speak, good Sicinius.

SICINIUS. Hear me, people! Peace!

ALL PLEBEIANS. Let’s hear our tribune. Peace! Speak, speak, speak.

SICINIUS. You are at point to lose your liberties. Martius would have all from you, Martius, Whom late you have named for consul.

MENENIUS. Fie, fie, fie! This is the way to kindle, not to quench.

FIRST SENATOR. To unbuild the city and to lay all flat.

SICINIUS. What is the city but the people?

ALL PLEBEIANS. True, The people are the city.

BRUTUS. By the consent of all, we were established The people’s magistrates.

ALL PLEBEIANS. You so remain.

MENENIUS. And so are like to do.

COMINIUS. That is the way to lay the city flat, To bring the roof to the foundation And bury all which yet distinctly ranges In heaps and piles of ruin.

SICINIUS. This deserves death.

BRUTUS. Or let us stand to our authority Or let us lose it. We do here pronounce, Upon the part o’ th’ people, in whose power We were elected theirs, Martius is worthy Of present death.

SICINIUS. Therefore lay hold of him, Bear him to th’ rock Tarpeian, and from thence Into destruction cast him.

BRUTUS. Aediles, seize him!

ALL PLEBEIANS. Yield, Martius, yield!

MENENIUS. Hear me one word. Beseech you, tribunes, hear me but a word.

AEDILES. Peace, peace!

MENENIUS. Be that you seem, truly your country’s friend, And temp’rately proceed to what you would Thus violently redress.

BRUTUS. Sir, those cold ways, That seem like prudent helps, are very poisonous Where the disease is violent.—Lay hands upon him, And bear him to the rock.

[Coriolanus draws his sword.]

CORIOLANUS. No; I’ll die here. There’s some among you have beheld me fighting. Come, try upon yourselves what you have seen me.

MENENIUS. Down with that sword!—Tribunes, withdraw awhile.

BRUTUS. Lay hands upon him!

MENENIUS. Help Martius, help! You that be noble, help him, young and old!

[In this mutiny the Tribunes, the Aediles and the People are beat in.]

MENENIUS. Go, get you to your house. Begone, away. All will be naught else.

SECOND SENATOR. Get you gone.

CORIOLANUS. Stand fast! We have as many friends as enemies.

MENENIUS. Shall it be put to that?

FIRST SENATOR. The gods forbid! I prithee, noble friend, home to thy house; Leave us to cure this cause.

MENENIUS. For ’tis a sore upon us You cannot tent yourself. Begone, beseech you.

COMINIUS. Come, sir, along with us.

CORIOLANUS. I would they were barbarians, as they are, Though in Rome littered, not Romans, as they are not, Though calved i’ th’ porch o’ th’ Capitol.

MENENIUS. Begone! Put not your worthy rage into your tongue. One time will owe another.

CORIOLANUS. On fair ground I could beat forty of them.

MENENIUS. I could myself Take up a brace o’ th’ best of them, yea, the two tribunes.

COMINIUS. But now ’tis odds beyond arithmetic, And manhood is called foolery when it stands Against a falling fabric. Will you hence, Before the tag return, whose rage doth rend Like interrupted waters, and o’erbear What they are used to bear?

MENENIUS. Pray you, begone. I’ll try whether my old wit be in request With those that have but little. This must be patched With cloth of any colour.

COMINIUS. Nay, come away.

[Exeunt Coriolanus and Cominius.]

PATRICIAN. This man has marred his fortune.

MENENIUS. His nature is too noble for the world. He would not flatter Neptune for his trident Or Jove for’s power to thunder. His heart’s his mouth; What his breast forges, that his tongue must vent, And, being angry, does forget that ever He heard the name of death.

[A noise within.]

Here’s goodly work.

PATRICIAN. I would they were abed!

MENENIUS. I would they were in Tiber! What the vengeance, Could he not speak ’em fair?

Enter Brutus and Sicinius with the rabble again.

SICINIUS. Where is this viper That would depopulate the city and Be every man himself?

MENENIUS. You worthy tribunes—

SICINIUS. He shall be thrown down the Tarpeian rock With rigorous hands. He hath resisted law, And therefore law shall scorn him further trial Than the severity of the public power Which he so sets at naught.

FIRST CITIZEN. He shall well know The noble tribunes are the people’s mouths, And we their hands.

ALL PLEBEIANS. He shall, sure on’t.

MENENIUS. Sir, sir—

SICINIUS. Peace!

MENENIUS. Do not cry havoc where you should but hunt With modest warrant.

SICINIUS. Sir, how comes’t that you Have holp to make this rescue?

MENENIUS. Hear me speak. As I do know the Consul’s worthiness, So can I name his faults.

SICINIUS. Consul? What consul?

MENENIUS. The consul Coriolanus.

BRUTUS. He consul?

ALL PLEBEIANS. No, no, no, no, no!

MENENIUS. If, by the Tribunes’ leave, and yours, good people, I may be heard, I would crave a word or two, The which shall turn you to no further harm Than so much loss of time.

SICINIUS. Speak briefly then, For we are peremptory to dispatch This viperous traitor. To eject him hence Were but one danger, and to keep him here Our certain death. Therefore it is decreed He dies tonight.

MENENIUS. Now the good gods forbid That our renowned Rome, whose gratitude Towards her deserved children is enrolled In Jove’s own book, like an unnatural dam Should now eat up her own.

SICINIUS. He’s a disease that must be cut away.

MENENIUS. O, he’s a limb that has but a disease— Mortal to cut it off; to cure it easy. What has he done to Rome that’s worthy death? Killing our enemies, the blood he hath lost— Which I dare vouch is more than that he hath By many an ounce—he dropt it for his country; And what is left, to lose it by his country Were to us all, that do’t and suffer it A brand to th’ end o’ th’ world.

SICINIUS. This is clean cam.

BRUTUS. Merely awry. When he did love his country, It honoured him.

MENENIUS. The service of the foot, Being once gangrened, is not then respected For what before it was.

BRUTUS. We’ll hear no more. Pursue him to his house, and pluck him thence, Lest his infection, being of catching nature, Spread further.

MENENIUS. One word more, one word! This tiger-footed rage, when it shall find The harm of unscanned swiftness, will too late, Tie leaden pounds to’s heels. Proceed by process, Lest parties—as he is beloved—break out And sack great Rome with Romans.

BRUTUS. If it were so—

SICINIUS. What do ye talk? Have we not had a taste of his obedience? Our aediles smote! Ourselves resisted? Come.

MENENIUS. Consider this: he has been bred i’ th’ wars Since he could draw a sword, and is ill schooled In bolted language; meal and bran together He throws without distinction. Give me leave, I’ll go to him and undertake to bring him Where he shall answer by a lawful form, In peace, to his utmost peril.

FIRST SENATOR. Noble tribunes, It is the humane way: the other course Will prove too bloody, and the end of it Unknown to the beginning.

SICINIUS. Noble Menenius, Be you then as the people’s officer.— Masters, lay down your weapons.

BRUTUS. Go not home.

SICINIUS. Meet on the marketplace. We’ll attend you there, Where if you bring not Martius, we’ll proceed In our first way.

MENENIUS. I’ll bring him to you. [To Senators.] Let me desire your company. He must come, Or what is worst will follow.

FIRST SENATOR. Pray you, let’s to him.

SCENE II. Rome. A room in Coriolanus’s house

Enter Coriolanus with Nobles.

CORIOLANUS. Let them pull all about mine ears, present me Death on the wheel or at wild horses’ heels, Or pile ten hills on the Tarpeian rock, That the precipitation might down stretch Below the beam of sight, yet will I still Be thus to them.

FIRST PATRICIAN. You do the nobler.

CORIOLANUS. I muse my mother Does not approve me further, who was wont To call them woollen vassals, things created To buy and sell with groats, to show bare heads In congregations, to yawn, be still, and wonder When one but of my ordinance stood up To speak of peace or war.

Enter Volumnia.

I talk of you. Why did you wish me milder? Would you have me False to my nature? Rather say I play The man I am.

VOLUMNIA. O, sir, sir, sir, I would have had you put your power well on Before you had worn it out.

CORIOLANUS. Let go.

VOLUMNIA. You might have been enough the man you are With striving less to be so. Lesser had been The thwartings of your dispositions if You had not showed them how ye were disposed Ere they lacked power to cross you.

CORIOLANUS. Let them hang!

VOLUMNIA. Ay, and burn too.

Enter Menenius with the Senators.

MENENIUS. Come, come, you have been too rough, something too rough. You must return and mend it.

FIRST SENATOR. There’s no remedy, Unless, by not so doing, our good city Cleave in the midst and perish.

VOLUMNIA. Pray be counselled. I have a heart as little apt as yours, But yet a brain that leads my use of anger To better vantage.

MENENIUS. Well said, noble woman. Before he should thus stoop to th’ herd—but that The violent fit o’ th’ time craves it as physic For the whole state—I would put mine armour on, Which I can scarcely bear.

CORIOLANUS. What must I do?

MENENIUS. Return to th’ Tribunes.

CORIOLANUS. Well, what then? What then?

MENENIUS. Repent what you have spoke.

CORIOLANUS. For them? I cannot do it to the gods. Must I then do’t to them?

VOLUMNIA. You are too absolute, Though therein you can never be too noble But when extremities speak. I have heard you say Honour and policy, like unsevered friends, I’ th’ war do grow together. Grant that, and tell me In peace what each of them by th’ other lose That they combine not there.

CORIOLANUS. Tush, tush!

MENENIUS. A good demand.

VOLUMNIA. If it be honour in your wars to seem The same you are not, which for your best ends You adopt your policy, how is it less or worse That it shall hold companionship in peace With honour as in war, since that to both It stands in like request?

CORIOLANUS. Why force you this?

VOLUMNIA. Because that now it lies you on to speak To th’ people, not by your own instruction, Nor by th’ matter which your heart prompts you, But with such words that are but rooted in Your tongue, though but bastards and syllables Of no allowance to your bosom’s truth. Now, this no more dishonours you at all Than to take in a town with gentle words, Which else would put you to your fortune and The hazard of much blood. I would dissemble with my nature where My fortunes and my friends at stake required I should do so in honour. I am in this Your wife, your son, these senators, the nobles; And you will rather show our general louts How you can frown than spend a fawn upon ’em For the inheritance of their loves and safeguard Of what that want might ruin.

MENENIUS. Noble lady!— Come, go with us; speak fair. You may salve so, Not what is dangerous present, but the loss Of what is past.

VOLUMNIA. I prithee now, my son, Go to them with this bonnet in thy hand, And thus far having stretched it—here be with them— Thy knee bussing the stones—for in such busines Action is eloquence, and the eyes of th’ ignorant More learned than the ears—waving thy head, Which often thus correcting thy stout heart, Now humble as the ripest mulberry That will not hold the handling. Or say to them Thou art their soldier and, being bred in broils, Hast not the soft way, which thou dost confess Were fit for thee to use, as they to claim, In asking their good loves; but thou wilt frame Thyself, forsooth, hereafter theirs, so far As thou hast power and person.

MENENIUS. This but done Even as she speaks, why, their hearts were yours; For they have pardons, being asked, as free As words to little purpose.

VOLUMNIA. Prithee now, Go, and be ruled; although I know thou hadst rather Follow thine enemy in a fiery gulf Than flatter him in a bower.

Enter Cominius.

Here is Cominius.

COMINIUS. I have been i’ th’ marketplace; and, sir, ’tis fit You make strong party or defend yourself By calmness or by absence. All’s in anger.

MENENIUS. Only fair speech.

COMINIUS. I think ’twill serve, if he Can thereto frame his spirit.

VOLUMNIA. He must, and will.— Prithee, now, say you will, and go about it.

CORIOLANUS. Must I go show them my unbarbed sconce? Must I With my base tongue give to my noble heart A lie that it must bear? Well, I will do’t. Yet, were there but this single plot to lose, This mould of Martius, they to dust should grind it And throw’t against the wind. To th’ marketplace! You have put me now to such a part which never I shall discharge to th’ life.

COMINIUS. Come, come, we’ll prompt you.

VOLUMNIA. I prithee now, sweet son, as thou hast said My praises made thee first a soldier, so, To have my praise for this, perform a part Thou hast not done before.

CORIOLANUS. Well, I must do’t. Away, my disposition, and possess me Some harlot’s spirit! My throat of war be turned, Which choired with my drum, into a pipe Small as an eunuch or the virgin voice That babies lulls asleep! The smiles of knaves Tent in my cheeks, and schoolboys’ tears take up The glasses of my sight! A beggar’s tongue Make motion through my lips, and my armed knees, Who bowed but in my stirrup, bend like his That hath received an alms! I will not do’t, Lest I surcease to honour mine own truth And, by my body’s action, teach my mind A most inherent baseness.

VOLUMNIA. At thy choice, then. To beg of thee, it is my more dishonour Than thou of them. Come all to ruin. Let Thy mother rather feel thy pride than fear Thy dangerous stoutness, for I mock at death With as big heart as thou. Do as thou list. Thy valiantness was mine; thou suck’dst it from me, But owe thy pride thyself.

CORIOLANUS. Pray, be content. Mother, I am going to the marketplace. Chide me no more. I’ll mountebank their loves, Cog their hearts from them, and come home beloved Of all the trades in Rome. Look, I am going. Commend me to my wife. I’ll return consul, Or never trust to what my tongue can do I’ th’ way of flattery further.

VOLUMNIA. Do your will.

[Exit Volumnia.]

COMINIUS. Away! The Tribunes do attend you. Arm yourself To answer mildly, for they are prepared With accusations, as I hear, more strong Than are upon you yet.

CORIOLANUS. The word is “mildly.” Pray you, let us go. Let them accuse me by invention, I Will answer in mine honour.

MENENIUS. Ay, but mildly.

CORIOLANUS. Well, mildly be it, then. Mildly.

BRUTUS. In this point charge him home, that he affects Tyrannical power. If he evade us there, Enforce him with his envy to the people, And that the spoil got on the Antiates Was ne’er distributed.

What, will he come?

AEDILE. He’s coming.

BRUTUS. How accompanied?

AEDILE. With old Menenius, and those senators That always favoured him.

SICINIUS. Have you a catalogue Of all the voices that we have procured, Set down by th’ poll?

AEDILE. I have. ’Tis ready.

SICINIUS. Have you collected them by tribes?

AEDILE. I have.

SICINIUS. Assemble presently the people hither; And when they hear me say “It shall be so I’ th’ right and strength o’ th’ commons,” be it either For death, for fine, or banishment, then let them If I say “Fine,” cry “Fine,” if “Death,” cry “Death,” Insisting on the old prerogative And power i’ th’ truth o’ th’ cause.

AEDILE. I shall inform them.

BRUTUS. And when such time they have begun to cry, Let them not cease, but with a din confused Enforce the present execution Of what we chance to sentence.

AEDILE. Very well.

SICINIUS. Make them be strong and ready for this hint When we shall hap to give’t them.

BRUTUS. Go about it.

Put him to choler straight. He hath been used Ever to conquer and to have his worth Of contradiction. Being once chafed, he cannot Be reined again to temperance; then he speaks What’s in his heart; and that is there which looks With us to break his neck.

Enter Coriolanus, Menenius and Cominius with other Senators.

SICINIUS. Well, here he comes.

MENENIUS. Calmly, I do beseech you.

CORIOLANUS. Ay, as an ostler, that for th’ poorest piece Will bear the knave by th’ volume.—Th’ honoured gods Keep Rome in safety and the chairs of justice Supplied with worthy men! Plant love among’s! Throng our large temples with the shows of peace And not our streets with war!

FIRST SENATOR. Amen, amen.

MENENIUS. A noble wish.

Enter the Aedile with the Plebeians.

SICINIUS. Draw near, ye people.

AEDILE. List to your tribunes. Audience! Peace, I say!

CORIOLANUS. First, hear me speak.

BOTH TRIBUNES. Well, say.—Peace, ho!

CORIOLANUS. Shall I be charged no further than this present? Must all determine here?

SICINIUS. I do demand If you submit you to the people’s voices, Allow their officers, and are content To suffer lawful censure for such faults As shall be proved upon you.

CORIOLANUS. I am content.

MENENIUS. Lo, citizens, he says he is content. The warlike service he has done, consider. Think Upon the wounds his body bears, which show Like graves i’ th’ holy churchyard.

CORIOLANUS. Scratches with briars, Scars to move laughter only.

MENENIUS. Consider further, That when he speaks not like a citizen, You find him like a soldier. Do not take His rougher accents for malicious sounds, But, as I say, such as become a soldier Rather than envy you.

COMINIUS. Well, well, no more.

CORIOLANUS. What is the matter, That, being passed for consul with full voice, I am so dishonoured that the very hour You take it off again?

SICINIUS. Answer to us.

CORIOLANUS. Say then. ’Tis true, I ought so.

SICINIUS. We charge you that you have contrived to take From Rome all seasoned office and to wind Yourself into a power tyrannical, For which you are a traitor to the people.

CORIOLANUS. How? Traitor?

MENENIUS. Nay, temperately! Your promise.

CORIOLANUS. The fires i’ th’ lowest hell fold in the people! Call me their traitor? Thou injurious tribune! Within thine eyes sat twenty thousand deaths, In thy hands clutched as many millions, in Thy lying tongue both numbers, I would say “Thou liest” unto thee with a voice as free As I do pray the gods.

SICINIUS. Mark you this, people?

ALL PLEBEIANS. To th’ rock, to th’ rock with him!

SICINIUS. Peace! We need not put new matter to his charge. What you have seen him do and heard him speak, Beating your officers, cursing yourselves, Opposing laws with strokes, and here defying Those whose great power must try him—even this, So criminal and in such capital kind, Deserves th’ extremest death.

BRUTUS. But since he hath Served well for Rome—

CORIOLANUS. What do you prate of service?

BRUTUS. I talk of that that know it.

CORIOLANUS. You?

MENENIUS. Is this the promise that you made your mother?

COMINIUS. Know, I pray you—

CORIOLANUS. I’ll know no further. Let them pronounce the steep Tarpeian death, Vagabond exile, flaying, pent to linger But with a grain a day, I would not buy Their mercy at the price of one fair word, Nor check my courage for what they can give, To have’t with saying “Good morrow.”

SICINIUS. For that he has, As much as in him lies, from time to time Envied against the people, seeking means To pluck away their power, as now at last Given hostile strokes, and that not in the presence Of dreaded justice, but on the ministers That do distribute it, in the name o’ th’ people And in the power of us the Tribunes, we, Even from this instant, banish him our city In peril of precipitation From off the rock Tarpeian, never more To enter our Rome gates. I’ th’ people’s name, I say it shall be so.

ALL PLEBEIANS. It shall be so, it shall be so! Let him away! He’s banished, and it shall be so.

COMINIUS. Hear me, my masters and my common friends—

SICINIUS. He’s sentenced. No more hearing.

COMINIUS. Let me speak. I have been consul and can show for Rome Her enemies’ marks upon me. I do love My country’s good with a respect more tender, More holy and profound, than mine own life, My dear wife’s estimate, her womb’s increase, And treasure of my loins. Then if I would Speak that—

SICINIUS. We know your drift. Speak what?

BRUTUS. There’s no more to be said, but he is banished As enemy to the people and his country. It shall be so.

ALL PLEBEIANS. It shall be so, it shall be so!

CORIOLANUS. You common cry of curs, whose breath I hate As reek o’ th’ rotten fens, whose loves I prize As the dead carcasses of unburied men That do corrupt my air, I banish you! And here remain with your uncertainty; Let every feeble rumour shake your hearts; Your enemies, with nodding of their plumes, Fan you into despair! Have the power still To banish your defenders, till at length Your ignorance—which finds not till it feels, Making but reservation of yourselves, Still your own foes—deliver you, As most abated captives to some nation That won you without blows! Despising For you the city, thus I turn my back. There is a world elsewhere.

[Exeunt Coriolanus, Cominius, with other Senators.]

AEDILE. The people’s enemy is gone, is gone.

ALL PLEBEIANS. Our enemy is banished; he is gone. Hoo, hoo!

[They all shout and throw up their caps.]

SICINIUS. Go see him out at gates, and follow him, As he hath followed you, with all despite. Give him deserved vexation. Let a guard Attend us through the city.

ALL PLEBEIANS. Come, come, let’s see him out at gates! Come! The gods preserve our noble tribunes! Come.

SCENE I. Rome. Before a gate of the city

Enter Coriolanus, Volumnia, Virgilia, Menenius, Cominius with the young nobility of Rome.

CORIOLANUS. Come, leave your tears. A brief farewell. The beast With many heads butts me away. Nay, mother, Where is your ancient courage? You were used To say extremities was the trier of spirits; That common chances common men could bear; That when the sea was calm, all boats alike Showed mastership in floating; fortune’s blows When most struck home, being gentle wounded craves A noble cunning. You were used to load me With precepts that would make invincible The heart that conned them.

VIRGILIA. O heavens! O heavens!

CORIOLANUS. Nay, I prithee, woman—

VOLUMNIA. Now the red pestilence strike all trades in Rome, And occupations perish!

CORIOLANUS. What, what, what! I shall be loved when I am lacked. Nay, mother, Resume that spirit when you were wont to say If you had been the wife of Hercules, Six of his labours you’d have done and saved Your husband so much sweat.—Cominius, Droop not. Adieu.—Farewell, my wife, my mother. I’ll do well yet.—Thou old and true Menenius, Thy tears are salter than a younger man’s And venomous to thine eyes.—My sometime general, I have seen thee stern, and thou hast oft beheld Heart-hard’ning spectacles. Tell these sad women ’Tis fond to wail inevitable strokes As ’tis to laugh at ’em.—My mother, you wot well My hazards still have been your solace, and— Believe’t not lightly—though I go alone, Like to a lonely dragon that his fen Makes feared and talked of more than seen, your son Will or exceed the common or be caught With cautelous baits and practice.

VOLUMNIA. My first son, Whither wilt thou go? Take good Cominius With thee awhile. Determine on some course More than a wild exposture to each chance That starts i’ th’ way before thee.

VIRGILIA. O the gods!

COMINIUS. I’ll follow thee a month, devise with thee Where thou shalt rest, that thou mayst hear of us And we of thee; so if the time thrust forth A cause for thy repeal, we shall not send O’er the vast world to seek a single man And lose advantage, which doth ever cool I’ th’ absence of the needer.

CORIOLANUS. Fare ye well. Thou hast years upon thee, and thou art too full Of the wars’ surfeits to go rove with one That’s yet unbruised. Bring me but out at gate.— Come, my sweet wife, my dearest mother, and My friends of noble touch. When I am forth, Bid me farewell, and smile. I pray you, come. While I remain above the ground, you shall Hear from me still, and never of me aught But what is like me formerly.

MENENIUS. That’s worthily As any ear can hear. Come, let’s not weep. If I could shake off but one seven years From these old arms and legs, by the good gods, I’d with thee every foot.

CORIOLANUS. Give me thy hand. Come.

SCENE II. Rome. A street near the gate

Enter two Tribunes, Sicinius, Brutus with the Aedile.

SICINIUS. Bid them all home. He’s gone, and we’ll no further. The nobility are vexed, whom we see have sided In his behalf.

BRUTUS. Now we have shown our power, Let us seem humbler after it is done Than when it was a-doing.

SICINIUS. Bid them home. Say their great enemy is gone, and they Stand in their ancient strength.

BRUTUS. Dismiss them home.

Here comes his mother.

Enter Volumnia, Virgilia and Menenius.

SICINIUS. Let’s not meet her.

BRUTUS. Why?

SICINIUS. They say she’s mad.

BRUTUS. They have ta’en note of us. Keep on your way.

VOLUMNIA. O, you’re well met. The hoarded plague o’ th’ gods Requite your love!

MENENIUS. Peace, peace! Be not so loud.

VOLUMNIA. If that I could for weeping, you should hear— Nay, and you shall hear some. [To Sicinius.] Will you be gone?

VIRGILIA. [To Brutus.] You shall stay too. I would I had the power To say so to my husband.

SICINIUS. Are you mankind?

VOLUMNIA. Ay, fool, is that a shame? Note but this, fool. Was not a man my father? Hadst thou foxship To banish him that struck more blows for Rome Than thou hast spoken words?

SICINIUS. O blessed heavens!

VOLUMNIA. More noble blows than ever thou wise words, And for Rome’s good. I’ll tell thee what—yet go. Nay, but thou shalt stay too. I would my son Were in Arabia and thy tribe before him, His good sword in his hand.

SICINIUS. What then?

VIRGILIA. What then? He’d make an end of thy posterity.

VOLUMNIA. Bastards and all. Good man, the wounds that he does bear for Rome!

MENENIUS. Come, come, peace.

SICINIUS. I would he had continued to his country As he began, and not unknit himself The noble knot he made.

BRUTUS. I would he had.

VOLUMNIA. “I would he had?” ’Twas you incensed the rabble. Cats, that can judge as fitly of his worth As I can of those mysteries which heaven Will not have Earth to know.

BRUTUS. Pray, let’s go.

VOLUMNIA. Now, pray, sir, get you gone. You have done a brave deed. Ere you go, hear this: As far as doth the Capitol exceed The meanest house in Rome, so far my son— This lady’s husband here, this, do you see?— Whom you have banished, does exceed you all.

BRUTUS. Well, well, we’ll leave you.

SICINIUS. Why stay we to be baited With one that wants her wits?

[Exeunt Tribunes.]

VOLUMNIA. Take my prayers with you. I would the gods had nothing else to do But to confirm my curses. Could I meet ’em But once a day, it would unclog my heart Of what lies heavy to’t.

MENENIUS. You have told them home, And, by my troth, you have cause. You’ll sup with me?

VOLUMNIA. Anger’s my meat. I sup upon myself And so shall starve with feeding. Come, let’s go. Leave this faint puling, and lament as I do, In anger, Juno-like. Come, come, come.

MENENIUS. Fie, fie, fie!

SCENE III. A highway between Rome and Antium

Enter a Roman and a Volsce.

ROMAN. I know you well, sir, and you know me. Your name I think is Adrian.

VOLSCE. It is so, sir. Truly, I have forgot you.

ROMAN. I am a Roman, and my services are, as you are, against ’em. Know you me yet?

VOLSCE. Nicanor, no?

ROMAN. The same, sir.

VOLSCE. You had more beard when I last saw you, but your favour is well approved by your tongue. What’s the news in Rome? I have a note from the Volscian state to find you out there. You have well saved me a day’s journey.

ROMAN. There hath been in Rome strange insurrections, the people against the senators, patricians, and nobles.

VOLSCE. Hath been? Is it ended, then? Our state thinks not so. They are in a most warlike preparation and hope to come upon them in the heat of their division.

ROMAN. The main blaze of it is past, but a small thing would make it flame again; for the nobles receive so to heart the banishment of that worthy Coriolanus that they are in a ripe aptness to take all power from the people and to pluck from them their tribunes for ever. This lies glowing, I can tell you, and is almost mature for the violent breaking out.

VOLSCE. Coriolanus banished?

ROMAN. Banished, sir.

VOLSCE. You will be welcome with this intelligence, Nicanor.

ROMAN. The day serves well for them now. I have heard it said the fittest time to corrupt a man’s wife is when she’s fallen out with her husband. Your noble Tullus Aufidius will appear well in these wars, his great opposer Coriolanus being now in no request of his country.

VOLSCE. He cannot choose. I am most fortunate thus accidentally to encounter you. You have ended my business, and I will merrily accompany you home.

ROMAN. I shall between this and supper tell you most strange things from Rome, all tending to the good of their adversaries. Have you an army ready, say you?

VOLSCE. A most royal one. The centurions and their charges, distinctly billeted, already in th’ entertainment, and to be on foot at an hour’s warning.

ROMAN. I am joyful to hear of their readiness and am the man, I think, that shall set them in present action. So, sir, heartily well met, and most glad of your company.

VOLSCE. You take my part from me, sir. I have the most cause to be glad of yours.

ROMAN. Well, let us go together.

SCENE IV. Antium. Before Aufidius’s house

Enter Coriolanus in mean apparel, disguised and muffled.

CORIOLANUS. A goodly city is this Antium. City, ’Tis I that made thy widows. Many an heir Of these fair edifices ’fore my wars Have I heard groan and drop. Then know me not, Lest that thy wives with spits and boys with stones In puny battle slay me.

Enter a Citizen.

Save you, sir.

CITIZEN. And you.

CORIOLANUS. Direct me, if it be your will, Where great Aufidius lies. Is he in Antium?

CITIZEN. He is, and feasts the nobles of the state At his house this night.

CORIOLANUS. Which is his house, beseech you?

CITIZEN. This here before you.

CORIOLANUS. Thank you, sir. Farewell.

[Exit Citizen.]

O world, thy slippery turns! Friends now fast sworn, Whose double bosoms seems to wear one heart, Whose hours, whose bed, whose meal and exercise Are still together, who twin, as ’twere, in love Unseparable, shall within this hour, On a dissension of a doit, break out To bitterest enmity; so fellest foes, Whose passions and whose plots have broke their sleep To take the one the other, by some chance, Some trick not worth an egg, shall grow dear friends And interjoin their issues. So with me: My birthplace hate I, and my love’s upon This enemy town. I’ll enter. If he slay me, He does fair justice; if he give me way, I’ll do his country service.

SCENE V. Antium. A hall in Aufidius’s house

Music plays. Enter a Servingman.

FIRST SERVINGMAN. Wine, wine, wine! What service is here? I think our fellows are asleep.

Enter another Servingman.

SECOND SERVINGMAN. Where’s Cotus? My master calls for him. Cotus!

CORIOLANUS. A goodly house. The feast smells well, but I Appear not like a guest.

Enter the First Servingman.

FIRST SERVINGMAN. What would you have, friend? Whence are you? Here’s no place for you. Pray go to the door.

CORIOLANUS. I have deserved no better entertainment In being Coriolanus.

Enter Second Servingman.

SECOND SERVINGMAN. Whence are you, sir?—Has the porter his eyes in his head, that he gives entrance to such companions?—Pray, get you out.

CORIOLANUS. Away!

SECOND SERVINGMAN. Away? Get you away.

CORIOLANUS. Now th’ art troublesome.

SECOND SERVINGMAN. Are you so brave? I’ll have you talked with anon.

Enter Third Servingman; the First, entering, meets him.

THIRD SERVINGMAN. What fellow’s this?

FIRST SERVINGMAN. A strange one as ever I looked on. I cannot get him out o’ th’ house. Prithee call my master to him.

THIRD SERVINGMAN. What have you to do here, fellow? Pray you, avoid the house.

CORIOLANUS. Let me but stand. I will not hurt your hearth.

THIRD SERVINGMAN. What are you?

CORIOLANUS. A gentleman.

THIRD SERVINGMAN. A marv’llous poor one.

CORIOLANUS. True, so I am.

THIRD SERVINGMAN. Pray you, poor gentleman, take up some other station. Here’s no place for you. Pray you, avoid. Come.

CORIOLANUS. Follow your function, go, and batten on cold bits.

[Pushes him away from him.]

THIRD SERVINGMAN. What, you will not?—Prithee, tell my master what a strange guest he has here.

SECOND SERVINGMAN. And I shall.

THIRD SERVINGMAN. Where dwell’st thou?

CORIOLANUS. Under the canopy.

THIRD SERVINGMAN. Under the canopy?

CORIOLANUS. Ay.

THIRD SERVINGMAN. Where’s that?

CORIOLANUS. I’ th’ city of kites and crows.

THIRD SERVINGMAN. I’ th’ city of kites and crows? What an ass it is! Then thou dwell’st with daws too?

CORIOLANUS. No, I serve not thy master.

THIRD SERVINGMAN. How, sir? Do you meddle with my master?

CORIOLANUS. Ay, ’tis an honester service than to meddle with thy mistress. Thou prat’st and prat’st. Serve with thy trencher, hence!

[Beats him away.]

[Exit Third Servingman.]

Enter Aufidius with the Second Servingman.

AUFIDIUS. Where is this fellow?

SECOND SERVINGMAN. Here, sir. I’d have beaten him like a dog, but for disturbing the lords within.

AUFIDIUS. Whence com’st thou? What wouldst thou? Thy name? Why speak’st not? Speak, man. What’s thy name?

CORIOLANUS. [Removing his muffler.] If, Tullus, Not yet thou know’st me, and, seeing me, dost not Think me for the man I am, necessity Commands me name myself.

AUFIDIUS. What is thy name?

CORIOLANUS. A name unmusical to the Volscians’ ears And harsh in sound to thine.

AUFIDIUS. Say, what’s thy name? Thou has a grim appearance, and thy face Bears a command in’t. Though thy tackle’s torn, Thou show’st a noble vessel. What’s thy name?

CORIOLANUS. Prepare thy brow to frown. Know’st thou me yet?

AUFIDIUS. I know thee not. Thy name?

CORIOLANUS. My name is Caius Martius, who hath done To thee particularly and to all the Volsces Great hurt and mischief; thereto witness may My surname Coriolanus. The painful service, The extreme dangers, and the drops of blood Shed for my thankless country are requited But with that surname, a good memory And witness of the malice and displeasure Which thou shouldst bear me. Only that name remains. The cruelty and envy of the people, Permitted by our dastard nobles, who Have all forsook me, hath devoured the rest, And suffered me by th’ voice of slaves to be Whooped out of Rome. Now this extremity Hath brought me to thy hearth, not out of hope— Mistake me not—to save my life; for if I had feared death, of all the men i’ th’ world I would have ’voided thee, but in mere spite, To be full quit of those my banishers, Stand I before thee here. Then if thou hast A heart of wreak in thee, that wilt revenge Thine own particular wrongs and stop those maims Of shame seen through thy country, speed thee straight And make my misery serve thy turn. So use it That my revengeful services may prove As benefits to thee, for I will fight Against my cankered country with the spleen Of all the under fiends. But if so be Thou dar’st not this, and that to prove more fortunes Thou ’rt tired, then, in a word, I also am Longer to live most weary, and present My throat to thee and to thy ancient malice, Which not to cut would show thee but a fool, Since I have ever followed thee with hate, Drawn tuns of blood out of thy country’s breast, And cannot live but to thy shame, unless It be to do thee service.

AUFIDIUS. O Martius, Martius, Each word thou hast spoke hath weeded from my heart A root of ancient envy. If Jupiter Should from yond cloud speak divine things And say ’tis true, I’d not believe them more Than thee, all-noble Martius. Let me twine Mine arms about that body, whereagainst My grained ash an hundred times hath broke And scarred the moon with splinters. Here I clip The anvil of my sword and do contest As hotly and as nobly with thy love As ever in ambitious strength I did Contend against thy valour. Know thou first, I loved the maid I married; never man Sighed truer breath. But that I see thee here, Thou noble thing, more dances my rapt heart Than when I first my wedded mistress saw Bestride my threshold. Why, thou Mars, I tell thee We have a power on foot, and I had purpose Once more to hew thy target from thy brawn Or lose mine arm for’t. Thou hast beat me out Twelve several times, and I have nightly since Dreamt of encounters ’twixt thyself and me; We have been down together in my sleep, Unbuckling helms, fisting each other’s throat, And waked half dead with nothing. Worthy Martius, Had we no other quarrel else to Rome but that Thou art thence banished, we would muster all From twelve to seventy and, pouring war Into the bowels of ungrateful Rome, Like a bold flood o’erbear ’t. O, come, go in, And take our friendly senators by th’ hands, Who now are here, taking their leaves of me, Who am prepared against your territories, Though not for Rome itself.

CORIOLANUS. You bless me, gods!

AUFIDIUS. Therefore, most absolute sir, if thou wilt have The leading of thine own revenges, take Th’ one half of my commission and set down— As best thou art experienced, since thou know’st Thy country’s strength and weakness—thine own ways, Whether to knock against the gates of Rome, Or rudely visit them in parts remote To fright them ere destroy. But come in. Let me commend thee first to those that shall Say yea to thy desires. A thousand welcomes! And more a friend than e’er an enemy— Yet, Martius, that was much. Your hand. Most welcome!

[Exeunt Coriolanus and Aufidius.]

Two of the Servingmen come forward.

FIRST SERVINGMAN. Here’s a strange alteration!

SECOND SERVINGMAN. By my hand, I had thought to have strucken him with a cudgel, and yet my mind gave me his clothes made a false report of him.

FIRST SERVINGMAN. What an arm he has! He turned me about with his finger and his thumb as one would set up a top.

SECOND SERVINGMAN. Nay, I knew by his face that there was something in him. He had, sir, a kind of face, methought—I cannot tell how to term it.

FIRST SERVINGMAN. He had so, looking as it were—Would I were hanged, but I thought there was more in him than I could think.

SECOND SERVINGMAN. So did I, I’ll be sworn. He is simply the rarest man i’ th’ world.

FIRST SERVINGMAN. I think he is. But a greater soldier than he you wot one.

SECOND SERVINGMAN. Who, my master?

FIRST SERVINGMAN. Nay, it’s no matter for that.

SECOND SERVINGMAN. Worth six on him.

FIRST SERVINGMAN. Nay, not so neither. But I take him to be the greater soldier.

SECOND SERVINGMAN. Faith, look you, one cannot tell how to say that. For the defence of a town our general is excellent.

FIRST SERVINGMAN. Ay, and for an assault too.

Enter the Third Servingman.

THIRD SERVINGMAN. O slaves, I can tell you news, news, you rascals!

FIRST and SECOND SERVINGMAN. What, what, what? Let’s partake.

THIRD SERVINGMAN. I would not be a Roman, of all nations; I had as lief be a condemned man.

FIRST and SECOND SERVINGMAN. Wherefore? Wherefore?

THIRD SERVINGMAN. Why, here’s he that was wont to thwack our general, Caius Martius.

FIRST SERVINGMAN. Why do you say, “thwack our general”?

THIRD SERVINGMAN. I do not say “thwack our general,” but he was always good enough for him.

SECOND SERVINGMAN. Come, we are fellows and friends. He was ever too hard for him; I have heard him say so himself.

FIRST SERVINGMAN. He was too hard for him directly, to say the troth on’t, before Corioles; he scotched him and notched him like a carbonado.

SECOND SERVINGMAN. An he had been cannibally given, he might have boiled and eaten him too.

FIRST SERVINGMAN. But, more of thy news?

THIRD SERVINGMAN. Why, he is so made on here within as if he were son and heir to Mars; set at upper end o’ th’ table; no question asked him by any of the senators but they stand bald before him. Our general himself makes a mistress of him, sanctifies himself with’s hand, and turns up the white o’ th’ eye to his discourse. But the bottom of the news is, our general is cut i’ th’ middle and but one half of what he was yesterday, for the other has half, by the entreaty and grant of the whole table. He’ll go, he says, and sowl the porter of Rome gates by th’ ears. He will mow all down before him and leave his passage polled.

SECOND SERVINGMAN. And he’s as like to do’t as any man I can imagine.

THIRD SERVINGMAN. Do’t? He will do’t! For look you, sir, he has as many friends as enemies, which friends, sir, as it were, durst not, look you, sir, show themselves, as we term it, his friends whilest he’s in directitude.

FIRST SERVINGMAN. Directitude? What’s that?

THIRD SERVINGMAN. But when they shall see, sir, his crest up again, and the man in blood, they will out of their burrows like coneys after rain, and revel all with him.

FIRST SERVINGMAN. But when goes this forward?

THIRD SERVINGMAN. Tomorrow, today, presently. You shall have the drum struck up this afternoon. ’Tis as it were parcel of their feast, and to be executed ere they wipe their lips.

SECOND SERVINGMAN. Why then, we shall have a stirring world again. This peace is nothing but to rust iron, increase tailors, and breed ballad-makers.

FIRST SERVINGMAN. Let me have war, say I. It exceeds peace as far as day does night. It’s sprightly walking, audible, and full of vent. Peace is a very apoplexy, lethargy; mulled, deaf, sleepy, insensible; a getter of more bastard children than war’s a destroyer of men.

SECOND SERVINGMAN. ’Tis so, and as war in some sort, may be said to be a ravisher, so it cannot be denied but peace is a great maker of cuckolds.

FIRST SERVINGMAN. Ay, and it makes men hate one another.

THIRD SERVINGMAN. Reason: because they then less need one another. The wars for my money! I hope to see Romans as cheap as Volscians. They are rising; they are rising.

ALL. In, in, in, in!

SCENE VI. Rome. A public place

Enter the two Tribunes. Sicinius and Brutus.

SICINIUS. We hear not of him, neither need we fear him. His remedies are tame—the present peace, And quietness of the people, which before Were in wild hurry. Here do we make his friends Blush that the world goes well, who rather had, Though they themselves did suffer by’t, behold Dissentious numbers pest’ring streets than see Our tradesmen singing in their shops and going About their functions friendly.

BRUTUS. We stood to’t in good time.

Enter Menenius.

Is this Menenius?

SICINIUS. ’Tis he, ’tis he. O, he is grown most kind Of late.—Hail, sir!

MENENIUS. Hail to you both.

SICINIUS. Your Coriolanus is not much missed But with his friends. The commonwealth doth stand, And so would do were he more angry at it.

MENENIUS. All’s well, and might have been much better if He could have temporized.

SICINIUS. Where is he, hear you?

MENENIUS. Nay, I hear nothing; His mother and his wife hear nothing from him.

Enter three or four Citizens.

ALL CITIZENS. The gods preserve you both!

SICINIUS. Good e’en, our neighbours.

BRUTUS. Good e’en to you all, good e’en to you all.

FIRST CITIZEN. Ourselves, our wives, and children, on our knees Are bound to pray for you both.

SICINIUS. Live and thrive!

BRUTUS. Farewell, kind neighbours. We wished Coriolanus Had loved you as we did.

CITIZENS. Now the gods keep you!

BOTH TRIBUNES. Farewell, farewell.

[Exeunt Citizens.]

SICINIUS. This is a happier and more comely time Than when these fellows ran about the streets Crying confusion.

BRUTUS. Caius Martius was A worthy officer i’ th’ war, but insolent, O’ercome with pride, ambitious, past all thinking Self-loving.

SICINIUS. And affecting one sole throne, without assistance.

MENENIUS. I think not so.

SICINIUS. We should by this, to all our lamentation, If he had gone forth consul, found it so.

BRUTUS. The gods have well prevented it, and Rome Sits safe and still without him.

AEDILE. Worthy tribunes, There is a slave, whom we have put in prison, Reports the Volsces with two several powers Are entered in the Roman territories, And with the deepest malice of the war Destroy what lies before ’em.

MENENIUS. ’Tis Aufidius, Who, hearing of our Martius’ banishment, Thrusts forth his horns again into the world, Which were inshelled when Martius stood for Rome, And durst not once peep out.

SICINIUS. Come, what talk you of Martius?

BRUTUS. Go see this rumourer whipped. It cannot be The Volsces dare break with us.

MENENIUS. Cannot be? We have record that very well it can, And three examples of the like hath been Within my age. But reason with the fellow Before you punish him, where he heard this, Lest you shall chance to whip your information And beat the messenger who bids beware Of what is to be dreaded.

SICINIUS. Tell not me. I know this cannot be.

BRUTUS. Not possible.

MESSENGER. The nobles in great earnestness are going All to the Senate House. Some news is coming That turns their countenances.

SICINIUS. ’Tis this slave— Go whip him ’fore the people’s eyes—his raising, Nothing but his report.

MESSENGER. Yes, worthy sir, The slave’s report is seconded, and more, More fearful, is delivered.

SICINIUS. What more fearful?

MESSENGER. It is spoke freely out of many mouths— How probable I do not know—that Martius, Joined with Aufidius, leads a power ’gainst Rome And vows revenge as spacious as between The young’st and oldest thing.

SICINIUS. This is most likely!

BRUTUS. Raised only that the weaker sort may wish Good Martius home again.

SICINIUS. The very trick on ’t.

MENENIUS. This is unlikely; He and Aufidius can no more atone Than violent’st contrariety.

Enter a Second Messenger.

SECOND MESSENGER. You are sent for to the Senate. A fearful army, led by Caius Martius Associated with Aufidius, rages Upon our territories, and have already O’erborne their way, consumed with fire and took What lay before them.

COMINIUS. O, you have made good work!

MENENIUS. What news? What news?

COMINIUS. You have holp to ravish your own daughters and To melt the city leads upon your pates, To see your wives dishonoured to your noses—

MENENIUS. What’s the news? What’s the news?

COMINIUS. Your temples burned in their cement, and Your franchises, whereon you stood, confined Into an auger’s bore.

MENENIUS. Pray now, your news?— You have made fair work, I fear me.—Pray, your news? If Martius should be joined with Volscians—

COMINIUS. If? He is their god; he leads them like a thing Made by some other deity than Nature, That shapes man better; and they follow him Against us brats with no less confidence Than boys pursuing summer butterflies Or butchers killing flies.

MENENIUS. You have made good work, You and your apron-men, you that stood so much Upon the voice of occupation and The breath of garlic eaters!

COMINIUS. He’ll shake your Rome about your ears.

MENENIUS. As Hercules did shake down mellow fruit. You have made fair work.

BRUTUS. But is this true, sir?

COMINIUS. Ay, and you’ll look pale Before you find it other. All the regions Do smilingly revolt, and who resists Are mocked for valiant ignorance And perish constant fools. Who is’t can blame him? Your enemies and his find something in him.

MENENIUS. We are all undone unless The noble man have mercy.

MENENIUS. ’Tis true. If he were putting to my house the brand That should consume it, I have not the face To say “Beseech you, cease.”—You have made fair hands, You and your crafts! You have crafted fair!

COMINIUS. Who shall ask it? The Tribunes cannot do’t for shame; the people Deserve such pity of him as the wolf Does of the shepherds. For his best friends, if they Should say “Be good to Rome,” they charged him even As those should do that had deserved his hate And therein showed like enemies.

COMINIUS. You have brought A trembling upon Rome such as was never S’ incapable of help.

TRIBUNES. Say not we brought it.

MENENIUS. How? Was it we? We loved him, but like beasts And cowardly nobles, gave way unto your clusters, Who did hoot him out o’ th’ city.

COMINIUS. But I fear They’ll roar him in again. Tullus Aufidius, The second name of men, obeys his points As if he were his officer. Desperation Is all the policy, strength, and defence That Rome can make against them.

Enter a troop of Citizens.

MENENIUS. Here comes the clusters.— And is Aufidius with him? You are they That made the air unwholesome when you cast Your stinking, greasy caps in hooting at Coriolanus’ exile. Now he’s coming, And not a hair upon a soldier’s head Which will not prove a whip. As many coxcombs As you threw caps up will he tumble down And pay you for your voices. ’Tis no matter. If he could burn us all into one coal We have deserved it.

ALL CITIZENS. Faith, we hear fearful news.

FIRST CITIZEN. For mine own part, When I said banish him, I said ’twas pity.

SECOND CITIZEN. And so did I.

THIRD CITIZEN. And so did I. And, to say the truth, so did very many of us. That we did we did for the best; and though we willingly consented to his banishment, yet it was against our will.

COMINIUS. You are goodly things, you voices!

MENENIUS. You have made good work, you and your cry!— Shall’s to the Capitol?

COMINIUS. O, ay, what else?

[Exeunt Cominius and Menenius.]

SICINIUS. Go, masters, get you home. Be not dismayed. These are a side that would be glad to have This true which they so seem to fear. Go home, And show no sign of fear.

FIRST CITIZEN. The gods be good to us! Come, masters, let’s home. I ever said we were i’ th’ wrong when we banished him.

SECOND CITIZEN. So did we all. But, come, let’s home.

BRUTUS. I do not like this news.

SICINIUS. Nor I.

BRUTUS. Let’s to the Capitol. Would half my wealth Would buy this for a lie!

SICINIUS. Pray let’s go.

SCENE VII. A camp at a short distance from Rome

Enter Aufidius with his Lieutenant.

AUFIDIUS. Do they still fly to th’ Roman?

LIEUTENANT. I do not know what witchcraft’s in him, but Your soldiers use him as the grace ’fore meat, Their talk at table, and their thanks at end; And you are dark’ned in this action, sir, Even by your own.

AUFIDIUS. I cannot help it now, Unless by using means I lame the foot Of our design. He bears himself more proudlier, Even to my person, than I thought he would When first I did embrace him. Yet his nature In that’s no changeling, and I must excuse What cannot be amended.

LIEUTENANT. Yet I wish, sir— I mean for your particular—you had not Joined in commission with him, but either Had borne the action of yourself or else To him had left it solely.

AUFIDIUS. I understand thee well, and be thou sure, When he shall come to his account, he knows not What I can urge against him, although it seems, And so he thinks and is no less apparent To th’ vulgar eye, that he bears all things fairly, And shows good husbandry for the Volscian state, Fights dragonlike, and does achieve as soon As draw his sword; yet he hath left undone That which shall break his neck or hazard mine Whene’er we come to our account.

LIEUTENANT. Sir, I beseech you, think you he’ll carry Rome?

AUFIDIUS. All places yield to him ere he sits down, And the nobility of Rome are his; The Senators and Patricians love him too. The Tribunes are no soldiers, and their people Will be as rash in the repeal as hasty To expel him thence. I think he’ll be to Rome As is the osprey to the fish, who takes it By sovereignty of nature. First, he was A noble servant to them, but he could not Carry his honours even. Whether ’twas pride, Which out of daily fortune ever taints The happy man; whether defect of judgment, To fail in the disposing of those chances Which he was lord of; or whether nature, Not to be other than one thing, not moving From th’ casque to th’ cushion, but commanding peace Even with the same austerity and garb As he controlled the war; but one of these— As he hath spices of them all—not all, For I dare so far free him—made him feared, So hated, and so banished. But he has a merit To choke it in the utt’rance. So our virtues Lie in th’ interpretation of the time, And power, unto itself most commendable, Hath not a tomb so evident as a chair T’ extol what it hath done. One fire drives out one fire, one nail one nail; Rights by rights falter; strengths by strengths do fail. Come, let’s away. When, Caius, Rome is thine, Thou art poor’st of all; then shortly art thou mine.

Enter Menenius, Cominius, Sicinius, Brutus (the two Tribunes), with others.

MENENIUS. No, I’ll not go. You hear what he hath said Which was sometime his general, who loved him In a most dear particular. He called me father, But what o’ that? Go you that banished him; A mile before his tent, fall down, and knee The way into his mercy. Nay, if he coyed To hear Cominius speak, I’ll keep at home.

COMINIUS. He would not seem to know me.

MENENIUS. Do you hear?

COMINIUS. Yet one time he did call me by my name. I urged our old acquaintance, and the drops That we have bled together. “Coriolanus” He would not answer to, forbade all names. He was a kind of nothing, titleless, Till he had forged himself a name i’ th’ fire Of burning Rome.

MENENIUS. Why, so; you have made good work! A pair of tribunes that have wracked Rome To make coals cheap! A noble memory!

COMINIUS. I minded him how royal ’twas to pardon When it was less expected. He replied It was a bare petition of a state To one whom they had punished.

MENENIUS. Very well. Could he say less?

COMINIUS. I offered to awaken his regard For’s private friends. His answer to me was He could not stay to pick them in a pile Of noisome musty chaff. He said ’twas folly For one poor grain or two to leave unburnt And still to nose th’ offence.

MENENIUS. For one poor grain or two! I am one of those! His mother, wife, his child, And this brave fellow too, we are the grains; You are the musty chaff, and you are smelt Above the moon. We must be burnt for you.

SICINIUS. Nay, pray, be patient. If you refuse your aid In this so-never-needed help, yet do not Upbraid’s with our distress. But sure, if you Would be your country’s pleader, your good tongue, More than the instant army we can make, Might stop our countryman.

MENENIUS. No, I’ll not meddle.

SICINIUS. Pray you, go to him.

MENENIUS. What should I do?

BRUTUS. Only make trial what your love can do For Rome, towards Martius.

MENENIUS. Well, and say that Martius Return me, as Cominius is returned, unheard, What then? But as a discontented friend, Grief-shot with his unkindness? Say’t be so?

SICINIUS. Yet your good will Must have that thanks from Rome after the measure As you intended well.

MENENIUS. I’ll undertake’t. I think he’ll hear me. Yet to bite his lip And hum at good Cominius much unhearts me. He was not taken well; he had not dined. The veins unfilled, our blood is cold, and then We pout upon the morning, are unapt To give or to forgive; but when we have stuffed These pipes and these conveyances of our blood With wine and feeding, we have suppler souls Than in our priestlike fasts. Therefore I’ll watch him Till he be dieted to my request, And then I’ll set upon him.

BRUTUS. You know the very road into his kindness And cannot lose your way.

MENENIUS. Good faith, I’ll prove him, Speed how it will. I shall ere long have knowledge Of my success.

COMINIUS. He’ll never hear him.

SICINIUS. Not?

COMINIUS. I tell you, he does sit in gold, his eye Red as ’twould burn Rome; and his injury The jailer to his pity. I kneeled before him; ’Twas very faintly he said “Rise”; dismissed me Thus with his speechless hand. What he would do He sent in writing after me; what he Would not, bound with an oath to yield to his Conditions. So that all hope is vain Unless his noble mother and his wife, Who, as I hear, mean to solicit him For mercy to his country. Therefore let’s hence And with our fair entreaties haste them on.

SCENE II. An Advanced post of the Volscian camp before Rome.

Enter Menenius to the Watch, or Guard.

FIRST WATCH. Stay! Whence are you?

SECOND WATCH. Stand, and go back.

MENENIUS. You guard like men; ’tis well. But by your leave, I am an officer of state and come To speak with Coriolanus.

FIRST WATCH. From whence?

MENENIUS. From Rome.

FIRST WATCH. You may not pass; you must return. Our general Will no more hear from thence.

SECOND WATCH. You’ll see your Rome embraced with fire before You’ll speak with Coriolanus.

MENENIUS. Good my friends, If you have heard your general talk of Rome And of his friends there, it is lots to blanks My name hath touched your ears. It is Menenius.

FIRST WATCH. Be it so; go back. The virtue of your name Is not here passable.

MENENIUS. I tell thee, fellow, Thy general is my lover. I have been The book of his good acts, whence men have read His fame unparalleled happily amplified; For I have ever verified my friends— Of whom he’s chief—with all the size that verity Would without lapsing suffer. Nay, sometimes, Like to a bowl upon a subtle ground, I have tumbled past the throw, and in his praise Have almost stamped the leasing. Therefore, fellow, I must have leave to pass.

FIRST WATCH. Faith, sir, if you had told as many lies in his behalf as you have uttered words in your own, you should not pass here, no, though it were as virtuous to lie as to live chastely. Therefore, go back.

MENENIUS. Prithee, fellow, remember my name is Menenius, always factionary on the party of your general.

SECOND WATCH. Howsoever you have been his liar, as you say you have, I am one that, telling true under him, must say you cannot pass. Therefore go back.

MENENIUS. Has he dined, can’st thou tell? For I would not speak with him till after dinner.

FIRST WATCH. You are a Roman, are you?

MENENIUS. I am, as thy general is.

FIRST WATCH. Then you should hate Rome as he does. Can you, when you have pushed out your gates the very defender of them, and, in a violent popular ignorance given your enemy your shield, think to front his revenges with the easy groans of old women, the virginal palms of your daughters, or with the palsied intercession of such a decayed dotant as you seem to be? Can you think to blow out the intended fire your city is ready to flame in with such weak breath as this? No, you are deceived. Therefore back to Rome and prepare for your execution. You are condemned. Our general has sworn you out of reprieve and pardon.

MENENIUS. Sirrah, if thy captain knew I were here, he would use me with estimation.

SECOND WATCH. Come, my captain knows you not.

MENENIUS. I mean thy general.

FIRST WATCH. My general cares not for you. Back, I say, go, lest I let forth your half pint of blood. Back! That’s the utmost of your having. Back!

MENENIUS. Nay, but fellow, fellow—

Enter Coriolanus with Aufidius.

CORIOLANUS. What’s the matter?

MENENIUS. Now, you companion, I’ll say an errand for you. You shall know now that I am in estimation; you shall perceive that a Jack guardant cannot office me from my son Coriolanus. Guess but by my entertainment with him if thou stand’st not i’ th’ state of hanging or of some death more long in spectatorship and crueller in suffering; behold now presently, and swoon for what’s to come upon thee. [to Coriolanus.] The glorious gods sit in hourly synod about thy particular prosperity and love thee no worse than thy old father Menenius does! O my son, my son! Thou art preparing fire for us; look thee, here’s water to quench it. I was hardly moved to come to thee; but being assured none but myself could move thee, I have been blown out of your gates with sighs, and conjure thee to pardon Rome and thy petitionary countrymen. The good gods assuage thy wrath and turn the dregs of it upon this varlet here, this, who, like a block, hath denied my access to thee.

MENENIUS. How? Away?

CORIOLANUS. Wife, mother, child, I know not. My affairs Are servanted to others. Though I owe My revenge properly, my remission lies In Volscian breasts. That we have been familiar, Ingrate forgetfulness shall poison rather Than pity note how much. Therefore begone. Mine ears against your suits are stronger than Your gates against my force. Yet, for I loved thee, Take this along; I writ it for thy sake,

[He gives Menenius a paper.]

And would have sent it. Another word, Menenius, I will not hear thee speak.—This man, Aufidius, Was my beloved in Rome; yet thou behold’st.

AUFIDIUS. You keep a constant temper.

[They exit.]

[The Guard and Menenius remain.]

FIRST WATCH. Now, sir, is your name Menenius?

SECOND WATCH. ’Tis a spell, you see, of much power. You know the way home again.

FIRST WATCH. Do you hear how we are shent for keeping your Greatness back?

SECOND WATCH. What cause do you think I have to swoon?

MENENIUS. I neither care for th’ world nor your general. For such things as you, I can scarce think there’s any, you’re so slight. He that hath a will to die by himself fears it not from another. Let your general do his worst. For you, be that you are, long; and your misery increase with your age! I say to you, as I was said to, away!

FIRST WATCH. A noble fellow, I warrant him.

SECOND WATCH. The worthy fellow is our general. He is the rock, the oak not to be wind-shaken.

SCENE III. The tent of Coriolanus

Enter Coriolanus and Aufidius.

CORIOLANUS. We will before the walls of Rome tomorrow Set down our host. My partner in this action, You must report to th’ Volscian lords how plainly I have borne this business.

AUFIDIUS. Only their ends You have respected, stopped your ears against The general suit of Rome; never admitted A private whisper, no, not with such friends That thought them sure of you.

CORIOLANUS. This last old man, Whom with cracked heart I have sent to Rome, Loved me above the measure of a father, Nay, godded me indeed. Their latest refuge Was to send him, for whose old love I have— Though I showed sourly to him—once more offered The first conditions, which they did refuse And cannot now accept, to grace him only That thought he could do more. A very little I have yielded to. Fresh embassies and suits, Nor from the state nor private friends, hereafter Will I lend ear to.

[Shout within.]

Ha? What shout is this? Shall I be tempted to infringe my vow In the same time ’tis made? I will not.

Enter Virgilia, Volumnia, Valeria, young Martius with attendants.

My wife comes foremost, then the honoured mold Wherein this trunk was framed, and in her hand The grandchild to her blood. But out, affection! All bond and privilege of nature, break! Let it be virtuous to be obstinate. What is that curtsy worth? Or those doves’ eyes, Which can make gods forsworn? I melt and am not Of stronger earth than others. My mother bows, As if Olympus to a molehill should In supplication nod; and my young boy Hath an aspect of intercession which Great Nature cries “Deny not!” Let the Volsces Plough Rome and harrow Italy, I’ll never Be such a gosling to obey instinct, but stand As if a man were author of himself, And knew no other kin.

VIRGILIA. My lord and husband.

CORIOLANUS. These eyes are not the same I wore in Rome.

VIRGILIA. The sorrow that delivers us thus changed Makes you think so.

CORIOLANUS. Like a dull actor now, I have forgot my part, and I am out, Even to a full disgrace. Best of my flesh, Forgive my tyranny, but do not say For that, “Forgive our Romans.”

[They kiss.]

O, a kiss Long as my exile, sweet as my revenge! Now, by the jealous queen of heaven, that kiss I carried from thee, dear, and my true lip Hath virgined it e’er since. You gods! I prate And the most noble mother of the world Leave unsaluted. Sink, my knee, i’ th’ earth;

Of thy deep duty more impression show Than that of common sons.

VOLUMNIA. O, stand up blest,

[He rises.]

Whilst with no softer cushion than the flint I kneel before thee and unproperly Show duty, as mistaken all this while Between the child and parent.

[She kneels.]

CORIOLANUS. What is this? Your knees to me? To your corrected son?

[He raises her up.]

Then let the pebbles on the hungry beach Fillip the stars! Then let the mutinous winds Strike the proud cedars ’gainst the fiery sun, Murdering impossibility to make What cannot be slight work.

VOLUMNIA. Thou art my warrior; I holp to frame thee. Do you know this lady?

CORIOLANUS. The noble sister of Publicola, The moon of Rome, chaste as the icicle That’s curdied by the frost from purest snow And hangs on Dian’s temple!—Dear Valeria.

VOLUMNIA. This is a poor epitome of yours, Which by th’ interpretation of full time May show like all yourself.

CORIOLANUS. The god of soldiers, With the consent of supreme Jove, inform Thy thoughts with nobleness, that thou mayst prove To shame unvulnerable, and stick i’ th’ wars Like a great seamark standing every flaw And saving those that eye thee.

VOLUMNIA. [To young Martius.] Your knee, sirrah.

[He kneels.]

CORIOLANUS. That’s my brave boy!

VOLUMNIA. Even he, your wife, this lady, and myself Are suitors to you.

[Young Martius rises.]

CORIOLANUS. I beseech you, peace; Or, if you’d ask, remember this before: The thing I have forsworn to grant may never Be held by you denials. Do not bid me Dismiss my soldiers or capitulate Again with Rome’s mechanics. Tell me not Wherein I seem unnatural; desire not T’ allay my rages and revenges with Your colder reasons.

VOLUMNIA. O, no more, no more! You have said you will not grant us anything; For we have nothing else to ask but that Which you deny already. Yet we will ask, That if you fail in our request, the blame May hang upon your hardness. Therefore hear us.

CORIOLANUS. Aufidius, and you Volsces, mark, for we’ll Hear naught from Rome in private. Your request?

VOLUMNIA. Should we be silent and not speak, our raiment And state of bodies would bewray what life We have led since thy exile. Think with thyself How more unfortunate than all living women Are we come hither; since that thy sight, which should Make our eyes flow with joy, hearts dance with comforts, Constrains them weep and shake with fear and sorrow, Making the mother, wife, and child to see The son, the husband, and the father tearing His country’s bowels out. And to poor we Thine enmity’s most capital. Thou barr’st us Our prayers to the gods, which is a comfort That all but we enjoy. For how can we— Alas, how can we—for our country pray, Whereto we are bound, together with thy victory, Whereto we are bound? Alack, or we must lose The country, our dear nurse, or else thy person, Our comfort in the country. We must find An evident calamity, though we had Our wish, which side should win, for either thou Must as a foreign recreant be led With manacles through our streets, or else Triumphantly tread on thy country’s ruin And bear the palm for having bravely shed Thy wife and children’s blood. For myself, son, I purpose not to wait on fortune till These wars determine. If I cannot persuade thee Rather to show a noble grace to both parts Than seek the end of one, thou shalt no sooner March to assault thy country than to tread— Trust to’t, thou shalt not—on thy mother’s womb That brought thee to this world.

VIRGILIA. Ay, and mine, That brought you forth this boy to keep your name Living to time.

YOUNG MARTIUS. He shall not tread on me. I’ll run away till I am bigger, but then I’ll fight.

CORIOLANUS. Not of a woman’s tenderness to be Requires nor child nor woman’s face to see.— I have sat too long.

VOLUMNIA. Nay, go not from us thus. If it were so, that our request did tend To save the Romans, thereby to destroy The Volsces whom you serve, you might condemn us As poisonous of your honour. No, our suit Is that you reconcile them, while the Volsces May say “This mercy we have showed,” the Romans “This we received,” and each in either side Give the all-hail to thee and cry, “Be blessed For making up this peace!” Thou know’st, great son, The end of war’s uncertain, but this certain, That, if thou conquer Rome, the benefit Which thou shalt thereby reap is such a name Whose repetition will be dogged with curses, Whose chronicle thus writ: “The man was noble, But with his last attempt he wiped it out; Destroyed his country, and his name remains To th’ ensuing age abhorred.” Speak to me, son. Thou hast affected the fine strains of honour To imitate the graces of the gods, To tear with thunder the wide cheeks o’ th’ air And yet to charge thy sulphur with a bolt That should but rive an oak. Why dost not speak? Think’st thou it honourable for a noble man Still to remember wrongs?—Daughter, speak you. He cares not for your weeping.—Speak thou, boy. Perhaps thy childishness will move him more Than can our reasons.—There’s no man in the world More bound to’s mother, yet here he lets me prate Like one i’ th’ stocks. Thou hast never in thy life Showed thy dear mother any courtesy When she, poor hen, fond of no second brood, Has clucked thee to the wars and safely home, Loaden with honour. Say my request’s unjust And spurn me back; but if it be not so, Thou art not honest, and the gods will plague thee That thou restrain’st from me the duty which To a mother’s part belongs.—He turns away.— Down, ladies! Let us shame him with our knees. To his surname Coriolanus ’longs more pride Than pity to our prayers. Down! An end.

[They kneel.]

This is the last. So we will home to Rome And die among our neighbours.—Nay, behold’s. This boy that cannot tell what he would have, But kneels and holds up hands for fellowship, Does reason our petition with more strength Than thou hast to deny’t.—Come, let us go.

[They rise.]

This fellow had a Volscian to his mother, His wife is in Corioles, and his child Like him by chance.—Yet give us our dispatch. I am hushed until our city be afire, And then I’ll speak a little.

[He holds her by the hand, silent.]

CORIOLANUS. O mother, mother! What have you done? Behold, the heavens do ope, The gods look down, and this unnatural scene They laugh at. O my mother, mother, O! You have won a happy victory to Rome, But, for your son—believe it, O, believe it!— Most dangerously you have with him prevailed, If not most mortal to him. But let it come.— Aufidius, though I cannot make true wars, I’ll frame convenient peace. Now, good Aufidius, Were you in my stead, would you have heard A mother less? Or granted less, Aufidius?

AUFIDIUS. I was moved withal.

CORIOLANUS. I dare be sworn you were. And, sir, it is no little thing to make Mine eyes to sweat compassion. But, good sir, What peace you’ll make, advise me. For my part, I’ll not to Rome, I’ll back with you; and pray you, Stand to me in this cause.—O mother!—Wife!

[He speaks with them aside.]

AUFIDIUS. [Aside.] I am glad thou hast set thy mercy and thy honour At difference in thee. Out of that I’ll work Myself a former fortune.

CORIOLANUS. [To the Women.] Ay, by and by; But we’ll drink together, and you shall bear A better witness back than words, which we, On like conditions, will have countersealed. Come, enter with us. Ladies, you deserve To have a temple built you. All the swords In Italy, and her confederate arms, Could not have made this peace.

SCENE IV. Rome. A public place

Enter Menenius and Sicinius.

MENENIUS. See you yond coign o’ the Capitol, yond cornerstone?

SICINIUS. Why, what of that?

MENENIUS. If it be possible for you to displace it with your little finger, there is some hope the ladies of Rome, especially his mother, may prevail with him. But I say there is no hope in’t. Our throats are sentenced and stay upon execution.

SICINIUS. Is’t possible that so short a time can alter the condition of a man?

MENENIUS. There is differency between a grub and a butterfly, yet your butterfly was a grub. This Martius is grown from man to dragon. He has wings; he’s more than a creeping thing.

SICINIUS. He loved his mother dearly.

MENENIUS. So did he me; and he no more remembers his mother now than an eight-year-old horse. The tartness of his face sours ripe grapes. When he walks, he moves like an engine, and the ground shrinks before his treading. He is able to pierce a corslet with his eye, talks like a knell, and his hum is a battery. He sits in his state as a thing made for Alexander. What he bids be done is finished with his bidding. He wants nothing of a god but eternity and a heaven to throne in.

SICINIUS. Yes, mercy, if you report him truly.

MENENIUS. I paint him in the character. Mark what mercy his mother shall bring from him. There is no more mercy in him than there is milk in a male tiger. That shall our poor city find, and all this is long of you.

SICINIUS. The gods be good unto us.

MENENIUS. No, in such a case the gods will not be good unto us. When we banished him, we respected not them; and he returning to break our necks, they respect not us.

MESSENGER. Sir, if you’d save your life, fly to your house. The plebeians have got your fellow tribune And hale him up and down, all swearing if The Roman ladies bring not comfort home, They’ll give him death by inches.

SICINIUS. What’s the news?

SECOND MESSENGER. Good news, good news! The ladies have prevailed. The Volscians are dislodged and Martius gone. A merrier day did never yet greet Rome, No, not th’ expulsion of the Tarquins.

SICINIUS. Friend, Art thou certain this is true? Is’t most certain?

SECOND MESSENGER. As certain as I know the sun is fire. Where have you lurked that you make doubt of it? Ne’er through an arch so hurried the blown tide As the recomforted through th’ gates. Why, hark you!

[Trumpets, hautboys, drums beat, all together.]

The trumpets, sackbuts, psalteries, and fifes, Tabors and cymbals, and the shouting Romans Make the sun dance. Hark you!

[A shout within.]

MENENIUS. This is good news. I will go meet the ladies. This Volumnia Is worth of consuls, senators, patricians A city full; of tribunes such as you A sea and land full. You have prayed well today. This morning for ten thousand of your throats I’d not have given a doit. Hark, how they joy!

[Sound still with the shouts.]

SICINIUS. First, the gods bless you for your tidings; next, accept my thankfulness.

SECOND MESSENGER. Sir, we have all great cause to give great thanks.

SICINIUS. They are near the city?

MESSENGER. Almost at point to enter.

SICINIUS. We’ll meet them, and help the joy.

SCENE V. Rome. A street near the gate

Enter two Senators, with Ladies (Volumnia, Virgilia, Valeria) passing over the stage, with other Lords.

SENATOR. Behold our patroness, the life of Rome! Call all your tribes together, praise the gods, And make triumphant fires. Strew flowers before them, Unshout the noise that banished Martius, Repeal him with the welcome of his mother. Cry “Welcome, ladies, welcome!”

ALL. Welcome, ladies, welcome!

[A flourish with drums and trumpets.]

SCENE VI. Antium. A public place

Enter Tullus Aufidius with Attendants.

AUFIDIUS. Go tell the lords o’ th’ city I am here. Deliver them this paper.

[He gives them a paper.]

Having read it, Bid them repair to th’ marketplace, where I, Even in theirs and in the commons’ ears, Will vouch the truth of it. Him I accuse The city ports by this hath entered and Intends t’ appear before the people, hoping To purge himself with words. Dispatch.

[Exeunt Attendants.]

Enter three or four Conspirators of Aufidius’s faction.

Most welcome!

FIRST CONSPIRATOR. How is it with our general?

AUFIDIUS. Even so As with a man by his own alms empoisoned And with his charity slain.

SECOND CONSPIRATOR. Most noble sir, If you do hold the same intent wherein You wished us parties, we’ll deliver you Of your great danger.

AUFIDIUS. Sir, I cannot tell. We must proceed as we do find the people.

THIRD CONSPIRATOR. The people will remain uncertain whilst ’Twixt you there’s difference, but the fall of either Makes the survivor heir of all.

AUFIDIUS. I know it, And my pretext to strike at him admits A good construction. I raised him, and I pawned Mine honour for his truth, who being so heightened, He watered his new plants with dews of flattery, Seducing so my friends; and to this end, He bowed his nature, never known before But to be rough, unswayable, and free.

THIRD CONSPIRATOR. Sir, his stoutness When he did stand for consul, which he lost By lack of stooping—

AUFIDIUS. That I would have spoke of. Being banished for’t, he came unto my hearth, Presented to my knife his throat. I took him, Made him joint servant with me, gave him way In all his own desires; nay, let him choose Out of my files, his projects to accomplish, My best and freshest men; served his designments In mine own person; holp to reap the fame Which he did end all his; and took some pride To do myself this wrong; till at the last I seemed his follower, not partner; and He waged me with his countenance as if I had been mercenary.

FIRST CONSPIRATOR. So he did, my lord. The army marvelled at it, and, in the last, When he had carried Rome and that we looked For no less spoil than glory—

AUFIDIUS. There was it For which my sinews shall be stretched upon him. At a few drops of women’s rheum, which are As cheap as lies, he sold the blood and labour Of our great action. Therefore shall he die, And I’ll renew me in his fall. But, hark!

[Drums and trumpets sound, with great shouts of the people.]

FIRST CONSPIRATOR. Your native town you entered like a post And had no welcomes home, but he returns Splitting the air with noise.

SECOND CONSPIRATOR. And patient fools, Whose children he hath slain, their base throats tear With giving him glory.

THIRD CONSPIRATOR. Therefore at your vantage, Ere he express himself or move the people With what he would say, let him feel your sword, Which we will second. When he lies along, After your way his tale pronounced shall bury His reasons with his body.

AUFIDIUS. Say no more. Here come the lords.

Enter the Lords of the city.

ALL LORDS. You are most welcome home.

AUFIDIUS. I have not deserved it. But, worthy lords, have you with heed perused What I have written to you?

ALL LORDS. We have.

FIRST LORD. And grieve to hear’t. What faults he made before the last, I think Might have found easy fines, but there to end Where he was to begin and give away The benefit of our levies, answering us With our own charge, making a treaty where There was a yielding—this admits no excuse.

Enter Coriolanus marching with Drum and Colours, the Commoners being with him.

AUFIDIUS. He approaches. You shall hear him.

CORIOLANUS. Hail, lords! I am returned your soldier, No more infected with my country’s love Than when I parted hence, but still subsisting Under your great command. You are to know That prosperously I have attempted, and With bloody passage led your wars even to The gates of Rome. Our spoils we have brought home Doth more than counterpoise a full third part The charges of the action. We have made peace With no less honour to the Antiates Than shame to th’ Romans, and we here deliver, Subscribed by th’ Consuls and patricians, Together with the seal o’ th’ Senate, what We have compounded on.

[He offers the lords a paper.]

AUFIDIUS. Read it not, noble lords, But tell the traitor in the highest degree He hath abused your powers.

CORIOLANUS. “Traitor?” How now?

AUFIDIUS. Ay, traitor, Martius.

CORIOLANUS. Martius?

AUFIDIUS. Ay, Martius, Caius Martius. Dost thou think I’ll grace thee with that robbery, thy stol’n name Coriolanus, in Corioles? You lords and heads o’ th’ state, perfidiously He has betrayed your business and given up For certain drops of salt your city Rome— I say your city—to his wife and mother, Breaking his oath and resolution like A twist of rotten silk, never admitting Counsel o’ th’ war, but at his nurse’s tears He whined and roared away your victory, That pages blushed at him and men of heart Looked wond’ring each at other.

CORIOLANUS. Hear’st thou, Mars?

AUFIDIUS. Name not the god, thou boy of tears.

CORIOLANUS. Ha?

AUFIDIUS. No more.

CORIOLANUS. Measureless liar, thou hast made my heart Too great for what contains it. “Boy”? O slave!— Pardon me, lords, ’tis the first time that ever I was forced to scold. Your judgments, my grave lords, Must give this cur the lie; and his own notion— Who wears my stripes impressed upon him, that Must bear my beating to his grave—shall join To thrust the lie unto him.

FIRST LORD. Peace, both, and hear me speak.

CORIOLANUS. Cut me to pieces, Volsces. Men and lads, Stain all your edges on me. “Boy”? False hound! If you have writ your annals true, ’tis there, That like an eagle in a dovecote, I Fluttered your Volscians in Corioles, Alone I did it. “Boy”!

AUFIDIUS. Why, noble lords, Will you be put in mind of his blind fortune, Which was your shame, by this unholy braggart, ’Fore your own eyes and ears?

ALL CONSPIRATORS. Let him die for’t.

ALL PEOPLE Tear him to pieces! Do it presently! He killed my son! My daughter! He killed my cousin Marcus! He killed my father!

SECOND LORD. Peace, ho! No outrage! Peace! The man is noble, and his fame folds in This orb o’ th’ Earth. His last offences to us Shall have judicious hearing. Stand, Aufidius, And trouble not the peace.

CORIOLANUS. O that I had him, With six Aufidiuses, or more, his tribe, To use my lawful sword.

AUFIDIUS. Insolent villain!

ALL CONSPIRATORS. Kill, kill, kill, kill, kill him!

[Draw the Conspirators, and kills Martius, who falls. Aufidius stands on him.]

LORDS. Hold, hold, hold, hold!

AUFIDIUS. My noble masters, hear me speak.

FIRST LORD. O Tullus!

SECOND LORD. Thou hast done a deed whereat valour will weep.

THIRD LORD. Tread not upon him.—Masters, all be quiet.— Put up your swords.

AUFIDIUS. My lords, when you shall know—as in this rage, Provoked by him, you cannot—the great danger Which this man’s life did owe you, you’ll rejoice That he is thus cut off. Please it your Honours To call me to your senate, I’ll deliver Myself your loyal servant, or endure Your heaviest censure.

FIRST LORD. Bear from hence his body, And mourn you for him. Let him be regarded As the most noble corse that ever herald Did follow to his urn.

SECOND LORD. His own impatience Takes from Aufidius a great part of blame. Let’s make the best of it.

AUFIDIUS. My rage is gone, And I am struck with sorrow.—Take him up. Help, three o’ th’ chiefest soldiers; I’ll be one.— Beat thou the drum that it speak mournfully.— Trail your steel pikes. Though in this city he Hath widowed and unchilded many a one, Which to this hour bewail the injury, Yet he shall have a noble memory. Assist.

[Exeunt, bearing the body of Martius. A dead march sounded.]

CYMBELINE

ACT I Scene I. Britain. The garden of Cymbeline’s palace. Scene II. The same. Scene III. Britain. A public place. Scene IV. Britain. Cymbeline’s palace. Scene V. Rome. Philario’s house. Scene VI. Britain. Cymbeline’s palace. Scene VII. Britain. The palace.

ACT II Scene I. Britain. Before Cymbeline’s palace. Scene II. Britain. Imogen’s bedchamber in Cymbeline’s palace; a trunk in one corner. Scene III. Cymbeline’s palace. An ante-chamber adjoining Imogen’s apartments. Scene IV. Rome. Philario’s house. Scene V. Rome. Another room in Philario’s house.

ACT III Scene I. Britain. A hall in Cymbeline’s palace. Scene II. Britain. Another room in Cymbeline’s palace. Scene III. Wales. A mountainous country with a cave. Scene IV. Wales, near Milford Haven. Scene V. Britain. Cymbeline’s palace. Scene VI. Wales. Before the cave of Belarius. Scene VII. The same. Scene VIII. Rome. A public place.

ACT IV Scene I. Wales. Near the cave of Belarius. Scene II. Wales. Before the cave of Belarius. Scene III. Britain. Cymbeline’s palace. Scene IV. Wales. Before the cave of Belarius.

ACT V Scene I. Britain. The Roman camp. Scene II. Britain. A field of battle between the British and Roman camps. Scene III. Another part of the field. Scene IV. Britain. A prison. Scene V. Britain. Cymbeline’s tent.

CYMBELINE, King of Britain CLOTEN, son to the Queen by a former husband POSTHUMUS LEONATUS, a gentleman, husband to Imogen BELARIUS, a banished lord, disguised under the name of Morgan GUIDERIUS and ARVIRAGUS, sons to Cymbeline, disguised under the names of POLYDORE and CADWAL, supposed sons to Belarius PHILARIO, Italian, friend to Posthumus IACHIMO, Italian, friend to Philario CAIUS LUCIUS, General of the Roman forces PISANIO, servant to Posthumus CORNELIUS, a physician A SOOTHSAYER A ROMAN CAPTAIN TWO BRITISH CAPTAINS A FRENCH GENTLEMAN, friend to Philario TWO LORDS of Cymbeline’s court TWO GENTLEMEN of the same TWO GAOLERS

QUEEN, wife to Cymbeline IMOGEN, daughter to Cymbeline by a former queen HELEN, a lady attending on Imogen

APPARITIONS

Lords, Ladies, Roman Senators, Tribunes, a Dutch Gentleman, a Spanish Gentleman, Musicians, Officers, Captains, Soldiers, Messengers, and Attendants

SCENE: Britain; Italy.

SCENE I. Britain. The garden of Cymbeline’s palace.

Enter two Gentlemen.

FIRST GENTLEMAN. You do not meet a man but frowns; our bloods No more obey the heavens than our courtiers Still seem as does the King’s.

SECOND GENTLEMAN. But what’s the matter?

FIRST GENTLEMAN. His daughter, and the heir of’s kingdom, whom He purpos’d to his wife’s sole son—a widow That late he married—hath referr’d herself Unto a poor but worthy gentleman. She’s wedded; Her husband banish’d; she imprison’d. All Is outward sorrow, though I think the King Be touch’d at very heart.

SECOND GENTLEMAN. None but the King?

FIRST GENTLEMAN. He that hath lost her too. So is the Queen, That most desir’d the match. But not a courtier, Although they wear their faces to the bent Of the King’s looks, hath a heart that is not Glad at the thing they scowl at.

SECOND GENTLEMAN. And why so?

FIRST GENTLEMAN. He that hath miss’d the Princess is a thing Too bad for bad report; and he that hath her— I mean that married her, alack, good man! And therefore banish’d—is a creature such As, to seek through the regions of the earth For one his like, there would be something failing In him that should compare. I do not think So fair an outward and such stuff within Endows a man but he.

SECOND GENTLEMAN. You speak him far.

FIRST GENTLEMAN. I do extend him, sir, within himself; Crush him together rather than unfold His measure duly.

SECOND GENTLEMAN. What’s his name and birth?

FIRST GENTLEMAN. I cannot delve him to the root; his father Was call’d Sicilius, who did join his honour Against the Romans with Cassibelan, But had his titles by Tenantius, whom He serv’d with glory and admir’d success, So gain’d the sur-addition Leonatus; And had, besides this gentleman in question, Two other sons, who, in the wars o’ th’ time, Died with their swords in hand; for which their father, Then old and fond of issue, took such sorrow That he quit being; and his gentle lady, Big of this gentleman, our theme, deceas’d As he was born. The King he takes the babe To his protection, calls him Posthumus Leonatus, Breeds him and makes him of his bed-chamber, Puts to him all the learnings that his time Could make him the receiver of; which he took, As we do air, fast as ’twas minist’red, And in’s spring became a harvest, liv’d in court— Which rare it is to do—most prais’d, most lov’d, A sample to the youngest; to th’ more mature A glass that feated them; and to the graver A child that guided dotards. To his mistress, For whom he now is banish’d, her own price Proclaims how she esteem’d him and his virtue; By her election may be truly read What kind of man he is.

SECOND GENTLEMAN. I honour him Even out of your report. But pray you tell me, Is she sole child to th’ King?

FIRST GENTLEMAN. His only child. He had two sons—if this be worth your hearing, Mark it—the eldest of them at three years old, I’ th’ swathing clothes the other, from their nursery Were stol’n; and to this hour no guess in knowledge Which way they went.

SECOND GENTLEMAN. How long is this ago?

FIRST GENTLEMAN. Some twenty years.

SECOND GENTLEMAN. That a king’s children should be so convey’d, So slackly guarded, and the search so slow That could not trace them!

FIRST GENTLEMAN. Howsoe’er ’tis strange, Or that the negligence may well be laugh’d at, Yet is it true, sir.

SECOND GENTLEMAN. I do well believe you.

FIRST GENTLEMAN. We must forbear; here comes the gentleman, The Queen, and Princess.

SCENE II. The same.

Enter Queen, Posthumus and Imogen.

QUEEN. No, be assur’d you shall not find me, daughter, After the slander of most stepmothers, Evil-ey’d unto you. You’re my prisoner, but Your gaoler shall deliver you the keys That lock up your restraint. For you, Posthumus, So soon as I can win th’ offended King, I will be known your advocate. Marry, yet The fire of rage is in him, and ’twere good You lean’d unto his sentence with what patience Your wisdom may inform you.

POSTHUMUS. Please your Highness, I will from hence today.

QUEEN. You know the peril. I’ll fetch a turn about the garden, pitying The pangs of barr’d affections, though the King Hath charg’d you should not speak together.

IMOGEN. O dissembling courtesy! How fine this tyrant Can tickle where she wounds! My dearest husband, I something fear my father’s wrath, but nothing (Always reserv’d my holy duty) what His rage can do on me. You must be gone; And I shall here abide the hourly shot Of angry eyes, not comforted to live But that there is this jewel in the world That I may see again.

POSTHUMUS. My queen! my mistress! O lady, weep no more, lest I give cause To be suspected of more tenderness Than doth become a man. I will remain The loyal’st husband that did e’er plight troth; My residence in Rome at one Philario’s, Who to my father was a friend, to me Known but by letter; thither write, my queen, And with mine eyes I’ll drink the words you send, Though ink be made of gall.

Enter Queen.

QUEEN. Be brief, I pray you. If the King come, I shall incur I know not How much of his displeasure. [Aside.] Yet I’ll move him To walk this way. I never do him wrong But he does buy my injuries, to be friends; Pays dear for my offences.

POSTHUMUS. Should we be taking leave As long a term as yet we have to live, The loathness to depart would grow. Adieu!

IMOGEN. Nay, stay a little. Were you but riding forth to air yourself, Such parting were too petty. Look here, love: This diamond was my mother’s; take it, heart; But keep it till you woo another wife, When Imogen is dead.

POSTHUMUS. How, how? Another? You gentle gods, give me but this I have, And sear up my embracements from a next With bonds of death! Remain, remain thou here

[Puts on the ring.]

While sense can keep it on. And, sweetest, fairest, As I my poor self did exchange for you, To your so infinite loss, so in our trifles I still win of you. For my sake wear this; It is a manacle of love; I’ll place it Upon this fairest prisoner.

[Puts a bracelet on her arm.]

IMOGEN. O the gods! When shall we see again?

Enter Cymbeline and Lords.

POSTHUMUS. Alack, the King!

CYMBELINE. Thou basest thing, avoid; hence from my sight If after this command thou fraught the court With thy unworthiness, thou diest. Away! Thou’rt poison to my blood.

POSTHUMUS. The gods protect you, And bless the good remainders of the court! I am gone.

IMOGEN. There cannot be a pinch in death More sharp than this is.

CYMBELINE. O disloyal thing, That shouldst repair my youth, thou heap’st A year’s age on me!

IMOGEN. I beseech you, sir, Harm not yourself with your vexation. I am senseless of your wrath; a touch more rare Subdues all pangs, all fears.

CYMBELINE. Past grace? obedience?

IMOGEN. Past hope, and in despair; that way past grace.

CYMBELINE. That mightst have had the sole son of my queen!

IMOGEN. O blessed that I might not! I chose an eagle, And did avoid a puttock.

CYMBELINE. Thou took’st a beggar, wouldst have made my throne A seat for baseness.

IMOGEN. No; I rather added A lustre to it.

CYMBELINE. O thou vile one!

IMOGEN. Sir, It is your fault that I have lov’d Posthumus. You bred him as my playfellow, and he is A man worth any woman; overbuys me Almost the sum he pays.

CYMBELINE. What, art thou mad?

IMOGEN. Almost, sir. Heaven restore me! Would I were A neat-herd’s daughter, and my Leonatus Our neighbour shepherd’s son!

CYMBELINE. Thou foolish thing! [To the Queen.] They were again together. You have done Not after our command. Away with her, And pen her up.

QUEEN. Beseech your patience. Peace, Dear lady daughter, peace!—Sweet sovereign, Leave us to ourselves, and make yourself some comfort Out of your best advice.

CYMBELINE. Nay, let her languish A drop of blood a day and, being aged, Die of this folly.

[Exit with Lords.]

Enter Pisanio.

QUEEN. Fie! you must give way. Here is your servant. How now, sir! What news?

PISANIO. My lord your son drew on my master.

QUEEN. Ha! No harm, I trust, is done?

PISANIO. There might have been, But that my master rather play’d than fought, And had no help of anger; they were parted By gentlemen at hand.

QUEEN. I am very glad on’t.

IMOGEN. Your son’s my father’s friend; he takes his part To draw upon an exile! O brave sir! I would they were in Afric both together; Myself by with a needle, that I might prick The goer-back. Why came you from your master?

PISANIO. On his command. He would not suffer me To bring him to the haven; left these notes Of what commands I should be subject to, When’t pleas’d you to employ me.

QUEEN. This hath been Your faithful servant. I dare lay mine honour He will remain so.

PISANIO. I humbly thank your Highness.

QUEEN. Pray walk awhile.

IMOGEN. About some half-hour hence, Pray you speak with me. You shall at least go see my lord aboard. For this time leave me.

SCENE III. Britain. A public place.

Enter Cloten and two Lords.

FIRST LORD. Sir, I would advise you to shift a shirt; the violence of action hath made you reek as a sacrifice. Where air comes out, air comes in; there’s none abroad so wholesome as that you vent.

CLOTEN. If my shirt were bloody, then to shift it. Have I hurt him?

SECOND LORD. [Aside.] No, faith; not so much as his patience.

FIRST LORD. Hurt him! His body’s a passable carcass if he be not hurt. It is a throughfare for steel if it be not hurt.

SECOND LORD. [Aside.] His steel was in debt; it went o’ th’ backside the town.

CLOTEN. The villain would not stand me.

SECOND LORD. [Aside.] No; but he fled forward still, toward your face.

FIRST LORD. Stand you? You have land enough of your own; but he added to your having, gave you some ground.

SECOND LORD. [Aside.] As many inches as you have oceans. Puppies!

CLOTEN. I would they had not come between us.

SECOND LORD. [Aside.] So would I, till you had measur’d how long a fool you were upon the ground.

CLOTEN. And that she should love this fellow, and refuse me!

SECOND LORD. [Aside.] If it be a sin to make a true election, she is damn’d.

FIRST LORD. Sir, as I told you always, her beauty and her brain go not together; she’s a good sign, but I have seen small reflection of her wit.

SECOND LORD. [Aside.] She shines not upon fools, lest the reflection should hurt her.

CLOTEN. Come, I’ll to my chamber. Would there had been some hurt done!

SECOND LORD. [Aside.] I wish not so; unless it had been the fall of an ass, which is no great hurt.

CLOTEN. You’ll go with us?

FIRST LORD. I’ll attend your lordship.

CLOTEN. Nay, come, let’s go together.

SECOND LORD. Well, my lord.

SCENE IV. Britain. Cymbeline’s palace.

Enter Imogen and Pisanio.

IMOGEN. I would thou grew’st unto the shores o’ th’ haven, And questioned’st every sail; if he should write, And I not have it, ’twere a paper lost, As offer’d mercy is. What was the last That he spake to thee?

PISANIO. It was: his queen, his queen!

IMOGEN. Then wav’d his handkerchief?

PISANIO. And kiss’d it, madam.

IMOGEN. Senseless linen, happier therein than I! And that was all?

PISANIO. No, madam; for so long As he could make me with his eye, or ear Distinguish him from others, he did keep The deck, with glove, or hat, or handkerchief, Still waving, as the fits and stirs of’s mind Could best express how slow his soul sail’d on, How swift his ship.

IMOGEN. Thou shouldst have made him As little as a crow, or less, ere left To after-eye him.

PISANIO. Madam, so I did.

IMOGEN. I would have broke mine eyestrings, crack’d them but To look upon him, till the diminution Of space had pointed him sharp as my needle; Nay, followed him till he had melted from The smallness of a gnat to air, and then Have turn’d mine eye and wept. But, good Pisanio, When shall we hear from him?

PISANIO. Be assur’d, madam, With his next vantage.

IMOGEN. I did not take my leave of him, but had Most pretty things to say. Ere I could tell him How I would think on him at certain hours Such thoughts and such; or I could make him swear The shes of Italy should not betray Mine interest and his honour; or have charg’d him, At the sixth hour of morn, at noon, at midnight, T’ encounter me with orisons, for then I am in heaven for him; or ere I could Give him that parting kiss which I had set Betwixt two charming words, comes in my father, And like the tyrannous breathing of the north Shakes all our buds from growing.

Enter a Lady.

LADY. The Queen, madam, Desires your Highness’ company.

IMOGEN. Those things I bid you do, get them dispatch’d. I will attend the Queen.

PISANIO. Madam, I shall.

SCENE V. Rome. Philario’s house.

Enter Philario, Iachimo, a Frenchman, a Dutchman and a Spaniard.

IACHIMO. Believe it, sir, I have seen him in Britain. He was then of a crescent note, expected to prove so worthy as since he hath been allowed the name of. But I could then have look’d on him without the help of admiration, though the catalogue of his endowments had been tabled by his side, and I to peruse him by items.

PHILARIO. You speak of him when he was less furnish’d than now he is with that which makes him both without and within.

FRENCHMAN. I have seen him in France; we had very many there could behold the sun with as firm eyes as he.

IACHIMO. This matter of marrying his king’s daughter, wherein he must be weighed rather by her value than his own, words him, I doubt not, a great deal from the matter.

FRENCHMAN. And then his banishment.

IACHIMO. Ay, and the approbation of those that weep this lamentable divorce under her colours are wonderfully to extend him, be it but to fortify her judgement, which else an easy battery might lay flat, for taking a beggar, without less quality. But how comes it he is to sojourn with you? How creeps acquaintance?

PHILARIO. His father and I were soldiers together, to whom I have been often bound for no less than my life.

Enter Posthumus.

Here comes the Briton. Let him be so entertained amongst you as suits with gentlemen of your knowing to a stranger of his quality. I beseech you all be better known to this gentleman, whom I commend to you as a noble friend of mine. How worthy he is I will leave to appear hereafter, rather than story him in his own hearing.

FRENCHMAN. Sir, we have known together in Orleans.

POSTHUMUS. Since when I have been debtor to you for courtesies, which I will be ever to pay and yet pay still.

FRENCHMAN. Sir, you o’errate my poor kindness. I was glad I did atone my countryman and you; it had been pity you should have been put together with so mortal a purpose as then each bore, upon importance of so slight and trivial a nature.

POSTHUMUS. By your pardon, sir. I was then a young traveller; rather shunn’d to go even with what I heard than in my every action to be guided by others’ experiences; but upon my mended judgement (if I offend not to say it is mended) my quarrel was not altogether slight.

FRENCHMAN. Faith, yes, to be put to the arbitrement of swords, and by such two that would by all likelihood have confounded one the other or have fall’n both.

IACHIMO. Can we, with manners, ask what was the difference?

FRENCHMAN. Safely, I think. ’Twas a contention in public, which may, without contradiction, suffer the report. It was much like an argument that fell out last night, where each of us fell in praise of our country mistresses; this gentleman at that time vouching (and upon warrant of bloody affirmation) his to be more fair, virtuous, wise, chaste, constant, qualified, and less attemptable, than any the rarest of our ladies in France.

IACHIMO. That lady is not now living, or this gentleman’s opinion, by this, worn out.

POSTHUMUS. She holds her virtue still, and I my mind.

IACHIMO. You must not so far prefer her ’fore ours of Italy.

POSTHUMUS. Being so far provok’d as I was in France, I would abate her nothing, though I profess myself her adorer, not her friend.

IACHIMO. As fair and as good—a kind of hand-in-hand comparison—had been something too fair and too good for any lady in Britain. If she went before others I have seen as that diamond of yours outlustres many I have beheld, I could not but believe she excelled many; but I have not seen the most precious diamond that is, nor you the lady.

POSTHUMUS. I prais’d her as I rated her. So do I my stone.

IACHIMO. What do you esteem it at?

POSTHUMUS. More than the world enjoys.

IACHIMO. Either your unparagon’d mistress is dead, or she’s outpriz’d by a trifle.

POSTHUMUS. You are mistaken: the one may be sold or given, if there were wealth enough for the purchase or merit for the gift; the other is not a thing for sale, and only the gift of the gods.

IACHIMO. Which the gods have given you?

POSTHUMUS. Which by their graces I will keep.

IACHIMO. You may wear her in title yours; but you know strange fowl light upon neighbouring ponds. Your ring may be stol’n too. So your brace of unprizable estimations, the one is but frail and the other casual; a cunning thief, or a that-way-accomplish’d courtier, would hazard the winning both of first and last.

POSTHUMUS. Your Italy contains none so accomplish’d a courtier to convince the honour of my mistress, if in the holding or loss of that you term her frail. I do nothing doubt you have store of thieves; notwithstanding, I fear not my ring.

PHILARIO. Let us leave here, gentlemen.

POSTHUMUS. Sir, with all my heart. This worthy signior, I thank him, makes no stranger of me; we are familiar at first.

IACHIMO. With five times so much conversation I should get ground of your fair mistress; make her go back even to the yielding, had I admittance and opportunity to friend.

POSTHUMUS. No, no.

IACHIMO. I dare thereupon pawn the moiety of my estate to your ring, which, in my opinion, o’ervalues it something. But I make my wager rather against your confidence than her reputation; and, to bar your offence herein too, I durst attempt it against any lady in the world.

POSTHUMUS. You are a great deal abus’d in too bold a persuasion, and I doubt not you sustain what y’are worthy of by your attempt.

IACHIMO. What’s that?

POSTHUMUS. A repulse; though your attempt, as you call it, deserve more; a punishment too.

PHILARIO. Gentlemen, enough of this. It came in too suddenly; let it die as it was born, and I pray you be better acquainted.

IACHIMO. Would I had put my estate and my neighbour’s on th’ approbation of what I have spoke!

POSTHUMUS. What lady would you choose to assail?

IACHIMO. Yours, whom in constancy you think stands so safe. I will lay you ten thousand ducats to your ring that, commend me to the court where your lady is, with no more advantage than the opportunity of a second conference, and I will bring from thence that honour of hers which you imagine so reserv’d.

POSTHUMUS. I will wage against your gold, gold to it. My ring I hold dear as my finger; ’tis part of it.

IACHIMO. You are a friend, and therein the wiser. If you buy ladies’ flesh at a million a dram, you cannot preserve it from tainting. But I see you have some religion in you, that you fear.

POSTHUMUS. This is but a custom in your tongue; you bear a graver purpose, I hope.

IACHIMO. I am the master of my speeches, and would undergo what’s spoken, I swear.

POSTHUMUS. Will you? I shall but lend my diamond till your return. Let there be covenants drawn between’s. My mistress exceeds in goodness the hugeness of your unworthy thinking. I dare you to this match: here’s my ring.

PHILARIO. I will have it no lay.

IACHIMO. By the gods, it is one. If I bring you no sufficient testimony that I have enjoy’d the dearest bodily part of your mistress, my ten thousand ducats are yours; so is your diamond too. If I come off, and leave her in such honour as you have trust in, she your jewel, this your jewel, and my gold are yours: provided I have your commendation for my more free entertainment.

POSTHUMUS. I embrace these conditions; let us have articles betwixt us. Only, thus far you shall answer: if you make your voyage upon her, and give me directly to understand you have prevail’d, I am no further your enemy; she is not worth our debate; if she remain unseduc’d, you not making it appear otherwise, for your ill opinion and th’ assault you have made to her chastity you shall answer me with your sword.

IACHIMO. Your hand, a covenant! We will have these things set down by lawful counsel, and straight away for Britain, lest the bargain should catch cold and starve. I will fetch my gold and have our two wagers recorded.

POSTHUMUS. Agreed.

[Exeunt Posthumus and Iachimo.]

FRENCHMAN. Will this hold, think you?

PHILARIO. Signior Iachimo will not from it. Pray let us follow ’em.

SCENE VI. Britain. Cymbeline’s palace.

Enter Queen, Ladies and Cornelius.

QUEEN. Whiles yet the dew’s on ground, gather those flowers; Make haste; who has the note of them?

LADY. I, madam.

QUEEN. Dispatch.

[Exeunt Ladies.]

Now, Master Doctor, have you brought those drugs?

CORNELIUS. Pleaseth your Highness, ay. Here they are, madam.

[Presenting a box.]

But I beseech your Grace, without offence, (My conscience bids me ask) wherefore you have Commanded of me these most poisonous compounds Which are the movers of a languishing death, But, though slow, deadly?

QUEEN. I wonder, Doctor, Thou ask’st me such a question. Have I not been Thy pupil long? Hast thou not learn’d me how To make perfumes? distil? preserve? yea, so That our great king himself doth woo me oft For my confections? Having thus far proceeded (Unless thou think’st me devilish) is’t not meet That I did amplify my judgement in Other conclusions? I will try the forces Of these thy compounds on such creatures as We count not worth the hanging (but none human) To try the vigour of them, and apply Allayments to their act, and by them gather Their several virtues and effects.

CORNELIUS. Your Highness Shall from this practice but make hard your heart; Besides, the seeing these effects will be Both noisome and infectious.

QUEEN. O, content thee.

[Aside.] Here comes a flattering rascal; upon him Will I first work. He’s for his master, An enemy to my son. How now, Pisanio! Doctor, your service for this time is ended; Take your own way.

CORNELIUS. [Aside.] I do suspect you, madam; But you shall do no harm.

QUEEN. [To Pisanio.] Hark thee, a word.

CORNELIUS. [Aside.] I do not like her. She doth think she has Strange ling’ring poisons. I do know her spirit, And will not trust one of her malice with A drug of such damn’d nature. Those she has Will stupefy and dull the sense awhile, Which first perchance she’ll prove on cats and dogs, Then afterward up higher; but there is No danger in what show of death it makes, More than the locking up the spirits a time, To be more fresh, reviving. She is fool’d With a most false effect; and I the truer So to be false with her.

QUEEN. No further service, Doctor, Until I send for thee.

CORNELIUS. I humbly take my leave.

QUEEN. Weeps she still, say’st thou? Dost thou think in time She will not quench, and let instructions enter Where folly now possesses? Do thou work. When thou shalt bring me word she loves my son, I’ll tell thee on the instant thou art then As great as is thy master; greater, for His fortunes all lie speechless, and his name Is at last gasp. Return he cannot, nor Continue where he is. To shift his being Is to exchange one misery with another, And every day that comes comes to decay A day’s work in him. What shalt thou expect To be depender on a thing that leans, Who cannot be new built, nor has no friends So much as but to prop him?

[The Queen drops the box. Pisanio takes it up.]

Thou tak’st up Thou know’st not what; but take it for thy labour. It is a thing I made, which hath the King Five times redeem’d from death. I do not know What is more cordial. Nay, I prithee take it; It is an earnest of a further good That I mean to thee. Tell thy mistress how The case stands with her; do’t as from thyself. Think what a chance thou changest on; but think Thou hast thy mistress still; to boot, my son, Who shall take notice of thee. I’ll move the King To any shape of thy preferment, such As thou’lt desire; and then myself, I chiefly, That set thee on to this desert, am bound To load thy merit richly. Call my women. Think on my words.

[Exit Pisanio.]

A sly and constant knave, Not to be shak’d; the agent for his master, And the remembrancer of her to hold The hand-fast to her lord. I have given him that Which, if he take, shall quite unpeople her Of liegers for her sweet; and which she after, Except she bend her humour, shall be assur’d To taste of too.

Enter Pisanio and Ladies.

So, so. Well done, well done. The violets, cowslips, and the primroses, Bear to my closet. Fare thee well, Pisanio; Think on my words.

[Exeunt Queen and Ladies.]

PISANIO. And shall do. But when to my good lord I prove untrue I’ll choke myself: there’s all I’ll do for you.

SCENE VII. Britain. The palace.

Enter Imogen alone.

IMOGEN. A father cruel and a step-dame false; A foolish suitor to a wedded lady That hath her husband banish’d. O, that husband! My supreme crown of grief! and those repeated Vexations of it! Had I been thief-stol’n, As my two brothers, happy! but most miserable Is the desire that’s glorious. Blessed be those, How mean soe’er, that have their honest wills, Which seasons comfort. Who may this be? Fie!

Enter Pisanio and Iachimo.

PISANIO. Madam, a noble gentleman of Rome Comes from my lord with letters.

IACHIMO. Change you, madam? The worthy Leonatus is in safety, And greets your Highness dearly.

[Presents a letter.]

IMOGEN. Thanks, good sir. You’re kindly welcome.

IACHIMO. [Aside.] All of her that is out of door most rich! If she be furnish’d with a mind so rare, She is alone th’ Arabian bird, and I Have lost the wager. Boldness be my friend! Arm me, audacity, from head to foot! Or, like the Parthian, I shall flying fight; Rather, directly fly.

IMOGEN. [Reads.] He is one of the noblest note, to whose kindnesses I am most infinitely tied. Reflect upon him accordingly, as you value your trust. LEONATUS.

So far I read aloud; But even the very middle of my heart Is warm’d by th’ rest and takes it thankfully. You are as welcome, worthy sir, as I Have words to bid you; and shall find it so In all that I can do.

IACHIMO. Thanks, fairest lady. What, are men mad? Hath nature given them eyes To see this vaulted arch and the rich crop Of sea and land, which can distinguish ’twixt The fiery orbs above and the twinn’d stones Upon the number’d beach, and can we not Partition make with spectacles so precious ’Twixt fair and foul?

IMOGEN. What makes your admiration?

IACHIMO. It cannot be i’ th’ eye, for apes and monkeys, ’Twixt two such shes, would chatter this way and Contemn with mows the other; nor i’ th’ judgement, For idiots in this case of favour would Be wisely definite; nor i’ th’ appetite; Sluttery, to such neat excellence oppos’d, Should make desire vomit emptiness, Not so allur’d to feed.

IMOGEN. What is the matter, trow?

IACHIMO. The cloyed will— That satiate yet unsatisfied desire, that tub Both fill’d and running—ravening first the lamb, Longs after for the garbage.

IMOGEN. What, dear sir, Thus raps you? Are you well?

IACHIMO. Thanks, madam; well. Beseech you, sir, Desire my man’s abode where I did leave him. He’s strange and peevish.

PISANIO. I was going, sir, To give him welcome.

IMOGEN. Continues well my lord? His health beseech you?

IACHIMO. Well, madam.

IMOGEN. Is he dispos’d to mirth? I hope he is.

IACHIMO. Exceeding pleasant; none a stranger there So merry and so gamesome. He is call’d The Briton reveller.

IMOGEN. When he was here He did incline to sadness, and oft-times Not knowing why.

IACHIMO. I never saw him sad. There is a Frenchman his companion, one An eminent monsieur that, it seems, much loves A Gallian girl at home. He furnaces The thick sighs from him; whiles the jolly Briton (Your lord, I mean) laughs from’s free lungs, cries “O, Can my sides hold, to think that man, who knows By history, report, or his own proof, What woman is, yea, what she cannot choose But must be, will’s free hours languish for Assured bondage?”

IMOGEN. Will my lord say so?

IACHIMO. Ay, madam, with his eyes in flood with laughter. It is a recreation to be by And hear him mock the Frenchman. But heavens know Some men are much to blame.

IMOGEN. Not he, I hope.

IACHIMO. Not he; but yet heaven’s bounty towards him might Be us’d more thankfully. In himself, ’tis much; In you, which I account his, beyond all talents. Whilst I am bound to wonder, I am bound To pity too.

IMOGEN. What do you pity, sir?

IACHIMO. Two creatures heartily.

IMOGEN. Am I one, sir? You look on me: what wreck discern you in me Deserves your pity?

IACHIMO. Lamentable! What, To hide me from the radiant sun and solace I’ th’ dungeon by a snuff?

IMOGEN. I pray you, sir, Deliver with more openness your answers To my demands. Why do you pity me?

IACHIMO. That others do, I was about to say, enjoy your—But It is an office of the gods to venge it, Not mine to speak on’t.

IMOGEN. You do seem to know Something of me, or what concerns me; pray you, Since doubting things go ill often hurts more Than to be sure they do; for certainties Either are past remedies, or, timely knowing, The remedy then born—discover to me What both you spur and stop.

IACHIMO. Had I this cheek To bathe my lips upon; this hand, whose touch, Whose every touch, would force the feeler’s soul To th’ oath of loyalty; this object, which Takes prisoner the wild motion of mine eye, Fixing it only here; should I, damn’d then, Slaver with lips as common as the stairs That mount the Capitol; join gripes with hands Made hard with hourly falsehood (falsehood as With labour): then by-peeping in an eye Base and illustrious as the smoky light That’s fed with stinking tallow: it were fit That all the plagues of hell should at one time Encounter such revolt.

IMOGEN. My lord, I fear, Has forgot Britain.

IACHIMO. And himself. Not I Inclin’d to this intelligence pronounce The beggary of his change; but ’tis your graces That from my mutest conscience to my tongue Charms this report out.

IMOGEN. Let me hear no more.

IACHIMO. O dearest soul, your cause doth strike my heart With pity that doth make me sick! A lady So fair, and fasten’d to an empery, Would make the great’st king double, to be partner’d With tomboys hir’d with that self exhibition Which your own coffers yield! with diseas’d ventures That play with all infirmities for gold Which rottenness can lend nature! Such boil’d stuff As well might poison poison! Be reveng’d; Or she that bore you was no queen, and you Recoil from your great stock.

IMOGEN. Reveng’d? How should I be reveng’d? If this be true, (As I have such a heart that both mine ears Must not in haste abuse) if it be true, How should I be reveng’d?

IACHIMO. Should he make me Live like Diana’s priest betwixt cold sheets, Whiles he is vaulting variable ramps, In your despite, upon your purse? Revenge it. I dedicate myself to your sweet pleasure, More noble than that runagate to your bed, And will continue fast to your affection, Still close as sure.

IMOGEN. What ho, Pisanio!

IACHIMO. Let me my service tender on your lips.

IMOGEN. Away! I do condemn mine ears that have So long attended thee. If thou wert honourable, Thou wouldst have told this tale for virtue, not For such an end thou seek’st, as base as strange. Thou wrong’st a gentleman who is as far From thy report as thou from honour; and Solicits here a lady that disdains Thee and the devil alike. What ho, Pisanio! The King my father shall be made acquainted Of thy assault. If he shall think it fit A saucy stranger in his court to mart As in a Romish stew, and to expound His beastly mind to us, he hath a court He little cares for, and a daughter who He not respects at all. What ho, Pisanio!

IACHIMO. O happy Leonatus! I may say The credit that thy lady hath of thee Deserves thy trust, and thy most perfect goodness Her assur’d credit. Blessed live you long, A lady to the worthiest sir that ever Country call’d his! and you his mistress, only For the most worthiest fit! Give me your pardon. I have spoke this to know if your affiance Were deeply rooted, and shall make your lord That which he is new o’er; and he is one The truest manner’d, such a holy witch That he enchants societies into him, Half all men’s hearts are his.

IMOGEN. You make amends.

IACHIMO. He sits ’mongst men like a descended god: He hath a kind of honour sets him off More than a mortal seeming. Be not angry, Most mighty Princess, that I have adventur’d To try your taking of a false report, which hath Honour’d with confirmation your great judgement In the election of a sir so rare, Which you know cannot err. The love I bear him Made me to fan you thus; but the gods made you, Unlike all others, chaffless. Pray your pardon.

IMOGEN. All’s well, sir; take my pow’r i’ th’ court for yours.

IACHIMO. My humble thanks. I had almost forgot T’ entreat your Grace but in a small request, And yet of moment too, for it concerns Your lord; myself and other noble friends Are partners in the business.

IMOGEN. Pray what is’t?

IACHIMO. Some dozen Romans of us, and your lord (The best feather of our wing) have mingled sums To buy a present for the Emperor; Which I, the factor for the rest, have done In France. ’Tis plate of rare device, and jewels Of rich and exquisite form, their values great; And I am something curious, being strange, To have them in safe stowage. May it please you To take them in protection?

IMOGEN. Willingly; And pawn mine honour for their safety. Since My lord hath interest in them, I will keep them In my bedchamber.

IACHIMO. They are in a trunk, Attended by my men. I will make bold To send them to you only for this night; I must aboard tomorrow.

IMOGEN. O, no, no.

IACHIMO. Yes, I beseech; or I shall short my word By length’ning my return. From Gallia I cross’d the seas on purpose and on promise To see your Grace.

IMOGEN. I thank you for your pains. But not away tomorrow!

IACHIMO. O, I must, madam. Therefore I shall beseech you, if you please To greet your lord with writing, do’t tonight. I have outstood my time, which is material To th’ tender of our present.

IMOGEN. I will write. Send your trunk to me; it shall safe be kept And truly yielded you. You’re very welcome.

SCENE I. Britain. Before Cymbeline’s palace.

Enter Cloten and the two Lords.

CLOTEN. Was there ever man had such luck! When I kiss’d the jack, upon an upcast to be hit away! I had a hundred pound on’t; and then a whoreson jackanapes must take me up for swearing, as if I borrowed mine oaths of him, and might not spend them at my pleasure.

FIRST LORD. What got he by that? You have broke his pate with your bowl.

SECOND LORD. [Aside.] If his wit had been like him that broke it, it would have run all out.

CLOTEN. When a gentleman is dispos’d to swear, it is not for any standers-by to curtail his oaths. Ha?

SECOND LORD. No, my lord; [Aside.] nor crop the ears of them.

CLOTEN. Whoreson dog! I gave him satisfaction. Would he had been one of my rank!

SECOND LORD. [Aside.] To have smell’d like a fool.

CLOTEN. I am not vex’d more at anything in th’ earth. A pox on’t! I had rather not be so noble as I am; they dare not fight with me, because of the Queen my mother. Every jackslave hath his bellyful of fighting, and I must go up and down like a cock that nobody can match.

SECOND LORD. [Aside.] You are cock and capon too; and you crow, cock, with your comb on.

CLOTEN. Sayest thou?

SECOND LORD. It is not fit your lordship should undertake every companion that you give offence to.

CLOTEN. No, I know that; but it is fit I should commit offence to my inferiors.

SECOND LORD. Ay, it is fit for your lordship only.

CLOTEN. Why, so I say.

FIRST LORD. Did you hear of a stranger that’s come to court tonight?

CLOTEN. A stranger, and I not known on’t?

SECOND LORD. [Aside.] He’s a strange fellow himself, and knows it not.

FIRST LORD. There’s an Italian come, and, ’tis thought, one of Leonatus’ friends.

CLOTEN. Leonatus? A banish’d rascal; and he’s another, whatsoever he be. Who told you of this stranger?

FIRST LORD. One of your lordship’s pages.

CLOTEN. Is it fit I went to look upon him? Is there no derogation in’t?

SECOND LORD. You cannot derogate, my lord.

CLOTEN. Not easily, I think.

SECOND LORD. [Aside.] You are a fool granted; therefore your issues, being foolish, do not derogate.

CLOTEN. Come, I’ll go see this Italian. What I have lost today at bowls I’ll win tonight of him. Come, go.

SECOND LORD. I’ll attend your lordship.

[Exeunt Cloten and First Lord.]

That such a crafty devil as is his mother Should yield the world this ass! A woman that Bears all down with her brain; and this her son Cannot take two from twenty, for his heart, And leave eighteen. Alas, poor princess, Thou divine Imogen, what thou endur’st, Betwixt a father by thy step-dame govern’d, A mother hourly coining plots, a wooer More hateful than the foul expulsion is Of thy dear husband, than that horrid act Of the divorce he’d make! The heavens hold firm The walls of thy dear honour, keep unshak’d That temple, thy fair mind, that thou mayst stand T’ enjoy thy banish’d lord and this great land!

SCENE II. Britain. Imogen’s bedchamber in Cymbeline’s palace; a trunk in one corner.

Enter Imogen in her bed, and a Lady attending.

IMOGEN. Who’s there? My woman Helen?

LADY. Please you, madam.

IMOGEN. What hour is it?

LADY. Almost midnight, madam.

IMOGEN. I have read three hours then. Mine eyes are weak; Fold down the leaf where I have left. To bed. Take not away the taper, leave it burning; And if thou canst awake by four o’ th’ clock, I prithee call me. Sleep hath seiz’d me wholly.

[Exit Lady.]

To your protection I commend me, gods. From fairies and the tempters of the night Guard me, beseech ye!

[Sleeps. Iachimo comes from the trunk.]

IACHIMO. The crickets sing, and man’s o’er-labour’d sense Repairs itself by rest. Our Tarquin thus Did softly press the rushes ere he waken’d The chastity he wounded. Cytherea, How bravely thou becom’st thy bed! fresh lily, And whiter than the sheets! That I might touch! But kiss; one kiss! Rubies unparagon’d, How dearly they do’t! ’Tis her breathing that Perfumes the chamber thus. The flame o’ th’ taper Bows toward her and would under-peep her lids To see th’ enclosed lights, now canopied Under these windows white and azure, lac’d With blue of heaven’s own tinct. But my design To note the chamber. I will write all down: Such and such pictures; there the window; such Th’ adornment of her bed; the arras, figures, Why, such and such; and the contents o’ th’ story. Ah, but some natural notes about her body Above ten thousand meaner movables Would testify, t’ enrich mine inventory. O sleep, thou ape of death, lie dull upon her! And be her sense but as a monument, Thus in a chapel lying! Come off, come off;

[Taking off her bracelet.]

As slippery as the Gordian knot was hard! ’Tis mine; and this will witness outwardly, As strongly as the conscience does within, To th’ madding of her lord. On her left breast A mole cinque-spotted, like the crimson drops I’ th’ bottom of a cowslip. Here’s a voucher Stronger than ever law could make; this secret Will force him think I have pick’d the lock and ta’en The treasure of her honour. No more. To what end? Why should I write this down that’s riveted, Screw’d to my memory? She hath been reading late The tale of Tereus; here the leaf’s turn’d down Where Philomel gave up. I have enough. To th’ trunk again, and shut the spring of it. Swift, swift, you dragons of the night, that dawning May bare the raven’s eye! I lodge in fear; Though this a heavenly angel, hell is here.

[Clock strikes.]

One, two, three. Time, time!

[Exit into the trunk.]

SCENE III. Cymbeline’s palace. An ante-chamber adjoining Imogen’s apartments.

Enter Cloten and Lords.

FIRST LORD. Your lordship is the most patient man in loss, the most coldest that ever turn’d up ace.

CLOTEN. It would make any man cold to lose.

FIRST LORD. But not every man patient after the noble temper of your lordship. You are most hot and furious when you win.

CLOTEN. Winning will put any man into courage. If I could get this foolish Imogen, I should have gold enough. It’s almost morning, is’t not?

FIRST LORD. Day, my lord.

CLOTEN. I would this music would come. I am advised to give her music a mornings; they say it will penetrate.

Enter Musicians.

Come on, tune. If you can penetrate her with your fingering, so. We’ll try with tongue too. If none will do, let her remain; but I’ll never give o’er. First, a very excellent good-conceited thing; after, a wonderful sweet air, with admirable rich words to it, and then let her consider.

Hark, hark! the lark at heaven’s gate sings, And Phœbus ’gins arise, His steeds to water at those springs On chalic’d flow’rs that lies; And winking Mary-buds begin To ope their golden eyes. With everything that pretty is, My lady sweet, arise; Arise, arise!

CLOTEN. So, get you gone. If this penetrate, I will consider your music the better; if it do not, it is a vice in her ears which horsehairs and calves’ guts, nor the voice of unpaved eunuch to boot, can never amend.

[Exeunt Musicians.]

Enter Cymbeline and Queen.

SECOND LORD. Here comes the King.

CLOTEN. I am glad I was up so late, for that’s the reason I was up so early. He cannot choose but take this service I have done fatherly.—Good morrow to your Majesty and to my gracious mother.

CYMBELINE. Attend you here the door of our stern daughter? Will she not forth?

CLOTEN. I have assail’d her with musics, but she vouchsafes no notice.

CYMBELINE. The exile of her minion is too new; She hath not yet forgot him; some more time Must wear the print of his remembrance on’t, And then she’s yours.

QUEEN. You are most bound to th’ King, Who lets go by no vantages that may Prefer you to his daughter. Frame yourself To orderly solicits, and be friended With aptness of the season; make denials Increase your services; so seem as if You were inspir’d to do those duties which You tender to her; that you in all obey her, Save when command to your dismission tends, And therein you are senseless.

CLOTEN. Senseless? Not so.

MESSENGER. So like you, sir, ambassadors from Rome; The one is Caius Lucius.

CYMBELINE. A worthy fellow, Albeit he comes on angry purpose now; But that’s no fault of his. We must receive him According to the honour of his sender; And towards himself, his goodness forespent on us, We must extend our notice. Our dear son, When you have given good morning to your mistress, Attend the Queen and us; we shall have need T’ employ you towards this Roman. Come, our queen.

[Exeunt all but Cloten.]

CLOTEN. If she be up, I’ll speak with her; if not, Let her lie still and dream. By your leave, ho!

[Knocks.]

I know her women are about her; what If I do line one of their hands? ’Tis gold Which buys admittance (oft it doth) yea, and makes Diana’s rangers false themselves, yield up Their deer to th’ stand o’ th’ stealer; and ’tis gold Which makes the true man kill’d and saves the thief; Nay, sometime hangs both thief and true man. What Can it not do and undo? I will make One of her women lawyer to me, for I yet not understand the case myself. By your leave.

LADY. Who’s there that knocks?

CLOTEN. A gentleman.

LADY. No more?

CLOTEN. Yes, and a gentlewoman’s son.

LADY. That’s more Than some whose tailors are as dear as yours Can justly boast of. What’s your lordship’s pleasure?

CLOTEN. Your lady’s person; is she ready?

LADY. Ay, To keep her chamber.

CLOTEN. There is gold for you; sell me your good report.

LADY. How? My good name? or to report of you What I shall think is good? The Princess!

Enter Imogen.

CLOTEN. Good morrow, fairest sister. Your sweet hand.

IMOGEN. Good morrow, sir. You lay out too much pains For purchasing but trouble. The thanks I give Is telling you that I am poor of thanks, And scarce can spare them.

CLOTEN. Still I swear I love you.

IMOGEN. If you but said so, ’twere as deep with me. If you swear still, your recompense is still That I regard it not.

CLOTEN. This is no answer.

IMOGEN. But that you shall not say I yield, being silent, I would not speak. I pray you spare me. Faith, I shall unfold equal discourtesy To your best kindness; one of your great knowing Should learn, being taught, forbearance.

CLOTEN. To leave you in your madness ’twere my sin; I will not.

IMOGEN. Fools are not mad folks.

CLOTEN. Do you call me fool?

IMOGEN. As I am mad, I do; If you’ll be patient, I’ll no more be mad; That cures us both. I am much sorry, sir, You put me to forget a lady’s manners By being so verbal; and learn now, for all, That I, which know my heart, do here pronounce, By th’ very truth of it, I care not for you, And am so near the lack of charity To accuse myself I hate you; which I had rather You felt than make’t my boast.

CLOTEN. You sin against Obedience, which you owe your father. For The contract you pretend with that base wretch, One bred of alms and foster’d with cold dishes, With scraps o’ th’ court, it is no contract, none. And though it be allowed in meaner parties (Yet who than he more mean?) to knit their souls (On whom there is no more dependency But brats and beggary) in self-figur’d knot, Yet you are curb’d from that enlargement by The consequence o’ th’ crown, and must not foil The precious note of it with a base slave, A hilding for a livery, a squire’s cloth, A pantler; not so eminent!

IMOGEN. Profane fellow! Wert thou the son of Jupiter, and no more But what thou art besides, thou wert too base To be his groom. Thou wert dignified enough, Even to the point of envy, if ’twere made Comparative for your virtues to be styl’d The under-hangman of his kingdom, and hated For being preferr’d so well.

CLOTEN. The south fog rot him!

IMOGEN. He never can meet more mischance than come To be but nam’d of thee. His mean’st garment That ever hath but clipp’d his body, is dearer In my respect, than all the hairs above thee, Were they all made such men. How now, Pisanio!

CLOTEN. ‘His garment’! Now the devil—

IMOGEN. To Dorothy my woman hie thee presently.

CLOTEN. ‘His garment’!

IMOGEN. I am sprited with a fool; Frighted, and ang’red worse. Go bid my woman Search for a jewel that too casually Hath left mine arm. It was thy master’s; shrew me, If I would lose it for a revenue Of any king’s in Europe! I do think I saw’t this morning; confident I am Last night ’twas on mine arm; I kiss’d it. I hope it be not gone to tell my lord That I kiss aught but he.

PISANIO. ’Twill not be lost.

IMOGEN. I hope so. Go and search.

CLOTEN. You have abus’d me. ‘His meanest garment’!

IMOGEN. Ay, I said so, sir. If you will make ’t an action, call witness to ’t.

CLOTEN. I will inform your father.

IMOGEN. Your mother too. She’s my good lady and will conceive, I hope, But the worst of me. So I leave you, sir, To th’ worst of discontent.

CLOTEN. I’ll be reveng’d. ‘His mean’st garment’! Well.

SCENE IV. Rome. Philario’s house.

Enter Posthumus and Philario.

POSTHUMUS. Fear it not, sir; I would I were so sure To win the King as I am bold her honour Will remain hers.

PHILARIO. What means do you make to him?

POSTHUMUS. Not any; but abide the change of time, Quake in the present winter’s state, and wish That warmer days would come. In these fear’d hopes I barely gratify your love; they failing, I must die much your debtor.

PHILARIO. Your very goodness and your company O’erpays all I can do. By this your king Hath heard of great Augustus. Caius Lucius Will do’s commission throughly; and I think He’ll grant the tribute, send th’ arrearages, Or look upon our Romans, whose remembrance Is yet fresh in their grief.

POSTHUMUS. I do believe Statist though I am none, nor like to be, That this will prove a war; and you shall hear The legions now in Gallia sooner landed In our not-fearing Britain than have tidings Of any penny tribute paid. Our countrymen Are men more order’d than when Julius Cæsar Smil’d at their lack of skill, but found their courage Worthy his frowning at. Their discipline, Now mingled with their courages, will make known To their approvers they are people such That mend upon the world.

Enter Iachimo.

PHILARIO. See! Iachimo!

POSTHUMUS. The swiftest harts have posted you by land, And winds of all the corners kiss’d your sails, To make your vessel nimble.

PHILARIO. Welcome, sir.

POSTHUMUS. I hope the briefness of your answer made The speediness of your return.

IACHIMO. Your lady Is one of the fairest that I have look’d upon.

POSTHUMUS. And therewithal the best; or let her beauty Look through a casement to allure false hearts, And be false with them.

IACHIMO. Here are letters for you.

POSTHUMUS. Their tenour good, I trust.

IACHIMO. ’Tis very like.

PHILARIO. Was Caius Lucius in the Britain court When you were there?

IACHIMO. He was expected then, But not approach’d.

POSTHUMUS. All is well yet. Sparkles this stone as it was wont, or is’t not Too dull for your good wearing?

IACHIMO. If I have lost it, I should have lost the worth of it in gold. I’ll make a journey twice as far t’ enjoy A second night of such sweet shortness which Was mine in Britain; for the ring is won.

POSTHUMUS. The stone’s too hard to come by.

IACHIMO. Not a whit, Your lady being so easy.

POSTHUMUS. Make not, sir, Your loss your sport. I hope you know that we Must not continue friends.

IACHIMO. Good sir, we must, If you keep covenant. Had I not brought The knowledge of your mistress home, I grant We were to question farther; but I now Profess myself the winner of her honour, Together with your ring; and not the wronger Of her or you, having proceeded but By both your wills.

POSTHUMUS. If you can make’t apparent That you have tasted her in bed, my hand And ring is yours. If not, the foul opinion You had of her pure honour gains or loses Your sword or mine, or masterless leaves both To who shall find them.

IACHIMO. Sir, my circumstances, Being so near the truth as I will make them, Must first induce you to believe; whose strength I will confirm with oath; which I doubt not You’ll give me leave to spare when you shall find You need it not.

POSTHUMUS. Proceed.

IACHIMO. First, her bedchamber, (Where I confess I slept not, but profess Had that was well worth watching) it was hang’d With tapestry of silk and silver; the story, Proud Cleopatra when she met her Roman And Cydnus swell’d above the banks, or for The press of boats or pride. A piece of work So bravely done, so rich, that it did strive In workmanship and value; which I wonder’d Could be so rarely and exactly wrought, Since the true life on’t was—

POSTHUMUS. This is true; And this you might have heard of here, by me Or by some other.

IACHIMO. More particulars Must justify my knowledge.

POSTHUMUS. So they must, Or do your honour injury.

IACHIMO. The chimney Is south the chamber, and the chimneypiece Chaste Dian bathing. Never saw I figures So likely to report themselves. The cutter Was as another nature, dumb; outwent her, Motion and breath left out.

POSTHUMUS. This is a thing Which you might from relation likewise reap, Being, as it is, much spoke of.

IACHIMO. The roof o’ th’ chamber With golden cherubins is fretted; her andirons (I had forgot them) were two winking Cupids Of silver, each on one foot standing, nicely Depending on their brands.

POSTHUMUS. This is her honour! Let it be granted you have seen all this, and praise Be given to your remembrance; the description Of what is in her chamber nothing saves The wager you have laid.

IACHIMO. Then, if you can, [Shows the bracelet] Be pale. I beg but leave to air this jewel. See! And now ’tis up again. It must be married To that your diamond; I’ll keep them.

POSTHUMUS. Jove! Once more let me behold it. Is it that Which I left with her?

IACHIMO. Sir (I thank her) that. She stripp’d it from her arm; I see her yet; Her pretty action did outsell her gift, And yet enrich’d it too. She gave it me, and said She priz’d it once.

POSTHUMUS. May be she pluck’d it off To send it me.

IACHIMO. She writes so to you, doth she?

POSTHUMUS. O, no, no, no! ’tis true. Here, take this too;

[Gives the ring.]

It is a basilisk unto mine eye, Kills me to look on’t. Let there be no honour Where there is beauty; truth where semblance; love Where there’s another man. The vows of women Of no more bondage be to where they are made Than they are to their virtues, which is nothing. O, above measure false!

PHILARIO. Have patience, sir, And take your ring again; ’tis not yet won. It may be probable she lost it, or Who knows if one her women, being corrupted Hath stol’n it from her?

POSTHUMUS. Very true; And so I hope he came by’t. Back my ring. Render to me some corporal sign about her, More evident than this; for this was stol’n.

IACHIMO. By Jupiter, I had it from her arm!

POSTHUMUS. Hark you, he swears; by Jupiter he swears. ’Tis true, nay, keep the ring, ’tis true. I am sure She would not lose it. Her attendants are All sworn and honourable:—they induc’d to steal it! And by a stranger! No, he hath enjoy’d her. The cognizance of her incontinency Is this: she hath bought the name of whore thus dearly. There, take thy hire; and all the fiends of hell Divide themselves between you!

PHILARIO. Sir, be patient; This is not strong enough to be believ’d Of one persuaded well of.

POSTHUMUS. Never talk on’t; She hath been colted by him.

IACHIMO. If you seek For further satisfying, under her breast (Worthy the pressing) lies a mole, right proud Of that most delicate lodging. By my life, I kiss’d it; and it gave me present hunger To feed again, though full. You do remember This stain upon her?

POSTHUMUS. Ay, and it doth confirm Another stain, as big as hell can hold, Were there no more but it.

IACHIMO. Will you hear more?

POSTHUMUS. Spare your arithmetic; never count the turns. Once, and a million!

IACHIMO. I’ll be sworn—

POSTHUMUS. No swearing. If you will swear you have not done’t, you lie; And I will kill thee if thou dost deny Thou’st made me cuckold.

IACHIMO. I’ll deny nothing.

POSTHUMUS. O that I had her here to tear her limb-meal! I will go there and do’t, i’ th’ court, before Her father. I’ll do something—

PHILARIO. Quite besides The government of patience! You have won. Let’s follow him and pervert the present wrath He hath against himself.

IACHIMO. With all my heart.

SCENE V. Rome. Another room in Philario’s house.

POSTHUMUS. Is there no way for men to be, but women Must be half-workers? We are all bastards, And that most venerable man which I Did call my father was I know not where When I was stamp’d. Some coiner with his tools Made me a counterfeit; yet my mother seem’d The Dian of that time. So doth my wife The nonpareil of this. O, vengeance, vengeance! Me of my lawful pleasure she restrain’d, And pray’d me oft forbearance; did it with A pudency so rosy, the sweet view on’t Might well have warm’d old Saturn; that I thought her As chaste as unsunn’d snow. O, all the devils! This yellow Iachimo in an hour, was’t not? Or less; at first? Perchance he spoke not, but, Like a full-acorn’d boar, a German one, Cried “O!” and mounted; found no opposition But what he look’d for should oppose and she Should from encounter guard. Could I find out The woman’s part in me! For there’s no motion That tends to vice in man but I affirm It is the woman’s part. Be it lying, note it, The woman’s; flattering, hers; deceiving, hers; Lust and rank thoughts, hers, hers; revenges, hers; Ambitions, covetings, change of prides, disdain, Nice longing, slanders, mutability, All faults that man may name, nay, that hell knows, Why, hers, in part or all; but rather all; For even to vice They are not constant, but are changing still One vice but of a minute old for one Not half so old as that. I’ll write against them, Detest them, curse them. Yet ’tis greater skill In a true hate to pray they have their will: The very devils cannot plague them better.

SCENE I. Britain. A hall in Cymbeline’s palace.

Enter in state Cymbeline, Queen, Cloten and Lords at one door, and at another Caius Lucius and Attendants.

CYMBELINE. Now say, what would Augustus Cæsar with us?

LUCIUS. When Julius Cæsar, (whose remembrance yet Lives in men’s eyes, and will to ears and tongues Be theme and hearing ever) was in this Britain, And conquer’d it, Cassibelan, thine uncle, Famous in Cæsar’s praises no whit less Than in his feats deserving it, for him And his succession granted Rome a tribute, Yearly three thousand pounds, which by thee lately Is left untender’d.

QUEEN. And, to kill the marvel, Shall be so ever.

CLOTEN. There be many Cæsars ere such another Julius. Britain is a world by itself, and we will nothing pay for wearing our own noses.

QUEEN. That opportunity, Which then they had to take from’s, to resume We have again. Remember, sir, my liege, The kings your ancestors, together with The natural bravery of your isle, which stands As Neptune’s park, ribb’d and pal’d in With rocks unscaleable and roaring waters, With sands that will not bear your enemies’ boats But suck them up to th’ top-mast. A kind of conquest Cæsar made here, but made not here his brag Of ‘Came, and saw, and overcame.’ With shame (The first that ever touch’d him) he was carried From off our coast, twice beaten; and his shipping (Poor ignorant baubles!) on our terrible seas, Like egg-shells mov’d upon their surges, crack’d As easily ’gainst our rocks; for joy whereof The fam’d Cassibelan, who was once at point (O, giglot fortune!) to master Cæsar’s sword, Made Lud’s Town with rejoicing fires bright And Britons strut with courage.

CLOTEN. Come, there’s no more tribute to be paid. Our kingdom is stronger than it was at that time; and, as I said, there is no moe such Cæsars. Other of them may have crook’d noses; but to owe such straight arms, none.

CYMBELINE. Son, let your mother end.

CLOTEN. We have yet many among us can gripe as hard as Cassibelan. I do not say I am one; but I have a hand. Why tribute? Why should we pay tribute? If Cæsar can hide the sun from us with a blanket, or put the moon in his pocket, we will pay him tribute for light; else, sir, no more tribute, pray you now.

CYMBELINE. You must know, Till the injurious Romans did extort This tribute from us, we were free. Cæsar’s ambition, Which swell’d so much that it did almost stretch The sides o’ th’ world, against all colour here Did put the yoke upon’s; which to shake off Becomes a warlike people, whom we reckon Ourselves to be.

CLOTEN. We do.

CYMBELINE. Say then to Cæsar, Our ancestor was that Mulmutius which Ordain’d our laws, whose use the sword of Cæsar Hath too much mangled; whose repair and franchise Shall, by the power we hold, be our good deed, Though Rome be therefore angry. Mulmutius made our laws, Who was the first of Britain which did put His brows within a golden crown, and call’d Himself a king.

LUCIUS. I am sorry, Cymbeline, That I am to pronounce Augustus Cæsar (Cæsar, that hath moe kings his servants than Thyself domestic officers) thine enemy. Receive it from me, then: war and confusion In Cæsar’s name pronounce I ’gainst thee; look For fury not to be resisted. Thus defied, I thank thee for myself.

CYMBELINE. Thou art welcome, Caius. Thy Cæsar knighted me; my youth I spent Much under him; of him I gather’d honour, Which he to seek of me again, perforce, Behoves me keep at utterance. I am perfect That the Pannonians and Dalmatians for Their liberties are now in arms, a precedent Which not to read would show the Britons cold; So Cæsar shall not find them.

LUCIUS. Let proof speak.

CLOTEN. His majesty bids you welcome. Make pastime with us a day or two, or longer. If you seek us afterwards in other terms, you shall find us in our salt-water girdle. If you beat us out of it, it is yours; if you fall in the adventure, our crows shall fare the better for you; and there’s an end.

LUCIUS. So, sir.

CYMBELINE. I know your master’s pleasure, and he mine; All the remain is, welcome.

SCENE II. Britain. Another room in Cymbeline’s palace.

Enter Pisanio reading of a letter.

PISANIO. How? of adultery? Wherefore write you not What monsters her accuse? Leonatus! O master, what a strange infection Is fall’n into thy ear! What false Italian (As poisonous-tongu’d as handed) hath prevail’d On thy too ready hearing? Disloyal? No. She’s punish’d for her truth, and undergoes, More goddess-like than wife-like, such assaults As would take in some virtue. O my master, Thy mind to her is now as low as were Thy fortunes. How? that I should murder her? Upon the love, and truth, and vows, which I Have made to thy command? I, her? Her blood? If it be so to do good service, never Let me be counted serviceable. How look I That I should seem to lack humanity So much as this fact comes to?

‘Do’t. The letter That I have sent her, by her own command Shall give thee opportunity.’ O damn’d paper, Black as the ink that’s on thee! Senseless bauble, Art thou a fedary for this act, and look’st So virgin-like without? Lo, here she comes.

I am ignorant in what I am commanded.

IMOGEN. How now, Pisanio?

PISANIO. Madam, here is a letter from my lord.

IMOGEN. Who? thy lord? That is my lord, Leonatus? O, learn’d indeed were that astronomer That knew the stars as I his characters; He’d lay the future open. You good gods, Let what is here contain’d relish of love, Of my lord’s health, of his content; yet not That we two are asunder; let that grieve him! Some griefs are med’cinable; that is one of them, For it doth physic love: of his content, All but in that. Good wax, thy leave. Blest be You bees that make these locks of counsel! Lovers And men in dangerous bonds pray not alike; Though forfeiters you cast in prison, yet You clasp young Cupid’s tables. Good news, gods!

Justice and your father’s wrath, should he take me in his dominion, could not be so cruel to me as you, O the dearest of creatures, would even renew me with your eyes. Take notice that I am in Cambria, at Milford Haven. What your own love will out of this advise you, follow. So he wishes you all happiness that remains loyal to his vow, and your increasing in love. LEONATUS POSTHUMUS.

O for a horse with wings! Hear’st thou, Pisanio? He is at Milford Haven. Read, and tell me How far ’tis thither. If one of mean affairs May plod it in a week, why may not I Glide thither in a day? Then, true Pisanio, Who long’st like me to see thy lord, who long’st (O, let me ’bate!) but not like me, yet long’st, But in a fainter kind. O, not like me, For mine’s beyond beyond: say, and speak thick, (Love’s counsellor should fill the bores of hearing To th’ smothering of the sense) how far it is To this same blessed Milford. And by th’ way Tell me how Wales was made so happy as T’ inherit such a haven. But first of all, How we may steal from hence; and for the gap That we shall make in time from our hence-going And our return, to excuse. But first, how get hence. Why should excuse be born or ere begot? We’ll talk of that hereafter. Prithee speak, How many score of miles may we well rid ’Twixt hour and hour?

PISANIO. One score ’twixt sun and sun, Madam, ’s enough for you, and too much too.

IMOGEN. Why, one that rode to’s execution, man, Could never go so slow. I have heard of riding wagers Where horses have been nimbler than the sands That run i’ th’ clock’s behalf. But this is fool’ry. Go bid my woman feign a sickness; say She’ll home to her father; and provide me presently A riding suit, no costlier than would fit A franklin’s huswife.

PISANIO. Madam, you’re best consider.

IMOGEN. I see before me, man. Nor here, nor here, Nor what ensues, but have a fog in them That I cannot look through. Away, I prithee; Do as I bid thee. There’s no more to say. Accessible is none but Milford way.

SCENE III. Wales. A mountainous country with a cave.

Enter from the cave Belarius, Guiderius and Arviragus.

BELARIUS. A goodly day not to keep house with such Whose roof’s as low as ours! Stoop, boys; this gate Instructs you how t’ adore the heavens, and bows you To a morning’s holy office. The gates of monarchs Are arch’d so high that giants may jet through And keep their impious turbans on without Good morrow to the sun. Hail, thou fair heaven! We house i’ th’ rock, yet use thee not so hardly As prouder livers do.

GUIDERIUS. Hail, heaven!

ARVIRAGUS. Hail, heaven!

BELARIUS. Now for our mountain sport. Up to yond hill, Your legs are young; I’ll tread these flats. Consider, When you above perceive me like a crow, That it is place which lessens and sets off; And you may then revolve what tales I have told you Of courts, of princes, of the tricks in war. This service is not service so being done, But being so allow’d. To apprehend thus Draws us a profit from all things we see, And often to our comfort shall we find The sharded beetle in a safer hold Than is the full-wing’d eagle. O, this life Is nobler than attending for a check, Richer than doing nothing for a robe, Prouder than rustling in unpaid-for silk: Such gain the cap of him that makes him fine, Yet keeps his book uncross’d. No life to ours!

GUIDERIUS. Out of your proof you speak. We, poor unfledg’d, Have never wing’d from view o’ th’ nest, nor know not What air’s from home. Haply this life is best, If quiet life be best; sweeter to you That have a sharper known; well corresponding With your stiff age. But unto us it is A cell of ignorance, travelling abed, A prison for a debtor that not dares To stride a limit.

ARVIRAGUS. What should we speak of When we are old as you? When we shall hear The rain and wind beat dark December, how, In this our pinching cave, shall we discourse. The freezing hours away? We have seen nothing; We are beastly: subtle as the fox for prey, Like warlike as the wolf for what we eat. Our valour is to chase what flies; our cage We make a choir, as doth the prison’d bird, And sing our bondage freely.

BELARIUS. How you speak! Did you but know the city’s usuries, And felt them knowingly; the art o’ th’ court, As hard to leave as keep, whose top to climb Is certain falling, or so slipp’ry that The fear’s as bad as falling; the toil o’ th’ war, A pain that only seems to seek out danger I’ th’ name of fame and honour, which dies i’ th’ search, And hath as oft a sland’rous epitaph As record of fair act; nay, many times, Doth ill deserve by doing well; what’s worse, Must curtsy at the censure. O, boys, this story The world may read in me; my body’s mark’d With Roman swords, and my report was once First with the best of note. Cymbeline lov’d me; And when a soldier was the theme, my name Was not far off. Then was I as a tree Whose boughs did bend with fruit. But in one night A storm, or robbery, call it what you will, Shook down my mellow hangings, nay, my leaves, And left me bare to weather.

GUIDERIUS. Uncertain favour!

BELARIUS. My fault being nothing, as I have told you oft, But that two villains, whose false oaths prevail’d Before my perfect honour, swore to Cymbeline I was confederate with the Romans. So Follow’d my banishment, and this twenty years This rock and these demesnes have been my world, Where I have liv’d at honest freedom, paid More pious debts to heaven than in all The fore-end of my time. But up to th’ mountains! This is not hunters’ language. He that strikes The venison first shall be the lord o’ th’ feast; To him the other two shall minister; And we will fear no poison, which attends In place of greater state. I’ll meet you in the valleys.

[Exeunt Guiderius and Arviragus.]

How hard it is to hide the sparks of nature! These boys know little they are sons to th’ King, Nor Cymbeline dreams that they are alive. They think they are mine; and though train’d up thus meanly I’ th’ cave wherein they bow, their thoughts do hit The roofs of palaces, and nature prompts them In simple and low things to prince it much Beyond the trick of others. This Polydore, The heir of Cymbeline and Britain, who The King his father call’d Guiderius—Jove! When on my three-foot stool I sit and tell The warlike feats I have done, his spirits fly out Into my story; say ‘Thus mine enemy fell, And thus I set my foot on’s neck’; even then The princely blood flows in his cheek, he sweats, Strains his young nerves, and puts himself in posture That acts my words. The younger brother, Cadwal, Once Arviragus, in as like a figure Strikes life into my speech, and shows much more His own conceiving. Hark, the game is rous’d! O Cymbeline, heaven and my conscience knows Thou didst unjustly banish me! Whereon, At three and two years old, I stole these babes, Thinking to bar thee of succession as Thou refts me of my lands. Euriphile, Thou wast their nurse; they took thee for their mother, And every day do honour to her grave. Myself, Belarius, that am Morgan call’d, They take for natural father. The game is up.

SCENE IV. Wales, near Milford Haven.

Enter Pisanio and Imogen.

IMOGEN. Thou told’st me, when we came from horse, the place Was near at hand. Ne’er long’d my mother so To see me first as I have now. Pisanio! Man! Where is Posthumus? What is in thy mind That makes thee stare thus? Wherefore breaks that sigh From th’ inward of thee? One but painted thus Would be interpreted a thing perplex’d Beyond self-explication. Put thyself Into a haviour of less fear, ere wildness Vanquish my staider senses. What’s the matter? Why tender’st thou that paper to me with A look untender? If’t be summer news, Smile to’t before; if winterly, thou need’st But keep that count’nance still. My husband’s hand? That drug-damn’d Italy hath out-craftied him, And he’s at some hard point. Speak, man; thy tongue May take off some extremity, which to read Would be even mortal to me.

PISANIO. Please you read, And you shall find me, wretched man, a thing The most disdain’d of fortune.

IMOGEN. [Reads.] Thy mistress, Pisanio, hath play’d the strumpet in my bed, the testimonies whereof lie bleeding in me. I speak not out of weak surmises, but from proof as strong as my grief and as certain as I expect my revenge. That part thou, Pisanio, must act for me, if thy faith be not tainted with the breach of hers. Let thine own hands take away her life; I shall give thee opportunity at Milford Haven; she hath my letter for the purpose; where, if thou fear to strike, and to make me certain it is done, thou art the pandar to her dishonour, and equally to me disloyal.

PISANIO. What shall I need to draw my sword? The paper Hath cut her throat already. No, ’tis slander, Whose edge is sharper than the sword, whose tongue Outvenoms all the worms of Nile, whose breath Rides on the posting winds and doth belie All corners of the world. Kings, queens, and states, Maids, matrons, nay, the secrets of the grave, This viperous slander enters. What cheer, madam?

IMOGEN. False to his bed? What is it to be false? To lie in watch there, and to think on him? To weep twixt clock and clock? If sleep charge nature, To break it with a fearful dream of him, And cry myself awake? That’s false to’s bed, Is it?

PISANIO. Alas, good lady!

IMOGEN. I false! Thy conscience witness! Iachimo, Thou didst accuse him of incontinency; Thou then look’dst like a villain; now, methinks, Thy favour’s good enough. Some jay of Italy, Whose mother was her painting, hath betray’d him. Poor I am stale, a garment out of fashion, And for I am richer than to hang by th’ walls I must be ripp’d. To pieces with me! O, Men’s vows are women’s traitors! All good seeming, By thy revolt, O husband, shall be thought Put on for villainy; not born where’t grows, But worn a bait for ladies.

PISANIO. Good madam, hear me.

IMOGEN. True honest men being heard, like false Æneas, Were, in his time, thought false; and Sinon’s weeping Did scandal many a holy tear, took pity From most true wretchedness. So thou, Posthumus, Wilt lay the leaven on all proper men: Goodly and gallant shall be false and perjur’d From thy great fail. Come, fellow, be thou honest; Do thou thy master’s bidding; when thou seest him, A little witness my obedience. Look! I draw the sword myself; take it, and hit The innocent mansion of my love, my heart. Fear not; ’tis empty of all things but grief; Thy master is not there, who was indeed The riches of it. Do his bidding; strike. Thou mayst be valiant in a better cause, But now thou seem’st a coward.

PISANIO. Hence, vile instrument! Thou shalt not damn my hand.

IMOGEN. Why, I must die; And if I do not by thy hand, thou art No servant of thy master’s. Against self-slaughter There is a prohibition so divine That cravens my weak hand. Come, here’s my heart: Something’s afore’t. Soft, soft! we’ll no defence, Obedient as the scabbard. What is here? The scriptures of the loyal Leonatus All turn’d to heresy? Away, away, Corrupters of my faith, you shall no more Be stomachers to my heart. Thus may poor fools Believe false teachers; though those that are betray’d Do feel the treason sharply, yet the traitor Stands in worse case of woe. And thou, Posthumus, That didst set up my disobedience ’gainst the King My father, and make me put into contempt the suits Of princely fellows, shalt hereafter find It is no act of common passage but A strain of rareness; and I grieve myself To think, when thou shalt be disedg’d by her That now thou tirest on, how thy memory Will then be pang’d by me. Prithee dispatch. The lamb entreats the butcher. Where’s thy knife? Thou art too slow to do thy master’s bidding, When I desire it too.

PISANIO. O gracious lady, Since I receiv’d command to do this busines I have not slept one wink.

IMOGEN. Do’t, and to bed then.

PISANIO. I’ll wake mine eyeballs first.

IMOGEN. Wherefore then Didst undertake it? Why hast thou abus’d So many miles with a pretence? This place? Mine action and thine own? our horses’ labour? The time inviting thee? The perturb’d court, For my being absent? whereunto I never Purpose return. Why hast thou gone so far To be unbent when thou hast ta’en thy stand, Th’ elected deer before thee?

PISANIO. But to win time To lose so bad employment, in the which I have consider’d of a course. Good lady, Hear me with patience.

IMOGEN. Talk thy tongue weary, speak. I have heard I am a strumpet, and mine ear, Therein false struck, can take no greater wound, Nor tent to bottom that. But speak.

PISANIO. Then, madam, I thought you would not back again.

IMOGEN. Most like, Bringing me here to kill me.

PISANIO. Not so, neither; But if I were as wise as honest, then My purpose would prove well. It cannot be But that my master is abus’d. Some villain, Ay, and singular in his art, hath done you both This cursed injury.

IMOGEN. Some Roman courtezan!

PISANIO. No, on my life! I’ll give but notice you are dead, and send him Some bloody sign of it, for ’tis commanded I should do so. You shall be miss’d at court, And that will well confirm it.

IMOGEN. Why, good fellow, What shall I do the while? Where bide? How live? Or in my life what comfort, when I am Dead to my husband?

PISANIO. If you’ll back to th’ court—

IMOGEN. No court, no father, nor no more ado With that harsh, noble, simple nothing, That Cloten, whose love-suit hath been to me As fearful as a siege.

PISANIO. If not at court, Then not in Britain must you bide.

IMOGEN. Where then? Hath Britain all the sun that shines? Day, night, Are they not but in Britain? I’ th’ world’s volume Our Britain seems as of it, but not in’t; In a great pool a swan’s nest. Prithee think There’s livers out of Britain.

PISANIO. I am most glad You think of other place. Th’ ambassador, Lucius the Roman, comes to Milford Haven Tomorrow. Now, if you could wear a mind Dark as your fortune is, and but disguise That which t’ appear itself must not yet be But by self-danger, you should tread a course Pretty and full of view; yea, happily, near The residence of Posthumus; so nigh, at least, That though his actions were not visible, yet Report should render him hourly to your ear As truly as he moves.

IMOGEN. O! for such means, Though peril to my modesty, not death on’t, I would adventure.

PISANIO. Well then, here’s the point: You must forget to be a woman; change Command into obedience; fear and niceness (The handmaids of all women, or, more truly, Woman it pretty self) into a waggish courage; Ready in gibes, quick-answer’d, saucy, and As quarrelous as the weasel. Nay, you must Forget that rarest treasure of your cheek, Exposing it (but, O, the harder heart! Alack, no remedy) to the greedy touch Of common-kissing Titan, and forget Your laboursome and dainty trims wherein You made great Juno angry.

IMOGEN. Nay, be brief; I see into thy end, and am almost A man already.

PISANIO. First, make yourself but like one. Fore-thinking this, I have already fit (’Tis in my cloak-bag) doublet, hat, hose, all That answer to them. Would you, in their serving, And with what imitation you can borrow From youth of such a season, ’fore noble Lucius Present yourself, desire his service, tell him Wherein you’re happy; which will make him know If that his head have ear in music; doubtless With joy he will embrace you; for he’s honourable, And, doubling that, most holy. Your means abroad: You have me, rich; and I will never fail Beginning nor supplyment.

IMOGEN. Thou art all the comfort The gods will diet me with. Prithee away! There’s more to be consider’d; but we’ll even All that good time will give us. This attempt I am soldier to, and will abide it with A prince’s courage. Away, I prithee.

PISANIO. Well, madam, we must take a short farewell, Lest, being miss’d, I be suspected of Your carriage from the court. My noble mistress, Here is a box; I had it from the Queen. What’s in’t is precious. If you are sick at sea Or stomach-qualm’d at land, a dram of this Will drive away distemper. To some shade, And fit you to your manhood. May the gods Direct you to the best!

IMOGEN. Amen. I thank thee.

SCENE V. Britain. Cymbeline’s palace.

Enter Cymbeline, Queen, Cloten, Lucius and Lords.

CYMBELINE. Thus far, and so farewell.

LUCIUS. Thanks, royal sir. My emperor hath wrote; I must from hence, And am right sorry that I must report ye My master’s enemy.

CYMBELINE. Our subjects, sir, Will not endure his yoke; and for ourself To show less sovereignty than they, must needs Appear unkinglike.

LUCIUS. So, sir. I desire of you A conduct overland to Milford Haven. Madam, all joy befall your Grace, and you!

CYMBELINE. My lords, you are appointed for that office; The due of honour in no point omit. So farewell, noble Lucius.

LUCIUS. Your hand, my lord.

CLOTEN. Receive it friendly; but from this time forth I wear it as your enemy.

LUCIUS. Sir, the event Is yet to name the winner. Fare you well.

CYMBELINE. Leave not the worthy Lucius, good my lords, Till he have cross’d the Severn. Happiness!

[Exeunt Lucius and Lords.]

QUEEN. He goes hence frowning; but it honours us That we have given him cause.

CLOTEN. ’Tis all the better; Your valiant Britons have their wishes in it.

CYMBELINE. Lucius hath wrote already to the Emperor How it goes here. It fits us therefore ripely Our chariots and our horsemen be in readiness. The pow’rs that he already hath in Gallia Will soon be drawn to head, from whence he moves His war for Britain.

QUEEN. ’Tis not sleepy business, But must be look’d to speedily and strongly.

CYMBELINE. Our expectation that it would be thus Hath made us forward. But, my gentle queen, Where is our daughter? She hath not appear’d Before the Roman, nor to us hath tender’d The duty of the day. She looks us like A thing more made of malice than of duty; We have noted it. Call her before us, for We have been too slight in sufferance.

QUEEN. Royal sir, Since the exile of Posthumus, most retir’d Hath her life been; the cure whereof, my lord, ’Tis time must do. Beseech your Majesty, Forbear sharp speeches to her; she’s a lady So tender of rebukes that words are strokes, And strokes death to her.

Enter Attendant.

CYMBELINE. Where is she, sir? How Can her contempt be answer’d?

ATTENDANT. Please you, sir, Her chambers are all lock’d, and there’s no answer That will be given to th’ loud of noise we make.

QUEEN. My lord, when last I went to visit her, She pray’d me to excuse her keeping close; Whereto constrain’d by her infirmity She should that duty leave unpaid to you Which daily she was bound to proffer. This She wish’d me to make known; but our great court Made me to blame in memory.

CYMBELINE. Her doors lock’d? Not seen of late? Grant, heavens, that which I fear Prove false!

QUEEN. Son, I say, follow the King.

CLOTEN. That man of hers, Pisanio, her old servant, I have not seen these two days.

QUEEN. Go, look after.

[Exit Cloten.]

Pisanio, thou that stand’st so for Posthumus! He hath a drug of mine. I pray his absence Proceed by swallowing that; for he believes It is a thing most precious. But for her, Where is she gone? Haply despair hath seiz’d her; Or, wing’d with fervour of her love, she’s flown To her desir’d Posthumus. Gone she is To death or to dishonour, and my end Can make good use of either. She being down, I have the placing of the British crown.

Enter Cloten.

How now, my son?

CLOTEN. ’Tis certain she is fled. Go in and cheer the King. He rages; none Dare come about him.

QUEEN. All the better. May This night forestall him of the coming day!

CLOTEN. I love and hate her; for she’s fair and royal, And that she hath all courtly parts more exquisite Than lady, ladies, woman. From every one The best she hath, and she, of all compounded, Outsells them all. I love her therefore; but Disdaining me and throwing favours on The low Posthumus slanders so her judgement That what’s else rare is chok’d; and in that point I will conclude to hate her, nay, indeed, To be reveng’d upon her. For when fools Shall—

Who is here? What, are you packing, sirrah? Come hither. Ah, you precious pandar! Villain, Where is thy lady? In a word, or else Thou art straightway with the fiends.

PISANIO. O good my lord!

CLOTEN. Where is thy lady? or, by Jupiter— I will not ask again. Close villain, I’ll have this secret from thy heart, or rip Thy heart to find it. Is she with Posthumus? From whose so many weights of baseness cannot A dram of worth be drawn.

PISANIO. Alas, my lord, How can she be with him? When was she miss’d? He is in Rome.

CLOTEN. Where is she, sir? Come nearer. No farther halting! Satisfy me home What is become of her.

PISANIO. O my all-worthy lord!

CLOTEN. All-worthy villain! Discover where thy mistress is at once, At the next word. No more of ‘worthy lord’! Speak, or thy silence on the instant is Thy condemnation and thy death.

PISANIO. Then, sir, This paper is the history of my knowledge Touching her flight.

[Presenting a letter.]

CLOTEN. Let’s see’t. I will pursue her Even to Augustus’ throne.

PISANIO. [Aside.] Or this or perish. She’s far enough; and what he learns by this May prove his travel, not her danger.

CLOTEN. Humh!

PISANIO. [Aside.] I’ll write to my lord she’s dead. O Imogen, Safe mayst thou wander, safe return again!

CLOTEN. Sirrah, is this letter true?

PISANIO. Sir, as I think.

CLOTEN. It is Posthumus’ hand; I know’t. Sirrah, if thou wouldst not be a villain, but do me true service, undergo those employments wherein I should have cause to use thee with a serious industry—that is, what villainy soe’er I bid thee do, to perform it directly and truly—I would think thee an honest man; thou shouldst neither want my means for thy relief nor my voice for thy preferment.

PISANIO. Well, my good lord.

CLOTEN. Wilt thou serve me? For since patiently and constantly thou hast stuck to the bare fortune of that beggar Posthumus, thou canst not, in the course of gratitude, but be a diligent follower of mine. Wilt thou serve me?

PISANIO. Sir, I will.

CLOTEN. Give me thy hand; here’s my purse. Hast any of thy late master’s garments in thy possession?

PISANIO. I have, my lord, at my lodging, the same suit he wore when he took leave of my lady and mistress.

CLOTEN. The first service thou dost me, fetch that suit hither. Let it be thy first service; go.

PISANIO. I shall, my lord.

CLOTEN. Meet thee at Milford Haven! I forgot to ask him one thing; I’ll remember’t anon. Even there, thou villain Posthumus, will I kill thee. I would these garments were come. She said upon a time—the bitterness of it I now belch from my heart—that she held the very garment of Posthumus in more respect than my noble and natural person, together with the adornment of my qualities. With that suit upon my back will I ravish her; first kill him, and in her eyes. There shall she see my valour, which will then be a torment to her contempt. He on the ground, my speech of insultment ended on his dead body, and when my lust hath dined—which, as I say, to vex her I will execute in the clothes that she so prais’d—to the court I’ll knock her back, foot her home again. She hath despis’d me rejoicingly, and I’ll be merry in my revenge.

Enter Pisanio with the clothes.

Be those the garments?

PISANIO. Ay, my noble lord.

CLOTEN. How long is’t since she went to Milford Haven?

PISANIO. She can scarce be there yet.

CLOTEN. Bring this apparel to my chamber; that is the second thing that I have commanded thee. The third is that thou wilt be a voluntary mute to my design. Be but duteous and true, preferment shall tender itself to thee. My revenge is now at Milford, would I had wings to follow it! Come, and be true.

PISANIO. Thou bid’st me to my loss; for true to thee Were to prove false, which I will never be, To him that is most true. To Milford go, And find not her whom thou pursuest. Flow, flow, You heavenly blessings, on her! This fool’s speed Be cross’d with slowness! Labour be his meed!

SCENE VI. Wales. Before the cave of Belarius.

Enter Imogen alone, in boy’s clothes.

IMOGEN. I see a man’s life is a tedious one. I have tir’d myself, and for two nights together Have made the ground my bed. I should be sick But that my resolution helps me. Milford, When from the mountain-top Pisanio show’d thee, Thou wast within a ken. O Jove! I think Foundations fly the wretched; such, I mean, Where they should be reliev’d. Two beggars told me I could not miss my way. Will poor folks lie, That have afflictions on them, knowing ’tis A punishment or trial? Yes; no wonder, When rich ones scarce tell true. To lapse in fulness Is sorer than to lie for need; and falsehood Is worse in kings than beggars. My dear lord! Thou art one o’ th’ false ones. Now I think on thee My hunger’s gone; but even before, I was At point to sink for food. But what is this? Here is a path to’t; ’tis some savage hold. I were best not call; I dare not call. Yet famine, Ere clean it o’erthrow nature, makes it valiant. Plenty and peace breeds cowards; hardness ever Of hardiness is mother. Ho! who’s here? If anything that’s civil, speak; if savage, Take or lend. Ho! No answer? Then I’ll enter. Best draw my sword; and if mine enemy But fear the sword, like me, he’ll scarcely look on’t. Such a foe, good heavens!

[Exit into the cave.]

SCENE VII. The same.

Enter Belarius, Guiderius and Arviragus.

BELARIUS. You, Polydore, have prov’d best woodman and Are master of the feast. Cadwal and I Will play the cook and servant; ’tis our match. The sweat of industry would dry and die But for the end it works to. Come, our stomachs Will make what’s homely savoury; weariness Can snore upon the flint, when resty sloth Finds the down pillow hard. Now, peace be here, Poor house, that keep’st thyself!

GUIDERIUS. I am thoroughly weary.

ARVIRAGUS. I am weak with toil, yet strong in appetite.

GUIDERIUS. There is cold meat i’ th’ cave; we’ll browse on that Whilst what we have kill’d be cook’d.

BELARIUS. [Looking into the cave.] Stay, come not in. But that it eats our victuals, I should think Here were a fairy.

GUIDERIUS. What’s the matter, sir?

BELARIUS. By Jupiter, an angel! or, if not, An earthly paragon! Behold divineness No elder than a boy!

IMOGEN. Good masters, harm me not. Before I enter’d here I call’d, and thought To have begg’d or bought what I have took. Good troth, I have stol’n nought; nor would not though I had found Gold strew’d i’ th’ floor. Here’s money for my meat. I would have left it on the board, so soon As I had made my meal, and parted With pray’rs for the provider.

GUIDERIUS. Money, youth?

ARVIRAGUS. All gold and silver rather turn to dirt, As ’tis no better reckon’d but of those Who worship dirty gods.

IMOGEN. I see you’re angry. Know, if you kill me for my fault, I should Have died had I not made it.

BELARIUS. Whither bound?

IMOGEN. To Milford Haven.

BELARIUS. What’s your name?

IMOGEN. Fidele, sir. I have a kinsman who Is bound for Italy; he embark’d at Milford; To whom being going, almost spent with hunger, I am fall’n in this offence.

BELARIUS. Prithee, fair youth, Think us no churls, nor measure our good minds By this rude place we live in. Well encounter’d! ’Tis almost night; you shall have better cheer Ere you depart, and thanks to stay and eat it. Boys, bid him welcome.

GUIDERIUS. Were you a woman, youth, I should woo hard but be your groom. In honesty I bid for you as I’d buy.

ARVIRAGUS. I’ll make’t my comfort He is a man. I’ll love him as my brother; And such a welcome as I’d give to him After long absence, such is yours. Most welcome! Be sprightly, for you fall ’mongst friends.

IMOGEN. ’Mongst friends, If brothers. [Aside.] Would it had been so that they Had been my father’s sons! Then had my prize Been less, and so more equal ballasting To thee, Posthumus.

BELARIUS. He wrings at some distress.

GUIDERIUS. Would I could free’t!

ARVIRAGUS. Or I, whate’er it be, What pain it cost, what danger! Gods!

BELARIUS. [Whispering.] Hark, boys.

IMOGEN. [Aside.] Great men, That had a court no bigger than this cave, That did attend themselves, and had the virtue Which their own conscience seal’d them, laying by That nothing-gift of differing multitudes, Could not out-peer these twain. Pardon me, gods! I’d change my sex to be companion with them, Since Leonatus false.

BELARIUS. It shall be so. Boys, we’ll go dress our hunt. Fair youth, come in. Discourse is heavy, fasting; when we have supp’d, We’ll mannerly demand thee of thy story, So far as thou wilt speak it.

GUIDERIUS. Pray draw near.

ARVIRAGUS. The night to th’ owl and morn to th’ lark less welcome.

IMOGEN. Thanks, sir.

ARVIRAGUS. I pray draw near.

SCENE VIII. Rome. A public place.

Enter two Roman Senators and Tribunes.

FIRST SENATOR. This is the tenour of the Emperor’s writ: That since the common men are now in action ’Gainst the Pannonians and Dalmatians, And that the legions now in Gallia are Full weak to undertake our wars against The fall’n-off Britons, that we do incite The gentry to this business. He creates Lucius proconsul; and to you, the tribunes, For this immediate levy, he commands His absolute commission. Long live Cæsar!

TRIBUNE. Is Lucius general of the forces?

SECOND SENATOR. Ay.

TRIBUNE. Remaining now in Gallia?

FIRST SENATOR. With those legions Which I have spoke of, whereunto your levy Must be supplyant. The words of your commission Will tie you to the numbers and the time Of their dispatch.

TRIBUNE. We will discharge our duty.

SCENE I. Wales. Near the cave of Belarius.

Enter Cloten alone.

CLOTEN. I am near to th’ place where they should meet, if Pisanio have mapp’d it truly. How fit his garments serve me! Why should his mistress, who was made by him that made the tailor, not be fit too? The rather, saving reverence of the word, for ’tis said a woman’s fitness comes by fits. Therein I must play the workman. I dare speak it to myself, for it is not vain-glory for a man and his glass to confer in his own chamber; I mean, the lines of my body are as well drawn as his; no less young, more strong, not beneath him in fortunes, beyond him in the advantage of the time, above him in birth, alike conversant in general services, and more remarkable in single oppositions. Yet this imperceiverant thing loves him in my despite. What mortality is! Posthumus, thy head, which now is growing upon thy shoulders, shall within this hour be off; thy mistress enforced; thy garments cut to pieces before her face; and all this done, spurn her home to her father, who may, haply, be a little angry for my so rough usage; but my mother, having power of his testiness, shall turn all into my commendations. My horse is tied up safe. Out, sword, and to a sore purpose! Fortune, put them into my hand. This is the very description of their meeting-place; and the fellow dares not deceive me.

SCENE II. Wales. Before the cave of Belarius.

Enter from the cave, Belarius, Guiderius, Arviragus and Imogen.

BELARIUS. [To Imogen.] You are not well. Remain here in the cave; We’ll come to you after hunting.

ARVIRAGUS. [To Imogen.] Brother, stay here. Are we not brothers?

IMOGEN. So man and man should be; But clay and clay differs in dignity, Whose dust is both alike. I am very sick.

GUIDERIUS. Go you to hunting; I’ll abide with him.

IMOGEN. So sick I am not, yet I am not well; But not so citizen a wanton as To seem to die ere sick. So please you, leave me; Stick to your journal course. The breach of custom Is breach of all. I am ill, but your being by me Cannot amend me; society is no comfort To one not sociable. I am not very sick, Since I can reason of it. Pray you trust me here. I’ll rob none but myself; and let me die, Stealing so poorly.

GUIDERIUS. I love thee; I have spoke it. How much the quantity, the weight as much As I do love my father.

BELARIUS. What? how? how?

ARVIRAGUS. If it be sin to say so, sir, I yoke me In my good brother’s fault. I know not why I love this youth, and I have heard you say Love’s reason’s without reason. The bier at door, And a demand who is’t shall die, I’d say ‘My father, not this youth.’

BELARIUS. [Aside.] O noble strain! O worthiness of nature! breed of greatness! Cowards father cowards and base things sire base. Nature hath meal and bran, contempt and grace. I’m not their father; yet who this should be Doth miracle itself, lov’d before me.— ’Tis the ninth hour o’ th’ morn.

ARVIRAGUS. Brother, farewell.

IMOGEN. I wish ye sport.

ARVIRAGUS. Your health. [To Belarius.] So please you, sir.

IMOGEN. [Aside.] These are kind creatures. Gods, what lies I have heard! Our courtiers say all’s savage but at court. Experience, O, thou disprov’st report! Th’ imperious seas breed monsters; for the dish, Poor tributary rivers as sweet fish. I am sick still; heart-sick. Pisanio, I’ll now taste of thy drug.

[Swallows some.]

GUIDERIUS. I could not stir him. He said he was gentle, but unfortunate; Dishonestly afflicted, but yet honest.

ARVIRAGUS. Thus did he answer me; yet said hereafter I might know more.

BELARIUS. To th’ field, to th’ field! We’ll leave you for this time. Go in and rest.

ARVIRAGUS. We’ll not be long away.

BELARIUS. Pray be not sick, For you must be our huswife.

IMOGEN. Well, or ill, I am bound to you.

BELARIUS. And shalt be ever.

[Exit Imogen into the cave.]

This youth, howe’er distress’d, appears he hath had Good ancestors.

ARVIRAGUS. How angel-like he sings!

GUIDERIUS. But his neat cookery! He cut our roots in characters, And sauc’d our broths as Juno had been sick, And he her dieter.

ARVIRAGUS. Nobly he yokes A smiling with a sigh, as if the sigh Was that it was for not being such a smile; The smile mocking the sigh that it would fly From so divine a temple to commix With winds that sailors rail at.

GUIDERIUS. I do note That grief and patience, rooted in him both, Mingle their spurs together.

ARVIRAGUS. Grow patience! And let the stinking elder, grief, untwine His perishing root with the increasing vine!

BELARIUS. It is great morning. Come, away! Who’s there?

CLOTEN. I cannot find those runagates; that villain Hath mock’d me. I am faint.

BELARIUS. Those runagates? Means he not us? I partly know him; ’tis Cloten, the son o’ th’ Queen. I fear some ambush. I saw him not these many years, and yet I know ’tis he. We are held as outlaws. Hence!

GUIDERIUS. He is but one; you and my brother search What companies are near. Pray you away; Let me alone with him.

[Exeunt Belarius and Arviragus.]

CLOTEN. Soft! What are you That fly me thus? Some villain mountaineers? I have heard of such. What slave art thou?

GUIDERIUS. A thing More slavish did I ne’er than answering A slave without a knock.

CLOTEN. Thou art a robber, A law-breaker, a villain. Yield thee, thief.

GUIDERIUS. To who? To thee? What art thou? Have not I An arm as big as thine, a heart as big? Thy words, I grant, are bigger, for I wear not My dagger in my mouth. Say what thou art; Why I should yield to thee.

CLOTEN. Thou villain base, Know’st me not by my clothes?

GUIDERIUS. No, nor thy tailor, rascal, Who is thy grandfather; he made those clothes, Which, as it seems, make thee.

CLOTEN. Thou precious varlet, My tailor made them not.

GUIDERIUS. Hence, then, and thank The man that gave them thee. Thou art some fool; I am loath to beat thee.

CLOTEN. Thou injurious thief, Hear but my name, and tremble.

GUIDERIUS. What’s thy name?

CLOTEN. Cloten, thou villain.

GUIDERIUS. Cloten, thou double villain, be thy name, I cannot tremble at it. Were it Toad, or Adder, Spider, ’Twould move me sooner.

CLOTEN. To thy further fear, Nay, to thy mere confusion, thou shalt know I am son to th’ Queen.

GUIDERIUS. I’m sorry for’t; not seeming So worthy as thy birth.

CLOTEN. Art not afeard?

GUIDERIUS. Those that I reverence, those I fear—the wise; At fools I laugh, not fear them.

CLOTEN. Die the death. When I have slain thee with my proper hand, I’ll follow those that even now fled hence, And on the gates of Lud’s Town set your heads. Yield, rustic mountaineer.

[Exeunt, fighting.]

Enter Belarius and Arviragus.

BELARIUS. No company’s abroad?

ARVIRAGUS. None in the world; you did mistake him, sure.

BELARIUS. I cannot tell; long is it since I saw him, But time hath nothing blurr’d those lines of favour Which then he wore; the snatches in his voice, And burst of speaking, were as his. I am absolute ’Twas very Cloten.

ARVIRAGUS. In this place we left them. I wish my brother make good time with him, You say he is so fell.

BELARIUS. Being scarce made up, I mean to man, he had not apprehension Or roaring terrors; for defect of judgement Is oft the cease of fear.

Enter Guiderius with Cloten’s head.

But, see, thy brother.

GUIDERIUS. This Cloten was a fool, an empty purse; There was no money in’t. Not Hercules Could have knock’d out his brains, for he had none; Yet I not doing this, the fool had borne My head as I do his.

BELARIUS. What hast thou done?

GUIDERIUS. I am perfect what: cut off one Cloten’s head, Son to the Queen, after his own report; Who call’d me traitor, mountaineer, and swore With his own single hand he’d take us in, Displace our heads where, thank the gods, they grow, And set them on Lud’s Town.

BELARIUS. We are all undone.

GUIDERIUS. Why, worthy father, what have we to lose But that he swore to take, our lives? The law Protects not us; then why should we be tender To let an arrogant piece of flesh threat us, Play judge and executioner all himself, For we do fear the law? What company Discover you abroad?

BELARIUS. No single soul Can we set eye on, but in all safe reason He must have some attendants. Though his humour Was nothing but mutation, ay, and that From one bad thing to worse, not frenzy, not Absolute madness could so far have rav’d, To bring him here alone. Although perhaps It may be heard at court that such as we Cave here, hunt here, are outlaws, and in time May make some stronger head, the which he hearing, As it is like him, might break out and swear He’d fetch us in; yet is’t not probable To come alone, either he so undertaking Or they so suffering. Then on good ground we fear, If we do fear this body hath a tail More perilous than the head.

ARVIRAGUS. Let ordinance Come as the gods foresay it. Howsoe’er, My brother hath done well.

BELARIUS. I had no mind To hunt this day; the boy Fidele’s sickness Did make my way long forth.

GUIDERIUS. With his own sword, Which he did wave against my throat, I have ta’en His head from him. I’ll throw’t into the creek Behind our rock, and let it to the sea And tell the fishes he’s the Queen’s son, Cloten. That’s all I reck.

BELARIUS. I fear ’twill be reveng’d. Would, Polydore, thou hadst not done’t! though valour Becomes thee well enough.

ARVIRAGUS. Would I had done’t, So the revenge alone pursu’d me! Polydore, I love thee brotherly, but envy much Thou hast robb’d me of this deed. I would revenges, That possible strength might meet, would seek us through, And put us to our answer.

BELARIUS. Well, ’tis done. We’ll hunt no more today, nor seek for danger Where there’s no profit. I prithee to our rock. You and Fidele play the cooks; I’ll stay Till hasty Polydore return, and bring him To dinner presently.

ARVIRAGUS. Poor sick Fidele! I’ll willingly to him; to gain his colour I’d let a parish of such Cloten’s blood, And praise myself for charity.

BELARIUS. O thou goddess, Thou divine Nature, thou thyself thou blazon’st In these two princely boys! They are as gentle As zephyrs blowing below the violet, Not wagging his sweet head; and yet as rough, Their royal blood enchaf’d, as the rud’st wind That by the top doth take the mountain pine And make him stoop to th’ vale. ’Tis wonder That an invisible instinct should frame them To royalty unlearn’d, honour untaught, Civility not seen from other, valour That wildly grows in them, but yields a crop As if it had been sow’d. Yet still it’s strange What Cloten’s being here to us portends, Or what his death will bring us.

Enter Guiderius.

GUIDERIUS. Where’s my brother? I have sent Cloten’s clotpoll down the stream, In embassy to his mother; his body’s hostage For his return.

[Solemn music.]

BELARIUS. My ingenious instrument! Hark, Polydore, it sounds. But what occasion Hath Cadwal now to give it motion? Hark!

GUIDERIUS. Is he at home?

BELARIUS. He went hence even now.

GUIDERIUS. What does he mean? Since death of my dear’st mother It did not speak before. All solemn things Should answer solemn accidents. The matter? Triumphs for nothing and lamenting toys Is jollity for apes and grief for boys. Is Cadwal mad?

Enter Arviragus with Imogen as dead, bearing her in his arms.

BELARIUS. Look, here he comes, And brings the dire occasion in his arms Of what we blame him for!

ARVIRAGUS. The bird is dead That we have made so much on. I had rather Have skipp’d from sixteen years of age to sixty, To have turn’d my leaping time into a crutch, Than have seen this.

GUIDERIUS. O sweetest, fairest lily! My brother wears thee not the one half so well As when thou grew’st thyself.

BELARIUS. O melancholy! Who ever yet could sound thy bottom? find The ooze to show what coast thy sluggish crare Might’st easiliest harbour in? Thou blessed thing! Jove knows what man thou mightst have made; but I, Thou diedst, a most rare boy, of melancholy. How found you him?

ARVIRAGUS. Stark, as you see; Thus smiling, as some fly had tickled slumber, Not as death’s dart, being laugh’d at; his right cheek Reposing on a cushion.

GUIDERIUS. Where?

ARVIRAGUS. O’ th’ floor; His arms thus leagu’d. I thought he slept, and put My clouted brogues from off my feet, whose rudeness Answer’d my steps too loud.

GUIDERIUS. Why, he but sleeps. If he be gone he’ll make his grave a bed; With female fairies will his tomb be haunted, And worms will not come to thee.

ARVIRAGUS. With fairest flowers, Whilst summer lasts and I live here, Fidele, I’ll sweeten thy sad grave. Thou shalt not lack The flower that’s like thy face, pale primrose; nor The azur’d hare-bell, like thy veins; no, nor The leaf of eglantine, whom not to slander, Out-sweet’ned not thy breath. The ruddock would, With charitable bill (O bill, sore shaming Those rich-left heirs that let their fathers lie Without a monument!) bring thee all this; Yea, and furr’d moss besides, when flow’rs are none, To winter-ground thy corse—

GUIDERIUS. Prithee have done, And do not play in wench-like words with that Which is so serious. Let us bury him, And not protract with admiration what Is now due debt. To th’ grave.

ARVIRAGUS. Say, where shall’s lay him?

GUIDERIUS. By good Euriphile, our mother.

ARVIRAGUS. Be’t so; And let us, Polydore, though now our voices Have got the mannish crack, sing him to th’ ground, As once to our mother; use like note and words, Save that Euriphile must be Fidele.

GUIDERIUS. Cadwal, I cannot sing. I’ll weep, and word it with thee; For notes of sorrow out of tune are worse Than priests and fanes that lie.

ARVIRAGUS. We’ll speak it, then.

BELARIUS. Great griefs, I see, med’cine the less, for Cloten Is quite forgot. He was a queen’s son, boys; And though he came our enemy, remember He was paid for that. Though mean and mighty rotting Together have one dust, yet reverence, That angel of the world, doth make distinction Of place ’tween high and low. Our foe was princely; And though you took his life, as being our foe, Yet bury him as a prince.

GUIDERIUS. Pray you fetch him hither. Thersites’ body is as good as Ajax’, When neither are alive.

ARVIRAGUS. If you’ll go fetch him, We’ll say our song the whilst. Brother, begin.

[Exit Belarius.]

GUIDERIUS. Nay, Cadwal, we must lay his head to th’ East; My father hath a reason for’t.

ARVIRAGUS. ’Tis true.

GUIDERIUS. Come on, then, and remove him.

ARVIRAGUS. So. Begin.

GUIDERIUS. Fear no more the heat o’ th’ sun, Nor the furious winter’s rages; Thou thy worldly task hast done, Home art gone, and ta’en thy wages. Golden lads and girls all must, As chimney-sweepers, come to dust.

ARVIRAGUS. Fear no more the frown o’ th’ great; Thou art past the tyrant’s stroke. Care no more to clothe and eat; To thee the reed is as the oak. The sceptre, learning, physic, must All follow this and come to dust.

GUIDERIUS. Fear no more the lightning flash.

ARVIRAGUS. Nor th’ all-dreaded thunder-stone.

GUIDERIUS. Fear not slander, censure rash;

ARVIRAGUS. Thou hast finish’d joy and moan.

BOTH. All lovers young, all lovers must Consign to thee and come to dust.

GUIDERIUS. No exorciser harm thee!

ARVIRAGUS. Nor no witchcraft charm thee!

GUIDERIUS. Ghost unlaid forbear thee!

ARVIRAGUS. Nothing ill come near thee!

BOTH. Quiet consummation have, And renowned be thy grave!

Enter Belarius with the body of Cloten.

GUIDERIUS. We have done our obsequies. Come, lay him down.

BELARIUS. Here’s a few flowers; but ’bout midnight, more. The herbs that have on them cold dew o’ th’ night Are strewings fit’st for graves. Upon their faces. You were as flow’rs, now wither’d. Even so These herblets shall which we upon you strew. Come on, away. Apart upon our knees. The ground that gave them first has them again. Their pleasures here are past, so is their pain.

[Exeunt all but Imogen.]

IMOGEN. [Awaking.] Yes, sir, to Milford Haven. Which is the way? I thank you. By yond bush? Pray, how far thither? ’Ods pittikins! can it be six mile yet? I have gone all night. Faith, I’ll lie down and sleep. But, soft! no bedfellow. O gods and goddesses!

[Seeing the body.]

These flow’rs are like the pleasures of the world; This bloody man, the care on’t. I hope I dream; For so I thought I was a cave-keeper, And cook to honest creatures. But ’tis not so; ’Twas but a bolt of nothing, shot at nothing, Which the brain makes of fumes. Our very eyes Are sometimes, like our judgements, blind. Good faith, I tremble still with fear; but if there be Yet left in heaven as small a drop of pity As a wren’s eye, fear’d gods, a part of it! The dream’s here still. Even when I wake it is Without me, as within me; not imagin’d, felt. A headless man? The garments of Posthumus? I know the shape of’s leg; this is his hand, His foot Mercurial, his Martial thigh, The brawns of Hercules; but his Jovial face— Murder in heaven! How! ’Tis gone. Pisanio, All curses madded Hecuba gave the Greeks, And mine to boot, be darted on thee! Thou, Conspir’d with that irregulous devil, Cloten, Hath here cut off my lord. To write and read Be henceforth treacherous! Damn’d Pisanio Hath with his forged letters (damn’d Pisanio) From this most bravest vessel of the world Struck the main-top. O Posthumus! alas, Where is thy head? Where’s that? Ay me! where’s that? Pisanio might have kill’d thee at the heart, And left this head on. How should this be? Pisanio? ’Tis he and Cloten; malice and lucre in them Have laid this woe here. O, ’tis pregnant, pregnant! The drug he gave me, which he said was precious And cordial to me, have I not found it Murd’rous to th’ senses? That confirms it home. This is Pisanio’s deed, and Cloten. O! Give colour to my pale cheek with thy blood, That we the horrider may seem to those Which chance to find us. O, my lord, my lord!

[Falls fainting on the body.]

Enter Lucius, Captains and a Soothsayer.

CAPTAIN. To them the legions garrison’d in Gallia, After your will, have cross’d the sea, attending You here at Milford Haven; with your ships, They are in readiness.

LUCIUS. But what from Rome?

CAPTAIN. The Senate hath stirr’d up the confiners And gentlemen of Italy, most willing spirits, That promise noble service; and they come Under the conduct of bold Iachimo, Sienna’s brother.

LUCIUS. When expect you them?

CAPTAIN. With the next benefit o’ th’ wind.

LUCIUS. This forwardness Makes our hopes fair. Command our present numbers Be muster’d; bid the captains look to’t. Now, sir, What have you dream’d of late of this war’s purpose?

SOOTHSAYER. Last night the very gods show’d me a vision (I fast and pray’d for their intelligence) thus: I saw Jove’s bird, the Roman eagle, wing’d From the spongy south to this part of the west, There vanish’d in the sunbeams; which portends, Unless my sins abuse my divination, Success to th’ Roman host.

LUCIUS. Dream often so, And never false. Soft, ho! what trunk is here Without his top? The ruin speaks that sometime It was a worthy building. How? a page? Or dead or sleeping on him? But dead, rather; For nature doth abhor to make his bed With the defunct, or sleep upon the dead. Let’s see the boy’s face.

CAPTAIN. He’s alive, my lord.

LUCIUS. He’ll then instruct us of this body. Young one, Inform us of thy fortunes; for it seems They crave to be demanded. Who is this Thou mak’st thy bloody pillow? Or who was he That, otherwise than noble nature did, Hath alter’d that good picture? What’s thy interest In this sad wreck? How came’t? Who is’t? What art thou?

IMOGEN. I am nothing; or if not, Nothing to be were better. This was my master, A very valiant Briton and a good, That here by mountaineers lies slain. Alas! There is no more such masters. I may wander From east to occident; cry out for service; Try many, all good; serve truly; never Find such another master.

LUCIUS. ’Lack, good youth! Thou mov’st no less with thy complaining than Thy master in bleeding. Say his name, good friend.

IMOGEN. Richard du Champ. [Aside.] If I do lie, and do No harm by it, though the gods hear, I hope They’ll pardon it.—Say you, sir?

LUCIUS. Thy name?

IMOGEN. Fidele, sir.

LUCIUS. Thou dost approve thyself the very same; Thy name well fits thy faith, thy faith thy name. Wilt take thy chance with me? I will not say Thou shalt be so well master’d; but, be sure, No less belov’d. The Roman Emperor’s letters, Sent by a consul to me, should not sooner Than thine own worth prefer thee. Go with me.

IMOGEN. I’ll follow, sir. But first, an’t please the gods, I’ll hide my master from the flies, as deep As these poor pickaxes can dig; and when With wild wood-leaves and weeds I ha’ strew’d his grave, And on it said a century of prayers, Such as I can, twice o’er, I’ll weep and sigh; And leaving so his service, follow you, So please you entertain me.

LUCIUS. Ay, good youth; And rather father thee than master thee. My friends, The boy hath taught us manly duties; let us Find out the prettiest daisied plot we can, And make him with our pikes and partisans A grave. Come, arm him. Boy, he is preferr’d By thee to us; and he shall be interr’d As soldiers can. Be cheerful; wipe thine eyes. Some falls are means the happier to arise.

SCENE III. Britain. Cymbeline’s palace.

Enter Cymbeline, Lords, Pisanio and Attendants.

CYMBELINE. Again! and bring me word how ’tis with her.

A fever with the absence of her son; A madness, of which her life’s in danger. Heavens, How deeply you at once do touch me! Imogen, The great part of my comfort, gone; my queen Upon a desperate bed, and in a time When fearful wars point at me; her son gone, So needful for this present. It strikes me past The hope of comfort. But for thee, fellow, Who needs must know of her departure and Dost seem so ignorant, we’ll enforce it from thee By a sharp torture.

PISANIO. Sir, my life is yours; I humbly set it at your will; but for my mistress, I nothing know where she remains, why gone, Nor when she purposes return. Beseech your Highness, Hold me your loyal servant.

LORD. Good my liege, The day that she was missing he was here. I dare be bound he’s true and shall perform All parts of his subjection loyally. For Cloten, There wants no diligence in seeking him, And will no doubt be found.

CYMBELINE. The time is troublesome. [To Pisanio.] We’ll slip you for a season; but our jealousy Does yet depend.

LORD. So please your Majesty, The Roman legions, all from Gallia drawn, Are landed on your coast, with a supply Of Roman gentlemen by the Senate sent.

CYMBELINE. Now for the counsel of my son and queen! I am amaz’d with matter.

LORD. Good my liege, Your preparation can affront no less Than what you hear of. Come more, for more you’re ready. The want is but to put those pow’rs in motion That long to move.

CYMBELINE. I thank you. Let’s withdraw, And meet the time as it seeks us. We fear not What can from Italy annoy us; but We grieve at chances here. Away!

[Exeunt all but Pisanio.]

PISANIO. I heard no letter from my master since I wrote him Imogen was slain. ’Tis strange. Nor hear I from my mistress, who did promise To yield me often tidings. Neither know I What is betid to Cloten, but remain Perplex’d in all. The heavens still must work. Wherein I am false I am honest; not true, to be true. These present wars shall find I love my country, Even to the note o’ th’ King, or I’ll fall in them. All other doubts, by time let them be clear’d: Fortune brings in some boats that are not steer’d.

SCENE IV. Wales. Before the cave of Belarius.

GUIDERIUS. The noise is round about us.

BELARIUS. Let us from it.

ARVIRAGUS. What pleasure, sir, find we in life, to lock it From action and adventure?

GUIDERIUS. Nay, what hope Have we in hiding us? This way the Romans Must or for Britons slay us, or receive us For barbarous and unnatural revolts During their use, and slay us after.

BELARIUS. Sons, We’ll higher to the mountains; there secure us. To the King’s party there’s no going. Newness Of Cloten’s death (we being not known, not muster’d Among the bands) may drive us to a render Where we have liv’d, and so extort from’s that Which we have done, whose answer would be death, Drawn on with torture.

GUIDERIUS. This is, sir, a doubt In such a time nothing becoming you Nor satisfying us.

ARVIRAGUS. It is not likely That when they hear the Roman horses neigh, Behold their quarter’d fires, have both their eyes And ears so cloy’d importantly as now, That they will waste their time upon our note, To know from whence we are.

BELARIUS. O, I am known Of many in the army. Many years, Though Cloten then but young, you see, not wore him From my remembrance. And, besides, the King Hath not deserv’d my service nor your loves, Who find in my exile the want of breeding, The certainty of this hard life; aye hopeless To have the courtesy your cradle promis’d, But to be still hot summer’s tanlings and The shrinking slaves of winter.

GUIDERIUS. Than be so, Better to cease to be. Pray, sir, to th’ army. I and my brother are not known; yourself So out of thought, and thereto so o’ergrown, Cannot be questioned.

ARVIRAGUS. By this sun that shines, I’ll thither. What thing is’t that I never Did see man die! scarce ever look’d on blood But that of coward hares, hot goats, and venison! Never bestrid a horse, save one that had A rider like myself, who ne’er wore rowel Nor iron on his heel! I am asham’d To look upon the holy sun, to have The benefit of his blest beams, remaining So long a poor unknown.

GUIDERIUS. By heavens, I’ll go! If you will bless me, sir, and give me leave, I’ll take the better care; but if you will not, The hazard therefore due fall on me by The hands of Romans!

ARVIRAGUS. So say I. Amen.

BELARIUS. No reason I, since of your lives you set So slight a valuation, should reserve My crack’d one to more care. Have with you, boys! If in your country wars you chance to die, That is my bed too, lads, and there I’ll lie. Lead, lead. [Aside.] The time seems long; their blood thinks scorn Till it fly out and show them princes born.

SCENE I. Britain. The Roman camp.

Enter Posthumus alone, with a bloody handkerchief.

POSTHUMUS. Yea, bloody cloth, I’ll keep thee; for I wish’d Thou shouldst be colour’d thus. You married ones, If each of you should take this course, how many Must murder wives much better than themselves For wrying but a little! O Pisanio! Every good servant does not all commands; No bond but to do just ones. Gods! if you Should have ta’en vengeance on my faults, I never Had liv’d to put on this; so had you saved The noble Imogen to repent, and struck Me, wretch more worth your vengeance. But alack, You snatch some hence for little faults; that’s love, To have them fall no more. You some permit To second ills with ills, each elder worse, And make them dread it, to the doers’ thrift. But Imogen is your own. Do your best wills, And make me blest to obey. I am brought hither Among th’ Italian gentry, and to fight Against my lady’s kingdom. ’Tis enough That, Britain, I have kill’d thy mistress; peace! I’ll give no wound to thee. Therefore, good heavens, Hear patiently my purpose. I’ll disrobe me Of these Italian weeds, and suit myself As does a Britain peasant. So I’ll fight Against the part I come with; so I’ll die For thee, O Imogen, even for whom my life Is every breath a death. And thus unknown, Pitied nor hated, to the face of peril Myself I’ll dedicate. Let me make men know More valour in me than my habits show. Gods, put the strength o’ th’ Leonati in me! To shame the guise o’ th’ world, I will begin The fashion less without and more within.

SCENE II. Britain. A field of battle between the British and Roman camps.

Enter Lucius, Iachimo and the Roman army at one door, and the British army at another, Leonatus Posthumus following like a poor soldier. They march over and go out. Alarums. Then enter again, in skirmish, Iachimo and Posthumus. He vanquisheth and disarmeth Iachimo and then leaves him.

IACHIMO. The heaviness and guilt within my bosom Takes off my manhood. I have belied a lady, The Princess of this country, and the air on’t Revengingly enfeebles me; or could this carl, A very drudge of nature’s, have subdu’d me In my profession? Knighthoods and honours borne As I wear mine are titles but of scorn. If that thy gentry, Britain, go before This lout as he exceeds our lords, the odds Is that we scarce are men, and you are gods.

The battle continues; the Britons fly; Cymbeline is taken. Then enter to his rescue Belarius, Guiderius and Arviragus.

BELARIUS. Stand, stand! We have th’ advantage of the ground; The lane is guarded; nothing routs us but The villainy of our fears.

GUIDERIUS and ARVIRAGUS. Stand, stand, and fight!

Enter Posthumus and seconds the Britons; they rescue Cymbeline and exeunt. Then re-enter Lucius and Iachimo with Imogen.

LUCIUS. Away, boy, from the troops, and save thyself; For friends kill friends, and the disorder’s such As war were hoodwink’d.

IACHIMO. ’Tis their fresh supplies.

LUCIUS. It is a day turn’d strangely. Or betimes Let’s reinforce or fly.

SCENE III. Another part of the field.

Enter Posthumus and a Briton Lord.

LORD. Cam’st thou from where they made the stand?

POSTHUMUS. I did: Though you, it seems, come from the fliers.

LORD. I did.

POSTHUMUS. No blame be to you, sir, for all was lost, But that the heavens fought. The King himself Of his wings destitute, the army broken, And but the backs of Britons seen, all flying, Through a strait lane; the enemy, full-hearted, Lolling the tongue with slaught’ring, having work More plentiful than tools to do’t, struck down Some mortally, some slightly touch’d, some falling Merely through fear, that the strait pass was damm’d With dead men hurt behind, and cowards living To die with length’ned shame.

LORD. Where was this lane?

POSTHUMUS. Close by the battle, ditch’d, and wall’d with turf, Which gave advantage to an ancient soldier, An honest one, I warrant, who deserv’d So long a breeding as his white beard came to, In doing this for’s country. Athwart the lane He, with two striplings (lads more like to run The country base than to commit such slaughter; With faces fit for masks, or rather fairer Than those for preservation cas’d or shame) Made good the passage, cried to those that fled ‘Our Britain’s harts die flying, not our men. To darkness fleet souls that fly backwards! Stand; Or we are Romans and will give you that, Like beasts, which you shun beastly, and may save But to look back in frown. Stand, stand!’ These three, Three thousand confident, in act as many— For three performers are the file when all The rest do nothing—with this word ‘Stand, stand!’ Accommodated by the place, more charming With their own nobleness, which could have turn’d A distaff to a lance, gilded pale looks, Part shame, part spirit renew’d; that some turn’d coward But by example (O, a sin in war Damn’d in the first beginners) ’gan to look The way that they did and to grin like lions Upon the pikes o’ th’ hunters. Then began A stop i’ th’ chaser, a retire; anon A rout, confusion thick. Forthwith they fly, Chickens, the way which they stoop’d eagles; slaves, The strides they victors made; and now our cowards, Like fragments in hard voyages, became The life o’ th’ need. Having found the back-door open Of the unguarded hearts, heavens, how they wound! Some slain before, some dying, some their friends O’erborne i’ th’ former wave. Ten chas’d by one Are now each one the slaughterman of twenty. Those that would die or ere resist are grown The mortal bugs o’ th’ field.

LORD. This was strange chance: A narrow lane, an old man, and two boys.

POSTHUMUS. Nay, do not wonder at it; you are made Rather to wonder at the things you hear Than to work any. Will you rhyme upon’t, And vent it for a mock’ry? Here is one:

‘Two boys, an old man (twice a boy), a lane, Preserv’d the Britons, was the Romans’ bane.’

LORD. Nay, be not angry, sir.

POSTHUMUS. ’Lack, to what end? Who dares not stand his foe I’ll be his friend; For if he’ll do as he is made to do, I know he’ll quickly fly my friendship too. You have put me into rhyme.

LORD. Farewell; you’re angry.

POSTHUMUS. Still going? This is a lord! O noble misery, To be i’ th’ field and ask ‘What news?’ of me! Today how many would have given their honours To have sav’d their carcasses! took heel to do’t, And yet died too! I, in mine own woe charm’d, Could not find death where I did hear him groan, Nor feel him where he struck. Being an ugly monster, ’Tis strange he hides him in fresh cups, soft beds, Sweet words; or hath moe ministers than we That draw his knives i’ th’ war. Well, I will find him; For being now a favourer to the Briton, No more a Briton, I have resum’d again The part I came in. Fight I will no more, But yield me to the veriest hind that shall Once touch my shoulder. Great the slaughter is Here made by th’ Roman; great the answer be Britons must take. For me, my ransom’s death; On either side I come to spend my breath, Which neither here I’ll keep nor bear again, But end it by some means for Imogen.

Enter two British Captains and soldiers.

FIRST CAPTAIN. Great Jupiter be prais’d! Lucius is taken. ’Tis thought the old man and his sons were angels.

SECOND CAPTAIN. There was a fourth man, in a silly habit, That gave th’ affront with them.

FIRST CAPTAIN. So ’tis reported; But none of ’em can be found. Stand! who’s there?

POSTHUMUS. A Roman, Who had not now been drooping here if seconds Had answer’d him.

SECOND CAPTAIN. Lay hands on him; a dog! A leg of Rome shall not return to tell What crows have peck’d them here. He brags his service, As if he were of note. Bring him to th’ King.

Enter Cymbeline, Belarius, Guiderius, Arviragus, Pisanio and Roman captives. The Captains present Posthumus to Cymbeline, who delivers him over to a gaoler.

SCENE IV. Britain. A prison.

Enter Posthumus and two Gaolers.

FIRST GAOLER. You shall not now be stol’n, you have locks upon you; So graze as you find pasture.

SECOND GAOLER. Ay, or a stomach.

[Exeunt Gaolers.]

POSTHUMUS. Most welcome, bondage! for thou art a way, I think, to liberty. Yet am I better Than one that’s sick o’ th’ gout, since he had rather Groan so in perpetuity than be cur’d By th’ sure physician death, who is the key T’ unbar these locks. My conscience, thou art fetter’d More than my shanks and wrists; you good gods, give me The penitent instrument to pick that bolt, Then, free for ever! Is’t enough I am sorry? So children temporal fathers do appease; Gods are more full of mercy. Must I repent, I cannot do it better than in gyves, Desir’d more than constrain’d. To satisfy, If of my freedom ’tis the main part, take No stricter render of me than my all. I know you are more clement than vile men, Who of their broken debtors take a third, A sixth, a tenth, letting them thrive again On their abatement; that’s not my desire. For Imogen’s dear life take mine; and though ’Tis not so dear, yet ’tis a life; you coin’d it. ’Tween man and man they weigh not every stamp; Though light, take pieces for the figure’s sake; You rather mine, being yours. And so, great pow’rs, If you will take this audit, take this life, And cancel these cold bonds. O Imogen! I’ll speak to thee in silence.

[Sleeps.]

Solemn music. Enter, as in an apparition, Sicilius Leonatus, father to Posthumus, an old man attired like a warrior; leading in his hand an ancient matron, his wife and Mother to Posthumus, with music before them. Then, after other music, follows the two young Leonati, brothers to Posthumus, with wounds, as they died in the wars. They circle Posthumus round as he lies sleeping.

SICILIUS. No more, thou thunder-master, show Thy spite on mortal flies. With Mars fall out, with Juno chide, That thy adulteries Rates and revenges. Hath my poor boy done aught but well, Whose face I never saw? I died whilst in the womb he stay’d Attending nature’s law; Whose father then, as men report Thou orphans’ father art, Thou shouldst have been, and shielded him From this earth-vexing smart.

MOTHER. Lucina lent not me her aid, But took me in my throes, That from me was Posthumus ripp’d, Came crying ’mongst his foes, A thing of pity.

SICILIUS. Great Nature like his ancestry Moulded the stuff so fair That he deserv’d the praise o’ th’ world As great Sicilius’ heir.

FIRST BROTHER. When once he was mature for man, In Britain where was he That could stand up his parallel, Or fruitful object be In eye of Imogen, that best Could deem his dignity?

MOTHER. With marriage wherefore was he mock’d, To be exil’d and thrown From Leonati seat and cast From her his dearest one, Sweet Imogen?

SICILIUS. Why did you suffer Iachimo, Slight thing of Italy, To taint his nobler heart and brain With needless jealousy, And to become the geck and scorn O’ th’ other’s villainy?

SECOND BROTHER. For this from stiller seats we came, Our parents and us twain, That, striking in our country’s cause, Fell bravely and were slain, Our fealty and Tenantius’ right With honour to maintain.

FIRST BROTHER. Like hardiment Posthumus hath To Cymbeline perform’d. Then, Jupiter, thou king of gods, Why hast thou thus adjourn’d The graces for his merits due, Being all to dolours turn’d?

SICILIUS. Thy crystal window ope; look out; No longer exercise Upon a valiant race thy harsh And potent injuries.

MOTHER. Since, Jupiter, our son is good, Take off his miseries.

SICILIUS. Peep through thy marble mansion. Help! Or we poor ghosts will cry To th’ shining synod of the rest Against thy deity.

BROTHERS. Help, Jupiter! or we appeal, And from thy justice fly.

Jupiter descends in thunder and lightning, sitting upon an eagle. He throws a thunderbolt. The Ghosts fall on their knees.

JUPITER. No more, you petty spirits of region low, Offend our hearing; hush! How dare you ghosts Accuse the Thunderer whose bolt, you know, Sky-planted, batters all rebelling coasts? Poor shadows of Elysium, hence and rest Upon your never-withering banks of flow’rs. Be not with mortal accidents opprest: No care of yours it is; you know ’tis ours. Whom best I love I cross; to make my gift, The more delay’d, delighted. Be content; Your low-laid son our godhead will uplift; His comforts thrive, his trials well are spent. Our Jovial star reign’d at his birth, and in Our temple was he married. Rise and fade! He shall be lord of Lady Imogen, And happier much by his affliction made. This tablet lay upon his breast, wherein Our pleasure his full fortune doth confine; And so, away; no farther with your din Express impatience, lest you stir up mine. Mount, eagle, to my palace crystalline.

[Ascends.]

SICILIUS. He came in thunder; his celestial breath Was sulphurous to smell; the holy eagle Stoop’d as to foot us. His ascension is More sweet than our blest fields. His royal bird Prunes the immortal wing, and cloys his beak, As when his god is pleas’d.

ALL. Thanks, Jupiter!

SICILIUS. The marble pavement closes, he is enter’d His radiant roof. Away! and, to be blest, Let us with care perform his great behest.

[Ghosts vanish.]

POSTHUMUS. [Waking.] Sleep, thou has been a grandsire and begot A father to me; and thou hast created A mother and two brothers. But, O scorn, Gone! They went hence so soon as they were born. And so I am awake. Poor wretches, that depend On greatness’ favour, dream as I have done; Wake and find nothing. But, alas, I swerve; Many dream not to find, neither deserve, And yet are steep’d in favours; so am I, That have this golden chance, and know not why. What fairies haunt this ground? A book? O rare one! Be not, as is our fangled world, a garment Nobler than that it covers. Let thy effects So follow to be most unlike our courtiers, As good as promise.

[Reads.] When as a lion’s whelp shall, to himself unknown, without seeking find, and be embrac’d by a piece of tender air; and when from a stately cedar shall be lopp’d branches which, being dead many years, shall after revive, be jointed to the old stock, and freshly grow; then shall Posthumus end his miseries, Britain be fortunate and flourish in peace and plenty.

’Tis still a dream, or else such stuff as madmen Tongue, and brain not; either both or nothing, Or senseless speaking, or a speaking such As sense cannot untie. Be what it is, The action of my life is like it, which I’ll keep, if but for sympathy.

Enter Gaoler.

GAOLER. Come, sir, are you ready for death?

POSTHUMUS. Over-roasted rather; ready long ago.

GAOLER. Hanging is the word, sir; if you be ready for that, you are well cook’d.

POSTHUMUS. So, if I prove a good repast to the spectators, the dish pays the shot.

GAOLER. A heavy reckoning for you, sir. But the comfort is, you shall be called to no more payments, fear no more tavern bills, which are often the sadness of parting, as the procuring of mirth. You come in faint for want of meat, depart reeling with too much drink; sorry that you have paid too much, and sorry that you are paid too much; purse and brain both empty; the brain the heavier for being too light, the purse too light, being drawn of heaviness. O, of this contradiction you shall now be quit. O, the charity of a penny cord! It sums up thousands in a trice. You have no true debitor and creditor but it; of what’s past, is, and to come, the discharge. Your neck, sir, is pen, book, and counters; so the acquittance follows.

POSTHUMUS. I am merrier to die than thou art to live.

GAOLER. Indeed, sir, he that sleeps feels not the toothache. But a man that were to sleep your sleep, and a hangman to help him to bed, I think he would change places with his officer; for look you, sir, you know not which way you shall go.

POSTHUMUS. Yes indeed do I, fellow.

GAOLER. Your death has eyes in’s head, then; I have not seen him so pictur’d. You must either be directed by some that take upon them to know, or to take upon yourself that which I am sure you do not know, or jump the after-inquiry on your own peril. And how you shall speed in your journey’s end, I think you’ll never return to tell one.

POSTHUMUS. I tell thee, fellow, there are none want eyes to direct them the way I am going, but such as wink and will not use them.

GAOLER. What an infinite mock is this, that a man should have the best use of eyes to see the way of blindness! I am sure hanging’s the way of winking.

MESSENGER. Knock off his manacles; bring your prisoner to the King.

POSTHUMUS. Thou bring’st good news: I am call’d to be made free.

GAOLER. I’ll be hang’d then.

POSTHUMUS. Thou shalt be then freer than a gaoler; no bolts for the dead.

[Exeunt Posthumus and Messenger.]

GAOLER. Unless a man would marry a gallows and beget young gibbets, I never saw one so prone. Yet, on my conscience, there are verier knaves desire to live, for all he be a Roman; and there be some of them too that die against their wills; so should I, if I were one. I would we were all of one mind, and one mind good. O, there were desolation of gaolers and gallowses! I speak against my present profit, but my wish hath a preferment in’t.

SCENE V. Britain. Cymbeline’s tent.

Enter Cymbeline, Belarius, Guiderius, Arviragus, Pisanio, Lords, Officers and Attendants.

CYMBELINE. Stand by my side, you whom the gods have made Preservers of my throne. Woe is my heart That the poor soldier that so richly fought, Whose rags sham’d gilded arms, whose naked breast Stepp’d before targes of proof, cannot be found. He shall be happy that can find him, if Our grace can make him so.

BELARIUS. I never saw Such noble fury in so poor a thing; Such precious deeds in one that promis’d nought But beggary and poor looks.

CYMBELINE. No tidings of him?

PISANIO. He hath been search’d among the dead and living, But no trace of him.

CYMBELINE. To my grief, I am The heir of his reward, [To Belarius, Guiderius, and Arviragus] which I will add To you, the liver, heart, and brain of Britain, By whom I grant she lives. ’Tis now the time To ask of whence you are. Report it.

BELARIUS. Sir, In Cambria are we born, and gentlemen; Further to boast were neither true nor modest, Unless I add we are honest.

CYMBELINE. Bow your knees. Arise my knights o’ th’ battle; I create you Companions to our person, and will fit you With dignities becoming your estates.

Enter Cornelius and Ladies.

There’s business in these faces. Why so sadly Greet you our victory? You look like Romans, And not o’ th’ court of Britain.

CORNELIUS. Hail, great King! To sour your happiness I must report The Queen is dead.

CYMBELINE. Who worse than a physician Would this report become? But I consider By med’cine life may be prolong’d, yet death Will seize the doctor too. How ended she?

CORNELIUS. With horror, madly dying, like her life; Which, being cruel to the world, concluded Most cruel to herself. What she confess’d I will report, so please you; these her women Can trip me if I err, who with wet cheeks Were present when she finish’d.

CYMBELINE. Prithee say.

CORNELIUS. First, she confess’d she never lov’d you; only Affected greatness got by you, not you; Married your royalty, was wife to your place; Abhorr’d your person.

CYMBELINE. She alone knew this; And but she spoke it dying, I would not Believe her lips in opening it. Proceed.

CORNELIUS. Your daughter, whom she bore in hand to love With such integrity, she did confess Was as a scorpion to her sight; whose life, But that her flight prevented it, she had Ta’en off by poison.

CYMBELINE. O most delicate fiend! Who is’t can read a woman? Is there more?

CORNELIUS. More, sir, and worse. She did confess she had For you a mortal mineral, which, being took, Should by the minute feed on life, and ling’ring, By inches waste you. In which time she purpos’d, By watching, weeping, tendance, kissing, to O’ercome you with her show; and in time, When she had fitted you with her craft, to work Her son into th’ adoption of the crown; But failing of her end by his strange absence, Grew shameless-desperate, open’d, in despite Of heaven and men, her purposes, repented The evils she hatch’d were not effected; so, Despairing, died.

CYMBELINE. Heard you all this, her women?

LADIES. We did, so please your Highness.

CYMBELINE. Mine eyes Were not in fault, for she was beautiful; Mine ears, that heard her flattery; nor my heart That thought her like her seeming. It had been vicious To have mistrusted her; yet, O my daughter! That it was folly in me thou mayst say, And prove it in thy feeling. Heaven mend all!

Enter Lucius, Iachimo, the Soothsayer and other Roman prisoners, guarded; Posthumus behind, and Imogen.

Thou com’st not, Caius, now for tribute; that The Britons have raz’d out, though with the loss Of many a bold one, whose kinsmen have made suit That their good souls may be appeas’d with slaughter Of you their captives, which ourself have granted; So think of your estate.

LUCIUS. Consider, sir, the chance of war. The day Was yours by accident; had it gone with us, We should not, when the blood was cool, have threaten’d Our prisoners with the sword. But since the gods Will have it thus, that nothing but our lives May be call’d ransom, let it come. Sufficeth A Roman with a Roman’s heart can suffer. Augustus lives to think on’t; and so much For my peculiar care. This one thing only I will entreat: my boy, a Briton born, Let him be ransom’d. Never master had A page so kind, so duteous, diligent, So tender over his occasions, true, So feat, so nurse-like; let his virtue join With my request, which I’ll make bold your Highness Cannot deny; he hath done no Briton harm Though he have serv’d a Roman. Save him, sir, And spare no blood beside.

CYMBELINE. I have surely seen him; His favour is familiar to me. Boy, Thou hast look’d thyself into my grace, And art mine own. I know not why, wherefore To say “Live, boy.” Ne’er thank thy master. Live; And ask of Cymbeline what boon thou wilt, Fitting my bounty and thy state, I’ll give it; Yea, though thou do demand a prisoner, The noblest ta’en.

IMOGEN. I humbly thank your Highness.

LUCIUS. I do not bid thee beg my life, good lad, And yet I know thou wilt.

IMOGEN. No, no! Alack, There’s other work in hand. I see a thing Bitter to me as death; your life, good master, Must shuffle for itself.

LUCIUS. The boy disdains me, He leaves me, scorns me. Briefly die their joys That place them on the truth of girls and boys. Why stands he so perplex’d?

CYMBELINE. What wouldst thou, boy? I love thee more and more; think more and more What’s best to ask. Know’st him thou look’st on? Speak, Wilt have him live? Is he thy kin? thy friend?

IMOGEN. He is a Roman, no more kin to me Than I to your Highness; who, being born your vassal, Am something nearer.

CYMBELINE. Wherefore ey’st him so?

IMOGEN. I’ll tell you, sir, in private, if you please To give me hearing.

CYMBELINE. Ay, with all my heart, And lend my best attention. What’s thy name?

CYMBELINE. Thou’rt my good youth, my page; I’ll be thy master. Walk with me; speak freely.

[Cymbeline and Imogen converse apart.]

BELARIUS. Is not this boy reviv’d from death?

ARVIRAGUS. One sand another Not more resembles that sweet rosy lad Who died and was Fidele. What think you?

GUIDERIUS. The same dead thing alive.

BELARIUS. Peace, peace! see further. He eyes us not; forbear. Creatures may be alike; were’t he, I am sure He would have spoke to us.

GUIDERIUS. But we see him dead.

BELARIUS. Be silent; let’s see further.

PISANIO. [Aside.] It is my mistress. Since she is living, let the time run on To good or bad.

[Cymbeline and Imogen advance.]

CYMBELINE. Come, stand thou by our side; Make thy demand aloud. [To Iachimo.] Sir, step you forth; Give answer to this boy, and do it freely, Or, by our greatness and the grace of it, Which is our honour, bitter torture shall Winnow the truth from falsehood. On, speak to him.

IMOGEN. My boon is that this gentleman may render Of whom he had this ring.

POSTHUMUS. [Aside.] What’s that to him?

CYMBELINE. That diamond upon your finger, say How came it yours?

IACHIMO. Thou’lt torture me to leave unspoken that Which to be spoke would torture thee.

CYMBELINE. How? me?

IACHIMO. I am glad to be constrain’d to utter that Which torments me to conceal. By villainy I got this ring; ’twas Leonatus’ jewel, Whom thou didst banish; and—which more may grieve thee, As it doth me—a nobler sir ne’er liv’d ’Twixt sky and ground. Wilt thou hear more, my lord?

CYMBELINE. All that belongs to this.

IACHIMO. That paragon, thy daughter, For whom my heart drops blood and my false spirits Quail to remember—Give me leave, I faint.

CYMBELINE. My daughter? What of her? Renew thy strength; I had rather thou shouldst live while nature will Than die ere I hear more. Strive, man, and speak.

IACHIMO. Upon a time, unhappy was the clock That struck the hour: was in Rome, accurs’d The mansion where: ’twas at a feast, O, would Our viands had been poison’d (or at least Those which I heav’d to head) the good Posthumus (What should I say? he was too good to be Where ill men were, and was the best of all Amongst the rar’st of good ones) sitting sadly Hearing us praise our loves of Italy For beauty that made barren the swell’d boast Of him that best could speak; for feature, laming The shrine of Venus or straight-pight Minerva, Postures beyond brief nature; for condition, A shop of all the qualities that man Loves woman for; besides that hook of wiving, Fairness which strikes the eye.

CYMBELINE. I stand on fire. Come to the matter.

IACHIMO. All too soon I shall, Unless thou wouldst grieve quickly. This Posthumus, Most like a noble lord in love and one That had a royal lover, took his hint; And (not dispraising whom we prais’d, therein He was as calm as virtue) he began His mistress’ picture; which by his tongue being made, And then a mind put in’t, either our brags Were crack’d of kitchen trulls, or his description Prov’d us unspeaking sots.

CYMBELINE. Nay, nay, to th’ purpose.

IACHIMO. Your daughter’s chastity (there it begins) He spake of her as Dian had hot dreams And she alone were cold; whereat I, wretch, Made scruple of his praise, and wager’d with him Pieces of gold ’gainst this which then he wore Upon his honour’d finger, to attain In suit the place of’s bed, and win this ring By hers and mine adultery. He, true knight, No lesser of her honour confident Than I did truly find her, stakes this ring; And would so, had it been a carbuncle Of Phoebus’ wheel; and might so safely, had it Been all the worth of’s car. Away to Britain Post I in this design. Well may you, sir, Remember me at court, where I was taught Of your chaste daughter the wide difference ’Twixt amorous and villainous. Being thus quench’d Of hope, not longing, mine Italian brain Gan in your duller Britain operate Most vilely; for my vantage, excellent; And, to be brief, my practice so prevail’d That I return’d with simular proof enough To make the noble Leonatus mad, By wounding his belief in her renown With tokens thus and thus; averring notes Of chamber-hanging, pictures, this her bracelet (O cunning, how I got it!) nay, some marks Of secret on her person, that he could not But think her bond of chastity quite crack’d, I having ta’en the forfeit. Whereupon Methinks I see him now—

POSTHUMUS. [Coming forward.] Ay, so thou dost, Italian fiend! Ay me, most credulous fool, Egregious murderer, thief, anything That’s due to all the villains past, in being, To come! O, give me cord, or knife, or poison, Some upright justicer! Thou, King, send out For torturers ingenious. It is I That all th’ abhorred things o’ th’ earth amend By being worse than they. I am Posthumus, That kill’d thy daughter; villain-like, I lie; That caus’d a lesser villain than myself, A sacrilegious thief, to do’t. The temple Of virtue was she; yea, and she herself. Spit, and throw stones, cast mire upon me, set The dogs o’ th’ street to bay me. Every villain Be call’d Posthumus Leonatus, and Be villainy less than ’twas! O Imogen! My queen, my life, my wife! O Imogen, Imogen, Imogen!

IMOGEN. Peace, my lord. Hear, hear!

POSTHUMUS. Shall’s have a play of this? Thou scornful page, There lies thy part.

[Strikes her. She falls.]

PISANIO. O gentlemen, help! Mine and your mistress! O, my lord Posthumus! You ne’er kill’d Imogen till now. Help, help! Mine honour’d lady!

CYMBELINE. Does the world go round?

POSTHUMUS. How comes these staggers on me?

PISANIO. Wake, my mistress!

CYMBELINE. If this be so, the gods do mean to strike me To death with mortal joy.

PISANIO. How fares my mistress?

IMOGEN. O, get thee from my sight; Thou gav’st me poison. Dangerous fellow, hence! Breathe not where princes are.

CYMBELINE. The tune of Imogen!

PISANIO. Lady, The gods throw stones of sulphur on me, if That box I gave you was not thought by me A precious thing! I had it from the Queen.

CYMBELINE. New matter still?

IMOGEN. It poison’d me.

CORNELIUS. O gods! I left out one thing which the Queen confess’d, Which must approve thee honest. ‘If Pisanio Have’ said she ‘given his mistress that confection Which I gave him for cordial, she is serv’d As I would serve a rat.’

CYMBELINE. What’s this, Cornelius?

CORNELIUS. The Queen, sir, very oft importun’d me To temper poisons for her; still pretending The satisfaction of her knowledge only In killing creatures vile, as cats and dogs, Of no esteem. I, dreading that her purpose Was of more danger, did compound for her A certain stuff, which, being ta’en would cease The present pow’r of life, but in short time All offices of nature should again Do their due functions. Have you ta’en of it?

IMOGEN. Most like I did, for I was dead.

BELARIUS. My boys, There was our error.

GUIDERIUS. This is sure Fidele.

IMOGEN. Why did you throw your wedded lady from you? Think that you are upon a rock, and now Throw me again.

[Embracing him.]

POSTHUMUS. Hang there like fruit, my soul, Till the tree die!

CYMBELINE. How now, my flesh? my child? What, mak’st thou me a dullard in this act? Wilt thou not speak to me?

IMOGEN. [Kneeling.] Your blessing, sir.

BELARIUS. [To Guiderius and Arviragus.] Though you did love this youth, I blame ye not; You had a motive for’t.

CYMBELINE. My tears that fall Prove holy water on thee! Imogen, Thy mother’s dead.

IMOGEN. I am sorry for’t, my lord.

CYMBELINE. O, she was naught, and long of her it was That we meet here so strangely; but her son Is gone, we know not how nor where.

PISANIO. My lord, Now fear is from me, I’ll speak troth. Lord Cloten, Upon my lady’s missing, came to me With his sword drawn, foam’d at the mouth, and swore, If I discover’d not which way she was gone, It was my instant death. By accident I had a feigned letter of my master’s Then in my pocket, which directed him To seek her on the mountains near to Milford; Where, in a frenzy, in my master’s garments, Which he enforc’d from me, away he posts With unchaste purpose, and with oath to violate My lady’s honour. What became of him I further know not.

GUIDERIUS. Let me end the story: I slew him there.

CYMBELINE. Marry, the gods forfend! I would not thy good deeds should from my lips Pluck a hard sentence. Prithee, valiant youth, Deny’t again.

GUIDERIUS. I have spoke it, and I did it.

CYMBELINE. He was a prince.

GUIDERIUS. A most incivil one. The wrongs he did me Were nothing prince-like; for he did provoke me With language that would make me spurn the sea, If it could so roar to me. I cut off’s head, And am right glad he is not standing here To tell this tale of mine.

CYMBELINE. I am sorry for thee. By thine own tongue thou art condemn’d, and must Endure our law. Thou’rt dead.

IMOGEN. That headless man I thought had been my lord.

CYMBELINE. Bind the offender, And take him from our presence.

BELARIUS. Stay, sir King. This man is better than the man he slew, As well descended as thyself, and hath More of thee merited than a band of Clotens Had ever scar for. [To the guard.] Let his arms alone; They were not born for bondage.

CYMBELINE. Why, old soldier, Wilt thou undo the worth thou art unpaid for By tasting of our wrath? How of descent As good as we?

ARVIRAGUS. In that he spake too far.

CYMBELINE. And thou shalt die for’t.

BELARIUS. We will die all three; But I will prove that two on’s are as good As I have given out him. My sons, I must For mine own part unfold a dangerous speech, Though haply well for you.

ARVIRAGUS. Your danger’s ours.

GUIDERIUS. And our good his.

BELARIUS. Have at it then by leave! Thou hadst, great King, a subject who Was call’d Belarius.

CYMBELINE. What of him? He is A banish’d traitor.

BELARIUS. He it is that hath Assum’d this age; indeed a banish’d man; I know not how a traitor.

CYMBELINE. Take him hence, The whole world shall not save him.

BELARIUS. Not too hot. First pay me for the nursing of thy sons, And let it be confiscate all, so soon As I have receiv’d it.

CYMBELINE. Nursing of my sons?

BELARIUS. I am too blunt and saucy: here’s my knee. Ere I arise I will prefer my sons; Then spare not the old father. Mighty sir, These two young gentlemen that call me father, And think they are my sons, are none of mine; They are the issue of your loins, my liege, And blood of your begetting.

CYMBELINE. How? my issue?

BELARIUS. So sure as you your father’s. I, old Morgan, Am that Belarius whom you sometime banish’d. Your pleasure was my mere offence, my punishment Itself, and all my treason; that I suffer’d Was all the harm I did. These gentle princes (For such and so they are) these twenty years Have I train’d up; those arts they have as I Could put into them. My breeding was, sir, as Your Highness knows. Their nurse, Euriphile, Whom for the theft I wedded, stole these children Upon my banishment; I mov’d her to’t, Having receiv’d the punishment before For that which I did then. Beaten for loyalty Excited me to treason. Their dear loss, The more of you ’twas felt, the more it shap’d Unto my end of stealing them. But, gracious sir, Here are your sons again, and I must lose Two of the sweet’st companions in the world. The benediction of these covering heavens Fall on their heads like dew! for they are worthy To inlay heaven with stars.

CYMBELINE. Thou weep’st and speak’st. The service that you three have done is more Unlike than this thou tell’st. I lost my children. If these be they, I know not how to wish A pair of worthier sons.

BELARIUS. Be pleas’d awhile. This gentleman, whom I call Polydore, Most worthy prince, as yours, is true Guiderius; This gentleman, my Cadwal, Arviragus, Your younger princely son; he, sir, was lapp’d In a most curious mantle, wrought by th’ hand Of his queen mother, which for more probation I can with ease produce.

CYMBELINE. Guiderius had Upon his neck a mole, a sanguine star; It was a mark of wonder.

BELARIUS. This is he, Who hath upon him still that natural stamp. It was wise nature’s end in the donation, To be his evidence now.

CYMBELINE. O, what am I? A mother to the birth of three? Ne’er mother Rejoic’d deliverance more. Blest pray you be, That, after this strange starting from your orbs, You may reign in them now! O Imogen, Thou hast lost by this a kingdom.

IMOGEN. No, my lord; I have got two worlds by’t. O my gentle brothers, Have we thus met? O, never say hereafter But I am truest speaker! You call’d me brother, When I was but your sister: I you brothers, When we were so indeed.

CYMBELINE. Did you e’er meet?

ARVIRAGUS. Ay, my good lord.

GUIDERIUS. And at first meeting lov’d, Continu’d so until we thought he died.

CORNELIUS. By the Queen’s dram she swallow’d.

CYMBELINE. O rare instinct! When shall I hear all through? This fierce abridgement Hath to it circumstantial branches, which Distinction should be rich in. Where? how liv’d you? And when came you to serve our Roman captive? How parted with your brothers? how first met them? Why fled you from the court? and whither? These, And your three motives to the battle, with I know not how much more, should be demanded, And all the other by-dependances, From chance to chance; but nor the time nor place Will serve our long interrogatories. See, Posthumus anchors upon Imogen; And she, like harmless lightning, throws her eye On him, her brothers, me, her master, hitting Each object with a joy; the counterchange Is severally in all. Let’s quit this ground, And smoke the temple with our sacrifices. [To Belarius.] Thou art my brother; so we’ll hold thee ever.

IMOGEN. You are my father too, and did relieve me To see this gracious season.

CYMBELINE. All o’erjoy’d Save these in bonds. Let them be joyful too, For they shall taste our comfort.

IMOGEN. My good master, I will yet do you service.

LUCIUS. Happy be you!

CYMBELINE. The forlorn soldier, that so nobly fought, He would have well becom’d this place and grac’d The thankings of a king.

POSTHUMUS. I am, sir, The soldier that did company these three In poor beseeming; ’twas a fitment for The purpose I then follow’d. That I was he, Speak, Iachimo. I had you down, and might Have made you finish.

IACHIMO. [Kneeling.] I am down again; But now my heavy conscience sinks my knee, As then your force did. Take that life, beseech you, Which I so often owe; but your ring first, And here the bracelet of the truest princess That ever swore her faith.

POSTHUMUS. Kneel not to me. The pow’r that I have on you is to spare you; The malice towards you to forgive you. Live, And deal with others better.

CYMBELINE. Nobly doom’d! We’ll learn our freeness of a son-in-law; Pardon’s the word to all.

ARVIRAGUS. You holp us, sir, As you did mean indeed to be our brother; Joy’d are we that you are.

POSTHUMUS. Your servant, Princes. Good my lord of Rome, Call forth your soothsayer. As I slept, methought Great Jupiter, upon his eagle back’d, Appear’d to me, with other spritely shows Of mine own kindred. When I wak’d, I found This label on my bosom; whose containing Is so from sense in hardness that I can Make no collection of it. Let him show His skill in the construction.

LUCIUS. Philarmonus!

SOOTHSAYER. Here, my good lord.

LUCIUS. Read, and declare the meaning.

SOOTHSAYER. [Reads.] When as a lion’s whelp shall, to himself unknown, without seeking find, and be embrac’d by a piece of tender air; and when from a stately cedar shall be lopp’d branches which, being dead many years, shall after revive, be jointed to the old stock, and freshly grow; then shall Posthumus end his miseries, Britain be fortunate and flourish in peace and plenty. Thou, Leonatus, art the lion’s whelp; The fit and apt construction of thy name, Being Leo-natus, doth import so much. [To Cymbeline] The piece of tender air, thy virtuous daughter, Which we call mollis aer, and mollis aer We term it mulier; which mulier I divine Is this most constant wife, who even now Answering the letter of the oracle, Unknown to you, unsought, were clipp’d about With this most tender air.

CYMBELINE. This hath some seeming.

SOOTHSAYER. The lofty cedar, royal Cymbeline, Personates thee; and thy lopp’d branches point Thy two sons forth, who, by Belarius stol’n, For many years thought dead, are now reviv’d, To the majestic cedar join’d, whose issue Promises Britain peace and plenty.

CYMBELINE. Well, My peace we will begin. And, Caius Lucius, Although the victor, we submit to Cæsar And to the Roman empire, promising To pay our wonted tribute, from the which We were dissuaded by our wicked queen, Whom heavens in justice, both on her and hers, Have laid most heavy hand.

SOOTHSAYER. The fingers of the pow’rs above do tune The harmony of this peace. The vision Which I made known to Lucius ere the stroke Of yet this scarce-cold battle, at this instant Is full accomplish’d; for the Roman eagle, From south to west on wing soaring aloft, Lessen’d herself and in the beams o’ th’ sun So vanish’d; which foreshow’d our princely eagle, Th’ imperial Cæsar, should again unite His favour with the radiant Cymbeline, Which shines here in the west.

CYMBELINE. Laud we the gods; And let our crooked smokes climb to their nostrils From our bless’d altars. Publish we this peace To all our subjects. Set we forward; let A Roman and a British ensign wave Friendly together. So through Lud’s Town march; And in the temple of great Jupiter Our peace we’ll ratify; seal it with feasts. Set on there! Never was a war did cease, Ere bloody hands were wash’d, with such a peace.

THE TRAGEDY OF HAMLET, PRINCE OF DENMARK

ACT I Scene I. Elsinore. A platform before the Castle Scene II. Elsinore. A room of state in the Castle Scene III. A room in Polonius’s house Scene IV. The platform Scene V. A more remote part of the Castle

ACT II Scene I. A room in Polonius’s house Scene II. A room in the Castle

ACT III Scene I. A room in the Castle Scene II. A hall in the Castle Scene III. A room in the Castle Scene IV. Another room in the Castle

ACT IV Scene I. A room in the Castle Scene II. Another room in the Castle Scene III. Another room in the Castle Scene IV. A plain in Denmark Scene V. Elsinore. A room in the Castle Scene VI. Another room in the Castle Scene VII. Another room in the Castle

ACT V Scene I. A churchyard Scene II. A hall in the Castle

HAMLET, Prince of Denmark CLAUDIUS, King of Denmark, Hamlet’s uncle The GHOST of the late king, Hamlet’s father GERTRUDE, the Queen, Hamlet’s mother, now wife of Claudius POLONIUS, Lord Chamberlain LAERTES, Son to Polonius OPHELIA, Daughter to Polonius HORATIO, Friend to Hamlet FORTINBRAS, Prince of Norway VOLTEMAND, Courtier CORNELIUS, Courtier ROSENCRANTZ, Courtier GUILDENSTERN, Courtier MARCELLUS, Officer BARNARDO, Officer FRANCISCO, a Soldier OSRIC, Courtier REYNALDO, Servant to Polonius Players A Gentleman, Courtier A Priest Two Clowns, Grave-diggers A Captain English Ambassadors. Lords, Ladies, Officers, Soldiers, Sailors, Messengers, and Attendants

SCENE. Elsinore.

SCENE I. Elsinore. A platform before the Castle.

Enter Francisco and Barnardo, two sentinels.

BARNARDO. Who’s there?

FRANCISCO. Nay, answer me. Stand and unfold yourself.

BARNARDO. Long live the King!

FRANCISCO. Barnardo?

BARNARDO. He.

FRANCISCO. You come most carefully upon your hour.

BARNARDO. ’Tis now struck twelve. Get thee to bed, Francisco.

FRANCISCO. For this relief much thanks. ’Tis bitter cold, And I am sick at heart.

BARNARDO. Have you had quiet guard?

FRANCISCO. Not a mouse stirring.

BARNARDO. Well, good night. If you do meet Horatio and Marcellus, The rivals of my watch, bid them make haste.

Enter Horatio and Marcellus.

FRANCISCO. I think I hear them. Stand, ho! Who is there?

HORATIO. Friends to this ground.

MARCELLUS. And liegemen to the Dane.

FRANCISCO. Give you good night.

MARCELLUS. O, farewell, honest soldier, who hath reliev’d you?

FRANCISCO. Barnardo has my place. Give you good-night.

MARCELLUS. Holla, Barnardo!

BARNARDO. Say, what, is Horatio there?

HORATIO. A piece of him.

BARNARDO. Welcome, Horatio. Welcome, good Marcellus.

MARCELLUS. What, has this thing appear’d again tonight?

BARNARDO. I have seen nothing.

MARCELLUS. Horatio says ’tis but our fantasy, And will not let belief take hold of him Touching this dreaded sight, twice seen of us. Therefore I have entreated him along With us to watch the minutes of this night, That if again this apparition come He may approve our eyes and speak to it.

HORATIO. Tush, tush, ’twill not appear.

BARNARDO. Sit down awhile, And let us once again assail your ears, That are so fortified against our story, What we two nights have seen.

HORATIO. Well, sit we down, And let us hear Barnardo speak of this.

BARNARDO. Last night of all, When yond same star that’s westward from the pole, Had made his course t’illume that part of heaven Where now it burns, Marcellus and myself, The bell then beating one—

MARCELLUS. Peace, break thee off. Look where it comes again.

Enter Ghost.

BARNARDO. In the same figure, like the King that’s dead.

MARCELLUS. Thou art a scholar; speak to it, Horatio.

BARNARDO. Looks it not like the King? Mark it, Horatio.

HORATIO. Most like. It harrows me with fear and wonder.

BARNARDO It would be spoke to.

MARCELLUS. Question it, Horatio.

HORATIO. What art thou that usurp’st this time of night, Together with that fair and warlike form In which the majesty of buried Denmark Did sometimes march? By heaven I charge thee speak.

MARCELLUS. It is offended.

BARNARDO. See, it stalks away.

HORATIO. Stay! speak, speak! I charge thee speak!

[Exit Ghost.]

MARCELLUS. ’Tis gone, and will not answer.

BARNARDO. How now, Horatio! You tremble and look pale. Is not this something more than fantasy? What think you on’t?

HORATIO. Before my God, I might not this believe Without the sensible and true avouch Of mine own eyes.

MARCELLUS. Is it not like the King?

HORATIO. As thou art to thyself: Such was the very armour he had on When he th’ambitious Norway combated; So frown’d he once, when in an angry parle He smote the sledded Polacks on the ice. ’Tis strange.

MARCELLUS. Thus twice before, and jump at this dead hour, With martial stalk hath he gone by our watch.

HORATIO. In what particular thought to work I know not; But in the gross and scope of my opinion, This bodes some strange eruption to our state.

MARCELLUS. Good now, sit down, and tell me, he that knows, Why this same strict and most observant watch So nightly toils the subject of the land, And why such daily cast of brazen cannon And foreign mart for implements of war; Why such impress of shipwrights, whose sore task Does not divide the Sunday from the week. What might be toward, that this sweaty haste Doth make the night joint-labourer with the day: Who is’t that can inform me?

HORATIO. That can I; At least, the whisper goes so. Our last King, Whose image even but now appear’d to us, Was, as you know, by Fortinbras of Norway, Thereto prick’d on by a most emulate pride, Dar’d to the combat; in which our valiant Hamlet, For so this side of our known world esteem’d him, Did slay this Fortinbras; who by a seal’d compact, Well ratified by law and heraldry, Did forfeit, with his life, all those his lands Which he stood seiz’d of, to the conqueror; Against the which, a moiety competent Was gaged by our King; which had return’d To the inheritance of Fortinbras, Had he been vanquisher; as by the same cov’nant And carriage of the article design’d, His fell to Hamlet. Now, sir, young Fortinbras, Of unimproved mettle, hot and full, Hath in the skirts of Norway, here and there, Shark’d up a list of lawless resolutes, For food and diet, to some enterprise That hath a stomach in’t; which is no other, As it doth well appear unto our state, But to recover of us by strong hand And terms compulsatory, those foresaid lands So by his father lost. And this, I take it, Is the main motive of our preparations, The source of this our watch, and the chief head Of this post-haste and rummage in the land.

BARNARDO. I think it be no other but e’en so: Well may it sort that this portentous figure Comes armed through our watch so like the King That was and is the question of these wars.

HORATIO. A mote it is to trouble the mind’s eye. In the most high and palmy state of Rome, A little ere the mightiest Julius fell, The graves stood tenantless and the sheeted dead Did squeak and gibber in the Roman streets; As stars with trains of fire and dews of blood, Disasters in the sun; and the moist star, Upon whose influence Neptune’s empire stands, Was sick almost to doomsday with eclipse. And even the like precurse of fierce events, As harbingers preceding still the fates And prologue to the omen coming on, Have heaven and earth together demonstrated Unto our climatures and countrymen.

Re-enter Ghost.

But, soft, behold! Lo, where it comes again! I’ll cross it, though it blast me. Stay, illusion! If thou hast any sound, or use of voice, Speak to me. If there be any good thing to be done, That may to thee do ease, and grace to me, Speak to me. If thou art privy to thy country’s fate, Which, happily, foreknowing may avoid, O speak! Or if thou hast uphoarded in thy life Extorted treasure in the womb of earth, For which, they say, you spirits oft walk in death, Speak of it. Stay, and speak!

[The cock crows.]

Stop it, Marcellus!

MARCELLUS. Shall I strike at it with my partisan?

HORATIO. Do, if it will not stand.

BARNARDO. ’Tis here!

HORATIO. ’Tis here!

MARCELLUS. ’Tis gone! We do it wrong, being so majestical, To offer it the show of violence, For it is as the air, invulnerable, And our vain blows malicious mockery.

BARNARDO. It was about to speak, when the cock crew.

HORATIO. And then it started, like a guilty thing Upon a fearful summons. I have heard The cock, that is the trumpet to the morn, Doth with his lofty and shrill-sounding throat Awake the god of day; and at his warning, Whether in sea or fire, in earth or air, Th’extravagant and erring spirit hies To his confine. And of the truth herein This present object made probation.

MARCELLUS. It faded on the crowing of the cock. Some say that ever ’gainst that season comes Wherein our Saviour’s birth is celebrated, The bird of dawning singeth all night long; And then, they say, no spirit dare stir abroad, The nights are wholesome, then no planets strike, No fairy takes, nor witch hath power to charm; So hallow’d and so gracious is the time.

HORATIO. So have I heard, and do in part believe it. But look, the morn in russet mantle clad, Walks o’er the dew of yon high eastward hill. Break we our watch up, and by my advice, Let us impart what we have seen tonight Unto young Hamlet; for upon my life, This spirit, dumb to us, will speak to him. Do you consent we shall acquaint him with it, As needful in our loves, fitting our duty?

MARCELLUS. Let’s do’t, I pray, and I this morning know Where we shall find him most conveniently.

SCENE II. Elsinore. A room of state in the Castle.

Enter Claudius King of Denmark, Gertrude the Queen, Hamlet, Polonius, Laertes, Voltemand, Cornelius, Lords and Attendant.

KING. Though yet of Hamlet our dear brother’s death The memory be green, and that it us befitted To bear our hearts in grief, and our whole kingdom To be contracted in one brow of woe; Yet so far hath discretion fought with nature That we with wisest sorrow think on him, Together with remembrance of ourselves. Therefore our sometime sister, now our queen, Th’imperial jointress to this warlike state, Have we, as ’twere with a defeated joy, With one auspicious and one dropping eye, With mirth in funeral, and with dirge in marriage, In equal scale weighing delight and dole, Taken to wife; nor have we herein barr’d Your better wisdoms, which have freely gone With this affair along. For all, our thanks. Now follows, that you know young Fortinbras, Holding a weak supposal of our worth, Or thinking by our late dear brother’s death Our state to be disjoint and out of frame, Colleagued with this dream of his advantage, He hath not fail’d to pester us with message, Importing the surrender of those lands Lost by his father, with all bonds of law, To our most valiant brother. So much for him. Now for ourself and for this time of meeting: Thus much the business is: we have here writ To Norway, uncle of young Fortinbras, Who, impotent and bed-rid, scarcely hears Of this his nephew’s purpose, to suppress His further gait herein; in that the levies, The lists, and full proportions are all made Out of his subject: and we here dispatch You, good Cornelius, and you, Voltemand, For bearers of this greeting to old Norway, Giving to you no further personal power To business with the King, more than the scope Of these dilated articles allow. Farewell; and let your haste commend your duty.

CORNELIUS and VOLTEMAND. In that, and all things, will we show our duty.

KING. We doubt it nothing: heartily farewell.

[Exeunt Voltemand and Cornelius.]

And now, Laertes, what’s the news with you? You told us of some suit. What is’t, Laertes? You cannot speak of reason to the Dane, And lose your voice. What wouldst thou beg, Laertes, That shall not be my offer, not thy asking? The head is not more native to the heart, The hand more instrumental to the mouth, Than is the throne of Denmark to thy father. What wouldst thou have, Laertes?

LAERTES. Dread my lord, Your leave and favour to return to France, From whence though willingly I came to Denmark To show my duty in your coronation; Yet now I must confess, that duty done, My thoughts and wishes bend again toward France, And bow them to your gracious leave and pardon.

KING. Have you your father’s leave? What says Polonius?

POLONIUS. He hath, my lord, wrung from me my slow leave By laboursome petition; and at last Upon his will I seal’d my hard consent. I do beseech you give him leave to go.

KING. Take thy fair hour, Laertes; time be thine, And thy best graces spend it at thy will! But now, my cousin Hamlet, and my son—

HAMLET. [Aside.] A little more than kin, and less than kind.

KING. How is it that the clouds still hang on you?

HAMLET. Not so, my lord, I am too much i’ the sun.

QUEEN. Good Hamlet, cast thy nighted colour off, And let thine eye look like a friend on Denmark. Do not for ever with thy vailed lids Seek for thy noble father in the dust. Thou know’st ’tis common, all that lives must die, Passing through nature to eternity.

HAMLET. Ay, madam, it is common.

QUEEN. If it be, Why seems it so particular with thee?

HAMLET. Seems, madam! Nay, it is; I know not seems. ’Tis not alone my inky cloak, good mother, Nor customary suits of solemn black, Nor windy suspiration of forc’d breath, No, nor the fruitful river in the eye, Nor the dejected haviour of the visage, Together with all forms, moods, shows of grief, That can denote me truly. These indeed seem, For they are actions that a man might play; But I have that within which passeth show; These but the trappings and the suits of woe.

KING. ’Tis sweet and commendable in your nature, Hamlet, To give these mourning duties to your father; But you must know, your father lost a father, That father lost, lost his, and the survivor bound In filial obligation, for some term To do obsequious sorrow. But to persevere In obstinate condolement is a course Of impious stubbornness. ’Tis unmanly grief, It shows a will most incorrect to heaven, A heart unfortified, a mind impatient, An understanding simple and unschool’d; For what we know must be, and is as common As any the most vulgar thing to sense, Why should we in our peevish opposition Take it to heart? Fie, ’tis a fault to heaven, A fault against the dead, a fault to nature, To reason most absurd, whose common theme Is death of fathers, and who still hath cried, From the first corse till he that died today, ‘This must be so.’ We pray you throw to earth This unprevailing woe, and think of us As of a father; for let the world take note You are the most immediate to our throne, And with no less nobility of love Than that which dearest father bears his son Do I impart toward you. For your intent In going back to school in Wittenberg, It is most retrograde to our desire: And we beseech you bend you to remain Here in the cheer and comfort of our eye, Our chiefest courtier, cousin, and our son.

QUEEN. Let not thy mother lose her prayers, Hamlet. I pray thee stay with us; go not to Wittenberg.

HAMLET. I shall in all my best obey you, madam.

KING. Why, ’tis a loving and a fair reply. Be as ourself in Denmark. Madam, come; This gentle and unforc’d accord of Hamlet Sits smiling to my heart; in grace whereof, No jocund health that Denmark drinks today But the great cannon to the clouds shall tell, And the King’s rouse the heaven shall bruit again, Re-speaking earthly thunder. Come away.

[Exeunt all but Hamlet.]

HAMLET. O that this too too solid flesh would melt, Thaw, and resolve itself into a dew! Or that the Everlasting had not fix’d His canon ’gainst self-slaughter. O God! O God! How weary, stale, flat, and unprofitable Seem to me all the uses of this world! Fie on’t! Oh fie! ’tis an unweeded garden That grows to seed; things rank and gross in nature Possess it merely. That it should come to this! But two months dead—nay, not so much, not two: So excellent a king; that was to this Hyperion to a satyr; so loving to my mother, That he might not beteem the winds of heaven Visit her face too roughly. Heaven and earth! Must I remember? Why, she would hang on him As if increase of appetite had grown By what it fed on; and yet, within a month— Let me not think on’t—Frailty, thy name is woman! A little month, or ere those shoes were old With which she followed my poor father’s body Like Niobe, all tears.—Why she, even she— O God! A beast that wants discourse of reason Would have mourn’d longer,—married with mine uncle, My father’s brother; but no more like my father Than I to Hercules. Within a month, Ere yet the salt of most unrighteous tears Had left the flushing in her galled eyes, She married. O most wicked speed, to post With such dexterity to incestuous sheets! It is not, nor it cannot come to good. But break, my heart, for I must hold my tongue.

Enter Horatio, Marcellus and Barnardo.

HORATIO. Hail to your lordship!

HAMLET. I am glad to see you well: Horatio, or I do forget myself.

HORATIO. The same, my lord, And your poor servant ever.

HAMLET. Sir, my good friend; I’ll change that name with you: And what make you from Wittenberg, Horatio?— Marcellus?

MARCELLUS. My good lord.

HAMLET. I am very glad to see you.—Good even, sir.— But what, in faith, make you from Wittenberg?

HORATIO. A truant disposition, good my lord.

HAMLET. I would not hear your enemy say so; Nor shall you do my ear that violence, To make it truster of your own report Against yourself. I know you are no truant. But what is your affair in Elsinore? We’ll teach you to drink deep ere you depart.

HORATIO. My lord, I came to see your father’s funeral.

HAMLET. I prithee do not mock me, fellow-student. I think it was to see my mother’s wedding.

HORATIO. Indeed, my lord, it follow’d hard upon.

HAMLET. Thrift, thrift, Horatio! The funeral bak’d meats Did coldly furnish forth the marriage tables. Would I had met my dearest foe in heaven Or ever I had seen that day, Horatio. My father,—methinks I see my father.

HORATIO. Where, my lord?

HAMLET. In my mind’s eye, Horatio.

HORATIO. I saw him once; he was a goodly king.

HAMLET. He was a man, take him for all in all, I shall not look upon his like again.

HORATIO. My lord, I think I saw him yesternight.

HAMLET. Saw? Who?

HORATIO. My lord, the King your father.

HAMLET. The King my father!

HORATIO. Season your admiration for a while With an attent ear, till I may deliver Upon the witness of these gentlemen This marvel to you.

HAMLET. For God’s love let me hear.

HORATIO. Two nights together had these gentlemen, Marcellus and Barnardo, on their watch In the dead waste and middle of the night, Been thus encounter’d. A figure like your father, Armed at point exactly, cap-à-pie, Appears before them, and with solemn march Goes slow and stately by them: thrice he walk’d By their oppress’d and fear-surprised eyes, Within his truncheon’s length; whilst they, distill’d Almost to jelly with the act of fear, Stand dumb, and speak not to him. This to me In dreadful secrecy impart they did, And I with them the third night kept the watch, Where, as they had deliver’d, both in time, Form of the thing, each word made true and good, The apparition comes. I knew your father; These hands are not more like.

HAMLET. But where was this?

MARCELLUS. My lord, upon the platform where we watch.

HAMLET. Did you not speak to it?

HORATIO. My lord, I did; But answer made it none: yet once methought It lifted up it head, and did address Itself to motion, like as it would speak. But even then the morning cock crew loud, And at the sound it shrunk in haste away, And vanish’d from our sight.

HAMLET. ’Tis very strange.

HORATIO. As I do live, my honour’d lord, ’tis true; And we did think it writ down in our duty To let you know of it.

HAMLET. Indeed, indeed, sirs, but this troubles me. Hold you the watch tonight?

MARCELLUS and BARNARDO. We do, my lord.

HAMLET. Arm’d, say you?

Both. Arm’d, my lord.

HAMLET. From top to toe?

BOTH. My lord, from head to foot.

HAMLET. Then saw you not his face?

HORATIO. O yes, my lord, he wore his beaver up.

HAMLET. What, look’d he frowningly?

HORATIO. A countenance more in sorrow than in anger.

HAMLET. Pale, or red?

HORATIO. Nay, very pale.

HAMLET. And fix’d his eyes upon you?

HORATIO. Most constantly.

HAMLET. I would I had been there.

HORATIO. It would have much amaz’d you.

HAMLET. Very like, very like. Stay’d it long?

HORATIO. While one with moderate haste might tell a hundred.

MARCELLUS and BARNARDO. Longer, longer.

HORATIO. Not when I saw’t.

HAMLET. His beard was grizzled, no?

HORATIO. It was, as I have seen it in his life, A sable silver’d.

HAMLET. I will watch tonight; Perchance ’twill walk again.

HORATIO. I warrant you it will.

HAMLET. If it assume my noble father’s person, I’ll speak to it, though hell itself should gape And bid me hold my peace. I pray you all, If you have hitherto conceal’d this sight, Let it be tenable in your silence still; And whatsoever else shall hap tonight, Give it an understanding, but no tongue. I will requite your loves. So, fare ye well. Upon the platform ’twixt eleven and twelve, I’ll visit you.

ALL. Our duty to your honour.

HAMLET. Your loves, as mine to you: farewell.

[Exeunt Horatio, Marcellus and Barnardo.]

My father’s spirit in arms! All is not well; I doubt some foul play: would the night were come! Till then sit still, my soul: foul deeds will rise, Though all the earth o’erwhelm them, to men’s eyes.

SCENE III. A room in Polonius’s house.

Enter Laertes and Ophelia.

LAERTES. My necessaries are embark’d. Farewell. And, sister, as the winds give benefit And convoy is assistant, do not sleep, But let me hear from you.

OPHELIA. Do you doubt that?

LAERTES. For Hamlet, and the trifling of his favour, Hold it a fashion and a toy in blood; A violet in the youth of primy nature, Forward, not permanent, sweet, not lasting; The perfume and suppliance of a minute; No more.

OPHELIA. No more but so?

LAERTES. Think it no more. For nature crescent does not grow alone In thews and bulk; but as this temple waxes, The inward service of the mind and soul Grows wide withal. Perhaps he loves you now, And now no soil nor cautel doth besmirch The virtue of his will; but you must fear, His greatness weigh’d, his will is not his own; For he himself is subject to his birth: He may not, as unvalu’d persons do, Carve for himself; for on his choice depends The sanctity and health of this whole state; And therefore must his choice be circumscrib’d Unto the voice and yielding of that body Whereof he is the head. Then if he says he loves you, It fits your wisdom so far to believe it As he in his particular act and place May give his saying deed; which is no further Than the main voice of Denmark goes withal. Then weigh what loss your honour may sustain If with too credent ear you list his songs, Or lose your heart, or your chaste treasure open To his unmaster’d importunity. Fear it, Ophelia, fear it, my dear sister; And keep you in the rear of your affection, Out of the shot and danger of desire. The chariest maid is prodigal enough If she unmask her beauty to the moon. Virtue itself ’scapes not calumnious strokes: The canker galls the infants of the spring Too oft before their buttons be disclos’d, And in the morn and liquid dew of youth Contagious blastments are most imminent. Be wary then, best safety lies in fear. Youth to itself rebels, though none else near.

OPHELIA. I shall th’effect of this good lesson keep As watchman to my heart. But good my brother, Do not as some ungracious pastors do, Show me the steep and thorny way to heaven; Whilst like a puff’d and reckless libertine Himself the primrose path of dalliance treads, And recks not his own rede.

LAERTES. O, fear me not. I stay too long. But here my father comes.

Enter Polonius.

A double blessing is a double grace; Occasion smiles upon a second leave.

POLONIUS. Yet here, Laertes? Aboard, aboard, for shame. The wind sits in the shoulder of your sail, And you are stay’d for. There, my blessing with you.

[Laying his hand on Laertes’s head.]

And these few precepts in thy memory Look thou character. Give thy thoughts no tongue, Nor any unproportion’d thought his act. Be thou familiar, but by no means vulgar. Those friends thou hast, and their adoption tried, Grapple them unto thy soul with hoops of steel; But do not dull thy palm with entertainment Of each new-hatch’d, unfledg’d comrade. Beware Of entrance to a quarrel; but being in, Bear’t that th’opposed may beware of thee. Give every man thine ear, but few thy voice: Take each man’s censure, but reserve thy judgement. Costly thy habit as thy purse can buy, But not express’d in fancy; rich, not gaudy: For the apparel oft proclaims the man; And they in France of the best rank and station Are of a most select and generous chief in that. Neither a borrower nor a lender be: For loan oft loses both itself and friend; And borrowing dulls the edge of husbandry. This above all: to thine own self be true; And it must follow, as the night the day, Thou canst not then be false to any man. Farewell: my blessing season this in thee.

LAERTES. Most humbly do I take my leave, my lord.

POLONIUS. The time invites you; go, your servants tend.

LAERTES. Farewell, Ophelia, and remember well What I have said to you.

OPHELIA. ’Tis in my memory lock’d, And you yourself shall keep the key of it.

LAERTES. Farewell.

POLONIUS. What is’t, Ophelia, he hath said to you?

OPHELIA. So please you, something touching the Lord Hamlet.

POLONIUS. Marry, well bethought: ’Tis told me he hath very oft of late Given private time to you; and you yourself Have of your audience been most free and bounteous. If it be so,—as so ’tis put on me, And that in way of caution,—I must tell you You do not understand yourself so clearly As it behoves my daughter and your honour. What is between you? Give me up the truth.

OPHELIA. He hath, my lord, of late made many tenders Of his affection to me.

POLONIUS. Affection! Pooh! You speak like a green girl, Unsifted in such perilous circumstance. Do you believe his tenders, as you call them?

OPHELIA. I do not know, my lord, what I should think.

POLONIUS. Marry, I’ll teach you; think yourself a baby; That you have ta’en these tenders for true pay, Which are not sterling. Tender yourself more dearly; Or,—not to crack the wind of the poor phrase, Running it thus,—you’ll tender me a fool.

OPHELIA. My lord, he hath importun’d me with love In honourable fashion.

POLONIUS. Ay, fashion you may call it; go to, go to.

OPHELIA. And hath given countenance to his speech, my lord, With almost all the holy vows of heaven.

POLONIUS. Ay, springes to catch woodcocks. I do know, When the blood burns, how prodigal the soul Lends the tongue vows: these blazes, daughter, Giving more light than heat, extinct in both, Even in their promise, as it is a-making, You must not take for fire. From this time Be something scanter of your maiden presence; Set your entreatments at a higher rate Than a command to parley. For Lord Hamlet, Believe so much in him that he is young; And with a larger tether may he walk Than may be given you. In few, Ophelia, Do not believe his vows; for they are brokers, Not of that dye which their investments show, But mere implorators of unholy suits, Breathing like sanctified and pious bawds, The better to beguile. This is for all: I would not, in plain terms, from this time forth Have you so slander any moment leisure As to give words or talk with the Lord Hamlet. Look to’t, I charge you; come your ways.

OPHELIA. I shall obey, my lord.

SCENE IV. The platform.

Enter Hamlet, Horatio and Marcellus.

HAMLET. The air bites shrewdly; it is very cold.

HORATIO. It is a nipping and an eager air.

HAMLET. What hour now?

HORATIO. I think it lacks of twelve.

MARCELLUS. No, it is struck.

HORATIO. Indeed? I heard it not. It then draws near the season Wherein the spirit held his wont to walk.

[A flourish of trumpets, and ordnance shot off within.]

What does this mean, my lord?

HAMLET. The King doth wake tonight and takes his rouse, Keeps wassail, and the swaggering upspring reels; And as he drains his draughts of Rhenish down, The kettle-drum and trumpet thus bray out The triumph of his pledge.

HORATIO. Is it a custom?

HAMLET. Ay marry is’t; And to my mind, though I am native here, And to the manner born, it is a custom More honour’d in the breach than the observance. This heavy-headed revel east and west Makes us traduc’d and tax’d of other nations: They clepe us drunkards, and with swinish phrase Soil our addition; and indeed it takes From our achievements, though perform’d at height, The pith and marrow of our attribute. So oft it chances in particular men That for some vicious mole of nature in them, As in their birth, wherein they are not guilty, Since nature cannot choose his origin, By their o’ergrowth of some complexion, Oft breaking down the pales and forts of reason; Or by some habit, that too much o’erleavens The form of plausive manners;—that these men, Carrying, I say, the stamp of one defect, Being Nature’s livery or Fortune’s star,— His virtues else,—be they as pure as grace, As infinite as man may undergo, Shall in the general censure take corruption From that particular fault. The dram of evil Doth all the noble substance of a doubt To his own scandal.

HORATIO. Look, my lord, it comes!

HAMLET. Angels and ministers of grace defend us! Be thou a spirit of health or goblin damn’d, Bring with thee airs from heaven or blasts from hell, Be thy intents wicked or charitable, Thou com’st in such a questionable shape That I will speak to thee. I’ll call thee Hamlet, King, father, royal Dane. O, answer me! Let me not burst in ignorance; but tell Why thy canoniz’d bones, hearsed in death, Have burst their cerements; why the sepulchre, Wherein we saw thee quietly inurn’d, Hath op’d his ponderous and marble jaws To cast thee up again! What may this mean, That thou, dead corse, again in complete steel, Revisit’st thus the glimpses of the moon, Making night hideous, and we fools of nature So horridly to shake our disposition With thoughts beyond the reaches of our souls? Say, why is this? Wherefore? What should we do?

[Ghost beckons Hamlet.]

HORATIO. It beckons you to go away with it, As if it some impartment did desire To you alone.

MARCELLUS. Look with what courteous action It waves you to a more removed ground. But do not go with it.

HORATIO. No, by no means.

HAMLET. It will not speak; then will I follow it.

HORATIO. Do not, my lord.

HAMLET. Why, what should be the fear? I do not set my life at a pin’s fee; And for my soul, what can it do to that, Being a thing immortal as itself? It waves me forth again. I’ll follow it.

HORATIO. What if it tempt you toward the flood, my lord, Or to the dreadful summit of the cliff That beetles o’er his base into the sea, And there assume some other horrible form Which might deprive your sovereignty of reason, And draw you into madness? Think of it. The very place puts toys of desperation, Without more motive, into every brain That looks so many fathoms to the sea And hears it roar beneath.

HAMLET. It waves me still. Go on, I’ll follow thee.

MARCELLUS. You shall not go, my lord.

HAMLET. Hold off your hands.

HORATIO. Be rul’d; you shall not go.

HAMLET. My fate cries out, And makes each petty artery in this body As hardy as the Nemean lion’s nerve.

[Ghost beckons.]

Still am I call’d. Unhand me, gentlemen.

[Breaking free from them.]

By heaven, I’ll make a ghost of him that lets me. I say, away!—Go on, I’ll follow thee.

[Exeunt Ghost and Hamlet.]

HORATIO. He waxes desperate with imagination.

MARCELLUS. Let’s follow; ’tis not fit thus to obey him.

HORATIO. Have after. To what issue will this come?

MARCELLUS. Something is rotten in the state of Denmark.

HORATIO. Heaven will direct it.

MARCELLUS. Nay, let’s follow him.

SCENE V. A more remote part of the Castle.

Enter Ghost and Hamlet.

HAMLET. Whither wilt thou lead me? Speak, I’ll go no further.

GHOST. Mark me.

HAMLET. I will.

GHOST. My hour is almost come, When I to sulph’rous and tormenting flames Must render up myself.

HAMLET. Alas, poor ghost!

GHOST. Pity me not, but lend thy serious hearing To what I shall unfold.

HAMLET. Speak, I am bound to hear.

GHOST. So art thou to revenge, when thou shalt hear.

HAMLET. What?

GHOST. I am thy father’s spirit, Doom’d for a certain term to walk the night, And for the day confin’d to fast in fires, Till the foul crimes done in my days of nature Are burnt and purg’d away. But that I am forbid To tell the secrets of my prison-house, I could a tale unfold whose lightest word Would harrow up thy soul; freeze thy young blood, Make thy two eyes like stars start from their spheres, Thy knotted and combined locks to part, And each particular hair to stand on end Like quills upon the fretful porpentine. But this eternal blazon must not be To ears of flesh and blood. List, list, O, list! If thou didst ever thy dear father love—

HAMLET. O God!

GHOST. Revenge his foul and most unnatural murder.

HAMLET. Murder!

GHOST. Murder most foul, as in the best it is; But this most foul, strange, and unnatural.

HAMLET. Haste me to know’t, that I, with wings as swift As meditation or the thoughts of love May sweep to my revenge.

GHOST. I find thee apt; And duller shouldst thou be than the fat weed That rots itself in ease on Lethe wharf, Wouldst thou not stir in this. Now, Hamlet, hear. ’Tis given out that, sleeping in my orchard, A serpent stung me; so the whole ear of Denmark Is by a forged process of my death Rankly abus’d; but know, thou noble youth, The serpent that did sting thy father’s life Now wears his crown.

HAMLET. O my prophetic soul! Mine uncle!

GHOST. Ay, that incestuous, that adulterate beast, With witchcraft of his wit, with traitorous gifts,— O wicked wit, and gifts, that have the power So to seduce!—won to his shameful lust The will of my most seeming-virtuous queen. O Hamlet, what a falling off was there, From me, whose love was of that dignity That it went hand in hand even with the vow I made to her in marriage; and to decline Upon a wretch whose natural gifts were poor To those of mine. But virtue, as it never will be mov’d, Though lewdness court it in a shape of heaven; So lust, though to a radiant angel link’d, Will sate itself in a celestial bed And prey on garbage. But soft! methinks I scent the morning air; Brief let me be. Sleeping within my orchard, My custom always of the afternoon, Upon my secure hour thy uncle stole With juice of cursed hebenon in a vial, And in the porches of my ears did pour The leperous distilment, whose effect Holds such an enmity with blood of man That swift as quicksilver it courses through The natural gates and alleys of the body; And with a sudden vigour it doth posset And curd, like eager droppings into milk, The thin and wholesome blood. So did it mine; And a most instant tetter bark’d about, Most lazar-like, with vile and loathsome crust All my smooth body. Thus was I, sleeping, by a brother’s hand, Of life, of crown, of queen at once dispatch’d: Cut off even in the blossoms of my sin, Unhous’led, disappointed, unanel’d; No reckoning made, but sent to my account With all my imperfections on my head. O horrible! O horrible! most horrible! If thou hast nature in thee, bear it not; Let not the royal bed of Denmark be A couch for luxury and damned incest. But howsoever thou pursu’st this act, Taint not thy mind, nor let thy soul contrive Against thy mother aught; leave her to heaven, And to those thorns that in her bosom lodge, To prick and sting her. Fare thee well at once! The glow-worm shows the matin to be near, And ’gins to pale his uneffectual fire. Adieu, adieu, adieu. Remember me.

HAMLET. O all you host of heaven! O earth! What else? And shall I couple hell? O, fie! Hold, my heart; And you, my sinews, grow not instant old, But bear me stiffly up. Remember thee? Ay, thou poor ghost, while memory holds a seat In this distracted globe. Remember thee? Yea, from the table of my memory I’ll wipe away all trivial fond records, All saws of books, all forms, all pressures past, That youth and observation copied there; And thy commandment all alone shall live Within the book and volume of my brain, Unmix’d with baser matter. Yes, by heaven! O most pernicious woman! O villain, villain, smiling damned villain! My tables. Meet it is I set it down, That one may smile, and smile, and be a villain! At least I am sure it may be so in Denmark.

[Writing.]

So, uncle, there you are. Now to my word; It is ‘Adieu, adieu, remember me.’ I have sworn’t.

HORATIO and MARCELLUS. [Within.] My lord, my lord.

MARCELLUS. [Within.] Lord Hamlet.

HORATIO. [Within.] Heaven secure him.

HAMLET. So be it!

MARCELLUS. [Within.] Illo, ho, ho, my lord!

HAMLET. Hillo, ho, ho, boy! Come, bird, come.

MARCELLUS. How is’t, my noble lord?

HORATIO. What news, my lord?

HAMLET. O, wonderful!

HORATIO. Good my lord, tell it.

HAMLET. No, you’ll reveal it.

HORATIO. Not I, my lord, by heaven.

MARCELLUS. Nor I, my lord.

HAMLET. How say you then, would heart of man once think it?— But you’ll be secret?

HORATIO and MARCELLUS. Ay, by heaven, my lord.

HAMLET. There’s ne’er a villain dwelling in all Denmark But he’s an arrant knave.

HORATIO. There needs no ghost, my lord, come from the grave To tell us this.

HAMLET. Why, right; you are i’ the right; And so, without more circumstance at all, I hold it fit that we shake hands and part: You, as your business and desire shall point you,— For every man hath business and desire, Such as it is;—and for my own poor part, Look you, I’ll go pray.

HORATIO. These are but wild and whirling words, my lord.

HAMLET. I’m sorry they offend you, heartily; Yes faith, heartily.

HORATIO. There’s no offence, my lord.

HAMLET. Yes, by Saint Patrick, but there is, Horatio, And much offence too. Touching this vision here, It is an honest ghost, that let me tell you. For your desire to know what is between us, O’ermaster’t as you may. And now, good friends, As you are friends, scholars, and soldiers, Give me one poor request.

HORATIO. What is’t, my lord? We will.

HAMLET. Never make known what you have seen tonight.

HORATIO and MARCELLUS. My lord, we will not.

HAMLET. Nay, but swear’t.

HORATIO. In faith, my lord, not I.

MARCELLUS. Nor I, my lord, in faith.

HAMLET. Upon my sword.

MARCELLUS. We have sworn, my lord, already.

HAMLET. Indeed, upon my sword, indeed.

GHOST. [Cries under the stage.] Swear.

HAMLET. Ha, ha boy, sayst thou so? Art thou there, truepenny? Come on, you hear this fellow in the cellarage. Consent to swear.

HORATIO. Propose the oath, my lord.

HAMLET. Never to speak of this that you have seen. Swear by my sword.

GHOST. [Beneath.] Swear.

HAMLET. Hic et ubique? Then we’ll shift our ground. Come hither, gentlemen, And lay your hands again upon my sword. Never to speak of this that you have heard. Swear by my sword.

HAMLET. Well said, old mole! Canst work i’ th’earth so fast? A worthy pioner! Once more remove, good friends.

HORATIO. O day and night, but this is wondrous strange.

HAMLET. And therefore as a stranger give it welcome. There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, Than are dreamt of in your philosophy. But come, Here, as before, never, so help you mercy, How strange or odd soe’er I bear myself,— As I perchance hereafter shall think meet To put an antic disposition on— That you, at such times seeing me, never shall, With arms encumber’d thus, or this head-shake, Or by pronouncing of some doubtful phrase, As ‘Well, we know’, or ‘We could and if we would’, Or ‘If we list to speak’; or ‘There be and if they might’, Or such ambiguous giving out, to note That you know aught of me:—this not to do. So grace and mercy at your most need help you, Swear.

HAMLET. Rest, rest, perturbed spirit. So, gentlemen, With all my love I do commend me to you; And what so poor a man as Hamlet is May do t’express his love and friending to you, God willing, shall not lack. Let us go in together, And still your fingers on your lips, I pray. The time is out of joint. O cursed spite, That ever I was born to set it right. Nay, come, let’s go together.

SCENE I. A room in Polonius’s house.

Enter Polonius and Reynaldo.

POLONIUS. Give him this money and these notes, Reynaldo.

REYNALDO. I will, my lord.

POLONIUS. You shall do marvellous wisely, good Reynaldo, Before you visit him, to make inquiry Of his behaviour.

REYNALDO. My lord, I did intend it.

POLONIUS. Marry, well said; very well said. Look you, sir, Enquire me first what Danskers are in Paris; And how, and who, what means, and where they keep, What company, at what expense; and finding By this encompassment and drift of question, That they do know my son, come you more nearer Than your particular demands will touch it. Take you as ’twere some distant knowledge of him, As thus, ‘I know his father and his friends, And in part him’—do you mark this, Reynaldo?

REYNALDO. Ay, very well, my lord.

POLONIUS. ‘And in part him, but,’ you may say, ‘not well; But if’t be he I mean, he’s very wild; Addicted so and so;’ and there put on him What forgeries you please; marry, none so rank As may dishonour him; take heed of that; But, sir, such wanton, wild, and usual slips As are companions noted and most known To youth and liberty.

REYNALDO. As gaming, my lord?

POLONIUS. Ay, or drinking, fencing, swearing, Quarrelling, drabbing. You may go so far.

REYNALDO. My lord, that would dishonour him.

POLONIUS. Faith no, as you may season it in the charge. You must not put another scandal on him, That he is open to incontinency; That’s not my meaning: but breathe his faults so quaintly That they may seem the taints of liberty; The flash and outbreak of a fiery mind, A savageness in unreclaimed blood, Of general assault.

REYNALDO. But my good lord—

POLONIUS. Wherefore should you do this?

REYNALDO. Ay, my lord, I would know that.

POLONIUS. Marry, sir, here’s my drift, And I believe it is a fetch of warrant. You laying these slight sullies on my son, As ’twere a thing a little soil’d i’ th’ working, Mark you, Your party in converse, him you would sound, Having ever seen in the prenominate crimes The youth you breathe of guilty, be assur’d He closes with you in this consequence; ‘Good sir,’ or so; or ‘friend,’ or ‘gentleman’— According to the phrase or the addition Of man and country.

REYNALDO. Very good, my lord.

POLONIUS. And then, sir, does he this,— He does—What was I about to say? By the mass, I was about to say something. Where did I leave?

REYNALDO. At ‘closes in the consequence.’ At ‘friend or so,’ and ‘gentleman.’

POLONIUS. At ‘closes in the consequence’ ay, marry! He closes with you thus: ‘I know the gentleman, I saw him yesterday, or t’other day, Or then, or then, with such and such; and, as you say, There was he gaming, there o’ertook in’s rouse, There falling out at tennis’: or perchance, ‘I saw him enter such a house of sale’— Videlicet, a brothel, or so forth. See you now; Your bait of falsehood takes this carp of truth; And thus do we of wisdom and of reach, With windlasses, and with assays of bias, By indirections find directions out. So by my former lecture and advice Shall you my son. You have me, have you not?

REYNALDO. My lord, I have.

POLONIUS. God b’ wi’ you, fare you well.

REYNALDO. Good my lord.

POLONIUS. Observe his inclination in yourself.

REYNALDO. I shall, my lord.

POLONIUS. And let him ply his music.

REYNALDO. Well, my lord.

POLONIUS. Farewell.

[Exit Reynaldo.]

Enter Ophelia.

How now, Ophelia, what’s the matter?

OPHELIA. Alas, my lord, I have been so affrighted.

POLONIUS. With what, in the name of God?

OPHELIA. My lord, as I was sewing in my chamber, Lord Hamlet, with his doublet all unbrac’d, No hat upon his head, his stockings foul’d, Ungart’red, and down-gyved to his ankle, Pale as his shirt, his knees knocking each other, And with a look so piteous in purport As if he had been loosed out of hell To speak of horrors, he comes before me.

POLONIUS. Mad for thy love?

OPHELIA. My lord, I do not know, but truly I do fear it.

POLONIUS. What said he?

OPHELIA. He took me by the wrist and held me hard; Then goes he to the length of all his arm; And with his other hand thus o’er his brow, He falls to such perusal of my face As he would draw it. Long stay’d he so, At last,—a little shaking of mine arm, And thrice his head thus waving up and down, He rais’d a sigh so piteous and profound As it did seem to shatter all his bulk And end his being. That done, he lets me go, And with his head over his shoulder turn’d He seem’d to find his way without his eyes, For out o’ doors he went without their help, And to the last bended their light on me.

POLONIUS. Come, go with me. I will go seek the King. This is the very ecstasy of love, Whose violent property fordoes itself, And leads the will to desperate undertakings, As oft as any passion under heaven That does afflict our natures. I am sorry,— What, have you given him any hard words of late?

OPHELIA. No, my good lord; but as you did command, I did repel his letters and denied His access to me.

POLONIUS. That hath made him mad. I am sorry that with better heed and judgement I had not quoted him. I fear’d he did but trifle, And meant to wreck thee. But beshrew my jealousy! It seems it is as proper to our age To cast beyond ourselves in our opinions As it is common for the younger sort To lack discretion. Come, go we to the King. This must be known, which, being kept close, might move More grief to hide than hate to utter love.

SCENE II. A room in the Castle.

Enter King, Queen, Rosencrantz, Guildenstern and Attendants.

KING. Welcome, dear Rosencrantz and Guildenstern. Moreover that we much did long to see you, The need we have to use you did provoke Our hasty sending. Something have you heard Of Hamlet’s transformation; so I call it, Since nor th’exterior nor the inward man Resembles that it was. What it should be, More than his father’s death, that thus hath put him So much from th’understanding of himself, I cannot dream of. I entreat you both That, being of so young days brought up with him, And since so neighbour’d to his youth and humour, That you vouchsafe your rest here in our court Some little time, so by your companies To draw him on to pleasures and to gather, So much as from occasion you may glean, Whether aught to us unknown afflicts him thus That, open’d, lies within our remedy.

QUEEN. Good gentlemen, he hath much talk’d of you, And sure I am, two men there are not living To whom he more adheres. If it will please you To show us so much gentry and good will As to expend your time with us awhile, For the supply and profit of our hope, Your visitation shall receive such thanks As fits a king’s remembrance.

ROSENCRANTZ. Both your majesties Might, by the sovereign power you have of us, Put your dread pleasures more into command Than to entreaty.

GUILDENSTERN. We both obey, And here give up ourselves, in the full bent, To lay our service freely at your feet To be commanded.

KING. Thanks, Rosencrantz and gentle Guildenstern.

QUEEN. Thanks, Guildenstern and gentle Rosencrantz. And I beseech you instantly to visit My too much changed son. Go, some of you, And bring these gentlemen where Hamlet is.

GUILDENSTERN. Heavens make our presence and our practices Pleasant and helpful to him.

QUEEN. Ay, amen.

[Exeunt Rosencrantz, Guildenstern and some Attendants.]

POLONIUS. Th’ambassadors from Norway, my good lord, Are joyfully return’d.

KING. Thou still hast been the father of good news.

POLONIUS. Have I, my lord? Assure you, my good liege, I hold my duty, as I hold my soul, Both to my God and to my gracious King: And I do think,—or else this brain of mine Hunts not the trail of policy so sure As it hath us’d to do—that I have found The very cause of Hamlet’s lunacy.

KING. O speak of that, that do I long to hear.

POLONIUS. Give first admittance to th’ambassadors; My news shall be the fruit to that great feast.

KING. Thyself do grace to them, and bring them in.

[Exit Polonius.]

He tells me, my sweet queen, that he hath found The head and source of all your son’s distemper.

QUEEN. I doubt it is no other but the main, His father’s death and our o’erhasty marriage.

KING. Well, we shall sift him.

Enter Polonius with Voltemand and Cornelius.

Welcome, my good friends! Say, Voltemand, what from our brother Norway?

VOLTEMAND. Most fair return of greetings and desires. Upon our first, he sent out to suppress His nephew’s levies, which to him appear’d To be a preparation ’gainst the Polack; But better look’d into, he truly found It was against your Highness; whereat griev’d, That so his sickness, age, and impotence Was falsely borne in hand, sends out arrests On Fortinbras; which he, in brief, obeys, Receives rebuke from Norway; and in fine, Makes vow before his uncle never more To give th’assay of arms against your Majesty. Whereon old Norway, overcome with joy, Gives him three thousand crowns in annual fee, And his commission to employ those soldiers So levied as before, against the Polack: With an entreaty, herein further shown, [Gives a paper.] That it might please you to give quiet pass Through your dominions for this enterprise, On such regards of safety and allowance As therein are set down.

KING. It likes us well; And at our more consider’d time we’ll read, Answer, and think upon this business. Meantime we thank you for your well-took labour. Go to your rest, at night we’ll feast together:. Most welcome home.

POLONIUS. This business is well ended. My liege and madam, to expostulate What majesty should be, what duty is, Why day is day, night night, and time is time Were nothing but to waste night, day and time. Therefore, since brevity is the soul of wit, And tediousness the limbs and outward flourishes, I will be brief. Your noble son is mad. Mad call I it; for to define true madness, What is’t but to be nothing else but mad? But let that go.

QUEEN. More matter, with less art.

POLONIUS. Madam, I swear I use no art at all. That he is mad, ’tis true: ’tis true ’tis pity; And pity ’tis ’tis true. A foolish figure, But farewell it, for I will use no art. Mad let us grant him then. And now remains That we find out the cause of this effect, Or rather say, the cause of this defect, For this effect defective comes by cause. Thus it remains, and the remainder thus. Perpend, I have a daughter—have whilst she is mine— Who in her duty and obedience, mark, Hath given me this. Now gather, and surmise. [Reads.] To the celestial, and my soul’s idol, the most beautified Ophelia— That’s an ill phrase, a vile phrase; ‘beautified’ is a vile phrase: but you shall hear. [Reads.] these; in her excellent white bosom, these, &c.

QUEEN. Came this from Hamlet to her?

POLONIUS. Good madam, stay awhile; I will be faithful. [Reads.] Doubt thou the stars are fire, Doubt that the sun doth move, Doubt truth to be a liar, But never doubt I love. O dear Ophelia, I am ill at these numbers. I have not art to reckon my groans. But that I love thee best, O most best, believe it. Adieu. Thine evermore, most dear lady, whilst this machine is to him, HAMLET. This in obedience hath my daughter show’d me; And more above, hath his solicitings, As they fell out by time, by means, and place, All given to mine ear.

KING. But how hath she receiv’d his love?

POLONIUS. What do you think of me?

KING. As of a man faithful and honourable.

POLONIUS. I would fain prove so. But what might you think, When I had seen this hot love on the wing, As I perceiv’d it, I must tell you that, Before my daughter told me, what might you, Or my dear Majesty your queen here, think, If I had play’d the desk or table-book, Or given my heart a winking, mute and dumb, Or look’d upon this love with idle sight, What might you think? No, I went round to work, And my young mistress thus I did bespeak: ‘Lord Hamlet is a prince, out of thy star. This must not be.’ And then I precepts gave her, That she should lock herself from his resort, Admit no messengers, receive no tokens. Which done, she took the fruits of my advice, And he, repulsed,—a short tale to make— Fell into a sadness, then into a fast, Thence to a watch, thence into a weakness, Thence to a lightness, and, by this declension, Into the madness wherein now he raves, And all we wail for.

KING. Do you think ’tis this?

QUEEN. It may be, very likely.

POLONIUS. Hath there been such a time, I’d fain know that, That I have positively said ‘’Tis so,’ When it prov’d otherwise?

KING. Not that I know.

POLONIUS. Take this from this, if this be otherwise. [Points to his head and shoulder.] If circumstances lead me, I will find Where truth is hid, though it were hid indeed Within the centre.

KING. How may we try it further?

POLONIUS. You know sometimes he walks four hours together Here in the lobby.

QUEEN. So he does indeed.

POLONIUS. At such a time I’ll loose my daughter to him. Be you and I behind an arras then, Mark the encounter. If he love her not, And be not from his reason fall’n thereon, Let me be no assistant for a state, But keep a farm and carters.

KING. We will try it.

Enter Hamlet, reading.

QUEEN. But look where sadly the poor wretch comes reading.

POLONIUS. Away, I do beseech you, both away I’ll board him presently. O, give me leave.

[Exeunt King, Queen and Attendants.]

How does my good Lord Hamlet?

HAMLET. Well, God-a-mercy.

POLONIUS. Do you know me, my lord?

HAMLET. Excellent well. You are a fishmonger.

POLONIUS. Not I, my lord.

HAMLET. Then I would you were so honest a man.

POLONIUS. Honest, my lord?

HAMLET. Ay sir, to be honest, as this world goes, is to be one man picked out of ten thousand.

POLONIUS. That’s very true, my lord.

HAMLET. For if the sun breed maggots in a dead dog, being a good kissing carrion,— Have you a daughter?

POLONIUS. I have, my lord.

HAMLET. Let her not walk i’ th’ sun. Conception is a blessing, but not as your daughter may conceive. Friend, look to’t.

POLONIUS. How say you by that? [Aside.] Still harping on my daughter. Yet he knew me not at first; he said I was a fishmonger. He is far gone, far gone. And truly in my youth I suffered much extremity for love; very near this. I’ll speak to him again.—What do you read, my lord?

HAMLET. Words, words, words.

POLONIUS. What is the matter, my lord?

HAMLET. Between who?

POLONIUS. I mean the matter that you read, my lord.

HAMLET. Slanders, sir. For the satirical slave says here that old men have grey beards; that their faces are wrinkled; their eyes purging thick amber and plum-tree gum; and that they have a plentiful lack of wit, together with most weak hams. All which, sir, though I most powerfully and potently believe, yet I hold it not honesty to have it thus set down. For you yourself, sir, should be old as I am, if like a crab you could go backward.

POLONIUS. [Aside.] Though this be madness, yet there is method in’t.— Will you walk out of the air, my lord?

HAMLET. Into my grave?

POLONIUS. Indeed, that is out o’ the air. [Aside.] How pregnant sometimes his replies are! A happiness that often madness hits on, which reason and sanity could not so prosperously be delivered of. I will leave him and suddenly contrive the means of meeting between him and my daughter. My honourable lord, I will most humbly take my leave of you.

HAMLET. You cannot, sir, take from me anything that I will more willingly part withal, except my life, except my life, except my life.

POLONIUS. Fare you well, my lord.

HAMLET. These tedious old fools.

Enter Rosencrantz and Guildenstern.

POLONIUS. You go to seek the Lord Hamlet; there he is.

ROSENCRANTZ. [To Polonius.] God save you, sir.

GUILDENSTERN. My honoured lord!

ROSENCRANTZ. My most dear lord!

HAMLET. My excellent good friends! How dost thou, Guildenstern? Ah, Rosencrantz. Good lads, how do ye both?

ROSENCRANTZ. As the indifferent children of the earth.

GUILDENSTERN. Happy in that we are not over-happy; On Fortune’s cap we are not the very button.

HAMLET. Nor the soles of her shoe?

ROSENCRANTZ. Neither, my lord.

HAMLET. Then you live about her waist, or in the middle of her favours?

GUILDENSTERN. Faith, her privates we.

HAMLET. In the secret parts of Fortune? O, most true; she is a strumpet. What’s the news?

ROSENCRANTZ. None, my lord, but that the world’s grown honest.

HAMLET. Then is doomsday near. But your news is not true. Let me question more in particular. What have you, my good friends, deserved at the hands of Fortune, that she sends you to prison hither?

GUILDENSTERN. Prison, my lord?

HAMLET. Denmark’s a prison.

ROSENCRANTZ. Then is the world one.

HAMLET. A goodly one; in which there are many confines, wards, and dungeons, Denmark being one o’ th’ worst.

ROSENCRANTZ. We think not so, my lord.

HAMLET. Why, then ’tis none to you; for there is nothing either good or bad but thinking makes it so. To me it is a prison.

ROSENCRANTZ. Why, then your ambition makes it one; ’tis too narrow for your mind.

HAMLET. O God, I could be bounded in a nutshell, and count myself a king of infinite space, were it not that I have bad dreams.

GUILDENSTERN. Which dreams, indeed, are ambition; for the very substance of the ambitious is merely the shadow of a dream.

HAMLET. A dream itself is but a shadow.

ROSENCRANTZ. Truly, and I hold ambition of so airy and light a quality that it is but a shadow’s shadow.

HAMLET. Then are our beggars bodies, and our monarchs and outstretch’d heroes the beggars’ shadows. Shall we to th’ court? For, by my fay, I cannot reason.

ROSENCRANTZ and GUILDENSTERN. We’ll wait upon you.

HAMLET. No such matter. I will not sort you with the rest of my servants; for, to speak to you like an honest man, I am most dreadfully attended. But, in the beaten way of friendship, what make you at Elsinore?

ROSENCRANTZ. To visit you, my lord, no other occasion.

HAMLET. Beggar that I am, I am even poor in thanks; but I thank you. And sure, dear friends, my thanks are too dear a halfpenny. Were you not sent for? Is it your own inclining? Is it a free visitation? Come, deal justly with me. Come, come; nay, speak.

GUILDENSTERN. What should we say, my lord?

HAMLET. Why, anything. But to the purpose. You were sent for; and there is a kind of confession in your looks, which your modesties have not craft enough to colour. I know the good King and Queen have sent for you.

ROSENCRANTZ. To what end, my lord?

HAMLET. That you must teach me. But let me conjure you, by the rights of our fellowship, by the consonancy of our youth, by the obligation of our ever-preserved love, and by what more dear a better proposer could charge you withal, be even and direct with me, whether you were sent for or no.

ROSENCRANTZ. [To Guildenstern.] What say you?

HAMLET. [Aside.] Nay, then I have an eye of you. If you love me, hold not off.

GUILDENSTERN. My lord, we were sent for.

HAMLET. I will tell you why; so shall my anticipation prevent your discovery, and your secrecy to the King and Queen moult no feather. I have of late, but wherefore I know not, lost all my mirth, forgone all custom of exercises; and indeed, it goes so heavily with my disposition that this goodly frame the earth, seems to me a sterile promontory; this most excellent canopy the air, look you, this brave o’erhanging firmament, this majestical roof fretted with golden fire, why, it appears no other thing to me than a foul and pestilent congregation of vapours. What a piece of work is man, how noble in reason, how infinite in faculties, in form and moving, how express and admirable; in action how like an angel, in apprehension, how like a god: the beauty of the world, the paragon of animals. And yet, to me, what is this quintessence of dust? Man delights not me; no, nor woman neither, though by your smiling you seem to say so.

ROSENCRANTZ. My lord, there was no such stuff in my thoughts.

HAMLET. Why did you laugh then, when I said ‘Man delights not me’?

ROSENCRANTZ. To think, my lord, if you delight not in man, what Lenten entertainment the players shall receive from you. We coted them on the way, and hither are they coming to offer you service.

HAMLET. He that plays the king shall be welcome,—his Majesty shall have tribute of me; the adventurous knight shall use his foil and target; the lover shall not sigh gratis, the humorous man shall end his part in peace; the clown shall make those laugh whose lungs are tickle o’ th’ sere; and the lady shall say her mind freely, or the blank verse shall halt for’t. What players are they?

ROSENCRANTZ. Even those you were wont to take such delight in—the tragedians of the city.

HAMLET. How chances it they travel? Their residence, both in reputation and profit, was better both ways.

ROSENCRANTZ. I think their inhibition comes by the means of the late innovation.

HAMLET. Do they hold the same estimation they did when I was in the city? Are they so followed?

ROSENCRANTZ. No, indeed, they are not.

HAMLET. How comes it? Do they grow rusty?

ROSENCRANTZ. Nay, their endeavour keeps in the wonted pace; but there is, sir, an aerie of children, little eyases, that cry out on the top of question, and are most tyrannically clapped for’t. These are now the fashion, and so berattle the common stages—so they call them—that many wearing rapiers are afraid of goose-quills and dare scarce come thither.

HAMLET. What, are they children? Who maintains ’em? How are they escoted? Will they pursue the quality no longer than they can sing? Will they not say afterwards, if they should grow themselves to common players—as it is most like, if their means are no better—their writers do them wrong to make them exclaim against their own succession?

ROSENCRANTZ. Faith, there has been much to do on both sides; and the nation holds it no sin to tarre them to controversy. There was for a while, no money bid for argument unless the poet and the player went to cuffs in the question.

HAMLET. Is’t possible?

GUILDENSTERN. O, there has been much throwing about of brains.

HAMLET. Do the boys carry it away?

ROSENCRANTZ. Ay, that they do, my lord. Hercules and his load too.

HAMLET. It is not very strange; for my uncle is King of Denmark, and those that would make mouths at him while my father lived, give twenty, forty, fifty, a hundred ducats apiece for his picture in little. ’Sblood, there is something in this more than natural, if philosophy could find it out.

[Flourish of trumpets within.]

GUILDENSTERN. There are the players.

HAMLET. Gentlemen, you are welcome to Elsinore. Your hands, come. The appurtenance of welcome is fashion and ceremony. Let me comply with you in this garb, lest my extent to the players, which I tell you must show fairly outward, should more appear like entertainment than yours. You are welcome. But my uncle-father and aunt-mother are deceived.

GUILDENSTERN. In what, my dear lord?

HAMLET. I am but mad north-north-west. When the wind is southerly, I know a hawk from a handsaw.

POLONIUS. Well be with you, gentlemen.

HAMLET. Hark you, Guildenstern, and you too, at each ear a hearer. That great baby you see there is not yet out of his swaddling clouts.

ROSENCRANTZ. Happily he’s the second time come to them; for they say an old man is twice a child.

HAMLET. I will prophesy he comes to tell me of the players. Mark it.—You say right, sir: for a Monday morning ’twas so indeed.

POLONIUS. My lord, I have news to tell you.

HAMLET. My lord, I have news to tell you. When Roscius was an actor in Rome—

POLONIUS. The actors are come hither, my lord.

HAMLET. Buzz, buzz.

POLONIUS. Upon my honour.

HAMLET. Then came each actor on his ass—

POLONIUS. The best actors in the world, either for tragedy, comedy, history, pastoral, pastoral-comical, historical-pastoral, tragical-historical, tragical-comical-historical-pastoral, scene individable, or poem unlimited. Seneca cannot be too heavy, nor Plautus too light, for the law of writ and the liberty. These are the only men.

HAMLET. O Jephthah, judge of Israel, what a treasure hadst thou!

POLONIUS. What treasure had he, my lord?

HAMLET. Why— ’One fair daughter, and no more, The which he loved passing well.’

POLONIUS. [Aside.] Still on my daughter.

HAMLET. Am I not i’ th’ right, old Jephthah?

POLONIUS. If you call me Jephthah, my lord, I have a daughter that I love passing well.

HAMLET. Nay, that follows not.

POLONIUS. What follows then, my lord?

HAMLET. Why, As by lot, God wot, and then, you know, It came to pass, as most like it was. The first row of the pious chanson will show you more. For look where my abridgement comes.

Enter four or five Players.

You are welcome, masters, welcome all. I am glad to see thee well. Welcome, good friends. O, my old friend! Thy face is valanc’d since I saw thee last. Com’st thou to beard me in Denmark? What, my young lady and mistress! By’r lady, your ladyship is nearer to heaven than when I saw you last, by the altitude of a chopine. Pray God your voice, like a piece of uncurrent gold, be not cracked within the ring. Masters, you are all welcome. We’ll e’en to’t like French falconers, fly at anything we see. We’ll have a speech straight. Come, give us a taste of your quality. Come, a passionate speech.

FIRST PLAYER. What speech, my lord?

HAMLET. I heard thee speak me a speech once, but it was never acted, or if it was, not above once, for the play, I remember, pleased not the million, ’twas caviare to the general. But it was—as I received it, and others, whose judgements in such matters cried in the top of mine—an excellent play, well digested in the scenes, set down with as much modesty as cunning. I remember one said there were no sallets in the lines to make the matter savoury, nor no matter in the phrase that might indite the author of affectation, but called it an honest method, as wholesome as sweet, and by very much more handsome than fine. One speech in it, I chiefly loved. ’Twas Aeneas’ tale to Dido, and thereabout of it especially where he speaks of Priam’s slaughter. If it live in your memory, begin at this line, let me see, let me see: The rugged Pyrrhus, like th’ Hyrcanian beast,— It is not so: it begins with Pyrrhus— The rugged Pyrrhus, he whose sable arms, Black as his purpose, did the night resemble When he lay couched in the ominous horse, Hath now this dread and black complexion smear’d With heraldry more dismal. Head to foot Now is he total gules, horridly trick’d With blood of fathers, mothers, daughters, sons, Bak’d and impasted with the parching streets, That lend a tyrannous and a damned light To their vile murders. Roasted in wrath and fire, And thus o’ersized with coagulate gore, With eyes like carbuncles, the hellish Pyrrhus Old grandsire Priam seeks. So, proceed you.

POLONIUS. ’Fore God, my lord, well spoken, with good accent and good discretion.

FIRST PLAYER. Anon he finds him, Striking too short at Greeks. His antique sword, Rebellious to his arm, lies where it falls, Repugnant to command. Unequal match’d, Pyrrhus at Priam drives, in rage strikes wide; But with the whiff and wind of his fell sword Th’unnerved father falls. Then senseless Ilium, Seeming to feel this blow, with flaming top Stoops to his base, and with a hideous crash Takes prisoner Pyrrhus’ ear. For lo, his sword, Which was declining on the milky head Of reverend Priam, seem’d i’ th’air to stick. So, as a painted tyrant, Pyrrhus stood, And like a neutral to his will and matter, Did nothing. But as we often see against some storm, A silence in the heavens, the rack stand still, The bold winds speechless, and the orb below As hush as death, anon the dreadful thunder Doth rend the region; so after Pyrrhus’ pause, Aroused vengeance sets him new a-work, And never did the Cyclops’ hammers fall On Mars’s armour, forg’d for proof eterne, With less remorse than Pyrrhus’ bleeding sword Now falls on Priam. Out, out, thou strumpet Fortune! All you gods, In general synod, take away her power; Break all the spokes and fellies from her wheel, And bowl the round nave down the hill of heaven, As low as to the fiends.

POLONIUS. This is too long.

HAMLET. It shall to the barber’s, with your beard.—Prithee say on. He’s for a jig or a tale of bawdry, or he sleeps. Say on; come to Hecuba.

FIRST PLAYER. But who, O who, had seen the mobled queen,—

HAMLET. ‘The mobled queen’?

POLONIUS. That’s good! ‘Mobled queen’ is good.

FIRST PLAYER. Run barefoot up and down, threat’ning the flames With bisson rheum. A clout upon that head Where late the diadem stood, and for a robe, About her lank and all o’erteemed loins, A blanket, in th’alarm of fear caught up— Who this had seen, with tongue in venom steep’d, ’Gainst Fortune’s state would treason have pronounc’d. But if the gods themselves did see her then, When she saw Pyrrhus make malicious sport In mincing with his sword her husband’s limbs, The instant burst of clamour that she made,— Unless things mortal move them not at all,— Would have made milch the burning eyes of heaven, And passion in the gods.

POLONIUS. Look, where he has not turn’d his colour, and has tears in’s eyes. Pray you, no more.

HAMLET. ’Tis well. I’ll have thee speak out the rest of this soon.—Good my lord, will you see the players well bestowed? Do you hear, let them be well used; for they are the abstracts and brief chronicles of the time. After your death you were better have a bad epitaph than their ill report while you live.

POLONIUS. My lord, I will use them according to their desert.

HAMLET. God’s bodikin, man, much better. Use every man after his desert, and who should ’scape whipping? Use them after your own honour and dignity. The less they deserve, the more merit is in your bounty. Take them in.

POLONIUS. Come, sirs.

HAMLET. Follow him, friends. We’ll hear a play tomorrow.

[Exeunt Polonius with all the Players but the First.]

Dost thou hear me, old friend? Can you play The Murder of Gonzago?

FIRST PLAYER. Ay, my lord.

HAMLET. We’ll ha’t tomorrow night. You could for a need study a speech of some dozen or sixteen lines, which I would set down and insert in’t, could you not?

HAMLET. Very well. Follow that lord, and look you mock him not.

[Exit First Player.]

[To Rosencrantz and Guildenstern] My good friends, I’ll leave you till night. You are welcome to Elsinore.

ROSENCRANTZ. Good my lord.

[Exeunt Rosencrantz and Guildenstern.]

HAMLET. Ay, so, God b’ wi’ ye. Now I am alone. O what a rogue and peasant slave am I! Is it not monstrous that this player here, But in a fiction, in a dream of passion, Could force his soul so to his own conceit That from her working all his visage wan’d; Tears in his eyes, distraction in’s aspect, A broken voice, and his whole function suiting With forms to his conceit? And all for nothing! For Hecuba? What’s Hecuba to him, or he to Hecuba, That he should weep for her? What would he do, Had he the motive and the cue for passion That I have? He would drown the stage with tears And cleave the general ear with horrid speech; Make mad the guilty, and appal the free, Confound the ignorant, and amaze indeed, The very faculties of eyes and ears. Yet I, A dull and muddy-mettled rascal, peak Like John-a-dreams, unpregnant of my cause, And can say nothing. No, not for a king Upon whose property and most dear life A damn’d defeat was made. Am I a coward? Who calls me villain, breaks my pate across? Plucks off my beard and blows it in my face? Tweaks me by the nose, gives me the lie i’ th’ throat As deep as to the lungs? Who does me this? Ha! ’Swounds, I should take it: for it cannot be But I am pigeon-liver’d, and lack gall To make oppression bitter, or ere this I should have fatted all the region kites With this slave’s offal. Bloody, bawdy villain! Remorseless, treacherous, lecherous, kindless villain! Oh vengeance! Why, what an ass am I! This is most brave, That I, the son of a dear father murder’d, Prompted to my revenge by heaven and hell, Must, like a whore, unpack my heart with words And fall a-cursing like a very drab, A scullion! Fie upon’t! Foh! About, my brain! I have heard That guilty creatures sitting at a play, Have by the very cunning of the scene, Been struck so to the soul that presently They have proclaim’d their malefactions. For murder, though it have no tongue, will speak With most miraculous organ. I’ll have these players Play something like the murder of my father Before mine uncle. I’ll observe his looks; I’ll tent him to the quick. If he but blench, I know my course. The spirit that I have seen May be the devil, and the devil hath power T’assume a pleasing shape, yea, and perhaps Out of my weakness and my melancholy, As he is very potent with such spirits, Abuses me to damn me. I’ll have grounds More relative than this. The play’s the thing Wherein I’ll catch the conscience of the King.

SCENE I. A room in the Castle.

Enter King, Queen, Polonius, Ophelia, Rosencrantz and Guildenstern.

KING. And can you by no drift of circumstance Get from him why he puts on this confusion, Grating so harshly all his days of quiet With turbulent and dangerous lunacy?

ROSENCRANTZ. He does confess he feels himself distracted, But from what cause he will by no means speak.

GUILDENSTERN. Nor do we find him forward to be sounded, But with a crafty madness keeps aloof When we would bring him on to some confession Of his true state.

QUEEN. Did he receive you well?

ROSENCRANTZ. Most like a gentleman.

GUILDENSTERN. But with much forcing of his disposition.

ROSENCRANTZ. Niggard of question, but of our demands, Most free in his reply.

QUEEN. Did you assay him to any pastime?

ROSENCRANTZ. Madam, it so fell out that certain players We o’er-raught on the way. Of these we told him, And there did seem in him a kind of joy To hear of it. They are about the court, And, as I think, they have already order This night to play before him.

POLONIUS. ’Tis most true; And he beseech’d me to entreat your Majesties To hear and see the matter.

KING. With all my heart; and it doth much content me To hear him so inclin’d. Good gentlemen, give him a further edge, And drive his purpose on to these delights.

ROSENCRANTZ. We shall, my lord.

KING. Sweet Gertrude, leave us too, For we have closely sent for Hamlet hither, That he, as ’twere by accident, may here Affront Ophelia. Her father and myself, lawful espials, Will so bestow ourselves that, seeing unseen, We may of their encounter frankly judge, And gather by him, as he is behav’d, If’t be th’affliction of his love or no That thus he suffers for.

QUEEN. I shall obey you. And for your part, Ophelia, I do wish That your good beauties be the happy cause Of Hamlet’s wildness: so shall I hope your virtues Will bring him to his wonted way again, To both your honours.

OPHELIA. Madam, I wish it may.

[Exit Queen.]

POLONIUS. Ophelia, walk you here.—Gracious, so please you, We will bestow ourselves.—[To Ophelia.] Read on this book, That show of such an exercise may colour Your loneliness.—We are oft to blame in this, ’Tis too much prov’d, that with devotion’s visage And pious action we do sugar o’er The devil himself.

KING. [Aside.] O ’tis too true! How smart a lash that speech doth give my conscience! The harlot’s cheek, beautied with plastering art, Is not more ugly to the thing that helps it Than is my deed to my most painted word. O heavy burden!

POLONIUS. I hear him coming. Let’s withdraw, my lord.

[Exeunt King and Polonius.]

Enter Hamlet.

HAMLET. To be, or not to be, that is the question: Whether ’tis nobler in the mind to suffer The slings and arrows of outrageous fortune, Or to take arms against a sea of troubles, And by opposing end them? To die—to sleep, No more; and by a sleep to say we end The heart-ache, and the thousand natural shocks That flesh is heir to: ’tis a consummation Devoutly to be wish’d. To die, to sleep. To sleep, perchance to dream—ay, there’s the rub, For in that sleep of death what dreams may come, When we have shuffled off this mortal coil, Must give us pause. There’s the respect That makes calamity of so long life. For who would bear the whips and scorns of time, The oppressor’s wrong, the proud man’s contumely, The pangs of dispriz’d love, the law’s delay, The insolence of office, and the spurns That patient merit of the unworthy takes, When he himself might his quietus make With a bare bodkin? Who would these fardels bear, To grunt and sweat under a weary life, But that the dread of something after death, The undiscover’d country, from whose bourn No traveller returns, puzzles the will, And makes us rather bear those ills we have Than fly to others that we know not of? Thus conscience does make cowards of us all, And thus the native hue of resolution Is sicklied o’er with the pale cast of thought, And enterprises of great pith and moment, With this regard their currents turn awry And lose the name of action. Soft you now, The fair Ophelia! Nymph, in thy orisons Be all my sins remember’d.

OPHELIA. Good my lord, How does your honour for this many a day?

HAMLET. I humbly thank you; well, well, well.

OPHELIA. My lord, I have remembrances of yours That I have longed long to re-deliver. I pray you, now receive them.

HAMLET. No, not I. I never gave you aught.

OPHELIA. My honour’d lord, you know right well you did, And with them words of so sweet breath compos’d As made the things more rich; their perfume lost, Take these again; for to the noble mind Rich gifts wax poor when givers prove unkind. There, my lord.

HAMLET. Ha, ha! Are you honest?

OPHELIA. My lord?

HAMLET. Are you fair?

OPHELIA. What means your lordship?

HAMLET. That if you be honest and fair, your honesty should admit no discourse to your beauty.

OPHELIA. Could beauty, my lord, have better commerce than with honesty?

HAMLET. Ay, truly; for the power of beauty will sooner transform honesty from what it is to a bawd than the force of honesty can translate beauty into his likeness. This was sometime a paradox, but now the time gives it proof. I did love you once.

OPHELIA. Indeed, my lord, you made me believe so.

HAMLET. You should not have believed me; for virtue cannot so inoculate our old stock but we shall relish of it. I loved you not.

OPHELIA. I was the more deceived.

HAMLET. Get thee to a nunnery. Why wouldst thou be a breeder of sinners? I am myself indifferent honest; but yet I could accuse me of such things that it were better my mother had not borne me. I am very proud, revengeful, ambitious, with more offences at my beck than I have thoughts to put them in, imagination to give them shape, or time to act them in. What should such fellows as I do crawling between earth and heaven? We are arrant knaves all, believe none of us. Go thy ways to a nunnery. Where’s your father?

OPHELIA. At home, my lord.

HAMLET. Let the doors be shut upon him, that he may play the fool nowhere but in’s own house. Farewell.

OPHELIA. O help him, you sweet heavens!

HAMLET. If thou dost marry, I’ll give thee this plague for thy dowry. Be thou as chaste as ice, as pure as snow, thou shalt not escape calumny. Get thee to a nunnery, go: farewell. Or if thou wilt needs marry, marry a fool; for wise men know well enough what monsters you make of them. To a nunnery, go; and quickly too. Farewell.

OPHELIA. O heavenly powers, restore him!

HAMLET. I have heard of your paintings too, well enough. God hath given you one face, and you make yourselves another. You jig, you amble, and you lisp, and nickname God’s creatures, and make your wantonness your ignorance. Go to, I’ll no more on’t, it hath made me mad. I say, we will have no more marriages. Those that are married already, all but one, shall live; the rest shall keep as they are. To a nunnery, go.

OPHELIA. O, what a noble mind is here o’erthrown! The courtier’s, soldier’s, scholar’s, eye, tongue, sword, Th’expectancy and rose of the fair state, The glass of fashion and the mould of form, Th’observ’d of all observers, quite, quite down! And I, of ladies most deject and wretched, That suck’d the honey of his music vows, Now see that noble and most sovereign reason, Like sweet bells jangled out of tune and harsh, That unmatch’d form and feature of blown youth Blasted with ecstasy. O woe is me, T’have seen what I have seen, see what I see.

Enter King and Polonius.

KING. Love? His affections do not that way tend, Nor what he spake, though it lack’d form a little, Was not like madness. There’s something in his soul O’er which his melancholy sits on brood, And I do doubt the hatch and the disclose Will be some danger, which for to prevent, I have in quick determination Thus set it down: he shall with speed to England For the demand of our neglected tribute: Haply the seas and countries different, With variable objects, shall expel This something settled matter in his heart, Whereon his brains still beating puts him thus From fashion of himself. What think you on’t?

POLONIUS. It shall do well. But yet do I believe The origin and commencement of his grief Sprung from neglected love. How now, Ophelia? You need not tell us what Lord Hamlet said, We heard it all. My lord, do as you please, But if you hold it fit, after the play, Let his queen mother all alone entreat him To show his grief, let her be round with him, And I’ll be plac’d, so please you, in the ear Of all their conference. If she find him not, To England send him; or confine him where Your wisdom best shall think.

KING. It shall be so. Madness in great ones must not unwatch’d go.

SCENE II. A hall in the Castle.

Enter Hamlet and certain Players.

HAMLET. Speak the speech, I pray you, as I pronounced it to you, trippingly on the tongue. But if you mouth it, as many of your players do, I had as lief the town-crier spoke my lines. Nor do not saw the air too much with your hand, thus, but use all gently; for in the very torrent, tempest, and, as I may say, whirlwind of passion, you must acquire and beget a temperance that may give it smoothness. O, it offends me to the soul to hear a robustious periwig-pated fellow tear a passion to tatters, to very rags, to split the ears of the groundlings, who, for the most part, are capable of nothing but inexplicable dumb shows and noise. I would have such a fellow whipped for o’erdoing Termagant. It out-Herods Herod. Pray you avoid it.

FIRST PLAYER. I warrant your honour.

HAMLET. Be not too tame neither; but let your own discretion be your tutor. Suit the action to the word, the word to the action, with this special observance, that you o’erstep not the modesty of nature; for anything so overdone is from the purpose of playing, whose end, both at the first and now, was and is, to hold as ’twere the mirror up to nature; to show virtue her own feature, scorn her own image, and the very age and body of the time his form and pressure. Now, this overdone, or come tardy off, though it make the unskilful laugh, cannot but make the judicious grieve; the censure of the which one must in your allowance o’erweigh a whole theatre of others. O, there be players that I have seen play—and heard others praise, and that highly—not to speak it profanely, that, neither having the accent of Christians, nor the gait of Christian, pagan, nor man, have so strutted and bellowed that I have thought some of Nature’s journeymen had made men, and not made them well, they imitated humanity so abominably.

FIRST PLAYER. I hope we have reform’d that indifferently with us, sir.

HAMLET. O reform it altogether. And let those that play your clowns speak no more than is set down for them. For there be of them that will themselves laugh, to set on some quantity of barren spectators to laugh too, though in the meantime some necessary question of the play be then to be considered. That’s villainous, and shows a most pitiful ambition in the fool that uses it. Go make you ready.

[Exeunt Players.]

Enter Polonius, Rosencrantz and Guildenstern.

How now, my lord? Will the King hear this piece of work?

POLONIUS. And the Queen too, and that presently.

HAMLET. Bid the players make haste.

Will you two help to hasten them?

ROSENCRANTZ and GUILDENSTERN. We will, my lord.

HAMLET. What ho, Horatio!

Enter Horatio.

HORATIO. Here, sweet lord, at your service.

HAMLET. Horatio, thou art e’en as just a man As e’er my conversation cop’d withal.

HORATIO. O my dear lord.

HAMLET. Nay, do not think I flatter; For what advancement may I hope from thee, That no revenue hast, but thy good spirits To feed and clothe thee? Why should the poor be flatter’d? No, let the candied tongue lick absurd pomp, And crook the pregnant hinges of the knee Where thrift may follow fawning. Dost thou hear? Since my dear soul was mistress of her choice, And could of men distinguish, her election Hath seal’d thee for herself. For thou hast been As one, in suffering all, that suffers nothing, A man that Fortune’s buffets and rewards Hast ta’en with equal thanks. And blessed are those Whose blood and judgement are so well co-mingled That they are not a pipe for Fortune’s finger To sound what stop she please. Give me that man That is not passion’s slave, and I will wear him In my heart’s core, ay, in my heart of heart, As I do thee. Something too much of this. There is a play tonight before the King. One scene of it comes near the circumstance Which I have told thee, of my father’s death. I prithee, when thou see’st that act a-foot, Even with the very comment of thy soul Observe mine uncle. If his occulted guilt Do not itself unkennel in one speech, It is a damned ghost that we have seen; And my imaginations are as foul As Vulcan’s stithy. Give him heedful note; For I mine eyes will rivet to his face; And after we will both our judgements join In censure of his seeming.

HORATIO. Well, my lord. If he steal aught the whilst this play is playing, And ’scape detecting, I will pay the theft.

HAMLET. They are coming to the play. I must be idle. Get you a place.

Danish march. A flourish. Enter King, Queen, Polonius, Ophelia, Rosencrantz, Guildenstern and others.

KING. How fares our cousin Hamlet?

HAMLET. Excellent, i’ faith; of the chameleon’s dish: I eat the air, promise-crammed: you cannot feed capons so.

KING. I have nothing with this answer, Hamlet; these words are not mine.

HAMLET. No, nor mine now. [To Polonius.] My lord, you play’d once i’ th’university, you say?

POLONIUS. That did I, my lord, and was accounted a good actor.

HAMLET. What did you enact?

POLONIUS. I did enact Julius Caesar. I was kill’d i’ th’ Capitol. Brutus killed me.

HAMLET. It was a brute part of him to kill so capital a calf there. Be the players ready?

ROSENCRANTZ. Ay, my lord; they stay upon your patience.

QUEEN. Come hither, my dear Hamlet, sit by me.

HAMLET. No, good mother, here’s metal more attractive.

POLONIUS. [To the King.] O ho! do you mark that?

HAMLET. Lady, shall I lie in your lap?

[Lying down at Ophelia’s feet.]

OPHELIA. No, my lord.

HAMLET. I mean, my head upon your lap?

OPHELIA. Ay, my lord.

HAMLET. Do you think I meant country matters?

OPHELIA. I think nothing, my lord.

HAMLET. That’s a fair thought to lie between maids’ legs.

OPHELIA. What is, my lord?

HAMLET. Nothing.

OPHELIA. You are merry, my lord.

HAMLET. Who, I?

HAMLET. O God, your only jig-maker! What should a man do but be merry? For look you how cheerfully my mother looks, and my father died within’s two hours.

OPHELIA. Nay, ’tis twice two months, my lord.

HAMLET. So long? Nay then, let the devil wear black, for I’ll have a suit of sables. O heavens! die two months ago, and not forgotten yet? Then there’s hope a great man’s memory may outlive his life half a year. But by’r lady, he must build churches then; or else shall he suffer not thinking on, with the hobby-horse, whose epitaph is ‘For, O, for O, the hobby-horse is forgot!’

Trumpets sound. The dumb show enters.

Enter a King and a Queen very lovingly; the Queen embracing him and he her. She kneels, and makes show of protestation unto him. He takes her up, and declines his head upon her neck. Lays him down upon a bank of flowers. She, seeing him asleep, leaves him. Anon comes in a fellow, takes off his crown, kisses it, pours poison in the King’s ears, and exits. The Queen returns, finds the King dead, and makes passionate action. The Poisoner with some three or four Mutes, comes in again, seeming to lament with her. The dead body is carried away. The Poisoner woos the Queen with gifts. She seems loth and unwilling awhile, but in the end accepts his love.

OPHELIA. What means this, my lord?

HAMLET. Marry, this is miching mallecho; it means mischief.

OPHELIA. Belike this show imports the argument of the play.

Enter Prologue.

HAMLET. We shall know by this fellow: the players cannot keep counsel; they’ll tell all.

OPHELIA. Will they tell us what this show meant?

HAMLET. Ay, or any show that you’ll show him. Be not you ashamed to show, he’ll not shame to tell you what it means.

OPHELIA. You are naught, you are naught: I’ll mark the play.

PROLOGUE. For us, and for our tragedy, Here stooping to your clemency, We beg your hearing patiently.

HAMLET. Is this a prologue, or the posy of a ring?

OPHELIA. ’Tis brief, my lord.

HAMLET. As woman’s love.

Enter a King and a Queen.

PLAYER KING. Full thirty times hath Phoebus’ cart gone round Neptune’s salt wash and Tellus’ orbed ground, And thirty dozen moons with borrow’d sheen About the world have times twelve thirties been, Since love our hearts, and Hymen did our hands Unite commutual in most sacred bands.

PLAYER QUEEN. So many journeys may the sun and moon Make us again count o’er ere love be done. But, woe is me, you are so sick of late, So far from cheer and from your former state, That I distrust you. Yet, though I distrust, Discomfort you, my lord, it nothing must: For women’s fear and love holds quantity, In neither aught, or in extremity. Now what my love is, proof hath made you know, And as my love is siz’d, my fear is so. Where love is great, the littlest doubts are fear; Where little fears grow great, great love grows there.

PLAYER KING. Faith, I must leave thee, love, and shortly too: My operant powers their functions leave to do: And thou shalt live in this fair world behind, Honour’d, belov’d, and haply one as kind For husband shalt thou—

PLAYER QUEEN. O confound the rest. Such love must needs be treason in my breast. In second husband let me be accurst! None wed the second but who kill’d the first.

HAMLET. [Aside.] Wormwood, wormwood.

PLAYER QUEEN. The instances that second marriage move Are base respects of thrift, but none of love. A second time I kill my husband dead, When second husband kisses me in bed.

PLAYER KING. I do believe you think what now you speak; But what we do determine, oft we break. Purpose is but the slave to memory, Of violent birth, but poor validity: Which now, like fruit unripe, sticks on the tree, But fall unshaken when they mellow be. Most necessary ’tis that we forget To pay ourselves what to ourselves is debt. What to ourselves in passion we propose, The passion ending, doth the purpose lose. The violence of either grief or joy Their own enactures with themselves destroy. Where joy most revels, grief doth most lament; Grief joys, joy grieves, on slender accident. This world is not for aye; nor ’tis not strange That even our loves should with our fortunes change, For ’tis a question left us yet to prove, Whether love lead fortune, or else fortune love. The great man down, you mark his favourite flies, The poor advanc’d makes friends of enemies; And hitherto doth love on fortune tend: For who not needs shall never lack a friend, And who in want a hollow friend doth try, Directly seasons him his enemy. But orderly to end where I begun, Our wills and fates do so contrary run That our devices still are overthrown. Our thoughts are ours, their ends none of our own. So think thou wilt no second husband wed, But die thy thoughts when thy first lord is dead.

PLAYER QUEEN. Nor earth to me give food, nor heaven light, Sport and repose lock from me day and night, To desperation turn my trust and hope, An anchor’s cheer in prison be my scope, Each opposite that blanks the face of joy, Meet what I would have well, and it destroy! Both here and hence pursue me lasting strife, If, once a widow, ever I be wife.

HAMLET. [To Ophelia.] If she should break it now.

PLAYER KING. ’Tis deeply sworn. Sweet, leave me here awhile. My spirits grow dull, and fain I would beguile The tedious day with sleep. [Sleeps.]

PLAYER QUEEN. Sleep rock thy brain, And never come mischance between us twain.

HAMLET. Madam, how like you this play?

QUEEN. The lady protests too much, methinks.

HAMLET. O, but she’ll keep her word.

KING. Have you heard the argument? Is there no offence in’t?

HAMLET. No, no, they do but jest, poison in jest; no offence i’ th’ world.

KING. What do you call the play?

HAMLET. The Mousetrap. Marry, how? Tropically. This play is the image of a murder done in Vienna. Gonzago is the Duke’s name, his wife Baptista: you shall see anon; ’tis a knavish piece of work: but what o’ that? Your majesty, and we that have free souls, it touches us not. Let the gall’d jade wince; our withers are unwrung.

Enter Lucianus.

This is one Lucianus, nephew to the King.

OPHELIA. You are a good chorus, my lord.

HAMLET. I could interpret between you and your love, if I could see the puppets dallying.

OPHELIA. You are keen, my lord, you are keen.

HAMLET. It would cost you a groaning to take off my edge.

OPHELIA. Still better, and worse.

HAMLET. So you mistake your husbands.—Begin, murderer. Pox, leave thy damnable faces, and begin. Come, the croaking raven doth bellow for revenge.

LUCIANUS. Thoughts black, hands apt, drugs fit, and time agreeing, Confederate season, else no creature seeing; Thou mixture rank, of midnight weeds collected, With Hecate’s ban thrice blasted, thrice infected, Thy natural magic and dire property On wholesome life usurp immediately.

[Pours the poison into the sleeper’s ears.]

HAMLET. He poisons him i’ th’garden for’s estate. His name’s Gonzago. The story is extant, and written in very choice Italian. You shall see anon how the murderer gets the love of Gonzago’s wife.

OPHELIA. The King rises.

HAMLET. What, frighted with false fire?

QUEEN. How fares my lord?

POLONIUS. Give o’er the play.

KING. Give me some light. Away.

All. Lights, lights, lights.

[Exeunt all but Hamlet and Horatio.]

HAMLET. Why, let the strucken deer go weep, The hart ungalled play; For some must watch, while some must sleep, So runs the world away. Would not this, sir, and a forest of feathers, if the rest of my fortunes turn Turk with me; with two Provincial roses on my razed shoes, get me a fellowship in a cry of players, sir?

HORATIO. Half a share.

HAMLET. A whole one, I. For thou dost know, O Damon dear, This realm dismantled was Of Jove himself, and now reigns here A very, very—pajock.

HORATIO. You might have rhymed.

HAMLET. O good Horatio, I’ll take the ghost’s word for a thousand pound. Didst perceive?

HORATIO. Very well, my lord.

HAMLET. Upon the talk of the poisoning?

HORATIO. I did very well note him.

HAMLET. Ah, ha! Come, some music. Come, the recorders. For if the king like not the comedy, Why then, belike he likes it not, perdie. Come, some music.

GUILDENSTERN. Good my lord, vouchsafe me a word with you.

HAMLET. Sir, a whole history.

GUILDENSTERN. The King, sir—

HAMLET. Ay, sir, what of him?

GUILDENSTERN. Is in his retirement, marvellous distempered.

HAMLET. With drink, sir?

GUILDENSTERN. No, my lord; rather with choler.

HAMLET. Your wisdom should show itself more richer to signify this to the doctor, for me to put him to his purgation would perhaps plunge him into far more choler.

GUILDENSTERN. Good my lord, put your discourse into some frame, and start not so wildly from my affair.

HAMLET. I am tame, sir, pronounce.

GUILDENSTERN. The Queen your mother, in most great affliction of spirit, hath sent me to you.

HAMLET. You are welcome.

GUILDENSTERN. Nay, good my lord, this courtesy is not of the right breed. If it shall please you to make me a wholesome answer, I will do your mother’s commandment; if not, your pardon and my return shall be the end of my business.

HAMLET. Sir, I cannot.

GUILDENSTERN. What, my lord?

HAMLET. Make you a wholesome answer. My wit’s diseased. But, sir, such answer as I can make, you shall command; or rather, as you say, my mother. Therefore no more, but to the matter. My mother, you say,—

ROSENCRANTZ. Then thus she says: your behaviour hath struck her into amazement and admiration.

HAMLET. O wonderful son, that can so stonish a mother! But is there no sequel at the heels of this mother’s admiration?

ROSENCRANTZ. She desires to speak with you in her closet ere you go to bed.

HAMLET. We shall obey, were she ten times our mother. Have you any further trade with us?

ROSENCRANTZ. My lord, you once did love me.

HAMLET. And so I do still, by these pickers and stealers.

ROSENCRANTZ. Good my lord, what is your cause of distemper? You do surely bar the door upon your own liberty if you deny your griefs to your friend.

HAMLET. Sir, I lack advancement.

ROSENCRANTZ. How can that be, when you have the voice of the King himself for your succession in Denmark?

HAMLET. Ay, sir, but while the grass grows—the proverb is something musty.

Re-enter the Players with recorders.

O, the recorders. Let me see one.—To withdraw with you, why do you go about to recover the wind of me, as if you would drive me into a toil?

GUILDENSTERN. O my lord, if my duty be too bold, my love is too unmannerly.

HAMLET. I do not well understand that. Will you play upon this pipe?

GUILDENSTERN. My lord, I cannot.

HAMLET. I pray you.

GUILDENSTERN. Believe me, I cannot.

HAMLET. I do beseech you.

GUILDENSTERN. I know no touch of it, my lord.

HAMLET. ’Tis as easy as lying: govern these ventages with your finger and thumb, give it breath with your mouth, and it will discourse most eloquent music. Look you, these are the stops.

GUILDENSTERN. But these cannot I command to any utterance of harmony. I have not the skill.

HAMLET. Why, look you now, how unworthy a thing you make of me! You would play upon me; you would seem to know my stops; you would pluck out the heart of my mystery; you would sound me from my lowest note to the top of my compass; and there is much music, excellent voice, in this little organ, yet cannot you make it speak. ’Sblood, do you think I am easier to be played on than a pipe? Call me what instrument you will, though you can fret me, you cannot play upon me.

God bless you, sir.

POLONIUS. My lord, the Queen would speak with you, and presently.

HAMLET. Do you see yonder cloud that’s almost in shape of a camel?

POLONIUS. By the mass, and ’tis like a camel indeed.

HAMLET. Methinks it is like a weasel.

POLONIUS. It is backed like a weasel.

HAMLET. Or like a whale.

POLONIUS. Very like a whale.

HAMLET. Then will I come to my mother by and by.—They fool me to the top of my bent.—I will come by and by.

POLONIUS. I will say so.

HAMLET. By and by is easily said. Leave me, friends.

’Tis now the very witching time of night, When churchyards yawn, and hell itself breathes out Contagion to this world. Now could I drink hot blood, And do such bitter business as the day Would quake to look on. Soft now, to my mother. O heart, lose not thy nature; let not ever The soul of Nero enter this firm bosom: Let me be cruel, not unnatural. I will speak daggers to her, but use none; My tongue and soul in this be hypocrites. How in my words somever she be shent, To give them seals never, my soul, consent.

SCENE III. A room in the Castle.

Enter King, Rosencrantz and Guildenstern.

KING. I like him not, nor stands it safe with us To let his madness range. Therefore prepare you, I your commission will forthwith dispatch, And he to England shall along with you. The terms of our estate may not endure Hazard so near us as doth hourly grow Out of his lunacies.

GUILDENSTERN. We will ourselves provide. Most holy and religious fear it is To keep those many many bodies safe That live and feed upon your Majesty.

ROSENCRANTZ. The single and peculiar life is bound With all the strength and armour of the mind, To keep itself from ’noyance; but much more That spirit upon whose weal depend and rest The lives of many. The cease of majesty Dies not alone; but like a gulf doth draw What’s near it with it. It is a massy wheel Fix’d on the summit of the highest mount, To whose huge spokes ten thousand lesser things Are mortis’d and adjoin’d; which when it falls, Each small annexment, petty consequence, Attends the boist’rous ruin. Never alone Did the King sigh, but with a general groan.

KING. Arm you, I pray you, to this speedy voyage; For we will fetters put upon this fear, Which now goes too free-footed.

ROSENCRANTZ and GUILDENSTERN. We will haste us.

POLONIUS. My lord, he’s going to his mother’s closet. Behind the arras I’ll convey myself To hear the process. I’ll warrant she’ll tax him home, And as you said, and wisely was it said, ’Tis meet that some more audience than a mother, Since nature makes them partial, should o’erhear The speech of vantage. Fare you well, my liege, I’ll call upon you ere you go to bed, And tell you what I know.

KING. Thanks, dear my lord.

O, my offence is rank, it smells to heaven; It hath the primal eldest curse upon’t,— A brother’s murder! Pray can I not, Though inclination be as sharp as will: My stronger guilt defeats my strong intent, And, like a man to double business bound, I stand in pause where I shall first begin, And both neglect. What if this cursed hand Were thicker than itself with brother’s blood, Is there not rain enough in the sweet heavens To wash it white as snow? Whereto serves mercy But to confront the visage of offence? And what’s in prayer but this twofold force, To be forestalled ere we come to fall, Or pardon’d being down? Then I’ll look up. My fault is past. But O, what form of prayer Can serve my turn? Forgive me my foul murder! That cannot be; since I am still possess’d Of those effects for which I did the murder,— My crown, mine own ambition, and my queen. May one be pardon’d and retain th’offence? In the corrupted currents of this world Offence’s gilded hand may shove by justice, And oft ’tis seen the wicked prize itself Buys out the law. But ’tis not so above; There is no shuffling, there the action lies In his true nature, and we ourselves compell’d Even to the teeth and forehead of our faults, To give in evidence. What then? What rests? Try what repentance can. What can it not? Yet what can it, when one cannot repent? O wretched state! O bosom black as death! O limed soul, that struggling to be free, Art more engag’d! Help, angels! Make assay: Bow, stubborn knees; and heart with strings of steel, Be soft as sinews of the new-born babe. All may be well.

[Retires and kneels.]

HAMLET. Now might I do it pat, now he is praying. And now I’ll do’t. And so he goes to heaven; And so am I reveng’d. That would be scann’d: A villain kills my father, and for that I, his sole son, do this same villain send To heaven. O, this is hire and salary, not revenge. He took my father grossly, full of bread, With all his crimes broad blown, as flush as May; And how his audit stands, who knows save heaven? But in our circumstance and course of thought, ’Tis heavy with him. And am I then reveng’d, To take him in the purging of his soul, When he is fit and season’d for his passage? No. Up, sword, and know thou a more horrid hent: When he is drunk asleep; or in his rage, Or in th’incestuous pleasure of his bed, At gaming, swearing; or about some act That has no relish of salvation in’t, Then trip him, that his heels may kick at heaven, And that his soul may be as damn’d and black As hell, whereto it goes. My mother stays. This physic but prolongs thy sickly days.

The King rises and advances.

KING. My words fly up, my thoughts remain below. Words without thoughts never to heaven go.

SCENE IV. Another room in the Castle.

Enter Queen and Polonius.

POLONIUS. He will come straight. Look you lay home to him, Tell him his pranks have been too broad to bear with, And that your Grace hath screen’d and stood between Much heat and him. I’ll silence me e’en here. Pray you be round with him.

HAMLET. [Within.] Mother, mother, mother.

QUEEN. I’ll warrant you, Fear me not. Withdraw, I hear him coming.

[Polonius goes behind the arras.]

HAMLET. Now, mother, what’s the matter?

QUEEN. Hamlet, thou hast thy father much offended.

HAMLET. Mother, you have my father much offended.

QUEEN. Come, come, you answer with an idle tongue.

HAMLET. Go, go, you question with a wicked tongue.

QUEEN. Why, how now, Hamlet?

HAMLET. What’s the matter now?

QUEEN. Have you forgot me?

HAMLET. No, by the rood, not so. You are the Queen, your husband’s brother’s wife, And, would it were not so. You are my mother.

QUEEN. Nay, then I’ll set those to you that can speak.

HAMLET. Come, come, and sit you down, you shall not budge. You go not till I set you up a glass Where you may see the inmost part of you.

QUEEN. What wilt thou do? Thou wilt not murder me? Help, help, ho!

POLONIUS. [Behind.] What, ho! help, help, help!

HAMLET. How now? A rat? [Draws.] Dead for a ducat, dead!

[Makes a pass through the arras.]

POLONIUS. [Behind.] O, I am slain!

[Falls and dies.]

QUEEN. O me, what hast thou done?

HAMLET. Nay, I know not. Is it the King?

[Draws forth Polonius.]

QUEEN. O what a rash and bloody deed is this!

HAMLET. A bloody deed. Almost as bad, good mother, As kill a king and marry with his brother.

QUEEN. As kill a king?

HAMLET. Ay, lady, ’twas my word.— [To Polonius.] Thou wretched, rash, intruding fool, farewell! I took thee for thy better. Take thy fortune, Thou find’st to be too busy is some danger.— Leave wringing of your hands. Peace, sit you down, And let me wring your heart, for so I shall, If it be made of penetrable stuff; If damned custom have not braz’d it so, That it is proof and bulwark against sense.

QUEEN. What have I done, that thou dar’st wag thy tongue In noise so rude against me?

HAMLET. Such an act That blurs the grace and blush of modesty, Calls virtue hypocrite, takes off the rose From the fair forehead of an innocent love, And sets a blister there. Makes marriage vows As false as dicers’ oaths. O such a deed As from the body of contraction plucks The very soul, and sweet religion makes A rhapsody of words. Heaven’s face doth glow, Yea this solidity and compound mass, With tristful visage, as against the doom, Is thought-sick at the act.

QUEEN. Ay me, what act, That roars so loud, and thunders in the index?

HAMLET. Look here upon this picture, and on this, The counterfeit presentment of two brothers. See what a grace was seated on this brow, Hyperion’s curls, the front of Jove himself, An eye like Mars, to threaten and command, A station like the herald Mercury New lighted on a heaven-kissing hill: A combination and a form indeed, Where every god did seem to set his seal, To give the world assurance of a man. This was your husband. Look you now what follows. Here is your husband, like a mildew’d ear Blasting his wholesome brother. Have you eyes? Could you on this fair mountain leave to feed, And batten on this moor? Ha! have you eyes? You cannot call it love; for at your age The hey-day in the blood is tame, it’s humble, And waits upon the judgement: and what judgement Would step from this to this? Sense sure you have, Else could you not have motion; but sure that sense Is apoplex’d, for madness would not err Nor sense to ecstacy was ne’er so thrall’d But it reserv’d some quantity of choice To serve in such a difference. What devil was’t That thus hath cozen’d you at hoodman-blind? Eyes without feeling, feeling without sight, Ears without hands or eyes, smelling sans all, Or but a sickly part of one true sense Could not so mope. O shame! where is thy blush? Rebellious hell, If thou canst mutine in a matron’s bones, To flaming youth let virtue be as wax, And melt in her own fire. Proclaim no shame When the compulsive ardour gives the charge, Since frost itself as actively doth burn, And reason panders will.

QUEEN. O Hamlet, speak no more. Thou turn’st mine eyes into my very soul, And there I see such black and grained spots As will not leave their tinct.

HAMLET. Nay, but to live In the rank sweat of an enseamed bed, Stew’d in corruption, honeying and making love Over the nasty sty.

QUEEN. O speak to me no more; These words like daggers enter in mine ears; No more, sweet Hamlet.

HAMLET. A murderer and a villain; A slave that is not twentieth part the tithe Of your precedent lord. A vice of kings, A cutpurse of the empire and the rule, That from a shelf the precious diadem stole And put it in his pocket!

QUEEN. No more.

HAMLET. A king of shreds and patches!—

Save me and hover o’er me with your wings, You heavenly guards! What would your gracious figure?

QUEEN. Alas, he’s mad.

HAMLET. Do you not come your tardy son to chide, That, laps’d in time and passion, lets go by The important acting of your dread command? O say!

GHOST. Do not forget. This visitation Is but to whet thy almost blunted purpose. But look, amazement on thy mother sits. O step between her and her fighting soul. Conceit in weakest bodies strongest works. Speak to her, Hamlet.

HAMLET. How is it with you, lady?

QUEEN. Alas, how is’t with you, That you do bend your eye on vacancy, And with the incorporal air do hold discourse? Forth at your eyes your spirits wildly peep, And, as the sleeping soldiers in the alarm, Your bedded hairs, like life in excrements, Start up and stand an end. O gentle son, Upon the heat and flame of thy distemper Sprinkle cool patience. Whereon do you look?

HAMLET. On him, on him! Look you how pale he glares, His form and cause conjoin’d, preaching to stones, Would make them capable.—Do not look upon me, Lest with this piteous action you convert My stern effects. Then what I have to do Will want true colour; tears perchance for blood.

QUEEN. To whom do you speak this?

HAMLET. Do you see nothing there?

QUEEN. Nothing at all; yet all that is I see.

HAMLET. Nor did you nothing hear?

QUEEN. No, nothing but ourselves.

HAMLET. Why, look you there! look how it steals away! My father, in his habit as he liv’d! Look where he goes even now out at the portal.

QUEEN. This is the very coinage of your brain. This bodiless creation ecstasy Is very cunning in.

HAMLET. Ecstasy! My pulse as yours doth temperately keep time, And makes as healthful music. It is not madness That I have utter’d. Bring me to the test, And I the matter will re-word; which madness Would gambol from. Mother, for love of grace, Lay not that flattering unction to your soul That not your trespass, but my madness speaks. It will but skin and film the ulcerous place, Whilst rank corruption, mining all within, Infects unseen. Confess yourself to heaven, Repent what’s past, avoid what is to come; And do not spread the compost on the weeds, To make them ranker. Forgive me this my virtue; For in the fatness of these pursy times Virtue itself of vice must pardon beg, Yea, curb and woo for leave to do him good.

QUEEN. O Hamlet, thou hast cleft my heart in twain.

HAMLET. O throw away the worser part of it, And live the purer with the other half. Good night. But go not to mine uncle’s bed. Assume a virtue, if you have it not. That monster custom, who all sense doth eat, Of habits evil, is angel yet in this, That to the use of actions fair and good He likewise gives a frock or livery That aptly is put on. Refrain tonight, And that shall lend a kind of easiness To the next abstinence. The next more easy; For use almost can change the stamp of nature, And either curb the devil, or throw him out With wondrous potency. Once more, good night, And when you are desirous to be bles’d, I’ll blessing beg of you. For this same lord [Pointing to Polonius.] I do repent; but heaven hath pleas’d it so, To punish me with this, and this with me, That I must be their scourge and minister. I will bestow him, and will answer well The death I gave him. So again, good night. I must be cruel, only to be kind: Thus bad begins, and worse remains behind. One word more, good lady.

QUEEN. What shall I do?

HAMLET. Not this, by no means, that I bid you do: Let the bloat King tempt you again to bed, Pinch wanton on your cheek, call you his mouse, And let him, for a pair of reechy kisses, Or paddling in your neck with his damn’d fingers, Make you to ravel all this matter out, That I essentially am not in madness, But mad in craft. ’Twere good you let him know, For who that’s but a queen, fair, sober, wise, Would from a paddock, from a bat, a gib, Such dear concernings hide? Who would do so? No, in despite of sense and secrecy, Unpeg the basket on the house’s top, Let the birds fly, and like the famous ape, To try conclusions, in the basket creep And break your own neck down.

QUEEN. Be thou assur’d, if words be made of breath, And breath of life, I have no life to breathe What thou hast said to me.

HAMLET. I must to England, you know that?

QUEEN. Alack, I had forgot. ’Tis so concluded on.

HAMLET. There’s letters seal’d: and my two schoolfellows, Whom I will trust as I will adders fang’d,— They bear the mandate, they must sweep my way And marshal me to knavery. Let it work; For ’tis the sport to have the enginer Hoist with his own petard, and ’t shall go hard But I will delve one yard below their mines And blow them at the moon. O, ’tis most sweet, When in one line two crafts directly meet. This man shall set me packing. I’ll lug the guts into the neighbour room. Mother, good night. Indeed, this counsellor Is now most still, most secret, and most grave, Who was in life a foolish prating knave. Come, sir, to draw toward an end with you. Good night, mother.

[Exit Hamlet dragging out Polonius.]

Enter King, Queen, Rosencrantz and Guildenstern.

KING. There’s matter in these sighs. These profound heaves You must translate; ’tis fit we understand them. Where is your son?

QUEEN. Bestow this place on us a little while.

[To Rosencrantz and Guildenstern, who go out.]

Ah, my good lord, what have I seen tonight!

KING. What, Gertrude? How does Hamlet?

QUEEN. Mad as the sea and wind, when both contend Which is the mightier. In his lawless fit Behind the arras hearing something stir, Whips out his rapier, cries ‘A rat, a rat!’ And in this brainish apprehension kills The unseen good old man.

KING. O heavy deed! It had been so with us, had we been there. His liberty is full of threats to all; To you yourself, to us, to everyone. Alas, how shall this bloody deed be answer’d? It will be laid to us, whose providence Should have kept short, restrain’d, and out of haunt This mad young man. But so much was our love We would not understand what was most fit, But like the owner of a foul disease, To keep it from divulging, let it feed Even on the pith of life. Where is he gone?

QUEEN. To draw apart the body he hath kill’d, O’er whom his very madness, like some ore Among a mineral of metals base, Shows itself pure. He weeps for what is done.

KING. O Gertrude, come away! The sun no sooner shall the mountains touch But we will ship him hence, and this vile deed We must with all our majesty and skill Both countenance and excuse.—Ho, Guildenstern!

Re-enter Rosencrantz and Guildenstern.

Friends both, go join you with some further aid: Hamlet in madness hath Polonius slain, And from his mother’s closet hath he dragg’d him. Go seek him out, speak fair, and bring the body Into the chapel. I pray you haste in this.

Come, Gertrude, we’ll call up our wisest friends, And let them know both what we mean to do And what’s untimely done, so haply slander, Whose whisper o’er the world’s diameter, As level as the cannon to his blank, Transports his poison’d shot, may miss our name, And hit the woundless air. O, come away! My soul is full of discord and dismay.

SCENE II. Another room in the Castle.

HAMLET. Safely stowed.

ROSENCRANTZ and GUILDENSTERN. [Within.] Hamlet! Lord Hamlet!

HAMLET. What noise? Who calls on Hamlet? O, here they come.

ROSENCRANTZ. What have you done, my lord, with the dead body?

HAMLET. Compounded it with dust, whereto ’tis kin.

ROSENCRANTZ. Tell us where ’tis, that we may take it thence, And bear it to the chapel.

HAMLET. Do not believe it.

ROSENCRANTZ. Believe what?

HAMLET. That I can keep your counsel, and not mine own. Besides, to be demanded of a sponge—what replication should be made by the son of a king?

ROSENCRANTZ. Take you me for a sponge, my lord?

HAMLET. Ay, sir; that soaks up the King’s countenance, his rewards, his authorities. But such officers do the King best service in the end: he keeps them, like an ape, in the corner of his jaw; first mouthed, to be last swallowed: when he needs what you have gleaned, it is but squeezing you, and, sponge, you shall be dry again.

ROSENCRANTZ. I understand you not, my lord.

HAMLET. I am glad of it. A knavish speech sleeps in a foolish ear.

ROSENCRANTZ. My lord, you must tell us where the body is and go with us to the King.

HAMLET. The body is with the King, but the King is not with the body. The King is a thing—

GUILDENSTERN. A thing, my lord!

HAMLET. Of nothing. Bring me to him. Hide fox, and all after.

SCENE III. Another room in the Castle.

Enter King, attended.

KING. I have sent to seek him and to find the body. How dangerous is it that this man goes loose! Yet must not we put the strong law on him: He’s lov’d of the distracted multitude, Who like not in their judgement, but their eyes; And where ’tis so, th’offender’s scourge is weigh’d, But never the offence. To bear all smooth and even, This sudden sending him away must seem Deliberate pause. Diseases desperate grown By desperate appliance are reliev’d, Or not at all.

Enter Rosencrantz.

How now? What hath befall’n?

ROSENCRANTZ. Where the dead body is bestow’d, my lord, We cannot get from him.

KING. But where is he?

ROSENCRANTZ. Without, my lord, guarded, to know your pleasure.

KING. Bring him before us.

ROSENCRANTZ. Ho, Guildenstern! Bring in my lord.

Enter Hamlet and Guildenstern.

KING. Now, Hamlet, where’s Polonius?

HAMLET. At supper.

KING. At supper? Where?

HAMLET. Not where he eats, but where he is eaten. A certain convocation of politic worms are e’en at him. Your worm is your only emperor for diet. We fat all creatures else to fat us, and we fat ourselves for maggots. Your fat king and your lean beggar is but variable service,—two dishes, but to one table. That’s the end.

KING. Alas, alas!

HAMLET. A man may fish with the worm that hath eat of a king, and eat of the fish that hath fed of that worm.

KING. What dost thou mean by this?

HAMLET. Nothing but to show you how a king may go a progress through the guts of a beggar.

KING. Where is Polonius?

HAMLET. In heaven. Send thither to see. If your messenger find him not there, seek him i’ th’other place yourself. But indeed, if you find him not within this month, you shall nose him as you go up the stairs into the lobby.

KING. [To some Attendants.] Go seek him there.

HAMLET. He will stay till you come.

KING. Hamlet, this deed, for thine especial safety,— Which we do tender, as we dearly grieve For that which thou hast done,—must send thee hence With fiery quickness. Therefore prepare thyself; The bark is ready, and the wind at help, Th’associates tend, and everything is bent For England.

HAMLET. For England?

KING. Ay, Hamlet.

HAMLET. Good.

KING. So is it, if thou knew’st our purposes.

HAMLET. I see a cherub that sees them. But, come; for England! Farewell, dear mother.

KING. Thy loving father, Hamlet.

HAMLET. My mother. Father and mother is man and wife; man and wife is one flesh; and so, my mother. Come, for England.

KING. Follow him at foot. Tempt him with speed aboard; Delay it not; I’ll have him hence tonight. Away, for everything is seal’d and done That else leans on th’affair. Pray you make haste.

And England, if my love thou hold’st at aught,— As my great power thereof may give thee sense, Since yet thy cicatrice looks raw and red After the Danish sword, and thy free awe Pays homage to us,—thou mayst not coldly set Our sovereign process, which imports at full, By letters conjuring to that effect, The present death of Hamlet. Do it, England; For like the hectic in my blood he rages, And thou must cure me. Till I know ’tis done, Howe’er my haps, my joys were ne’er begun.

SCENE IV. A plain in Denmark.

Enter Fortinbras and Forces marching.

FORTINBRAS. Go, Captain, from me greet the Danish king. Tell him that by his license, Fortinbras Craves the conveyance of a promis’d march Over his kingdom. You know the rendezvous. If that his Majesty would aught with us, We shall express our duty in his eye; And let him know so.

CAPTAIN. I will do’t, my lord.

FORTINBRAS. Go softly on.

[Exeunt all but the Captain.]

Enter Hamlet, Rosencrantz, Guildenstern &c.

HAMLET. Good sir, whose powers are these?

CAPTAIN. They are of Norway, sir.

HAMLET. How purpos’d, sir, I pray you?

CAPTAIN. Against some part of Poland.

HAMLET. Who commands them, sir?

CAPTAIN. The nephew to old Norway, Fortinbras.

HAMLET. Goes it against the main of Poland, sir, Or for some frontier?

CAPTAIN. Truly to speak, and with no addition, We go to gain a little patch of ground That hath in it no profit but the name. To pay five ducats, five, I would not farm it; Nor will it yield to Norway or the Pole A ranker rate, should it be sold in fee.

HAMLET. Why, then the Polack never will defend it.

CAPTAIN. Yes, it is already garrison’d.

HAMLET. Two thousand souls and twenty thousand ducats Will not debate the question of this straw! This is th’imposthume of much wealth and peace, That inward breaks, and shows no cause without Why the man dies. I humbly thank you, sir.

CAPTAIN. God b’ wi’ you, sir.

ROSENCRANTZ. Will’t please you go, my lord?

HAMLET. I’ll be with you straight. Go a little before.

How all occasions do inform against me, And spur my dull revenge. What is a man If his chief good and market of his time Be but to sleep and feed? A beast, no more. Sure he that made us with such large discourse, Looking before and after, gave us not That capability and godlike reason To fust in us unus’d. Now whether it be Bestial oblivion, or some craven scruple Of thinking too precisely on th’event,— A thought which, quarter’d, hath but one part wisdom And ever three parts coward,—I do not know Why yet I live to say this thing’s to do, Sith I have cause, and will, and strength, and means To do’t. Examples gross as earth exhort me, Witness this army of such mass and charge, Led by a delicate and tender prince, Whose spirit, with divine ambition puff’d, Makes mouths at the invisible event, Exposing what is mortal and unsure To all that fortune, death, and danger dare, Even for an eggshell. Rightly to be great Is not to stir without great argument, But greatly to find quarrel in a straw When honour’s at the stake. How stand I then, That have a father kill’d, a mother stain’d, Excitements of my reason and my blood, And let all sleep, while to my shame I see The imminent death of twenty thousand men That, for a fantasy and trick of fame, Go to their graves like beds, fight for a plot Whereon the numbers cannot try the cause, Which is not tomb enough and continent To hide the slain? O, from this time forth, My thoughts be bloody or be nothing worth.

SCENE V. Elsinore. A room in the Castle.

Enter Queen, Horatio and a Gentleman.

QUEEN. I will not speak with her.

GENTLEMAN. She is importunate, indeed distract. Her mood will needs be pitied.

QUEEN. What would she have?

GENTLEMAN. She speaks much of her father; says she hears There’s tricks i’ th’ world, and hems, and beats her heart, Spurns enviously at straws, speaks things in doubt, That carry but half sense. Her speech is nothing, Yet the unshaped use of it doth move The hearers to collection; they aim at it, And botch the words up fit to their own thoughts, Which, as her winks, and nods, and gestures yield them, Indeed would make one think there might be thought, Though nothing sure, yet much unhappily. ’Twere good she were spoken with, for she may strew Dangerous conjectures in ill-breeding minds.

QUEEN. Let her come in.

To my sick soul, as sin’s true nature is, Each toy seems prologue to some great amiss. So full of artless jealousy is guilt, It spills itself in fearing to be spilt.

OPHELIA. Where is the beauteous Majesty of Denmark?

QUEEN. How now, Ophelia?

OPHELIA. [Sings.] How should I your true love know From another one? By his cockle hat and staff And his sandal shoon.

QUEEN. Alas, sweet lady, what imports this song?

OPHELIA. Say you? Nay, pray you mark. [Sings.] He is dead and gone, lady, He is dead and gone, At his head a grass green turf, At his heels a stone.

QUEEN. Nay, but Ophelia—

OPHELIA. Pray you mark. [Sings.] White his shroud as the mountain snow.

Enter King.

QUEEN. Alas, look here, my lord!

OPHELIA. [Sings.] Larded all with sweet flowers; Which bewept to the grave did not go With true-love showers.

KING. How do you, pretty lady?

OPHELIA. Well, God dild you! They say the owl was a baker’s daughter. Lord, we know what we are, but know not what we may be. God be at your table!

KING. Conceit upon her father.

OPHELIA. Pray you, let’s have no words of this; but when they ask you what it means, say you this: [Sings.] Tomorrow is Saint Valentine’s day, All in the morning betime, And I a maid at your window, To be your Valentine.

Then up he rose and donn’d his clothes, And dupp’d the chamber door, Let in the maid, that out a maid Never departed more.

KING. Pretty Ophelia!

OPHELIA. Indeed la, without an oath, I’ll make an end on’t. [Sings.] By Gis and by Saint Charity, Alack, and fie for shame! Young men will do’t if they come to’t; By Cock, they are to blame.

Quoth she, before you tumbled me, You promis’d me to wed. So would I ha’ done, by yonder sun, An thou hadst not come to my bed.

KING. How long hath she been thus?

OPHELIA. I hope all will be well. We must be patient. But I cannot choose but weep, to think they would lay him i’ th’ cold ground. My brother shall know of it. And so I thank you for your good counsel. Come, my coach! Good night, ladies; good night, sweet ladies; good night, good night.

KING. Follow her close; give her good watch, I pray you.

[Exit Horatio.]

O, this is the poison of deep grief; it springs All from her father’s death. O Gertrude, Gertrude, When sorrows come, they come not single spies, But in battalions. First, her father slain; Next, your son gone; and he most violent author Of his own just remove; the people muddied, Thick, and unwholesome in their thoughts and whispers For good Polonius’ death; and we have done but greenly In hugger-mugger to inter him. Poor Ophelia Divided from herself and her fair judgement, Without the which we are pictures or mere beasts. Last, and as much containing as all these, Her brother is in secret come from France, Feeds on his wonder, keeps himself in clouds, And wants not buzzers to infect his ear With pestilent speeches of his father’s death, Wherein necessity, of matter beggar’d, Will nothing stick our person to arraign In ear and ear. O my dear Gertrude, this, Like to a murdering piece, in many places Gives me superfluous death.

QUEEN. Alack, what noise is this?

KING. Where are my Switzers? Let them guard the door.

What is the matter?

GENTLEMAN. Save yourself, my lord. The ocean, overpeering of his list, Eats not the flats with more impetuous haste Than young Laertes, in a riotous head, O’erbears your offices. The rabble call him lord, And, as the world were now but to begin, Antiquity forgot, custom not known, The ratifiers and props of every word, They cry ‘Choose we! Laertes shall be king!’ Caps, hands, and tongues applaud it to the clouds, ‘Laertes shall be king, Laertes king.’

QUEEN. How cheerfully on the false trail they cry. O, this is counter, you false Danish dogs.

KING. The doors are broke.

Enter Laertes, armed; Danes following.

LAERTES. Where is this king?—Sirs, stand you all without.

Danes. No, let’s come in.

LAERTES. I pray you, give me leave.

DANES. We will, we will.

[They retire without the door.]

LAERTES. I thank you. Keep the door. O thou vile king, Give me my father.

QUEEN. Calmly, good Laertes.

LAERTES. That drop of blood that’s calm proclaims me bastard; Cries cuckold to my father, brands the harlot Even here between the chaste unsmirched brow Of my true mother.

KING. What is the cause, Laertes, That thy rebellion looks so giant-like?— Let him go, Gertrude. Do not fear our person. There’s such divinity doth hedge a king, That treason can but peep to what it would, Acts little of his will.—Tell me, Laertes, Why thou art thus incens’d.—Let him go, Gertrude:— Speak, man.

LAERTES. Where is my father?

KING. Dead.

QUEEN. But not by him.

KING. Let him demand his fill.

LAERTES. How came he dead? I’ll not be juggled with. To hell, allegiance! Vows, to the blackest devil! Conscience and grace, to the profoundest pit! I dare damnation. To this point I stand, That both the worlds, I give to negligence, Let come what comes; only I’ll be reveng’d Most throughly for my father.

KING. Who shall stay you?

LAERTES. My will, not all the world. And for my means, I’ll husband them so well, They shall go far with little.

KING. Good Laertes, If you desire to know the certainty Of your dear father’s death, is’t writ in your revenge That, sweepstake, you will draw both friend and foe, Winner and loser?

LAERTES. None but his enemies.

KING. Will you know them then?

LAERTES. To his good friends thus wide I’ll ope my arms; And, like the kind life-rendering pelican, Repast them with my blood.

KING. Why, now you speak Like a good child and a true gentleman. That I am guiltless of your father’s death, And am most sensibly in grief for it, It shall as level to your judgement ’pear As day does to your eye.

DANES. [Within.] Let her come in.

LAERTES. How now! What noise is that?

Re-enter Ophelia, fantastically dressed with straws and flowers.

O heat, dry up my brains. Tears seven times salt, Burn out the sense and virtue of mine eye. By heaven, thy madness shall be paid by weight, Till our scale turn the beam. O rose of May! Dear maid, kind sister, sweet Ophelia! O heavens, is’t possible a young maid’s wits Should be as mortal as an old man’s life? Nature is fine in love, and where ’tis fine, It sends some precious instance of itself After the thing it loves.

OPHELIA. [Sings.] They bore him barefac’d on the bier, Hey non nonny, nonny, hey nonny And on his grave rain’d many a tear.— Fare you well, my dove!

LAERTES. Hadst thou thy wits, and didst persuade revenge, It could not move thus.

OPHELIA. You must sing ‘Down a-down, and you call him a-down-a.’ O, how the wheel becomes it! It is the false steward that stole his master’s daughter.

LAERTES. This nothing’s more than matter.

OPHELIA. There’s rosemary, that’s for remembrance; pray love, remember. And there is pansies, that’s for thoughts.

LAERTES. A document in madness, thoughts and remembrance fitted.

OPHELIA. There’s fennel for you, and columbines. There’s rue for you; and here’s some for me. We may call it herb of grace o’ Sundays. O you must wear your rue with a difference. There’s a daisy. I would give you some violets, but they wither’d all when my father died. They say he made a good end. [Sings.] For bonny sweet Robin is all my joy.

LAERTES. Thought and affliction, passion, hell itself She turns to favour and to prettiness.

OPHELIA. [Sings.] And will he not come again? And will he not come again? No, no, he is dead, Go to thy death-bed, He never will come again.

His beard was as white as snow, All flaxen was his poll. He is gone, he is gone, And we cast away moan. God ha’ mercy on his soul.

And of all Christian souls, I pray God. God b’ wi’ ye.

LAERTES. Do you see this, O God?

KING. Laertes, I must commune with your grief, Or you deny me right. Go but apart, Make choice of whom your wisest friends you will, And they shall hear and judge ’twixt you and me. If by direct or by collateral hand They find us touch’d, we will our kingdom give, Our crown, our life, and all that we call ours To you in satisfaction; but if not, Be you content to lend your patience to us, And we shall jointly labour with your soul To give it due content.

LAERTES. Let this be so; His means of death, his obscure burial,— No trophy, sword, nor hatchment o’er his bones, No noble rite, nor formal ostentation,— Cry to be heard, as ’twere from heaven to earth, That I must call’t in question.

KING. So you shall. And where th’offence is let the great axe fall. I pray you go with me.

SCENE VI. Another room in the Castle.

Enter Horatio and a Servant.

HORATIO. What are they that would speak with me?

SERVANT. Sailors, sir. They say they have letters for you.

HORATIO. Let them come in.

I do not know from what part of the world I should be greeted, if not from Lord Hamlet.

Enter Sailors.

FIRST SAILOR. God bless you, sir.

HORATIO. Let him bless thee too.

FIRST SAILOR. He shall, sir, and’t please him. There’s a letter for you, sir. It comes from th’ambassador that was bound for England; if your name be Horatio, as I am let to know it is.

HORATIO. [Reads.] ‘Horatio, when thou shalt have overlooked this, give these fellows some means to the King. They have letters for him. Ere we were two days old at sea, a pirate of very warlike appointment gave us chase. Finding ourselves too slow of sail, we put on a compelled valour, and in the grapple I boarded them. On the instant they got clear of our ship, so I alone became their prisoner. They have dealt with me like thieves of mercy. But they knew what they did; I am to do a good turn for them. Let the King have the letters I have sent, and repair thou to me with as much haste as thou wouldst fly death. I have words to speak in thine ear will make thee dumb; yet are they much too light for the bore of the matter. These good fellows will bring thee where I am. Rosencrantz and Guildenstern hold their course for England: of them I have much to tell thee. Farewell. He that thou knowest thine, HAMLET.’

Come, I will give you way for these your letters, And do’t the speedier, that you may direct me To him from whom you brought them.

SCENE VII. Another room in the Castle.

Enter King and Laertes.

KING. Now must your conscience my acquittance seal, And you must put me in your heart for friend, Sith you have heard, and with a knowing ear, That he which hath your noble father slain Pursu’d my life.

LAERTES. It well appears. But tell me Why you proceeded not against these feats, So crimeful and so capital in nature, As by your safety, wisdom, all things else, You mainly were stirr’d up.

KING. O, for two special reasons, Which may to you, perhaps, seem much unsinew’d, But yet to me they are strong. The Queen his mother Lives almost by his looks; and for myself,— My virtue or my plague, be it either which,— She’s so conjunctive to my life and soul, That, as the star moves not but in his sphere, I could not but by her. The other motive, Why to a public count I might not go, Is the great love the general gender bear him, Who, dipping all his faults in their affection, Would like the spring that turneth wood to stone, Convert his gyves to graces; so that my arrows, Too slightly timber’d for so loud a wind, Would have reverted to my bow again, And not where I had aim’d them.

LAERTES. And so have I a noble father lost, A sister driven into desperate terms, Whose worth, if praises may go back again, Stood challenger on mount of all the age For her perfections. But my revenge will come.

KING. Break not your sleeps for that. You must not think That we are made of stuff so flat and dull That we can let our beard be shook with danger, And think it pastime. You shortly shall hear more. I lov’d your father, and we love ourself, And that, I hope, will teach you to imagine—

How now? What news?

MESSENGER. Letters, my lord, from Hamlet. This to your Majesty; this to the Queen.

KING. From Hamlet! Who brought them?

MESSENGER. Sailors, my lord, they say; I saw them not. They were given me by Claudio. He receiv’d them Of him that brought them.

KING. Laertes, you shall hear them. Leave us.

[Reads.] ‘High and mighty, you shall know I am set naked on your kingdom. Tomorrow shall I beg leave to see your kingly eyes. When I shall, first asking your pardon thereunto, recount the occasions of my sudden and more strange return. HAMLET.’

What should this mean? Are all the rest come back? Or is it some abuse, and no such thing?

LAERTES. Know you the hand?

KING. ’Tis Hamlet’s character. ‘Naked!’ And in a postscript here he says ‘alone.’ Can you advise me?

LAERTES. I am lost in it, my lord. But let him come, It warms the very sickness in my heart That I shall live and tell him to his teeth, ‘Thus diest thou.’

KING. If it be so, Laertes,— As how should it be so? How otherwise?— Will you be rul’d by me?

LAERTES. Ay, my lord; So you will not o’errule me to a peace.

KING. To thine own peace. If he be now return’d, As checking at his voyage, and that he means No more to undertake it, I will work him To an exploit, now ripe in my device, Under the which he shall not choose but fall; And for his death no wind shall breathe, But even his mother shall uncharge the practice And call it accident.

LAERTES. My lord, I will be rul’d; The rather if you could devise it so That I might be the organ.

KING. It falls right. You have been talk’d of since your travel much, And that in Hamlet’s hearing, for a quality Wherein they say you shine. Your sum of parts Did not together pluck such envy from him As did that one, and that, in my regard, Of the unworthiest siege.

LAERTES. What part is that, my lord?

KING. A very riband in the cap of youth, Yet needful too, for youth no less becomes The light and careless livery that it wears Than settled age his sables and his weeds, Importing health and graveness. Two months since Here was a gentleman of Normandy,— I’ve seen myself, and serv’d against, the French, And they can well on horseback, but this gallant Had witchcraft in’t. He grew unto his seat, And to such wondrous doing brought his horse, As had he been incorps’d and demi-natur’d With the brave beast. So far he topp’d my thought That I in forgery of shapes and tricks, Come short of what he did.

LAERTES. A Norman was’t?

KING. A Norman.

LAERTES. Upon my life, Lamord.

KING. The very same.

LAERTES. I know him well. He is the brooch indeed And gem of all the nation.

KING. He made confession of you, And gave you such a masterly report For art and exercise in your defence, And for your rapier most especially, That he cried out ’twould be a sight indeed If one could match you. The scrimers of their nation He swore had neither motion, guard, nor eye, If you oppos’d them. Sir, this report of his Did Hamlet so envenom with his envy That he could nothing do but wish and beg Your sudden coming o’er to play with him. Now, out of this,—

LAERTES. What out of this, my lord?

KING. Laertes, was your father dear to you? Or are you like the painting of a sorrow, A face without a heart?

LAERTES. Why ask you this?

KING. Not that I think you did not love your father, But that I know love is begun by time, And that I see, in passages of proof, Time qualifies the spark and fire of it. There lives within the very flame of love A kind of wick or snuff that will abate it; And nothing is at a like goodness still, For goodness, growing to a pleurisy, Dies in his own too much. That we would do, We should do when we would; for this ‘would’ changes, And hath abatements and delays as many As there are tongues, are hands, are accidents; And then this ‘should’ is like a spendthrift sigh That hurts by easing. But to the quick o’ th’ulcer: Hamlet comes back: what would you undertake To show yourself your father’s son in deed, More than in words?

LAERTES. To cut his throat i’ th’ church.

KING. No place, indeed, should murder sanctuarize; Revenge should have no bounds. But good Laertes, Will you do this, keep close within your chamber. Hamlet return’d shall know you are come home: We’ll put on those shall praise your excellence, And set a double varnish on the fame The Frenchman gave you, bring you in fine together And wager on your heads. He, being remiss, Most generous, and free from all contriving, Will not peruse the foils; so that with ease, Or with a little shuffling, you may choose A sword unbated, and in a pass of practice, Requite him for your father.

LAERTES. I will do’t. And for that purpose I’ll anoint my sword. I bought an unction of a mountebank So mortal that, but dip a knife in it, Where it draws blood no cataplasm so rare, Collected from all simples that have virtue Under the moon, can save the thing from death This is but scratch’d withal. I’ll touch my point With this contagion, that if I gall him slightly, It may be death.

KING. Let’s further think of this, Weigh what convenience both of time and means May fit us to our shape. If this should fail, And that our drift look through our bad performance. ’Twere better not assay’d. Therefore this project Should have a back or second, that might hold If this did blast in proof. Soft, let me see. We’ll make a solemn wager on your cunnings,— I ha’t! When in your motion you are hot and dry, As make your bouts more violent to that end, And that he calls for drink, I’ll have prepar’d him A chalice for the nonce; whereon but sipping, If he by chance escape your venom’d stuck, Our purpose may hold there.

How now, sweet Queen?

QUEEN. One woe doth tread upon another’s heel, So fast they follow. Your sister’s drown’d, Laertes.

LAERTES. Drown’d! O, where?

QUEEN. There is a willow grows aslant a brook, That shows his hoary leaves in the glassy stream. There with fantastic garlands did she make Of crow-flowers, nettles, daisies, and long purples, That liberal shepherds give a grosser name, But our cold maids do dead men’s fingers call them. There on the pendant boughs her coronet weeds Clamb’ring to hang, an envious sliver broke, When down her weedy trophies and herself Fell in the weeping brook. Her clothes spread wide, And mermaid-like, awhile they bore her up, Which time she chaunted snatches of old tunes, As one incapable of her own distress, Or like a creature native and indued Unto that element. But long it could not be Till that her garments, heavy with their drink, Pull’d the poor wretch from her melodious lay To muddy death.

LAERTES. Alas, then she is drown’d?

QUEEN. Drown’d, drown’d.

LAERTES. Too much of water hast thou, poor Ophelia, And therefore I forbid my tears. But yet It is our trick; nature her custom holds, Let shame say what it will. When these are gone, The woman will be out. Adieu, my lord, I have a speech of fire, that fain would blaze, But that this folly douts it.

KING. Let’s follow, Gertrude; How much I had to do to calm his rage! Now fear I this will give it start again; Therefore let’s follow.

SCENE I. A churchyard.

Enter two Clowns with spades, &c.

FIRST CLOWN. Is she to be buried in Christian burial, when she wilfully seeks her own salvation?

SECOND CLOWN. I tell thee she is, and therefore make her grave straight. The crowner hath sat on her, and finds it Christian burial.

FIRST CLOWN. How can that be, unless she drowned herself in her own defence?

SECOND CLOWN. Why, ’tis found so.

FIRST CLOWN. It must be se offendendo, it cannot be else. For here lies the point: if I drown myself wittingly, it argues an act: and an act hath three branches. It is to act, to do, and to perform: argal, she drowned herself wittingly.

SECOND CLOWN. Nay, but hear you, goodman delver,—

FIRST CLOWN. Give me leave. Here lies the water; good. Here stands the man; good. If the man go to this water and drown himself, it is, will he nill he, he goes,—mark you that. But if the water come to him and drown him, he drowns not himself. Argal, he that is not guilty of his own death shortens not his own life.

SECOND CLOWN. But is this law?

FIRST CLOWN. Ay, marry, is’t, crowner’s quest law.

SECOND CLOWN. Will you ha’ the truth on’t? If this had not been a gentlewoman, she should have been buried out o’ Christian burial.

FIRST CLOWN. Why, there thou say’st. And the more pity that great folk should have countenance in this world to drown or hang themselves more than their even Christian. Come, my spade. There is no ancient gentlemen but gardeners, ditchers, and grave-makers: they hold up Adam’s profession.

SECOND CLOWN. Was he a gentleman?

FIRST CLOWN. He was the first that ever bore arms.

SECOND CLOWN. Why, he had none.

FIRST CLOWN. What, art a heathen? How dost thou understand the Scripture? The Scripture says Adam digg’d. Could he dig without arms? I’ll put another question to thee. If thou answerest me not to the purpose, confess thyself—

SECOND CLOWN. Go to.

FIRST CLOWN. What is he that builds stronger than either the mason, the shipwright, or the carpenter?

SECOND CLOWN. The gallows-maker; for that frame outlives a thousand tenants.

FIRST CLOWN. I like thy wit well in good faith, the gallows does well. But how does it well? It does well to those that do ill. Now, thou dost ill to say the gallows is built stronger than the church; argal, the gallows may do well to thee. To’t again, come.

SECOND CLOWN. Who builds stronger than a mason, a shipwright, or a carpenter?

FIRST CLOWN. Ay, tell me that, and unyoke.

SECOND CLOWN. Marry, now I can tell.

FIRST CLOWN. To’t.

SECOND CLOWN. Mass, I cannot tell.

Enter Hamlet and Horatio, at a distance.

FIRST CLOWN. Cudgel thy brains no more about it, for your dull ass will not mend his pace with beating; and when you are asked this question next, say ‘a grave-maker’. The houses he makes last till doomsday. Go, get thee to Yaughan; fetch me a stoup of liquor.

[Exit Second Clown.]

[Digs and sings.]

In youth when I did love, did love, Methought it was very sweet; To contract, O, the time for, a, my behove, O methought there was nothing meet.

HAMLET. Has this fellow no feeling of his business, that he sings at grave-making?

HORATIO. Custom hath made it in him a property of easiness.

HAMLET. ’Tis e’en so; the hand of little employment hath the daintier sense.

FIRST CLOWN. [Sings.] But age with his stealing steps Hath claw’d me in his clutch, And hath shipp’d me into the land, As if I had never been such.

[Throws up a skull.]

HAMLET. That skull had a tongue in it, and could sing once. How the knave jowls it to th’ ground, as if ’twere Cain’s jawbone, that did the first murder! This might be the pate of a politician which this ass now o’er-offices, one that would circumvent God, might it not?

HORATIO. It might, my lord.

HAMLET. Or of a courtier, which could say ‘Good morrow, sweet lord! How dost thou, good lord?’ This might be my lord such-a-one, that praised my lord such-a-one’s horse when he meant to beg it, might it not?

HORATIO. Ay, my lord.

HAMLET. Why, e’en so: and now my Lady Worm’s; chapless, and knocked about the mazard with a sexton’s spade. Here’s fine revolution, an we had the trick to see’t. Did these bones cost no more the breeding but to play at loggets with ’em? Mine ache to think on’t.

FIRST CLOWN. [Sings.] A pickaxe and a spade, a spade, For and a shrouding-sheet; O, a pit of clay for to be made For such a guest is meet.

[Throws up another skull.]

HAMLET. There’s another. Why may not that be the skull of a lawyer? Where be his quiddits now, his quillets, his cases, his tenures, and his tricks? Why does he suffer this rude knave now to knock him about the sconce with a dirty shovel, and will not tell him of his action of battery? Hum. This fellow might be in’s time a great buyer of land, with his statutes, his recognizances, his fines, his double vouchers, his recoveries. Is this the fine of his fines, and the recovery of his recoveries, to have his fine pate full of fine dirt? Will his vouchers vouch him no more of his purchases, and double ones too, than the length and breadth of a pair of indentures? The very conveyances of his lands will scarcely lie in this box; and must the inheritor himself have no more, ha?

HORATIO. Not a jot more, my lord.

HAMLET. Is not parchment made of sheep-skins?

HORATIO. Ay, my lord, and of calf-skins too.

HAMLET. They are sheep and calves which seek out assurance in that. I will speak to this fellow.—Whose grave’s this, sir?

FIRST CLOWN. Mine, sir. [Sings.] O, a pit of clay for to be made For such a guest is meet.

HAMLET. I think it be thine indeed, for thou liest in’t.

FIRST CLOWN. You lie out on’t, sir, and therefore ’tis not yours. For my part, I do not lie in’t, yet it is mine.

HAMLET. Thou dost lie in’t, to be in’t and say it is thine. ’Tis for the dead, not for the quick; therefore thou liest.

FIRST CLOWN. ’Tis a quick lie, sir; ’t will away again from me to you.

HAMLET. What man dost thou dig it for?

FIRST CLOWN. For no man, sir.

HAMLET. What woman then?

FIRST CLOWN. For none neither.

HAMLET. Who is to be buried in’t?

FIRST CLOWN. One that was a woman, sir; but, rest her soul, she’s dead.

HAMLET. How absolute the knave is! We must speak by the card, or equivocation will undo us. By the Lord, Horatio, these three years I have taken note of it, the age is grown so picked that the toe of the peasant comes so near the heel of the courtier he galls his kibe.—How long hast thou been a grave-maker?

FIRST CLOWN. Of all the days i’ th’ year, I came to’t that day that our last King Hamlet o’ercame Fortinbras.

HAMLET. How long is that since?

FIRST CLOWN. Cannot you tell that? Every fool can tell that. It was the very day that young Hamlet was born,—he that is mad, and sent into England.

HAMLET. Ay, marry, why was he sent into England?

FIRST CLOWN. Why, because he was mad; he shall recover his wits there; or if he do not, it’s no great matter there.

HAMLET. Why?

FIRST CLOWN. ’Twill not be seen in him there; there the men are as mad as he.

HAMLET. How came he mad?

FIRST CLOWN. Very strangely, they say.

HAMLET. How strangely?

FIRST CLOWN. Faith, e’en with losing his wits.

HAMLET. Upon what ground?

FIRST CLOWN. Why, here in Denmark. I have been sexton here, man and boy, thirty years.

HAMLET. How long will a man lie i’ th’earth ere he rot?

FIRST CLOWN. Faith, if he be not rotten before he die,—as we have many pocky corses nowadays that will scarce hold the laying in,—he will last you some eight year or nine year. A tanner will last you nine year.

HAMLET. Why he more than another?

FIRST CLOWN. Why, sir, his hide is so tann’d with his trade that he will keep out water a great while. And your water is a sore decayer of your whoreson dead body. Here’s a skull now; this skull hath lain in the earth three-and-twenty years.

HAMLET. Whose was it?

FIRST CLOWN. A whoreson, mad fellow’s it was. Whose do you think it was?

HAMLET. Nay, I know not.

FIRST CLOWN. A pestilence on him for a mad rogue! A pour’d a flagon of Rhenish on my head once. This same skull, sir, was Yorick’s skull, the King’s jester.

HAMLET. This?

FIRST CLOWN. E’en that.

HAMLET. Let me see. [Takes the skull.] Alas, poor Yorick. I knew him, Horatio, a fellow of infinite jest, of most excellent fancy. He hath borne me on his back a thousand times; and now, how abhorred in my imagination it is! My gorge rises at it. Here hung those lips that I have kiss’d I know not how oft. Where be your gibes now? your gambols? your songs? your flashes of merriment, that were wont to set the table on a roar? Not one now, to mock your own grinning? Quite chop-fallen? Now get you to my lady’s chamber, and tell her, let her paint an inch thick, to this favour she must come. Make her laugh at that.—Prithee, Horatio, tell me one thing.

HORATIO. What’s that, my lord?

HAMLET. Dost thou think Alexander looked o’ this fashion i’ th’earth?

HORATIO. E’en so.

[Throws down the skull.]

HAMLET. And smelt so? Pah!

HORATIO. E’en so, my lord.

HAMLET. To what base uses we may return, Horatio! Why may not imagination trace the noble dust of Alexander till he find it stopping a bung-hole?

HORATIO. ’Twere to consider too curiously to consider so.

HAMLET. No, faith, not a jot. But to follow him thither with modesty enough, and likelihood to lead it; as thus. Alexander died, Alexander was buried, Alexander returneth into dust; the dust is earth; of earth we make loam; and why of that loam whereto he was converted might they not stop a beer-barrel? Imperious Caesar, dead and turn’d to clay, Might stop a hole to keep the wind away. O, that that earth which kept the world in awe Should patch a wall t’expel the winter’s flaw. But soft! but soft! aside! Here comes the King.

Enter priests, &c, in procession; the corpse of Ophelia, Laertes and Mourners following; King, Queen, their Trains, &c.

The Queen, the courtiers. Who is that they follow? And with such maimed rites? This doth betoken The corse they follow did with desperate hand Fordo it own life. ’Twas of some estate. Couch we awhile and mark.

[Retiring with Horatio.]

LAERTES. What ceremony else?

HAMLET. That is Laertes, a very noble youth. Mark.

PRIEST. Her obsequies have been as far enlarg’d As we have warranties. Her death was doubtful; And but that great command o’ersways the order, She should in ground unsanctified have lodg’d Till the last trumpet. For charitable prayers, Shards, flints, and pebbles should be thrown on her. Yet here she is allowed her virgin rites, Her maiden strewments, and the bringing home Of bell and burial.

LAERTES. Must there no more be done?

PRIEST. No more be done. We should profane the service of the dead To sing sage requiem and such rest to her As to peace-parted souls.

LAERTES. Lay her i’ th’earth, And from her fair and unpolluted flesh May violets spring. I tell thee, churlish priest, A minist’ring angel shall my sister be When thou liest howling.

HAMLET. What, the fair Ophelia?

QUEEN. [Scattering flowers.] Sweets to the sweet. Farewell. I hop’d thou shouldst have been my Hamlet’s wife; I thought thy bride-bed to have deck’d, sweet maid, And not have strew’d thy grave.

LAERTES. O, treble woe Fall ten times treble on that cursed head Whose wicked deed thy most ingenious sense Depriv’d thee of. Hold off the earth a while, Till I have caught her once more in mine arms. [Leaps into the grave.] Now pile your dust upon the quick and dead, Till of this flat a mountain you have made, To o’ertop old Pelion or the skyish head Of blue Olympus.

HAMLET. [Advancing.] What is he whose grief Bears such an emphasis? whose phrase of sorrow Conjures the wand’ring stars, and makes them stand Like wonder-wounded hearers? This is I, Hamlet the Dane. [Leaps into the grave.]

LAERTES. [Grappling with him.] The devil take thy soul!

HAMLET. Thou pray’st not well. I prithee take thy fingers from my throat; For though I am not splenative and rash, Yet have I in me something dangerous, Which let thy wiseness fear. Away thy hand!

KING. Pluck them asunder.

QUEEN. Hamlet! Hamlet!

All. Gentlemen!

HORATIO. Good my lord, be quiet.

[The Attendants part them, and they come out of the grave.]

HAMLET. Why, I will fight with him upon this theme Until my eyelids will no longer wag.

QUEEN. O my son, what theme?

HAMLET. I lov’d Ophelia; forty thousand brothers Could not, with all their quantity of love, Make up my sum. What wilt thou do for her?

KING. O, he is mad, Laertes.

QUEEN. For love of God forbear him!

HAMLET. ’Swounds, show me what thou’lt do: Woul’t weep? woul’t fight? woul’t fast? woul’t tear thyself? Woul’t drink up eisel? eat a crocodile? I’ll do’t. Dost thou come here to whine? To outface me with leaping in her grave? Be buried quick with her, and so will I. And if thou prate of mountains, let them throw Millions of acres on us, till our ground, Singeing his pate against the burning zone, Make Ossa like a wart. Nay, an thou’lt mouth, I’ll rant as well as thou.

QUEEN. This is mere madness: And thus awhile the fit will work on him; Anon, as patient as the female dove, When that her golden couplets are disclos’d, His silence will sit drooping.

HAMLET. Hear you, sir; What is the reason that you use me thus? I lov’d you ever. But it is no matter. Let Hercules himself do what he may, The cat will mew, and dog will have his day.

KING. I pray thee, good Horatio, wait upon him.

[To Laertes] Strengthen your patience in our last night’s speech; We’ll put the matter to the present push.— Good Gertrude, set some watch over your son. This grave shall have a living monument. An hour of quiet shortly shall we see; Till then in patience our proceeding be.

Enter Hamlet and Horatio.

HAMLET. So much for this, sir. Now let me see the other; You do remember all the circumstance?

HORATIO. Remember it, my lord!

HAMLET. Sir, in my heart there was a kind of fighting That would not let me sleep. Methought I lay Worse than the mutinies in the bilboes. Rashly, And prais’d be rashness for it,—let us know, Our indiscretion sometime serves us well, When our deep plots do pall; and that should teach us There’s a divinity that shapes our ends, Rough-hew them how we will.

HORATIO. That is most certain.

HAMLET. Up from my cabin, My sea-gown scarf’d about me, in the dark Grop’d I to find out them; had my desire, Finger’d their packet, and in fine, withdrew To mine own room again, making so bold, My fears forgetting manners, to unseal Their grand commission; where I found, Horatio, Oh royal knavery! an exact command, Larded with many several sorts of reasons, Importing Denmark’s health, and England’s too, With ho! such bugs and goblins in my life, That on the supervise, no leisure bated, No, not to stay the grinding of the axe, My head should be struck off.

HORATIO. Is’t possible?

HAMLET. Here’s the commission, read it at more leisure. But wilt thou hear me how I did proceed?

HORATIO. I beseech you.

HAMLET. Being thus benetted round with villanies,— Or I could make a prologue to my brains, They had begun the play,—I sat me down, Devis’d a new commission, wrote it fair: I once did hold it, as our statists do, A baseness to write fair, and labour’d much How to forget that learning; but, sir, now It did me yeoman’s service. Wilt thou know The effect of what I wrote?

HORATIO. Ay, good my lord.

HAMLET. An earnest conjuration from the King, As England was his faithful tributary, As love between them like the palm might flourish, As peace should still her wheaten garland wear And stand a comma ’tween their amities, And many such-like ‘as’es of great charge, That on the view and know of these contents, Without debatement further, more or less, He should the bearers put to sudden death, Not shriving-time allow’d.

HORATIO. How was this seal’d?

HAMLET. Why, even in that was heaven ordinant. I had my father’s signet in my purse, Which was the model of that Danish seal: Folded the writ up in the form of the other, Subscrib’d it: gave’t th’impression; plac’d it safely, The changeling never known. Now, the next day Was our sea-fight, and what to this was sequent Thou know’st already.

HORATIO. So Guildenstern and Rosencrantz go to’t.

HAMLET. Why, man, they did make love to this employment. They are not near my conscience; their defeat Does by their own insinuation grow. ’Tis dangerous when the baser nature comes Between the pass and fell incensed points Of mighty opposites.

HORATIO. Why, what a king is this!

HAMLET. Does it not, thinks’t thee, stand me now upon,— He that hath kill’d my king, and whor’d my mother, Popp’d in between th’election and my hopes, Thrown out his angle for my proper life, And with such cozenage—is’t not perfect conscience To quit him with this arm? And is’t not to be damn’d To let this canker of our nature come In further evil?

HORATIO. It must be shortly known to him from England What is the issue of the business there.

HAMLET. It will be short. The interim is mine; And a man’s life’s no more than to say ‘One’. But I am very sorry, good Horatio, That to Laertes I forgot myself; For by the image of my cause I see The portraiture of his. I’ll court his favours. But sure the bravery of his grief did put me Into a tow’ring passion.

HORATIO. Peace, who comes here?

Enter Osric.

OSRIC. Your lordship is right welcome back to Denmark.

HAMLET. I humbly thank you, sir. Dost know this waterfly?

HORATIO. No, my good lord.

HAMLET. Thy state is the more gracious; for ’tis a vice to know him. He hath much land, and fertile; let a beast be lord of beasts, and his crib shall stand at the king’s mess; ’tis a chough; but, as I say, spacious in the possession of dirt.

OSRIC. Sweet lord, if your lordship were at leisure, I should impart a thing to you from his Majesty.

HAMLET. I will receive it with all diligence of spirit. Put your bonnet to his right use; ’tis for the head.

OSRIC. I thank your lordship, ’tis very hot.

HAMLET. No, believe me, ’tis very cold, the wind is northerly.

OSRIC. It is indifferent cold, my lord, indeed.

HAMLET. Methinks it is very sultry and hot for my complexion.

OSRIC. Exceedingly, my lord; it is very sultry,—as ’twere—I cannot tell how. But, my lord, his Majesty bade me signify to you that he has laid a great wager on your head. Sir, this is the matter,—

HAMLET. I beseech you, remember,—

[Hamlet moves him to put on his hat.]

OSRIC. Nay, in good faith; for mine ease, in good faith. Sir, here is newly come to court Laertes; believe me, an absolute gentleman, full of most excellent differences, of very soft society and great showing. Indeed, to speak feelingly of him, he is the card or calendar of gentry; for you shall find in him the continent of what part a gentleman would see.

HAMLET. Sir, his definement suffers no perdition in you, though I know, to divide him inventorially would dizzy th’arithmetic of memory, and yet but yaw neither, in respect of his quick sail. But, in the verity of extolment, I take him to be a soul of great article and his infusion of such dearth and rareness as, to make true diction of him, his semblable is his mirror and who else would trace him his umbrage, nothing more.

OSRIC. Your lordship speaks most infallibly of him.

OSRIC. Sir?

HAMLET. The concernancy, sir? Why do we wrap the gentleman in our more rawer breath?

HORATIO. Is’t not possible to understand in another tongue? You will do’t, sir, really.

HAMLET. What imports the nomination of this gentleman?

OSRIC. Of Laertes?

HORATIO. His purse is empty already, all’s golden words are spent.

HAMLET. Of him, sir.

OSRIC. I know you are not ignorant,—

HAMLET. I would you did, sir; yet in faith if you did, it would not much approve me. Well, sir?

OSRIC. You are not ignorant of what excellence Laertes is,—

HAMLET. I dare not confess that, lest I should compare with him in excellence; but to know a man well were to know himself.

OSRIC. I mean, sir, for his weapon; but in the imputation laid on him, by them in his meed he’s unfellowed.

HAMLET. What’s his weapon?

OSRIC. Rapier and dagger.

HAMLET. That’s two of his weapons. But well.

HAMLET. What call you the carriages?

OSRIC. The King, sir, hath wager’d with him six Barbary horses, against the which he has imponed, as I take it, six French rapiers and poniards, with their assigns, as girdle, hangers, and so. Three of the carriages, in faith, are very dear to fancy, very responsive to the hilts, most delicate carriages, and of very liberal conceit.

HORATIO. I knew you must be edified by the margin ere you had done.

OSRIC. The carriages, sir, are the hangers.

HAMLET. The phrase would be more german to the matter if we could carry cannon by our sides. I would it might be hangers till then. But on. Six Barbary horses against six French swords, their assigns, and three liberal conceited carriages: that’s the French bet against the Danish. Why is this all imponed, as you call it?

OSRIC. The King, sir, hath laid that in a dozen passes between you and him, he shall not exceed you three hits. He hath laid on twelve for nine. And it would come to immediate trial if your lordship would vouchsafe the answer.

HAMLET. How if I answer no?

OSRIC. I mean, my lord, the opposition of your person in trial.

HAMLET. Sir, I will walk here in the hall. If it please his Majesty, it is the breathing time of day with me. Let the foils be brought, the gentleman willing, and the King hold his purpose, I will win for him if I can; if not, I will gain nothing but my shame and the odd hits.

OSRIC. Shall I re-deliver you e’en so?

HAMLET. To this effect, sir; after what flourish your nature will.

OSRIC. I commend my duty to your lordship.

HAMLET. Yours, yours.

[Exit Osric.]

He does well to commend it himself, there are no tongues else for’s turn.

HORATIO. This lapwing runs away with the shell on his head.

HAMLET. He did comply with his dug before he suck’d it. Thus has he,—and many more of the same bevy that I know the drossy age dotes on,— only got the tune of the time and outward habit of encounter; a kind of yeasty collection, which carries them through and through the most fanned and winnowed opinions; and do but blow them to their trial, the bubbles are out.

Enter a Lord.

LORD. My lord, his Majesty commended him to you by young Osric, who brings back to him that you attend him in the hall. He sends to know if your pleasure hold to play with Laertes or that you will take longer time.

HAMLET. I am constant to my purposes, they follow the King’s pleasure. If his fitness speaks, mine is ready. Now or whensoever, provided I be so able as now.

LORD. The King and Queen and all are coming down.

HAMLET. In happy time.

LORD. The Queen desires you to use some gentle entertainment to Laertes before you fall to play.

HAMLET. She well instructs me.

[Exit Lord.]

HORATIO. You will lose this wager, my lord.

HAMLET. I do not think so. Since he went into France, I have been in continual practice. I shall win at the odds. But thou wouldst not think how ill all’s here about my heart: but it is no matter.

HORATIO. Nay, good my lord.

HAMLET. It is but foolery; but it is such a kind of gain-giving as would perhaps trouble a woman.

HORATIO. If your mind dislike anything, obey it. I will forestall their repair hither, and say you are not fit.

Enter King, Queen, Laertes, Lords, Osric and Attendants with foils &c.

HAMLET. Not a whit, we defy augury. There’s a special providence in the fall of a sparrow. If it be now, ’tis not to come; if it be not to come, it will be now; if it be not now, yet it will come. The readiness is all. Since no man has aught of what he leaves, what is’t to leave betimes?

[The King puts Laertes’s hand into Hamlet’s.]

HAMLET. Give me your pardon, sir. I have done you wrong; But pardon’t as you are a gentleman. This presence knows, and you must needs have heard, How I am punish’d with sore distraction. What I have done That might your nature, honour, and exception Roughly awake, I here proclaim was madness. Was’t Hamlet wrong’d Laertes? Never Hamlet. If Hamlet from himself be ta’en away, And when he’s not himself does wrong Laertes, Then Hamlet does it not, Hamlet denies it. Who does it, then? His madness. If’t be so, Hamlet is of the faction that is wrong’d; His madness is poor Hamlet’s enemy. Sir, in this audience, Let my disclaiming from a purpos’d evil Free me so far in your most generous thoughts That I have shot my arrow o’er the house And hurt my brother.

LAERTES. I am satisfied in nature, Whose motive in this case should stir me most To my revenge. But in my terms of honour I stand aloof, and will no reconcilement Till by some elder masters of known honour I have a voice and precedent of peace To keep my name ungor’d. But till that time I do receive your offer’d love like love, And will not wrong it.

HAMLET. I embrace it freely, And will this brother’s wager frankly play.— Give us the foils; come on.

LAERTES. Come, one for me.

KING. Come, Hamlet, come, and take this hand from me.

HAMLET. I’ll be your foil, Laertes; in mine ignorance Your skill shall like a star i’ th’ darkest night, Stick fiery off indeed.

LAERTES. You mock me, sir.

HAMLET. No, by this hand.

KING. Give them the foils, young Osric. Cousin Hamlet, You know the wager?

HAMLET. Very well, my lord. Your Grace has laid the odds o’ the weaker side.

KING. I do not fear it. I have seen you both; But since he is better’d, we have therefore odds.

LAERTES. This is too heavy. Let me see another.

HAMLET. This likes me well. These foils have all a length?

[They prepare to play.]

OSRIC. Ay, my good lord.

KING. Set me the stoups of wine upon that table. If Hamlet give the first or second hit, Or quit in answer of the third exchange, Let all the battlements their ordnance fire; The King shall drink to Hamlet’s better breath, And in the cup an union shall he throw Richer than that which four successive kings In Denmark’s crown have worn. Give me the cups; And let the kettle to the trumpet speak, The trumpet to the cannoneer without, The cannons to the heavens, the heavens to earth, ‘Now the King drinks to Hamlet.’ Come, begin. And you, the judges, bear a wary eye.

HAMLET. Come on, sir.

LAERTES. Come, my lord.

[They play.]

HAMLET. One.

LAERTES. No.

HAMLET. Judgement.

OSRIC. A hit, a very palpable hit.

LAERTES. Well; again.

KING. Stay, give me drink. Hamlet, this pearl is thine; Here’s to thy health.

[Trumpets sound, and cannon shot off within.]

Give him the cup.

HAMLET. I’ll play this bout first; set it by awhile.

Come. Another hit; what say you?

LAERTES. A touch, a touch, I do confess.

KING. Our son shall win.

QUEEN. He’s fat, and scant of breath. Here, Hamlet, take my napkin, rub thy brows. The Queen carouses to thy fortune, Hamlet.

KING. Gertrude, do not drink.

QUEEN. I will, my lord; I pray you pardon me.

KING. [Aside.] It is the poison’d cup; it is too late.

HAMLET. I dare not drink yet, madam. By and by.

QUEEN. Come, let me wipe thy face.

HAMLET. Good madam.

LAERTES. My lord, I’ll hit him now.

KING. I do not think’t.

LAERTES. [Aside.] And yet ’tis almost ’gainst my conscience.

HAMLET. Come for the third, Laertes. You do but dally. I pray you pass with your best violence. I am afeard you make a wanton of me.

LAERTES. Say you so? Come on.

OSRIC. Nothing neither way.

LAERTES. Have at you now.

[Laertes wounds Hamlet; then, in scuffling, they change rapiers, and Hamlet wounds Laertes.]

KING. Part them; they are incens’d.

HAMLET. Nay, come again!

[The Queen falls.]

OSRIC. Look to the Queen there, ho!

HORATIO. They bleed on both sides. How is it, my lord?

OSRIC. How is’t, Laertes?

LAERTES. Why, as a woodcock to my own springe, Osric. I am justly kill’d with mine own treachery.

HAMLET. How does the Queen?

KING. She swoons to see them bleed.

QUEEN. No, no, the drink, the drink! O my dear Hamlet! The drink, the drink! I am poison’d.

HAMLET. O villany! Ho! Let the door be lock’d: Treachery! Seek it out.

[Laertes falls.]

LAERTES. It is here, Hamlet. Hamlet, thou art slain. No medicine in the world can do thee good. In thee there is not half an hour of life; The treacherous instrument is in thy hand, Unbated and envenom’d. The foul practice Hath turn’d itself on me. Lo, here I lie, Never to rise again. Thy mother’s poison’d. I can no more. The King, the King’s to blame.

HAMLET. The point envenom’d too! Then, venom, to thy work.

[Stabs the King.]

OSRIC and LORDS. Treason! treason!

KING. O yet defend me, friends. I am but hurt.

HAMLET. Here, thou incestuous, murderous, damned Dane, Drink off this potion. Is thy union here? Follow my mother.

[King dies.]

LAERTES. He is justly serv’d. It is a poison temper’d by himself. Exchange forgiveness with me, noble Hamlet. Mine and my father’s death come not upon thee, Nor thine on me.

HAMLET. Heaven make thee free of it! I follow thee. I am dead, Horatio. Wretched Queen, adieu. You that look pale and tremble at this chance, That are but mutes or audience to this act, Had I but time,—as this fell sergeant, death, Is strict in his arrest,—O, I could tell you,— But let it be. Horatio, I am dead, Thou liv’st; report me and my cause aright To the unsatisfied.

HORATIO. Never believe it. I am more an antique Roman than a Dane. Here’s yet some liquor left.

[March afar off, and shot within.]

HAMLET. As th’art a man, Give me the cup. Let go; by Heaven, I’ll have’t. O good Horatio, what a wounded name, Things standing thus unknown, shall live behind me. If thou didst ever hold me in thy heart, Absent thee from felicity awhile, And in this harsh world draw thy breath in pain, To tell my story.

What warlike noise is this?

OSRIC. Young Fortinbras, with conquest come from Poland, To the ambassadors of England gives This warlike volley.

HAMLET. O, I die, Horatio. The potent poison quite o’er-crows my spirit: I cannot live to hear the news from England, But I do prophesy th’election lights On Fortinbras. He has my dying voice. So tell him, with the occurrents more and less, Which have solicited. The rest is silence.

HORATIO. Now cracks a noble heart. Good night, sweet prince, And flights of angels sing thee to thy rest. Why does the drum come hither?

[March within.]

Enter Fortinbras, the English Ambassadors and others.

FORTINBRAS. Where is this sight?

HORATIO. What is it you would see? If aught of woe or wonder, cease your search.

FORTINBRAS. This quarry cries on havoc. O proud death, What feast is toward in thine eternal cell, That thou so many princes at a shot So bloodily hast struck?

FIRST AMBASSADOR. The sight is dismal; And our affairs from England come too late. The ears are senseless that should give us hearing, To tell him his commandment is fulfill’d, That Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are dead. Where should we have our thanks?

HORATIO. Not from his mouth, Had it th’ability of life to thank you. He never gave commandment for their death. But since, so jump upon this bloody question, You from the Polack wars, and you from England Are here arriv’d, give order that these bodies High on a stage be placed to the view, And let me speak to th’ yet unknowing world How these things came about. So shall you hear Of carnal, bloody and unnatural acts, Of accidental judgements, casual slaughters, Of deaths put on by cunning and forc’d cause, And, in this upshot, purposes mistook Fall’n on the inventors’ heads. All this can I Truly deliver.

FORTINBRAS. Let us haste to hear it, And call the noblest to the audience. For me, with sorrow I embrace my fortune. I have some rights of memory in this kingdom, Which now to claim my vantage doth invite me.

HORATIO. Of that I shall have also cause to speak, And from his mouth whose voice will draw on more. But let this same be presently perform’d, Even while men’s minds are wild, lest more mischance On plots and errors happen.

FORTINBRAS. Let four captains Bear Hamlet like a soldier to the stage, For he was likely, had he been put on, To have prov’d most royally; and for his passage, The soldiers’ music and the rites of war Speak loudly for him. Take up the bodies. Such a sight as this Becomes the field, but here shows much amiss. Go, bid the soldiers shoot.

[A dead march.]

[Exeunt, bearing off the bodies, after which a peal of ordnance is shot off.]

THE FIRST PART OF KING HENRY THE FOURTH

ACT I Scene I. London. A Room in the Palace. Scene II. The same. An Apartment of Prince Henry’s. Scene III. The Same. A Room in the Palace.

ACT II Scene I. Rochester. An Inn-Yard. Scene II. The Road by Gads-hill. Scene III. Warkworth. A Room in the Castle. Scene IV. Eastcheap. A Room in the Boar’s Head Tavern.

ACT III Scene I. Bangor. A Room in the Archdeacon’s House. Scene II. London. A Room in the Palace. Scene III. Eastcheap. A Room in the Boar’s Head Tavern.

ACT IV Scene I. The Rebel Camp near Shrewsbury. Scene II. A public Road near Coventry. Scene III. The Rebel Camp near Shrewsbury. Scene IV. York. A Room in the Archbishop’s Palace.

ACT V Scene I. The King’s Camp near Shrewsbury. Scene II. The Rebel Camp. Scene III. Plain between the Camps. Scene IV. Another Part of the Field. Scene V. Another Part of the Field.

KING HENRY the Fourth. HENRY, PRINCE of Wales, son to the King. Prince John of LANCASTER, son to the King. Earl of WESTMORELAND. Sir Walter BLUNT. Thomas Percy, Earl of WORCESTER. Henry Percy, Earl of NORTHUMBERLAND. Henry Percy, surnamed HOTSPUR, his son. Edmund MORTIMER, Earl of March. Scroop, ARCHBISHOP of York. SIR MICHAEL, a friend to the archbishop of York. Archibald, Earl of DOUGLAS. Owen GLENDOWER. Sir Richard VERNON. Sir John FALSTAFF. POINS. GADSHILL. PETO. BARDOLPH. LADY PERCY, Wife to Hotspur. Lady Mortimer, Daughter to Glendower. Mrs. Quickly, Hostess in Eastcheap. Lords, Officers, Sheriff, Vintner, Chamberlain, Drawers, Carriers, Ostler, Messengers, Servant, Travellers and Attendants.

SCENE. England and Wales.

SCENE I. London. A Room in the Palace.

Enter the King, Lord John of Lancaster, Earl of Westmoreland with others.

KING. So shaken as we are, so wan with care, Find we a time for frighted peace to pant, And breathe short-winded accents of new broils To be commenced in strands afar remote. No more the thirsty entrance of this soil Shall daub her lips with her own children’s blood, No more shall trenching war channel her fields, Nor bruise her flow’rets with the armed hoofs Of hostile paces: those opposed eyes, Which, like the meteors of a troubled heaven, All of one nature, of one substance bred, Did lately meet in the intestine shock And furious close of civil butchery, Shall now, in mutual well-beseeming ranks, March all one way, and be no more opposed Against acquaintance, kindred, and allies. The edge of war, like an ill-sheathed knife, No more shall cut his master. Therefore, friends, As far as to the sepulchre of Christ— Whose soldier now, under whose blessed cross We are impressed and engaged to fight— Forthwith a power of English shall we levy, Whose arms were molded in their mothers’ womb To chase these pagans in those holy fields Over whose acres walked those blessed feet Which fourteen hundred years ago were nailed For our advantage on the bitter cross. But this our purpose now is twelve month old, And bootless ’tis to tell you we will go; Therefore we meet not now. Then let me hear Of you, my gentle cousin Westmoreland, What yesternight our Council did decree In forwarding this dear expedience.

WESTMORELAND. My liege, this haste was hot in question, And many limits of the charge set down But yesternight, when all athwart there came A post from Wales loaden with heavy news, Whose worst was that the noble Mortimer, Leading the men of Herefordshire to fight Against the irregular and wild Glendower, Was by the rude hands of that Welshman taken, A thousand of his people butchered, Upon whose dead corpse there was such misuse, Such beastly shameless transformation, By those Welshwomen done, as may not be Without much shame retold or spoken of.

KING. It seems then that the tidings of this broil Brake off our business for the Holy Land.

WESTMORELAND. This, matched with other did, my gracious lord, For more uneven and unwelcome news Came from the North, and thus it did import: On Holy-rood day the gallant Hotspur there, Young Harry Percy, and brave Archibald, That ever-valiant and approved Scot, At Holmedon met, where they did spend A sad and bloody hour; As by discharge of their artillery, And shape of likelihood, the news was told; For he that brought them, in the very heat And pride of their contention did take horse, Uncertain of the issue any way.

KING. Here is a dear and true-industrious friend, Sir Walter Blunt, new lighted from his horse, Stained with the variation of each soil Betwixt that Holmedon and this seat of ours; And he hath brought us smooth and welcome news. The Earl of Douglas is discomfited; Ten thousand bold Scots, two-and-twenty knights, Balked in their own blood, did Sir Walter see On Holmedon’s plains; of prisoners Hotspur took Mordake, Earl of Fife and eldest son To beaten Douglas, and the Earl of Athol, Of Murray, Angus, and Menteith. And is not this an honourable spoil, A gallant prize? Ha, cousin, is it not?

WESTMORELAND. In faith, it is a conquest for a prince to boast of.

KING. Yea, there thou mak’st me sad, and mak’st me sin In envy that my Lord Northumberland Should be the father to so blest a son, A son who is the theme of honour’s tongue, Amongst a grove the very straightest plant, Who is sweet Fortune’s minion and her pride; Whilst I, by looking on the praise of him, See riot and dishonour stain the brow Of my young Harry. O, that it could be proved That some night-tripping fairy had exchanged In cradle-clothes our children where they lay, And called mine Percy, his Plantagenet! Then would I have his Harry, and he mine: But let him from my thoughts. What think you, coz, Of this young Percy’s pride? The prisoners, Which he in this adventure hath surprised To his own use he keeps, and sends me word I shall have none but Mordake, Earl of Fife.

WESTMORELAND. This is his uncle’s teaching, this is Worcester, Malevolent to you in all aspects, Which makes him prune himself, and bristle up The crest of youth against your dignity.

KING. But I have sent for him to answer this; And for this cause awhile we must neglect Our holy purpose to Jerusalem. Cousin, on Wednesday next our Council we Will hold at Windsor, so inform the lords: But come yourself with speed to us again, For more is to be said and to be done Than out of anger can be uttered.

WESTMORELAND. I will, my liege.

SCENE II. The same. An Apartment of Prince Henry’s.

Enter Prince Henry and Sir John Falstaff.

FALSTAFF. Now, Hal, what time of day is it, lad?

PRINCE. Thou art so fat-witted, with drinking of old sack, and unbuttoning thee after supper, and sleeping upon benches after noon, that thou hast forgotten to demand that truly which thou wouldst truly know. What a devil hast thou to do with the time of the day? Unless hours were cups of sack, and minutes capons, and clocks the tongues of bawds, and dials the signs of leaping-houses, and the blessed sun himself a fair hot wench in flame-coloured taffeta, I see no reason why thou shouldst be so superfluous to demand the time of the day.

FALSTAFF. Indeed, you come near me now, Hal, for we that take purses go by the moon and the seven stars, and not by Phœbus, he, that wand’ring knight so fair. And I prithee, sweet wag, when thou art king, as God save thy Grace—Majesty I should say, for grace thou wilt have none—

PRINCE. What, none?

FALSTAFF. No, by my troth, not so much as will serve to be prologue to an egg and butter.

PRINCE. Well, how then? Come, roundly, roundly.

FALSTAFF. Marry then, sweet wag, when thou art king, let not us that are squires of the night’s body be called thieves of the day’s beauty: let us be Diana’s foresters, gentlemen of the shade, minions of the moon; and let men say we be men of good government, being governed, as the sea is, by our noble and chaste mistress the moon, under whose countenance we steal.

PRINCE. Thou sayest well, and it holds well too, for the fortune of us that are the moon’s men doth ebb and flow like the sea, being governed, as the sea is, by the moon. As for proof now: a purse of gold most resolutely snatched on Monday night, and most dissolutely spent on Tuesday morning, got with swearing “Lay by” and spent with crying “Bring in”; now in as low an ebb as the foot of the ladder, and by and by in as high a flow as the ridge of the gallows.

FALSTAFF. By the Lord, thou say’st true, lad. And is not my hostess of the tavern a most sweet wench?

PRINCE. As the honey of Hybla, my old lad of the castle. And is not a buff jerkin a most sweet robe of durance?

FALSTAFF. How now, how now, mad wag? What, in thy quips and thy quiddities? What a plague have I to do with a buff jerkin?

PRINCE. Why, what a pox have I to do with my hostess of the tavern?

FALSTAFF. Well, thou hast called her to a reckoning many a time and oft.

PRINCE. Did I ever call for thee to pay thy part?

FALSTAFF. No, I’ll give thee thy due, thou hast paid all there.

PRINCE. Yea, and elsewhere, so far as my coin would stretch, and where it would not, I have used my credit.

FALSTAFF. Yea, and so used it that were it not here apparent that thou art heir apparent—But I prithee sweet wag, shall there be gallows standing in England when thou art king? And resolution thus fubbed as it is with the rusty curb of old father Antic the law? Do not thou, when thou art king, hang a thief.

PRINCE. No, thou shalt.

FALSTAFF. Shall I? O rare! By the Lord, I’ll be a brave judge.

PRINCE. Thou judgest false already, I mean thou shalt have the hanging of the thieves, and so become a rare hangman.

FALSTAFF. Well, Hal, well; and in some sort it jumps with my humour, as well as waiting in the court, I can tell you.

PRINCE. For obtaining of suits?

FALSTAFF. Yea, for obtaining of suits, whereof the hangman hath no lean wardrobe. ’Sblood, I am as melancholy as a gib cat or a lugged bear.

PRINCE. Or an old lion, or a lover’s lute.

FALSTAFF. Yea, or the drone of a Lincolnshire bagpipe.

PRINCE. What sayest thou to a hare, or the melancholy of Moor-ditch?

FALSTAFF. Thou hast the most unsavoury similes, and art indeed the most comparative, rascalliest, sweet young prince. But, Hal, I prithee trouble me no more with vanity. I would to God thou and I knew where a commodity of good names were to be bought. An old lord of the Council rated me the other day in the street about you, sir, but I marked him not, and yet he talked very wisely, but I regarded him not, and yet he talked wisely, and in the street too.

PRINCE. Thou didst well, for wisdom cries out in the streets and no man regards it.

FALSTAFF. O, thou hast damnable iteration, and art indeed able to corrupt a saint. Thou hast done much harm upon me, Hal, God forgive thee for it. Before I knew thee, Hal, I knew nothing, and now am I, if a man should speak truly, little better than one of the wicked. I must give over this life, and I will give it over. By the Lord, an I do not, I am a villain. I’ll be damned for never a king’s son in Christendom.

PRINCE. Where shall we take a purse tomorrow, Jack?

FALSTAFF. Zounds, where thou wilt, lad, I’ll make one. An I do not, call me villain and baffle me.

PRINCE. I see a good amendment of life in thee, from praying to purse-taking.

FALSTAFF. Why, Hal, ’tis my vocation, Hal, ’tis no sin for a man to labour in his vocation.

Enter Poins.

Poins!—Now shall we know if Gadshill have set a match. O, if men were to be saved by merit, what hole in hell were hot enough for him? This is the most omnipotent villain that ever cried “Stand!” to a true man.

PRINCE. Good morrow, Ned.

POINS. Good morrow, sweet Hal.—What says Monsieur Remorse? What says Sir John Sack-and-sugar? Jack, how agrees the devil and thee about thy soul, that thou soldest him on Good Friday last for a cup of Madeira and a cold capon’s leg?

PRINCE. Sir John stands to his word, the devil shall have his bargain, for he was never yet a breaker of proverbs. He will give the devil his due.

POINS. Then art thou damned for keeping thy word with the devil.

PRINCE. Else he had been damned for cozening the devil.

POINS. But, my lads, my lads, tomorrow morning, by four o’clock early at Gad’s Hill, there are pilgrims going to Canterbury with rich offerings, and traders riding to London with fat purses. I have visards for you all; you have horses for yourselves. Gadshill lies tonight in Rochester. I have bespoke supper tomorrow night in Eastcheap. We may do it as secure as sleep. If you will go, I will stuff your purses full of crowns. If you will not, tarry at home and be hanged.

FALSTAFF. Hear ye, Yedward, if I tarry at home and go not, I’ll hang you for going.

POINS. You will, chops?

FALSTAFF. Hal, wilt thou make one?

PRINCE. Who, I rob? I a thief? Not I, by my faith.

FALSTAFF. There’s neither honesty, manhood, nor good fellowship in thee, nor thou cam’st not of the blood royal, if thou darest not stand for ten shillings.

PRINCE. Well then, once in my days I’ll be a madcap.

FALSTAFF. Why, that’s well said.

PRINCE. Well, come what will, I’ll tarry at home.

FALSTAFF. By the Lord, I’ll be a traitor then, when thou art king.

PRINCE. I care not.

POINS. Sir John, I prithee, leave the Prince and me alone. I will lay him down such reasons for this adventure, that he shall go.

FALSTAFF. Well, God give thee the spirit of persuasion, and him the ears of profiting, that what thou speakest may move, and what he hears may be believed, that the true prince may, for recreation sake, prove a false thief, for the poor abuses of the time want countenance. Farewell, you shall find me in Eastcheap.

PRINCE. Farewell, thou latter spring! Farewell, All-hallown summer!

[Exit Falstaff.]

POINS. Now, my good sweet honey lord, ride with us tomorrow. I have a jest to execute that I cannot manage alone. Falstaff, Bardolph, Peto, and Gadshill shall rob those men that we have already waylaid. Yourself and I will not be there. And when they have the booty, if you and I do not rob them, cut this head off from my shoulders.

PRINCE. But how shall we part with them in setting forth?

POINS. Why, we will set forth before or after them, and appoint them a place of meeting, wherein it is at our pleasure to fail; and then will they adventure upon the exploit themselves, which they shall have no sooner achieved but we’ll set upon them.

PRINCE. Yea, but ’tis like that they will know us by our horses, by our habits, and by every other appointment, to be ourselves.

POINS. Tut, our horses they shall not see, I’ll tie them in the wood; our visards we will change after we leave them; and, sirrah, I have cases of buckram for the nonce, to immask our noted outward garments.

PRINCE. Yea, but I doubt they will be too hard for us.

POINS. Well, for two of them, I know them to be as true-bred cowards as ever turned back; and for the third, if he fight longer than he sees reason, I’ll forswear arms. The virtue of this jest will be the incomprehensible lies that this same fat rogue will tell us when we meet at supper: how thirty at least he fought with, what wards, what blows, what extremities he endured; and in the reproof of this lives the jest.

PRINCE. Well, I’ll go with thee. Provide us all things necessary and meet me tomorrow night in Eastcheap; there I’ll sup. Farewell.

POINS. Farewell, my lord.

PRINCE. I know you all, and will awhile uphold The unyok’d humour of your idleness. Yet herein will I imitate the sun, Who doth permit the base contagious clouds To smother up his beauty from the world, That, when he please again to be himself, Being wanted, he may be more wonder’d at, By breaking through the foul and ugly mists Of vapours that did seem to strangle him. If all the year were playing holidays, To sport would be as tedious as to work; But, when they seldom come, they wish’d-for come, And nothing pleaseth but rare accidents. So when this loose behaviour I throw off, And pay the debt I never promised, By how much better than my word I am, By so much shall I falsify men’s hopes; And, like bright metal on a sullen ground, My reformation, glitt’ring o’er my fault, Shall show more goodly and attract more eyes Than that which hath no foil to set it off. I’ll so offend, to make offence a skill, Redeeming time, when men think least I will.

SCENE III. The Same. A Room in the Palace.

Enter King Henry, Northumberland, Worcester, Hotspur, Sir Walter Blunt and others.

KING. My blood hath been too cold and temperate, Unapt to stir at these indignities, And you have found me, for accordingly You tread upon my patience: but be sure I will from henceforth rather be myself, Mighty and to be fear’d, than my condition, Which hath been smooth as oil, soft as young down, And therefore lost that title of respect Which the proud soul ne’er pays but to the proud.

WORCESTER. Our house, my sovereign liege, little deserves The scourge of greatness to be used on it, And that same greatness too which our own hands Have holp to make so portly.

NORTHUMBERLAND. My lord,—

KING. Worcester, get thee gone, for I do see Danger and disobedience in thine eye: O, sir, your presence is too bold and peremptory, And majesty might never yet endure The moody frontier of a servant brow. You have good leave to leave us. When we need Your use and counsel, we shall send for you.

[Exit Worcester.]

[To Northumberland.]

You were about to speak.

NORTHUMBERLAND. Yea, my good lord. Those prisoners in your Highness’ name demanded, Which Harry Percy here at Holmedon took, Were, as he says, not with such strength denied As is deliver’d to your Majesty. Either envy, therefore, or misprision Is guilty of this fault, and not my son.

HOTSPUR. My liege, I did deny no prisoners. But I remember, when the fight was done, When I was dry with rage and extreme toil, Breathless and faint, leaning upon my sword, Came there a certain lord, neat and trimly dress’d, Fresh as a bridegroom, and his chin new reap’d Show’d like a stubble-land at harvest-home. He was perfumed like a milliner, And ’twixt his finger and his thumb he held A pouncet-box, which ever and anon He gave his nose, and took’t away again, Who therewith angry, when it next came there, Took it in snuff; and still he smiled and talk’d. And as the soldiers bore dead bodies by, He call’d them untaught knaves, unmannerly, To bring a slovenly unhandsome corse Betwixt the wind and his nobility. With many holiday and lady terms He question’d me, amongst the rest demanded My prisoners in your Majesty’s behalf. I then, all smarting with my wounds being cold, Out of my grief and my impatience To be so pester’d with a popinjay, Answer’d neglectingly, I know not what, He should, or he should not; for he made me mad To see him shine so brisk and smell so sweet, And talk so like a waiting-gentlewoman Of guns and drums and wounds, God save the mark! And telling me the sovereignest thing on Earth Was parmacety for an inward bruise, And that it was great pity, so it was, This villainous saltpetre should be digg’d Out of the bowels of the harmless earth, Which many a good tall fellow had destroy’d So cowardly, and but for these vile guns, He would himself have been a soldier. This bald unjointed chat of his, my lord, I answered indirectly, as I said, And I beseech you, let not his report Come current for an accusation Betwixt my love and your high Majesty.

BLUNT. The circumstance consider’d, good my lord, Whatever Harry Percy then had said To such a person, and in such a place, At such a time, with all the rest retold, May reasonably die, and never rise To do him wrong, or any way impeach What then he said, so he unsay it now.

KING. Why, yet he doth deny his prisoners, But with proviso and exception, That we at our own charge shall ransom straight His brother-in-law, the foolish Mortimer, Who, on my soul, hath wilfully betray’d The lives of those that he did lead to fight Against that great magician, damn’d Glendower, Whose daughter, as we hear, the Earl of March Hath lately married. Shall our coffers then Be emptied to redeem a traitor home? Shall we buy treason and indent with fears When they have lost and forfeited themselves? No, on the barren mountains let him starve; For I shall never hold that man my friend Whose tongue shall ask me for one penny cost To ransom home revolted Mortimer.

HOTSPUR. Revolted Mortimer! He never did fall off, my sovereign liege, But by the chance of war. To prove that true Needs no more but one tongue for all those wounds, Those mouthed wounds, which valiantly he took, When on the gentle Severn’s sedgy bank, In single opposition hand to hand, He did confound the best part of an hour In changing hardiment with great Glendower. Three times they breathed, and three times did they drink, Upon agreement, of swift Severn’s flood, Who then, affrighted with their bloody looks, Ran fearfully among the trembling reeds, And hid his crisp head in the hollow bank Blood-stained with these valiant combatants. Never did bare and rotten policy Colour her working with such deadly wounds, Nor never could the noble Mortimer Receive so many, and all willingly. Then let not him be slander’d with revolt.

KING. Thou dost belie him, Percy, thou dost belie him, He never did encounter with Glendower. I tell thee, he durst as well have met the devil alone As Owen Glendower for an enemy. Art not ashamed? But, sirrah, henceforth Let me not hear you speak of Mortimer. Send me your prisoners with the speediest means, Or you shall hear in such a kind from me As will displease you.—My Lord Northumberland, We license your departure with your son.— Send us your prisoners, or you’ll hear of it.

[Exit King Henry, Blunt and train.]

HOTSPUR. An if the devil come and roar for them, I will not send them. I will after straight And tell him so, for I will ease my heart, Albeit I make a hazard of my head.

NORTHUMBERLAND. What, drunk with choler? Stay, and pause awhile. Here comes your uncle.

Enter Worcester.

HOTSPUR. Speak of Mortimer? Zounds, I will speak of him, and let my soul Want mercy if I do not join with him. Yea, on his part I’ll empty all these veins, And shed my dear blood drop by drop in the dust, But I will lift the down-trod Mortimer As high in the air as this unthankful King, As this ingrate and canker’d Bolingbroke.

NORTHUMBERLAND. [To Worcester.] Brother, the King hath made your nephew mad.

WORCESTER. Who struck this heat up after I was gone?

HOTSPUR. He will forsooth have all my prisoners, And when I urged the ransom once again Of my wife’s brother, then his cheek look’d pale, And on my face he turn’d an eye of death, Trembling even at the name of Mortimer.

WORCESTER. I cannot blame him. Was not he proclaim’d By Richard that dead is, the next of blood?

NORTHUMBERLAND. He was; I heard the proclamation. And then it was when the unhappy King— Whose wrongs in us God pardon!—did set forth Upon his Irish expedition; From whence he, intercepted, did return To be deposed, and shortly murdered.

WORCESTER. And for whose death we in the world’s wide mouth Live scandalized and foully spoken of.

HOTSPUR. But soft, I pray you, did King Richard then Proclaim my brother Edmund Mortimer Heir to the crown?

NORTHUMBERLAND. He did; myself did hear it.

HOTSPUR. Nay, then I cannot blame his cousin King, That wish’d him on the barren mountains starve. But shall it be that you that set the crown Upon the head of this forgetful man, And for his sake wear the detested blot Of murderous subornation—shall it be, That you a world of curses undergo, Being the agents, or base second means, The cords, the ladder, or the hangman rather? O, pardon me, that I descend so low, To show the line and the predicament Wherein you range under this subtle King. Shall it for shame be spoken in these days, Or fill up chronicles in time to come, That men of your nobility and power Did gage them both in an unjust behalf (As both of you, God pardon it, have done) To put down Richard, that sweet lovely rose, And plant this thorn, this canker, Bolingbroke? And shall it in more shame be further spoken, That you are fool’d, discarded, and shook off By him for whom these shames ye underwent? No, yet time serves wherein you may redeem Your banish’d honours, and restore yourselves Into the good thoughts of the world again: Revenge the jeering and disdain’d contempt Of this proud King, who studies day and night To answer all the debt he owes to you Even with the bloody payment of your deaths. Therefore, I say—

WORCESTER. Peace, cousin, say no more. And now I will unclasp a secret book, And to your quick-conceiving discontents I’ll read you matter deep and dangerous, As full of peril and adventurous spirit As to o’er-walk a current roaring loud On the unsteadfast footing of a spear.

HOTSPUR. If we fall in, good night, or sink or swim! Send danger from the east unto the west, So honour cross it from the north to south, And let them grapple. O, the blood more stirs To rouse a lion than to start a hare!

NORTHUMBERLAND. Imagination of some great exploit Drives him beyond the bounds of patience.

HOTSPUR. By Heaven, methinks it were an easy leap To pluck bright honour from the pale-faced moon, Or dive into the bottom of the deep, Where fathom-line could never touch the ground, And pluck up drowned honour by the locks, So he that doth redeem her thence might wear Without corrival all her dignities. But out upon this half-faced fellowship!

WORCESTER. He apprehends a world of figures here, But not the form of what he should attend.— Good cousin, give me audience for a while.

HOTSPUR. I cry you mercy.

WORCESTER. Those same noble Scots That are your prisoners—

HOTSPUR. I’ll keep them all; By God, he shall not have a Scot of them, No, if a Scot would save his soul, he shall not. I’ll keep them, by this hand!

WORCESTER. You start away, And lend no ear unto my purposes: Those prisoners you shall keep—

HOTSPUR. Nay, I will: that’s flat. He said he would not ransom Mortimer, Forbade my tongue to speak of Mortimer, But I will find him when he lies asleep, And in his ear I’ll holla “Mortimer!” Nay, I’ll have a starling shall be taught to speak Nothing but “Mortimer”, and give it him, To keep his anger still in motion.

WORCESTER. Hear you, cousin, a word.

HOTSPUR. All studies here I solemnly defy, Save how to gall and pinch this Bolingbroke: And that same sword-and-buckler Prince of Wales, But that I think his father loves him not, And would be glad he met with some mischance— I would have him poison’d with a pot of ale.

WORCESTER. Farewell, kinsman. I will talk to you When you are better temper’d to attend.

NORTHUMBERLAND. Why, what a wasp-stung and impatient fool Art thou to break into this woman’s mood, Tying thine ear to no tongue but thine own!

HOTSPUR. Why, look you, I am whipp’d and scourged with rods, Nettled, and stung with pismires, when I hear Of this vile politician, Bolingbroke. In Richard’s time—what do you call the place? A plague upon’t! It is in Gloucestershire. ’Twas where the madcap Duke his uncle kept, His uncle York, where I first bow’d my knee Unto this king of smiles, this Bolingbroke, ’Sblood, when you and he came back from Ravenspurgh.

NORTHUMBERLAND. At Berkeley castle.

HOTSPUR. You say true. Why, what a candy deal of courtesy This fawning greyhound then did proffer me! “Look, when his infant fortune came to age,” And, “Gentle Harry Percy,” and “kind cousin.” O, the devil take such cozeners!—God forgive me! Good uncle, tell your tale. I have done.

WORCESTER. Nay, if you have not, to it again, We will stay your leisure.

HOTSPUR. I have done, i’faith.

WORCESTER. Then once more to your Scottish prisoners; Deliver them up without their ransom straight, And make the Douglas’ son your only mean For powers in Scotland, which, for divers reasons Which I shall send you written, be assured Will easily be granted.—[To Northumberland.] You, my lord, Your son in Scotland being thus employ’d, Shall secretly into the bosom creep Of that same noble prelate well beloved, The Archbishop.

HOTSPUR. Of York, is it not?

WORCESTER. True, who bears hard His brother’s death at Bristol, the Lord Scroop. I speak not this in estimation, As what I think might be, but what I know Is ruminated, plotted, and set down, And only stays but to behold the face Of that occasion that shall bring it on.

HOTSPUR. I smell it. Upon my life it will do well.

NORTHUMBERLAND. Before the game is afoot thou still let’st slip.

HOTSPUR. Why, it cannot choose but be a noble plot; And then the power of Scotland and of York To join with Mortimer, ha?

WORCESTER. And so they shall.

HOTSPUR. In faith, it is exceedingly well aim’d.

WORCESTER. And ’tis no little reason bids us speed, To save our heads by raising of a head; For, bear ourselves as even as we can, The King will always think him in our debt, And think we think ourselves unsatisfied, Till he hath found a time to pay us home: And see already how he doth begin To make us strangers to his looks of love.

HOTSPUR. He does, he does, we’ll be revenged on him.

WORCESTER. Cousin, farewell. No further go in this Than I by letters shall direct your course. When time is ripe, which will be suddenly, I’ll steal to Glendower and Lord Mortimer, Where you and Douglas, and our powers at once, As I will fashion it, shall happily meet, To bear our fortunes in our own strong arms, Which now we hold at much uncertainty.

NORTHUMBERLAND. Farewell, good brother; we shall thrive, I trust.

HOTSPUR. Uncle, adieu. O, let the hours be short, Till fields and blows and groans applaud our sport!

SCENE I. Rochester. An Inn-Yard.

Enter a Carrier with a lantern in his hand.

FIRST CARRIER. Heigh-ho! an it be not four by the day, I’ll be hang’d. Charles’ wain is over the new chimney, and yet our horse not pack’d.—What, ostler!

OSTLER. [within.] Anon, anon.

FIRST CARRIER. I prithee, Tom, beat Cut’s saddle, put a few flocks in the point; poor jade is wrung in the withers out of all cess.

Enter another Carrier.

SECOND CARRIER. Peas and beans are as dank here as a dog, and that is the next way to give poor jades the bots. This house is turned upside down since Robin ostler died.

FIRST CARRIER. Poor fellow never joyed since the price of oats rose, it was the death of him.

SECOND CARRIER. I think this be the most villainous house in all London road for fleas. I am stung like a tench.

FIRST CARRIER. Like a tench! By the Mass, there is ne’er a king christen could be better bit than I have been since the first cock.

SECOND CARRIER. Why, they will allow us ne’er a jordan, and then we leak in your chimney, and your chamber-lye breeds fleas like a loach.

FIRST CARRIER. What, ostler! Come away and be hanged, come away.

SECOND CARRIER. I have a gammon of bacon and two razes of ginger, to be delivered as far as Charing Cross.

FIRST CARRIER. God’s body! The turkeys in my pannier are quite starved.—What, ostler! A plague on thee! Hast thou never an eye in thy head? Canst not hear? An ’twere not as good deed as drink to break the pate on thee, I am a very villain. Come, and be hanged. Hast no faith in thee?

Enter Gadshill.

GADSHILL. Good morrow, carriers. What’s o’clock?

FIRST CARRIER. I think it be two o’clock.

GADSHILL. I prithee, lend me thy lantern, to see my gelding in the stable.

FIRST CARRIER. Nay, by God, soft! I know a trick worth two of that, i’faith.

GADSHILL. I pray thee, lend me thine.

SECOND CARRIER. Ay, when? Canst tell? “Lend me thy lantern,” quoth he! Marry, I’ll see thee hanged first.

GADSHILL. Sirrah carrier, what time do you mean to come to London?

SECOND CARRIER. Time enough to go to bed with a candle, I warrant thee. Come, neighbour Mugs, we’ll call up the gentlemen. They will along with company, for they have great charge.

[Exeunt Carriers.]

GADSHILL. What, ho! Chamberlain!

Enter Chamberlain.

CHAMBERLAIN. At hand, quoth pick-purse.

GADSHILL. That’s even as fair as “at hand, quoth the chamberlain,” for thou variest no more from picking of purses than giving direction doth from labouring; thou layest the plot how.

CHAMBERLAIN. Good morrow, Master Gadshill. It holds current that I told you yesternight: there’s a franklin in the Wild of Kent hath brought three hundred marks with him in gold. I heard him tell it to one of his company last night at supper; a kind of auditor, one that hath abundance of charge too, God knows what. They are up already, and call for eggs and butter. They will away presently.

GADSHILL. Sirrah, if they meet not with Saint Nicholas’ clerks, I’ll give thee this neck.

CHAMBERLAIN. No, I’ll none of it. I pray thee, keep that for the hangman, for I know thou worshippest Saint Nicholas as truly as a man of falsehood may.

GADSHILL. What talkest thou to me of the hangman? If I hang, I’ll make a fat pair of gallows; for, if I hang, old Sir John hangs with me, and thou knowest he is no starveling. Tut, there are other Troyans that thou dream’st not of, the which for sport sake are content to do the profession some grace, that would, if matters should be looked into, for their own credit sake make all whole. I am joined with no foot-land-rakers, no long-staff sixpenny strikers, none of these mad mustachio purple-hued malt-worms, but with nobility and tranquillity, burgomasters and great oneyers, such as can hold in, such as will strike sooner than speak, and speak sooner than drink, and drink sooner than pray: and yet, zounds, I lie, for they pray continually to their saint the commonwealth, or rather not pray to her, but prey on her, for they ride up and down on her, and make her their boots.

CHAMBERLAIN. What, the commonwealth their boots? Will she hold out water in foul way?

GADSHILL. She will, she will; justice hath liquored her. We steal as in a castle, cock-sure; we have the receipt of fern-seed, we walk invisible.

CHAMBERLAIN. Nay, by my faith, I think you are more beholding to the night than to fern-seed for your walking invisible.

GADSHILL. Give me thy hand. Thou shalt have a share in our purchase, as I am a true man.

CHAMBERLAIN. Nay, rather let me have it, as you are a false thief.

GADSHILL. Go to; homo is a common name to all men. Bid the ostler bring my gelding out of the stable. Farewell, you muddy knave.

SCENE II. The Road by Gads-hill.

Enter Prince Henry and Poins; Bardolph and Peto at some distance.

POINS. Come, shelter, shelter! I have removed Falstaff’s horse, and he frets like a gummed velvet.

PRINCE. Stand close.

[They retire.]

Enter Falstaff.

FALSTAFF. Poins! Poins, and be hanged! Poins!

PRINCE. [Coming forward.] Peace, ye fat-kidneyed rascal! What a brawling dost thou keep!

FALSTAFF. Where’s Poins, Hal?

PRINCE. He is walked up to the top of the hill. I’ll go seek him.

[Retires.]

FALSTAFF. I am accursed to rob in that thief’s company. The rascal hath removed my horse and tied him I know not where. If I travel but four foot by the square further afoot, I shall break my wind. Well, I doubt not but to die a fair death for all this, if I ’scape hanging for killing that rogue. I have forsworn his company hourly any time this two-and-twenty years, and yet I am bewitched with the rogue’s company. If the rascal have not given me medicines to make me love him, I’ll be hanged. It could not be else: I have drunk medicines. Poins! Hal! A plague upon you both! Bardolph! Peto! I’ll starve ere I’ll rob a foot further. An ’twere not as good a deed as drink, to turn true man, and to leave these rogues, I am the veriest varlet that ever chewed with a tooth. Eight yards of uneven ground is threescore and ten miles afoot with me, and the stony-hearted villains know it well enough. A plague upon it when thieves cannot be true one to another! [They whistle.] Whew! A plague upon you all! Give me my horse, you rogues, give me my horse and be hanged!

PRINCE. [Coming forward.] Peace, you fat guts, lie down, lay thine ear close to the ground, and list if thou canst hear the tread of travellers.

FALSTAFF. Have you any levers to lift me up again, being down? ’Sblood, I’ll not bear my own flesh so far afoot again for all the coin in thy father’s exchequer. What a plague mean ye to colt me thus?

PRINCE. Thou liest, thou art not colted, thou art uncolted.

FALSTAFF. I prithee, good Prince Hal, help me to my horse, good king’s son.

PRINCE. Out, ye rogue! Shall I be your ostler?

FALSTAFF. Hang thyself in thine own heir-apparent garters! If I be ta’en, I’ll peach for this. An I have not ballads made on you all, and sung to filthy tunes, let a cup of sack be my poison—when a jest is so forward, and afoot too! I hate it.

GADSHILL. Stand!

FALSTAFF. So I do, against my will.

POINS. O, ’tis our setter. I know his voice.

Comes forward with Bardolph and Peto.

BARDOLPH. What news?

GADSHILL. Case ye, case ye, on with your visards. There’s money of the King’s coming down the hill, ’tis going to the King’s exchequer.

FALSTAFF. You lie, ye rogue, ’tis going to the King’s tavern.

GADSHILL. There’s enough to make us all.

FALSTAFF. To be hanged.

PRINCE. Sirs, you four shall front them in the narrow lane. Ned Poins and I will walk lower; if they ’scape from your encounter, then they light on us.

PETO. How many be there of them?

GADSHILL. Some eight or ten.

FALSTAFF. Zounds, will they not rob us?

PRINCE. What, a coward, Sir John Paunch?

FALSTAFF. Indeed, I am not John of Gaunt, your grandfather, but yet no coward, Hal.

PRINCE. Well, we leave that to the proof.

POINS. Sirrah Jack, thy horse stands behind the hedge. When thou need’st him, there thou shalt find him. Farewell, and stand fast.

FALSTAFF. Now cannot I strike him, if I should be hanged.

PRINCE. [aside to Poins.] Ned, where are our disguises?

POINS. [aside to Prince Henry.] Here, hard by. Stand close.

[Exeunt Prince and Poins.]

FALSTAFF. Now, my masters, happy man be his dole, say I. Every man to his business.

Enter the Travellers.

FIRST TRAVELLER. Come, neighbour, the boy shall lead our horses down the hill; we’ll walk afoot awhile and ease our legs.

THIEVES. Stand!

SECOND TRAVELLER. Jesu bless us!

FALSTAFF. Strike, down with them, cut the villains’ throats! Ah, whoreson caterpillars, bacon-fed knaves, they hate us youth. Down with them, fleece them!

FIRST TRAVELLER. O, we are undone, both we and ours for ever!

FALSTAFF. Hang ye, gorbellied knaves, are ye undone? No, ye fat chuffs, I would your store were here! On, bacons, on! What, ye knaves! young men must live. You are grandjurors, are ye? We’ll jure ye, faith.

[Here they rob them and bind them. Exeunt]

Enter Prince Henry and Poins in buckram suits.

PRINCE. The thieves have bound the true men. Now could thou and I rob the thieves, and go merrily to London, it would be argument for a week, laughter for a month, and a good jest for ever.

POINS. Stand close, I hear them coming.

Enter the Thieves again.

FALSTAFF. Come, my masters, let us share, and then to horse before day. An the Prince and Poins be not two arrant cowards, there’s no equity stirring. There’s no more valour in that Poins than in a wild duck.

[As they are sharing, the Prince and Poins set upon them.]

PRINCE. Your money!

POINS. Villains!

[Falstaff after a blow or two, and the others run away, leaving the booty behind them.]

PRINCE. Got with much ease. Now merrily to horse. The thieves are all scatter’d, and possess’d with fear So strongly that they dare not meet each other; Each takes his fellow for an officer. Away, good Ned. Falstaff sweats to death, And lards the lean earth as he walks along. Were’t not for laughing, I should pity him.

POINS. How the fat rogue roared!

SCENE III. Warkworth. A Room in the Castle.

Enter Hotspur, reading a letter.

HOTSPUR. “But, for mine own part, my lord, I could be well contented to be there, in respect of the love I bear your house.” He could be contented; why is he not, then? In respect of the love he bears our house—he shows in this, he loves his own barn better than he loves our house. Let me see some more. “The purpose you undertake is dangerous”—Why, that’s certain. ’Tis dangerous to take a cold, to sleep, to drink; but I tell you, my lord fool, out of this nettle, danger, we pluck this flower, safety. “The purpose you undertake is dangerous, the friends you have named uncertain, the time itself unsorted, and your whole plot too light for the counterpoise of so great an opposition.” Say you so, say you so? I say unto you again, you are a shallow, cowardly hind, and you lie. What a lack-brain is this! By the Lord, our plot is a good plot as ever was laid, our friends true and constant: a good plot, good friends, and full of expectation; an excellent plot, very good friends. What a frosty-spirited rogue is this! Why, my Lord of York commends the plot and the general course of the action. Zounds, an I were now by this rascal, I could brain him with his lady’s fan. Is there not my father, my uncle, and myself? Lord Edmund Mortimer, my Lord of York, and Owen Glendower? Is there not besides the Douglas? Have I not all their letters to meet me in arms by the ninth of the next month, and are they not some of them set forward already? What a pagan rascal is this, an infidel! Ha! You shall see now, in very sincerity of fear and cold heart, will he to the King, and lay open all our proceedings. O, I could divide myself, and go to buffets, for moving such a dish of skim milk with so honourable an action! Hang him, let him tell the King, we are prepared. I will set forward tonight.—

Enter Lady Percy.

How now, Kate! I must leave you within these two hours.

LADY PERCY. O my good lord, why are you thus alone? For what offence have I this fortnight been A banish’d woman from my Harry’s bed? Tell me, sweet lord, what is’t that takes from thee Thy stomach, pleasure, and thy golden sleep? Why dost thou bend thine eyes upon the earth, And start so often when thou sit’st alone? Why hast thou lost the fresh blood in thy cheeks, And given my treasures and my rights of thee To thick-eyed musing and curst melancholy? In thy faint slumbers I by thee have watch’d, And heard thee murmur tales of iron wars, Speak terms of manage to thy bounding steed, Cry “Courage! To the field!” And thou hast talk’d Of sallies and retires, of trenches, tents, Of palisadoes, frontiers, parapets, Of basilisks, of cannon, culverin, Of prisoners’ ransom, and of soldiers slain, And all the currents of a heady fight. Thy spirit within thee hath been so at war, And thus hath so bestirr’d thee in thy sleep, That beads of sweat have stood upon thy brow Like bubbles in a late-disturbed stream, And in thy face strange motions have appear’d, Such as we see when men restrain their breath On some great sudden hest. O, what portents are these? Some heavy business hath my lord in hand, And I must know it, else he loves me not.

HOTSPUR. What, ho!

Is Gilliams with the packet gone?

SERVANT. He is, my lord, an hour ago.

HOTSPUR. Hath Butler brought those horses from the sheriff?

SERVANT. One horse, my lord, he brought even now.

HOTSPUR. What horse? A roan, a crop-ear, is it not?

SERVANT. It is, my lord.

HOTSPUR. That roan shall be my throne. Well, I will back him straight. O Esperance! Bid Butler lead him forth into the park.

LADY PERCY. But hear you, my lord.

HOTSPUR. What say’st thou, my lady?

LADY PERCY. What is it carries you away?

HOTSPUR. Why, my horse, my love, my horse.

LADY PERCY. Out, you mad-headed ape! A weasel hath not such a deal of spleen As you are toss’d with. In faith, I’ll know your business, Harry, that I will. I fear my brother Mortimer doth stir About his title, and hath sent for you To line his enterprise. But if you go—

HOTSPUR. So far afoot, I shall be weary, love.

LADY PERCY. Come, come, you paraquito, answer me Directly unto this question that I ask. In faith, I’ll break thy little finger, Harry, If thou wilt not tell me all things true.

HOTSPUR. Away, Away, you trifler! Love, I love thee not, I care not for thee, Kate. This is no world To play with mammets and to tilt with lips. We must have bloody noses and crack’d crowns, And pass them current too.—Gods me, my horse!— What say’st thou, Kate? What wouldst thou have with me?

LADY PERCY. Do you not love me? Do you not indeed? Well, do not, then, for since you love me not, I will not love myself. Do you not love me? Nay, tell me if you speak in jest or no.

HOTSPUR. Come, wilt thou see me ride? And when I am a-horseback I will swear I love thee infinitely. But hark you, Kate, I must not have you henceforth question me Whither I go, nor reason whereabout. Whither I must, I must; and, to conclude, This evening must I leave you, gentle Kate. I know you wise, but yet no farther wise Than Harry Percy’s wife; constant you are, But yet a woman; and for secrecy, No lady closer, for I well believe Thou wilt not utter what thou dost not know; And so far will I trust thee, gentle Kate.

LADY PERCY. How? So far?

HOTSPUR. Not an inch further. But hark you, Kate, Whither I go, thither shall you go too. Today will I set forth, tomorrow you. Will this content you, Kate?

LADY PERCY. It must, of force.

SCENE IV. Eastcheap. A Room in the Boar’s Head Tavern.

Enter Prince Henry.

PRINCE. Ned, prithee, come out of that fat room, and lend me thy hand to laugh a little.

POINS. Where hast been, Hal?

PRINCE. With three or four loggerheads amongst three or fourscore hogsheads. I have sounded the very base-string of humility. Sirrah, I am sworn brother to a leash of drawers, and can call them all by their Christian names, as Tom, Dick, and Francis. They take it already upon their salvation, that though I be but Prince of Wales, yet I am the king of courtesy, and tell me flatly I am no proud Jack, like Falstaff, but a Corinthian, a lad of mettle, a good boy,—by the Lord, so they call me—and when I am King of England, I shall command all the good lads in Eastcheap. They call drinking deep, “dyeing scarlet,” and when you breathe in your watering, they cry “Hem!” and bid you “Play it off!” To conclude, I am so good a proficient in one quarter of an hour, that I can drink with any tinker in his own language during my life. I tell thee, Ned, thou hast lost much honour that thou wert not with me in this action; but, sweet Ned—to sweeten which name of Ned, I give thee this pennyworth of sugar, clapped even now into my hand by an underskinker, one that never spake other English in his life than “Eight shillings and sixpence,” and “You are welcome,” with this shrill addition, “Anon, anon, sir! Score a pint of bastard in the Half-moon,” or so. But, Ned, to drive away the time till Falstaff come, I prithee, do thou stand in some by-room, while I question my puny drawer to what end he gave me the sugar, and do thou never leave calling “Francis,” that his tale to me may be nothing but “Anon.” Step aside, and I’ll show thee a precedent.

[Exit Poins.]

POINS. [Within] Francis!

PRINCE. Thou art perfect.

Enter Francis.

FRANCIS. Anon, anon, sir.—Look down into the Pomegarnet, Ralph.

PRINCE. Come hither, Francis.

FRANCIS. My lord?

PRINCE. How long hast thou to serve, Francis?

FRANCIS. Forsooth, five years, and as much as to—

POINS. [within.] Francis!

FRANCIS. Anon, anon, sir.

PRINCE. Five year! By’r Lady, a long lease for the clinking of pewter! But, Francis, darest thou be so valiant as to play the coward with thy indenture, and show it a fair pair of heels, and run from it?

FRANCIS. O Lord, sir, I’ll be sworn upon all the books in England, I could find in my heart—

FRANCIS. Anon, sir.

PRINCE. How old art thou, Francis?

FRANCIS. Let me see, about Michaelmas next I shall be—

FRANCIS. Anon, sir.—Pray, stay a little, my lord.

PRINCE. Nay, but hark you, Francis, for the sugar thou gavest me, ’twas a pennyworth, was’t not?

FRANCIS. O Lord, I would it had been two!

PRINCE. I will give thee for it a thousand pound. Ask me when thou wilt, and thou shalt have it.

FRANCIS. Anon, anon.

PRINCE. Anon, Francis? No, Francis, but tomorrow, Francis; or, Francis, a Thursday; or indeed, Francis, when thou wilt. But, Francis,—

PRINCE. Wilt thou rob this leathern-jerkin, crystal-button, not-pated, agate-ring, puke-stocking, caddis-garter, smooth-tongue, Spanish-pouch—

FRANCIS. O Lord, sir, who do you mean?

PRINCE. Why, then, your brown bastard is your only drink, for look you, Francis, your white canvas doublet will sully. In Barbary, sir, it cannot come to so much.

FRANCIS. What, sir?

PRINCE. Away, you rogue! Dost thou not hear them call?

[Here they both call him; the Drawer stands amazed, not knowing which way to go.]

Enter Vintner.

VINTNER. What, stand’st thou still, and hear’st such a calling? Look to the guests within.

[Exit Francis.]

My lord, old Sir John with half-a-dozen more are at the door. Shall I let them in?

PRINCE. Let them alone awhile, and then open the door.

[Exit Vintner.]

Poins!

POINS. Anon, anon, sir.

PRINCE. Sirrah, Falstaff and the rest of the thieves are at the door; shall we be merry?

POINS. As merry as crickets, my lad. But hark ye, what cunning match have you made with this jest of the drawer? Come, what’s the issue?

PRINCE. I am now of all humours that have showed themselves humours since the old days of goodman Adam to the pupil age of this present twelve o’clock at midnight.

What’s o’clock, Francis?

PRINCE. That ever this fellow should have fewer words than a parrot, and yet the son of a woman! His industry is upstairs and downstairs; his eloquence the parcel of a reckoning. I am not yet of Percy’s mind, the Hotspur of the north, he that kills me some six or seven dozen of Scots at a breakfast, washes his hands, and says to his wife, “Fie upon this quiet life! I want work.” “O my sweet Harry,” says she, “how many hast thou killed today?” “Give my roan horse a drench,” says he; and answers, “Some fourteen,” an hour after; “a trifle, a trifle.” I prithee, call in Falstaff. I’ll play Percy, and that damned brawn shall play Dame Mortimer his wife. Rivo! says the drunkard. Call in Ribs, call in Tallow.

Enter Falstaff, Gadshill, Bardolph and Peto; followed by Francis with wine.

POINS. Welcome, Jack. Where hast thou been?

FALSTAFF. A plague of all cowards, I say, and a vengeance too! Marry, and amen! Give me a cup of sack, boy. Ere I lead this life long, I’ll sew nether-stocks, and mend them and foot them too. A plague of all cowards! Give me a cup of sack, rogue. Is there no virtue extant?

[Drinks.]

PRINCE. Didst thou never see Titan kiss a dish of butter (pitiful-hearted Titan!), that melted at the sweet tale of the sun’s? If thou didst, then behold that compound.

FALSTAFF. You rogue, here’s lime in this sack too: there is nothing but roguery to be found in villainous man, yet a coward is worse than a cup of sack with lime in it. A villanous coward! Go thy ways, old Jack. Die when thou wilt, if manhood, good manhood, be not forgot upon the face of the Earth, then am I a shotten herring. There lives not three good men unhanged in England, and one of them is fat, and grows old, God help the while, a bad world, I say. I would I were a weaver; I could sing psalms or anything. A plague of all cowards, I say still.

PRINCE. How now, wool-sack, what mutter you?

FALSTAFF. A king’s son! If I do not beat thee out of thy kingdom with a dagger of lath, and drive all thy subjects afore thee like a flock of wild-geese, I’ll never wear hair on my face more. You, Prince of Wales!

PRINCE. Why, you whoreson round man, what’s the matter?

FALSTAFF. Are not you a coward? Answer me to that—and Poins there?

POINS. Zounds, ye fat paunch, an ye call me coward, by the Lord, I’ll stab thee.

FALSTAFF. I call thee coward? I’ll see thee damned ere I call thee coward, but I would give a thousand pound I could run as fast as thou canst. You are straight enough in the shoulders, you care not who sees your back. Call you that backing of your friends? A plague upon such backing! Give me them that will face me.—Give me a cup of sack. I am a rogue if I drunk today.

PRINCE. O villain! Thy lips are scarce wiped since thou drunk’st last.

FALSTAFF. All is one for that. A plague of all cowards, still say I.

PRINCE. What’s the matter?

FALSTAFF. What’s the matter? There be four of us here have ta’en a thousand pound this day morning.

PRINCE. Where is it, Jack, where is it?

FALSTAFF. Where is it? Taken from us it is: a hundred upon poor four of us.

PRINCE. What, a hundred, man?

FALSTAFF. I am a rogue if I were not at half-sword with a dozen of them two hours together. I have ’scaped by miracle. I am eight times thrust through the doublet, four through the hose, my buckler cut through and through, my sword hacked like a handsaw. Ecce signum! I never dealt better since I was a man: all would not do. A plague of all cowards! Let them speak. If they speak more or less than truth, they are villains, and the sons of darkness.

PRINCE. Speak, sirs, how was it?

GADSHILL. We four set upon some dozen.

FALSTAFF. Sixteen at least, my lord.

GADSHILL. And bound them.

PETO. No, no, they were not bound.

FALSTAFF. You rogue, they were bound, every man of them, or I am a Jew else, an Ebrew Jew.

GADSHILL. As we were sharing, some six or seven fresh men set upon us.

FALSTAFF. And unbound the rest, and then come in the other.

PRINCE. What, fought you with them all?

FALSTAFF. All? I know not what you call all, but if I fought not with fifty of them I am a bunch of radish. If there were not two or three and fifty upon poor old Jack, then am I no two-legged creature.

PRINCE. Pray God you have not murdered some of them.

PRINCE. What, four? Thou saidst but two even now.

FALSTAFF. Nay, that’s past praying for. I have peppered two of them. Two I am sure I have paid, two rogues in buckram suits. I tell thee what, Hal, if I tell thee a lie, spit in my face, call me horse. Thou knowest my old ward. Here I lay, and thus I bore my point. Four rogues in buckram let drive at me.

FALSTAFF. Four, Hal, I told thee four.

POINS. Ay, ay, he said four.

FALSTAFF. These four came all afront, and mainly thrust at me. I made me no more ado, but took all their seven points in my target, thus.

PRINCE. Seven? Why, there were but four even now.

FALSTAFF. In buckram?

POINS. Ay, four, in buckram suits.

FALSTAFF. Seven, by these hilts, or I am a villain else.

PRINCE. [aside to Poins.] Prithee let him alone, we shall have more anon.

FALSTAFF. Dost thou hear me, Hal?

PRINCE. Ay, and mark thee too, Jack.

FALSTAFF. Do so, for it is worth the listening to. These nine in buckram that I told thee of—

PRINCE. So, two more already.

FALSTAFF. Their points being broken—

POINS. Down fell their hose.

FALSTAFF. Began to give me ground; but I followed me close, came in foot and hand, and with a thought seven of the eleven I paid.

PRINCE. O monstrous! Eleven buckram men grown out of two!

FALSTAFF. But as the devil would have it, three misbegotten knaves in Kendal green came at my back and let drive at me, for it was so dark, Hal, that thou couldst not see thy hand.

PRINCE. These lies are like the father that begets them, gross as a mountain, open, palpable. Why, thou clay-brained guts, thou knotty-pated fool, thou whoreson, obscene greasy tallow-catch—

FALSTAFF. What, art thou mad? Art thou mad? Is not the truth the truth?

PRINCE. Why, how couldst thou know these men in Kendal green, when it was so dark thou couldst not see thy hand? Come, tell us your reason. What sayest thou to this?

POINS. Come, your reason, Jack, your reason.

FALSTAFF. What, upon compulsion? Zounds, an I were at the strappado, or all the racks in the world, I would not tell you on compulsion. Give you a reason on compulsion! If reasons were as plentiful as blackberries, I would give no man a reason upon compulsion, I.

PRINCE. I’ll be no longer guilty of this sin. This sanguine coward, this bed-presser, this horse-back-breaker, this huge hill of flesh—

FALSTAFF. ’Sblood, you starveling, you eel-skin, you dried neat’s-tongue, you bull’s pizzle, you stock-fish—O, for breath to utter what is like thee! You tailor’s-yard, you sheath, you bow-case, you vile standing tuck—

PRINCE. Well, breathe awhile, and then to it again, and when thou hast tired thyself in base comparisons, hear me speak but this.

POINS. Mark, Jack.

PRINCE. We two saw you four set on four, and bound them and were masters of their wealth. Mark now how a plain tale shall put you down. Then did we two set on you four, and, with a word, outfaced you from your prize, and have it, yea, and can show it you here in the house. And, Falstaff, you carried your guts away as nimbly, with as quick dexterity, and roared for mercy, and still ran and roared, as ever I heard bull-calf. What a slave art thou to hack thy sword as thou hast done, and then say it was in fight! What trick, what device, what starting-hole canst thou now find out to hide thee from this open and apparent shame?

POINS. Come, let’s hear, Jack, what trick hast thou now?

FALSTAFF. By the Lord, I knew ye as well as he that made ye. Why, hear you, my masters, was it for me to kill the heir-apparent? Should I turn upon the true prince? Why, thou knowest I am as valiant as Hercules: but beware instinct. The lion will not touch the true prince. Instinct is a great matter. I was now a coward on instinct. I shall think the better of myself, and thee, during my life—I for a valiant lion, and thou for a true prince. But, by the Lord, lads, I am glad you have the money.—Hostess, clap to the doors. Watch tonight, pray tomorrow. Gallants, lads, boys, hearts of gold, all the titles of good fellowship come to you! What, shall we be merry? Shall we have a play extempore?

PRINCE. Content; and the argument shall be thy running away.

FALSTAFF. Ah, no more of that, Hal, an thou lovest me!

Enter the Hostess.

HOSTESS. O Jesu, my lord the Prince—

PRINCE. How now, my lady the hostess! What say’st thou to me?

HOSTESS. Marry, my lord, there is a nobleman of the court at door would speak with you: he says he comes from your father.

PRINCE. Give him as much as will make him a royal man, and send him back again to my mother.

FALSTAFF. What manner of man is he?

HOSTESS. An old man.

FALSTAFF. What doth gravity out of his bed at midnight? Shall I give him his answer?

PRINCE. Prithee do, Jack.

FALSTAFF. Faith, and I’ll send him packing.

PRINCE. Now, sirs: by’r Lady, you fought fair, so did you, Peto. So did you, Bardolph. You are lions, too, you ran away upon instinct, you will not touch the true prince, no, fie!

BARDOLPH. Faith, I ran when I saw others run.

PRINCE. Faith, tell me now in earnest, how came Falstaff’s sword so hacked?

PETO. Why, he hacked it with his dagger, and said he would swear truth out of England but he would make you believe it was done in fight, and persuaded us to do the like.

BARDOLPH. Yea, and to tickle our noses with spear-grass to make them bleed, and then to beslubber our garments with it, and swear it was the blood of true men. I did that I did not this seven year before: I blushed to hear his monstrous devices.

PRINCE. O villain, thou stolest a cup of sack eighteen years ago, and wert taken with the manner, and ever since thou hast blushed extempore. Thou hadst fire and sword on thy side, and yet thou ran’st away. What instinct hadst thou for it?

BARDOLPH. My lord, do you see these meteors? Do you behold these exhalations?

PRINCE. I do.

BARDOLPH. What think you they portend?

PRINCE. Hot livers and cold purses.

BARDOLPH. Choler, my lord, if rightly taken.

PRINCE. No, if rightly taken, halter.

Here comes lean Jack, here comes bare-bone. How now, my sweet creature of bombast? How long is’t ago, Jack, since thou sawest thine own knee?

FALSTAFF. My own knee? When I was about thy years, Hal, I was not an eagle’s talon in the waist. I could have crept into any alderman’s thumb-ring: a plague of sighing and grief! It blows a man up like a bladder. There’s villanous news abroad: here was Sir John Bracy from your father; you must to the court in the morning. That same mad fellow of the north, Percy, and he of Wales that gave Amamon the bastinado, and made Lucifer cuckold, and swore the devil his true liegeman upon the cross of a Welsh hook—what a plague call you him?

POINS. O, Glendower.

FALSTAFF. Owen, Owen, the same; and his son-in-law Mortimer, and old Northumberland, and that sprightly Scot of Scots, Douglas, that runs a-horseback up a hill perpendicular—

PRINCE. He that rides at high speed, and with his pistol kills a sparrow flying.

FALSTAFF. You have hit it.

PRINCE. So did he never the sparrow.

FALSTAFF. Well, that rascal hath good metal in him, he will not run.

PRINCE. Why, what a rascal art thou then, to praise him so for running!

FALSTAFF. A-horseback, ye cuckoo, but afoot he will not budge a foot.

PRINCE. Yes, Jack, upon instinct.

FALSTAFF. I grant ye, upon instinct. Well, he is there too, and one Mordake, and a thousand blue-caps more. Worcester is stolen away tonight; thy father’s beard is turned white with the news. You may buy land now as cheap as stinking mackerel.

PRINCE. Why then, it is like if there come a hot June, and this civil buffeting hold, we shall buy maidenheads as they buy hobnails, by the hundreds.

FALSTAFF. By the mass, lad, thou sayest true. It is like we shall have good trading that way. But tell me, Hal, art not thou horrible afeard? Thou being heir-apparent, could the world pick thee out three such enemies again as that fiend Douglas, that spirit Percy, and that devil Glendower? Art thou not horribly afraid? Doth not thy blood thrill at it?

PRINCE. Not a whit, i’faith. I lack some of thy instinct.

FALSTAFF. Well, thou wilt be horribly chid tomorrow when thou comest to thy father. If thou love me practise an answer.

PRINCE. Do thou stand for my father and examine me upon the particulars of my life.

FALSTAFF. Shall I? Content! This chair shall be my state, this dagger my sceptre, and this cushion my crown.

PRINCE. Thy state is taken for a joint-stool, thy golden sceptre for a leaden dagger, and thy precious rich crown for a pitiful bald crown.

FALSTAFF. Well, an the fire of grace be not quite out of thee, now shalt thou be moved. Give me a cup of sack to make my eyes look red, that it may be thought I have wept, for I must speak in passion, and I will do it in King Cambyses’ vein.

PRINCE. Well, here is my leg.

FALSTAFF. And here is my speech. Stand aside, nobility.

HOSTESS. O Jesu, this is excellent sport, i faith!

FALSTAFF. Weep not, sweet Queen, for trickling tears are vain.

HOSTESS. O, the Father, how he holds his countenance!

FALSTAFF. For God’s sake, lords, convey my tristful Queen, For tears do stop the floodgates of her eyes.

HOSTESS. O Jesu, he doth it as like one of these harlotry players as ever I see!

FALSTAFF. Peace, good pint-pot; peace, good tickle-brain.—Harry, I do not only marvel where thou spendest thy time, but also how thou art accompanied. For though the camomile, the more it is trodden on, the faster it grows, yet youth, the more it is wasted, the sooner it wears. That thou art my son I have partly thy mother’s word, partly my own opinion, but chiefly a villainous trick of thine eye, and a foolish hanging of thy nether lip, that doth warrant me. If then thou be son to me, here lies the point: why, being son to me, art thou so pointed at? Shall the blessed sun of heaven prove a micher, and eat blackberries? A question not to be asked. Shall the son of England prove a thief, and take purses? A question to be asked. There is a thing, Harry, which thou hast often heard of, and it is known to many in our land by the name of pitch. This pitch, as ancient writers do report, doth defile; so doth the company thou keepest. For, Harry, now I do not speak to thee in drink, but in tears; not in pleasure, but in passion; not in words only, but in woes also. And yet there is a virtuous man whom I have often noted in thy company, but I know not his name.

PRINCE. What manner of man, an it like your Majesty?

FALSTAFF. A goodly portly man, i’faith, and a corpulent; of a cheerful look, a pleasing eye, and a most noble carriage; and, as I think, his age some fifty, or, by’r Lady, inclining to threescore; and now I remember me, his name is Falstaff. If that man should be lewdly given, he deceiveth me; for, Harry, I see virtue in his looks. If then the tree may be known by the fruit, as the fruit by the tree, then peremptorily I speak it, there is virtue in that Falstaff; him keep with, the rest banish. And tell me now, thou naughty varlet, tell me where hast thou been this month?

PRINCE. Dost thou speak like a king? Do thou stand for me, and I’ll play my father.

FALSTAFF. Depose me? If thou dost it half so gravely, so majestically, both in word and matter, hang me up by the heels for a rabbit-sucker or a poulter’s hare.

PRINCE. Well, here I am set.

FALSTAFF. And here I stand. Judge, my masters.

PRINCE. Now, Harry, whence come you?

FALSTAFF. My noble lord, from Eastcheap.

PRINCE. The complaints I hear of thee are grievous.

FALSTAFF. ’Sblood, my lord, they are false.—Nay, I’ll tickle ye for a young prince, i’faith.

PRINCE. Swearest thou, ungracious boy? Henceforth ne’er look on me. Thou art violently carried away from grace. There is a devil haunts thee in the likeness of an old fat man. A tun of man is thy companion. Why dost thou converse with that trunk of humours, that bolting-hutch of beastliness, that swollen parcel of dropsies, that huge bombard of sack, that stuffed cloak-bag of guts, that roasted Manningtree ox with the pudding in his belly, that reverend Vice, that grey iniquity, that father ruffian, that vanity in years? Wherein is he good, but to taste sack and drink it? Wherein neat and cleanly, but to carve a capon and eat it? Wherein cunning, but in craft? Wherein crafty, but in villany? Wherein villainous, but in all things? Wherein worthy, but in nothing?

FALSTAFF. I would your Grace would take me with you. Whom means your Grace?

PRINCE. That villainous abominable misleader of youth, Falstaff, that old white-bearded Satan.

FALSTAFF. My lord, the man I know.

PRINCE. I know thou dost.

FALSTAFF. But to say I know more harm in him than in myself were to say more than I know. That he is old, the more the pity, his white hairs do witness it. But that he is, saving your reverence, a whoremaster, that I utterly deny. If sack and sugar be a fault, God help the wicked! If to be old and merry be a sin, then many an old host that I know is damned. If to be fat be to be hated, then Pharaoh’s lean kine are to be loved. No, my good lord, banish Peto, banish Bardolph, banish Poins, but for sweet Jack Falstaff, kind Jack Falstaff, true Jack Falstaff, valiant Jack Falstaff, and therefore more valiant, being as he is old Jack Falstaff, banish not him thy Harry’s company, banish not him thy Harry’s company. Banish plump Jack, and banish all the world.

PRINCE. I do, I will.

[A knocking heard.]

[Exeunt Hostess, Francis and Bardolph.]

Enter Bardolph, running.

BARDOLPH. O, my lord, my lord, the sheriff with a most monstrous watch is at the door.

FALSTAFF. Out, ye rogue! Play out the play. I have much to say in the behalf of that Falstaff.

Enter the Hostess, hastily.

HOSTESS. O Jesu, my lord, my lord—

PRINCE. Heigh, heigh, the devil rides upon a fiddlestick. What’s the matter?

HOSTESS. The sheriff and all the watch are at the door. They are come to search the house. Shall I let them in?

FALSTAFF. Dost thou hear, Hal? Never call a true piece of gold a counterfeit: thou art essentially made without seeming so.

PRINCE. And thou a natural coward without instinct.

FALSTAFF. I deny your major. If you will deny the sheriff, so; if not, let him enter. If I become not a cart as well as another man, a plague on my bringing up! I hope I shall as soon be strangled with a halter as another.

PRINCE. Go hide thee behind the arras. The rest walk up above. Now, my masters, for a true face and good conscience.

FALSTAFF. Both which I have had, but their date is out, and therefore I’ll hide me.

PRINCE. Call in the sheriff.

[Exeunt all but the Prince and Peto.]

Enter Sheriff and the Carrier.

Now, master sheriff, what is your will with me?

SHERIFF. First, pardon me, my lord. A hue and cry Hath followed certain men unto this house.

PRINCE. What men?

SHERIFF. One of them is well known, my gracious lord, A gross fat man.

CARRIER. As fat as butter.

PRINCE. The man I do assure you is not here, For I myself at this time have employ’d him. And, sheriff, I will engage my word to thee, That I will by tomorrow dinner-time, Send him to answer thee, or any man, For anything he shall be charged withal. And so let me entreat you leave the house.

SHERIFF. I will, my lord. There are two gentlemen Have in this robbery lost three hundred marks.

PRINCE. It may be so. If he have robb’d these men, He shall be answerable; and so, farewell.

SHERIFF. Good night, my noble lord.

PRINCE. I think it is good morrow, is it not?

SHERIFF. Indeed, my lord, I think it be two o’clock.

[Exit Sheriff with the Carrier.]

PRINCE. This oily rascal is known as well as Paul’s. Go, call him forth.

PETO. Falstaff!—Fast asleep behind the arras, and snorting like a horse.

PRINCE. Hark, how hard he fetches breath. Search his pockets.

[He searcheth his pocket, and findeth certain papers.]

What hast thou found?

PETO. Nothing but papers, my lord.

PRINCE. Let’s see what they be. Read them.

PETO. [reads] Item, a capon, . . . . . . . . . . . 2s. 2d. Item, sauce, . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4d. Item, sack, two gallons, . . . 5s. 8d. Item, anchovies and sack after supper, 2s. 6d. Item, bread, . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . ob.

PRINCE. O monstrous! But one halfpennyworth of bread to this intolerable deal of sack! What there is else, keep close. We’ll read it at more advantage. There let him sleep till day. I’ll to the court in the morning. We must all to the wars, and thy place shall be honourable. I’ll procure this fat rogue a charge of foot, and I know his death will be a march of twelve score. The money shall be paid back again with advantage. Be with me betimes in the morning; and so, good morrow, Peto.

PETO. Good morrow, good my lord.

SCENE I. Bangor. A Room in the Archdeacon’s House.

Enter Hotspur, Worcester, Mortimer and Glendower.

MORTIMER. These promises are fair, the parties sure, And our induction full of prosperous hope.

HOTSPUR. Lord Mortimer and cousin Glendower, Will you sit down? And uncle Worcester, A plague upon it! I have forgot the map.

GLENDOWER. No, here it is. Sit, cousin Percy, sit, good cousin Hotspur; For by that name as oft as Lancaster doth speak of you His cheek looks pale, and with a rising sigh He wisheth you in heaven.

HOTSPUR. And you in hell, As oft as he hears Owen Glendower spoke of.

GLENDOWER. I cannot blame him. At my nativity The front of heaven was full of fiery shapes, Of burning cressets, and at my birth The frame and huge foundation of the Earth Shaked like a coward.

HOTSPUR. Why, so it would have done At the same season, if your mother’s cat Had but kitten’d, though yourself had never been born.

GLENDOWER. I say the Earth did shake when I was born.

HOTSPUR. And I say the Earth was not of my mind, If you suppose as fearing you it shook.

GLENDOWER. The heavens were all on fire, the Earth did tremble.

HOTSPUR. O, then th’ Earth shook to see the heavens on fire, And not in fear of your nativity. Diseased nature oftentimes breaks forth In strange eruptions; oft the teeming Earth Is with a kind of colic pinch’d and vex’d By the imprisoning of unruly wind Within her womb, which for enlargement striving, Shakes the old beldam Earth, and topples down Steeples and moss-grown towers. At your birth Our grandam Earth, having this distemp’rature, In passion shook.

GLENDOWER. Cousin, of many men I do not bear these crossings. Give me leave To tell you once again that at my birth The front of heaven was full of fiery shapes, The goats ran from the mountains, and the herds Were strangely clamorous to the frighted fields. These signs have mark’d me extraordinary, And all the courses of my life do show I am not in the roll of common men. Where is he living, clipp’d in with the sea That chides the banks of England, Scotland, Wales, Which calls me pupil or hath read to me? And bring him out that is but woman’s son Can trace me in the tedious ways of art, And hold me pace in deep experiments.

HOTSPUR. I think there is no man speaks better Welsh. I’ll to dinner.

MORTIMER. Peace, cousin Percy, you will make him mad.

GLENDOWER. I can call spirits from the vasty deep.

HOTSPUR. Why, so can I, or so can any man, But will they come when you do call for them?

GLENDOWER. Why, I can teach you, cousin, to command the devil.

HOTSPUR. And I can teach thee, coz, to shame the devil By telling truth; tell truth, and shame the devil. If thou have power to raise him, bring him hither, And I’ll be sworn I have power to shame him hence. O, while you live, tell truth, and shame the devil!

MORTIMER. Come, come, no more of this unprofitable chat.

GLENDOWER. Three times hath Henry Bolingbroke made head Against my power; thrice from the banks of Wye And sandy-bottom’d Severn have I sent him Bootless home and weather-beaten back.

HOTSPUR. Home without boots, and in foul weather too! How ’scapes he agues, in the devil’s name!

GLENDOWER. Come, here’s the map, shall we divide our right According to our threefold order ta’en?

MORTIMER. The archdeacon hath divided it Into three limits very equally: England, from Trent and Severn hitherto, By south and east is to my part assign’d: All westward, Wales beyond the Severn shore, And all the fertile land within that bound, To Owen Glendower: and, dear coz, to you The remnant northward lying off from Trent. And our indentures tripartite are drawn, Which being sealed interchangeably, A business that this night may execute, Tomorrow, cousin Percy, you and I, And my good Lord of Worcester will set forth To meet your father and the Scottish power, As is appointed us, at Shrewsbury. My father Glendower is not ready yet, Nor shall we need his help these fourteen days. [To Glendower.] Within that space you may have drawn together Your tenants, friends, and neighbouring gentlemen.

GLENDOWER. A shorter time shall send me to you, lords, And in my conduct shall your ladies come, From whom you now must steal, and take no leave, For there will be a world of water shed Upon the parting of your wives and you.

HOTSPUR. Methinks my moiety, north from Burton here, In quantity equals not one of yours. See how this river comes me cranking in, And cuts me from the best of all my land A huge half-moon, a monstrous cantle out. I’ll have the current in this place dammed up, And here the smug and silver Trent shall run In a new channel, fair and evenly. It shall not wind with such a deep indent, To rob me of so rich a bottom here.

GLENDOWER. Not wind? It shall, it must. You see it doth.

MORTIMER. Yea, but mark how he bears his course, and runs me up With like advantage on the other side, Gelding the opposed continent as much As on the other side it takes from you.

WORCESTER. Yea, but a little charge will trench him here, And on this north side win this cape of land, And then he runs straight and even.

HOTSPUR. I’ll have it so, a little charge will do it.

GLENDOWER. I’ll not have it altered.

HOTSPUR. Will not you?

GLENDOWER. No, nor you shall not.

HOTSPUR. Who shall say me nay?

GLENDOWER. Why, that will I.

HOTSPUR. Let me not understand you, then; speak it in Welsh.

GLENDOWER. I can speak English, lord, as well as you, For I was train’d up in the English Court, Where being but young I framed to the harp Many an English ditty lovely well, And gave the tongue a helpful ornament— A virtue that was never seen in you.

HOTSPUR. Marry, and I am glad of it with all my heart. I had rather be a kitten, and cry “mew” Than one of these same metre ballad-mongers; I had rather hear a brazen canstick turn’d, Or a dry wheel grate on the axletree, And that would set my teeth nothing on edge, Nothing so much as mincing poetry. ’Tis like the forced gait of a shuffling nag.

GLENDOWER. Come, you shall have Trent turn’d.

HOTSPUR. I do not care. I’ll give thrice so much land To any well-deserving friend; But in the way of bargain, mark ye me, I’ll cavil on the ninth part of a hair. Are the indentures drawn? Shall we be gone?

GLENDOWER. The moon shines fair, you may away by night. I’ll haste the writer, and withal Break with your wives of your departure hence. I am afraid my daughter will run mad, So much she doteth on her Mortimer.

MORTIMER. Fie, cousin Percy, how you cross my father!

HOTSPUR. I cannot choose. Sometimes he angers me With telling me of the moldwarp and the ant, Of the dreamer Merlin and his prophecies, And of a dragon and a finless fish, A clip-wing’d griffin and a moulten raven, A couching lion and a ramping cat, And such a deal of skimble-skamble stuff As puts me from my faith. I tell you what— He held me last night at least nine hours In reckoning up the several devils’ names That were his lackeys: I cried “Hum,” and “Well, go to,” But mark’d him not a word. O, he is as tedious As a tired horse, a railing wife, Worse than a smoky house. I had rather live With cheese and garlic in a windmill, far, Than feed on cates and have him talk to me In any summer house in Christendom.

MORTIMER. In faith, he is a worthy gentleman, Exceedingly well read, and profited In strange concealments, valiant as a lion, And wondrous affable, and as bountiful As mines of India. Shall I tell you, cousin? He holds your temper in a high respect And curbs himself even of his natural scope When you come cross his humour, faith, he does. I warrant you that man is not alive Might so have tempted him as you have done Without the taste of danger and reproof: But do not use it oft, let me entreat you.

WORCESTER. In faith, my lord, you are too wilful-blame, And since your coming hither have done enough To put him quite besides his patience. You must needs learn, lord, to amend this fault. Though sometimes it show greatness, courage, blood— And that’s the dearest grace it renders you— Yet oftentimes it doth present harsh rage, Defect of manners, want of government, Pride, haughtiness, opinion, and disdain, The least of which haunting a nobleman Loseth men’s hearts and leaves behind a stain Upon the beauty of all parts besides, Beguiling them of commendation.

HOTSPUR. Well, I am school’d. Good manners be your speed! Here come our wives, and let us take our leave.

Enter Glendower with Lady Mortimer and Lady Percy.

MORTIMER. This is the deadly spite that angers me, My wife can speak no English, I no Welsh.

GLENDOWER. My daughter weeps, she’ll not part with you, She’ll be a soldier too, she’ll to the wars.

MORTIMER. Good father, tell her that she and my aunt Percy Shall follow in your conduct speedily.

[Glendower speaks to Lady Mortimer in Welsh, and she answers him in the same.]

GLENDOWER. She is desperate here, a peevish self-willed harlotry, One that no persuasion can do good upon.

[Lady Mortimer speaks to Mortimer in Welsh.]

MORTIMER. I understand thy looks, that pretty Welsh Which thou pourest down from these swelling heavens I am too perfect in, and but for shame In such a parley should I answer thee.

[Lady Mortimer speaks to him again in Welsh.]

I understand thy kisses, and thou mine, And that’s a feeling disputation, But I will never be a truant, love, Till I have learnt thy language; for thy tongue Makes Welsh as sweet as ditties highly penn’d, Sung by a fair queen in a summer’s bower, With ravishing division, to her lute.

GLENDOWER. Nay, if you melt, then will she run mad.

[Lady Mortimer speaks to Mortimer again in Welsh.]

MORTIMER. O, I am ignorance itself in this!

GLENDOWER. She bids you on the wanton rushes lay you down, And rest your gentle head upon her lap, And she will sing the song that pleaseth you, And on your eyelids crown the god of sleep, Charming your blood with pleasing heaviness, Making such difference ’twixt wake and sleep As is the difference betwixt day and night, The hour before the heavenly-harness’d team Begins his golden progress in the east.

MORTIMER. With all my heart I’ll sit and hear her sing, By that time will our book, I think, be drawn.

GLENDOWER. Do so, and those musicians that shall play to you Hang in the air a thousand leagues from hence, And straight they shall be here: sit, and attend.

HOTSPUR. Come, Kate, thou art perfect in lying down. Come, quick, quick, that I may lay my head in thy lap.

LADY PERCY. Go, ye giddy goose.

[The music plays.]

HOTSPUR. Now I perceive the devil understands Welsh, And ’tis no marvel he’s so humorous. By’r Lady, he’s a good musician.

LADY PERCY. Then should you be nothing but musical, For you are altogether governed by humours. Lie still, ye thief, and hear the lady sing in Welsh.

HOTSPUR. I had rather hear Lady, my brach, howl in Irish.

LADY PERCY. Wouldst thou have thy head broken?

HOTSPUR. No.

LADY PERCY. Then be still.

HOTSPUR. Neither; ’tis a woman’s fault.

LADY PERCY. Now God help thee!

HOTSPUR. To the Welsh lady’s bed.

LADY PERCY. What’s that?

HOTSPUR. Peace, she sings.

[Here the lady sings a Welsh song.]

Come, Kate, I’ll have your song too.

LADY PERCY. Not mine, in good sooth.

HOTSPUR. Not yours, in good sooth! Heart! you swear like a comfit-maker’s wife! “Not you, in good sooth,” and “As true as I live,” and “As God shall mend me,” and “As sure as day” And givest such sarcenet surety for thy oaths As if thou never walk’dst further than Finsbury. Swear me, Kate, like a lady as thou art, A good mouth-filling oath, and leave “In sooth,” And such protest of pepper-gingerbread, To velvet-guards and Sunday citizens. Come, sing.

LADY PERCY. I will not sing.

HOTSPUR. ’Tis the next way to turn tailor, or be redbreast-teacher. An the indentures be drawn, I’ll away within these two hours; and so come in when ye will.

GLENDOWER. Come, come, Lord Mortimer, you are as slow As hot Lord Percy is on fire to go. By this our book is drawn. We’ll but seal, And then to horse immediately.

MORTIMER. With all my heart.

SCENE II. London. A Room in the Palace.

Enter King Henry, Prince Henry and Lords.

KING. Lords, give us leave; the Prince of Wales and I Must have some private conference: but be near at hand, For we shall presently have need of you.

I know not whether God will have it so For some displeasing service I have done, That, in His secret doom, out of my blood He’ll breed revengement and a scourge for me; But thou dost in thy passages of life Make me believe that thou art only mark’d For the hot vengeance and the rod of heaven To punish my mistreadings. Tell me else, Could such inordinate and low desires, Such poor, such bare, such lewd, such mean attempts, Such barren pleasures, rude society, As thou art match’d withal, and grafted to, Accompany the greatness of thy blood, And hold their level with thy princely heart?

PRINCE. So please your Majesty, I would I could Quit all offences with as clear excuse As well as I am doubtless I can purge Myself of many I am charged withal. Yet such extenuation let me beg As, in reproof of many tales devised, By smiling pickthanks and base newsmongers, Which oft the ear of greatness needs must hear, I may for some things true, wherein my youth Hath faulty wander’d and irregular, Find pardon on my true submission.

KING. God pardon thee! Yet let me wonder, Harry, At thy affections, which do hold a wing Quite from the flight of all thy ancestors. Thy place in Council thou hast rudely lost, Which by thy younger brother is supplied, And art almost an alien to the hearts Of all the court and princes of my blood. The hope and expectation of thy time Is ruin’d, and the soul of every man Prophetically do forethink thy fall. Had I so lavish of my presence been, So common-hackney’d in the eyes of men, So stale and cheap to vulgar company, Opinion, that did help me to the crown, Had still kept loyal to possession, And left me in reputeless banishment, A fellow of no mark nor likelihood. By being seldom seen, I could not stir But like a comet I was wonder’d at, That men would tell their children, “This is he.” Others would say, “Where, which is Bolingbroke?” And then I stole all courtesy from heaven, And dress’d myself in such humility That I did pluck allegiance from men’s hearts, Loud shouts and salutations from their mouths, Even in the presence of the crowned King. Thus did I keep my person fresh and new, My presence, like a robe pontifical, Ne’er seen but wonder’d at, and so my state, Seldom but sumptuous, showed like a feast, And won by rareness such solemnity. The skipping King, he ambled up and down With shallow jesters and rash bavin wits, Soon kindled and soon burnt; carded his state, Mingled his royalty, with cap’ring fools, Had his great name profaned with their scorns, And gave his countenance, against his name, To laugh at gibing boys, and stand the push Of every beardless vain comparative; Grew a companion to the common streets, Enfeoff’d himself to popularity, That, being daily swallow’d by men’s eyes, They surfeited with honey, and began To loathe the taste of sweetness, whereof a little More than a little is by much too much. So, when he had occasion to be seen, He was but as the cuckoo is in June, Heard, not regarded; seen, but with such eyes As, sick and blunted with community, Afford no extraordinary gaze, Such as is bent on sun-like majesty When it shines seldom in admiring eyes, But rather drowsed and hung their eyelids down, Slept in his face, and render’d such aspect As cloudy men use to their adversaries, Being with his presence glutted, gorged, and full. And in that very line, Harry, standest thou, For thou hast lost thy princely privilege With vile participation. Not an eye But is a-weary of thy common sight, Save mine, which hath desired to see thee more, Which now doth that I would not have it do, Make blind itself with foolish tenderness.

PRINCE. I shall hereafter, my thrice gracious lord, Be more myself.

KING. For all the world As thou art to this hour was Richard then When I from France set foot at Ravenspurgh, And even as I was then is Percy now. Now, by my sceptre, and my soul to boot, He hath more worthy interest to the state Than thou, the shadow of succession. For of no right, nor colour like to right, He doth fill fields with harness in the realm, Turns head against the lion’s armed jaws, And, being no more in debt to years than thou, Leads ancient lords and reverend bishops on To bloody battles and to bruising arms. What never-dying honour hath he got Against renowned Douglas! whose high deeds, Whose hot incursions and great name in arms, Holds from all soldiers chief majority And military title capital Through all the kingdoms that acknowledge Christ. Thrice hath this Hotspur, Mars in swathing clothes, This infant warrior, in his enterprises Discomfited great Douglas, ta’en him once, Enlarged him, and made a friend of him, To fill the mouth of deep defiance up, And shake the peace and safety of our throne. And what say you to this? Percy, Northumberland, The Archbishop’s Grace of York, Douglas, Mortimer, Capitulate against us and are up. But wherefore do I tell these news to thee? Why, Harry, do I tell thee of my foes, Which art my nearest and dearest enemy? Thou that art like enough, through vassal fear, Base inclination, and the start of spleen, To fight against me under Percy’s pay, To dog his heels, and curtsy at his frowns, To show how much thou art degenerate.

PRINCE. Do not think so, you shall not find it so. And God forgive them that so much have sway’d Your Majesty’s good thoughts away from me! I will redeem all this on Percy’s head, And, in the closing of some glorious day, Be bold to tell you that I am your son, When I will wear a garment all of blood, And stain my favours in a bloody mask, Which, wash’d away, shall scour my shame with it. And that shall be the day, whene’er it lights, That this same child of honour and renown, This gallant Hotspur, this all-praised knight, And your unthought-of Harry chance to meet. For every honour sitting on his helm, Would they were multitudes, and on my head My shames redoubled! For the time will come, That I shall make this northern youth exchange His glorious deeds for my indignities. Percy is but my factor, good my lord, To engross up glorious deeds on my behalf, And I will call him to so strict account That he shall render every glory up, Yea, even the slightest worship of his time, Or I will tear the reckoning from his heart. This in the name of God I promise here, The which if He be pleased I shall perform, I do beseech your Majesty may salve The long-grown wounds of my intemperance. If not, the end of life cancels all bands, And I will die a hundred thousand deaths Ere break the smallest parcel of this vow.

KING. A hundred thousand rebels die in this. Thou shalt have charge and sovereign trust herein.

Enter Sir Walter Blunt.

How now, good Blunt? Thy looks are full of speed.

BLUNT. So hath the business that I come to speak of. Lord Mortimer of Scotland hath sent word That Douglas and the English rebels met The eleventh of this month at Shrewsbury. A mighty and a fearful head they are, If promises be kept on every hand, As ever offer’d foul play in a state.

KING. The Earl of Westmoreland set forth today, With him my son, Lord John of Lancaster, For this advertisement is five days old. On Wednesday next you, Harry, shall set forward, On Thursday we ourselves will march. Our meeting is Bridgenorth. And, Harry, you Shall march through Gloustershire; by which account, Our business valued, some twelve days hence Our general forces at Bridgenorth shall meet. Our hands are full of business. Let’s away, Advantage feeds him fat while men delay.

SCENE III. Eastcheap. A Room in the Boar’s Head Tavern.

Enter Falstaff and Bardolph.

FALSTAFF. Bardolph, am I not fallen away vilely since this last action? Do I not bate? Do I not dwindle? Why, my skin hangs about me like an old lady’s loose gown. I am withered like an old apple-john. Well, I’ll repent, and that suddenly, while I am in some liking. I shall be out of heart shortly, and then I shall have no strength to repent. An I have not forgotten what the inside of a church is made of, I am a peppercorn, a brewer’s horse. The inside of a church! Company, villainous company, hath been the spoil of me.

BARDOLPH. Sir John, you are so fretful, you cannot live long.

FALSTAFF. Why, there is it. Come, sing me a song, make me merry. I was as virtuously given as a gentleman need to be, virtuous enough; swore little; diced not above seven times—a week; went to a bawdy house not above once in a quarter—in an hour; paid money that I borrowed—three or four times; lived well and in good compass; and now I live out of all order, out of all compass.

BARDOLPH. Why, you are so fat, Sir John, that you must needs be out of all compass, out of all reasonable compass, Sir John.

FALSTAFF. Do thou amend thy face, and I’ll amend my life. Thou art our admiral, thou bearest the lantern in the poop, but ’tis in the nose of thee. Thou art the Knight of the Burning Lamp.

BARDOLPH. Why, Sir John, my face does you no harm.

FALSTAFF. No, I’ll be sworn, I make as good use of it as many a man doth of a death’s-head or a memento mori. I never see thy face but I think upon hell-fire, and Dives that lived in purple, for there he is in his robes, burning, burning. If thou wert any way given to virtue, I would swear by thy face. My oath should be, “By this fire, that’s God’s angel.” But thou art altogether given over; and wert indeed, but for the light in thy face, the son of utter darkness. When thou ran’st up Gad’s Hill in the night to catch my horse, if I did not think thou hadst been an ignis fatuus or a ball of wildfire, there’s no purchase in money. O, thou art a perpetual triumph, an everlasting bonfire-light! Thou hast saved me a thousand marks in links and torches, walking with thee in the night betwixt tavern and tavern: but the sack that thou hast drunk me would have bought me lights as good cheap at the dearest chandler’s in Europe. I have maintained that salamander of yours with fire any time this two-and-thirty years, God reward me for it!

BARDOLPH. ’Sblood, I would my face were in your belly!

FALSTAFF. God-a-mercy! so should I be sure to be heartburnt.

How now, Dame Partlet the hen, have you enquired yet who picked my pocket?

HOSTESS. Why, Sir John, what do you think, Sir John, do you think I keep thieves in my house? I have searched, I have enquired, so has my husband, man by man, boy by boy, servant by servant. The tithe of a hair was never lost in my house before.

FALSTAFF. Ye lie, hostess. Bardolph was shaved and lost many a hair, and I’ll be sworn my pocket was picked. Go to, you are a woman, go.

HOSTESS. Who, I? No; I defy thee: God’s light, I was never called so in mine own house before.

FALSTAFF. Go to, I know you well enough.

HOSTESS. No, Sir John, you do not know me, Sir John. I know you, Sir John, you owe me money, Sir John, and now you pick a quarrel to beguile me of it. I bought you a dozen of shirts to your back.

FALSTAFF. Dowlas, filthy dowlas. I have given them away to bakers’ wives; and they have made bolters of them.

HOSTESS. Now, as I am a true woman, holland of eight shillings an ell. You owe money here besides, Sir John, for your diet and by-drinkings, and money lent you, four-and-twenty pound.

FALSTAFF. He had his part of it, let him pay.

HOSTESS. He? Alas, he is poor, he hath nothing.

FALSTAFF. How? Poor? Look upon his face. What call you rich? Let them coin his nose, let them coin his cheeks. I’ll not pay a denier. What, will you make a younker of me? Shall I not take mine ease in mine inn but I shall have my pocket picked? I have lost a seal-ring of my grandfather’s worth forty mark.

HOSTESS. O Jesu, I have heard the Prince tell him, I know not how oft, that that ring was copper.

FALSTAFF. How? The Prince is a Jack, a sneak-up. ’Sblood, an he were here, I would cudgel him like a dog if he would say so.

Enter Prince Henry with Peto, marching. Falstaff meets him, playing on his truncheon like a fife.

How now, lad? Is the wind in that door, i’faith? Must we all march?

BARDOLPH. Yea, two and two, Newgate fashion.

HOSTESS. My lord, I pray you, hear me.

PRINCE. What say’st thou, Mistress Quickly? How doth thy husband? I love him well; he is an honest man.

HOSTESS. Good my lord, hear me.

FALSTAFF. Prithee, let her alone, and list to me.

PRINCE. What say’st thou, Jack?

FALSTAFF. The other night I fell asleep here, behind the arras, and had my pocket picked. This house is turned bawdy-house; they pick pockets.

PRINCE. What didst thou lose, Jack?

FALSTAFF. Wilt thou believe me, Hal, three or four bonds of forty pound apiece and a seal-ring of my grandfather’s.

PRINCE. A trifle, some eightpenny matter.

HOSTESS. So I told him, my lord, and I said I heard your Grace say so. And, my lord, he speaks most vilely of you, like a foul-mouthed man as he is, and said he would cudgel you.

PRINCE. What! he did not?

HOSTESS. There’s neither faith, truth, nor womanhood in me else.

FALSTAFF. There’s no more faith in thee than in a stewed prune, nor no more truth in thee than in a drawn fox; and, for woman-hood, Maid Marian may be the deputy’s wife of the ward to thee. Go, you thing, go.

HOSTESS. Say, what thing, what thing?

FALSTAFF. What thing? Why, a thing to thank God on.

HOSTESS. I am no thing to thank God on, I would thou shouldst know it! I am an honest man’s wife, and, setting thy knighthood aside, thou art a knave to call me so.

FALSTAFF. Setting thy womanhood aside, thou art a beast to say otherwise.

HOSTESS. Say, what beast, thou knave, thou?

FALSTAFF. What beast? Why, an otter.

PRINCE. An otter, Sir John? Why an otter?

FALSTAFF. Why, she’s neither fish nor flesh; a man knows not where to have her.

HOSTESS. Thou art an unjust man in saying so, thou or any man knows where to have me, thou knave, thou.

PRINCE. Thou say’st true, hostess, and he slanders thee most grossly.

HOSTESS. So he doth you, my lord, and said this other day you ought him a thousand pound.

PRINCE. Sirrah, do I owe you a thousand pound?

FALSTAFF.

A thousand pound, Hal? A million. Thy love is worth a million; thou owest me thy love.

HOSTESS. Nay, my lord, he call’d you Jack, and said he would cudgel you.

FALSTAFF. Did I, Bardolph?

BARDOLPH. Indeed, Sir John, you said so.

FALSTAFF. Yea, if he said my ring was copper.

PRINCE. I say ’tis copper. Darest thou be as good as thy word now?

FALSTAFF. Why, Hal, thou knowest, as thou art but man, I dare, but as thou art prince, I fear thee as I fear the roaring of the lion’s whelp.

PRINCE. And why not as the lion?

FALSTAFF. The King himself is to be feared as the lion. Dost thou think I’ll fear thee as I fear thy father? Nay, an I do, I pray God my girdle break.

PRINCE. O, if it should, how would thy guts fall about thy knees! But, sirrah, there’s no room for faith, truth, nor honesty in this bosom of thine; it is all filled up with midriff. Charge an honest woman with picking thy pocket! Why, thou whoreson, impudent, embossed rascal, if there were anything in thy pocket but tavern reckonings, memorandums of bawdy houses, and one poor pennyworth of sugar-candy to make thee long-winded, if thy pocket were enriched with any other injuries but these, I am a villain. And yet you will stand to it, you will not pocket up wrong. Art thou not ashamed!

FALSTAFF. Dost thou hear, Hal? Thou knowest in the state of innocency Adam fell, and what should poor Jack Falstaff do in the days of villainy? Thou seest I have more flesh than another man and therefore more frailty. You confess, then, you picked my pocket?

PRINCE. It appears so by the story.

FALSTAFF. Hostess, I forgive thee. Go make ready breakfast, love thy husband, look to thy servants, cherish thy guests. Thou shalt find me tractable to any honest reason. Thou seest I am pacified still. Nay, prithee, be gone.

[Exit Hostess.]

Now, Hal, to the news at court. For the robbery, lad, how is that answered?

PRINCE. O, my sweet beef, I must still be good angel to thee. The money is paid back again.

FALSTAFF. O, I do not like that paying back, ’tis a double labour.

PRINCE. I am good friends with my father, and may do anything.

FALSTAFF. Rob me the exchequer the first thing thou dost, and do it with unwashed hands too.

BARDOLPH. Do, my lord.

PRINCE. I have procured thee, Jack, a charge of foot.

FALSTAFF. I would it had been of horse. Where shall I find one that can steal well? O, for a fine thief, of the age of two-and-twenty or thereabouts! I am heinously unprovided. Well, God be thanked for these rebels; they offend none but the virtuous. I laud them, I praise them.

PRINCE. Bardolph!

BARDOLPH. My lord?

PRINCE. Go bear this letter to Lord John of Lancaster, To my brother John; this to my Lord of Westmoreland.

[Exit Bardolph.]

Go, Peto, to horse, to horse, for thou and I Have thirty miles to ride yet ere dinner-time.

[Exit Peto.]

Jack, meet me tomorrow in the Temple hall At two o’clock in the afternoon; There shalt thou know thy charge, and there receive Money and order for their furniture. The land is burning, Percy stands on high, And either we or they must lower lie.

FALSTAFF. Rare words! Brave world!—Hostess, my breakfast, come.— O, I could wish this tavern were my drum.

SCENE I. The Rebel Camp near Shrewsbury.

Enter Hotspur, Worcester and Douglas.

HOTSPUR. Well said, my noble Scot. If speaking truth In this fine age were not thought flattery, Such attribution should the Douglas have As not a soldier of this season’s stamp Should go so general current through the world. By God, I cannot flatter, I do defy The tongues of soothers, but a braver place In my heart’s love hath no man than yourself. Nay, task me to my word; approve me, lord.

DOUGLAS. Thou art the king of honour. No man so potent breathes upon the ground But I will beard him.

HOTSPUR. Do so, and ’tis well.

Enter a Messenger with letters.

What letters hast thou there? I can but thank you.

MESSENGER. These letters come from your father.

HOTSPUR. Letters from him! Why comes he not himself?

MESSENGER. He cannot come, my lord, he is grievous sick.

HOTSPUR. Zounds, how has he the leisure to be sick In such a justling time? Who leads his power? Under whose government come they along?

MESSENGER. His letters bear his mind, not I, my lord.

WORCESTER. I prithee, tell me, doth he keep his bed?

MESSENGER. He did, my lord, four days ere I set forth, And at the time of my departure thence He was much fear’d by his physicians.

WORCESTER. I would the state of time had first been whole Ere he by sickness had been visited. His health was never better worth than now.

HOTSPUR. Sick now? Droop now? This sickness doth infect The very life-blood of our enterprise; ’Tis catching hither, even to our camp. He writes me here, that inward sickness— And that his friends by deputation could not So soon be drawn, nor did he think it meet To lay so dangerous and dear a trust On any soul removed but on his own. Yet doth he give us bold advertisement That with our small conjunction we should on, To see how fortune is disposed to us; For, as he writes, there is no quailing now, Because the King is certainly possess’d Of all our purposes. What say you to it?

WORCESTER. Your father’s sickness is a maim to us.

HOTSPUR. A perilous gash, a very limb lopp’d off— And yet, in faith, it is not! His present want Seems more than we shall find it. Were it good To set the exact wealth of all our states All at one cast? To set so rich a main On the nice hazard of one doubtful hour? It were not good, for therein should we read The very bottom and the soul of hope, The very list, the very utmost bound Of all our fortunes.

DOUGLAS. Faith, and so we should, where now remains A sweet reversion. We may boldly spend Upon the hope of what is to come in. A comfort of retirement lives in this.

HOTSPUR. A rendezvous, a home to fly unto, If that the devil and mischance look big Upon the maidenhead of our affairs.

WORCESTER. But yet I would your father had been here. The quality and hair of our attempt Brooks no division. It will be thought By some that know not why he is away, That wisdom, loyalty, and mere dislike Of our proceedings, kept the Earl from hence. And think how such an apprehension May turn the tide of fearful faction, And breed a kind of question in our cause. For well you know we of the off’ring side Must keep aloof from strict arbitrement, And stop all sight-holes, every loop from whence The eye of reason may pry in upon us. This absence of your father’s draws a curtain That shows the ignorant a kind of fear Before not dreamt of.

HOTSPUR. You strain too far. I rather of his absence make this use: It lends a lustre and more great opinion, A larger dare to our great enterprise, Than if the Earl were here; for men must think If we without his help can make a head To push against the kingdom, with his help We shall o’erturn it topsy-turvy down. Yet all goes well, yet all our joints are whole.

DOUGLAS. As heart can think. There is not such a word Spoke in Scotland as this term of fear.

Enter Sir Richard Vernon.

HOTSPUR. My cousin Vernon! Welcome, by my soul.

VERNON. Pray God my news be worth a welcome, lord. The Earl of Westmoreland, seven thousand strong, Is marching hitherwards, with him Prince John.

HOTSPUR. No harm, what more?

VERNON. And further, I have learn’d The King himself in person is set forth, Or hitherwards intended speedily, With strong and mighty preparation.

HOTSPUR. He shall be welcome too. Where is his son, The nimble-footed madcap Prince of Wales, And his comrades, that daffed the world aside And bid it pass?

VERNON. All furnish’d, all in arms; All plumed like estridges that with the wind Bated like eagles having lately bathed, Glittering in golden coats, like images, As full of spirit as the month of May, And gorgeous as the sun at midsummer; Wanton as youthful goats, wild as young bulls. I saw young Harry with his beaver on, His cuisses on his thighs, gallantly arm’d, Rise from the ground like feather’d Mercury, And vaulted with such ease into his seat As if an angel dropp’d down from the clouds, To turn and wind a fiery Pegasus, And witch the world with noble horsemanship.

HOTSPUR. No more, no more! Worse than the sun in March, This praise doth nourish agues. Let them come! They come like sacrifices in their trim, And to the fire-eyed maid of smoky war All hot and bleeding will we offer them. The mailed Mars shall on his altar sit Up to the ears in blood. I am on fire To hear this rich reprisal is so nigh, And yet not ours. Come, let me taste my horse, Who is to bear me like a thunderbolt Against the bosom of the Prince of Wales. Harry to Harry shall, hot horse to horse, Meet and ne’er part till one drop down a corse. O, that Glendower were come!

VERNON. There is more news. I learn’d in Worcester, as I rode along, He cannot draw his power this fourteen days.

DOUGLAS. That’s the worst tidings that I hear of yet.

WORCESTER. Ay, by my faith, that bears a frosty sound.

HOTSPUR. What may the King’s whole battle reach unto?

VERNON. To thirty thousand.

HOTSPUR. Forty let it be. My father and Glendower being both away, The powers of us may serve so great a day. Come, let us take a muster speedily. Doomsday is near; die all, die merrily.

DOUGLAS. Talk not of dying. I am out of fear Of death or death’s hand for this one half year.

SCENE II. A public Road near Coventry.

FALSTAFF. Bardolph, get thee before to Coventry; fill me a bottle of sack. Our soldiers shall march through; we’ll to Sutton Co’fil’ tonight.

BARDOLPH. Will you give me money, captain?

FALSTAFF. Lay out, lay out.

BARDOLPH. This bottle makes an angel.

FALSTAFF. An if it do, take it for thy labour. An if it make twenty, take them all, I’ll answer the coinage. Bid my lieutenant Peto meet me at town’s end.

BARDOLPH. I will, captain: farewell.

FALSTAFF. If I be not ashamed of my soldiers, I am a soused gurnet. I have misused the King’s press damnably. I have got, in exchange of a hundred and fifty soldiers, three hundred and odd pounds. I press me none but good householders, yeomen’s sons, inquire me out contracted bachelors, such as had been asked twice on the banns, such a commodity of warm slaves as had as lief hear the devil as a drum, such as fear the report of a caliver worse than a struck fowl or a hurt wild duck. I pressed me none but such toasts-and-butter, with hearts in their bellies no bigger than pins’ heads, and they have bought out their services; and now my whole charge consists of ancients, corporals, lieutenants, gentlemen of companies—slaves as ragged as Lazarus in the painted cloth, where the glutton’s dogs licked his sores; and such as indeed were never soldiers, but discarded unjust servingmen, younger sons to younger brothers, revolted tapsters, and ostlers trade-fallen; the cankers of a calm world and a long peace, ten times more dishonourable-ragged than an old fazed ancient; and such have I to fill up the rooms of them that have bought out their services, that you would think that I had a hundred and fifty tattered prodigals lately come from swine-keeping, from eating draff and husks. A mad fellow met me on the way, and told me I had unloaded all the gibbets and pressed the dead bodies. No eye hath seen such scarecrows. I’ll not march through Coventry with them, that’s flat. Nay, and the villains march wide betwixt the legs as if they had gyves on, for indeed I had the most of them out of prison. There’s not a shirt and a half in all my company, and the half shirt is two napkins tacked together and thrown over the shoulders like a herald’s coat without sleeves; and the shirt, to say the truth, stolen from my host at Saint Albans, or the red-nose innkeeper of Daventry. But that’s all one; they’ll find linen enough on every hedge.

Enter Prince Henry and the Lord of Westmoreland.

PRINCE. How now, blown Jack? How now, quilt?

FALSTAFF. What, Hal! How now, mad wag? What a devil dost thou in Warwickshire? My good Lord of Westmoreland, I cry you mercy. I thought your honour had already been at Shrewsbury.

WESTMORELAND. Faith, Sir John, ’tis more than time that I were there, and you too, but my powers are there already. The King, I can tell you, looks for us all. We must away all night.

FALSTAFF. Tut, never fear me. I am as vigilant as a cat to steal cream.

PRINCE. I think, to steal cream indeed, for thy theft hath already made thee butter. But tell me, Jack, whose fellows are these that come after?

FALSTAFF. Mine, Hal, mine.

PRINCE. I did never see such pitiful rascals.

FALSTAFF. Tut, tut, good enough to toss; food for powder, food for powder, they’ll fill a pit as well as better. Tush, man, mortal men, mortal men.

WESTMORELAND. Ay, but, Sir John, methinks they are exceeding poor and bare, too beggarly.

FALSTAFF. Faith, for their poverty, I know not where they had that; and for their bareness, I am sure they never learned that of me.

PRINCE. No, I’ll be sworn, unless you call three fingers on the ribs bare. But, sirrah, make haste. Percy is already in the field.

FALSTAFF. What, is the King encamped?

WESTMORELAND. He is, Sir John. I fear we shall stay too long.

FALSTAFF. Well, To the latter end of a fray and the beginning of a feast Fits a dull fighter and a keen guest.

SCENE III. The Rebel Camp near Shrewsbury.

Enter Hotspur, Worcester, Douglas and Vernon.

HOTSPUR. We’ll fight with him tonight.

WORCESTER. It may not be.

DOUGLAS. You give him then advantage.

VERNON. Not a whit.

HOTSPUR. Why say you so? Looks he not for supply?

VERNON. So do we.

HOTSPUR. His is certain, ours is doubtful.

WORCESTER. Good cousin, be advised, stir not tonight.

VERNON. Do not, my lord.

DOUGLAS. You do not counsel well. You speak it out of fear and cold heart.

VERNON. Do me no slander, Douglas; by my life, And I dare well maintain it with my life, If well-respected honour bid me on, I hold as little counsel with weak fear As you, my lord, or any Scot that this day lives. Let it be seen tomorrow in the battle Which of us fears.

DOUGLAS. Yea, or tonight.

VERNON. Content.

HOTSPUR. Tonight, say I.

VERNON. Come, come, it may not be. I wonder much, Being men of such great leading as you are, That you foresee not what impediments Drag back our expedition. Certain horse Of my cousin Vernon’s are not yet come up. Your uncle Worcester’s horse came but today, And now their pride and mettle is asleep, Their courage with hard labour tame and dull, That not a horse is half the half himself.

HOTSPUR. So are the horses of the enemy In general, journey-bated and brought low. The better part of ours are full of rest.

WORCESTER. The number of the King exceedeth ours. For God’s sake, cousin, stay till all come in.

[The trumpet sounds a parley.]

BLUNT. I come with gracious offers from the King, If you vouchsafe me hearing and respect.

HOTSPUR. Welcome, Sir Walter Blunt, and would to God You were of our determination! Some of us love you well, and even those some Envy your great deservings and good name, Because you are not of our quality, But stand against us like an enemy.

BLUNT. And God defend but still I should stand so, So long as out of limit and true rule You stand against anointed majesty. But to my charge. The King hath sent to know The nature of your griefs, and whereupon You conjure from the breast of civil peace Such bold hostility, teaching his duteous land Audacious cruelty. If that the King Have any way your good deserts forgot, Which he confesseth to be manifold, He bids you name your griefs, and with all speed You shall have your desires with interest And pardon absolute for yourself and these Herein misled by your suggestion.

HOTSPUR. The King is kind, and well we know the King Knows at what time to promise, when to pay. My father and my uncle and myself Did give him that same royalty he wears, And when he was not six-and-twenty strong, Sick in the world’s regard, wretched and low, A poor unminded outlaw sneaking home, My father gave him welcome to the shore: And when he heard him swear and vow to God He came but to be Duke of Lancaster, To sue his livery, and beg his peace With tears of innocence and terms of zeal, My father, in kind heart and pity moved, Swore him assistance, and performed it too. Now, when the lords and barons of the realm Perceived Northumberland did lean to him, The more and less came in with cap and knee, Met him in boroughs, cities, villages, Attended him on bridges, stood in lanes, Laid gifts before him, proffer’d him their oaths, Give him their heirs as pages, follow’d him Even at the heels in golden multitudes. He presently, as greatness knows itself, Steps me a little higher than his vow Made to my father while his blood was poor Upon the naked shore at Ravenspurgh; And now forsooth takes on him to reform Some certain edicts and some strait decrees That lie too heavy on the commonwealth; Cries out upon abuses, seems to weep Over his country’s wrongs; and by this face, This seeming brow of justice, did he win The hearts of all that he did angle for; Proceeded further—cut me off the heads Of all the favourites that the absent King In deputation left behind him here When he was personal in the Irish war.

BLUNT. Tut, I came not to hear this.

HOTSPUR. Then to the point. In short time after, he deposed the King, Soon after that deprived him of his life, And, in the neck of that, task’d the whole state. To make that worse, suffer’d his kinsman March (Who is, if every owner were well placed, Indeed his king) to be engaged in Wales, There without ransom to lie forfeited; Disgraced me in my happy victories, Sought to entrap me by intelligence, Rated mine uncle from the Council-board, In rage dismiss’d my father from the court, Broke oath on oath, committed wrong on wrong, And in conclusion drove us to seek out This head of safety, and withal to pry Into his title, the which now we find Too indirect for long continuance.

BLUNT. Shall I return this answer to the King?

HOTSPUR. Not so, Sir Walter. We’ll withdraw awhile. Go to the King, and let there be impawn’d Some surety for a safe return again, And in the morning early shall my uncle Bring him our purposes. And so, farewell.

BLUNT. I would you would accept of grace and love.

HOTSPUR. And maybe so we shall.

BLUNT. Pray God you do.

SCENE IV. York. A Room in the Archbishop’s Palace.

Enter the Archbishop of York and Sir Michael.

ARCHBISHOP. Hie, good Sir Michael; bear this sealed brief With winged haste to the Lord Marshal, This to my cousin Scroop, and all the rest To whom they are directed. If you knew How much they do import, you would make haste.

SIR MICHAEL. My good lord, I guess their tenour.

ARCHBISHOP. Like enough you do. Tomorrow, good Sir Michael, is a day Wherein the fortune of ten thousand men Must bide the touch; for, sir, at Shrewsbury, As I am truly given to understand, The King with mighty and quick-raised power Meets with Lord Harry. And, I fear, Sir Michael, What with the sickness of Northumberland, Whose power was in the first proportion, And what with Owen Glendower’s absence thence, Who with them was a rated sinew too, And comes not in, o’er-rul’d by prophecies, I fear the power of Percy is too weak To wage an instant trial with the King.

SIR MICHAEL. Why, my good lord, you need not fear, There is Douglas and Lord Mortimer.

ARCHBISHOP. No, Mortimer is not there.

SIR MICHAEL. But there is Mordake, Vernon, Lord Harry Percy, And there is my Lord of Worcester, and a head Of gallant warriors, noble gentlemen.

ARCHBISHOP. And so there is. But yet the King hath drawn The special head of all the land together: The Prince of Wales, Lord John of Lancaster, The noble Westmoreland, and warlike Blunt, And many more corrivals and dear men Of estimation and command in arms.

SIR MICHAEL. Doubt not, my lord, they shall be well opposed.

ARCHBISHOP. I hope no less, yet needful ’tis to fear; And to prevent the worst, Sir Michael, speed. For if Lord Percy thrive not, ere the King Dismiss his power he means to visit us, For he hath heard of our confederacy, And ’tis but wisdom to make strong against him. Therefore make haste. I must go write again To other friends; and so, farewell, Sir Michael.

SCENE I. The King’s Camp near Shrewsbury.

Enter King Henry, Prince Henry, Lancaster, Sir Walter Blunt and Sir John Falstaff.

KING. How bloodily the sun begins to peer Above yon bulky hill! The day looks pale At his distemp’rature.

PRINCE. The southern wind Doth play the trumpet to his purposes, And by his hollow whistling in the leaves Foretells a tempest and a blust’ring day.

KING. Then with the losers let it sympathize, For nothing can seem foul to those that win.

[The trumpet sounds.]

Enter Worcester and Vernon.

How, now, my Lord of Worcester! ’Tis not well That you and I should meet upon such terms As now we meet. You have deceived our trust, And made us doff our easy robes of peace, To crush our old limbs in ungentle steel. This is not well, my lord, this is not well. What say you to it? Will you again unknit This churlish knot of all-abhorred war, And move in that obedient orb again Where you did give a fair and natural light, And be no more an exhaled meteor, A prodigy of fear, and a portent Of broached mischief to the unborn times?

WORCESTER. Hear me, my liege: For mine own part, I could be well content To entertain the lag end of my life With quiet hours. For I do protest I have not sought the day of this dislike.

KING. You have not sought it? How comes it, then?

FALSTAFF. Rebellion lay in his way, and he found it.

PRINCE. Peace, chewet, peace!

WORCESTER. It pleased your Majesty to turn your looks Of favour from myself and all our house; And yet I must remember you, my lord, We were the first and dearest of your friends. For you my staff of office did I break In Richard’s time, and posted day and night To meet you on the way, and kiss your hand, When yet you were in place and in account Nothing so strong and fortunate as I. It was myself, my brother, and his son, That brought you home, and boldly did outdare The dangers of the time. You swore to us, And you did swear that oath at Doncaster, That you did nothing purpose ’gainst the state, Nor claim no further than your new-fall’n right, The seat of Gaunt, dukedom of Lancaster. To this we swore our aid. But in short space It rain’d down fortune show’ring on your head, And such a flood of greatness fell on you, What with our help, what with the absent King, What with the injuries of a wanton time, The seeming sufferances that you had borne, And the contrarious winds that held the King So long in his unlucky Irish wars That all in England did repute him dead: And from this swarm of fair advantages You took occasion to be quickly woo’d To gripe the general sway into your hand, Forgot your oath to us at Doncaster; And, being fed by us, you used us so As that ungentle gull, the cuckoo’s bird, Useth the sparrow—did oppress our nest, Grew by our feeding to so great a bulk That even our love durst not come near your sight For fear of swallowing; but with nimble wing We were enforced, for safety sake to fly Out of your sight, and raise this present head, Whereby we stand opposed by such means As you yourself have forged against yourself, By unkind usage, dangerous countenance, And violation of all faith and troth Sworn to us in your younger enterprise.

KING. These things, indeed, you have articulate, Proclaim’d at market crosses, read in churches, To face the garment of rebellion With some fine colour that may please the eye Of fickle changelings and poor discontents, Which gape and rub the elbow at the news Of hurlyburly innovation. And never yet did insurrection want Such water-colours to impaint his cause, Nor moody beggars starving for a time Of pellmell havoc and confusion.

PRINCE. In both your armies there is many a soul Shall pay full dearly for this encounter If once they join in trial. Tell your nephew, The Prince of Wales doth join with all the world In praise of Henry Percy. By my hopes, This present enterprise set off his head, I do not think a braver gentleman, More active-valiant or more valiant-young, More daring or more bold, is now alive To grace this latter age with noble deeds. For my part, I may speak it to my shame, I have a truant been to chivalry, And so I hear he doth account me too. Yet this before my father’s Majesty— I am content that he shall take the odds Of his great name and estimation, And will, to save the blood on either side, Try fortune with him in a single fight.

KING. And, Prince of Wales, so dare we venture thee, Albeit considerations infinite Do make against it.—No, good Worcester, no. We love our people well, even those we love That are misled upon your cousin’s part, And, will they take the offer of our grace, Both he, and they, and you, yea, every man Shall be my friend again, and I’ll be his. So tell your cousin, and then bring me word What he will do. But if he will not yield, Rebuke and dread correction wait on us, And they shall do their office. So, be gone; We will not now be troubled with reply. We offer fair, take it advisedly.

PRINCE. It will not be accepted, on my life. The Douglas and the Hotspur both together Are confident against the world in arms.

[Exit Worcester with Vernon.]

KING. Hence, therefore, every leader to his charge; For on their answer, will we set on them, And God befriend us as our cause is just!

[Exeunt the King, Blunt and Prince John.]

FALSTAFF. Hal, if thou see me down in the battle and bestride me, so; ’tis a point of friendship.

PRINCE. Nothing but a colossus can do thee that friendship. Say thy prayers, and farewell.

FALSTAFF. I would ’twere bedtime, Hal, and all well.

PRINCE. Why, thou owest God a death.

FALSTAFF. ’Tis not due yet, I would be loth to pay Him before His day. What need I be so forward with Him that calls not on me? Well, ’tis no matter, honour pricks me on. Yea, but how if honour prick me off when I come on? How then? Can honor set to a leg? No. Or an arm? No. Or take away the grief of a wound? No. Honour hath no skill in surgery then? No. What is honour? A word. What is in that word, “honour”? What is that “honour”? Air. A trim reckoning! Who hath it? He that died o’ Wednesday. Doth he feel it? No. Doth be hear it? No. ’Tis insensible, then? Yea, to the dead. But will it not live with the living? No. Why? Detraction will not suffer it. Therefore I’ll none of it. Honour is a mere scutcheon. And so ends my catechism.

SCENE II. The Rebel Camp.

WORCESTER. O no, my nephew must not know, Sir Richard, The liberal and kind offer of the King.

VERNON. ’Twere best he did.

WORCESTER. Then are we all undone. It is not possible, it cannot be, The King should keep his word in loving us; He will suspect us still, and find a time To punish this offence in other faults. Suspicion all our lives shall be stuck full of eyes, For treason is but trusted like the fox, Who, ne’er so tame, so cherish’d and lock’d up, Will have a wild trick of his ancestors. Look how we can, or sad or merrily, Interpretation will misquote our looks, And we shall feed like oxen at a stall, The better cherish’d still the nearer death. My nephew’s trespass may be well forgot, It hath the excuse of youth and heat of blood, And an adopted name of privilege— A hare-brain’d Hotspur, govern’d by a spleen. All his offences live upon my head And on his father’s. We did train him on, And, his corruption being ta’en from us, We as the spring of all shall pay for all. Therefore, good cousin, let not Harry know In any case the offer of the King.

VERNON. Deliver what you will, I’ll say ’tis so. Here comes your cousin.

Enter Hotspur and Douglas; Officers and Soldiers behind.

HOTSPUR. My uncle is return’d. Deliver up my Lord of Westmoreland. Uncle, what news?

WORCESTER. The King will bid you battle presently.

DOUGLAS. Defy him by the Lord Of Westmoreland.

HOTSPUR. Lord Douglas, go you and tell him so.

DOUGLAS. Marry, I shall, and very willingly.

WORCESTER. There is no seeming mercy in the King.

HOTSPUR. Did you beg any? God forbid!

WORCESTER. I told him gently of our grievances, Of his oath-breaking; which he mended thus, By now forswearing that he is forsworn. He calls us rebels, traitors, and will scourge With haughty arms this hateful name in us.

Enter Douglas.

DOUGLAS. Arm, gentlemen; to arms! For I have thrown A brave defiance in King Henry’s teeth, And Westmoreland, that was engaged, did bear it, Which cannot choose but bring him quickly on.

WORCESTER. The Prince of Wales stepp’d forth before the King, And, nephew, challenged you to single fight.

HOTSPUR. O, would the quarrel lay upon our heads, And that no man might draw short breath today But I and Harry Monmouth! Tell me, tell me, How show’d his tasking? Seem’d it in contempt?

VERNON. No, by my soul. I never in my life Did hear a challenge urged more modestly, Unless a brother should a brother dare To gentle exercise and proof of arms. He gave you all the duties of a man, Trimm’d up your praises with a princely tongue, Spoke your deservings like a chronicle, Making you ever better than his praise By still dispraising praise valued with you, And, which became him like a prince indeed, He made a blushing cital of himself, And chid his truant youth with such a grace As if he master’d there a double spirit Of teaching and of learning instantly. There did he pause: but let me tell the world, If he outlive the envy of this day, England did never owe so sweet a hope So much misconstrued in his wantonness.

HOTSPUR. Cousin, I think thou art enamoured Upon his follies. Never did I hear Of any prince so wild a liberty. But be he as he will, yet once ere night I will embrace him with a soldier’s arm, That he shall shrink under my courtesy. Arm, arm with speed! And, fellows, soldiers, friends, Better consider what you have to do Than I that have not well the gift of tongue Can lift your blood up with persuasion.

MESSENGER. My lord, here are letters for you.

HOTSPUR. I cannot read them now.— O gentlemen, the time of life is short! To spend that shortness basely were too long If life did ride upon a dial’s point, Still ending at the arrival of an hour. And if we live, we live to tread on kings; If die, brave death, when princes die with us! Now, for our consciences, the arms are fair When the intent of bearing them is just.

MESSENGER. My lord, prepare. The King comes on apace.

HOTSPUR. I thank him that he cuts me from my tale, For I profess not talking. Only this: Let each man do his best. And here draw I A sword whose temper I intend to stain With the best blood that I can meet withal In the adventure of this perilous day. Now, Esperance! Percy! And set on. Sound all the lofty instruments of war, And by that music let us all embrace, For, Heaven to Earth, some of us never shall A second time do such a courtesy.

[The trumpets sound. They embrace, and exeunt.]

SCENE III. Plain between the Camps.

The King enters with his power. Alarum to the battle. Then enter Douglas and Sir Walter Blunt.

BLUNT. What is thy name that in the battle thus Thou crossest me? What honour dost thou seek Upon my head?

DOUGLAS. Know then my name is Douglas, And I do haunt thee in the battle thus Because some tell me that thou art a king.

BLUNT. They tell thee true.

DOUGLAS. The Lord of Stafford dear today hath bought Thy likeness, for instead of thee, King Harry, This sword hath ended him. So shall it thee, Unless thou yield thee as my prisoner.

BLUNT. I was not born a yielder, thou proud Scot, And thou shalt find a king that will revenge Lord Stafford’s death.

[They fight, and Blunt is slain.]

Enter Hotspur.

HOTSPUR. O Douglas, hadst thou fought at Holmedon thus, I never had triumphed upon a Scot.

DOUGLAS. All’s done, all’s won; here breathless lies the King.

HOTSPUR. Where?

DOUGLAS. Here.

HOTSPUR. This, Douglas? No, I know this face full well. A gallant knight he was, his name was Blunt, Semblably furnish’d like the King himself.

DOUGLAS. A fool go with thy soul, whither it goes! A borrow’d title hast thou bought too dear. Why didst thou tell me that thou wert a king?

HOTSPUR. The King hath many marching in his coats.

DOUGLAS. Now, by my sword, I will kill all his coats; I’ll murder all his wardrobe, piece by piece, Until I meet the King.

HOTSPUR. Up, and away! Our soldiers stand full fairly for the day.

Alarums. Enter Falstaff solus.

FALSTAFF. Though I could scape shot-free at London, I fear the shot here. Here’s no scoring but upon the pate.—Soft! who are you? Sir Walter Blunt. There’s honour for you. Here’s no vanity. I am as hot as molten lead, and as heavy too. God keep lead out of me, I need no more weight than mine own bowels. I have led my ragamuffins where they are peppered. There’s not three of my hundred and fifty left alive, and they are for the town’s end, to beg during life. But who comes here?

PRINCE. What, stand’st thou idle here? Lend me thy sword. Many a nobleman lies stark and stiff Under the hoofs of vaunting enemies, Whose deaths are yet unrevenged. I prithee Lend me thy sword.

FALSTAFF. O Hal, I prithee give me leave to breathe awhile. Turk Gregory never did such deeds in arms as I have done this day. I have paid Percy, I have made him sure.

PRINCE. He is indeed, and living to kill thee. I prithee, lend me thy sword.

FALSTAFF. Nay, before God, Hal, if Percy be alive, thou gett’st not my sword; but take my pistol, if thou wilt.

PRINCE. Give it me. What, is it in the case?

FALSTAFF. Ay, Hal, ’tis hot, ’tis hot. There’s that will sack a city.

[The Prince draws out a bottle of sack.]

PRINCE. What, is it a time to jest and dally now?

[Throws it at him, and exit.]

FALSTAFF. Well, if Percy be alive, I’ll pierce him. If he do come in my way, so; if he do not, if I come in his willingly, let him make a carbonado of me. I like not such grinning honour as Sir Walter hath. Give me life, which if I can save, so: if not, honour comes unlooked for, and there’s an end.

SCENE IV. Another Part of the Field.

Alarums. Excursions. Enter King Henry, Prince Henry, Lancaster and Westmoreland.

KING. I prithee, Harry, withdraw thyself, thou bleedest too much. Lord John of Lancaster, go you with him.

LANCASTER. Not I, my lord, unless I did bleed too.

PRINCE. I do beseech your Majesty, make up, Lest your retirement do amaze your friends.

KING. I will do so. My Lord of Westmoreland, Lead him to his tent.

WESTMORELAND. Come, my lord, I’ll lead you to your tent.

PRINCE. Lead me, my lord? I do not need your help, And God forbid a shallow scratch should drive The Prince of Wales from such a field as this, Where stain’d nobility lies trodden on, And rebels’ arms triumph in massacres!

LANCASTER. We breathe too long. Come, cousin Westmoreland, Our duty this way lies. For God’s sake, come.

[Exeunt Lancaster and Westmoreland.]

PRINCE. By Heaven, thou hast deceived me, Lancaster, I did not think thee lord of such a spirit. Before, I loved thee as a brother, John, But now I do respect thee as my soul.

KING. I saw him hold Lord Percy at the point With lustier maintenance than I did look for Of such an ungrown warrior.

PRINCE. O, this boy Lends mettle to us all!

DOUGLAS. Another king! They grow like Hydra’s heads. I am the Douglas, fatal to all those That wear those colours on them. What art thou That counterfeit’st the person of a king?

KING. The King himself, who, Douglas, grieves at heart So many of his shadows thou hast met, And not the very King. I have two boys Seek Percy and thyself about the field, But, seeing thou fall’st on me so luckily, I will assay thee, and defend thyself.

DOUGLAS. I fear thou art another counterfeit, And yet, in faith, thou bearest thee like a king. But mine I am sure thou art, whoe’er thou be, And thus I win thee.

They fight; the King being in danger, enter Prince Henry.

PRINCE. Hold up thy head, vile Scot, or thou art like Never to hold it up again! The spirits Of valiant Shirley, Stafford, Blunt are in my arms. It is the Prince of Wales that threatens thee, Who never promiseth but he means to pay.

[They fight. Douglas flies.]

Cheerly, my lord. How fares your Grace? Sir Nicholas Gawsey hath for succour sent, And so hath Clifton. I’ll to Clifton straight.

KING. Stay and breathe awhile. Thou hast redeem’d thy lost opinion, And show’d thou mak’st some tender of my life, In this fair rescue thou hast brought to me.

PRINCE. O God, they did me too much injury That ever said I hearken’d for your death. If it were so, I might have let alone The insulting hand of Douglas over you, Which would have been as speedy in your end As all the poisonous potions in the world, And saved the treacherous labour of your son.

KING. Make up to Clifton. I’ll to Sir Nicholas Gawsey.

HOTSPUR. If I mistake not, thou art Harry Monmouth.

PRINCE. Thou speak’st as if I would deny my name.

HOTSPUR. My name is Harry Percy.

PRINCE. Why then I see A very valiant rebel of the name. I am the Prince of Wales; and think not, Percy, To share with me in glory any more. Two stars keep not their motion in one sphere, Nor can one England brook a double reign, Of Harry Percy and the Prince of Wales.

HOTSPUR. Nor shall it, Harry, for the hour is come To end the one of us, and would to God Thy name in arms were now as great as mine!

PRINCE. I’ll make it greater ere I part from thee, And all the budding honours on thy crest I’ll crop to make a garland for my head.

HOTSPUR. I can no longer brook thy vanities.

[They fight.]

FALSTAFF. Well said, Hal! To it, Hal! Nay, you shall find no boy’s play here, I can tell you.

Enter Douglas. He fights with Falstaff, who falls down as if he were dead, and exit Douglas. The Prince kills Hotspur.

HOTSPUR. O Harry, thou hast robb’d me of my youth! I better brook the loss of brittle life Than those proud titles thou hast won of me; They wound my thoughts worse than thy sword my flesh. But thoughts, the slaves of life, and life, time’s fool, And time, that takes survey of all the world, Must have a stop. O, I could prophesy, But that the earthy and cold hand of death Lies on my tongue. No, Percy, thou art dust, And food for—

PRINCE. For worms, brave Percy. Fare thee well, great heart! Ill-weaved ambition, how much art thou shrunk! When that this body did contain a spirit, A kingdom for it was too small a bound; But now two paces of the vilest earth Is room enough. This earth that bears thee dead Bears not alive so stout a gentleman. If thou wert sensible of courtesy, I should not make so dear a show of zeal. But let my favours hide thy mangled face; And even in thy behalf I’ll thank myself For doing these fair rites of tenderness. Adieu, and take thy praise with thee to heaven! Thy ignominy sleep with thee in the grave, But not remember’d in thy epitaph!

[Sees Falstaff on the ground.]

What, old acquaintance, could not all this flesh Keep in a little life? Poor Jack, farewell! I could have better spared a better man. O, I should have a heavy miss of thee If I were much in love with vanity. Death hath not struck so fat a deer today, Though many dearer, in this bloody fray. Embowell’d will I see thee by and by, Till then in blood by noble Percy lie.

Falstaff rises up.

FALSTAFF. Embowell’d! If thou embowel me today, I’ll give you leave to powder me and eat me too tomorrow. ’Sblood, ’twas time to counterfeit, or that hot termagant Scot had paid me scot and lot too. Counterfeit? I lie, I am no counterfeit. To die, is to be a counterfeit, for he is but the counterfeit of a man who hath not the life of a man: but to counterfeit dying, when a man thereby liveth, is to be no counterfeit, but the true and perfect image of life indeed. The better part of valour is discretion, in the which better part I have saved my life. Zounds, I am afraid of this gunpowder Percy, though he be dead. How if he should counterfeit too, and rise? By my faith, I am afraid he would prove the better counterfeit. Therefore I’ll make him sure, yea, and I’ll swear I killed him. Why may not he rise as well as I? Nothing confutes me but eyes, and nobody sees me. Therefore, sirrah, with a new wound in your thigh, come you along with me.

[Takes Hotspur on his back.]

Enter Prince Henry and Lancaster.

PRINCE. Come, brother John, full bravely hast thou flesh’d Thy maiden sword.

LANCASTER. But soft, whom have we here? Did you not tell me this fat man was dead?

PRINCE. I did; I saw him dead, Breathless and bleeding on the ground.—Art thou alive? Or is it fantasy that plays upon our eyesight? I prithee, speak, we will not trust our eyes Without our ears. Thou art not what thou seem’st.

FALSTAFF. No, that’s certain, I am not a double man. But if I be not Jack Falstaff, then am I a Jack. There is Percy! [Throwing the body down.] If your father will do me any honour, so; if not, let him kill the next Percy himself. I look to be either earl or duke, I can assure you.

PRINCE. Why, Percy I kill’d myself, and saw thee dead.

FALSTAFF. Didst thou? Lord, Lord, how this world is given to lying! I grant you I was down and out of breath, and so was he, but we rose both at an instant, and fought a long hour by Shrewsbury clock. If I may be believed, so; if not, let them that should reward valour bear the sin upon their own heads. I’ll take it upon my death, I gave him this wound in the thigh. If the man were alive, and would deny it, zounds, I would make him eat a piece of my sword.

LANCASTER. This is the strangest tale that ever I heard.

PRINCE. This is the strangest fellow, brother John.— Come, bring your luggage nobly on your back. For my part, if a lie may do thee grace, I’ll gild it with the happiest terms I have.

[A retreat is sounded.]

The trumpet sounds retreat; the day is ours. Come, brother, let us to the highest of the field, To see what friends are living, who are dead.

[Exeunt Prince Henry and Lancaster.]

FALSTAFF. I’ll follow, as they say, for reward. He that rewards me, God reward him! If I do grow great, I’ll grow less, for I’ll purge, and leave sack, and live cleanly as a nobleman should do.

[Exit, bearing off the body.]

SCENE V. Another Part of the Field.

The trumpets sound. Enter King Henry, Prince Henry, Lancaster, Westmoreland and others, with Worcester and Vernon prisoners.

KING. Thus ever did rebellion find rebuke. Ill-spirited Worcester, did not we send grace, Pardon, and terms of love to all of you? And wouldst thou turn our offers contrary? Misuse the tenour of thy kinsman’s trust? Three knights upon our party slain today, A noble earl, and many a creature else, Had been alive this hour, If, like a Christian, thou hadst truly borne Betwixt our armies true intelligence.

WORCESTER. What I have done my safety urged me to; And I embrace this fortune patiently, Since not to be avoided it falls on me.

KING. Bear Worcester to the death, and Vernon too. Other offenders we will pause upon.

[Exeunt Worcester and Vernon, guarded.]

How goes the field?

PRINCE. The noble Scot, Lord Douglas, when he saw The fortune of the day quite turn’d from him, The noble Percy slain, and all his men Upon the foot of fear, fled with the rest, And, falling from a hill, he was so bruised That the pursuers took him. At my tent The Douglas is, and I beseech your Grace I may dispose of him.

KING. With all my heart.

PRINCE. Then, brother John of Lancaster, to you This honourable bounty shall belong. Go to the Douglas and deliver him Up to his pleasure, ransomless and free. His valours shown upon our crests today Hath taught us how to cherish such high deeds, Even in the bosom of our adversaries.

LANCASTER. I thank your Grace for this high courtesy, Which I shall give away immediately.

KING. Then this remains, that we divide our power. You, son John, and my cousin Westmoreland, Towards York shall bend you with your dearest speed To meet Northumberland and the prelate Scroop, Who, as we hear, are busily in arms. Myself and you, son Harry, will towards Wales, To fight with Glendower and the Earl of March. Rebellion in this land shall lose his sway, Meeting the check of such another day, And since this business so fair is done, Let us not leave till all our own be won.

THE SECOND PART OF KING HENRY THE FOURTH

INDUCTION

ACT I Scene I. The same. Scene II. London. A street. Scene III. York. The Archbishop’s palace.

ACT II Scene I. London. A street. Scene II. London. Another street. Scene III. Warkworth. Before the castle. Scene IV. The Boar’s head Tavern in Eastcheap.

ACT III Scene I. Westminster. The palace. Scene II. Gloucestershire. Before Justice Shallow’s house.

ACT IV Scene I. Yorkshire. Gaultree Forest. Scene II. Another part of the forest. Scene III. Another part of the forest. Scene IV. Westminster. The Jerusalem Chamber. Scene V. Another chamber.

ACT V Scene I. Gloucestershire. Shallow’s house. Scene II. Westminster. The palace. Scene III. Gloucestershire. Shallow’s orchard. Scene IV. London. A street. Scene V. A public place near Westminster Abbey.

RUMOUR, the Presenter. KING HENRY the Fourth. HENRY, PRINCE OF WALES, afterwards King Henry the Fifth. THOMAS, DUKE OF CLARENCE. PRINCE JOHN OF LANCASTER. PRINCE HUMPHREY OF GLOUCESTER. EARL OF WARWICK. EARL OF WESTMORELAND. EARL OF SURREY. GOWER. HARCOURT. SIR JOHN BLUNT. Lord CHIEF JUSTICE of the King’s Bench. A SERVANT of the Chief Justice. Henry Percy, Earl of NORTHUMBERLAND. Scroop, ARCHBISHOP of York. Lord MOWBRAY. Lord HASTINGS. LORD BARDOLPH. SIR JOHN COLEVILLE. TRAVERS and MORTON, retainers of Northumberland. SIR JOHN FALSTAFF. His Page. BARDOLPH. PISTOL. POINS. PETO. SHALLOW and SILENCE, country justices. DAVY, Servant to Shallow. MOULDY, SHADOW, WART, FEEBLE, and BULLCALF, recruits. FANG and SNARE, sheriff’s officers.

LADY NORTHUMBERLAND. LADY PERCY. MISTRESS QUICKLY, hostess of a tavern in Eastcheap. DOLL TEARSHEET.

Lords and Attendants; Porter, Drawers, Musicians, Beadles, Grooms, etc.

A Dancer, speaker of the epilogue.

SCENE: England.

Warkworth. Before the castle.

Enter Rumour, painted full of tongues.

RUMOUR. Open your ears; for which of you will stop The vent of hearing when loud Rumour speaks? I, from the orient to the drooping west, Making the wind my post-horse, still unfold The acts commenced on this ball of earth. Upon my tongues continual slanders ride, The which in every language I pronounce, Stuffing the ears of men with false reports. I speak of peace, while covert enmity Under the smile of safety wounds the world. And who but Rumour, who but only I, Make fearful musters and prepared defence, Whiles the big year, swoln with some other grief, Is thought with child by the stern tyrant war, And no such matter? Rumour is a pipe Blown by surmises, jealousies, conjectures, And of so easy and so plain a stop That the blunt monster with uncounted heads, The still-discordant wav’ring multitude, Can play upon it. But what need I thus My well-known body to anatomize Among my household? Why is Rumour here? I run before King Harry’s victory, Who in a bloody field by Shrewsbury Hath beaten down young Hotspur and his troops, Quenching the flame of bold rebellion Even with the rebels’ blood. But what mean I To speak so true at first? My office is To noise abroad that Harry Monmouth fell Under the wrath of noble Hotspur’s sword, And that the King before the Douglas’ rage Stoop’d his anointed head as low as death. This have I rumour’d through the peasant towns Between that royal field of Shrewsbury And this worm-eaten hold of ragged stone, Where Hotspur’s father, old Northumberland, Lies crafty-sick. The posts come tiring on, And not a man of them brings other news Than they have learnt of me. From Rumour’s tongues They bring smooth comforts false, worse than true wrongs.

SCENE I. The same.

Enter Lord Bardolph.

LORD BARDOLPH. Who keeps the gate here, ho?

The Porter opens the gate.

Where is the Earl?

PORTER. What shall I say you are?

LORD BARDOLPH. Tell thou the Earl That the Lord Bardolph doth attend him here.

PORTER. His lordship is walk’d forth into the orchard. Please it your honour knock but at the gate, And he himself will answer.

Enter Northumberland.

LORD BARDOLPH. Here comes the Earl.

[Exit Porter.]

NORTHUMBERLAND. What news, Lord Bardolph? Every minute now Should be the father of some stratagem. The times are wild; contention, like a horse Full of high feeding, madly hath broke loose And bears down all before him.

LORD BARDOLPH. Noble earl, I bring you certain news from Shrewsbury.

NORTHUMBERLAND. Good, an God will!

LORD BARDOLPH. As good as heart can wish. The King is almost wounded to the death; And, in the fortune of my lord your son, Prince Harry slain outright; and both the Blunts Kill’d by the hand of Douglas; young Prince John And Westmoreland and Stafford fled the field; And Harry Monmouth’s brawn, the hulk Sir John, Is prisoner to your son. O, such a day, So fought, so follow’d and so fairly won, Came not till now to dignify the times Since Caesar’s fortunes!

NORTHUMBERLAND. How is this derived? Saw you the field? Came you from Shrewsbury?

LORD BARDOLPH. I spake with one, my lord, that came from thence, A gentleman well bred and of good name, That freely render’d me these news for true.

NORTHUMBERLAND. Here comes my servant Travers, whom I sent On Tuesday last to listen after news.

Enter Travers.

LORD BARDOLPH. My lord, I over-rode him on the way, And he is furnish’d with no certainties More than he haply may retail from me.

NORTHUMBERLAND. Now, Travers, what good tidings comes with you?

TRAVERS. My lord, Sir John Umfrevile turn’d me back With joyful tidings, and, being better horsed, Out-rode me. After him came spurring hard A gentleman, almost forspent with speed, That stopp’d by me to breathe his bloodied horse. He ask’d the way to Chester, and of him I did demand what news from Shrewsbury. He told me that rebellion had bad luck And that young Harry Percy’s spur was cold. With that he gave his able horse the head, And bending forward struck his armed heels Against the panting sides of his poor jade Up to the rowel-head, and starting so He seem’d in running to devour the way, Staying no longer question.

NORTHUMBERLAND. Ha? Again: Said he young Harry Percy’s spur was cold? Of Hotspur, Coldspur? That rebellion Had met ill luck?

LORD BARDOLPH. My lord, I’ll tell you what: If my young lord your son have not the day, Upon mine honour, for a silken point I’ll give my barony, never talk of it.

NORTHUMBERLAND. Why should that gentleman that rode by Travers Give then such instances of loss?

LORD BARDOLPH. Who, he? He was some hilding fellow that had stolen The horse he rode on, and, upon my life, Spoke at a venture. Look, here comes more news.

Enter Morton.

NORTHUMBERLAND. Yea, this man’s brow, like to a title-leaf, Foretells the nature of a tragic volume. So looks the strand whereon the imperious flood Hath left a witness’d usurpation. Say, Morton, didst thou come from Shrewsbury?

MORTON. I ran from Shrewsbury, my noble lord, Where hateful death put on his ugliest mask To fright our party.

NORTHUMBERLAND. How doth my son and brother? Thou tremblest, and the whiteness in thy cheek Is apter than thy tongue to tell thy errand. Even such a man, so faint, so spiritless, So dull, so dread in look, so woe-begone, Drew Priam’s curtain in the dead of night, And would have told him half his Troy was burnt; But Priam found the fire ere he his tongue, And I my Percy’s death ere thou report’st it. This thou wouldst say: “Your son did thus and thus; Your brother thus; so fought the noble Douglas” Stopping my greedy ear with their bold deeds: But in the end, to stop my ear indeed, Thou hast a sigh to blow away this praise, Ending with “Brother, son, and all are dead.”

MORTON. Douglas is living, and your brother, yet; But, for my lord your son—

NORTHUMBERLAND. Why, he is dead. See what a ready tongue suspicion hath! He that but fears the thing he would not know Hath by instinct knowledge from others’ eyes That what he fear’d is chanced. Yet speak, Morton; Tell thou an earl his divination lies, And I will take it as a sweet disgrace And make thee rich for doing me such wrong.

MORTON. You are too great to be by me gainsaid, Your spirit is too true, your fears too certain.

NORTHUMBERLAND. Yet, for all this, say not that Percy’s dead. I see a strange confession in thine eye. Thou shakest thy head and hold’st it fear or sin To speak a truth. If he be slain, say so. The tongue offends not that reports his death; And he doth sin that doth belie the dead, Not he which says the dead is not alive. Yet the first bringer of unwelcome news Hath but a losing office, and his tongue Sounds ever after as a sullen bell, Remember’d tolling a departing friend.

LORD BARDOLPH. I cannot think, my lord, your son is dead.

MORTON. I am sorry I should force you to believe That which I would to God I had not seen; But these mine eyes saw him in bloody state, Rend’ring faint quittance, wearied and outbreathed, To Harry Monmouth, whose swift wrath beat down The never-daunted Percy to the earth, From whence with life he never more sprung up. In few, his death, whose spirit lent a fire Even to the dullest peasant in his camp, Being bruited once, took fire and heat away From the best-temper’d courage in his troops; For from his metal was his party steel’d, Which once in him abated, all the rest Turn’d on themselves, like dull and heavy lead. And as the thing that’s heavy in itself Upon enforcement flies with greatest speed, So did our men, heavy in Hotspur’s loss, Lend to this weight such lightness with their fear That arrows fled not swifter toward their aim Than did our soldiers, aiming at their safety, Fly from the field. Then was that noble Worcester Too soon ta’en prisoner; and that furious Scot, The bloody Douglas, whose well-labouring sword Had three times slain th’ appearance of the King, Gan vail his stomach and did grace the shame Of those that turn’d their backs, and in his flight, Stumbling in fear, was took. The sum of all Is that the King hath won, and hath sent out A speedy power to encounter you, my lord, Under the conduct of young Lancaster And Westmoreland. This is the news at full.

NORTHUMBERLAND. For this I shall have time enough to mourn. In poison there is physic; and these news, Having been well, that would have made me sick, Being sick, have in some measure made me well. And as the wretch, whose fever-weaken’d joints, Like strengthless hinges, buckle under life, Impatient of his fit, breaks like a fire Out of his keeper’s arms, even so my limbs, Weaken’d with grief, being now enraged with grief, Are thrice themselves. Hence, therefore, thou nice crutch! A scaly gauntlet now with joints of steel Must glove this hand. And hence, thou sickly coif! Thou art a guard too wanton for the head Which princes, flesh’d with conquest, aim to hit. Now bind my brows with iron, and approach The ragged’st hour that time and spite dare bring To frown upon th’ enraged Northumberland! Let heaven kiss earth! Now let not Nature’s hand Keep the wild flood confined! Let order die! And let this world no longer be a stage To feed contention in a lingering act; But let one spirit of the first-born Cain Reign in all bosoms, that, each heart being set On bloody courses, the rude scene may end, And darkness be the burier of the dead!

LORD BARDOLPH. This strained passion doth you wrong, my lord.

MORTON. Sweet earl, divorce not wisdom from your honour. The lives of all your loving complices Lean on your health; the which, if you give o’er To stormy passion, must perforce decay. You cast th’ event of war, my noble lord, And summ’d the account of chance, before you said “Let us make head.” It was your presurmise That in the dole of blows your son might drop. You knew he walk’d o’er perils, on an edge, More likely to fall in than to get o’er. You were advised his flesh was capable Of wounds and scars, and that his forward spirit Would lift him where most trade of danger ranged. Yet did you say “Go forth;” and none of this, Though strongly apprehended, could restrain The stiff-borne action. What hath then befall’n, Or what hath this bold enterprise brought forth, More than that being which was like to be?

LORD BARDOLPH. We all that are engaged to this loss Knew that we ventured on such dangerous seas That if we wrought out life ’twas ten to one; And yet we ventured, for the gain proposed Choked the respect of likely peril fear’d; And since we are o’erset, venture again. Come, we will put forth, body and goods.

MORTON. ’Tis more than time. And, my most noble lord, I hear for certain, and dare speak the truth: The gentle Archbishop of York is up With well-appointed powers. He is a man Who with a double surety binds his followers. My lord your son had only but the corpse, But shadows and the shows of men, to fight; For that same word, “rebellion” did divide The action of their bodies from their souls, And they did fight with queasiness, constrain’d, As men drink potions, that their weapons only Seem’d on our side; but, for their spirits and souls, This word, “rebellion,” it had froze them up, As fish are in a pond. But now the bishop Turns insurrection to religion. Supposed sincere and holy in his thoughts, He’s follow’d both with body and with mind, And doth enlarge his rising with the blood Of fair King Richard, scraped from Pomfret stones; Derives from heaven his quarrel and his cause; Tells them he doth bestride a bleeding land, Gasping for life under great Bolingbroke; And more and less do flock to follow him.

NORTHUMBERLAND. I knew of this before; but, to speak truth, This present grief had wiped it from my mind. Go in with me, and counsel every man The aptest way for safety and revenge. Get posts and letters, and make friends with speed. Never so few, and never yet more need.

SCENE II. London. A street.

Enter Falstaff, with his Page bearing his sword and buckler.

FALSTAFF. Sirrah, you giant, what says the doctor to my water?

PAGE. He said, sir, the water itself was a good healthy water; but, for the party that owed it, he might have moe diseases than he knew for.

FALSTAFF. Men of all sorts take a pride to gird at me. The brain of this foolish-compounded clay, man, is not able to invent anything that tends to laughter more than I invent, or is invented on me. I am not only witty in myself, but the cause that wit is in other men. I do here walk before thee like a sow that hath overwhelmed all her litter but one. If the Prince put thee into my service for any other reason than to set me off, why then I have no judgement. Thou whoreson mandrake, thou art fitter to be worn in my cap than to wait at my heels. I was never manned with an agate till now, but I will inset you neither in gold nor silver, but in vile apparel, and send you back again to your master, for a jewel,—the juvenal, the Prince your master, whose chin is not yet fledge. I will sooner have a beard grow in the palm of my hand than he shall get one off his cheek; and yet he will not stick to say his face is a face-royal. God may finish it when He will, ’tis not a hair amiss yet. He may keep it still at a face-royal, for a barber shall never earn sixpence out of it. And yet he’ll be crowing as if he had writ man ever since his father was a bachelor. He may keep his own grace, but he’s almost out of mine, I can assure him. What said Master Dommelton about the satin for my short cloak and my slops?

PAGE. He said, sir, you should procure him better assurance than Bardolph. He would not take his band and yours, he liked not the security.

FALSTAFF. Let him be damned like the glutton! Pray God his tongue be hotter! A whoreson Achitophel! A rascally yea-forsooth knave, to bear a gentleman in hand, and then stand upon security! The whoreson smooth-pates do now wear nothing but high shoes and bunches of keys at their girdles; and if a man is through with them in honest taking up, then they must stand upon security. I had as lief they would put ratsbane in my mouth as offer to stop it with security. I looked he should have sent me two and twenty yards of satin, as I am a true knight, and he sends me “security”. Well, he may sleep in security, for he hath the horn of abundance, and the lightness of his wife shines through it; and yet cannot he see, though he have his own lanthorn to light him. Where’s Bardolph?

PAGE. He’s gone into Smithfield to buy your worship a horse.

FALSTAFF. I bought him in Paul’s, and he’ll buy me a horse in Smithfield. An I could get me but a wife in the stews, I were manned, horsed, and wived.

Enter the Lord Chief Justice and Servant.

PAGE. Sir, here comes the nobleman that committed the Prince for striking him about Bardolph.

FALSTAFF. Wait close, I will not see him.

CHIEF JUSTICE. What’s he that goes there?

SERVANT. Falstaff, an ’t please your lordship.

CHIEF JUSTICE. He that was in question for the robbery?

SERVANT. He, my lord; but he hath since done good service at Shrewsbury, and, as I hear, is now going with some charge to the Lord John of Lancaster.

CHIEF JUSTICE. What, to York? Call him back again.

SERVANT. Sir John Falstaff!

FALSTAFF. Boy, tell him I am deaf.

PAGE. You must speak louder, my master is deaf.

CHIEF JUSTICE. I am sure he is, to the hearing of anything good. Go pluck him by the elbow, I must speak with him.

SERVANT. Sir John!

FALSTAFF. What! A young knave, and begging! Is there not wars? Is there not employment? Doth not the King lack subjects? Do not the rebels need soldiers? Though it be a shame to be on any side but one, it is worse shame to beg than to be on the worst side, were it worse than the name of rebellion can tell how to make it.

SERVANT. You mistake me, sir.

FALSTAFF. Why, sir, did I say you were an honest man? Setting my knighthood and my soldiership aside, I had lied in my throat if I had said so.

SERVANT. I pray you, sir, then set your knighthood and your soldiership aside, and give me leave to tell you, you lie in your throat, if you say I am any other than an honest man.

FALSTAFF. I give thee leave to tell me so? I lay aside that which grows to me? If thou get’st any leave of me, hang me; if thou tak’st leave, thou wert better be hanged. You hunt counter. Hence! Avaunt!

SERVANT. Sir, my lord would speak with you.

CHIEF JUSTICE. Sir John Falstaff, a word with you.

FALSTAFF. My good lord! God give your lordship good time of day. I am glad to see your lordship abroad. I heard say your lordship was sick. I hope your lordship goes abroad by advice. Your lordship, though not clean past your youth, hath yet some smack of age in you, some relish of the saltness of time; and I most humbly beseech your lordship to have a reverend care of your health.

CHIEF JUSTICE. Sir John, I sent for you before your expedition to Shrewsbury.

FALSTAFF. An ’t please your lordship, I hear his Majesty is returned with some discomfort from Wales.

CHIEF JUSTICE. I talk not of his Majesty. You would not come when I sent for you.

FALSTAFF. And I hear, moreover, his Highness is fallen into this same whoreson apoplexy.

CHIEF JUSTICE. Well, God mend him! I pray you let me speak with you.

FALSTAFF. This apoplexy, as I take it, is a kind of lethargy, an ’t please your lordship, a kind of sleeping in the blood, a whoreson tingling.

CHIEF JUSTICE. What tell you me of it? Be it as it is.

FALSTAFF. It hath it original from much grief, from study and perturbation of the brain. I have read the cause of his effects in Galen. It is a kind of deafness.

CHIEF JUSTICE. I think you are fallen into the disease, for you hear not what I say to you.

FALSTAFF. Very well, my lord, very well. Rather, an ’t please you, it is the disease of not listening, the malady of not marking, that I am troubled withal.

CHIEF JUSTICE. To punish you by the heels would amend the attention of your ears, and I care not if I do become your physician.

FALSTAFF. I am as poor as Job, my lord, but not so patient. Your lordship may minister the potion of imprisonment to me in respect of poverty; but how I should be your patient to follow your prescriptions, the wise may make some dram of a scruple, or indeed a scruple itself.

CHIEF JUSTICE. I sent for you, when there were matters against you for your life, to come speak with me.

FALSTAFF. As I was then advised by my learned counsel in the laws of this land-service, I did not come.

CHIEF JUSTICE. Well, the truth is, Sir John, you live in great infamy.

FALSTAFF. He that buckles himself in my belt cannot live in less.

CHIEF JUSTICE. Your means are very slender, and your waste is great.

FALSTAFF. I would it were otherwise, I would my means were greater and my waist slenderer.

CHIEF JUSTICE. You have misled the youthful prince.

FALSTAFF. The young prince hath misled me. I am the fellow with the great belly, and he my dog.

CHIEF JUSTICE. Well, I am loath to gall a new-healed wound. Your day’s service at Shrewsbury hath a little gilded over your night’s exploit on Gad’s Hill. You may thank th’ unquiet time for your quiet o’er-posting that action.

FALSTAFF. My lord!

CHIEF JUSTICE. But since all is well, keep it so: wake not a sleeping wolf.

FALSTAFF. To wake a wolf is as bad as smell a fox.

CHIEF JUSTICE. What! You are as a candle, the better part burnt out.

FALSTAFF. A wassail candle, my lord, all tallow. If I did say of wax, my growth would approve the truth.

CHIEF JUSTICE. There is not a white hair in your face but should have his effect of gravity.

FALSTAFF. His effect of gravy, gravy, gravy.

CHIEF JUSTICE. You follow the young prince up and down, like his ill angel.

FALSTAFF. Not so, my lord, your ill angel is light, but I hope he that looks upon me will take me without weighing. And yet in some respects, I grant, I cannot go. I cannot tell. Virtue is of so little regard in these costermongers’ times that true valour is turned bearherd; pregnancy is made a tapster, and hath his quick wit wasted in giving reckonings. All the other gifts appertinent to man, as the malice of this age shapes them, are not worth a gooseberry. You that are old consider not the capacities of us that are young; you do measure the heat of our livers with the bitterness of your galls, and we that are in the vaward of our youth, I must confess, are wags too.

CHIEF JUSTICE. Do you set down your name in the scroll of youth, that are written down old with all the characters of age? Have you not a moist eye, a dry hand, a yellow cheek, a white beard, a decreasing leg, an increasing belly? Is not your voice broken, your wind short, your chin double, your wit single, and every part about you blasted with antiquity? And will you yet call yourself young? Fie, fie, fie, Sir John!

FALSTAFF. My lord, I was born about three of the clock in the afternoon, with a white head and something a round belly. For my voice, I have lost it with halloing and singing of anthems. To approve my youth further, I will not. The truth is, I am only old in judgement and understanding; and he that will caper with me for a thousand marks, let him lend me the money, and have at him! For the box of the ear that the Prince gave you, he gave it like a rude prince, and you took it like a sensible lord. I have checked him for it, and the young lion repents. Marry, not in ashes and sackcloth, but in new silk and old sack.

CHIEF JUSTICE. Well, God send the Prince a better companion!

FALSTAFF. God send the companion a better prince! I cannot rid my hands of him.

CHIEF JUSTICE. Well, the King hath severed you and Prince Harry. I hear you are going with Lord John of Lancaster against the Archbishop and the Earl of Northumberland.

FALSTAFF. Yea, I thank your pretty sweet wit for it. But look you pray, all you that kiss my lady Peace at home, that our armies join not in a hot day; for, by the Lord, I take but two shirts out with me, and I mean not to sweat extraordinarily. If it be a hot day, and I brandish anything but a bottle, I would I might never spit white again. There is not a dangerous action can peep out his head but I am thrust upon it. Well, I cannot last ever. But it was alway yet the trick of our English nation, if they have a good thing, to make it too common. If ye will needs say I am an old man, you should give me rest. I would to God my name were not so terrible to the enemy as it is. I were better to be eaten to death with a rust than to be scoured to nothing with perpetual motion.

CHIEF JUSTICE. Well, be honest, be honest, and God bless your expedition!

FALSTAFF. Will your lordship lend me a thousand pound to furnish me forth?

CHIEF JUSTICE. Not a penny, not a penny; you are too impatient to bear crosses. Fare you well: commend me to my cousin Westmoreland.

[Exeunt Chief Justice and Servant.]

FALSTAFF. If I do, fillip me with a three-man beetle. A man can no more separate age and covetousness than he can part young limbs and lechery: but the gout galls the one, and the pox pinches the other; and so both the degrees prevent my curses. Boy!

PAGE. Sir?

FALSTAFF. What money is in my purse?

PAGE. Seven groats and two pence.

FALSTAFF. I can get no remedy against this consumption of the purse. Borrowing only lingers and lingers it out, but the disease is incurable. Go bear this letter to my Lord of Lancaster; this to the Prince; this to the Earl of Westmoreland; and this to old Mistress Ursula, whom I have weekly sworn to marry since I perceived the first white hair of my chin. About it. You know where to find me. [Exit Page.] A pox of this gout! or a gout of this pox! for the one or the other plays the rogue with my great toe. ’Tis no matter if I do halt; I have the wars for my colour, and my pension shall seem the more reasonable. A good wit will make use of anything. I will turn diseases to commodity.

SCENE III. York. The Archbishop’s palace.

Enter the Archbishop, the Lords Hastings, Mowbray and Bardolph.

ARCHBISHOP. Thus have you heard our cause and known our means, And, my most noble friends, I pray you all Speak plainly your opinions of our hopes. And first, Lord Marshal, what say you to it?

MOWBRAY. I well allow the occasion of our arms, But gladly would be better satisfied How in our means we should advance ourselves To look with forehead bold and big enough Upon the power and puissance of the King.

HASTINGS. Our present musters grow upon the file To five and twenty thousand men of choice; And our supplies live largely in the hope Of great Northumberland, whose bosom burns With an incensed fire of injuries.

LORD BARDOLPH. The question then, Lord Hastings, standeth thus: Whether our present five and twenty thousand May hold up head without Northumberland.

HASTINGS. With him we may.

LORD BARDOLPH. Yea, marry, there’s the point: But if without him we be thought too feeble, My judgement is, we should not step too far Till we had his assistance by the hand; For in a theme so bloody-faced as this Conjecture, expectation, and surmise Of aids incertain should not be admitted.

ARCHBISHOP. ’Tis very true, Lord Bardolph, for indeed It was young Hotspur’s case at Shrewsbury.

LORD BARDOLPH. It was, my lord; who lined himself with hope, Eating the air on promise of supply, Flatt’ring himself in project of a power Much smaller than the smallest of his thoughts, And so, with great imagination Proper to madmen, led his powers to death And winking leap’d into destruction.

HASTINGS. But, by your leave, it never yet did hurt To lay down likelihoods and forms of hope.

LORD BARDOLPH. Yes, if this present quality of war— Indeed the instant action, a cause on foot— Lives so in hope, as in an early spring We see th’ appearing buds; which to prove fruit Hope gives not so much warrant as despair That frosts will bite them. When we mean to build, We first survey the plot, then draw the model, And when we see the figure of the house, Then we must rate the cost of the erection, Which if we find outweighs ability, What do we then but draw anew the model In fewer offices, or at least desist To build at all? Much more, in this great work, Which is almost to pluck a kingdom down And set another up, should we survey The plot of situation and the model, Consent upon a sure foundation, Question surveyors, know our own estate, How able such a work to undergo, To weigh against his opposite; or else We fortify in paper and in figures, Using the names of men instead of men, Like one that draws the model of a house Beyond his power to build it, who, half through, Gives o’er and leaves his part-created cost A naked subject to the weeping clouds And waste for churlish winter’s tyranny.

HASTINGS. Grant that our hopes, yet likely of fair birth, Should be still-born, and that we now possess’d The utmost man of expectation, I think we are a body strong enough, Even as we are, to equal with the King.

LORD BARDOLPH. What, is the King but five and twenty thousand?

HASTINGS. To us no more; nay, not so much, Lord Bardolph; For his divisions, as the times do brawl, Are in three heads: one power against the French, And one against Glendower; perforce a third Must take up us. So is the unfirm king In three divided, and his coffers sound With hollow poverty and emptiness.

ARCHBISHOP. That he should draw his several strengths together And come against us in full puissance Need not be dreaded.

HASTINGS. If he should do so, He leaves his back unarm’d, the French and Welsh Baying him at the heels: never fear that.

LORD BARDOLPH. Who is it like should lead his forces hither?

HASTINGS. The Duke of Lancaster and Westmoreland; Against the Welsh, himself and Harry Monmouth; But who is substituted ’gainst the French I have no certain notice.

ARCHBISHOP. Let us on, And publish the occasion of our arms. The commonwealth is sick of their own choice; Their over-greedy love hath surfeited. An habitation giddy and unsure Hath he that buildeth on the vulgar heart. O thou fond many, with what loud applause Didst thou beat heaven with blessing Bolingbroke, Before he was what thou wouldst have him be! And being now trimm’d in thine own desires, Thou, beastly feeder, art so full of him That thou provok’st thyself to cast him up. So, so, thou common dog, didst thou disgorge Thy glutton bosom of the royal Richard; And now thou wouldst eat thy dead vomit up, And howl’st to find it. What trust is in these times? They that, when Richard lived, would have him die Are now become enamour’d on his grave. Thou that threw’st dust upon his goodly head When through proud London he came sighing on After th’ admired heels of Bolingbroke, Criest now “O earth, yield us that king again, And take thou this!” O thoughts of men accursed! Past and to come seems best; things present, worst.

MOWBRAY. Shall we go draw our numbers, and set on?

HASTINGS. We are time’s subjects, and time bids be gone.

SCENE I. London. A street.

Enter Hostess with two Officers, Fang and Snare, following.

HOSTESS. Master Fang, have you entered the action?

FANG. It is entered.

HOSTESS. Where’s your yeoman? Is ’t a lusty yeoman? Will he stand to ’t?

FANG. Sirrah, where’s Snare?

HOSTESS. O Lord, ay! Good Master Snare.

SNARE. Here, here.

FANG. Snare, we must arrest Sir John Falstaff.

HOSTESS. Yea, good Master Snare, I have entered him and all.

SNARE. It may chance cost some of our lives, for he will stab.

HOSTESS. Alas the day, take heed of him. He stabbed me in mine own house, and that most beastly, in good faith. He cares not what mischief he does, if his weapon be out, he will foin like any devil. He will spare neither man, woman, nor child.

FANG. If I can close with him, I care not for his thrust.

HOSTESS. No, nor I neither. I’ll be at your elbow.

FANG. An I but fist him once, an he come but within my vice,—

HOSTESS. I am undone by his going, I warrant you, he’s an infinitive thing upon my score. Good Master Fang, hold him sure. Good Master Snare, let him not ’scape. He comes continuantly to Pie Corner—saving your manhoods—to buy a saddle, and he is indited to dinner to the Lubber’s Head in Lumbert Street, to Master Smooth’s the silkman. I pray you, since my exion is entered, and my case so openly known to the world, let him be brought in to his answer. A hundred mark is a long one for a poor lone woman to bear, and I have borne, and borne, and borne, and have been fubbed off, and fubbed off, and fubbed off, from this day to that day, that it is a shame to be thought on. There is no honesty in such dealing, unless a woman should be made an ass and a beast, to bear every knave’s wrong. Yonder he comes, and that arrant malmsey-nose knave, Bardolph, with him. Do your offices, do your offices, Master Fang and Master Snare, do me, do me, do me your offices.

Enter Falstaff, Bardolph and Page.

FALSTAFF. How now, whose mare’s dead? What’s the matter?

FANG. Sir John, I arrest you at the suit of Mistress Quickly.

FALSTAFF. Away, varlets! Draw, Bardolph! Cut me off the villain’s head. Throw the quean in the channel.

HOSTESS. Throw me in the channel? I’ll throw thee in the channel. Wilt thou, wilt thou, thou bastardly rogue? Murder, murder! Ah, thou honeysuckle villain, wilt thou kill God’s officers and the King’s? Ah, thou honeyseed rogue, thou art a honeyseed, a man-queller, and a woman-queller.

FALSTAFF. Keep them off, Bardolph.

FANG. A rescue! A rescue!

HOSTESS. Good people, bring a rescue or two. Thou wo’t, wo’t thou? Thou wo’t, wo’t ta? Do, do, thou rogue! Do, thou hempseed!

PAGE. Away, you scullion! you rampallian! you fustilarian! I’ll tickle your catastrophe.

Enter the Lord Chief Justice and his men.

CHIEF JUSTICE. What is the matter? Keep the peace here, ho!

HOSTESS. Good my lord, be good to me. I beseech you stand to me.

CHIEF JUSTICE. How now, Sir John? What are you brawling here? Doth this become your place, your time and business? You should have been well on your way to York. Stand from him, fellow. Wherefore hang’st thou upon him?

HOSTESS. O my most worshipful lord, an’t please your Grace, I am a poor widow of Eastcheap, and he is arrested at my suit.

CHIEF JUSTICE. For what sum?

HOSTESS. It is more than for some, my lord; it is for all, all I have. He hath eaten me out of house and home. He hath put all my substance into that fat belly of his: but I will have some of it out again, or I will ride thee o’ nights like the mare.

FALSTAFF. I think I am as like to ride the mare if I have any vantage of ground to get up.

CHIEF JUSTICE. How comes this, Sir John? Fie! what man of good temper would endure this tempest of exclamation? Are you not ashamed to enforce a poor widow to so rough a course to come by her own?

FALSTAFF. What is the gross sum that I owe thee?

HOSTESS. Marry, if thou wert an honest man, thyself and the money too. Thou didst swear to me upon a parcel-gilt goblet, sitting in my Dolphin chamber, at the round table, by a sea-coal fire, upon Wednesday in Wheeson week, when the Prince broke thy head for liking his father to a singing-man of Windsor, thou didst swear to me then, as I was washing thy wound, to marry me and make me my lady thy wife. Canst thou deny it? Did not goodwife Keech, the butcher’s wife, come in then and call me gossip Quickly? coming in to borrow a mess of vinegar, telling us she had a good dish of prawns, whereby thou didst desire to eat some, whereby I told thee they were ill for green wound? And didst thou not, when she was gone downstairs, desire me to be no more so familiarity with such poor people, saying that ere long they should call me madam? And didst thou not kiss me, and bid me fetch thee thirty shillings? I put thee now to thy book-oath. Deny it, if thou canst.

FALSTAFF. My lord, this is a poor mad soul, and she says up and down the town that her eldest son is like you. She hath been in good case, and the truth is, poverty hath distracted her. But for these foolish officers, I beseech you I may have redress against them.

CHIEF JUSTICE. Sir John, Sir John, I am well acquainted with your manner of wrenching the true cause the false way. It is not a confident brow, nor the throng of words that come with such more than impudent sauciness from you, can thrust me from a level consideration. You have, as it appears to me, practised upon the easy-yielding spirit of this woman, and made her serve your uses both in purse and in person.

HOSTESS. Yea, in truth, my lord.

CHIEF JUSTICE. Pray thee, peace. Pay her the debt you owe her, and unpay the villany you have done with her. The one you may do with sterling money, and the other with current repentance.

FALSTAFF. My lord, I will not undergo this sneap without reply. You call honourable boldness impudent sauciness; if a man will make curtsy and say nothing, he is virtuous. No, my lord, my humble duty remembered, I will not be your suitor. I say to you, I do desire deliverance from these officers, being upon hasty employment in the King’s affairs.

CHIEF JUSTICE. You speak as having power to do wrong; but answer in th’ effect of your reputation, and satisfy the poor woman.

FALSTAFF. Come hither, hostess.

Enter Gower.

CHIEF JUSTICE. Now, Master Gower, what news?

GOWER. The King, my lord, and Harry Prince of Wales Are near at hand: the rest the paper tells.

FALSTAFF. As I am a gentleman.

HOSTESS. Faith, you said so before.

FALSTAFF. As I am a gentleman. Come, no more words of it.

HOSTESS. By this heavenly ground I tread on, I must be fain to pawn both my plate and the tapestry of my dining-chambers.

FALSTAFF. Glasses, glasses, is the only drinking. And for thy walls, a pretty slight drollery, or the story of the Prodigal, or the German hunting in waterwork, is worth a thousand of these bed-hangers and these fly-bitten tapestries. Let it be ten pound, if thou canst. Come, an ’twere not for thy humours, there’s not a better wench in England. Go, wash thy face, and draw the action. Come, thou must not be in this humour with me; dost not know me? Come, come, I know thou wast set on to this.

HOSTESS. Pray thee, Sir John, let it be but twenty nobles. I’ faith, I am loath to pawn my plate, so God save me, la!

FALSTAFF. Let it alone, I’ll make other shift: you’ll be a fool still.

HOSTESS. Well, you shall have it, though I pawn my gown. I hope you’ll come to supper. You’ll pay me all together?

FALSTAFF. Will I live? [To Bardolph.] Go, with her, with her. Hook on, hook on.

HOSTESS. Will you have Doll Tearsheet meet you at supper?

FALSTAFF. No more words, let’s have her.

[Exeunt Hostess, Fang, Snare, Bardolph and Page.]

CHIEF JUSTICE. I have heard better news.

FALSTAFF. What’s the news, my lord?

CHIEF JUSTICE. Where lay the King tonight?

GOWER. At Basingstoke, my lord.

FALSTAFF. I hope, my lord, all’s well. What is the news, my lord?

CHIEF JUSTICE. Come all his forces back?

GOWER. No, fifteen hundred foot, five hundred horse Are march’d up to my Lord of Lancaster, Against Northumberland and the Archbishop.

FALSTAFF. Comes the King back from Wales, my noble lord?

CHIEF JUSTICE. You shall have letters of me presently. Come, go along with me, good Master Gower.

CHIEF JUSTICE. What’s the matter?

FALSTAFF. Master Gower, shall I entreat you with me to dinner?

GOWER. I must wait upon my good lord here, I thank you, good Sir John.

CHIEF JUSTICE. Sir John, you loiter here too long, being you are to take soldiers up in counties as you go.

FALSTAFF. Will you sup with me, Master Gower?

CHIEF JUSTICE. What foolish master taught you these manners, Sir John?

FALSTAFF. Master Gower, if they become me not, he was a fool that taught them me. This is the right fencing grace, my lord; tap for tap, and so part fair.

CHIEF JUSTICE. Now the Lord lighten thee, thou art a great fool.

SCENE II. London. Another street.

Enter Prince Henry and Poins.

PRINCE. Before God, I am exceeding weary.

POINS. Is ’t come to that? I had thought weariness durst not have attached one of so high blood.

PRINCE. Faith, it does me, though it discolours the complexion of my greatness to acknowledge it. Doth it not show vilely in me to desire small beer?

POINS. Why, a prince should not be so loosely studied as to remember so weak a composition.

PRINCE. Belike then my appetite was not princely got, for, by my troth, I do now remember the poor creature small beer. But indeed, these humble considerations make me out of love with my greatness. What a disgrace is it to me to remember thy name! or to know thy face tomorrow! or to take note how many pair of silk stockings thou hast—viz. these, and those that were thy peach-coloured ones! or to bear the inventory of thy shirts, as, one for superfluity, and another for use! But that the tennis-court keeper knows better than I, for it is a low ebb of linen with thee when thou keepest not racket there; as thou hast not done a great while, because the rest of thy low countries have made a shift to eat up thy holland. And God knows whether those that bawl out of the ruins of thy linen shall inherit his kingdom: but the midwives say the children are not in the fault; whereupon the world increases, and kindreds are mightily strengthened.

POINS. How ill it follows, after you have laboured so hard, you should talk so idly! Tell me, how many good young princes would do so, their fathers being so sick as yours at this time is?

PRINCE. Shall I tell thee one thing, Poins?

POINS. Yes, faith, and let it be an excellent good thing.

PRINCE. It shall serve among wits of no higher breeding than thine.

POINS. Go to, I stand the push of your one thing that you will tell.

PRINCE. Marry, I tell thee it is not meet that I should be sad, now my father is sick; albeit I could tell to thee, as to one it pleases me, for fault of a better, to call my friend, I could be sad, and sad indeed too.

POINS. Very hardly upon such a subject.

PRINCE. By this hand, thou thinkest me as far in the devil’s book as thou and Falstaff for obduracy and persistency. Let the end try the man. But I tell thee, my heart bleeds inwardly that my father is so sick; and keeping such vile company as thou art hath in reason taken from me all ostentation of sorrow.

POINS. The reason?

PRINCE. What wouldst thou think of me if I should weep?

POINS. I would think thee a most princely hypocrite.

PRINCE. It would be every man’s thought; and thou art a blessed fellow to think as every man thinks. Never a man’s thought in the world keeps the roadway better than thine: every man would think me an hypocrite indeed. And what accites your most worshipful thought to think so?

POINS. Why, because you have been so lewd and so much engraffed to Falstaff.

PRINCE. And to thee.

POINS. By this light, I am well spoke on; I can hear it with mine own ears. The worst that they can say of me is that I am a second brother, and that I am a proper fellow of my hands; and those two things, I confess, I cannot help. By the mass, here comes Bardolph.

Enter Bardolph and Page.

PRINCE. And the boy that I gave Falstaff. He had him from me Christian, and look if the fat villain have not transformed him ape.

BARDOLPH. God save your Grace!

PRINCE. And yours, most noble Bardolph!

POINS. Come, you virtuous ass, you bashful fool, must you be blushing? Wherefore blush you now? What a maidenly man-at-arms are you become! Is ’t such a matter to get a pottle-pot’s maidenhead?

PAGE. He calls me e’en now, my lord, through a red lattice, and I could discern no part of his face from the window. At last I spied his eyes, and methought he had made two holes in the ale-wife’s new petticoat and so peeped through.

PRINCE. Has not the boy profited?

BARDOLPH. Away, you whoreson upright rabbit, away!

PAGE. Away, you rascally Althaea’s dream, away!

PRINCE. Instruct us, boy; what dream, boy?

PAGE. Marry, my lord, Althaea dreamt she was delivered of a firebrand; and therefore I call him her dream.

PRINCE. A crown’s worth of good interpretation. There ’tis, boy.

POINS. O, that this blossom could be kept from cankers! Well, there is sixpence to preserve thee.

BARDOLPH. An you do not make him be hanged among you, the gallows shall have wrong.

PRINCE. And how doth thy master, Bardolph?

BARDOLPH. Well, my lord. He heard of your Grace’s coming to town. There’s a letter for you.

POINS. Delivered with good respect. And how doth the martlemas, your master?

BARDOLPH. In bodily health, sir.

POINS. Marry, the immortal part needs a physician, but that moves not him. Though that be sick, it dies not.

PRINCE. I do allow this wen to be as familiar with me as my dog, and he holds his place, for look you how he writes.

POINS. [Reads.] “John Falstaff, knight,” Every man must know that, as oft as he has occasion to name himself: even like those that are kin to the King, for they never prick their finger but they say, “There’s some of the King’s blood spilt.” “How comes that?” says he that takes upon him not to conceive. The answer is as ready as a borrower’s cap, “I am the King’s poor cousin, sir.”

PRINCE. Nay, they will be kin to us, or they will fetch it from Japhet. But to the letter: “Sir John Falstaff, knight, to the son of the King, nearest his father, Harry Prince of Wales, greeting.”

POINS. Why, this is a certificate.

PRINCE. Peace! “I will imitate the honourable Romans in brevity.”

POINS. He sure means brevity in breath, short-winded.

PRINCE. “I commend me to thee, I commend thee, and I leave thee. Be not too familiar with Poins, for he misuses thy favours so much that he swears thou art to marry his sister Nell. Repent at idle times as thou mayst, and so, farewell. Thine by yea and no, which is as much as to say, as thou usest him—Jack Falstaff with my familiars, John with my brothers and sisters, and Sir John with all Europe.”

POINS. My lord, I’ll steep this letter in sack and make him eat it.

PRINCE. That’s to make him eat twenty of his words. But do you use me thus, Ned? Must I marry your sister?

POINS. God send the wench no worse fortune! But I never said so.

PRINCE. Well, thus we play the fools with the time, and the spirits of the wise sit in the clouds and mock us. Is your master here in London?

BARDOLPH. Yea, my lord.

PRINCE. Where sups he? Doth the old boar feed in the old frank?

BARDOLPH. At the old place, my lord, in Eastcheap.

PRINCE. What company?

PAGE. Ephesians, my lord, of the old church.

PRINCE. Sup any women with him?

PAGE. None, my lord, but old Mistress Quickly and Mistress Doll Tearsheet.

PRINCE. What pagan may that be?

PAGE. A proper gentlewoman, sir, and a kinswoman of my master’s.

PRINCE. Even such kin as the parish heifers are to the town bull. Shall we steal upon them, Ned, at supper?

POINS. I am your shadow, my lord, I’ll follow you.

PRINCE. Sirrah, you boy, and Bardolph, no word to your master that I am yet come to town. There’s for your silence.

BARDOLPH. I have no tongue, sir.

PAGE. And for mine, sir, I will govern it.

PRINCE. Fare you well; go.

[Exeunt Bardolph and Page.]

This Doll Tearsheet should be some road.

POINS. I warrant you, as common as the way between Saint Albans and London.

PRINCE. How might we see Falstaff bestow himself tonight in his true colours, and not ourselves be seen?

POINS. Put on two leathern jerkins and aprons, and wait upon him at his table as drawers.

PRINCE. From a god to a bull? A heavy descension! It was Jove’s case. From a prince to a ’prentice? A low transformation that shall be mine, for in everything the purpose must weigh with the folly. Follow me, Ned.

SCENE III. Warkworth. Before the castle.

Enter Northumberland, Lady Northumberland and Lady Percy.

NORTHUMBERLAND. I pray thee, loving wife, and gentle daughter, Give even way unto my rough affairs; Put not you on the visage of the times And be like them to Percy troublesome.

LADY NORTHUMBERLAND. I have given over, I will speak no more. Do what you will; your wisdom be your guide.

NORTHUMBERLAND. Alas, sweet wife, my honour is at pawn, And, but my going, nothing can redeem it.

LADY PERCY. O yet, for God’s sake, go not to these wars! The time was, father, that you broke your word, When you were more endear’d to it than now; When your own Percy, when my heart’s dear Harry, Threw many a northward look to see his father Bring up his powers; but he did long in vain. Who then persuaded you to stay at home? There were two honours lost, yours and your son’s. For yours, the God of heaven brighten it! For his, it stuck upon him as the sun In the grey vault of heaven, and by his light Did all the chivalry of England move To do brave acts. He was indeed the glass Wherein the noble youth did dress themselves. He had no legs that practis’d not his gait; And speaking thick, which nature made his blemish, Became the accents of the valiant; For those who could speak low and tardily Would turn their own perfection to abuse, To seem like him. So that in speech, in gait, In diet, in affections of delight, In military rules, humours of blood, He was the mark and glass, copy and book, That fashion’d others. And him—O wondrous him! O miracle of men!—him did you leave, Second to none, unseconded by you, To look upon the hideous god of war In disadvantage, to abide a field Where nothing but the sound of Hotspur’s name Did seem defensible: so you left him. Never, O never, do his ghost the wrong To hold your honour more precise and nice With others than with him! Let them alone. The Marshal and the Archbishop are strong: Had my sweet Harry had but half their numbers, Today might I, hanging on Hotspur’s neck, Have talk’d of Monmouth’s grave.

NORTHUMBERLAND. Beshrew your heart, Fair daughter, you do draw my spirits from me With new lamenting ancient oversights. But I must go and meet with danger there, Or it will seek me in another place, And find me worse provided.

LADY NORTHUMBERLAND. O, fly to Scotland, Till that the nobles and the armed commons Have of their puissance made a little taste.

LADY PERCY. If they get ground and vantage of the King, Then join you with them like a rib of steel, To make strength stronger; but, for all our loves, First let them try themselves. So did your son; He was so suffer’d. So came I a widow, And never shall have length of life enough To rain upon remembrance with mine eyes, That it may grow and sprout as high as heaven For recordation to my noble husband.

NORTHUMBERLAND. Come, come, go in with me. ’Tis with my mind As with the tide swell’d up unto his height, That makes a still-stand, running neither way. Fain would I go to meet the Archbishop, But many thousand reasons hold me back. I will resolve for Scotland. There am I, Till time and vantage crave my company.

SCENE IV. London. The Boar’s head Tavern in Eastcheap.

Enter two Drawers.

FIRST DRAWER. What the devil hast thou brought there—applejohns? Thou knowest Sir John cannot endure an applejohn.

SECOND DRAWER. Mass, thou sayest true. The Prince once set a dish of applejohns before him, and told him there were five more Sir Johns, and, putting off his hat, said “I will now take my leave of these six dry, round, old, withered knights.” It angered him to the heart. But he hath forgot that.

FIRST DRAWER. Why then, cover, and set them down, and see if thou canst find out Sneak’s noise. Mistress Tearsheet would fain hear some music. Dispatch. The room where they supped is too hot, they’ll come in straight.

SECOND DRAWER. Sirrah, here will be the Prince and Master Poins anon, and they will put on two of our jerkins and aprons, and Sir John must not know of it. Bardolph hath brought word.

FIRST DRAWER. By the mass, here will be old utis. It will be an excellent stratagem.

SECOND DRAWER. I’ll see if I can find out Sneak.

Enter Hostess and Doll Tearsheet.

HOSTESS. I’ faith, sweetheart, methinks now you are in an excellent good temperality. Your pulsidge beats as extraordinarily as heart would desire, and your colour, I warrant you, is as red as any rose, in good truth, la! But, i’ faith, you have drunk too much canaries, and that’s a marvellous searching wine, and it perfumes the blood ere one can say “What’s this?” How do you now?

DOLL. Better than I was. Hem!

HOSTESS. Why, that’s well said. A good heart’s worth gold. Lo, here comes Sir John.

FALSTAFF. [Singing.] “When Arthur first in court”—Empty the jordan. [Exit First Drawer.]—[Singing.] “And was a worthy king.” How now, Mistress Doll!

HOSTESS. Sick of a calm, yea, good faith.

FALSTAFF. So is all her sect; an they be once in a calm, they are sick.

DOLL. A pox damn you, you muddy rascal, is that all the comfort you give me?

FALSTAFF. You make fat rascals, Mistress Doll.

DOLL. I make them? Gluttony and diseases make them; I make them not.

FALSTAFF. If the cook help to make the gluttony, you help to make the diseases, Doll: we catch of you, Doll. We catch of you; grant that, my poor virtue, grant that.

DOLL. Yea, joy, our chains and our jewels.

FALSTAFF. “Your brooches, pearls, and ouches:”—for to serve bravely is to come halting off, you know; to come off the breach with his pike bent bravely, and to surgery bravely; to venture upon the charged chambers bravely—

DOLL. Hang yourself, you muddy conger, hang yourself!

HOSTESS. By my troth, this is the old fashion; you two never meet but you fall to some discord. You are both, i’ good truth, as rheumatic as two dry toasts. You cannot one bear with another’s confirmities. What the good-year! One must bear, and that must be you. You are the weaker vessel, as as they say, the emptier vessel.

DOLL. Can a weak empty vessel bear such a huge full hogshead? There’s a whole merchant’s venture of Bourdeaux stuff in him; you have not seen a hulk better stuffed in the hold. Come, I’ll be friends with thee, Jack. Thou art going to the wars, and whether I shall ever see thee again or no, there is nobody cares.

Enter First Drawer.

FIRST DRAWER. Sir, Ancient Pistol’s below, and would speak with you.

DOLL. Hang him, swaggering rascal! Let him not come hither: it is the foul-mouthed’st rogue in England.

HOSTESS. If he swagger, let him not come here. No, by my faith, I must live among my neighbours. I’ll no swaggerers. I am in good name and fame with the very best. Shut the door, there comes no swaggerers here. I have not lived all this while to have swaggering now. Shut the door, I pray you.

FALSTAFF. Dost thou hear, hostess?

HOSTESS. Pray ye pacify yourself, Sir John. There comes no swaggerers here.

FALSTAFF. Dost thou hear? It is mine ancient.

HOSTESS. Tilly-fally, Sir John, ne’er tell me. And our ancient swaggerer comes not in my doors. I was before Master Tisick, the debuty t’other day, and, as he said to me,—’twas no longer ago than Wednesday last, i’ good faith,—“Neighbour Quickly,” says he—Master Dumb, our minister, was by then—“Neighbour Quickly,” says he, “receive those that are civil, for,” said he “you are in an ill name.” Now he said so, I can tell whereupon. “For,” says he, “you are an honest woman, and well thought on. Therefore take heed what guests you receive. Receive,” says he, “no swaggering companions.” There comes none here. You would bless you to hear what he said. No, I’ll no swaggerers.

FALSTAFF. He’s no swaggerer, hostess; a tame cheater, i’ faith, you may stroke him as gently as a puppy greyhound. He’ll not swagger with a Barbary hen, if her feathers turn back in any show of resistance. Call him up, drawer.

[Exit First Drawer.]

HOSTESS. Cheater, call you him? I will bar no honest man my house, nor no cheater, but I do not love swaggering, by my troth, I am the worse when one says “swagger.” Feel, masters, how I shake; look you, I warrant you.

DOLL. So you do, hostess.

HOSTESS. Do I? Yea, in very truth, do I, an ’twere an aspen leaf. I cannot abide swaggerers.

Enter Pistol, Bardolph and Page.

PISTOL. God save you, Sir John!

FALSTAFF. Welcome, Ancient Pistol. Here, Pistol, I charge you with a cup of sack. Do you discharge upon mine hostess.

PISTOL. I will discharge upon her, Sir John, with two bullets.

FALSTAFF. She is pistol-proof, sir; you shall not hardly offend her.

HOSTESS. Come, I’ll drink no proofs nor no bullets. I’ll drink no more than will do me good, for no man’s pleasure, I.

PISTOL. Then to you, Mistress Dorothy! I will charge you.

DOLL. Charge me! I scorn you, scurvy companion. What, you poor, base, rascally, cheating, lack-linen mate! Away, you mouldy rogue, away! I am meat for your master.

PISTOL. I know you, Mistress Dorothy.

DOLL. Away, you cut-purse rascal, you filthy bung, away! By this wine, I’ll thrust my knife in your mouldy chaps an you play the saucy cuttle with me. Away, you bottle-ale rascal, you basket-hilt stale juggler, you! Since when, I pray you, sir? God’s light, with two points on your shoulder? Much!

PISTOL. God let me not live, but I will murder your ruff for this.

FALSTAFF. No more, Pistol! I would not have you go off here. Discharge yourself of our company, Pistol.

HOSTESS. No, good Captain Pistol, not here, sweet captain.

DOLL. Captain! Thou abominable damned cheater, art thou not ashamed to be called captain? An captains were of my mind, they would truncheon you out, for taking their names upon you before you have earned them. You a captain? You slave, for what? For tearing a poor whore’s ruff in a bawdy-house? He a captain! Hang him, rogue, he lives upon mouldy stewed prunes and dried cakes. A captain? God’s light, these villains will make the word as odious as the word “occupy,” which was an excellent good word before it was ill sorted. Therefore captains had need look to’t.

BARDOLPH. Pray thee go down, good ancient.

FALSTAFF. Hark thee hither, Mistress Doll.

PISTOL. Not I. I tell thee what, Corporal Bardolph, I could tear her. I’ll be revenged of her.

PAGE. Pray thee go down.

PISTOL. I’ll see her damned first to Pluto’s damned lake, by this hand, to th’ infernal deep, with Erebus and tortures vile also. Hold hook and line, say I. Down, down, dogs! Down, faitors! Have we not Hiren here?

HOSTESS. Good Captain Peesel, be quiet, ’tis very late, i’ faith. I beseek you now, aggravate your choler.

PISTOL. These be good humours, indeed! Shall packhorses And hollow pamper’d jades of Asia, Which cannot go but thirty mile a day, Compare with Caesars and with Cannibals, And Trojant Greeks? Nay, rather damn them with King Cerberus; and let the welkin roar. Shall we fall foul for toys?

HOSTESS. By my troth, captain, these are very bitter words.

BARDOLPH. Be gone, good ancient. This will grow to a brawl anon.

PISTOL. Die men like dogs! Give crowns like pins! Have we not Hiren here?

HOSTESS. O’ my word, captain, there’s none such here. What the good-year, do you think I would deny her? For God’s sake, be quiet.

PISTOL. Then feed and be fat, my fair Calipolis. Come, give ’s some sack. Si fortune me tormente, sperato me contento. Fear we broadsides? No, let the fiend give fire. Give me some sack; and, sweetheart, lie thou there.

[Laying down his sword.]

Come we to full points here? And are etceteras nothings?

FALSTAFF. Pistol, I would be quiet.

PISTOL. Sweet knight, I kiss thy neaf. What! we have seen the seven stars.

DOLL. For God’s sake, thrust him downstairs. I cannot endure such a fustian rascal.

PISTOL. Thrust him downstairs? Know we not Galloway nags?

FALSTAFF. Quoit him down, Bardolph, like a shove-groat shilling. Nay, an he do nothing but speak nothing, he shall be nothing here.

BARDOLPH. Come, get you downstairs.

PISTOL. What! shall we have incision? Shall we imbrue?

[Snatching up his sword.]

Then death rock me asleep, abridge my doleful days! Why then, let grievous, ghastly, gaping wounds Untwind the Sisters Three! Come, Atropos, I say!

HOSTESS. Here’s goodly stuff toward!

FALSTAFF. Give me my rapier, boy.

DOLL. I pray thee, Jack, I pray thee, do not draw.

FALSTAFF. Get you downstairs.

[Drawing, and driving Pistol out.]

HOSTESS. Here’s a goodly tumult! I’ll forswear keeping house, afore I’ll be in these tirrits and frights. So, murder, I warrant now. Alas, alas, put up your naked weapons, put up your naked weapons.

[Exeunt Bardolph and Pistol.]

DOLL. I pray thee, Jack, be quiet. The rascal’s gone. Ah, you whoreson little valiant villain, you!

HOSTESS. Are you not hurt i’ th’ groin? Methought he made a shrewd thrust at your belly.

Enter Bardolph.

FALSTAFF. Have you turned him out o’ doors?

BARDOLPH. Yea, sir. The rascal’s drunk. You have hurt him, sir, i’ th’ shoulder.

FALSTAFF. A rascal, to brave me!

DOLL. Ah, you sweet little rogue, you! Alas, poor ape, how thou sweat’st! Come, let me wipe thy face. Come on, you whoreson chops. Ah, rogue! i’ faith, I love thee. Thou art as valorous as Hector of Troy, worth five of Agamemnon, and ten times better than the Nine Worthies. Ah, villain!

FALSTAFF. A rascally slave! I will toss the rogue in a blanket.

DOLL. Do, an thou darest for thy heart. An thou dost, I’ll canvass thee between a pair of sheets.

Enter Music.

PAGE. The music is come, sir.

FALSTAFF. Let them play. Play, sirs. Sit on my knee, Doll. A rascal bragging slave! The rogue fled from me like quicksilver.

DOLL. I’ faith, and thou followedst him like a church. Thou whoreson little tidy Bartholomew boar-pig, when wilt thou leave fighting a-days and foining a-nights, and begin to patch up thine old body for heaven?

Enter, behind, Prince Henry and Poins, disguised as drawers.

FALSTAFF. Peace, good Doll, do not speak like a death’s-head; do not bid me remember mine end.

DOLL. Sirrah, what humour ’s the Prince of?

FALSTAFF. A good shallow young fellow; he would have made a good pantler; he would ha’ chipped bread well.

DOLL. They say Poins has a good wit.

FALSTAFF. He a good wit? Hang him, baboon! His wit’s as thick as Tewksbury mustard; there’s no more conceit in him than is in a mallet.

DOLL. Why does the Prince love him so, then?

FALSTAFF. Because their legs are both of a bigness, and he plays at quoits well, and eats conger and fennel, and drinks off candles’ ends for flap-dragons, and rides the wild mare with the boys, and jumps upon joint stools, and swears with a good grace, and wears his boots very smooth like unto the sign of the Leg, and breeds no bate with telling of discreet stories, and such other gambol faculties he has that show a weak mind and an able body, for the which the Prince admits him: for the Prince himself is such another. The weight of a hair will turn the scales between their avoirdupois.

PRINCE. Would not this nave of a wheel have his ears cut off?

POINS. Let’s beat him before his whore.

PRINCE. Look whe’er the withered elder hath not his poll clawed like a parrot.

POINS. Is it not strange that desire should so many years outlive performance?

FALSTAFF. Kiss me, Doll.

PRINCE. Saturn and Venus this year in conjunction! What says th’ almanac to that?

POINS. And look whether the fiery Trigon, his man, be not lisping to his master’s old tables, his note-book, his counsel-keeper.

FALSTAFF. Thou dost give me flattering busses.

DOLL. By my troth, I kiss thee with a most constant heart.

FALSTAFF. I am old, I am old.

DOLL. I love thee better than I love e’er a scurvy young boy of them all.

FALSTAFF. What stuff wilt have a kirtle of? I shall receive money o’ Thursday; shalt have a cap tomorrow. A merry song! Come, it grows late, we’ll to bed. Thou’lt forget me when I am gone.

DOLL. By my troth, thou’lt set me a-weeping an thou sayest so. Prove that ever I dress myself handsome till thy return. Well, hearken a’ th’ end.

FALSTAFF. Some sack, Francis.

PRINCE & POINS. Anon, anon, sir.

[Coming forward.]

FALSTAFF. Ha! A bastard son of the King’s? And art thou not Poins his brother?

PRINCE. Why, thou globe of sinful continents, what a life dost thou lead!

FALSTAFF. A better than thou. I am a gentleman, thou art a drawer.

PRINCE. Very true, sir, and I come to draw you out by the ears.

HOSTESS. O, the Lord preserve thy Grace! By my troth, welcome to London. Now, the Lord bless that sweet face of thine! O Jesu, are you come from Wales?

FALSTAFF. Thou whoreson mad compound of majesty, by this light flesh and corrupt blood, thou art welcome.

DOLL. How? You fat fool, I scorn you.

POINS. My lord, he will drive you out of your revenge and turn all to a merriment, if you take not the heat.

PRINCE. You whoreson candle-mine, you, how vilely did you speak of me even now before this honest, virtuous, civil gentlewoman!

HOSTESS. God’s blessing of your good heart! and so she is, by my troth.

FALSTAFF. Didst thou hear me?

PRINCE. Yea, and you knew me, as you did when you ran away by Gad’s Hill. You knew I was at your back, and spoke it on purpose to try my patience.

FALSTAFF. No, no, no, not so; I did not think thou wast within hearing.

PRINCE. I shall drive you then to confess the wilful abuse, and then I know how to handle you.

FALSTAFF. No abuse, Hal, o’ mine honour, no abuse.

PRINCE. Not to dispraise me, and call me pantler and bread-chipper and I know not what?

FALSTAFF. No abuse, Hal.

POINS. No abuse?

FALSTAFF. No abuse, Ned, i’ th’ world, honest Ned, none. I dispraised him before the wicked, that the wicked might not fall in love with thee; in which doing, I have done the part of a careful friend and a true subject, and thy father is to give me thanks for it. No abuse, Hal; none, Ned, none; no, faith, boys, none.

PRINCE. See now whether pure fear and entire cowardice doth not make thee wrong this virtuous gentlewoman to close with us. Is she of the wicked? Is thine hostess here of the wicked? Or is thy boy of the wicked? Or honest Bardolph, whose zeal burns in his nose, of the wicked?

POINS. Answer, thou dead elm, answer.

FALSTAFF. The fiend hath pricked down Bardolph irrecoverable, and his face is Lucifer’s privy-kitchen, where he doth nothing but roast malt-worms. For the boy, there is a good angel about him, but the devil outbids him too.

PRINCE. For the women?

FALSTAFF. For one of them, she’s in hell already, and burns poor souls. For th’ other, I owe her money, and whether she be damned for that I know not.

HOSTESS. No, I warrant you.

FALSTAFF. No, I think thou art not, I think thou art quit for that. Marry, there is another indictment upon thee, for suffering flesh to be eaten in thy house, contrary to the law, for the which I think thou wilt howl.

HOSTESS. All victuallers do so. What’s a joint of mutton or two in a whole Lent?

PRINCE. You, gentlewoman.

DOLL. What says your Grace?

FALSTAFF. His grace says that which his flesh rebels against.

[Peto knocks at door.]

HOSTESS. Who knocks so loud at door? Look to th’ door there, Francis.

Enter Peto.

PRINCE. Peto, how now, what news?

PETO. The King your father is at Westminster, And there are twenty weak and wearied posts Come from the north: and as I came along, I met and overtook a dozen captains, Bareheaded, sweating, knocking at the taverns, And asking everyone for Sir John Falstaff.

PRINCE. By heaven, Poins, I feel me much to blame, So idly to profane the precious time, When tempest of commotion, like the south Borne with black vapour, doth begin to melt And drop upon our bare unarmed heads. Give me my sword and cloak. Falstaff, good night.

[Exeunt Prince, Poins, Peto and Bardolph.]

FALSTAFF. Now comes in the sweetest morsel of the night, and we must hence and leave it unpicked. [Knocking within.] More knocking at the door?

How now, what’s the matter?

BARDOLPH. You must away to court, sir, presently. A dozen captains stay at door for you.

FALSTAFF. [To the Page.] Pay the musicians, sirrah. Farewell, hostess; farewell, Doll. You see, my good wenches, how men of merit are sought after. The undeserver may sleep, when the man of action is called on. Farewell, good wenches. If I be not sent away post, I will see you again ere I go.

DOLL. I cannot speak; if my heart be not ready to burst—well, sweet Jack, have a care of thyself.

FALSTAFF. Farewell, farewell.

[Exeunt Falstaff and Bardolph.]

HOSTESS. Well, fare thee well. I have known thee these twenty-nine years, come peascod-time; but an honester and truer-hearted man—well, fare thee well.

BARDOLPH. [Within.] Mistress Tearsheet!

HOSTESS. What’s the matter?

BARDOLPH. [Within.] Bid Mistress Tearsheet come to my master.

HOSTESS. O, run, Doll, run; run, good Doll; come. She comes blubbered. Yea, will you come, Doll?

SCENE I. Westminster. The palace.

Enter the King in his nightgown, with a Page.

KING. Go call the Earls of Surrey and of Warwick; But, ere they come, bid them o’er-read these letters And well consider of them. Make good speed.

How many thousands of my poorest subjects Are at this hour asleep! O sleep, O gentle sleep, Nature’s soft nurse, how have I frighted thee, That thou no more wilt weigh my eyelids down And steep my senses in forgetfulness? Why rather, sleep, liest thou in smoky cribs, Upon uneasy pallets stretching thee, And hushed with buzzing night-flies to thy slumber, Than in the perfumed chambers of the great, Under the canopies of costly state, And lull’d with sound of sweetest melody? O thou dull god, why liest thou with the vile In loathsome beds, and leavest the kingly couch A watch-case or a common ’larum-bell? Wilt thou upon the high and giddy mast Seal up the ship-boy’s eyes, and rock his brains In cradle of the rude imperious surge And in the visitation of the winds, Who take the ruffian billows by the top, Curling their monstrous heads and hanging them With deafing clamour in the slippery clouds, That with the hurly death itself awakes? Canst thou, O partial sleep, give thy repose To the wet sea-boy in an hour so rude, And in the calmest and most stillest night, With all appliances and means to boot, Deny it to a King? Then happy low, lie down! Uneasy lies the head that wears a crown.

Enter Warwick and Surrey.

WARWICK. Many good morrows to your Majesty!

KING. Is it good morrow, lords?

WARWICK. ’Tis one o’clock, and past.

KING. Why then, good morrow to you all, my lords. Have you read o’er the letters that I sent you?

WARWICK. We have, my liege.

KING. Then you perceive the body of our kingdom How foul it is, what rank diseases grow, And with what danger, near the heart of it.

WARWICK. It is but as a body yet distemper’d, Which to his former strength may be restored With good advice and little medicine. My Lord Northumberland will soon be cool’d.

KING. O God, that one might read the book of fate, And see the revolution of the times Make mountains level, and the continent, Weary of solid firmness, melt itself Into the sea, and other times to see The beachy girdle of the ocean Too wide for Neptune’s hips; how chance’s mocks And changes fill the cup of alteration With divers liquors! O, if this were seen, The happiest youth, viewing his progress through, What perils past, what crosses to ensue, Would shut the book, and sit him down and die. ’Tis not ten years gone Since Richard and Northumberland, great friends, Did feast together, and in two years after Were they at wars. It is but eight years since This Percy was the man nearest my soul, Who like a brother toil’d in my affairs And laid his love and life under my foot, Yea, for my sake, even to the eyes of Richard Gave him defiance. But which of you was by— [To Warwick.] You, cousin Nevil, as I may remember— When Richard, with his eye brimful of tears, Then check’d and rated by Northumberland, Did speak these words, now proved a prophecy? “Northumberland, thou ladder by the which My cousin Bolingbroke ascends my throne” Though then, God knows, I had no such intent, But that necessity so bow’d the state That I and greatness were compell’d to kiss— “The time shall come,” thus did he follow it, “The time will come, that foul sin, gathering head, Shall break into corruption”—so went on, Foretelling this same time’s condition And the division of our amity.

WARWICK. There is a history in all men’s lives Figuring the natures of the times deceased; The which observed, a man may prophesy, With a near aim, of the main chance of things As yet not come to life, who in their seeds And weak beginning lie intreasured. Such things become the hatch and brood of time; And by the necessary form of this King Richard might create a perfect guess That great Northumberland, then false to him, Would of that seed grow to a greater falseness, Which should not find a ground to root upon, Unless on you.

KING. Are these things then necessities? Then let us meet them like necessities; And that same word even now cries out on us. They say the bishop and Northumberland Are fifty thousand strong.

WARWICK. It cannot be, my lord. Rumour doth double, like the voice and echo, The numbers of the feared. Please it your Grace To go to bed. Upon my soul, my lord, The powers that you already have sent forth Shall bring this prize in very easily. To comfort you the more, I have received A certain instance that Glendower is dead. Your majesty hath been this fortnight ill, And these unseason’d hours perforce must add Unto your sickness.

KING. I will take your counsel. And were these inward wars once out of hand, We would, dear lords, unto the Holy Land.

SCENE II. Gloucestershire. Before Justice Shallow’s house.

Enter Shallow and Silence, meeting; Mouldy, Shadow, Wart, Feeble, Bullcalf, a Servant or two with them.

SHALLOW. Come on, come on, come on. Give me your hand, sir, give me your hand, sir. An early stirrer, by the rood! And how doth my good cousin Silence?

SILENCE. Good morrow, good cousin Shallow.

SHALLOW. And how doth my cousin, your bedfellow? And your fairest daughter and mine, my god-daughter Ellen?

SILENCE. Alas, a black ousel, cousin Shallow!

SHALLOW. By yea and no, sir, I dare say my cousin William is become a good scholar. He is at Oxford still, is he not?

SILENCE. Indeed, sir, to my cost.

SHALLOW. He must, then, to the Inns o’ Court shortly. I was once of Clement’s Inn, where I think they will talk of mad Shallow yet.

SILENCE. You were called “lusty Shallow” then, cousin.

SHALLOW. By the mass, I was called anything, and I would have done anything indeed too, and roundly too. There was I, and little John Doit of Staffordshire, and black George Barnes, and Francis Pickbone, and Will Squele, a Cotswold man. You had not four such swinge-bucklers in all the Inns o’ Court again. And I may say to you, we knew where the bona-robas were and had the best of them all at commandment. Then was Jack Falstaff, now Sir John, a boy, and page to Thomas Mowbray, Duke of Norfolk.

SILENCE. This Sir John, cousin, that comes hither anon about soldiers?

SHALLOW. The same Sir John, the very same. I see him break Scoggin’s head at the court gate, when he was a crack not thus high; and the very same day did I fight with one Sampson Stockfish, a fruiterer, behind Gray’s Inn. Jesu, Jesu, the mad days that I have spent! And to see how many of my old acquaintance are dead!

SILENCE. We shall all follow, cousin.

SHALLOW. Certain, ’tis certain, very sure, very sure. Death, as the Psalmist saith, is certain to all, all shall die. How a good yoke of bullocks at Stamford fair?

SILENCE. By my troth, I was not there.

SHALLOW. Death is certain. Is old Double of your town living yet?

SILENCE. Dead, sir.

SHALLOW. Jesu, Jesu, dead! He drew a good bow, and dead! He shot a fine shoot. John a Gaunt loved him well, and betted much money on his head. Dead! He would have clapped i’ th’ clout at twelve score, and carried you a forehand shaft a fourteen and fourteen and a half, that it would have done a man’s heart good to see. How a score of ewes now?

SILENCE. Thereafter as they be; a score of good ewes may be worth ten pounds.

SHALLOW. And is old Double dead?

SILENCE. Here come two of Sir John Falstaff’s men, as I think.

Enter Bardolph and one with him.

SHALLOW. Good morrow, honest gentlemen.

BARDOLPH. I beseech you, which is Justice Shallow?

SHALLOW. I am Robert Shallow, sir, a poor esquire of this county, and one of the King’s justices of the peace. What is your good pleasure with me?

BARDOLPH. My captain, sir, commends him to you, my captain, Sir John Falstaff, a tall gentleman, by heaven, and a most gallant leader.

SHALLOW. He greets me well, sir. I knew him a good backsword man. How doth the good knight? May I ask how my lady his wife doth?

BARDOLPH. Sir, pardon. A soldier is better accommodated than with a wife.

SHALLOW. It is well said, in faith, sir, and it is well said indeed too. “Better accommodated!” It is good, yea indeed, is it. Good phrases are surely, and ever were, very commendable. “Accommodated.” It comes of accommodo. Very good, a good phrase.

BARDOLPH. Pardon, sir, I have heard the word—phrase call you it? By this day, I know not the phrase, but I will maintain the word with my sword to be a soldier-like word, and a word of exceeding good command, by heaven. Accommodated, that is when a man is, as they say, accommodated, or when a man is being whereby he may be thought to be accommodated; which is an excellent thing.

SHALLOW. It is very just.

Look, here comes good Sir John. Give me your good hand, give me your worship’s good hand. By my troth, you like well and bear your years very well. Welcome, good Sir John.

FALSTAFF. I am glad to see you well, good Master Robert Shallow. Master Surecard, as I think?

SHALLOW. No, Sir John, it is my cousin Silence, in commission with me.

FALSTAFF. Good Master Silence, it well befits you should be of the peace.

SILENCE. Your good worship is welcome.

FALSTAFF. Fie, this is hot weather, gentlemen. Have you provided me here half a dozen sufficient men?

SHALLOW. Marry, have we, sir. Will you sit?

FALSTAFF. Let me see them, I beseech you.

SHALLOW. Where’s the roll? Where’s the roll? Where’s the roll? Let me see, let me see, let me see. So, so, so, so, so, so, so. Yea, marry, sir: Ralph Mouldy! Let them appear as I call; let them do so, let them do so. Let me see; where is Mouldy?

MOULDY. Here, an it please you.

SHALLOW. What think you, Sir John? A good-limbed fellow, young, strong, and of good friends.

FALSTAFF. Is thy name Mouldy?

MOULDY. Yea, an’t please you.

FALSTAFF. ’Tis the more time thou wert used.

SHALLOW. Ha, ha, ha! most excellent, i’ faith! Things that are mouldy lack use. Very singular good, in faith, well said, Sir John, very well said.

FALSTAFF. Prick him.

MOULDY. I was pricked well enough before, an you could have let me alone. My old dame will be undone now for one to do her husbandry and her drudgery. You need not to have pricked me, there are other men fitter to go out than I.

FALSTAFF. Go to. Peace, Mouldy; you shall go. Mouldy, it is time you were spent.

MOULDY. Spent?

SHALLOW. Peace, fellow, peace. Stand aside. Know you where you are? For th’other, Sir John. Let me see: Simon Shadow!

FALSTAFF. Yea, marry, let me have him to sit under. He’s like to be a cold soldier.

SHALLOW. Where’s Shadow?

SHADOW. Here, sir.

FALSTAFF. Shadow, whose son art thou?

SHADOW. My mother’s son, sir.

FALSTAFF. Thy mother’s son! Like enough, and thy father’s shadow. So the son of the female is the shadow of the male. It is often so indeed, but much of the father’s substance!

SHALLOW. Do you like him, Sir John?

FALSTAFF. Shadow will serve for summer. Prick him, for we have a number of shadows to fill up the muster-book.

SHALLOW. Thomas Wart!

FALSTAFF. Where’s he?

WART. Here, sir.

FALSTAFF. Is thy name Wart?

WART. Yea, sir.

FALSTAFF. Thou art a very ragged wart.

SHALLOW. Shall I prick him, Sir John?

FALSTAFF. It were superfluous, for his apparel is built upon his back, and the whole frame stands upon pins. Prick him no more.

SHALLOW. Ha, ha, ha! You can do it, sir, you can do it. I commend you well. Francis Feeble!

FEEBLE. Here, sir.

FALSTAFF. What trade art thou, Feeble?

FEEBLE. A woman’s tailor, sir.

SHALLOW. Shall I prick him, sir?

FALSTAFF. You may; but if he had been a man’s tailor, he’d ha’ pricked you. Wilt thou make as many holes in an enemy’s battle as thou hast done in a woman’s petticoat?

FEEBLE. I will do my good will, sir, you can have no more.

FALSTAFF. Well said, good woman’s tailor! Well said, courageous Feeble! Thou wilt be as valiant as the wrathful dove or most magnanimous mouse. Prick the woman’s tailor: well, Master Shallow, deep, Master Shallow.

FEEBLE. I would Wart might have gone, sir.

FALSTAFF. I would thou wert a man’s tailor, that thou mightst mend him and make him fit to go. I cannot put him to a private soldier that is the leader of so many thousands. Let that suffice, most forcible Feeble.

FEEBLE. It shall suffice, sir.

FALSTAFF. I am bound to thee, reverend Feeble. Who is next?

SHALLOW. Peter Bullcalf o’ th’ green!

FALSTAFF. Yea, marry, let’s see Bullcalf.

BULLCALF. Here, sir.

FALSTAFF. Fore God, a likely fellow! Come, prick me Bullcalf till he roar again.

BULLCALF. O Lord! good my lord captain—

FALSTAFF. What, dost thou roar before thou art pricked?

BULLCALF. O Lord, sir, I am a diseased man.

FALSTAFF. What disease hast thou?

BULLCALF. A whoreson cold, sir, a cough, sir, which I caught with ringing in the King’s affairs upon his coronation day, sir.

FALSTAFF. Come, thou shalt go to the wars in a gown; we will have away thy cold, and I will take such order that thy friends shall ring for thee. Is here all?

SHALLOW. Here is two more called than your number; you must have but four here, sir; and so, I pray you, go in with me to dinner.

FALSTAFF. Come, I will go drink with you, but I cannot tarry dinner. I am glad to see you, by my troth, Master Shallow.

SHALLOW. O, Sir John, do you remember since we lay all night in the windmill in Saint George’s Field?

FALSTAFF. No more of that, good Master Shallow, no more of that.

SHALLOW. Ha, ’twas a merry night. And is Jane Nightwork alive?

FALSTAFF. She lives, Master Shallow.

SHALLOW. She never could away with me.

FALSTAFF. Never, never; she would always say she could not abide Master Shallow.

SHALLOW. By the mass, I could anger her to th’ heart. She was then a bona-roba. Doth she hold her own well?

FALSTAFF. Old, old, Master Shallow.

SHALLOW. Nay, she must be old, she cannot choose but be old, certain she’s old, and had Robin Nightwork by old Nightwork before I came to Clement’s Inn.

SILENCE. That’s fifty-five year ago.

SHALLOW. Ha, cousin Silence, that thou hadst seen that that this knight and I have seen! Ha, Sir John, said I well?

FALSTAFF. We have heard the chimes at midnight, Master Shallow.

SHALLOW. That we have, that we have, that we have; in faith, Sir John, we have. Our watchword was “Hem boys!” Come, let’s to dinner; come, let’s to dinner. Jesus, the days that we have seen! Come, come.

[Exeunt Falstaff, Shallow and Silence.]

BULLCALF. Good Master Corporate Bardolph, stand my friend; and here’s four Harry ten shillings in French crowns for you. In very truth, sir, I had as lief be hanged, sir, as go. And yet, for mine own part, sir, I do not care; but rather because I am unwilling, and, for mine own part, have a desire to stay with my friends; else, sir, I did not care, for mine own part, so much.

BARDOLPH. Go to, stand aside.

MOULDY. And, good Master Corporal Captain, for my old dame’s sake, stand my friend. She has nobody to do anything about her when I am gone, and she is old, and cannot help herself. You shall have forty, sir.

FEEBLE. By my troth, I care not. A man can die but once. We owe God a death. I’ll ne’er bear a base mind. An ’t be my destiny, so; an ’t be not, so. No man’s too good to serve’s prince, and let it go which way it will, he that dies this year is quit for the next.

BARDOLPH. Well said, th’art a good fellow.

FEEBLE. Faith, I’ll bear no base mind.

Enter Falstaff and the Justices.

FALSTAFF. Come, sir, which men shall I have?

SHALLOW. Four of which you please.

BARDOLPH. Sir, a word with you. I have three pound to free Mouldy and Bullcalf.

FALSTAFF. Go to, well.

SHALLOW. Come, Sir John, which four will you have?

FALSTAFF. Do you choose for me.

SHALLOW. Marry, then, Mouldy, Bullcalf, Feeble, and Shadow.

FALSTAFF. Mouldy and Bullcalf: for you, Mouldy, stay at home till you are past service; and for your part, Bullcalf, grow till you come unto it. I will none of you.

SHALLOW. Sir John, Sir John, do not yourself wrong. They are your likeliest men, and I would have you served with the best.

FALSTAFF. Will you tell me, Master Shallow, how to choose a man? Care I for the limb, the thews, the stature, bulk, and big assemblance of a man? Give me the spirit, Master Shallow. Here’s Wart. You see what a ragged appearance it is. He shall charge you and discharge you with the motion of a pewterer’s hammer, come off and on swifter than he that gibbets on the brewer’s bucket. And this same half-faced fellow, Shadow; give me this man. He presents no mark to the enemy. The foeman may with as great aim level at the edge of a penknife. And for a retreat, how swiftly will this Feeble, the woman’s tailor, run off! O, give me the spare men, and spare me the great ones. Put me a caliver into Wart’s hand, Bardolph.

BARDOLPH. Hold, Wart. Traverse. Thas, thas, thas.

FALSTAFF. Come, manage me your caliver. So, very well, go to, very good, exceeding good. O, give me always a little, lean, old, chopt, bald shot. Well said, i’ faith, Wart. Th’art a good scab. Hold, there’s a tester for thee.

SHALLOW. He is not his craft’s master, he doth not do it right. I remember at Mile-End Green, when I lay at Clement’s Inn—I was then Sir Dagonet in Arthur’s show—there was a little quiver fellow, and he would manage you his piece thus. And he would about and about, and come you in and come you in. “Rah, tah, tah,” would he say. “Bounce” would he say; and away again would he go, and again would he come. I shall ne’er see such a fellow.

FALSTAFF. These fellows will do well. Master Shallow. God keep you, Master Silence: I will not use many words with you. Fare you well, gentlemen both. I thank you. I must a dozen mile tonight. Bardolph, give the soldiers coats.

SHALLOW. Sir John, the Lord bless you! God prosper your affairs! God send us peace! At your return, visit our house, let our old acquaintance be renewed. Peradventure I will with ye to the court.

FALSTAFF. Fore God, I would you would, Master Shallow.

SHALLOW. Go to, I have spoke at a word. God keep you.

FALSTAFF. Fare you well, gentle gentlemen. [Exeunt Justices.] On, Bardolph, lead the men away. [Exeunt Bardolph, recruits, &c.] As I return, I will fetch off these justices. I do see the bottom of Justice Shallow. Lord, Lord, how subject we old men are to this vice of lying! This same starved justice hath done nothing but prate to me of the wildness of his youth, and the feats he hath done about Turnbull Street, and every third word a lie, duer paid to the hearer than the Turk’s tribute. I do remember him at Clement’s Inn, like a man made after supper of a cheese-paring. When he was naked, he was, for all the world, like a forked radish, with a head fantastically carved upon it with a knife. He was so forlorn, that his dimensions to any thick sight were invincible. He was the very genius of famine, yet lecherous as a monkey, and the whores called him mandrake. He came ever in the rearward of the fashion, and sung those tunes to the overscutched huswives that he heard the carmen whistle, and sware they were his fancies or his good-nights. And now is this Vice’s dagger become a squire, and talks as familiarly of John a Gaunt as if he had been sworn brother to him, and I’ll be sworn he ne’er saw him but once in the tilt-yard, and then he burst his head for crowding among the marshal’s men. I saw it and told John a Gaunt he beat his own name, for you might have thrust him and all his apparel into an eel-skin; the case of a treble hautboy was a mansion for him, a court. And now has he land and beefs. Well, I’ll be acquainted with him if I return, and ’t shall go hard but I’ll make him a philosopher’s two stones to me. If the young dace be a bait for the old pike, I see no reason in the law of nature but I may snap at him. Let time shape, and there an end.

SCENE I. Yorkshire. Gaultree Forest.

Enter the Archbishop of York, Mowbray, Hastings and others.

ARCHBISHOP. What is this forest call’d?

HASTINGS. ’Tis Gaultree Forest, an ’t shall please your Grace.

ARCHBISHOP. Here stand, my lords, and send discoverers forth To know the numbers of our enemies.

HASTINGS. We have sent forth already.

ARCHBISHOP. ’Tis well done. My friends and brethren in these great affairs, I must acquaint you that I have received New-dated letters from Northumberland, Their cold intent, tenor, and substance, thus: Here doth he wish his person, with such powers As might hold sortance with his quality, The which he could not levy; whereupon He is retired, to ripe his growing fortunes, To Scotland, and concludes in hearty prayers That your attempts may overlive the hazard And fearful meeting of their opposite.

MOWBRAY. Thus do the hopes we have in him touch ground And dash themselves to pieces.

HASTINGS. Now, what news?

MESSENGER. West of this forest, scarcely off a mile, In goodly form comes on the enemy, And, by the ground they hide, I judge their number Upon or near the rate of thirty thousand.

MOWBRAY. The just proportion that we gave them out. Let us sway on and face them in the field.

Enter Westmoreland.

ARCHBISHOP. What well-appointed leader fronts us here?

MOWBRAY. I think it is my Lord of Westmoreland.

WESTMORELAND. Health and fair greeting from our general, The prince, Lord John and Duke of Lancaster.

ARCHBISHOP. Say on, my Lord of Westmoreland, in peace, What doth concern your coming.

WESTMORELAND. Then, my lord, Unto your Grace do I in chief address The substance of my speech. If that rebellion Came like itself, in base and abject routs, Led on by bloody youth, guarded with rags, And countenanced by boys and beggary; I say, if damn’d commotion so appear’d In his true, native, and most proper shape, You, reverend father, and these noble lords Had not been here to dress the ugly form Of base and bloody insurrection With your fair honours. You, Lord Archbishop, Whose see is by a civil peace maintain’d, Whose beard the silver hand of peace hath touch’d, Whose learning and good letters peace hath tutor’d, Whose white investments figure innocence, The dove and very blessed spirit of peace, Wherefore you do so ill translate yourself Out of the speech of peace that bears such grace, Into the harsh and boisterous tongue of war; Turning your books to graves, your ink to blood, Your pens to lances and your tongue divine To a loud trumpet and a point of war?

ARCHBISHOP. Wherefore do I this? So the question stands. Briefly to this end: we are all diseased, And with our surfeiting and wanton hours Have brought ourselves into a burning fever, And we must bleed for it; of which disease Our late King Richard, being infected, died. But, my most noble Lord of Westmoreland, I take not on me here as a physician, Nor do I as an enemy to peace Troop in the throngs of military men, But rather show awhile like fearful war To diet rank minds sick of happiness, And purge th’ obstructions which begin to stop Our very veins of life. Hear me more plainly. I have in equal balance justly weigh’d What wrongs our arms may do, what wrongs we suffer, And find our griefs heavier than our offences. We see which way the stream of time doth run, And are enforced from our most quiet there By the rough torrent of occasion, And have the summary of all our griefs, When time shall serve, to show in articles; Which long ere this we offer’d to the King And might by no suit gain our audience. When we are wrong’d and would unfold our griefs, We are denied access unto his person Even by those men that most have done us wrong. The dangers of the days but newly gone, Whose memory is written on the earth With yet-appearing blood, and the examples Of every minute’s instance, present now, Hath put us in these ill-beseeming arms, Not to break peace or any branch of it, But to establish here a peace indeed, Concurring both in name and quality.

WESTMORELAND. Whenever yet was your appeal denied? Wherein have you been galled by the King? What peer hath been suborn’d to grate on you, That you should seal this lawless bloody book Of forged rebellion with a seal divine And consecrate commotion’s bitter edge?

ARCHBISHOP. My brother general, the commonwealth, To brother born an household cruelty, I make my quarrel in particular.

WESTMORELAND. There is no need of any such redress, Or if there were, it not belongs to you.

MOWBRAY. Why not to him in part, and to us all That feel the bruises of the days before, And suffer the condition of these times To lay a heavy and unequal hand Upon our honours?

WESTMORELAND. O, my good Lord Mowbray, Construe the times to their necessities, And you shall say indeed, it is the time, And not the King, that doth you injuries. Yet for your part, it not appears to me Either from the King or in the present time That you should have an inch of any ground To build a grief on. Were you not restored To all the Duke of Norfolk’s signories, Your noble and right well rememb’red father’s?

MOWBRAY. What thing, in honour, had my father lost, That need to be revived and breathed in me? The King that loved him, as the state stood then, Was force perforce compell’d to banish him, And then that Henry Bolingbroke and he, Being mounted and both roused in their seats, Their neighing coursers daring of the spur, Their armed staves in charge, their beavers down, Their eyes of fire sparkling through sights of steel, And the loud trumpet blowing them together, Then, then, when there was nothing could have stay’d My father from the breast of Bolingbroke, O, when the King did throw his warder down, His own life hung upon the staff he threw; Then threw he down himself and all their lives That by indictment and by dint of sword Have since miscarried under Bolingbroke.

WESTMORELAND. You speak, Lord Mowbray, now you know not what. The Earl of Hereford was reputed then In England the most valiant gentleman. Who knows on whom fortune would then have smiled? But if your father had been victor there, He ne’er had borne it out of Coventry; For all the country in a general voice Cried hate upon him; and all their prayers and love Were set on Hereford, whom they doted on And bless’d and graced, indeed more than the King. But this is mere digression from my purpose. Here come I from our princely general To know your griefs, to tell you from his Grace That he will give you audience; and wherein It shall appear that your demands are just, You shall enjoy them, everything set off That might so much as think you enemies.

MOWBRAY. But he hath forc’d us to compel this offer, And it proceeds from policy, not love.

WESTMORELAND. Mowbray, you overween to take it so; This offer comes from mercy, not from fear. For, lo, within a ken our army lies, Upon mine honour, all too confident To give admittance to a thought of fear. Our battle is more full of names than yours, Our men more perfect in the use of arms, Our armour all as strong, our cause the best; Then reason will our hearts should be as good. Say you not then our offer is compell’d.

MOWBRAY. Well, by my will we shall admit no parley.

WESTMORELAND. That argues but the shame of your offence: A rotten case abides no handling.

HASTINGS. Hath the Prince John a full commission, In very ample virtue of his father, To hear and absolutely to determine Of what conditions we shall stand upon?

WESTMORELAND. That is intended in the general’s name: I muse you make so slight a question.

ARCHBISHOP. Then take, my Lord of Westmoreland, this schedule, For this contains our general grievances. Each several article herein redress’d, All members of our cause, both here and hence, That are insinew’d to this action, Acquitted by a true substantial form And present execution of our wills To us and to our purposes confined, We come within our awful banks again And knit our powers to the arm of peace.

WESTMORELAND. This will I show the general. Please you, lords, In sight of both our battles we may meet, And either end in peace, which God so frame! Or to the place of difference call the swords Which must decide it.

ARCHBISHOP. My lord, we will do so.

[Exit Westmoreland.]

MOWBRAY. There is a thing within my bosom tells me That no conditions of our peace can stand.

HASTINGS. Fear you not that: if we can make our peace Upon such large terms and so absolute As our conditions shall consist upon, Our peace shall stand as firm as rocky mountains.

MOWBRAY. Yea, but our valuation shall be such That every slight and false-derived cause, Yea, every idle, nice, and wanton reason, Shall to the King taste of this action; That, were our royal faiths martyrs in love, We shall be winnow’d with so rough a wind That even our corn shall seem as light as chaff And good from bad find no partition.

ARCHBISHOP. No, no, my lord. Note this; the King is weary Of dainty and such picking grievances; For he hath found to end one doubt by death Revives two greater in the heirs of life; And therefore will he wipe his tables clean And keep no tell-tale to his memory That may repeat and history his loss To new remembrance. For full well he knows He cannot so precisely weed this land As his misdoubts present occasion. His foes are so enrooted with his friends That, plucking to unfix an enemy, He doth unfasten so and shake a friend. So that this land, like an offensive wife That hath enraged him on to offer strokes, As he is striking, holds his infant up And hangs resolved correction in the arm That was uprear’d to execution.

HASTINGS. Besides, the King hath wasted all his rods On late offenders, that he now doth lack The very instruments of chastisement; So that his power, like to a fangless lion, May offer, but not hold.

ARCHBISHOP. ’Tis very true, And therefore be assured, my good Lord Marshal, If we do now make our atonement well, Our peace will, like a broken limb united, Grow stronger for the breaking.

MOWBRAY. Be it so. Here is return’d my Lord of Westmoreland.

WESTMORELAND. The prince is here at hand. Pleaseth your lordship To meet his Grace just distance ’tween our armies.

MOWBRAY. Your Grace of York, in God’s name then set forward.

ARCHBISHOP. Before, and greet his Grace. My lord, we come.

SCENE II. Another part of the forest.

Enter, from one side, Mowbray, attended; afterwards, the Archbishop, Hastings, and others; from the other side, Prince John of Lancaster, and Westmoreland; Officers, and others with them.

LANCASTER. You are well encounter’d here, my cousin Mowbray. Good day to you, gentle Lord Archbishop; And so to you, Lord Hastings, and to all. My Lord of York, it better show’d with you When that your flock, assembled by the bell, Encircled you to hear with reverence Your exposition on the holy text Than now to see you here an iron man, Cheering a rout of rebels with your drum, Turning the word to sword, and life to death. That man that sits within a monarch’s heart, And ripens in the sunshine of his favour, Would he abuse the countenance of the king, Alack, what mischiefs might he set abroach In shadow of such greatness! With you, Lord Bishop, It is even so. Who hath not heard it spoken How deep you were within the books of God, To us the speaker in his parliament, To us th’ imagined voice of God himself, The very opener and intelligencer Between the grace, the sanctities of heaven, And our dull workings? O, who shall believe But you misuse the reverence of your place, Employ the countenance and grace of heaven As a false favourite doth his prince’s name, In deeds dishonourable? You have ta’en up, Under the counterfeited zeal of God, The subjects of his substitute, my father, And both against the peace of heaven and him Have here up-swarm’d them.

ARCHBISHOP. Good my Lord of Lancaster, I am not here against your father’s peace; But, as I told my Lord of Westmoreland, The time misorder’d doth, in common sense, Crowd us and crush us to this monstrous form To hold our safety up. I sent your Grace The parcels and particulars of our grief, The which hath been with scorn shoved from the court, Whereon this Hydra son of war is born, Whose dangerous eyes may well be charm’d asleep With grant of our most just and right desires, And true obedience, of this madness cured, Stoop tamely to the foot of majesty.

MOWBRAY. If not, we ready are to try our fortunes To the last man.

HASTINGS. And though we here fall down, We have supplies to second our attempt: If they miscarry, theirs shall second them; And so success of mischief shall be born, And heir from heir shall hold this quarrel up Whiles England shall have generation.

LANCASTER. You are too shallow, Hastings, much too shallow, To sound the bottom of the after-times.

WESTMORELAND. Pleaseth your Grace to answer them directly How far forth you do like their articles.

LANCASTER. I like them all, and do allow them well, And swear here, by the honour of my blood, My father’s purposes have been mistook, And some about him have too lavishly Wrested his meaning and authority. My lord, these griefs shall be with speed redress’d; Upon my soul, they shall. If this may please you, Discharge your powers unto their several counties, As we will ours; and here between the armies Let’s drink together friendly and embrace, That all their eyes may bear those tokens home Of our restored love and amity.

ARCHBISHOP. I take your princely word for these redresses.

LANCASTER. I give it you, and will maintain my word; And thereupon I drink unto your Grace.

HASTINGS. Go, captain, and deliver to the army This news of peace. Let them have pay, and part. I know it will please them. Hie thee, captain.

[Exit Officer.]

ARCHBISHOP. To you, my noble Lord of Westmoreland.

WESTMORELAND. I pledge your Grace; and if you knew what pains I have bestow’d to breed this present peace, You would drink freely; but my love to ye Shall show itself more openly hereafter.

ARCHBISHOP. I do not doubt you.

WESTMORELAND. I am glad of it. Health to my lord and gentle cousin, Mowbray.

MOWBRAY. You wish me health in very happy season, For I am on the sudden something ill.

ARCHBISHOP. Against ill chances men are ever merry, But heaviness foreruns the good event.

WESTMORELAND. Therefore be merry, coz, since sudden sorrow Serves to say thus, “Some good thing comes tomorrow.”

ARCHBISHOP. Believe me, I am passing light in spirit.

MOWBRAY. So much the worse, if your own rule be true.

[Shouts within.]

LANCASTER. The word of peace is render’d. Hark how they shout!

MOWBRAY. This had been cheerful after victory.

ARCHBISHOP. A peace is of the nature of a conquest; For then both parties nobly are subdued, And neither party loser.

LANCASTER. Go, my lord. And let our army be discharged too.

And, good my lord, so please you, let our trains March by us, that we may peruse the men We should have coped withal.

ARCHBISHOP. Go, good Lord Hastings, And, ere they be dismiss’d, let them march by.

[Exit Hastings.]

LANCASTER. I trust, lords, we shall lie tonight together.

Now, cousin, wherefore stands our army still?

WESTMORELAND. The leaders, having charge from you to stand, Will not go off until they hear you speak.

LANCASTER. They know their duties.

Enter Hastings.

HASTINGS. My lord, our army is dispersed already. Like youthful steers unyoked, they take their courses East, west, north, south; or, like a school broke up, Each hurries toward his home and sporting-place.

WESTMORELAND. Good tidings, my Lord Hastings; for the which I do arrest thee, traitor, of high treason; And you, Lord Archbishop, and you, Lord Mowbray, Of capital treason I attach you both.

MOWBRAY. Is this proceeding just and honourable?

WESTMORELAND. Is your assembly so?

ARCHBISHOP. Will you thus break your faith?

LANCASTER. I pawn’d thee none. I promised you redress of these same grievances Whereof you did complain; which, by mine honour, I will perform with a most Christian care. But for you, rebels, look to taste the due Meet for rebellion and such acts as yours. Most shallowly did you these arms commence, Fondly brought here and foolishly sent hence. Strike up our drums, pursue the scattr’d stray: God, and not we, hath safely fought today. Some guard these traitors to the block of death, Treason’s true bed and yielder-up of breath.

SCENE III. Another part of the forest.

Alarum. Excursions. Enter Falstaff and Colevile, meeting.

FALSTAFF. What’s your name, sir? Of what condition are you, and of what place, I pray?

COLEVILE. I am a knight, sir, and my name is Colevile of the Dale.

FALSTAFF. Well, then, Colevile is your name, a knight is your degree, and your place the Dale. Colevile shall be still your name, a traitor your degree, and the dungeon your place, a place deep enough; so shall you be still Colevile of the Dale.

COLEVILE. Are not you Sir John Falstaff?

FALSTAFF. As good a man as he, sir, whoe’er I am. Do ye yield, sir, or shall I sweat for you? If I do sweat, they are the drops of thy lovers, and they weep for thy death. Therefore rouse up fear and trembling, and do observance to my mercy.

COLEVILE. I think you are Sir John Falstaff, and in that thought yield me.

FALSTAFF. I have a whole school of tongues in this belly of mine, and not a tongue of them all speaks any other word but my name. An I had but a belly of any indifferency, I were simply the most active fellow in Europe. My womb, my womb, my womb undoes me. Here comes our general.

Enter Prince John of Lancaster, Westmoreland, Blunt, and others.

LANCASTER. The heat is past; follow no further now. Call in the powers, good cousin Westmoreland.

Now, Falstaff, where have you been all this while? When everything is ended, then you come. These tardy tricks of yours will, on my life, One time or other break some gallows’ back.

FALSTAFF. I would be sorry, my lord, but it should be thus. I never knew yet but rebuke and check was the reward of valour. Do you think me a swallow, an arrow, or a bullet? Have I, in my poor and old motion, the expedition of thought? I have speeded hither with the very extremest inch of possibility; I have foundered nine score and odd posts; and here, travel-tainted as I am, have in my pure and immaculate valour, taken Sir John Colevile of the Dale, a most furious knight and valorous enemy. But what of that? He saw me, and yielded; that I may justly say, with the hook-nosed fellow of Rome, “I came, saw, and overcame.”

LANCASTER. It was more of his courtesy than your deserving.

FALSTAFF. I know not. Here he is, and here I yield him. And I beseech your Grace, let it be booked with the rest of this day’s deeds, or, by the Lord, I will have it in a particular ballad else, with mine own picture on the top on’t, Colevile kissing my foot: to the which course if I be enforced, if you do not all show like gilt twopences to me, and I in the clear sky of fame o’ershine you as much as the full moon doth the cinders of the element, which show like pins’ heads to her, believe not the word of the noble. Therefore let me have right, and let desert mount.

LANCASTER. Thine’s too heavy to mount.

FALSTAFF. Let it shine, then.

LANCASTER. Thine’s too thick to shine.

FALSTAFF. Let it do something, my good lord, that may do me good, and call it what you will.

LANCASTER. Is thy name Colevile?

COLEVILE. It is, my lord.

LANCASTER. A famous rebel art thou, Colevile.

FALSTAFF. And a famous true subject took him.

COLEVILE. I am, my lord, but as my betters are That led me hither. Had they been ruled by me, You should have won them dearer than you have.

FALSTAFF. I know not how they sold themselves, but thou, like a kind fellow, gavest thyself away gratis, and I thank thee for thee.

LANCASTER. Now, have you left pursuit?

WESTMORELAND. Retreat is made and execution stay’d.

LANCASTER. Send Colevile with his confederates To York, to present execution. Blunt, lead him hence, and see you guard him sure.

[Exeunt Blunt and others with Colevile.]

And now dispatch we toward the court, my lords. I hear the King my father is sore sick. Our news shall go before us to his Majesty, Which, cousin, you shall bear to comfort him, And we with sober speed will follow you.

FALSTAFF. My lord, I beseech you give me leave to go through Gloucestershire, and, when you come to court, stand my good lord, pray, in your good report.

LANCASTER. Fare you well, Falstaff. I, in my condition, Shall better speak of you than you deserve.

[Exeunt all but Falstaff.]

FALSTAFF. I would you had but the wit, ’twere better than your dukedom. Good faith, this same young sober-blooded boy doth not love me, nor a man cannot make him laugh; but that’s no marvel, he drinks no wine. There’s never none of these demure boys come to any proof; for thin drink doth so over-cool their blood, and making many fish meals, that they fall into a kind of male green-sickness; and then, when they marry, they get wenches. They are generally fools and cowards, which some of us should be too, but for inflammation. A good sherris-sack hath a two-fold operation in it. It ascends me into the brain, dries me there all the foolish and dull and crudy vapours which environ it, makes it apprehensive, quick, forgetive, full of nimble, fiery, and delectable shapes, which, delivered o’er to the voice, the tongue, which is the birth, becomes excellent wit. The second property of your excellent sherris is the warming of the blood, which, before cold and settled, left the liver white and pale, which is the badge of pusillanimity and cowardice. But the sherris warms it and makes it course from the inwards to the parts’ extremes. It illumineth the face, which as a beacon gives warning to all the rest of this little kingdom, man, to arm; and then the vital commoners and inland petty spirits muster me all to their captain, the heart, who, great and puffed up with this retinue, doth any deed of courage; and this valour comes of sherris. So that skill in the weapon is nothing without sack, for that sets it a-work; and learning a mere hoard of gold kept by a devil, till sack commences it and sets it in act and use. Hereof comes it that Prince Harry is valiant; for the cold blood he did naturally inherit of his father he hath, like lean, sterile and bare land, manured, husbanded and tilled with excellent endeavour of drinking good and good store of fertile sherris, that he is become very hot and valiant. If I had a thousand sons, the first humane principle I would teach them should be to forswear thin potations and to addict themselves to sack.

How now, Bardolph?

BARDOLPH. The army is discharged all and gone.

FALSTAFF. Let them go. I’ll through Gloucestershire, and there will I visit Master Robert Shallow, Esquire. I have him already tempering between my finger and my thumb, and shortly will I seal with him. Come away.

SCENE IV. Westminster. The Jerusalem Chamber.

Enter the King, Warwick, Thomas Duke of Clarence and Humphrey Duke of Gloucester and others.

KING. Now, lords, if God doth give successful end To this debate that bleedeth at our doors, We will our youth lead on to higher fields And draw no swords but what are sanctified. Our navy is address’d, our power collected, Our substitutes in absence well invested, And everything lies level to our wish. Only we want a little personal strength; And pause us till these rebels now afoot Come underneath the yoke of government.

WARWICK. Both which we doubt not but your Majesty Shall soon enjoy.

KING. Humphrey, my son of Gloucester, Where is the Prince your brother?

GLOUCESTER. I think he’s gone to hunt, my lord, at Windsor.

KING. And how accompanied?

GLOUCESTER. I do not know, my lord.

KING. Is not his brother Thomas of Clarence with him?

GLOUCESTER. No, my good lord, he is in presence here.

CLARENCE. What would my lord and father?

KING. Nothing but well to thee, Thomas of Clarence. How chance thou art not with the Prince thy brother? He loves thee, and thou dost neglect him, Thomas. Thou hast a better place in his affection Than all thy brothers. Cherish it, my boy, And noble offices thou mayst effect Of mediation, after I am dead, Between his greatness and thy other brethren. Therefore omit him not, blunt not his love, Nor lose the good advantage of his grace By seeming cold or careless of his will; For he is gracious, if he be observed, He hath a tear for pity, and a hand Open as day for melting charity: Yet notwithstanding, being incensed, he’s flint, As humorous as winter, and as sudden As flaws congealed in the spring of day. His temper therefore must be well observed. Chide him for faults, and do it reverently, When you perceive his blood inclined to mirth; But, being moody, give him time and scope, Till that his passions, like a whale on ground, Confound themselves with working. Learn this, Thomas, And thou shalt prove a shelter to thy friends, A hoop of gold to bind thy brothers in, That the united vessel of their blood, Mingled with venom of suggestion— As, force perforce, the age will pour it in— Shall never leak, though it do work as strong As aconitum or rash gunpowder.

CLARENCE. I shall observe him with all care and love.

KING. Why art thou not at Windsor with him, Thomas?

CLARENCE. He is not there today; he dines in London.

KING. And how accompanied? Canst thou tell that?

CLARENCE. With Poins, and other his continual followers.

KING. Most subject is the fattest soil to weeds, And he, the noble image of my youth, Is overspread with them; therefore my grief Stretches itself beyond the hour of death. The blood weeps from my heart when I do shape In forms imaginary th’ unguided days And rotten times that you shall look upon When I am sleeping with my ancestors. For when his headstrong riot hath no curb, When rage and hot blood are his counsellors, When means and lavish manners meet together, O, with what wings shall his affections fly Towards fronting peril and opposed decay!

WARWICK. My gracious lord, you look beyond him quite. The prince but studies his companions Like a strange tongue, wherein, to gain the language, ’Tis needful that the most immodest word Be looked upon and learned; which once attained, Your Highness knows, comes to no further use But to be known and hated. So, like gross terms, The Prince will, in the perfectness of time, Cast off his followers, and their memory Shall as a pattern or a measure live, By which his Grace must mete the lives of other, Turning past evils to advantages.

KING. ’Tis seldom when the bee doth leave her comb In the dead carrion.

Who’s here? Westmoreland?

WESTMORELAND. Health to my sovereign, and new happiness Added to that that I am to deliver! Prince John your son doth kiss your Grace’s hand. Mowbray, the Bishop Scroop, Hastings and all Are brought to the correction of your law. There is not now a rebel’s sword unsheathed, But Peace puts forth her olive everywhere. The manner how this action hath been borne Here at more leisure may your Highness read, With every course in his particular.

KING. O Westmoreland, thou art a summer bird, Which ever in the haunch of winter sings The lifting up of day.

Enter Harcourt.

Look, here’s more news.

HARCOURT. From enemies heaven keep your Majesty; And when they stand against you, may they fall As those that I am come to tell you of! The Earl Northumberland and the Lord Bardolph, With a great power of English and of Scots, Are by the shrieve of Yorkshire overthrown. The manner and true order of the fight This packet, please it you, contains at large.

KING. And wherefore should these good news make me sick? Will Fortune never come with both hands full, But write her fair words still in foulest letters? She either gives a stomach and no food— Such are the poor, in health; or else a feast And takes away the stomach—such are the rich, That have abundance and enjoy it not. I should rejoice now at this happy news, And now my sight fails, and my brain is giddy. O me! Come near me, now I am much ill.

GLOUCESTER. Comfort, your Majesty!

CLARENCE. O my royal father!

WESTMORELAND. My sovereign lord, cheer up yourself, look up.

WARWICK. Be patient, princes; you do know these fits Are with his Highness very ordinary. Stand from him, give him air; he’ll straight be well.

CLARENCE. No, no, he cannot long hold out these pangs. Th’ incessant care and labour of his mind Hath wrought the mure that should confine it in So thin that life looks through and will break out.

GLOUCESTER. The people fear me, for they do observe Unfather’d heirs and loathly births of nature. The seasons change their manners, as the year Had found some months asleep and leap’d them over.

CLARENCE. The river hath thrice flow’d, no ebb between, And the old folk, time’s doting chronicles, Say it did so a little time before That our great-grandsire, Edward, sick’d and died.

WARWICK. Speak lower, princes, for the King recovers.

GLOUCESTER. This apoplexy will certain be his end.

KING. I pray you take me up, and bear me hence Into some other chamber: softly, pray.

SCENE V. Another chamber.

The King lying on a bed. Clarence, Gloucester, Warwick and others in attendance.

KING. Let there be no noise made, my gentle friends, Unless some dull and favourable hand Will whisper music to my weary spirit.

WARWICK. Call for the music in the other room.

KING. Set me the crown upon my pillow here.

CLARENCE. His eye is hollow, and he changes much.

WARWICK. Less noise, less noise!

PRINCE. Who saw the Duke of Clarence?

CLARENCE. I am here, brother, full of heaviness.

PRINCE. How now, rain within doors, and none abroad? How doth the King?

GLOUCESTER. Exceeding ill.

PRINCE. Heard he the good news yet? Tell it him.

GLOUCESTER. He alt’red much upon the hearing it.

PRINCE. If he be sick with joy, he’ll recover without physic.

WARWICK. Not so much noise, my lords. Sweet prince, speak low; The King your father is disposed to sleep.

CLARENCE. Let us withdraw into the other room.

WARWICK. Will’t please your Grace to go along with us?

PRINCE. No, I will sit and watch here by the King.

[Exeunt all but the Prince.]

Why doth the crown lie there upon his pillow, Being so troublesome a bedfellow? O polish’d perturbation! golden care! That keep’st the ports of slumber open wide To many a watchful night! Sleep with it now; Yet not so sound and half so deeply sweet As he whose brow with homely biggen bound Snores out the watch of night. O majesty! When thou dost pinch thy bearer, thou dost sit Like a rich armour worn in heat of day, That scald’st with safety. By his gates of breath There lies a downy feather which stirs not: Did he suspire, that light and weightless down Perforce must move. My gracious lord, my father! This sleep is sound indeed; this is a sleep That from this golden rigol hath divorced So many English kings. Thy due from me Is tears and heavy sorrows of the blood, Which nature, love, and filial tenderness, Shall, O dear father, pay thee plenteously. My due from thee is this imperial crown, Which, as immediate from thy place and blood, Derives itself to me. Lo, where it sits, Which God shall guard; and put the world’s whole strength Into one giant arm, it shall not force This lineal honour from me. This from thee Will I to mine leave, as ’tis left to me.

KING. Warwick! Gloucester! Clarence!

Enter Warwick, Gloucester, Clarence and the rest.

CLARENCE. Doth the King call?

WARWICK. What would your Majesty? How fares your Grace?

KING. Why did you leave me here alone, my lords?

CLARENCE. We left the Prince my brother here, my liege, Who undertook to sit and watch by you.

KING. The Prince of Wales! Where is he? Let me see him. He is not here.

WARWICK. This door is open, he is gone this way.

GLOUCESTER. He came not through the chamber where we stay’d.

KING. Where is the crown? Who took it from my pillow?

WARWICK. When we withdrew, my liege, we left it here.

KING. The Prince hath ta’en it hence. Go seek him out. Is he so hasty that he doth suppose My sleep my death? Find him, my Lord of Warwick, chide him hither.

[Exit Warwick.]

This part of his conjoins with my disease, And helps to end me. See, sons, what things you are, How quickly nature falls into revolt When gold becomes her object! For this the foolish over-careful fathers Have broke their sleep with thoughts, Their brains with care, their bones with industry; For this they have engrossed and piled up The canker’d heaps of strange-achieved gold; For this they have been thoughtful to invest Their sons with arts and martial exercises; When, like the bee, tolling from every flower The virtuous sweets, Our thighs pack’d with wax, our mouths with honey, We bring it to the hive; and like the bees, Are murdered for our pains. This bitter taste Yields his engrossments to the ending father.

Enter Warwick.

Now where is he that will not stay so long Till his friend sickness hath determin’d me?

WARWICK. My lord, I found the Prince in the next room, Washing with kindly tears his gentle cheeks, With such a deep demeanour in great sorrow That tyranny, which never quaff’d but blood, Would, by beholding him, have wash’d his knife With gentle eye-drops. He is coming hither.

KING. But wherefore did he take away the crown?

Lo where he comes. Come hither to me, Harry. Depart the chamber, leave us here alone.

[Exeunt Warwick and the rest.]

PRINCE. I never thought to hear you speak again.

KING. Thy wish was father, Harry, to that thought. I stay too long by thee, I weary thee. Dost thou so hunger for mine empty chair That thou wilt needs invest thee with my honours Before thy hour be ripe? O foolish youth! Thou seek’st the greatness that will overwhelm thee. Stay but a little, for my cloud of dignity Is held from falling with so weak a wind That it will quickly drop. My day is dim. Thou hast stolen that which after some few hours Were thine without offence, and at my death Thou hast seal’d up my expectation. Thy life did manifest thou loved’st me not, And thou wilt have me die assured of it. Thou hid’st a thousand daggers in thy thoughts Which thou hast whetted on thy stony heart, To stab at half an hour of my life. What, canst thou not forbear me half an hour? Then get thee gone, and dig my grave thyself, And bid the merry bells ring to thine ear That thou art crowned, not that I am dead. Let all the tears that should bedew my hearse Be drops of balm to sanctify thy head, Only compound me with forgotten dust. Give that which gave thee life unto the worms. Pluck down my officers, break my decrees; For now a time is come to mock at form. Harry the Fifth is crown’d. Up, vanity! Down, royal state! All you sage counsellors, hence! And to the English court assemble now, From every region, apes of idleness! Now, neighbour confines, purge you of your scum. Have you a ruffian that will swear, drink, dance, Revel the night, rob, murder, and commit The oldest sins the newest kind of ways? Be happy, he will trouble you no more. England shall double gild his treble guilt, England shall give him office, honour, might, For the fifth Harry from curb’d license plucks The muzzle of restraint, and the wild dog Shall flesh his tooth on every innocent. O my poor kingdom, sick with civil blows! When that my care could not withhold thy riots, What wilt thou do when riot is thy care? O, thou wilt be a wilderness again, Peopled with wolves, thy old inhabitants!

PRINCE. O, pardon me, my liege! But for my tears, The moist impediments unto my speech, I had forestall’d this dear and deep rebuke Ere you with grief had spoke and I had heard The course of it so far. There is your crown; And He that wears the crown immortally Long guard it yours! If I affect it more Than as your honour and as your renown, Let me no more from this obedience rise, Which my most inward true and duteous spirit Teacheth this prostrate and exterior bending. God witness with me, when I here came in, And found no course of breath within your Majesty, How cold it struck my heart! If I do feign, O, let me in my present wildness die And never live to show th’ incredulous world The noble change that I have purposed! Coming to look on you, thinking you dead, And dead almost, my liege, to think you were, I spake unto this crown as having sense, And thus upbraided it: “The care on thee depending Hath fed upon the body of my father; Therefore thou best of gold art worst of gold. Other, less fine in carat, is more precious, Preserving life in med’cine potable; But thou, most fine, most honour’d, most renown’d, Hast eat thy bearer up.” Thus, my most royal liege, Accusing it, I put it on my head, To try with it, as with an enemy That had before my face murder’d my father, The quarrel of a true inheritor. But if it did infect my blood with joy, Or swell my thoughts to any strain of pride, If any rebel or vain spirit of mine Did with the least affection of a welcome Give entertainment to the might of it, Let God for ever keep it from my head And make me as the poorest vassal is That doth with awe and terror kneel to it!

KING. O my son, God put it in thy mind to take it hence, That thou mightst win the more thy father’s love, Pleading so wisely in excuse of it! Come hither, Harry, sit thou by my bed, And hear, I think, the very latest counsel That ever I shall breathe. God knows, my son, By what by-paths and indirect crook’d ways I met this crown, and I myself know well How troublesome it sat upon my head. To thee it shall descend with better quiet, Better opinion, better confirmation, For all the soil of the achievement goes With me into the earth. It seem’d in me But as an honour snatch’d with boisterous hand, And I had many living to upbraid My gain of it by their assistances, Which daily grew to quarrel and to bloodshed, Wounding supposed peace. All these bold fears Thou seest with peril I have answered; For all my reign hath been but as a scene Acting that argument. And now my death Changes the mood, for what in me was purchased, Falls upon thee in a more fairer sort; So thou the garland wear’st successively. Yet though thou stand’st more sure than I could do, Thou art not firm enough, since griefs are green; And all my friends, which thou must make thy friends, Have but their stings and teeth newly ta’en out; By whose fell working I was first advanced And by whose power I well might lodge a fear To be again displaced; which to avoid, I cut them off, and had a purpose now To lead out many to the Holy Land, Lest rest and lying still might make them look Too near unto my state. Therefore, my Harry, Be it thy course to busy giddy minds With foreign quarrels, that action, hence borne out, May waste the memory of the former days. More would I, but my lungs are wasted so That strength of speech is utterly denied me. How I came by the crown, O God, forgive, And grant it may with thee in true peace live!

PRINCE. My gracious liege, You won it, wore it, kept it, gave it me; Then plain and right must my possession be, Which I with more than with a common pain ’Gainst all the world will rightfully maintain.

Enter Lord John of Lancaster and others.

KING. Look, look, here comes my John of Lancaster.

LANCASTER. Health, peace, and happiness to my royal father!

KING. Thou bring’st me happiness and peace, son John, But health, alack, with youthful wings is flown From this bare wither’d trunk. Upon thy sight My worldly business makes a period. Where is my Lord of Warwick?

PRINCE. My Lord of Warwick!

Enter Warwick and others.

KING. Doth any name particular belong Unto the lodging where I first did swoon?

WARWICK. ’Tis call’d Jerusalem, my noble lord.

KING. Laud be to God! Even there my life must end. It hath been prophesied to me many years, I should not die but in Jerusalem, Which vainly I supposed the Holy Land. But bear me to that chamber; there I’ll lie; In that Jerusalem shall Harry die.

SCENE I. Gloucestershire. Shallow’s house.

Enter Shallow, Falstaff, Bardolph and Page.

SHALLOW. By cock and pie, sir, you shall not away tonight. What, Davy, I say!

FALSTAFF. You must excuse me, Master Robert Shallow.

SHALLOW. I will not excuse you, you shall not be excused. Excuses shall not be admitted, there is no excuse shall serve, you shall not be excused. Why, Davy!

Enter Davy.

DAVY. Here, sir.

SHALLOW. Davy, Davy, Davy, Davy, let me see, Davy, let me see, Davy, let me see. Yea, marry, William cook, bid him come hither. Sir John, you shall not be excused.

DAVY. Marry, sir, thus: those precepts cannot be served; and again, sir—shall we sow the hade land with wheat?

SHALLOW. With red wheat, Davy. But for William cook, are there no young pigeons?

DAVY. Yes, sir. Here is now the smith’s note for shoeing and plough-irons.

SHALLOW. Let it be cast and paid. Sir John, you shall not be excused.

DAVY. Now, sir, a new link to the bucket must needs be had. And, sir, do you mean to stop any of William’s wages, about the sack he lost the other day at Hinckley fair?

SHALLOW. He shall answer it. Some pigeons, Davy, a couple of short-legged hens, a joint of mutton, and any pretty little tiny kickshaws, tell William cook.

DAVY. Doth the man of war stay all night, sir?

SHALLOW. Yea, Davy, I will use him well: a friend i’ th’ court is better than a penny in purse. Use his men well, Davy, for they are arrant knaves, and will backbite.

DAVY. No worse than they are backbitten, sir, for they have marvellous foul linen.

SHALLOW. Well conceited, Davy. About thy business, Davy.

DAVY. I beseech you, sir, to countenance William Visor of Woncot against Clement Perkes o’ th’ hill.

SHALLOW. There is many complaints, Davy, against that Visor. That Visor is an arrant knave, on my knowledge.

DAVY. I grant your worship that he is a knave, sir, but yet, God forbid, sir, but a knave should have some countenance at his friend’s request. An honest man, sir, is able to speak for himself, when a knave is not. I have served your worship truly, sir, this eight years; and if I cannot once or twice in a quarter bear out a knave against an honest man, I have but a very little credit with your worship. The knave is mine honest friend, sir; therefore I beseech your worship let him be countenanced.

SHALLOW. Go to; I say he shall have no wrong. Look about, Davy.

[Exit Davy.]

Where are you, Sir John? Come, come, come, off with your boots. Give me your hand, Master Bardolph.

BARDOLPH. I am glad to see your worship.

SHALLOW. I thank thee with all my heart, kind Master Bardolph; and welcome, my tall fellow [to the Page]. Come, Sir John.

FALSTAFF. I’ll follow you, good Master Robert Shallow.

[Exit Shallow.]

Bardolph, look to our horses.

If I were sawed into quantities, I should make four dozen of such bearded hermits’ staves as Master Shallow. It is a wonderful thing to see the semblable coherence of his men’s spirits and his. They, by observing of him, do bear themselves like foolish justices: he, by conversing with them, is turned into a justice-like serving-man. Their spirits are so married in conjunction with the participation of society that they flock together in consent, like so many wild-geese. If I had a suit to Master Shallow, I would humour his men with the imputation of being near their master: if to his men, I would curry with Master Shallow that no man could better command his servants. It is certain that either wise bearing or ignorant carriage is caught, as men take diseases, one of another. Therefore let men take heed of their company. I will devise matter enough out of this Shallow to keep Prince Harry in continual laughter the wearing out of six fashions, which is four terms, or two actions, and he shall laugh without intervallums. O, it is much that a lie with a slight oath and a jest with a sad brow will do with a fellow that never had the ache in his shoulders! O, you shall see him laugh till his face be like a wet cloak ill laid up!

SHALLOW. [Within.] Sir John!

FALSTAFF. I come, Master Shallow, I come, Master Shallow.

SCENE II. Westminster. The palace.

Enter Warwick and the Lord Chief Justice, meeting.

WARWICK. How now, my Lord Chief Justice, whither away?

CHIEF JUSTICE. How doth the King?

WARWICK. Exceeding well. His cares are now all ended.

CHIEF JUSTICE. I hope, not dead.

WARWICK. He’s walk’d the way of nature, And to our purposes he lives no more.

CHIEF JUSTICE. I would his Majesty had call’d me with him. The service that I truly did his life Hath left me open to all injuries.

WARWICK. Indeed I think the young King loves you not.

CHIEF JUSTICE. I know he doth not, and do arm myself To welcome the condition of the time, Which cannot look more hideously upon me Than I have drawn it in my fantasy.

Enter Lancaster, Clarence, Gloucester and others.

WARWICK. Here comes the heavy issue of dead Harry. O that the living Harry had the temper Of he the worst of these three gentlemen! How many nobles then should hold their places, That must strike sail to spirits of vile sort!

CHIEF JUSTICE. O God, I fear all will be overturn’d.

LANCASTER. Good morrow, cousin Warwick, good morrow.

GLOUCESTER & CLARENCE. Good morrow, cousin.

LANCASTER. We meet like men that had forgot to speak.

WARWICK. We do remember, but our argument Is all too heavy to admit much talk.

LANCASTER. Well, peace be with him that hath made us heavy!

CHIEF JUSTICE. Peace be with us, lest we be heavier!

GLOUCESTER. O, good my lord, you have lost a friend indeed; And I dare swear you borrow not that face Of seeming sorrow; it is sure your own.

LANCASTER. Though no man be assured what grace to find, You stand in coldest expectation. I am the sorrier; would ’twere otherwise.

CLARENCE. Well, you must now speak Sir John Falstaff fair, Which swims against your stream of quality.

CHIEF JUSTICE. Sweet Princes, what I did I did in honour, Led by th’ impartial conduct of my soul; And never shall you see that I will beg A ragged and forestall’d remission. If truth and upright innocency fail me, I’ll to the King my master that is dead, And tell him who hath sent me after him.

WARWICK. Here comes the Prince.

Enter King Henry the Fifth, attended.

CHIEF JUSTICE. Good morrow, and God save your Majesty!

KING. This new and gorgeous garment, majesty, Sits not so easy on me as you think. Brothers, you mix your sadness with some fear. This is the English, not the Turkish court; Not Amurath an Amurath succeeds, But Harry Harry. Yet be sad, good brothers, For, by my faith, it very well becomes you. Sorrow so royally in you appears That I will deeply put the fashion on And wear it in my heart. Why then, be sad; But entertain no more of it, good brothers, Than a joint burden laid upon us all. For me, by heaven, I bid you be assured, I’ll be your father and your brother too; Let me but bear your love, I’ll bear your cares. Yet weep that Harry’s dead, and so will I; But Harry lives, that shall convert those tears By number into hours of happiness.

PRINCES. We hope no otherwise from your Majesty.

KING. You all look strangely on me. And you most; You are, I think, assured I love you not.

CHIEF JUSTICE. I am assured, if I be measured rightly, Your Majesty hath no just cause to hate me.

KING. No? How might a prince of my great hopes forget So great indignities you laid upon me? What! rate, rebuke, and roughly send to prison Th’ immediate heir of England? Was this easy? May this be wash’d in Lethe and forgotten?

CHIEF JUSTICE. I then did use the person of your father; The image of his power lay then in me; And in the administration of his law, Whiles I was busy for the commonwealth, Your Highness pleased to forget my place, The majesty and power of law and justice, The image of the King whom I presented, And struck me in my very seat of judgement; Whereon, as an offender to your father, I gave bold way to my authority And did commit you. If the deed were ill, Be you contented, wearing now the garland, To have a son set your decrees at nought? To pluck down justice from your awful bench? To trip the course of law and blunt the sword That guards the peace and safety of your person? Nay more, to spurn at your most royal image, And mock your workings in a second body? Question your royal thoughts, make the case yours; Be now the father and propose a son, Hear your own dignity so much profaned, See your most dreadful laws so loosely slighted, Behold yourself so by a son disdain’d, And then imagine me taking your part And in your power soft silencing your son. After this cold considerance, sentence me; And, as you are a king, speak in your state What I have done that misbecame my place, My person, or my liege’s sovereignty.

KING. You are right, justice, and you weigh this well. Therefore still bear the balance and the sword. And I do wish your honours may increase Till you do live to see a son of mine Offend you and obey you, as I did. So shall I live to speak my father’s words: “Happy am I, that have a man so bold That dares do justice on my proper son; And not less happy, having such a son That would deliver up his greatness so Into the hands of justice.” You did commit me, For which I do commit into your hand Th’ unstained sword that you have used to bear, With this remembrance: that you use the same With the like bold, just, and impartial spirit As you have done ’gainst me. There is my hand. You shall be as a father to my youth, My voice shall sound as you do prompt mine ear, And I will stoop and humble my intents To your well-practised wise directions. And, princes all, believe me, I beseech you, My father is gone wild into his grave, For in his tomb lie my affections; And with his spirit sadly I survive To mock the expectation of the world, To frustrate prophecies, and to raze out Rotten opinion, who hath writ me down After my seeming. The tide of blood in me Hath proudly flow’d in vanity till now. Now doth it turn and ebb back to the sea, Where it shall mingle with the state of floods, And flow henceforth in formal majesty. Now call we our high court of parliament, And let us choose such limbs of noble counsel That the great body of our state may go In equal rank with the best-govern’d nation; That war, or peace, or both at once, may be As things acquainted and familiar to us; In which you, father, shall have foremost hand. Our coronation done, we will accite, As I before remember’d, all our state: And, God consigning to my good intents, No prince nor peer shall have just cause to say, God shorten Harry’s happy life one day!

SCENE III. Gloucestershire. Shallow’s orchard.

Enter Falstaff, Shallow, Silence, Davy, Bardolph and the Page.

SHALLOW. Nay, you shall see my orchard, where, in an arbour, we will eat a last year’s pippin of mine own graffing, with a dish of caraways, and so forth. Come, cousin Silence. And then to bed.

FALSTAFF. Fore God, you have here a goodly dwelling, and a rich.

SHALLOW. Barren, barren, barren; beggars all, beggars all, Sir John. Marry, good air. Spread, Davy, spread, Davy. Well said, Davy.

FALSTAFF. This Davy serves you for good uses; he is your serving-man and your husband.

SHALLOW. A good varlet, a good varlet, a very good varlet, Sir John. By the mass, I have drunk too much sack at supper. A good varlet. Now sit down, now sit down. Come, cousin.

SILENCE. Ah, sirrah! quoth-a, we shall [Singing.]

Do nothing but eat, and make good cheer, And praise God for the merry year, When flesh is cheap and females dear, And lusty lads roam here and there So merrily, And ever among so merrily.

FALSTAFF. There’s a merry heart! Good Master Silence, I’ll give you a health for that anon.

SHALLOW. Give Master Bardolph some wine, Davy.

DAVY. Sweet sir, sit. I’ll be with you anon. Most sweet sir, sit. Master page, good master page, sit. Proface! What you want in meat, we’ll have in drink, but you must bear; the heart’s all.

SHALLOW. Be merry, Master Bardolph, and, my little soldier there, be merry.

SILENCE. [Singing.]

Be merry, be merry, my wife has all, For women are shrews, both short and tall. ’Tis merry in hall when beards wag all, And welcome merry Shrove-tide. Be merry, be merry.

FALSTAFF. I did not think Master Silence had been a man of this mettle.

SILENCE. Who, I? I have been merry twice and once ere now.

DAVY. [To Bardolph.] There’s a dish of leather-coats for you.

SHALLOW. Davy!

DAVY. Your worship? I’ll be with you straight. [To Bardolph] A cup of wine, sir?

A cup of wine that’s brisk and fine, And drink unto thee, leman mine, And a merry heart lives long-a.

FALSTAFF. Well said, Master Silence.

SILENCE. An we shall be merry, now comes in the sweet o’ th’ night.

FALSTAFF. Health and long life to you, Master Silence.

Fill the cup, and let it come, I’ll pledge you a mile to th’ bottom.

SHALLOW. Honest Bardolph, welcome! If thou want’st anything and wilt not call, beshrew thy heart. Welcome, my little tiny thief, [to the Page] and welcome indeed too. I’ll drink to Master Bardolph, and to all the cabileros about London.

DAVY. I hope to see London once ere I die.

BARDOLPH. An I might see you there, Davy,—

SHALLOW. By the mass, you’ll crack a quart together, ha! will you not, Master Bardolph?

BARDOLPH. Yea, sir, in a pottle-pot.

SHALLOW. By God’s liggens, I thank thee. The knave will stick by thee, I can assure thee that. He will not out, he. ’Tis true bred.

BARDOLPH. And I’ll stick by him, sir.

SHALLOW. Why, there spoke a king. Lack nothing! Be merry.

[Knocking within.]

Look who’s at door there, ho! Who knocks?

FALSTAFF. [To Silence, seeing him take off a bumper.] Why, now you have done me right.

Do me right, And dub me knight: Samingo.

Is’t not so?

FALSTAFF. ’Tis so.

SILENCE. Is’t so? Why then, say an old man can do somewhat.

DAVY. An’t please your worship, there’s one Pistol come from the court with news.

FALSTAFF. From the court? Let him come in.

Enter Pistol.

How now, Pistol?

PISTOL. Sir John, God save you!

FALSTAFF. What wind blew you hither, Pistol?

PISTOL. Not the ill wind which blows no man to good. Sweet knight, thou art now one of the greatest men in this realm.

SILENCE. By’r lady, I think he be, but goodman Puff of Barson.

PISTOL. Puff! Puff in thy teeth, most recreant coward base! Sir John, I am thy Pistol and thy friend, And helter-skelter have I rode to thee, And tidings do I bring and lucky joys, And golden times, and happy news of price.

FALSTAFF. I pray thee now, deliver them like a man of this world.

PISTOL. A foutre for the world and worldlings base! I speak of Africa and golden joys.

FALSTAFF. O base Assyrian knight, what is thy news? Let King Cophetua know the truth thereof.

SILENCE. [Singing.] And Robin Hood, Scarlet, and John.

PISTOL. Shall dunghill curs confront the Helicons? And shall good news be baffled? Then, Pistol, lay thy head in Furies’ lap.

SHALLOW. Honest gentleman, I know not your breeding.

PISTOL. Why then, lament therefor.

SHALLOW. Give me pardon, sir. If, sir, you come with news from the court, I take it there’s but two ways, either to utter them, or conceal them. I am, sir, under the King, in some authority.

PISTOL. Under which king, Besonian? Speak, or die.

SHALLOW. Under King Harry.

PISTOL. Harry the Fourth, or Fifth?

SHALLOW. Harry the Fourth.

PISTOL. A foutre for thine office! Sir John, thy tender lambkin now is King; Harry the Fifth’s the man. I speak the truth. When Pistol lies, do this, and fig me, like The bragging Spaniard.

FALSTAFF. What, is the old King dead?

PISTOL. As nail in door. The things I speak are just.

FALSTAFF. Away, Bardolph, saddle my horse. Master Robert Shallow, choose what office thou wilt in the land, ’tis thine. Pistol, I will double-charge thee with dignities.

BARDOLPH. O joyful day! I would not take a knighthood for my fortune.

PISTOL. What! I do bring good news.

FALSTAFF. Carry Master Silence to bed. Master Shallow, my Lord Shallow, be what thou wilt; I am Fortune’s steward! Get on thy boots, we’ll ride all night. O sweet Pistol! Away, Bardolph!

Come, Pistol, utter more to me; and withal devise something to do thyself good. Boot, boot, Master Shallow. I know the young King is sick for me. Let us take any man’s horses. The laws of England are at my commandment. Blessed are they that have been my friends, and woe to my Lord Chief Justice!

PISTOL. Let vultures vile seize on his lungs also! “Where is the life that late I led?” say they: Why, here it is; welcome these pleasant days!

SCENE IV. London. A street.

Enter Beadles, dragging in Hostess Quickly and Doll Tearsheet.

HOSTESS. No, thou arrant knave. I would to God that I might die, that I might have thee hanged. Thou hast drawn my shoulder out of joint.

FIRST BEADLE. The constables have delivered her over to me, and she shall have whipping-cheer enough, I warrant her. There hath been a man or two lately killed about her.

DOLL. Nut-hook, nut-hook, you lie! Come on, I’ll tell thee what, thou damned tripe-visaged rascal, an the child I now go with do miscarry, thou wert better thou hadst struck thy mother, thou paper-faced villain.

HOSTESS. O the Lord, that Sir John were come! He would make this a bloody day to somebody. But I pray God the fruit of her womb miscarry!

FIRST BEADLE. If it do, you shall have a dozen of cushions again; you have but eleven now. Come, I charge you both go with me, for the man is dead that you and Pistol beat amongst you.

DOLL. I’ll tell you what, you thin man in a censer, I will have you as soundly swinged for this, you bluebottle rogue, you filthy famished correctioner, if you be not swinged, I’ll forswear half-kirtles.

FIRST BEADLE. Come, come, you she knight-errant, come.

HOSTESS. O God, that right should thus overcome might! Well, of sufferance comes ease.

DOLL. Come, you rogue, come, bring me to a justice.

HOSTESS. Ay, come, you starved bloodhound.

DOLL. Goodman death, goodman bones!

HOSTESS. Thou atomy, thou!

DOLL. Come, you thin thing, come, you rascal!

FIRST BEADLE. Very well.

SCENE V. A public place near Westminster Abbey.

Enter two Grooms, strewing rushes.

FIRST GROOM. More rushes, more rushes.

SECOND GROOM. The trumpets have sounded twice.

FIRST GROOM. ’Twill be two o’clock ere they come from the coronation. Dispatch, dispatch.

Trumpets sound, and the King and his train pass over the stage. Enter Falstaff, Shallow, Pistol, Bardolph and Page.

FALSTAFF. Stand here by me, Master Robert Shallow. I will make the King do you grace. I will leer upon him as he comes by, and do but mark the countenance that he will give me.

PISTOL. God bless thy lungs, good knight!

FALSTAFF. Come here, Pistol, stand behind me. O, if I had had time to have made new liveries, I would have bestowed the thousand pound I borrowed of you. But ’tis no matter, this poor show doth better. This doth infer the zeal I had to see him.

SHALLOW. It doth so.

FALSTAFF. It shows my earnestness of affection—

FALSTAFF. My devotion—

SHALLOW. It doth, it doth, it doth.

FALSTAFF. As it were, to ride day and night, and not to deliberate, not to remember, not to have patience to shift me—

SHALLOW. It is best, certain.

FALSTAFF. But to stand stained with travel, and sweating with desire to see him, thinking of nothing else, putting all affairs else in oblivion, as if there were nothing else to be done but to see him.

PISTOL. ’Tis semper idem, for obsque hoc nihil est; ’tis all in every part.

SHALLOW. ’Tis so, indeed.

PISTOL. My knight, I will inflame thy noble liver, And make thee rage. Thy Doll, and Helen of thy noble thoughts, Is in base durance and contagious prison, Haled thither By most mechanical and dirty hand. Rouse up revenge from ebon den with fell Alecto’s snake, For Doll is in. Pistol speaks nought but truth.

FALSTAFF. I will deliver her.

[Shouts within. The trumpets sound.]

PISTOL. There roar’d the sea, and trumpet-clangor sounds.

Enter the King and his train, the Lord Chief Justice among them.

FALSTAFF. God save thy Grace, King Hal, my royal Hal!

PISTOL. The heavens thee guard and keep, most royal imp of fame!

FALSTAFF. God save thee, my sweet boy!

KING. My Lord Chief Justice, speak to that vain man.

CHIEF JUSTICE. Have you your wits? Know you what ’tis you speak?

FALSTAFF. My King! My Jove! I speak to thee, my heart!

KING. I know thee not, old man. Fall to thy prayers. How ill white hairs becomes a fool and jester! I have long dreamt of such a kind of man, So surfeit-swell’d, so old, and so profane; But, being awaked, I do despise my dream. Make less thy body hence, and more thy grace; Leave gormandizing; know the grave doth gape For thee thrice wider than for other men. Reply not to me with a fool-born jest. Presume not that I am the thing I was; For God doth know, so shall the world perceive, That I have turn’d away my former self; So will I those that kept me company. When thou dost hear I am as I have been, Approach me, and thou shalt be as thou wast, The tutor and the feeder of my riots. Till then I banish thee, on pain of death, As I have done the rest of my misleaders, Not to come near our person by ten mile. For competence of life I will allow you, That lack of means enforce you not to evils. And, as we hear you do reform yourselves, We will, according to your strengths and qualities, Give you advancement. Be it your charge, my lord, To see perform’d the tenor of our word. Set on.

[Exeunt King with his train.]

FALSTAFF. Master Shallow, I owe you a thousand pounds.

SHALLOW. Yea, marry, Sir John, which I beseech you to let me have home with me.

FALSTAFF. That can hardly be, Master Shallow. Do not you grieve at this; I shall be sent for in private to him. Look you, he must seem thus to the world. Fear not your advancements; I will be the man yet that shall make you great.

SHALLOW. I cannot perceive how, unless you give me your doublet and stuff me out with straw. I beseech you, good Sir John, let me have five hundred of my thousand.

FALSTAFF. Sir, I will be as good as my word. This that you heard was but a colour.

SHALLOW. A colour that I fear you will die in, Sir John.

FALSTAFF. Fear no colours. Go with me to dinner. Come, Lieutenant Pistol; come, Bardolph. I shall be sent for soon at night.

Enter the Lord Chief Justice and Prince John, Officers with them.

CHIEF JUSTICE. Go, carry Sir John Falstaff to the Fleet. Take all his company along with him.

FALSTAFF. My lord, my lord,—

CHIEF JUSTICE. I cannot now speak. I will hear you soon. Take them away.

PISTOL. Si fortuna me tormenta, spero me contenta.

[Exeunt all but Prince John and the Lord Chief Justice.]

LANCASTER. I like this fair proceeding of the King’s. He hath intent his wonted followers Shall all be very well provided for, But all are banish’d till their conversations Appear more wise and modest to the world.

CHIEF JUSTICE. And so they are.

LANCASTER. The King hath call’d his parliament, my lord.

CHIEF JUSTICE. He hath.

LANCASTER. I will lay odds that, ere this year expire, We bear our civil swords and native fire As far as France. I heard a bird so sing, Whose music, to my thinking, pleased the King. Come, will you hence?

EPILOGUE.

First my fear; then my curtsy; last my speech. My fear is your displeasure; my curtsy, my duty; and my speech, to beg your pardons. If you look for a good speech now, you undo me, for what I have to say is of mine own making; and what indeed I should say will, I doubt, prove mine own marring. But to the purpose, and so to the venture. Be it known to you, as it is very well, I was lately here in the end of a displeasing play, to pray your patience for it and to promise you a better. I meant indeed to pay you with this; which, if like an ill venture it come unluckily home, I break, and you, my gentle creditors, lose. Here I promised you I would be, and here I commit my body to your mercies. Bate me some, and I will pay you some, and, as most debtors do, promise you infinitely.

If my tongue cannot entreat you to acquit me, will you command me to use my legs? And yet that were but light payment, to dance out of your debt. But a good conscience will make any possible satisfaction, and so would I. All the gentlewomen here have forgiven me; if the gentlemen will not, then the gentlemen do not agree with the gentlewomen, which was never seen before in such an assembly.

One word more, I beseech you. If you be not too much cloyed with fat meat, our humble author will continue the story, with Sir John in it, and make you merry with fair Katharine of France; where, for anything I know, Falstaff shall die of a sweat, unless already he be killed with your hard opinions; for Oldcastle died a martyr, and this is not the man. My tongue is weary; when my legs are too, I will bid you good night.

THE LIFE OF KING HENRY THE FIFTH

ACT I Prologue. Scene I. London. An ante-chamber in the King’s palace. Scene II. The same. The presence chamber.

ACT II Chorus. Scene I. London. A street. Scene II. Southampton. A council-chamber. Scene III. London. Before a tavern. Scene IV. France. The King’s palace.

ACT III Chorus. Scene I. France. Before Harfleur. Scene II. The same. Scene III. Before the gates. Scene IV. The French King’s palace. Scene V. The same. Scene VI. The English camp in Picardy. Scene VII. The French camp, near Agincourt.

ACT IV Chorus. Scene I. The English camp at Agincourt. Scene II. The French camp. Scene III. The English camp. Scene IV. The field of battle. Scene V. Another part of the field. Scene VI. Another part of the field. Scene VII. Another part of the field. Scene VIII. Before King Henry’s pavilion.

ACT V Chorus. Scene I. France. The English camp. Scene II. France. A royal palace. Epilogue.

KING HENRY V. DUKE OF CLARENCE, brother to the King. DUKE OF BEDFORD, brother to the King. DUKE OF GLOUCESTER, brother to the King. DUKE OF EXETER, uncle to the King. DUKE OF YORK, cousin to the King. EARL OF SALISBURY. EARL OF HUNTINGDON. EARL OF WESTMORLAND. EARL OF WARWICK. ARCHBISHOP OF CANTERBURY. BISHOP OF ELY. EARL OF CAMBRIDGE. LORD SCROOP. SIR THOMAS GREY. SIR THOMAS ERPINGHAM, officer in King Henry’s army. GOWER, officer in King Henry’s army. FLUELLEN, officer in King Henry’s army. MACMORRIS, officer in King Henry’s army. JAMY, officer in King Henry’s army. BATES, soldier in the same. COURT, soldier in the same. WILLIAMS, soldier in the same. PISTOL. NYM. BARDOLPH. BOY. A Herald.

CHARLES VI, king of France. LEWIS, the Dauphin. DUKE OF BERRY. DUKE OF BRITTANY. DUKE OF BURGUNDY. DUKE OF ORLEANS. DUKE OF BOURBON. The Constable of France. RAMBURES, French Lord. GRANDPRÉ, French Lord. Governor of Harfleur MONTJOY, a French herald. Ambassadors to the King of England.

ISABEL, queen of France. KATHARINE, daughter to Charles and Isabel. ALICE, a lady attending on her. HOSTESS of a tavern in Eastcheap, formerly Mistress Nell Quickly, and now married to Pistol.

CHORUS.

Lords, Ladies, Officers, Soldiers, Citizens, Messengers, and Attendants.

SCENE: England; afterwards France.

PROLOGUE.

Enter Chorus.

CHORUS. O for a Muse of fire, that would ascend The brightest heaven of invention, A kingdom for a stage, princes to act, And monarchs to behold the swelling scene! Then should the warlike Harry, like himself, Assume the port of Mars, and at his heels, Leash’d in like hounds, should famine, sword, and fire Crouch for employment. But pardon, gentles all, The flat unraised spirits that hath dar’d On this unworthy scaffold to bring forth So great an object. Can this cockpit hold The vasty fields of France? Or may we cram Within this wooden O the very casques That did affright the air at Agincourt? O pardon! since a crooked figure may Attest in little place a million, And let us, ciphers to this great accompt, On your imaginary forces work. Suppose within the girdle of these walls Are now confin’d two mighty monarchies, Whose high upreared and abutting fronts The perilous narrow ocean parts asunder; Piece out our imperfections with your thoughts. Into a thousand parts divide one man, And make imaginary puissance. Think, when we talk of horses, that you see them Printing their proud hoofs i’ th’ receiving earth. For ’tis your thoughts that now must deck our kings, Carry them here and there, jumping o’er times, Turning the accomplishment of many years Into an hour-glass: for the which supply, Admit me Chorus to this history; Who prologue-like your humble patience pray, Gently to hear, kindly to judge, our play.

SCENE I. London. An ante-chamber in the King’s palace.

Enter the Archbishop of Canterbury and the Bishop of Ely.

CANTERBURY. My lord, I’ll tell you, that self bill is urg’d Which in the eleventh year of the last king’s reign Was like, and had indeed against us passed But that the scambling and unquiet time Did push it out of farther question.

ELY. But how, my lord, shall we resist it now?

CANTERBURY. It must be thought on. If it pass against us, We lose the better half of our possession: For all the temporal lands, which men devout By testament have given to the Church, Would they strip from us; being valu’d thus: As much as would maintain, to the King’s honour, Full fifteen earls and fifteen hundred knights, Six thousand and two hundred good esquires; And, to relief of lazars and weak age, Of indigent faint souls past corporal toil, A hundred almshouses right well supplied; And to the coffers of the King beside, A thousand pounds by th’ year. Thus runs the bill.

ELY. This would drink deep.

CANTERBURY. ’Twould drink the cup and all.

ELY. But what prevention?

CANTERBURY. The King is full of grace and fair regard.

ELY. And a true lover of the holy Church.

CANTERBURY. The courses of his youth promis’d it not. The breath no sooner left his father’s body But that his wildness, mortified in him, Seemed to die too; yea, at that very moment Consideration like an angel came And whipped th’ offending Adam out of him, Leaving his body as a paradise T’ envelope and contain celestial spirits. Never was such a sudden scholar made, Never came reformation in a flood With such a heady currance scouring faults, Nor never Hydra-headed wilfulness So soon did lose his seat, and all at once, As in this king.

ELY. We are blessed in the change.

CANTERBURY. Hear him but reason in divinity And, all-admiring, with an inward wish You would desire the King were made a prelate; Hear him debate of commonwealth affairs, You would say it hath been all in all his study; List his discourse of war, and you shall hear A fearful battle rendered you in music; Turn him to any cause of policy, The Gordian knot of it he will unloose, Familiar as his garter; that, when he speaks, The air, a chartered libertine, is still, And the mute wonder lurketh in men’s ears To steal his sweet and honeyed sentences; So that the art and practic part of life Must be the mistress to this theoric: Which is a wonder how his Grace should glean it, Since his addiction was to courses vain, His companies unlettered, rude, and shallow, His hours filled up with riots, banquets, sports, And never noted in him any study, Any retirement, any sequestration From open haunts and popularity.

ELY. The strawberry grows underneath the nettle, And wholesome berries thrive and ripen best Neighboured by fruit of baser quality; And so the Prince obscured his contemplation Under the veil of wildness, which, no doubt, Grew like the summer grass, fastest by night, Unseen, yet crescive in his faculty.

CANTERBURY. It must be so, for miracles are ceased, And therefore we must needs admit the means How things are perfected.

ELY. But, my good lord, How now for mitigation of this bill Urged by the Commons? Doth his Majesty Incline to it, or no?

CANTERBURY. He seems indifferent, Or rather swaying more upon our part Than cherishing th’ exhibitors against us; For I have made an offer to his Majesty, Upon our spiritual convocation And in regard of causes now in hand, Which I have opened to his Grace at large, As touching France, to give a greater sum Than ever at one time the clergy yet Did to his predecessors part withal.

ELY. How did this offer seem received, my lord?

CANTERBURY. With good acceptance of his Majesty; Save that there was not time enough to hear, As I perceived his Grace would fain have done, The severals and unhidden passages Of his true titles to some certain dukedoms, And generally to the crown and seat of France, Derived from Edward, his great-grandfather.

ELY. What was th’ impediment that broke this off?

CANTERBURY. The French ambassador upon that instant Craved audience; and the hour, I think, is come To give him hearing. Is it four o’clock?

ELY. It is.

CANTERBURY. Then go we in, to know his embassy, Which I could with a ready guess declare Before the Frenchman speak a word of it.

ELY. I’ll wait upon you, and I long to hear it.

SCENE II. The same. The presence chamber.

Enter King Henry, Gloucester, Bedford, Clarence, Warwick, Westmorland, Exeter and Attendants.

KING HENRY. Where is my gracious Lord of Canterbury?

EXETER. Not here in presence.

KING HENRY. Send for him, good uncle.

WESTMORLAND. Shall we call in th’ ambassador, my liege?

KING HENRY. Not yet, my cousin. We would be resolved, Before we hear him, of some things of weight That task our thoughts concerning us and France.

CANTERBURY. God and his angels guard your sacred throne And make you long become it!

KING HENRY. Sure, we thank you. My learned lord, we pray you to proceed And justly and religiously unfold Why the law Salic that they have in France Or should or should not bar us in our claim. And God forbid, my dear and faithful lord, That you should fashion, wrest, or bow your reading, Or nicely charge your understanding soul With opening titles miscreate, whose right Suits not in native colours with the truth; For God doth know how many now in health Shall drop their blood in approbation Of what your reverence shall incite us to. Therefore take heed how you impawn our person, How you awake our sleeping sword of war. We charge you in the name of God, take heed; For never two such kingdoms did contend Without much fall of blood, whose guiltless drops Are every one a woe, a sore complaint ’Gainst him whose wrongs gives edge unto the swords That makes such waste in brief mortality. Under this conjuration speak, my lord, For we will hear, note, and believe in heart That what you speak is in your conscience washed As pure as sin with baptism.

CANTERBURY. Then hear me, gracious sovereign, and you peers, That owe yourselves, your lives, and services To this imperial throne. There is no bar To make against your Highness’ claim to France But this, which they produce from Pharamond: In terram Salicam mulieres ne succedant, “No woman shall succeed in Salic land;” Which Salic land the French unjustly gloze To be the realm of France, and Pharamond The founder of this law and female bar. Yet their own authors faithfully affirm That the land Salic is in Germany, Between the floods of Sala and of Elbe; Where Charles the Great, having subdu’d the Saxons, There left behind and settled certain French; Who, holding in disdain the German women For some dishonest manners of their life, Establish’d then this law, to wit, no female Should be inheritrix in Salic land; Which Salic, as I said, ’twixt Elbe and Sala, Is at this day in Germany call’d Meissen. Then doth it well appear the Salic law Was not devised for the realm of France; Nor did the French possess the Salic land Until four hundred one and twenty years After defunction of King Pharamond, Idly suppos’d the founder of this law, Who died within the year of our redemption Four hundred twenty-six; and Charles the Great Subdu’d the Saxons, and did seat the French Beyond the river Sala, in the year Eight hundred five. Besides, their writers say, King Pepin, which deposed Childeric, Did, as heir general, being descended Of Blithild, which was daughter to King Clothair, Make claim and title to the crown of France. Hugh Capet also, who usurp’d the crown Of Charles the Duke of Lorraine, sole heir male Of the true line and stock of Charles the Great, To find his title with some shows of truth, Though, in pure truth, it was corrupt and naught, Convey’d himself as the heir to the Lady Lingare, Daughter to Charlemain, who was the son To Lewis the Emperor, and Lewis the son Of Charles the Great. Also, King Lewis the Tenth, Who was sole heir to the usurper Capet, Could not keep quiet in his conscience, Wearing the crown of France, till satisfied That fair Queen Isabel, his grandmother, Was lineal of the Lady Ermengare, Daughter to Charles, the foresaid Duke of Lorraine; By the which marriage the line of Charles the Great Was re-united to the crown of France. So that, as clear as is the summer’s sun, King Pepin’s title and Hugh Capet’s claim, King Lewis his satisfaction, all appear To hold in right and title of the female. So do the kings of France unto this day, Howbeit they would hold up this Salic law To bar your Highness claiming from the female, And rather choose to hide them in a net Than amply to imbar their crooked titles Usurp’d from you and your progenitors.

KING HENRY. May I with right and conscience make this claim?

CANTERBURY. The sin upon my head, dread sovereign! For in the Book of Numbers is it writ, “When the man dies, let the inheritance Descend unto the daughter.” Gracious lord, Stand for your own! Unwind your bloody flag! Look back into your mighty ancestors! Go, my dread lord, to your great-grandsire’s tomb, From whom you claim; invoke his warlike spirit, And your great-uncle’s, Edward the Black Prince, Who on the French ground play’d a tragedy, Making defeat on the full power of France, Whiles his most mighty father on a hill Stood smiling to behold his lion’s whelp Forage in blood of French nobility. O noble English, that could entertain With half their forces the full pride of France And let another half stand laughing by, All out of work and cold for action!

ELY. Awake remembrance of these valiant dead, And with your puissant arm renew their feats. You are their heir; you sit upon their throne; The blood and courage that renowned them Runs in your veins; and my thrice-puissant liege Is in the very May-morn of his youth, Ripe for exploits and mighty enterprises.

EXETER. Your brother kings and monarchs of the earth Do all expect that you should rouse yourself, As did the former lions of your blood.

WESTMORLAND. They know your Grace hath cause and means and might; So hath your Highness. Never King of England Had nobles richer, and more loyal subjects, Whose hearts have left their bodies here in England And lie pavilion’d in the fields of France.

CANTERBURY. O, let their bodies follow, my dear liege, With blood and sword and fire to win your right; In aid whereof we of the spiritualty Will raise your Highness such a mighty sum As never did the clergy at one time Bring in to any of your ancestors.

KING HENRY. We must not only arm to invade the French, But lay down our proportions to defend Against the Scot, who will make road upon us With all advantages.

CANTERBURY. They of those marches, gracious sovereign, Shall be a wall sufficient to defend Our inland from the pilfering borderers.

KING HENRY. We do not mean the coursing snatchers only, But fear the main intendment of the Scot, Who hath been still a giddy neighbour to us; For you shall read that my great-grandfather Never went with his forces into France But that the Scot on his unfurnish’d kingdom Came pouring, like the tide into a breach, With ample and brim fullness of his force, Galling the gleaned land with hot assays, Girdling with grievous siege castles and towns; That England, being empty of defence, Hath shook and trembled at the ill neighbourhood.

CANTERBURY. She hath been then more fear’d than harm’d, my liege; For hear her but exampl’d by herself: When all her chivalry hath been in France, And she a mourning widow of her nobles, She hath herself not only well defended But taken and impounded as a stray The King of Scots; whom she did send to France To fill King Edward’s fame with prisoner kings, And make her chronicle as rich with praise As is the ooze and bottom of the sea With sunken wreck and sumless treasuries.

WESTMORLAND. But there’s a saying very old and true, “If that you will France win, Then with Scotland first begin.” For once the eagle England being in prey, To her unguarded nest the weasel Scot Comes sneaking and so sucks her princely eggs, Playing the mouse in absence of the cat, To tear and havoc more than she can eat.

EXETER. It follows then the cat must stay at home; Yet that is but a crush’d necessity, Since we have locks to safeguard necessaries, And pretty traps to catch the petty thieves. While that the armed hand doth fight abroad, The advised head defends itself at home; For government, though high and low and lower, Put into parts, doth keep in one consent, Congreeing in a full and natural close, Like music.

CANTERBURY. Therefore doth heaven divide The state of man in divers functions, Setting endeavour in continual motion, To which is fixed, as an aim or butt, Obedience; for so work the honey-bees, Creatures that by a rule in nature teach The act of order to a peopled kingdom. They have a king and officers of sorts, Where some, like magistrates, correct at home, Others like merchants, venture trade abroad, Others, like soldiers, armed in their stings, Make boot upon the summer’s velvet buds, Which pillage they with merry march bring home To the tent-royal of their emperor; Who, busied in his majesty, surveys The singing masons building roofs of gold, The civil citizens kneading up the honey, The poor mechanic porters crowding in Their heavy burdens at his narrow gate, The sad-eyed justice, with his surly hum, Delivering o’er to executors pale The lazy yawning drone. I this infer, That many things, having full reference To one consent, may work contrariously. As many arrows, loosed several ways, Come to one mark; as many ways meet in one town; As many fresh streams meet in one salt sea; As many lines close in the dial’s centre; So many a thousand actions, once afoot, End in one purpose, and be all well borne Without defeat. Therefore to France, my liege! Divide your happy England into four, Whereof take you one quarter into France, And you withal shall make all Gallia shake. If we, with thrice such powers left at home, Cannot defend our own doors from the dog, Let us be worried and our nation lose The name of hardiness and policy.

KING HENRY. Call in the messengers sent from the Dauphin.

[Exeunt some Attendants.]

Now are we well resolv’d; and, by God’s help, And yours, the noble sinews of our power, France being ours, we’ll bend it to our awe, Or break it all to pieces. Or there we’ll sit, Ruling in large and ample empery O’er France and all her almost kingly dukedoms, Or lay these bones in an unworthy urn, Tombless, with no remembrance over them. Either our history shall with full mouth Speak freely of our acts, or else our grave, Like Turkish mute, shall have a tongueless mouth, Not worshipp’d with a waxen epitaph.

Enter Ambassadors of France.

Now are we well prepar’d to know the pleasure Of our fair cousin Dauphin; for we hear Your greeting is from him, not from the King.

FIRST AMBASSADOR. May’t please your Majesty to give us leave Freely to render what we have in charge, Or shall we sparingly show you far off The Dauphin’s meaning and our embassy?

KING HENRY. We are no tyrant, but a Christian king, Unto whose grace our passion is as subject As is our wretches fett’red in our prisons; Therefore with frank and with uncurbed plainness Tell us the Dauphin’s mind.

AMBASSADOR. Thus, then, in few. Your Highness, lately sending into France, Did claim some certain dukedoms, in the right Of your great predecessor, King Edward the Third. In answer of which claim, the prince our master Says that you savour too much of your youth, And bids you be advis’d there’s nought in France That can be with a nimble galliard won. You cannot revel into dukedoms there. He therefore sends you, meeter for your spirit, This tun of treasure; and, in lieu of this, Desires you let the dukedoms that you claim Hear no more of you. This the Dauphin speaks.

KING HENRY. What treasure, uncle?

EXETER. Tennis-balls, my liege.

KING HENRY. We are glad the Dauphin is so pleasant with us. His present and your pains we thank you for. When we have match’d our rackets to these balls, We will, in France, by God’s grace, play a set Shall strike his father’s crown into the hazard. Tell him he hath made a match with such a wrangler That all the courts of France will be disturb’d With chaces. And we understand him well, How he comes o’er us with our wilder days, Not measuring what use we made of them. We never valu’d this poor seat of England; And therefore, living hence, did give ourself To barbarous licence; as ’tis ever common That men are merriest when they are from home. But tell the Dauphin I will keep my state, Be like a king, and show my sail of greatness When I do rouse me in my throne of France. For that I have laid by my majesty And plodded like a man for working days, But I will rise there with so full a glory That I will dazzle all the eyes of France, Yea, strike the Dauphin blind to look on us. And tell the pleasant prince this mock of his Hath turn’d his balls to gun-stones, and his soul Shall stand sore charged for the wasteful vengeance That shall fly with them; for many a thousand widows Shall this his mock mock out of their dear husbands, Mock mothers from their sons, mock castles down; And some are yet ungotten and unborn That shall have cause to curse the Dauphin’s scorn. But this lies all within the will of God, To whom I do appeal; and in whose name Tell you the Dauphin I am coming on To venge me as I may, and to put forth My rightful hand in a well-hallow’d cause. So get you hence in peace; and tell the Dauphin His jest will savour but of shallow wit, When thousands weep more than did laugh at it.— Convey them with safe conduct.—Fare you well.

[Exeunt Ambassadors.]

EXETER. This was a merry message.

KING HENRY. We hope to make the sender blush at it. Therefore, my lords, omit no happy hour That may give furtherance to our expedition; For we have now no thought in us but France, Save those to God, that run before our business. Therefore, let our proportions for these wars Be soon collected, and all things thought upon That may with reasonable swiftness add More feathers to our wings; for, God before, We’ll chide this Dauphin at his father’s door. Therefore let every man now task his thought, That this fair action may on foot be brought.

Flourish. Enter Chorus.

CHORUS. Now all the youth of England are on fire, And silken dalliance in the wardrobe lies. Now thrive the armourers, and honour’s thought Reigns solely in the breast of every man. They sell the pasture now to buy the horse, Following the mirror of all Christian kings, With winged heels, as English Mercuries. For now sits Expectation in the air, And hides a sword from hilts unto the point With crowns imperial, crowns, and coronets, Promis’d to Harry and his followers. The French, advis’d by good intelligence Of this most dreadful preparation, Shake in their fear, and with pale policy Seek to divert the English purposes. O England! model to thy inward greatness, Like little body with a mighty heart, What mightst thou do, that honour would thee do, Were all thy children kind and natural! But see thy fault! France hath in thee found out A nest of hollow bosoms, which he fills With treacherous crowns; and three corrupted men, One, Richard Earl of Cambridge, and the second, Henry Lord Scroop of Masham, and the third, Sir Thomas Grey, knight of Northumberland, Have, for the gilt of France,—O guilt indeed!— Confirm’d conspiracy with fearful France; And by their hands this grace of kings must die, If hell and treason hold their promises, Ere he take ship for France, and in Southampton. Linger your patience on, and we’ll digest The abuse of distance, force a play. The sum is paid; the traitors are agreed; The King is set from London; and the scene Is now transported, gentles, to Southampton. There is the playhouse now, there must you sit; And thence to France shall we convey you safe, And bring you back, charming the narrow seas To give you gentle pass; for, if we may, We’ll not offend one stomach with our play. But, till the King come forth, and not till then, Unto Southampton do we shift our scene.

Enter Corporal Nym and Lieutenant Bardolph.

BARDOLPH. Well met, Corporal Nym.

NYM. Good morrow, Lieutenant Bardolph.

BARDOLPH. What, are Ancient Pistol and you friends yet?

NYM. For my part, I care not. I say little; but when time shall serve, there shall be smiles; but that shall be as it may. I dare not fight, but I will wink and hold out mine iron. It is a simple one, but what though? It will toast cheese, and it will endure cold as another man’s sword will; and there’s an end.

BARDOLPH. I will bestow a breakfast to make you friends; and we’ll be all three sworn brothers to France. Let it be so, good Corporal Nym.

NYM. Faith, I will live so long as I may, that’s the certain of it; and when I cannot live any longer, I will do as I may. That is my rest, that is the rendezvous of it.

BARDOLPH. It is certain, corporal, that he is married to Nell Quickly; and certainly she did you wrong, for you were troth-plight to her.

NYM. I cannot tell. Things must be as they may. Men may sleep, and they may have their throats about them at that time; and some say knives have edges. It must be as it may. Though patience be a tired mare, yet she will plod. There must be conclusions. Well, I cannot tell.

Enter Pistol and Hostess.

BARDOLPH. Here comes Ancient Pistol and his wife. Good Corporal, be patient here. How now, mine host Pistol!

PISTOL. Base tike, call’st thou me host? Now, by this hand, I swear I scorn the term; Nor shall my Nell keep lodgers.

HOSTESS. No, by my troth, not long; for we cannot lodge and board a dozen or fourteen gentlewomen that live honestly by the prick of their needles, but it will be thought we keep a bawdy house straight. [Nym and Pistol draw.] O well a day, Lady, if he be not drawn now! We shall see wilful adultery and murder committed.

BARDOLPH. Good Lieutenant! good corporal! offer nothing here.

NYM. Pish!

PISTOL. Pish for thee, Iceland dog! thou prick-ear’d cur of Iceland!

HOSTESS. Good Corporal Nym, show thy valour, and put up your sword.

NYM. Will you shog off? I would have you solus.

PISTOL. Solus, egregious dog! O viper vile! The solus in thy most mervailous face; The solus in thy teeth, and in thy throat, And in thy hateful lungs, yea, in thy maw, perdy, And, which is worse, within thy nasty mouth! I do retort the solus in thy bowels; For I can take, and Pistol’s cock is up, And flashing fire will follow.

NYM. I am not Barbason; you cannot conjure me. I have an humour to knock you indifferently well. If you grow foul with me, Pistol, I will scour you with my rapier, as I may, in fair terms. If you would walk off, I would prick your guts a little, in good terms, as I may; and that’s the humour of it.

PISTOL. O braggart vile and damned furious wight! The grave doth gape, and doting death is near, Therefore exhale.

BARDOLPH. Hear me, hear me what I say. He that strikes the first stroke I’ll run him up to the hilts, as I am a soldier.

[Draws.]

PISTOL. An oath of mickle might; and fury shall abate. Give me thy fist, thy fore-foot to me give. Thy spirits are most tall.

NYM. I will cut thy throat, one time or other, in fair terms: that is the humour of it.

PISTOL. “Couple a gorge!” That is the word. I thee defy again. O hound of Crete, think’st thou my spouse to get? No! to the spital go, And from the powdering tub of infamy Fetch forth the lazar kite of Cressid’s kind, Doll Tearsheet she by name, and her espouse. I have, and I will hold, the quondam Quickly For the only she; and pauca, there’s enough. Go to.

Enter the Boy.

BOY. Mine host Pistol, you must come to my master, and you, hostess. He is very sick, and would to bed. Good Bardolph, put thy face between his sheets, and do the office of a warming-pan. Faith, he’s very ill.

BARDOLPH. Away, you rogue!

HOSTESS. By my troth, he’ll yield the crow a pudding one of these days. The King has kill’d his heart. Good husband, come home presently.

[Exeunt Hostess and Boy.]

BARDOLPH. Come, shall I make you two friends? We must to France together; why the devil should we keep knives to cut one another’s throats?

PISTOL. Let floods o’erswell, and fiends for food howl on!

NYM. You’ll pay me the eight shillings I won of you at betting?

PISTOL. Base is the slave that pays.

NYM. That now I will have: that’s the humour of it.

PISTOL. As manhood shall compound. Push home.

BARDOLPH. By this sword, he that makes the first thrust, I’ll kill him; by this sword, I will.

PISTOL. Sword is an oath, and oaths must have their course.

BARDOLPH. Corporal Nym, and thou wilt be friends, be friends; an thou wilt not, why, then, be enemies with me too. Prithee, put up.

NYM. I shall have my eight shillings I won from you at betting?

PISTOL. A noble shalt thou have, and present pay; And liquor likewise will I give to thee, And friendship shall combine, and brotherhood. I’ll live by Nym, and Nym shall live by me. Is not this just? For I shall sutler be Unto the camp, and profits will accrue. Give me thy hand.

NYM. I shall have my noble?

PISTOL. In cash most justly paid.

NYM. Well, then, that’s the humour of’t.

Enter Hostess.

HOSTESS. As ever you come of women, come in quickly to Sir John. Ah, poor heart! he is so shak’d of a burning quotidian tertian, that it is most lamentable to behold. Sweet men, come to him.

NYM. The King hath run bad humours on the knight; that’s the even of it.

PISTOL. Nym, thou hast spoke the right. His heart is fracted and corroborate.

NYM. The King is a good king; but it must be as it may; he passes some humours and careers.

PISTOL. Let us condole the knight; for, lambkins, we will live.

SCENE II. Southampton. A council-chamber.

Enter Exeter, Bedford and Westmorland.

BEDFORD. ’Fore God, his Grace is bold, to trust these traitors.

EXETER. They shall be apprehended by and by.

WESTMORLAND. How smooth and even they do bear themselves! As if allegiance in their bosoms sat Crowned with faith and constant loyalty.

BEDFORD. The King hath note of all that they intend, By interception which they dream not of.

EXETER. Nay, but the man that was his bed-fellow, Whom he hath dull’d and cloy’d with gracious favours, That he should, for a foreign purse, so sell His sovereign’s life to death and treachery.

Trumpets sound. Enter King Henry, Scroop, Cambridge and Grey.

KING HENRY. Now sits the wind fair, and we will aboard. My Lord of Cambridge, and my kind Lord of Masham, And you, my gentle knight, give me your thoughts. Think you not that the powers we bear with us Will cut their passage through the force of France, Doing the execution and the act For which we have in head assembled them?

SCROOP. No doubt, my liege, if each man do his best.

KING HENRY. I doubt not that, since we are well persuaded We carry not a heart with us from hence That grows not in a fair consent with ours, Nor leave not one behind that doth not wish Success and conquest to attend on us.

CAMBRIDGE. Never was monarch better fear’d and lov’d Than is your Majesty. There’s not, I think, a subject That sits in heart-grief and uneasiness Under the sweet shade of your government.

GREY. True; those that were your father’s enemies Have steep’d their galls in honey, and do serve you With hearts create of duty and of zeal.

KING HENRY. We therefore have great cause of thankfulness, And shall forget the office of our hand Sooner than quittance of desert and merit According to the weight and worthiness.

SCROOP. So service shall with steeled sinews toil, And labour shall refresh itself with hope, To do your Grace incessant services.

KING HENRY. We judge no less. Uncle of Exeter, Enlarge the man committed yesterday, That rail’d against our person. We consider It was excess of wine that set him on, And on his more advice we pardon him.

SCROOP. That’s mercy, but too much security. Let him be punish’d, sovereign, lest example Breed, by his sufferance, more of such a kind.

KING HENRY. O, let us yet be merciful.

CAMBRIDGE. So may your Highness, and yet punish too.

GREY. Sir, You show great mercy if you give him life After the taste of much correction.

KING HENRY. Alas, your too much love and care of me Are heavy orisons ’gainst this poor wretch! If little faults, proceeding on distemper, Shall not be wink’d at, how shall we stretch our eye When capital crimes, chew’d, swallow’d, and digested, Appear before us? We’ll yet enlarge that man, Though Cambridge, Scroop, and Grey, in their dear care And tender preservation of our person, Would have him punish’d. And now to our French causes. Who are the late commissioners?

CAMBRIDGE. I one, my lord. Your Highness bade me ask for it today.

SCROOP. So did you me, my liege.

GREY. And I, my royal sovereign.

KING HENRY. Then, Richard Earl of Cambridge, there is yours; There yours, Lord Scroop of Masham; and, sir knight, Grey of Northumberland, this same is yours. Read them, and know I know your worthiness. My Lord of Westmorland, and uncle Exeter, We will aboard tonight.—Why, how now, gentlemen! What see you in those papers that you lose So much complexion?—Look ye, how they change! Their cheeks are paper.—Why, what read you there, That have so cowarded and chas’d your blood Out of appearance?

CAMBRIDGE. I do confess my fault, And do submit me to your Highness’ mercy.

GREY, SCROOP. To which we all appeal.

KING HENRY. The mercy that was quick in us but late, By your own counsel is suppress’d and kill’d. You must not dare, for shame, to talk of mercy, For your own reasons turn into your bosoms, As dogs upon their masters, worrying you. See you, my princes and my noble peers, These English monsters! My Lord of Cambridge here, You know how apt our love was to accord To furnish him with an appertinents Belonging to his honour; and this man Hath, for a few light crowns, lightly conspir’d And sworn unto the practices of France To kill us here in Hampton; to the which This knight, no less for bounty bound to us Than Cambridge is, hath likewise sworn. But, O What shall I say to thee, Lord Scroop? thou cruel, Ingrateful, savage, and inhuman creature! Thou that didst bear the key of all my counsels, That knew’st the very bottom of my soul, That almost mightst have coin’d me into gold, Wouldst thou have practis’d on me for thy use,— May it be possible that foreign hire Could out of thee extract one spark of evil That might annoy my finger? ’Tis so strange, That, though the truth of it stands off as gross As black and white, my eye will scarcely see it. Treason and murder ever kept together, As two yoke-devils sworn to either’s purpose, Working so grossly in a natural cause That admiration did not whoop at them; But thou, ’gainst all proportion, didst bring in Wonder to wait on treason and on murder; And whatsoever cunning fiend it was That wrought upon thee so preposterously Hath got the voice in hell for excellence; And other devils that suggest by treasons Do botch and bungle up damnation With patches, colours, and with forms being fetch’d From glist’ring semblances of piety. But he that temper’d thee bade thee stand up, Gave thee no instance why thou shouldst do treason, Unless to dub thee with the name of traitor. If that same demon that hath gull’d thee thus Should with his lion gait walk the whole world, He might return to vasty Tartar back, And tell the legions, “I can never win A soul so easy as that Englishman’s.” O, how hast thou with jealousy infected The sweetness of affiance! Show men dutiful? Why, so didst thou. Seem they grave and learned? Why, so didst thou. Come they of noble family? Why, so didst thou. Seem they religious? Why, so didst thou. Or are they spare in diet, Free from gross passion or of mirth or anger, Constant in spirit, not swerving with the blood, Garnish’d and deck’d in modest complement, Not working with the eye without the ear, And but in purged judgement trusting neither? Such and so finely bolted didst thou seem. And thus thy fall hath left a kind of blot To mark the full-fraught man and best indued With some suspicion. I will weep for thee; For this revolt of thine, methinks, is like Another fall of man. Their faults are open. Arrest them to the answer of the law; And God acquit them of their practices!

EXETER. I arrest thee of high treason, by the name of Richard Earl of Cambridge. I arrest thee of high treason, by the name of Henry Lord Scroop of Masham. I arrest thee of high treason, by the name of Thomas Grey, knight, of Northumberland.

SCROOP. Our purposes God justly hath discover’d, And I repent my fault more than my death, Which I beseech your Highness to forgive, Although my body pay the price of it.

CAMBRIDGE. For me, the gold of France did not seduce, Although I did admit it as a motive The sooner to effect what I intended. But God be thanked for prevention, Which I in sufferance heartily will rejoice, Beseeching God and you to pardon me.

GREY. Never did faithful subject more rejoice At the discovery of most dangerous treason Than I do at this hour joy o’er myself, Prevented from a damned enterprise. My fault, but not my body, pardon, sovereign.

KING HENRY. God quit you in his mercy! Hear your sentence. You have conspir’d against our royal person, Join’d with an enemy proclaim’d, and from his coffers Received the golden earnest of our death; Wherein you would have sold your king to slaughter, His princes and his peers to servitude, His subjects to oppression and contempt, And his whole kingdom into desolation. Touching our person seek we no revenge; But we our kingdom’s safety must so tender, Whose ruin you have sought, that to her laws We do deliver you. Get you therefore hence, Poor miserable wretches, to your death, The taste whereof God of his mercy give You patience to endure, and true repentance Of all your dear offences! Bear them hence.

[Exeunt Cambridge, Scroop and Grey, guarded.]

Now, lords, for France; the enterprise whereof Shall be to you, as us, like glorious. We doubt not of a fair and lucky war, Since God so graciously hath brought to light This dangerous treason lurking in our way To hinder our beginnings. We doubt not now But every rub is smoothed on our way. Then forth, dear countrymen! Let us deliver Our puissance into the hand of God, Putting it straight in expedition. Cheerly to sea! The signs of war advance! No king of England, if not king of France!

SCENE III. London. Before a tavern.

Enter Pistol, Nym, Bardolph, Boy and Hostess.

HOSTESS. Prithee, honey, sweet husband, let me bring thee to Staines.

PISTOL. No; for my manly heart doth yearn. Bardolph, be blithe; Nym, rouse thy vaunting veins; Boy, bristle thy courage up; for Falstaff he is dead, And we must yearn therefore.

BARDOLPH. Would I were with him, wheresome’er he is, either in heaven or in hell!

HOSTESS. Nay, sure, he’s not in hell. He’s in Arthur’s bosom, if ever man went to Arthur’s bosom. ’A made a finer end and went away an it had been any christom child. ’A parted even just between twelve and one, even at the turning o’ the tide: for after I saw him fumble with the sheets, and play with flowers, and smile upon his fingers’ ends, I knew there was but one way; for his nose was as sharp as a pen, and ’a babbled of green fields. “How now, Sir John!” quoth I; “what, man! be o’ good cheer.” So ’a cried out, “God, God, God!” three or four times. Now I, to comfort him, bid him ’a should not think of God; I hop’d there was no need to trouble himself with any such thoughts yet. So ’a bade me lay more clothes on his feet. I put my hand into the bed and felt them, and they were as cold as any stone. Then I felt to his knees, and so upward and upward, and all was as cold as any stone.

NYM. They say he cried out of sack.

HOSTESS. Ay, that ’a did.

BARDOLPH. And of women.

HOSTESS. Nay, that ’a did not.

BOY. Yes, that ’a did; and said they were devils incarnate.

HOSTESS. ’A could never abide carnation; ’twas a colour he never liked.

BOY. ’A said once, the devil would have him about women.

HOSTESS. ’A did in some sort, indeed, handle women; but then he was rheumatic, and talk’d of the whore of Babylon.

BOY. Do you not remember, ’a saw a flea stick upon Bardolph’s nose, and ’a said it was a black soul burning in hell-fire?

BARDOLPH. Well, the fuel is gone that maintain’d that fire. That’s all the riches I got in his service.

NYM. Shall we shog? The King will be gone from Southampton.

PISTOL. Come, let’s away. My love, give me thy lips. Look to my chattels and my movables. Let senses rule; the word is “Pitch and Pay.” Trust none; For oaths are straws, men’s faiths are wafer-cakes And hold-fast is the only dog, my duck; Therefore, Caveto be thy counsellor. Go, clear thy crystals. Yoke-fellows in arms, Let us to France; like horse-leeches, my boys, To suck, to suck, the very blood to suck!

BOY. And that’s but unwholesome food, they say.

PISTOL. Touch her soft mouth, and march.

BARDOLPH. Farewell, hostess.

[Kissing her.]

NYM. I cannot kiss; that is the humour of it; but, adieu.

PISTOL. Let housewifery appear. Keep close, I thee command.

HOSTESS. Farewell; adieu.

SCENE IV. France. The King’s palace.

Flourish. Enter the French King, the Dauphin, the Dukes of Berry and Brittany, the Constable and others.

FRENCH KING. Thus comes the English with full power upon us, And more than carefully it us concerns To answer royally in our defences. Therefore the Dukes of Berry and of Brittany, Of Brabant and of Orleans, shall make forth, And you, Prince Dauphin, with all swift dispatch, To line and new repair our towns of war With men of courage and with means defendant; For England his approaches makes as fierce As waters to the sucking of a gulf. It fits us then to be as provident As fears may teach us out of late examples Left by the fatal and neglected English Upon our fields.

DAUPHIN. My most redoubted father, It is most meet we arm us ’gainst the foe; For peace itself should not so dull a kingdom, Though war nor no known quarrel were in question, But that defences, musters, preparations, Should be maintain’d, assembled, and collected, As were a war in expectation. Therefore, I say, ’tis meet we all go forth To view the sick and feeble parts of France. And let us do it with no show of fear; No, with no more than if we heard that England Were busied with a Whitsun morris-dance; For, my good liege, she is so idly king’d, Her sceptre so fantastically borne By a vain, giddy, shallow, humorous youth, That fear attends her not.

CONSTABLE. O peace, Prince Dauphin! You are too much mistaken in this king. Question your Grace the late ambassadors With what great state he heard their embassy, How well supplied with noble counsellors, How modest in exception, and withal How terrible in constant resolution, And you shall find his vanities forespent Were but the outside of the Roman Brutus, Covering discretion with a coat of folly; As gardeners do with ordure hide those roots That shall first spring and be most delicate.

DAUPHIN. Well, ’tis not so, my Lord High Constable; But though we think it so, it is no matter. In cases of defence ’tis best to weigh The enemy more mighty than he seems, So the proportions of defence are fill’d; Which, of a weak and niggardly projection, Doth, like a miser, spoil his coat with scanting A little cloth.

FRENCH KING. Think we King Harry strong; And, Princes, look you strongly arm to meet him. The kindred of him hath been flesh’d upon us; And he is bred out of that bloody strain That haunted us in our familiar paths. Witness our too much memorable shame When Cressy battle fatally was struck, And all our princes captiv’d by the hand Of that black name, Edward, Black Prince of Wales; Whiles that his mountain sire, on mountain standing, Up in the air, crown’d with the golden sun, Saw his heroical seed, and smil’d to see him, Mangle the work of nature and deface The patterns that by God and by French fathers Had twenty years been made. This is a stem Of that victorious stock; and let us fear The native mightiness and fate of him.

MESSENGER. Ambassadors from Harry King of England Do crave admittance to your Majesty.

FRENCH KING. We’ll give them present audience. Go, and bring them.

[Exeunt Messenger and certain Lords.]

You see this chase is hotly follow’d, friends.

DAUPHIN. Turn head and stop pursuit; for coward dogs Most spend their mouths when what they seem to threaten Runs far before them. Good my sovereign, Take up the English short, and let them know Of what a monarchy you are the head. Self-love, my liege, is not so vile a sin As self-neglecting.

Enter Exeter.

FRENCH KING. From our brother of England?

EXETER. From him; and thus he greets your Majesty: He wills you, in the name of God Almighty, That you divest yourself, and lay apart The borrowed glories that by gift of heaven, By law of nature and of nations, ’longs To him and to his heirs; namely, the crown And all wide-stretched honours that pertain By custom and the ordinance of times Unto the crown of France. That you may know ’Tis no sinister nor no awkward claim Pick’d from the worm-holes of long-vanish’d days, Nor from the dust of old oblivion rak’d, He sends you this most memorable line, In every branch truly demonstrative; Willing you overlook this pedigree; And when you find him evenly deriv’d From his most fam’d of famous ancestors, Edward the Third, he bids you then resign Your crown and kingdom, indirectly held From him, the native and true challenger.

FRENCH KING. Or else what follows?

EXETER. Bloody constraint; for if you hide the crown Even in your hearts, there will he rake for it. Therefore in fierce tempest is he coming, In thunder and in earthquake, like a Jove, That, if requiring fail, he will compel; And bids you, in the bowels of the Lord, Deliver up the crown, and to take mercy On the poor souls for whom this hungry war Opens his vasty jaws; and on your head Turning the widows’ tears, the orphans’ cries, The dead men’s blood, the pining maidens’ groans, For husbands, fathers, and betrothed lovers, That shall be swallowed in this controversy. This is his claim, his threat’ning, and my message; Unless the Dauphin be in presence here, To whom expressly I bring greeting too.

FRENCH KING. For us, we will consider of this further. Tomorrow shall you bear our full intent Back to our brother of England.

DAUPHIN. For the Dauphin, I stand here for him. What to him from England?

EXETER. Scorn and defiance. Slight regard, contempt, And anything that may not misbecome The mighty sender, doth he prize you at. Thus says my king: an if your father’s Highness Do not, in grant of all demands at large, Sweeten the bitter mock you sent his Majesty, He’ll call you to so hot an answer of it That caves and womby vaultages of France Shall chide your trespass and return your mock In second accent of his ordinance.

DAUPHIN. Say, if my father render fair return, It is against my will; for I desire Nothing but odds with England. To that end, As matching to his youth and vanity, I did present him with the Paris balls.

EXETER. He’ll make your Paris Louvre shake for it, Were it the mistress-court of mighty Europe; And, be assur’d, you’ll find a difference, As we his subjects have in wonder found, Between the promise of his greener days And these he masters now. Now he weighs time Even to the utmost grain. That you shall read In your own losses, if he stay in France.

FRENCH KING. Tomorrow shall you know our mind at full.

EXETER. Dispatch us with all speed, lest that our king Come here himself to question our delay; For he is footed in this land already.

FRENCH KING. You shall be soon dispatch’d with fair conditions. A night is but small breath and little pause To answer matters of this consequence.

CHORUS. Thus with imagin’d wing our swift scene flies, In motion of no less celerity Than that of thought. Suppose that you have seen The well-appointed king at Hampton pier Embark his royalty, and his brave fleet With silken streamers the young Phoebus fanning. Play with your fancies; and in them behold Upon the hempen tackle ship-boys climbing; Hear the shrill whistle which doth order give To sounds confus’d; behold the threaden sails, Borne with the invisible and creeping wind, Draw the huge bottoms through the furrow’d sea, Breasting the lofty surge. O, do but think You stand upon the rivage and behold A city on the inconstant billows dancing; For so appears this fleet majestical, Holding due course to Harfleur. Follow, follow! Grapple your minds to sternage of this navy, And leave your England, as dead midnight still, Guarded with grandsires, babies, and old women, Either past or not arriv’d to pith and puissance. For who is he, whose chin is but enrich’d With one appearing hair, that will not follow These cull’d and choice-drawn cavaliers to France? Work, work your thoughts, and therein see a siege; Behold the ordnance on their carriages, With fatal mouths gaping on girded Harfleur. Suppose the ambassador from the French comes back, Tells Harry that the King doth offer him Katharine his daughter, and with her, to dowry, Some petty and unprofitable dukedoms. The offer likes not; and the nimble gunner With linstock now the devilish cannon touches,

[Alarum, and chambers go off.]

And down goes all before them. Still be kind, And eke out our performance with your mind.

SCENE I. France. Before Harfleur.

Alarum. Enter King Henry, Exeter, Bedford, Gloucester and Soldiers, with scaling-ladders.

KING HENRY. Once more unto the breach, dear friends, once more, Or close the wall up with our English dead. In peace there’s nothing so becomes a man As modest stillness and humility; But when the blast of war blows in our ears, Then imitate the action of the tiger; Stiffen the sinews, summon up the blood, Disguise fair nature with hard-favour’d rage; Then lend the eye a terrible aspect; Let it pry through the portage of the head Like the brass cannon; let the brow o’erwhelm it As fearfully as does a galled rock O’erhang and jutty his confounded base, Swill’d with the wild and wasteful ocean. Now set the teeth and stretch the nostril wide, Hold hard the breath, and bend up every spirit To his full height. On, on, you noblest English, Whose blood is fet from fathers of war-proof! Fathers that, like so many Alexanders, Have in these parts from morn till even fought, And sheath’d their swords for lack of argument. Dishonour not your mothers; now attest That those whom you call’d fathers did beget you. Be copy now to men of grosser blood, And teach them how to war. And you, good yeomen, Whose limbs were made in England, show us here The mettle of your pasture; let us swear That you are worth your breeding, which I doubt not; For there is none of you so mean and base, That hath not noble lustre in your eyes. I see you stand like greyhounds in the slips, Straining upon the start. The game’s afoot! Follow your spirit, and upon this charge Cry, “God for Harry! England and Saint George!”

[Exeunt. Alarum, and chambers go off.]

Enter Nym, Bardolph, Pistol and Boy.

BARDOLPH. On, on, on, on, on! To the breach, to the breach!

NYM. Pray thee, corporal, stay. The knocks are too hot; and, for mine own part, I have not a case of lives. The humour of it is too hot; that is the very plain-song of it.

PISTOL. The plain-song is most just, for humours do abound. Knocks go and come; God’s vassals drop and die; And sword and shield, In bloody field, Doth win immortal fame.

BOY. Would I were in an alehouse in London! I would give all my fame for a pot of ale and safety.

PISTOL. And I. If wishes would prevail with me, My purpose should not fail with me, But thither would I hie.

BOY. As duly, But not as truly, As bird doth sing on bough.

Enter Fluellen.

FLUELLEN. Up to the breach, you dogs! Avaunt, you cullions!

[Driving them forward.]

PISTOL. Be merciful, great Duke, to men of mould. Abate thy rage, abate thy manly rage, Abate thy rage, great Duke! Good bawcock, bate thy rage; use lenity, sweet chuck!

NYM. These be good humours! Your honour wins bad humours.

[Exeunt all but Boy.]

BOY. As young as I am, I have observ’d these three swashers. I am boy to them all three; but all they three, though they would serve me, could not be man to me; for indeed three such antics do not amount to a man. For Bardolph, he is white-liver’d and red-fac’d; by the means whereof ’a faces it out, but fights not. For Pistol, he hath a killing tongue and a quiet sword; by the means whereof ’a breaks words, and keeps whole weapons. For Nym, he hath heard that men of few words are the best men; and therefore he scorns to say his prayers, lest ’a should be thought a coward. But his few bad words are match’d with as few good deeds; for ’a never broke any man’s head but his own, and that was against a post when he was drunk. They will steal anything, and call it purchase. Bardolph stole a lute-case, bore it twelve leagues, and sold it for three half-pence. Nym and Bardolph are sworn brothers in filching, and in Calais they stole a fire-shovel. I knew by that piece of service the men would carry coals. They would have me as familiar with men’s pockets as their gloves or their handkerchers; which makes much against my manhood, if I should take from another’s pocket to put into mine; for it is plain pocketing up of wrongs. I must leave them, and seek some better service. Their villainy goes against my weak stomach, and therefore I must cast it up.

Enter Gower and Fluellen.

GOWER. Captain Fluellen, you must come presently to the mines. The Duke of Gloucester would speak with you.

FLUELLEN. To the mines! Tell you the Duke, it is not so good to come to the mines; for, look you, the mines is not according to the disciplines of the war. The concavities of it is not sufficient; for, look you, the athversary, you may discuss unto the Duke, look you, is digt himself four yard under the countermines. By Cheshu, I think ’a will plow up all, if there is not better directions.

GOWER. The Duke of Gloucester, to whom the order of the siege is given, is altogether directed by an Irishman, a very valiant gentleman, i’ faith.

FLUELLEN. It is Captain Macmorris, is it not?

GOWER. I think it be.

FLUELLEN. By Cheshu, he is an ass, as in the world. I will verify as much in his beard. He has no more directions in the true disciplines of the wars, look you, of the Roman disciplines, than is a puppy-dog.

Enter Macmorris and Captain Jamy.

GOWER. Here ’a comes; and the Scots captain, Captain Jamy, with him.

FLUELLEN. Captain Jamy is a marvellous falorous gentleman, that is certain; and of great expedition and knowledge in the anchient wars, upon my particular knowledge of his directions. By Cheshu, he will maintain his argument as well as any military man in the world, in the disciplines of the pristine wars of the Romans.

JAMY. I say gud-day, Captain Fluellen.

FLUELLEN. God-den to your worship, good Captain James.

GOWER. How now, Captain Macmorris! have you quit the mines? Have the pioneers given o’er?

MACMORRIS. By Chrish, la! ’tish ill done! The work ish give over, the trompet sound the retreat. By my hand I swear, and my father’s soul, the work ish ill done; it ish give over. I would have blowed up the town, so Chrish save me, la! in an hour. O, ’tish ill done, ’tish ill done; by my hand, ’tish ill done!

FLUELLEN. Captain Macmorris, I beseech you now, will you voutsafe me, look you, a few disputations with you, as partly touching or concerning the disciplines of the war, the Roman wars, in the way of argument, look you, and friendly communication; partly to satisfy my opinion, and partly for the satisfaction, look you, of my mind, as touching the direction of the military discipline; that is the point.

JAMY. It sall be vary gud, gud feith, gud captains bath: and I sall quit you with gud leve, as I may pick occasion; that sall I, marry.

MACMORRIS. It is no time to discourse, so Chrish save me. The day is hot, and the weather, and the wars, and the King, and the Dukes. It is no time to discourse. The town is beseech’d, and the trumpet call us to the breach, and we talk, and, be Chrish, do nothing. ’Tis shame for us all. So God sa’ me, ’tis shame to stand still; it is shame, by my hand; and there is throats to be cut, and works to be done; and there ish nothing done, so Chrish sa’ me, la!

JAMY. By the mess, ere theise eyes of mine take themselves to slomber, I’ll de gud service, or I’ll lig i’ the grund for it; ay, or go to death; and I’ll pay’t as valorously as I may, that sall I suerly do, that is the breff and the long. Marry, I wad full fain heard some question ’tween you tway.

FLUELLEN. Captain Macmorris, I think, look you, under your correction, there is not many of your nation—

MACMORRIS. Of my nation! What ish my nation? Ish a villain, and a bastard, and a knave, and a rascal? What ish my nation? Who talks of my nation?

FLUELLEN. Look you, if you take the matter otherwise than is meant, Captain Macmorris, peradventure I shall think you do not use me with that affability as in discretion you ought to use me, look you, being as good a man as yourself, both in the disciplines of war, and in the derivation of my birth, and in other particularities.

MACMORRIS. I do not know you so good a man as myself. So Chrish save me, I will cut off your head.

GOWER. Gentlemen both, you will mistake each other.

JAMY. Ah! that’s a foul fault.

[A parley sounded.]

GOWER. The town sounds a parley.

FLUELLEN. Captain Macmorris, when there is more better opportunity to be required, look you, I will be so bold as to tell you I know the disciplines of war; and there is an end.

SCENE III. Before the gates.

The Governor and some citizens on the walls; the English forces below. Enter King Henry and his train.

KING HENRY. How yet resolves the governor of the town? This is the latest parle we will admit; Therefore to our best mercy give yourselves, Or like to men proud of destruction Defy us to our worst; for, as I am a soldier, A name that in my thoughts becomes me best, If I begin the battery once again, I will not leave the half-achieved Harfleur Till in her ashes she lie buried. The gates of mercy shall be all shut up, And the flesh’d soldier, rough and hard of heart, In liberty of bloody hand shall range With conscience wide as hell, mowing like grass Your fresh fair virgins and your flow’ring infants. What is it then to me, if impious War, Array’d in flames like to the prince of fiends, Do with his smirch’d complexion all fell feats Enlink’d to waste and desolation? What is’t to me, when you yourselves are cause, If your pure maidens fall into the hand Of hot and forcing violation? What rein can hold licentious wickedness When down the hill he holds his fierce career? We may as bootless spend our vain command Upon the enraged soldiers in their spoil As send precepts to the leviathan To come ashore. Therefore, you men of Harfleur, Take pity of your town and of your people, Whiles yet my soldiers are in my command, Whiles yet the cool and temperate wind of grace O’erblows the filthy and contagious clouds Of heady murder, spoil, and villainy. If not, why, in a moment look to see The blind and bloody soldier with foul hand Defile the locks of your shrill-shrieking daughters; Your fathers taken by the silver beards, And their most reverend heads dash’d to the walls; Your naked infants spitted upon pikes, Whiles the mad mothers with their howls confus’d Do break the clouds, as did the wives of Jewry At Herod’s bloody-hunting slaughtermen. What say you? Will you yield, and this avoid, Or, guilty in defence, be thus destroy’d?

GOVERNOR. Our expectation hath this day an end. The Dauphin, whom of succours we entreated, Returns us that his powers are yet not ready To raise so great a siege. Therefore, great King, We yield our town and lives to thy soft mercy. Enter our gates; dispose of us and ours; For we no longer are defensible.

KING HENRY. Open your gates. Come, uncle Exeter, Go you and enter Harfleur; there remain, And fortify it strongly ’gainst the French. Use mercy to them all. For us, dear uncle, The winter coming on, and sickness growing Upon our soldiers, we will retire to Calais. Tonight in Harfleur will we be your guest; Tomorrow for the march are we addrest.

Flourish. The King and his train enter the town.

SCENE IV. The French King’s palace.

Enter Katharine and Alice, an old Gentlewoman.

KATHARINE. Alice, tu as été en Angleterre, et tu parles bien le langage.

ALICE. Un peu, madame.

KATHARINE. Je te prie, m’enseignez; il faut que j’apprenne à parler. Comment appelez-vous la main en anglais?

ALICE. La main? Elle est appelée de hand.

KATHARINE. De hand. Et les doigts?

ALICE. Les doigts? Ma foi, j’oublie les doigts; mais je me souviendrai. Les doigts? Je pense qu’ils sont appelés de fingres; oui, de fingres.

KATHARINE. La main, de hand; les doigts, de fingres. Je pense que je suis le bon écolier; j’ai gagné deux mots d’anglais vitement. Comment appelez-vous les ongles?

ALICE. Les ongles? Nous les appelons de nails.

KATHARINE. De nails. Écoutez; dites-moi, si je parle bien: de hand, de fingres, et de nails.

ALICE. C’est bien dit, madame; il est fort bon anglais.

KATHARINE. Dites-moi l’anglais pour le bras.

ALICE. De arm, madame.

KATHARINE. Et le coude?

ALICE. D’elbow.

KATHARINE. D’elbow. Je m’en fais la répétition de tous les mots que vous m’avez appris dès à présent.

ALICE. Il est trop difficile, madame, comme je pense.

KATHARINE. Excusez-moi, Alice. Écoutez: d’hand, de fingres, de nails, d’arm, de bilbow.

ALICE. D’elbow, madame.

KATHARINE. O Seigneur Dieu, je m’en oublie! D’elbow. Comment appelez-vous le col?

ALICE. De nick, madame.

KATHARINE. De nick. Et le menton?

ALICE. De chin.

KATHARINE. De sin. Le col, de nick; le menton, de sin.

ALICE. Oui. Sauf votre honneur, en vérité, vous prononcez les mots aussi droit que les natifs d’Angleterre.

KATHARINE. Je ne doute point d’apprendre, par la grâce de Dieu, et en peu de temps.

ALICE. N’avez-vous pas déjà oublié ce que je vous ai enseigné?

KATHARINE. Non, je réciterai à vous promptement: d’hand, de fingres, de mails,—

ALICE. De nails, madame.

KATHARINE. De nails, de arm, de ilbow.

ALICE. Sauf votre honneur, de elbow.

KATHARINE. Ainsi dis-je, d’elbow, de nick, et de sin. Comment appelez-vous le pied et la robe?

ALICE. De foot, madame; et de coun.

KATHARINE. De foot et de coun! O Seigneur Dieu! ils sont les mots de son mauvais, corruptible, gros, et impudique, et non pour les dames d’honneur d’user. Je ne voudrais prononcer ces mots devant les seigneurs de France pour tout le monde. Foh! le foot et le coun! Néanmoins, je réciterai une autre fois ma leçon ensemble: d’hand, de fingres, de nails, d’arm, d’elbow, de nick, de sin, de foot, de coun.

ALICE. Excellent, madame!

KATHARINE. C’est assez pour une fois. Allons-nous à dîner.

SCENE V. The same.

Enter the King of France, the Dauphin, the Duke of Bourbon, the Constable of France and others.

FRENCH KING. ’Tis certain he hath pass’d the river Somme.

CONSTABLE. And if he be not fought withal, my lord, Let us not live in France; let us quit all And give our vineyards to a barbarous people.

DAUPHIN. O Dieu vivant! shall a few sprays of us, The emptying of our fathers’ luxury, Our scions put in wild and savage stock, Spirt up so suddenly into the clouds, And overlook their grafters?

BOURBON. Normans, but bastard Normans, Norman bastards! Mort de ma vie, if they march along Unfought withal, but I will sell my dukedom, To buy a slobbery and a dirty farm In that nook-shotten isle of Albion.

CONSTABLE. Dieu de batailles, where have they this mettle? Is not their climate foggy, raw, and dull, On whom, as in despite, the sun looks pale, Killing their fruit with frowns? Can sodden water, A drench for sur-rein’d jades, their barley-broth, Decoct their cold blood to such valiant heat? And shall our quick blood, spirited with wine, Seem frosty? O, for honour of our land, Let us not hang like roping icicles Upon our houses’ thatch, whiles a more frosty people Sweat drops of gallant youth in our rich fields! Poor we may call them in their native lords.

DAUPHIN. By faith and honour, Our madams mock at us, and plainly say Our mettle is bred out, and they will give Their bodies to the lust of English youth To new-store France with bastard warriors.

BOURBON. They bid us to the English dancing-schools, And teach lavoltas high, and swift corantos; Saying our grace is only in our heels, And that we are most lofty runaways.

FRENCH KING. Where is Montjoy the herald? Speed him hence. Let him greet England with our sharp defiance. Up, princes! and, with spirit of honour edged More sharper than your swords, hie to the field! Charles Delabreth, High Constable of France; You Dukes of Orleans, Bourbon, and of Berry, Alençon, Brabant, Bar, and Burgundy; Jacques Chatillon, Rambures, Vaudemont, Beaumont, Grandpré, Roussi, and Fauconbridge, Foix, Lestrale, Boucicault, and Charolois; High dukes, great princes, barons, lords, and knights, For your great seats now quit you of great shames. Bar Harry England, that sweeps through our land With pennons painted in the blood of Harfleur. Rush on his host, as doth the melted snow Upon the valleys, whose low vassal seat The Alps doth spit and void his rheum upon. Go down upon him, you have power enough, And in a captive chariot into Rouen Bring him our prisoner.

CONSTABLE. This becomes the great. Sorry am I his numbers are so few, His soldiers sick and famish’d in their march; For I am sure, when he shall see our army, He’ll drop his heart into the sink of fear And for achievement offer us his ransom.

FRENCH KING. Therefore, Lord Constable, haste on Montjoy, And let him say to England that we send To know what willing ransom he will give. Prince Dauphin, you shall stay with us in Rouen.

DAUPHIN. Not so, I do beseech your Majesty.

FRENCH KING. Be patient, for you shall remain with us. Now forth, Lord Constable and princes all, And quickly bring us word of England’s fall.

SCENE VI. The English camp in Picardy.

Enter Gower and Fluellen, meeting.

GOWER. How now, Captain Fluellen! come you from the bridge?

FLUELLEN. I assure you, there is very excellent services committed at the bridge.

GOWER. Is the Duke of Exeter safe?

FLUELLEN. The Duke of Exeter is as magnanimous as Agamemnon; and a man that I love and honour with my soul, and my heart, and my duty, and my life, and my living, and my uttermost power. He is not—God be praised and blessed!—any hurt in the world; but keeps the bridge most valiantly, with excellent discipline. There is an anchient lieutenant there at the pridge, I think in my very conscience he is as valiant a man as Mark Antony; and he is a man of no estimation in the world, but I did see him do as gallant service.

GOWER. What do you call him?

FLUELLEN. He is call’d Anchient Pistol.

GOWER. I know him not.

FLUELLEN. Here is the man.

PISTOL. Captain, I thee beseech to do me favours. The Duke of Exeter doth love thee well.

FLUELLEN. Ay, I praise God; and I have merited some love at his hands.

PISTOL. Bardolph, a soldier, firm and sound of heart, And of buxom valour, hath by cruel fate And giddy Fortune’s furious fickle wheel, That goddess blind, That stands upon the rolling restless stone—

FLUELLEN. By your patience, Anchient Pistol. Fortune is painted blind, with a muffler afore his eyes, to signify to you that Fortune is blind; and she is painted also with a wheel, to signify to you, which is the moral of it, that she is turning, and inconstant, and mutability, and variation; and her foot, look you, is fixed upon a spherical stone, which rolls, and rolls, and rolls. In good truth, the poet makes a most excellent description of it. Fortune is an excellent moral.

PISTOL. Fortune is Bardolph’s foe, and frowns on him; For he hath stolen a pax, and hanged must ’a be,— A damned death! Let gallows gape for dog; let man go free, And let not hemp his windpipe suffocate. But Exeter hath given the doom of death For pax of little price. Therefore, go speak; the Duke will hear thy voice; And let not Bardolph’s vital thread be cut With edge of penny cord and vile reproach. Speak, captain, for his life, and I will thee requite.

FLUELLEN. Anchient Pistol, I do partly understand your meaning.

PISTOL. Why then, rejoice therefore.

FLUELLEN. Certainly, anchient, it is not a thing to rejoice at; for if, look you, he were my brother, I would desire the Duke to use his good pleasure, and put him to execution; for discipline ought to be used.

PISTOL. Die and be damn’d! and fico for thy friendship!

FLUELLEN. It is well.

PISTOL. The fig of Spain.

FLUELLEN. Very good.

GOWER. Why, this is an arrant counterfeit rascal. I remember him now; a bawd, a cutpurse.

FLUELLEN. I’ll assure you, ’a uttered as prave words at the pridge as you shall see in a summer’s day. But it is very well; what he has spoke to me, that is well, I warrant you, when time is serve.

GOWER. Why, ’t is a gull, a fool, a rogue, that now and then goes to the wars, to grace himself at his return into London under the form of a soldier. And such fellows are perfect in the great commanders’ names; and they will learn you by rote where services were done; at such and such a sconce, at such a breach, at such a convoy; who came off bravely, who was shot, who disgrac’d, what terms the enemy stood on; and this they con perfectly in the phrase of war, which they trick up with new-tuned oaths: and what a beard of the general’s cut and a horrid suit of the camp will do among foaming bottles and ale-wash’d wits, is wonderful to be thought on. But you must learn to know such slanders of the age, or else you may be marvellously mistook.

FLUELLEN. I tell you what, Captain Gower; I do perceive he is not the man that he would gladly make show to the world he is. If I find a hole in his coat, I will tell him my mind. [Drum heard.] Hark you, the King is coming, and I must speak with him from the pridge.

Drum and colours. Enter King Henry, Gloucester and his poor soldiers.

God bless your Majesty!

KING HENRY. How now, Fluellen! cam’st thou from the bridge?

FLUELLEN. Ay, so please your Majesty. The Duke of Exeter has very gallantly maintain’d the pridge. The French is gone off, look you; and there is gallant and most prave passages. Marry, th’ athversary was have possession of the pridge; but he is enforced to retire, and the Duke of Exeter is master of the pridge. I can tell your Majesty, the Duke is a prave man.

KING HENRY. What men have you lost, Fluellen?

FLUELLEN. The perdition of the athversary hath been very great, reasonable great. Marry, for my part, I think the Duke hath lost never a man, but one that is like to be executed for robbing a church, one Bardolph, if your Majesty know the man. His face is all bubukles, and whelks, and knobs, and flames o’ fire; and his lips blows at his nose, and it is like a coal of fire, sometimes plue and sometimes red; but his nose is executed, and his fire’s out.

KING HENRY. We would have all such offenders so cut off; and we give express charge, that in our marches through the country, there be nothing compell’d from the villages, nothing taken but paid for, none of the French upbraided or abused in disdainful language; for when lenity and cruelty play for a kingdom, the gentler gamester is the soonest winner.

Tucket. Enter Montjoy.

MONTJOY. You know me by my habit.

KING HENRY. Well then I know thee. What shall I know of thee?

MONTJOY. My master’s mind.

KING HENRY. Unfold it.

MONTJOY. Thus says my King: Say thou to Harry of England: Though we seem’d dead, we did but sleep; advantage is a better soldier than rashness. Tell him we could have rebuk’d him at Harfleur, but that we thought not good to bruise an injury till it were full ripe. Now we speak upon our cue, and our voice is imperial. England shall repent his folly, see his weakness, and admire our sufferance. Bid him therefore consider of his ransom; which must proportion the losses we have borne, the subjects we have lost, the disgrace we have digested; which in weight to re-answer, his pettishness would bow under. For our losses, his exchequer is too poor; for the effusion of our blood, the muster of his kingdom too faint a number; and for our disgrace, his own person, kneeling at our feet, but a weak and worthless satisfaction. To this add defiance; and tell him, for conclusion, he hath betrayed his followers, whose condemnation is pronounc’d. So far my King and master; so much my office.

KING HENRY. What is thy name? I know thy quality.

MONTJOY. Montjoy.

KING HENRY. Thou dost thy office fairly. Turn thee back, And tell thy King I do not seek him now, But could be willing to march on to Calais Without impeachment; for, to say the sooth, Though ’tis no wisdom to confess so much Unto an enemy of craft and vantage, My people are with sickness much enfeebled, My numbers lessen’d, and those few I have Almost no better than so many French; Who when they were in health, I tell thee, herald, I thought upon one pair of English legs Did march three Frenchmen. Yet, forgive me, God, That I do brag thus! This your air of France Hath blown that vice in me. I must repent. Go therefore, tell thy master here I am; My ransom is this frail and worthless trunk, My army but a weak and sickly guard; Yet, God before, tell him we will come on, Though France himself and such another neighbour Stand in our way. There’s for thy labour, Montjoy. Go, bid thy master well advise himself. If we may pass, we will; if we be hind’red, We shall your tawny ground with your red blood Discolour; and so, Montjoy, fare you well. The sum of all our answer is but this: We would not seek a battle, as we are; Nor, as we are, we say we will not shun it. So tell your master.

MONTJOY. I shall deliver so. Thanks to your Highness.

GLOUCESTER. I hope they will not come upon us now.

KING HENRY. We are in God’s hands, brother, not in theirs. March to the bridge; it now draws toward night. Beyond the river we’ll encamp ourselves, And on tomorrow bid them march away.

SCENE VII. The French camp, near Agincourt.

Enter the Constable of France, the Lord Rambures, Orleans, Dauphin with others.

CONSTABLE. Tut! I have the best armour of the world. Would it were day!

ORLEANS. You have an excellent armour; but let my horse have his due.

CONSTABLE. It is the best horse of Europe.

ORLEANS. Will it never be morning?

DAUPHIN. My Lord of Orleans, and my Lord High Constable, you talk of horse and armour?

ORLEANS. You are as well provided of both as any prince in the world.

DAUPHIN. What a long night is this! I will not change my horse with any that treads but on four pasterns. Ch’ha! He bounds from the earth, as if his entrails were hairs; le cheval volant, the Pegasus, qui a les narines de feu! When I bestride him, I soar, I am a hawk. He trots the air; the earth sings when he touches it; the basest horn of his hoof is more musical than the pipe of Hermes.

ORLEANS. He’s of the colour of the nutmeg.

DAUPHIN. And of the heat of the ginger. It is a beast for Perseus. He is pure air and fire; and the dull elements of earth and water never appear in him, but only in patient stillness while his rider mounts him. He is indeed a horse, and all other jades you may call beasts.

CONSTABLE. Indeed, my lord, it is a most absolute and excellent horse.

DAUPHIN. It is the prince of palfreys; his neigh is like the bidding of a monarch, and his countenance enforces homage.

ORLEANS. No more, cousin.

DAUPHIN. Nay, the man hath no wit that cannot, from the rising of the lark to the lodging of the lamb, vary deserved praise on my palfrey. It is a theme as fluent as the sea; turn the sands into eloquent tongues, and my horse is argument for them all. ’Tis a subject for a sovereign to reason on, and for a sovereign’s sovereign to ride on; and for the world, familiar to us and unknown, to lay apart their particular functions and wonder at him. I once writ a sonnet in his praise and began thus: “Wonder of nature,”—

ORLEANS. I have heard a sonnet begin so to one’s mistress.

DAUPHIN. Then did they imitate that which I compos’d to my courser, for my horse is my mistress.

ORLEANS. Your mistress bears well.

DAUPHIN. Me well; which is the prescript praise and perfection of a good and particular mistress.

CONSTABLE. Nay, for methought yesterday your mistress shrewdly shook your back.

DAUPHIN. So perhaps did yours.

CONSTABLE. Mine was not bridled.

DAUPHIN. O then belike she was old and gentle; and you rode, like a kern of Ireland, your French hose off, and in your strait strossers.

CONSTABLE. You have good judgment in horsemanship.

DAUPHIN. Be warn’d by me, then; they that ride so and ride not warily, fall into foul bogs. I had rather have my horse to my mistress.

CONSTABLE. I had as lief have my mistress a jade.

DAUPHIN. I tell thee, Constable, my mistress wears his own hair.

CONSTABLE. I could make as true a boast as that, if I had a sow to my mistress.

DAUPHIN. “Le chien est retourné à son propre vomissement, et la truie lavée au bourbier.” Thou mak’st use of anything.

CONSTABLE. Yet do I not use my horse for my mistress, or any such proverb so little kin to the purpose.

RAMBURES. My Lord Constable, the armour that I saw in your tent tonight, are those stars or suns upon it?

CONSTABLE. Stars, my lord.

DAUPHIN. Some of them will fall tomorrow, I hope.

CONSTABLE. And yet my sky shall not want.

DAUPHIN. That may be, for you bear a many superfluously, and ’twere more honour some were away.

CONSTABLE. Even as your horse bears your praises; who would trot as well, were some of your brags dismounted.

DAUPHIN. Would I were able to load him with his desert! Will it never be day? I will trot tomorrow a mile, and my way shall be paved with English faces.

CONSTABLE. I will not say so, for fear I should be fac’d out of my way. But I would it were morning; for I would fain be about the ears of the English.

RAMBURES. Who will go to hazard with me for twenty prisoners?

CONSTABLE. You must first go yourself to hazard, ere you have them.

DAUPHIN. ’Tis midnight; I’ll go arm myself.

ORLEANS. The Dauphin longs for morning.

RAMBURES. He longs to eat the English.

CONSTABLE. I think he will eat all he kills.

ORLEANS. By the white hand of my lady, he’s a gallant prince.

CONSTABLE. Swear by her foot that she may tread out the oath.

ORLEANS. He is simply the most active gentleman of France.

CONSTABLE. Doing is activity; and he will still be doing.

ORLEANS. He never did harm, that I heard of.

CONSTABLE. Nor will do none tomorrow. He will keep that good name still.

ORLEANS. I know him to be valiant.

CONSTABLE. I was told that by one that knows him better than you.

ORLEANS. What’s he?

CONSTABLE. Marry, he told me so himself; and he said he car’d not who knew it.

ORLEANS. He needs not; it is no hidden virtue in him.

CONSTABLE. By my faith, sir, but it is; never anybody saw it but his lackey. ’Tis a hooded valour; and when it appears, it will bate.

ORLEANS. “Ill will never said well.”

CONSTABLE. I will cap that proverb with “There is flattery in friendship.”

ORLEANS. And I will take up that with “Give the devil his due.”

CONSTABLE. Well plac’d. There stands your friend for the devil; have at the very eye of that proverb with “A pox of the devil.”

ORLEANS. You are the better at proverbs, by how much “A fool’s bolt is soon shot.”

CONSTABLE. You have shot over.

ORLEANS. ’Tis not the first time you were overshot.

MESSENGER. My Lord High Constable, the English lie within fifteen hundred paces of your tents.

CONSTABLE. Who hath measur’d the ground?

MESSENGER. The Lord Grandpré.

CONSTABLE. A valiant and most expert gentleman. Would it were day! Alas, poor Harry of England, he longs not for the dawning as we do.

ORLEANS. What a wretched and peevish fellow is this King of England, to mope with his fat-brain’d followers so far out of his knowledge!

CONSTABLE. If the English had any apprehension, they would run away.

ORLEANS. That they lack; for if their heads had any intellectual armour, they could never wear such heavy head-pieces.

RAMBURES. That island of England breeds very valiant creatures. Their mastiffs are of unmatchable courage.

ORLEANS. Foolish curs, that run winking into the mouth of a Russian bear and have their heads crush’d like rotten apples! You may as well say, that’s a valiant flea that dare eat his breakfast on the lip of a lion.

CONSTABLE. Just, just; and the men do sympathize with the mastiffs in robustious and rough coming on, leaving their wits with their wives; and then, give them great meals of beef and iron and steel, they will eat like wolves and fight like devils.

ORLEANS. Ay, but these English are shrewdly out of beef.

CONSTABLE. Then shall we find tomorrow they have only stomachs to eat and none to fight. Now is it time to arm. Come, shall we about it?

ORLEANS. It is now two o’clock; but, let me see, by ten We shall have each a hundred Englishmen.

CHORUS. Now entertain conjecture of a time When creeping murmur and the poring dark Fills the wide vessel of the universe. From camp to camp through the foul womb of night The hum of either army stilly sounds, That the fix’d sentinels almost receive The secret whispers of each other’s watch; Fire answers fire, and through their paly flames Each battle sees the other’s umber’d face; Steed threatens steed, in high and boastful neighs Piercing the night’s dull ear; and from the tents The armourers, accomplishing the knights, With busy hammers closing rivets up, Give dreadful note of preparation. The country cocks do crow, the clocks do toll, And the third hour of drowsy morning name. Proud of their numbers and secure in soul, The confident and over-lusty French Do the low-rated English play at dice; And chide the cripple tardy-gaited Night Who, like a foul and ugly witch, doth limp So tediously away. The poor condemned English, Like sacrifices, by their watchful fires Sit patiently and inly ruminate The morning’s danger; and their gesture sad, Investing lank-lean cheeks and war-worn coats, Presented them unto the gazing moon So many horrid ghosts. O now, who will behold The royal captain of this ruin’d band Walking from watch to watch, from tent to tent, Let him cry, “Praise and glory on his head!” For forth he goes and visits all his host, Bids them good morrow with a modest smile, And calls them brothers, friends, and countrymen. Upon his royal face there is no note How dread an army hath enrounded him; Nor doth he dedicate one jot of colour Unto the weary and all-watched night, But freshly looks, and over-bears attaint With cheerful semblance and sweet majesty; That every wretch, pining and pale before, Beholding him, plucks comfort from his looks. A largess universal like the sun His liberal eye doth give to everyone, Thawing cold fear, that mean and gentle all Behold, as may unworthiness define, A little touch of Harry in the night. And so our scene must to the battle fly, Where—O for pity!—we shall much disgrace With four or five most vile and ragged foils, Right ill-dispos’d in brawl ridiculous, The name of Agincourt. Yet sit and see, Minding true things by what their mock’ries be.

SCENE I. The English camp at Agincourt.

Enter King Henry, Bedford and Gloucester.

KING HENRY. Gloucester, ’tis true that we are in great danger; The greater therefore should our courage be. Good morrow, brother Bedford. God Almighty! There is some soul of goodness in things evil, Would men observingly distil it out; For our bad neighbour makes us early stirrers, Which is both healthful and good husbandry. Besides, they are our outward consciences, And preachers to us all, admonishing That we should dress us fairly for our end. Thus may we gather honey from the weed, And make a moral of the devil himself.

Enter Erpingham.

Good morrow, old Sir Thomas Erpingham: A good soft pillow for that good white head Were better than a churlish turf of France.

ERPINGHAM. Not so, my liege; this lodging likes me better, Since I may say, “Now lie I like a king.”

KING HENRY. ’Tis good for men to love their present pains Upon example; so the spirit is eased; And when the mind is quick’ned, out of doubt, The organs, though defunct and dead before, Break up their drowsy grave and newly move, With casted slough and fresh legerity. Lend me thy cloak, Sir Thomas. Brothers both, Commend me to the princes in our camp; Do my good morrow to them, and anon Desire them all to my pavilion.

GLOUCESTER. We shall, my liege.

ERPINGHAM. Shall I attend your Grace?

KING HENRY. No, my good knight; Go with my brothers to my lords of England. I and my bosom must debate a while, And then I would no other company.

ERPINGHAM. The Lord in heaven bless thee, noble Harry!

[Exeunt all but King.]

KING HENRY. God-a-mercy, old heart! thou speak’st cheerfully.

PISTOL. Qui vous là?

KING HENRY. A friend.

PISTOL. Discuss unto me; art thou officer? Or art thou base, common, and popular?

KING HENRY. I am a gentleman of a company.

PISTOL. Trail’st thou the puissant pike?

KING HENRY. Even so. What are you?

PISTOL. As good a gentleman as the Emperor.

KING HENRY. Then you are a better than the King.

PISTOL. The King’s a bawcock, and a heart of gold, A lad of life, an imp of fame; Of parents good, of fist most valiant. I kiss his dirty shoe, and from heart-string I love the lovely bully. What is thy name?

KING HENRY. Harry le Roy.

PISTOL. Le Roy! a Cornish name. Art thou of Cornish crew?

KING HENRY. No, I am a Welshman.

PISTOL. Know’st thou Fluellen?

KING HENRY. Yes.

PISTOL. Tell him I’ll knock his leek about his pate Upon Saint Davy’s day.

KING HENRY. Do not you wear your dagger in your cap that day, lest he knock that about yours.

PISTOL. Art thou his friend?

KING HENRY. And his kinsman too.

PISTOL. The fico for thee, then!

KING HENRY. I thank you. God be with you!

PISTOL. My name is Pistol call’d.

KING HENRY. It sorts well with your fierceness.

Enter Fluellen and Gower.

GOWER. Captain Fluellen!

FLUELLEN. So! in the name of Jesu Christ, speak lower. It is the greatest admiration in the universal world, when the true and anchient prerogatifes and laws of the wars is not kept. If you would take the pains but to examine the wars of Pompey the Great, you shall find, I warrant you, that there is no tiddle taddle nor pibble pabble in Pompey’s camp. I warrant you, you shall find the ceremonies of the wars, and the cares of it, and the forms of it, and the sobriety of it, and the modesty of it, to be otherwise.

GOWER. Why, the enemy is loud; you hear him all night.

FLUELLEN. If the enemy is an ass and a fool and a prating coxcomb, is it meet, think you, that we should also, look you, be an ass and a fool and a prating coxcomb? In your own conscience, now?

GOWER. I will speak lower.

FLUELLEN. I pray you and beseech you that you will.

[Exeunt Gower and Fluellen.]

KING HENRY. Though it appear a little out of fashion, There is much care and valour in this Welshman.

Enter three soldiers, John Bates, Alexander Court and Michael Williams.

COURT. Brother John Bates, is not that the morning which breaks yonder?

BATES. I think it be; but we have no great cause to desire the approach of day.

WILLIAMS. We see yonder the beginning of the day, but I think we shall never see the end of it. Who goes there?

WILLIAMS. Under what captain serve you?

KING HENRY. Under Sir Thomas Erpingham.

WILLIAMS. A good old commander and a most kind gentleman. I pray you, what thinks he of our estate?

KING HENRY. Even as men wreck’d upon a sand, that look to be wash’d off the next tide.

BATES. He hath not told his thought to the King?

KING HENRY. No; nor it is not meet he should. For though I speak it to you, I think the King is but a man as I am. The violet smells to him as it doth to me; the element shows to him as it doth to me; all his senses have but human conditions. His ceremonies laid by, in his nakedness he appears but a man; and though his affections are higher mounted than ours, yet, when they stoop, they stoop with the like wing. Therefore, when he sees reason of fears as we do, his fears, out of doubt, be of the same relish as ours are; yet, in reason, no man should possess him with any appearance of fear, lest he, by showing it, should dishearten his army.

BATES. He may show what outward courage he will; but I believe, as cold a night as ’tis, he could wish himself in Thames up to the neck; and so I would he were, and I by him, at all adventures, so we were quit here.

KING HENRY. By my troth, I will speak my conscience of the King: I think he would not wish himself anywhere but where he is.

BATES. Then I would he were here alone; so should he be sure to be ransomed, and a many poor men’s lives saved.

KING HENRY. I dare say you love him not so ill, to wish him here alone, howsoever you speak this to feel other men’s minds. Methinks I could not die anywhere so contented as in the King’s company, his cause being just and his quarrel honourable.

WILLIAMS. That’s more than we know.

BATES. Ay, or more than we should seek after; for we know enough, if we know we are the King’s subjects. If his cause be wrong, our obedience to the King wipes the crime of it out of us.

WILLIAMS. But if the cause be not good, the King himself hath a heavy reckoning to make, when all those legs and arms and heads, chopp’d off in a battle, shall join together at the latter day and cry all, “We died at such a place”; some swearing, some crying for a surgeon, some upon their wives left poor behind them, some upon the debts they owe, some upon their children rawly left. I am afeard there are few die well that die in a battle; for how can they charitably dispose of anything, when blood is their argument? Now, if these men do not die well, it will be a black matter for the King that led them to it; who to disobey were against all proportion of subjection.

KING HENRY. So, if a son that is by his father sent about merchandise do sinfully miscarry upon the sea, the imputation of his wickedness, by your rule, should be imposed upon his father that sent him; or if a servant, under his master’s command transporting a sum of money, be assailed by robbers and die in many irreconcil’d iniquities, you may call the business of the master the author of the servant’s damnation. But this is not so. The King is not bound to answer the particular endings of his soldiers, the father of his son, nor the master of his servant; for they purpose not their death, when they purpose their services. Besides, there is no king, be his cause never so spotless, if it come to the arbitrement of swords, can try it out with all unspotted soldiers. Some peradventure have on them the guilt of premeditated and contrived murder; some, of beguiling virgins with the broken seals of perjury; some, making the wars their bulwark, that have before gored the gentle bosom of Peace with pillage and robbery. Now, if these men have defeated the law and outrun native punishment, though they can outstrip men, they have no wings to fly from God. War is his beadle, war is his vengeance; so that here men are punish’d for before-breach of the King’s laws in now the King’s quarrel. Where they feared the death, they have borne life away; and where they would be safe, they perish. Then if they die unprovided, no more is the King guilty of their damnation than he was before guilty of those impieties for the which they are now visited. Every subject’s duty is the King’s; but every subject’s soul is his own. Therefore should every soldier in the wars do as every sick man in his bed, wash every mote out of his conscience; and dying so, death is to him advantage; or not dying, the time was blessedly lost wherein such preparation was gained; and in him that escapes, it were not sin to think that, making God so free an offer, He let him outlive that day to see His greatness and to teach others how they should prepare.

WILLIAMS. ’Tis certain, every man that dies ill, the ill upon his own head, the King is not to answer for it.

BATES. I do not desire he should answer for me; and yet I determine to fight lustily for him.

KING HENRY. I myself heard the King say he would not be ransom’d.

WILLIAMS. Ay, he said so, to make us fight cheerfully; but when our throats are cut, he may be ransom’d, and we ne’er the wiser.

KING HENRY. If I live to see it, I will never trust his word after.

WILLIAMS. You pay him then. That’s a perilous shot out of an elder-gun, that a poor and a private displeasure can do against a monarch! You may as well go about to turn the sun to ice with fanning in his face with a peacock’s feather. You’ll never trust his word after! Come, ’tis a foolish saying.

KING HENRY. Your reproof is something too round. I should be angry with you, if the time were convenient.

WILLIAMS. Let it be a quarrel between us if you live.

KING HENRY. I embrace it.

WILLIAMS. How shall I know thee again?

KING HENRY. Give me any gage of thine, and I will wear it in my bonnet; then, if ever thou dar’st acknowledge it, I will make it my quarrel.

WILLIAMS. Here’s my glove; give me another of thine.

KING HENRY. There.

WILLIAMS. This will I also wear in my cap. If ever thou come to me and say, after tomorrow, “This is my glove,” by this hand I will take thee a box on the ear.

KING HENRY. If ever I live to see it, I will challenge it.

WILLIAMS. Thou dar’st as well be hang’d.

KING HENRY. Well, I will do it, though I take thee in the King’s company.

WILLIAMS. Keep thy word; fare thee well.

BATES. Be friends, you English fools, be friends. We have French quarrels enough, if you could tell how to reckon.

KING HENRY. Indeed, the French may lay twenty French crowns to one they will beat us, for they bear them on their shoulders; but it is no English treason to cut French crowns, and tomorrow the King himself will be a clipper.

[Exeunt soldiers.]

Upon the King! Let us our lives, our souls, Our debts, our careful wives, Our children, and our sins lay on the King! We must bear all. O hard condition, Twin-born with greatness, subject to the breath Of every fool, whose sense no more can feel But his own wringing! What infinite heart’s ease Must kings neglect, that private men enjoy! And what have kings, that privates have not too, Save ceremony, save general ceremony? And what art thou, thou idol Ceremony? What kind of god art thou, that suffer’st more Of mortal griefs than do thy worshippers? What are thy rents? What are thy comings in? O Ceremony, show me but thy worth! What is thy soul of adoration? Art thou aught else but place, degree, and form, Creating awe and fear in other men? Wherein thou art less happy being fear’d Than they in fearing. What drink’st thou oft, instead of homage sweet, But poison’d flattery? O, be sick, great greatness, And bid thy Ceremony give thee cure! Think’st thou the fiery fever will go out With titles blown from adulation? Will it give place to flexure and low bending? Canst thou, when thou command’st the beggar’s knee, Command the health of it? No, thou proud dream, That play’st so subtly with a king’s repose; I am a king that find thee, and I know ’Tis not the balm, the sceptre, and the ball, The sword, the mace, the crown imperial, The intertissued robe of gold and pearl, The farced title running ’fore the King, The throne he sits on, nor the tide of pomp That beats upon the high shore of this world, No, not all these, thrice-gorgeous Ceremony,— Not all these, laid in bed majestical, Can sleep so soundly as the wretched slave, Who with a body fill’d and vacant mind Gets him to rest, cramm’d with distressful bread, Never sees horrid night, the child of hell, But, like a lackey, from the rise to set Sweats in the eye of Phoebus, and all night Sleeps in Elysium; next day after dawn, Doth rise and help Hyperion to his horse, And follows so the ever-running year, With profitable labour, to his grave: And, but for ceremony, such a wretch, Winding up days with toil and nights with sleep, Had the fore-hand and vantage of a king. The slave, a member of the country’s peace, Enjoys it, but in gross brain little wots What watch the King keeps to maintain the peace, Whose hours the peasant best advantages.

ERPINGHAM. My lord, your nobles, jealous of your absence, Seek through your camp to find you.

KING HENRY. Good old knight, Collect them all together at my tent. I’ll be before thee.

ERPINGHAM. I shall do’t, my lord.

KING HENRY. O God of battles! steel my soldiers’ hearts. Possess them not with fear. Take from them now The sense of reckoning, if the opposed numbers Pluck their hearts from them. Not today, O Lord, O, not today, think not upon the fault My father made in compassing the crown! I Richard’s body have interred new, And on it have bestow’d more contrite tears Than from it issued forced drops of blood. Five hundred poor I have in yearly pay, Who twice a day their wither’d hands hold up Toward heaven, to pardon blood; and I have built Two chantries, where the sad and solemn priests Sing still for Richard’s soul. More will I do; Though all that I can do is nothing worth, Since that my penitence comes after all, Imploring pardon.

Enter Gloucester.

GLOUCESTER. My liege!

KING HENRY. My brother Gloucester’s voice? Ay; I know thy errand, I will go with thee. The day, my friends, and all things stay for me.

SCENE II. The French camp.

Enter the Dauphin, Orleans, Rambures and others.

ORLEANS. The sun doth gild our armour; up, my lords!

DAUPHIN. Monte à cheval! My horse, varlet! laquais, ha!

ORLEANS. O brave spirit!

DAUPHIN. Via, les eaux et terre!

ORLEANS. Rien puis? L’air et feu?

DAUPHIN. Cieux, cousin Orleans.

Enter Constable.

Now, my Lord Constable!

CONSTABLE. Hark, how our steeds for present service neigh!

DAUPHIN. Mount them, and make incision in their hides, That their hot blood may spin in English eyes, And dout them with superfluous courage, ha!

RAMBURES. What, will you have them weep our horses’ blood? How shall we, then, behold their natural tears?

MESSENGER. The English are embattl’d, you French peers.

CONSTABLE. To horse, you gallant princes! straight to horse! Do but behold yon poor and starved band, And your fair show shall suck away their souls, Leaving them but the shales and husks of men. There is not work enough for all our hands; Scarce blood enough in all their sickly veins To give each naked curtle-axe a stain, That our French gallants shall today draw out, And sheathe for lack of sport. Let us but blow on them, The vapour of our valour will o’erturn them. ’Tis positive ’gainst all exceptions, lords, That our superfluous lackeys and our peasants, Who in unnecessary action swarm About our squares of battle, were enough To purge this field of such a hilding foe, Though we upon this mountain’s basis by Took stand for idle speculation, But that our honours must not. What’s to say? A very little little let us do, And all is done. Then let the trumpets sound The tucket sonance and the note to mount; For our approach shall so much dare the field That England shall crouch down in fear and yield.

Enter Grandpré.

GRANDPRÉ. Why do you stay so long, my lords of France? Yond island carrions, desperate of their bones, Ill-favouredly become the morning field. Their ragged curtains poorly are let loose, And our air shakes them passing scornfully. Big Mars seems bankrupt in their beggar’d host, And faintly through a rusty beaver peeps; The horsemen sit like fixed candlesticks With torch-staves in their hand; and their poor jades Lob down their heads, drooping the hides and hips, The gum down-roping from their pale-dead eyes, And in their pale dull mouths the gimmal bit Lies foul with chew’d grass, still, and motionless; And their executors, the knavish crows, Fly o’er them, all impatient for their hour. Description cannot suit itself in words To demonstrate the life of such a battle, In life so lifeless as it shows itself.

CONSTABLE. They have said their prayers, and they stay for death.

DAUPHIN. Shall we go send them dinners and fresh suits And give their fasting horses provender, And after fight with them?

CONSTABLE. I stay but for my guard; on to the field! I will the banner from a trumpet take, And use it for my haste. Come, come, away! The sun is high, and we outwear the day.

SCENE III. The English camp.

Enter Gloucester, Bedford, Exeter, Erpingham, with all his host: Salisbury and Westmorland.

GLOUCESTER. Where is the King?

BEDFORD. The King himself is rode to view their battle.

WESTMORLAND. Of fighting men they have full three-score thousand.

EXETER. There’s five to one; besides, they all are fresh.

SALISBURY. God’s arm strike with us! ’tis a fearful odds. God be wi’ you, princes all; I’ll to my charge. If we no more meet till we meet in heaven, Then, joyfully, my noble Lord of Bedford, My dear Lord Gloucester, and my good Lord Exeter, And my kind kinsman, warriors all, adieu!

BEDFORD. Farewell, good Salisbury, and good luck go with thee!

EXETER. Farewell, kind lord; fight valiantly today! And yet I do thee wrong to mind thee of it, For thou art fram’d of the firm truth of valour.

[Exit Salisbury.]

BEDFORD. He is as full of valour as of kindness, Princely in both.

Enter the King.

WESTMORLAND. O that we now had here But one ten thousand of those men in England That do no work today!

KING. What’s he that wishes so? My cousin Westmorland? No, my fair cousin. If we are mark’d to die, we are enough To do our country loss; and if to live, The fewer men, the greater share of honour. God’s will! I pray thee, wish not one man more. By Jove, I am not covetous for gold, Nor care I who doth feed upon my cost; It yearns me not if men my garments wear; Such outward things dwell not in my desires; But if it be a sin to covet honour, I am the most offending soul alive. No, faith, my coz, wish not a man from England. God’s peace! I would not lose so great an honour As one man more, methinks, would share from me For the best hope I have. O, do not wish one more! Rather proclaim it, Westmorland, through my host, That he which hath no stomach to this fight, Let him depart. His passport shall be made, And crowns for convoy put into his purse. We would not die in that man’s company That fears his fellowship to die with us. This day is call’d the feast of Crispian. He that outlives this day, and comes safe home, Will stand a tip-toe when this day is named, And rouse him at the name of Crispian. He that shall live this day, and see old age, Will yearly on the vigil feast his neighbours, And say, “Tomorrow is Saint Crispian.” Then will he strip his sleeve and show his scars, And say, “These wounds I had on Crispian’s day.” Old men forget; yet all shall be forgot, But he’ll remember with advantages What feats he did that day. Then shall our names, Familiar in his mouth as household words, Harry the King, Bedford, and Exeter, Warwick and Talbot, Salisbury and Gloucester, Be in their flowing cups freshly remembered. This story shall the good man teach his son; And Crispin Crispian shall ne’er go by, From this day to the ending of the world, But we in it shall be remembered, We few, we happy few, we band of brothers. For he today that sheds his blood with me Shall be my brother; be he ne’er so vile, This day shall gentle his condition; And gentlemen in England now abed Shall think themselves accurs’d they were not here, And hold their manhoods cheap whiles any speaks That fought with us upon Saint Crispin’s day.

Enter Salisbury.

SALISBURY. My sovereign lord, bestow yourself with speed. The French are bravely in their battles set, And will with all expedience charge on us.

KING HENRY. All things are ready, if our minds be so.

WESTMORLAND. Perish the man whose mind is backward now!

KING HENRY. Thou dost not wish more help from England, coz?

WESTMORLAND. God’s will! my liege, would you and I alone, Without more help, could fight this royal battle!

KING HENRY. Why, now thou hast unwish’d five thousand men, Which likes me better than to wish us one. You know your places. God be with you all!

MONTJOY. Once more I come to know of thee, King Harry, If for thy ransom thou wilt now compound, Before thy most assured overthrow; For certainly thou art so near the gulf, Thou needs must be englutted. Besides, in mercy, The Constable desires thee thou wilt mind Thy followers of repentance; that their souls May make a peaceful and a sweet retire From off these fields, where, wretches, their poor bodies Must lie and fester.

KING HENRY. Who hath sent thee now?

MONTJOY. The Constable of France.

KING HENRY. I pray thee, bear my former answer back: Bid them achieve me and then sell my bones. Good God! why should they mock poor fellows thus? The man that once did sell the lion’s skin While the beast liv’d, was kill’d with hunting him. A many of our bodies shall no doubt Find native graves, upon the which, I trust, Shall witness live in brass of this day’s work; And those that leave their valiant bones in France, Dying like men, though buried in your dunghills, They shall be fam’d; for there the sun shall greet them, And draw their honours reeking up to heaven; Leaving their earthly parts to choke your clime, The smell whereof shall breed a plague in France. Mark then abounding valour in our English, That being dead, like to the bullet’s grazing, Break out into a second course of mischief, Killing in relapse of mortality. Let me speak proudly: tell the Constable We are but warriors for the working-day. Our gayness and our gilt are all besmirch’d With rainy marching in the painful field; There’s not a piece of feather in our host— Good argument, I hope, we will not fly— And time hath worn us into slovenry; But, by the mass, our hearts are in the trim; And my poor soldiers tell me, yet ere night They’ll be in fresher robes, or they will pluck The gay new coats o’er the French soldiers’ heads And turn them out of service. If they do this— As, if God please, they shall,—my ransom then Will soon be levied. Herald, save thou thy labour. Come thou no more for ransom, gentle herald. They shall have none, I swear, but these my joints; Which if they have as I will leave ’em them, Shall yield them little, tell the Constable.

MONTJOY. I shall, King Harry. And so fare thee well; Thou never shalt hear herald any more.

KING HENRY. I fear thou’lt once more come again for ransom.

Enter York.

YORK. My lord, most humbly on my knee I beg The leading of the vaward.

KING HENRY. Take it, brave York. Now, soldiers, march away; And how thou pleasest, God, dispose the day!

SCENE IV. The field of battle.

Alarum. Excursions. Enter Pistol, French Soldier and Boy.

PISTOL. Yield, cur!

FRENCH SOLDIER. Je pense que vous êtes le gentilhomme de bonne qualité.

PISTOL. Qualité? Caleno custore me! Art thou a gentleman? What is thy name? Discuss.

FRENCH SOLDIER. O Seigneur Dieu!

PISTOL. O, Signieur Dew should be a gentleman. Perpend my words, O Signieur Dew, and mark: O Signieur Dew, thou diest on point of fox, Except, O signieur, thou do give to me Egregious ransom.

FRENCH SOLDIER. O, prenez miséricorde! Ayez pitié de moi!

PISTOL. Moy shall not serve; I will have forty moys, Or I will fetch thy rim out at thy throat In drops of crimson blood.

FRENCH SOLDIER. Est-il impossible d’échapper la force de ton bras?

PISTOL. Brass, cur! Thou damned and luxurious mountain goat, Offer’st me brass?

FRENCH SOLDIER. O pardonnez-moi!

PISTOL. Say’st thou me so? Is that a ton of moys? Come hither, boy; ask me this slave in French What is his name.

BOY. Écoutez. Comment êtes-vous appelé?

FRENCH SOLDIER. Monsieur le Fer.

BOY. He says his name is Master Fer.

PISTOL. Master Fer! I’ll fer him, and firk him, and ferret him. Discuss the same in French unto him.

BOY. I do not know the French for fer, and ferret, and firk.

PISTOL. Bid him prepare; for I will cut his throat.

FRENCH SOLDIER. Que dit-il, monsieur?

BOY. Il me commande à vous dire que vous faites vous prêt, car ce soldat ici est disposé tout à cette heure de couper votre gorge.

PISTOL. Owy, cuppele gorge, permafoy, Peasant, unless thou give me crowns, brave crowns; Or mangled shalt thou be by this my sword.

FRENCH SOLDIER. O, je vous supplie, pour l’amour de Dieu, me pardonner! Je suis le gentilhomme de bonne maison; gardez ma vie, et je vous donnerai deux cents écus.

PISTOL. What are his words?

BOY. He prays you to save his life. He is a gentleman of a good house; and for his ransom he will give you two hundred crowns.

PISTOL. Tell him my fury shall abate, and I The crowns will take.

FRENCH SOLDIER. Petit monsieur, que dit-il?

BOY. Encore qu’il est contre son jurement de pardonner aucun prisonnier; néanmoins, pour les écus que vous lui avez promis, il est content à vous donner la liberté, le franchisement.

FRENCH SOLDIER. Sur mes genoux je vous donne mille remerciements; et je m’estime heureux que je suis tombé entre les mains d’un chevalier, je pense, le plus brave, vaillant, et très distingué seigneur d’Angleterre.

PISTOL. Expound unto me, boy.

BOY. He gives you upon his knees, a thousand thanks; and he esteems himself happy that he hath fallen into the hands of one, as he thinks, the most brave, valorous, and thrice-worthy seigneur of England.

PISTOL. As I suck blood, I will some mercy show. Follow me!

BOY. Suivez-vous le grand capitaine.

[Exeunt Pistol and French Soldier.]

I did never know so full a voice issue from so empty a heart; but the saying is true, “The empty vessel makes the greatest sound.” Bardolph and Nym had ten times more valour than this roaring devil i’ the old play, that everyone may pare his nails with a wooden dagger; and they are both hang’d; and so would this be, if he durst steal anything adventurously. I must stay with the lackeys with the luggage of our camp. The French might have a good prey of us, if he knew of it; for there is none to guard it but boys.

SCENE V. Another part of the field.

Enter Constable, Orleans, Bourbon, Dauphin and Rambures.

CONSTABLE. O diable!

ORLEANS. O Seigneur! le jour est perdu, tout est perdu!

DAUPHIN. Mort de ma vie! all is confounded, all! Reproach and everlasting shame Sits mocking in our plumes.

[A short alarum.]

O méchante Fortune! Do not run away.

CONSTABLE. Why, all our ranks are broke.

DAUPHIN. O perdurable shame! Let’s stab ourselves, Be these the wretches that we play’d at dice for?

ORLEANS. Is this the king we sent to for his ransom?

BOURBON. Shame and eternal shame, nothing but shame! Let’s die in honour! Once more back again! And he that will not follow Bourbon now, Let him go hence, and with his cap in hand, Like a base pandar, hold the chamber door Whilst by a slave, no gentler than my dog, His fairest daughter is contaminated.

CONSTABLE. Disorder, that hath spoil’d us, friend us now! Let us on heaps go offer up our lives.

ORLEANS. We are enough yet living in the field To smother up the English in our throngs, If any order might be thought upon.

BOURBON. The devil take order now! I’ll to the throng. Let life be short, else shame will be too long.

SCENE VI. Another part of the field.

Alarum. Enter King Henry and his train, with prisoners.

KING HENRY. Well have we done, thrice valiant countrymen. But all’s not done; yet keep the French the field.

EXETER. The Duke of York commends him to your Majesty.

KING HENRY. Lives he, good uncle? Thrice within this hour I saw him down; thrice up again, and fighting. From helmet to the spur all blood he was.

EXETER. In which array, brave soldier, doth he lie, Larding the plain; and by his bloody side, Yoke-fellow to his honour-owing wounds, The noble Earl of Suffolk also lies. Suffolk first died; and York, all haggled over, Comes to him, where in gore he lay insteeped, And takes him by the beard; kisses the gashes That bloodily did yawn upon his face. He cries aloud, “Tarry, my cousin Suffolk! My soul shall thine keep company to heaven; Tarry, sweet soul, for mine, then fly abreast, As in this glorious and well-foughten field We kept together in our chivalry.” Upon these words I came and cheer’d him up. He smil’d me in the face, raught me his hand, And, with a feeble gripe, says, “Dear my lord, Commend my service to my sovereign.” So did he turn and over Suffolk’s neck He threw his wounded arm and kiss’d his lips; And so espous’d to death, with blood he seal’d A testament of noble-ending love. The pretty and sweet manner of it forc’d Those waters from me which I would have stopp’d; But I had not so much of man in me, And all my mother came into mine eyes And gave me up to tears.

KING HENRY. I blame you not; For, hearing this, I must perforce compound With mistful eyes, or they will issue too.

[Alarum.]

But hark! what new alarum is this same? The French have reinforc’d their scatter’d men. Then every soldier kill his prisoners; Give the word through.

SCENE VII. Another part of the field.

FLUELLEN. Kill the poys and the luggage! ’Tis expressly against the law of arms. ’Tis as arrant a piece of knavery, mark you now, as can be offer’t; in your conscience, now, is it not?

GOWER. ’Tis certain there’s not a boy left alive; and the cowardly rascals that ran from the battle ha’ done this slaughter. Besides, they have burned and carried away all that was in the King’s tent; wherefore the King, most worthily, hath caus’d every soldier to cut his prisoner’s throat. O, ’tis a gallant king!

FLUELLEN. Ay, he was porn at Monmouth, Captain Gower. What call you the town’s name where Alexander the Pig was born?

GOWER. Alexander the Great.

FLUELLEN. Why, I pray you, is not pig great? The pig, or the great, or the mighty, or the huge, or the magnanimous, are all one reckonings, save the phrase is a little variations.

GOWER. I think Alexander the Great was born in Macedon. His father was called Philip of Macedon, as I take it.

FLUELLEN. I think it is in Macedon where Alexander is porn. I tell you, Captain, if you look in the maps of the ’orld, I warrant you sall find, in the comparisons between Macedon and Monmouth, that the situations, look you, is both alike. There is a river in Macedon; and there is also moreover a river at Monmouth; it is call’d Wye at Monmouth; but it is out of my prains what is the name of the other river; but ’tis all one, ’tis alike as my fingers is to my fingers, and there is salmons in both. If you mark Alexander’s life well, Harry of Monmouth’s life is come after it indifferent well; for there is figures in all things. Alexander, God knows, and you know, in his rages, and his furies, and his wraths, and his cholers, and his moods, and his displeasures, and his indignations, and also being a little intoxicates in his prains, did, in his ales and his angers, look you, kill his best friend, Cleitus.

GOWER. Our King is not like him in that. He never kill’d any of his friends.

FLUELLEN. It is not well done, mark you now, to take the tales out of my mouth, ere it is made and finished. I speak but in the figures and comparisons of it. As Alexander kill’d his friend Cleitus, being in his ales and his cups; so also Harry Monmouth, being in his right wits and his good judgements, turn’d away the fat knight with the great belly doublet. He was full of jests, and gipes, and knaveries, and mocks; I have forgot his name.

GOWER. Sir John Falstaff.

FLUELLEN. That is he. I’ll tell you there is good men porn at Monmouth.

GOWER. Here comes his Majesty.

Alarum. Enter King Henry and forces; Warwick, Gloucester, Exeter with prisoners. Flourish.

KING HENRY. I was not angry since I came to France Until this instant. Take a trumpet, herald; Ride thou unto the horsemen on yond hill. If they will fight with us, bid them come down, Or void the field; they do offend our sight. If they’ll do neither, we will come to them, And make them skirr away, as swift as stones Enforced from the old Assyrian slings. Besides, we’ll cut the throats of those we have, And not a man of them that we shall take Shall taste our mercy. Go and tell them so.

Enter Montjoy.

EXETER. Here comes the herald of the French, my liege.

GLOUCESTER. His eyes are humbler than they us’d to be.

KING HENRY. How now! what means this, herald? Know’st thou not That I have fin’d these bones of mine for ransom? Com’st thou again for ransom?

MONTJOY. No, great King; I come to thee for charitable license, That we may wander o’er this bloody field To book our dead, and then to bury them; To sort our nobles from our common men. For many of our princes—woe the while!— Lie drown’d and soak’d in mercenary blood; So do our vulgar drench their peasant limbs In blood of princes; and their wounded steeds Fret fetlock deep in gore, and with wild rage Yerk out their armed heels at their dead masters, Killing them twice. O, give us leave, great King, To view the field in safety, and dispose Of their dead bodies!

KING HENRY. I tell thee truly, herald, I know not if the day be ours or no; For yet a many of your horsemen peer And gallop o’er the field.

MONTJOY. The day is yours.

KING HENRY. Praised be God, and not our strength, for it! What is this castle call’d that stands hard by?

MONTJOY. They call it Agincourt.

KING HENRY. Then call we this the field of Agincourt, Fought on the day of Crispin Crispianus.

FLUELLEN. Your grandfather of famous memory, an’t please your Majesty, and your great-uncle Edward the Plack Prince of Wales, as I have read in the chronicles, fought a most prave pattle here in France.

KING HENRY. They did, Fluellen.

FLUELLEN. Your Majesty says very true. If your Majesties is rememb’red of it, the Welshmen did good service in garden where leeks did grow, wearing leeks in their Monmouth caps; which, your Majesty know, to this hour is an honourable badge of the service; and I do believe your Majesty takes no scorn to wear the leek upon Saint Tavy’s day.

KING HENRY. I wear it for a memorable honour; For I am Welsh, you know, good countryman.

FLUELLEN. All the water in Wye cannot wash your Majesty’s Welsh plood out of your pody, I can tell you that. Got pless it and preserve it, as long as it pleases His grace, and His majesty too!

KING HENRY. Thanks, good my countryman.

FLUELLEN. By Jeshu, I am your Majesty’s countryman, I care not who know it. I will confess it to all the ’orld. I need not be asham’d of your Majesty, praised be God, so long as your Majesty is an honest man.

KING HENRY. God keep me so!

Enter Williams.

Our heralds go with him; Bring me just notice of the numbers dead On both our parts. Call yonder fellow hither.

[Exeunt Heralds with Montjoy.]

EXETER. Soldier, you must come to the King.

KING HENRY. Soldier, why wear’st thou that glove in thy cap?

WILLIAMS. An’t please your Majesty, ’tis the gage of one that I should fight withal, if he be alive.

KING HENRY. An Englishman?

WILLIAMS. An’t please your Majesty, a rascal that swagger’d with me last night; who, if alive and ever dare to challenge this glove, I have sworn to take him a box o’ the ear; or if I can see my glove in his cap, which he swore, as he was a soldier, he would wear if alive, I will strike it out soundly.

KING HENRY. What think you, Captain Fluellen, is it fit this soldier keep his oath?

FLUELLEN. He is a craven and a villain else, an’t please your Majesty, in my conscience.

KING HENRY. It may be his enemy is a gentlemen of great sort, quite from the answer of his degree.

FLUELLEN. Though he be as good a gentleman as the devil is, as Lucifier and Belzebub himself, it is necessary, look your Grace, that he keep his vow and his oath. If he be perjur’d, see you now, his reputation is as arrant a villain and a Jacksauce, as ever his black shoe trod upon God’s ground and His earth, in my conscience, la!

KING HENRY. Then keep thy vow, sirrah, when thou meet’st the fellow.

WILLIAMS. So I will, my liege, as I live.

KING HENRY. Who serv’st thou under?

WILLIAMS. Under Captain Gower, my liege.

FLUELLEN. Gower is a good captain, and is good knowledge and literatured in the wars.

KING HENRY. Call him hither to me, soldier.

WILLIAMS. I will, my liege.

KING HENRY. Here, Fluellen; wear thou this favour for me and stick it in thy cap. When Alençon and myself were down together, I pluck’d this glove from his helm. If any man challenge this, he is a friend to Alençon, and an enemy to our person. If thou encounter any such, apprehend him, an thou dost me love.

FLUELLEN. Your Grace does me as great honours as can be desir’d in the hearts of his subjects. I would fain see the man, that has but two legs, that shall find himself aggrief’d at this glove; that is all. But I would fain see it once, an please God of His grace that I might see.

KING HENRY. Know’st thou Gower?

FLUELLEN. He is my dear friend, an please you.

KING HENRY. Pray thee, go seek him, and bring him to my tent.

FLUELLEN. I will fetch him.

KING HENRY. My Lord of Warwick, and my brother Gloucester, Follow Fluellen closely at the heels. The glove which I have given him for a favour May haply purchase him a box o’ the ear. It is the soldier’s; I by bargain should Wear it myself. Follow, good cousin Warwick. If that the soldier strike him, as I judge By his blunt bearing he will keep his word, Some sudden mischief may arise of it; For I do know Fluellen valiant And, touch’d with choler, hot as gunpowder, And quickly will return an injury. Follow, and see there be no harm between them. Go you with me, uncle of Exeter.

SCENE VIII. Before King Henry’s pavilion.

Enter Gower and Williams.

WILLIAMS. I warrant it is to knight you, Captain.

FLUELLEN. God’s will and his pleasure, captain, I beseech you now, come apace to the King. There is more good toward you peradventure than is in your knowledge to dream of.

WILLIAMS. Sir, know you this glove?

FLUELLEN. Know the glove! I know the glove is a glove.

WILLIAMS. I know this; and thus I challenge it.

[Strikes him.]

FLUELLEN. ’Sblood! an arrant traitor as any is in the universal world, or in France, or in England!

GOWER. How now, sir! you villain!

WILLIAMS. Do you think I’ll be forsworn?

FLUELLEN. Stand away, Captain Gower. I will give treason his payment into plows, I warrant you.

WILLIAMS. I am no traitor.

FLUELLEN. That’s a lie in thy throat. I charge you in his Majesty’s name, apprehend him; he’s a friend of the Duke Alençon’s.

Enter Warwick and Gloucester.

WARWICK. How now, how now! what’s the matter?

FLUELLEN. My lord of Warwick, here is—praised be God for it!—a most contagious treason come to light, look you, as you shall desire in a summer’s day. Here is his Majesty.

Enter King Henry and Exeter.

KING HENRY. How now! what’s the matter?

FLUELLEN. My liege, here is a villain and a traitor, that, look your Grace, has struck the glove which your Majesty is take out of the helmet of Alençon.

WILLIAMS. My liege, this was my glove; here is the fellow of it; and he that I gave it to in change promis’d to wear it in his cap. I promis’d to strike him, if he did. I met this man with my glove in his cap, and I have been as good as my word.

FLUELLEN. Your Majesty hear now, saving your Majesty’s manhood, what an arrant, rascally, beggarly, lousy knave it is. I hope your Majesty is pear me testimony and witness, and will avouchment, that this is the glove of Alençon that your Majesty is give me; in your conscience, now?

KING HENRY. Give me thy glove, soldier. Look, here is the fellow of it. ’Twas I, indeed, thou promisedst to strike; And thou hast given me most bitter terms.

FLUELLEN. An it please your Majesty, let his neck answer for it, if there is any martial law in the world.

KING HENRY. How canst thou make me satisfaction?

WILLIAMS. All offences, my lord, come from the heart. Never came any from mine that might offend your Majesty.

KING HENRY. It was ourself thou didst abuse.

WILLIAMS. Your Majesty came not like yourself. You appear’d to me but as a common man; witness the night, your garments, your lowliness; and what your Highness suffer’d under that shape, I beseech you take it for your own fault and not mine; for had you been as I took you for, I made no offence; therefore, I beseech your Highness, pardon me.

KING HENRY. Here, uncle Exeter, fill this glove with crowns, And give it to this fellow. Keep it, fellow; And wear it for an honour in thy cap Till I do challenge it. Give him his crowns; And, captain, you must needs be friends with him.

FLUELLEN. By this day and this light, the fellow has mettle enough in his belly. Hold, there is twelve pence for you; and I pray you to serve God, and keep you out of prawls, and prabbles, and quarrels, and dissensions, and, I warrant you, it is the better for you.

WILLIAMS. I will none of your money.

FLUELLEN. It is with a good will; I can tell you, it will serve you to mend your shoes. Come, wherefore should you be so pashful? Your shoes is not so good. ’Tis a good silling, I warrant you, or I will change it.

Enter an English Herald.

KING HENRY. Now, herald, are the dead numb’red?

HERALD. Here is the number of the slaught’red French.

KING HENRY. What prisoners of good sort are taken, uncle?

EXETER. Charles Duke of Orleans, nephew to the King; John Duke of Bourbon, and Lord Boucicault: Of other lords and barons, knights and squires, Full fifteen hundred, besides common men.

KING HENRY. This note doth tell me of ten thousand French That in the field lie slain; of princes, in this number, And nobles bearing banners, there lie dead One hundred twenty-six; added to these, Of knights, esquires, and gallant gentlemen, Eight thousand and four hundred; of the which, Five hundred were but yesterday dubb’d knights; So that, in these ten thousand they have lost, There are but sixteen hundred mercenaries; The rest are princes, barons, lords, knights, squires, And gentlemen of blood and quality. The names of those their nobles that lie dead: Charles Delabreth, High Constable of France; Jacques of Chatillon, Admiral of France; The master of the Crossbows, Lord Rambures; Great Master of France, the brave Sir Guichard Dauphin, John, Duke of Alençon, Anthony, Duke of Brabant, The brother to the Duke of Burgundy, And Edward, Duke of Bar; of lusty earls, Grandpré and Roussi, Fauconbridge and Foix, Beaumont and Marle, Vaudemont and Lestrale. Here was a royal fellowship of death! Where is the number of our English dead?

[Herald gives him another paper.]

Edward the Duke of York, the Earl of Suffolk, Sir Richard Ketly, Davy Gam, esquire; None else of name; and of all other men But five and twenty.—O God, thy arm was here; And not to us, but to thy arm alone, Ascribe we all! When, without stratagem, But in plain shock and even play of battle, Was ever known so great and little loss On one part and on the other? Take it, God, For it is none but thine!

EXETER. ’Tis wonderful!

KING HENRY. Come, go we in procession to the village; And be it death proclaimed through our host To boast of this or take that praise from God Which is His only.

FLUELLEN. Is it not lawful, an please your Majesty, to tell how many is kill’d?

KING HENRY. Yes, Captain; but with this acknowledgment, That God fought for us.

FLUELLEN. Yes, my conscience, He did us great good.

KING HENRY. Do we all holy rites. Let there be sung Non nobis and Te Deum, The dead with charity enclos’d in clay, And then to Calais; and to England then, Where ne’er from France arriv’d more happy men.

CHORUS. Vouchsafe to those that have not read the story, That I may prompt them; and of such as have, I humbly pray them to admit the excuse Of time, of numbers, and due course of things, Which cannot in their huge and proper life Be here presented. Now we bear the King Toward Calais; grant him there; there seen, Heave him away upon your winged thoughts Athwart the sea. Behold, the English beach Pales in the flood with men, with wives and boys, Whose shouts and claps out-voice the deep-mouth’d sea, Which like a mighty whiffler ’fore the King Seems to prepare his way. So let him land, And solemnly see him set on to London. So swift a pace hath thought that even now You may imagine him upon Blackheath, Where that his lords desire him to have borne His bruised helmet and his bended sword Before him through the city. He forbids it, Being free from vainness and self-glorious pride; Giving full trophy, signal, and ostent Quite from himself to God. But now behold, In the quick forge and working-house of thought, How London doth pour out her citizens! The mayor and all his brethren in best sort, Like to the senators of th’ antique Rome, With the plebeians swarming at their heels, Go forth and fetch their conquering Caesar in; As, by a lower but loving likelihood, Were now the general of our gracious empress, As in good time he may, from Ireland coming, Bringing rebellion broached on his sword, How many would the peaceful city quit, To welcome him! Much more, and much more cause, Did they this Harry. Now in London place him; As yet the lamentation of the French Invites the King of England’s stay at home, The Emperor’s coming in behalf of France, To order peace between them;—and omit All the occurrences, whatever chanc’d, Till Harry’s back-return again to France. There must we bring him; and myself have play’d The interim, by rememb’ring you ’tis past. Then brook abridgement, and your eyes advance After your thoughts, straight back again to France.

SCENE I. France. The English camp.

GOWER. Nay, that’s right; but why wear you your leek today? Saint Davy’s day is past.

FLUELLEN. There is occasions and causes why and wherefore in all things. I will tell you ass my friend, Captain Gower. The rascally, scald, beggarly, lousy, pragging knave, Pistol, which you and yourself and all the world know to be no petter than a fellow, look you now, of no merits, he is come to me and prings me pread and salt yesterday, look you, and bid me eat my leek. It was in a place where I could not breed no contention with him; but I will be so bold as to wear it in my cap till I see him once again, and then I will tell him a little piece of my desires.

GOWER. Why, here he comes, swelling like a turkey-cock.

FLUELLEN. ’Tis no matter for his swellings nor his turkey-cocks. God pless you, Anchient Pistol! you scurvy, lousy knave, God pless you!

PISTOL. Ha! art thou bedlam? Dost thou thirst, base Trojan, To have me fold up Parca’s fatal web? Hence! I am qualmish at the smell of leek.

FLUELLEN. I peseech you heartily, scurfy, lousy knave, at my desires, and my requests, and my petitions, to eat, look you, this leek. Because, look you, you do not love it, nor your affections and your appetites and your digestions does not agree with it, I would desire you to eat it.

PISTOL. Not for Cadwallader and all his goats.

FLUELLEN. There is one goat for you. [Strikes him.] Will you be so good, scald knave, as eat it?

PISTOL. Base Trojan, thou shalt die.

FLUELLEN. You say very true, scald knave, when God’s will is. I will desire you to live in the mean time, and eat your victuals. Come, there is sauce for it. [Strikes him.] You call’d me yesterday mountain-squire; but I will make you today a squire of low degree. I pray you, fall to; if you can mock a leek, you can eat a leek.

GOWER. Enough, captain; you have astonish’d him.

FLUELLEN. I say, I will make him eat some part of my leek, or I will peat his pate four days. Bite, I pray you; it is good for your green wound and your ploody coxcomb.

PISTOL. Must I bite?

FLUELLEN. Yes, certainly, and out of doubt and out of question too, and ambiguities.

PISTOL. By this leek, I will most horribly revenge. I eat and eat, I swear—

FLUELLEN. Eat, I pray you. Will you have some more sauce to your leek? There is not enough leek to swear by.

PISTOL. Quiet thy cudgel; thou dost see I eat.

FLUELLEN. Much good do you, scald knave, heartily. Nay, pray you, throw none away; the skin is good for your broken coxcomb. When you take occasions to see leeks hereafter, I pray you, mock at ’em; that is all.

PISTOL. Good.

FLUELLEN. Ay, leeks is good. Hold you, there is a groat to heal your pate.

PISTOL. Me a groat!

FLUELLEN. Yes, verily and in truth you shall take it; or I have another leek in my pocket, which you shall eat.

PISTOL. I take thy groat in earnest of revenge.

FLUELLEN. If I owe you anything I will pay you in cudgels. You shall be a woodmonger, and buy nothing of me but cudgels. God be wi’ you, and keep you, and heal your pate.

PISTOL. All hell shall stir for this.

GOWER. Go, go; you are a couterfeit cowardly knave. Will you mock at an ancient tradition, begun upon an honourable respect, and worn as a memorable trophy of predeceased valour, and dare not avouch in your deeds any of your words? I have seen you gleeking and galling at this gentleman twice or thrice. You thought, because he could not speak English in the native garb, he could not therefore handle an English cudgel. You find it otherwise; and henceforth let a Welsh correction teach you a good English condition. Fare ye well.

PISTOL. Doth Fortune play the huswife with me now? News have I, that my Doll is dead i’ the spital Of malady of France; And there my rendezvous is quite cut off. Old I do wax; and from my weary limbs Honour is cudgell’d. Well, bawd I’ll turn, And something lean to cutpurse of quick hand. To England will I steal, and there I’ll steal; And patches will I get unto these cudgell’d scars, And swear I got them in the Gallia wars.

SCENE II. France. A royal palace.

Enter at one door, King Henry, Exeter, Bedford, Warwick, Gloucester, Westmorland, Clarence, Huntingdon and other Lords. At another, Queen Isabel, the French King, the Princess Katharine, Alice, and other Ladies; the Duke of Burgundy and other French.

KING HENRY. Peace to this meeting, wherefore we are met! Unto our brother France, and to our sister, Health and fair time of day; joy and good wishes To our most fair and princely cousin Katharine; And, as a branch and member of this royalty, By whom this great assembly is contriv’d, We do salute you, Duke of Burgundy; And, princes French, and peers, health to you all!

FRENCH KING. Right joyous are we to behold your face, Most worthy brother England; fairly met! So are you, princes English, every one.

QUEEN ISABEL. So happy be the issue, brother England, Of this good day and of this gracious meeting As we are now glad to behold your eyes; Your eyes, which hitherto have borne in them Against the French that met them in their bent The fatal balls of murdering basilisks. The venom of such looks, we fairly hope, Have lost their quality; and that this day Shall change all griefs and quarrels into love.

KING HENRY. To cry amen to that, thus we appear.

QUEEN ISABEL. You English princes all, I do salute you.

BURGUNDY. My duty to you both, on equal love, Great Kings of France and England! That I have labour’d, With all my wits, my pains, and strong endeavours, To bring your most imperial Majesties Unto this bar and royal interview, Your mightiness on both parts best can witness. Since then my office hath so far prevail’d That, face to face and royal eye to eye, You have congreeted, let it not disgrace me If I demand, before this royal view, What rub or what impediment there is, Why that the naked, poor, and mangled Peace, Dear nurse of arts, plenties, and joyful births, Should not in this best garden of the world, Our fertile France, put up her lovely visage? Alas, she hath from France too long been chas’d, And all her husbandry doth lie on heaps, Corrupting in it own fertility. Her vine, the merry cheerer of the heart, Unpruned dies; her hedges even-pleach’d, Like prisoners wildly overgrown with hair, Put forth disorder’d twigs; her fallow leas The darnel, hemlock, and rank fumitory, Doth root upon, while that the coulter rusts That should deracinate such savagery; The even mead, that erst brought sweetly forth The freckled cowslip, burnet, and green clover, Wanting the scythe, all uncorrected, rank, Conceives by idleness, and nothing teems But hateful docks, rough thistles, kecksies, burs, Losing both beauty and utility; And as our vineyards, fallows, meads, and hedges, Defective in their natures, grow to wildness. Even so our houses and ourselves and children Have lost, or do not learn for want of time, The sciences that should become our country; But grow like savages,—as soldiers will That nothing do but meditate on blood,— To swearing and stern looks, diffus’d attire, And everything that seems unnatural. Which to reduce into our former favour You are assembled; and my speech entreats That I may know the let, why gentle Peace Should not expel these inconveniences And bless us with her former qualities.

KING HENRY. If, Duke of Burgundy, you would the peace, Whose want gives growth to the imperfections Which you have cited, you must buy that peace With full accord to all our just demands; Whose tenours and particular effects You have enschedul’d briefly in your hands.

BURGUNDY. The King hath heard them; to the which as yet There is no answer made.

KING HENRY. Well, then, the peace, Which you before so urg’d, lies in his answer.

FRENCH KING. I have but with a cursorary eye O’erglanc’d the articles. Pleaseth your Grace To appoint some of your council presently To sit with us once more, with better heed To re-survey them, we will suddenly Pass our accept and peremptory answer.

KING HENRY. Brother, we shall. Go, uncle Exeter, And brother Clarence, and you, brother Gloucester, Warwick, and Huntington, go with the King; And take with you free power to ratify, Augment, or alter, as your wisdoms best Shall see advantageable for our dignity, Anything in or out of our demands, And we’ll consign thereto. Will you, fair sister, Go with the princes, or stay here with us?

QUEEN ISABEL. Our gracious brother, I will go with them. Haply a woman’s voice may do some good, When articles too nicely urg’d be stood on.

KING HENRY. Yet leave our cousin Katharine here with us: She is our capital demand, compris’d Within the fore-rank of our articles.

QUEEN ISABEL. She hath good leave.

[Exeunt all except Henry, Katharine and Alice.]

KING HENRY. Fair Katharine, and most fair, Will you vouchsafe to teach a soldier terms Such as will enter at a lady’s ear And plead his love-suit to her gentle heart?

KATHARINE. Your Majesty shall mock me; I cannot speak your England.

KING HENRY. O fair Katharine, if you will love me soundly with your French heart, I will be glad to hear you confess it brokenly with your English tongue. Do you like me, Kate?

KATHARINE. Pardonnez-moi, I cannot tell wat is “like me.”

KING HENRY. An angel is like you, Kate, and you are like an angel.

KATHARINE. Que dit-il? Que je suis semblable à les anges?

ALICE. Oui, vraiment, sauf votre Grâce, ainsi dit-il.

KING HENRY. I said so, dear Katharine; and I must not blush to affirm it.

KATHARINE. O bon Dieu! les langues des hommes sont pleines de tromperies.

KING HENRY. What says she, fair one? That the tongues of men are full of deceits?

ALICE. Oui, dat de tongues of de mans is be full of deceits: dat is de Princess.

KING HENRY. The Princess is the better Englishwoman. I’ faith, Kate, my wooing is fit for thy understanding. I am glad thou canst speak no better English; for if thou couldst, thou wouldst find me such a plain king that thou wouldst think I had sold my farm to buy my crown. I know no ways to mince it in love, but directly to say, “I love you”; then if you urge me farther than to say, “Do you in faith?” I wear out my suit. Give me your answer; i’ faith, do; and so clap hands and a bargain. How say you, lady?

KATHARINE. Sauf votre honneur, me understand well.

KING HENRY. Marry, if you would put me to verses, or to dance for your sake, Kate, why you undid me; for the one, I have neither words nor measure, and for the other I have no strength in measure, yet a reasonable measure in strength. If I could win a lady at leap-frog, or by vaulting into my saddle with my armour on my back, under the correction of bragging be it spoken, I should quickly leap into a wife. Or if I might buffet for my love, or bound my horse for her favours, I could lay on like a butcher and sit like a jack-an-apes, never off. But, before God, Kate, I cannot look greenly, nor gasp out my eloquence, nor I have no cunning in protestation; only downright oaths, which I never use till urg’d, nor never break for urging. If thou canst love a fellow of this temper, Kate, whose face is not worth sunburning, that never looks in his glass for love of anything he sees there, let thine eye be thy cook. I speak to thee plain soldier. If thou canst love me for this, take me; if not, to say to thee that I shall die, is true; but for thy love, by the Lord, no; yet I love thee too. And while thou liv’st, dear Kate, take a fellow of plain and uncoined constancy; for he perforce must do thee right, because he hath not the gift to woo in other places; for these fellows of infinite tongue, that can rhyme themselves into ladies’ favours, they do always reason themselves out again. What! a speaker is but a prater: a rhyme is but a ballad. A good leg will fall; a straight back will stoop; a black beard will turn white; a curl’d pate will grow bald; a fair face will wither; a full eye will wax hollow; but a good heart, Kate, is the sun and the moon; or rather the sun and not the moon; for it shines bright and never changes, but keeps his course truly. If thou would have such a one, take me; and take me, take a soldier; take a soldier, take a king. And what say’st thou then to my love? Speak, my fair, and fairly, I pray thee.

KATHARINE. Is it possible dat I should love de enemy of France?

KING HENRY. No; it is not possible you should love the enemy of France, Kate; but, in loving me, you should love the friend of France; for I love France so well that I will not part with a village of it, I will have it all mine; and, Kate, when France is mine and I am yours, then yours is France and you are mine.

KATHARINE. I cannot tell wat is dat.

KING HENRY. No, Kate? I will tell thee in French; which I am sure will hang upon my tongue like a new-married wife about her husband’s neck, hardly to be shook off. Je quand sur le possession de France, et quand vous avez le possession de moi,—let me see, what then? Saint Denis be my speed!—donc votre est France, et vous êtes mienne. It is as easy for me, Kate, to conquer the kingdom as to speak so much more French. I shall never move thee in French, unless it be to laugh at me.

KATHARINE. Sauf votre honneur, le français que vous parlez, il est meilleur que l’anglais lequel je parle.

KING HENRY. No, faith, is’t not, Kate; but thy speaking of my tongue, and I thine, most truly-falsely, must needs be granted to be much at one. But, Kate, dost thou understand thus much English: canst thou love me?

KATHARINE. I cannot tell.

KING HENRY. Can any of your neighbours tell, Kate? I’ll ask them. Come, I know thou lovest me; and at night, when you come into your closet, you’ll question this gentlewoman about me; and I know, Kate, you will to her dispraise those parts in me that you love with your heart. But, good Kate, mock me mercifully; the rather, gentle princess, because I love thee cruelly. If ever thou beest mine, Kate, as I have a saving faith within me tells me thou shalt, I get thee with scambling, and thou must therefore needs prove a good soldier-breeder. Shall not thou and I, between Saint Denis and Saint George, compound a boy, half French, half English, that shall go to Constantinople and take the Turk by the beard? Shall we not? What say’st thou, my fair flower-de-luce?

KATHARINE. I do not know dat.

KING HENRY. No; ’tis hereafter to know, but now to promise. Do but now promise, Kate, you will endeavour for your French part of such a boy; and for my English moiety, take the word of a king and a bachelor. How answer you, la plus belle Katherine du monde, mon très cher et divin déesse?

KATHARINE. Your Majestee ’ave fausse French enough to deceive de most sage demoiselle dat is en France.

KING HENRY. Now, fie upon my false French! By mine honour, in true English, I love thee, Kate; by which honour I dare not swear thou lovest me; yet my blood begins to flatter me that thou dost, notwithstanding the poor and untempering effect of my visage. Now, beshrew my father’s ambition! He was thinking of civil wars when he got me; therefore was I created with a stubborn outside, with an aspect of iron, that, when I come to woo ladies, I fright them. But, in faith, Kate, the elder I wax, the better I shall appear. My comfort is, that old age, that ill layer up of beauty, can do no more spoil upon my face. Thou hast me, if thou hast me, at the worst; and thou shalt wear me, if thou wear me, better and better; and therefore tell me, most fair Katharine, will you have me? Put off your maiden blushes; avouch the thoughts of your heart with the looks of an empress; take me by the hand, and say, Harry of England, I am thine; which word thou shalt no sooner bless mine ear withal, but I will tell thee aloud, England is thine, Ireland is thine, France is thine, and Henry Plantagenet is thine; who, though I speak it before his face, if he be not fellow with the best king, thou shalt find the best king of good fellows. Come, your answer in broken music; for thy voice is music and thy English broken; therefore, queen of all, Katharine, break thy mind to me in broken English. Wilt thou have me?

KATHARINE. Dat is as it shall please le roi mon père.

KING HENRY. Nay, it will please him well, Kate; it shall please him, Kate.

KATHARINE. Den it sall also content me.

KING HENRY. Upon that I kiss your hand, and call you my queen.

KATHARINE. Laissez, mon seigneur, laissez, laissez! Ma foi, je ne veux point que vous abaissiez votre grandeur en baisant la main d’une—Notre Seigneur!—indigne serviteur. Excusez-moi, je vous supplie, mon très-puissant seigneur.

KING HENRY. Then I will kiss your lips, Kate.

KATHARINE. Les dames et demoiselles pour être baisées devant leurs noces, il n’est pas la coutume de France.

KING HENRY. Madame my interpreter, what says she?

ALICE. Dat it is not be de fashion pour les ladies of France,—I cannot tell wat is baiser en Anglish.

KING HENRY. To kiss.

ALICE. Your Majestee entend bettre que moi.

KING HENRY. It is not a fashion for the maids in France to kiss before they are married, would she say?

ALICE. Oui, vraiment.

KING HENRY. O Kate, nice customs curtsy to great kings. Dear Kate, you and I cannot be confined within the weak list of a country’s fashion. We are the makers of manners, Kate; and the liberty that follows our places stops the mouth of all find-faults, as I will do yours, for upholding the nice fashion of your country in denying me a kiss; therefore, patiently and yielding. [Kissing her.] You have witchcraft in your lips, Kate; there is more eloquence in a sugar touch of them than in the tongues of the French council; and they should sooner persuade Harry of England than a general petition of monarchs. Here comes your father.

Enter the French Power and the English Lords.

BURGUNDY. God save your Majesty! My royal cousin, teach you our princess English?

KING HENRY. I would have her learn, my fair cousin, how perfectly I love her; and that is good English.

BURGUNDY. Is she not apt?

KING HENRY. Our tongue is rough, coz, and my condition is not smooth; so that, having neither the voice nor the heart of flattery about me, I cannot so conjure up the spirit of love in her, that he will appear in his true likeness.

BURGUNDY. Pardon the frankness of my mirth, if I answer you for that. If you would conjure in her, you must make a circle; if conjure up Love in her in his true likeness, he must appear naked and blind. Can you blame her then, being a maid yet ros’d over with the virgin crimson of modesty, if she deny the appearance of a naked blind boy in her naked seeing self? It were, my lord, a hard condition for a maid to consign to.

KING HENRY. Yet they do wink and yield, as love is blind and enforces.

BURGUNDY. They are then excus’d, my lord, when they see not what they do.

KING HENRY. Then, good my lord, teach your cousin to consent winking.

BURGUNDY. I will wink on her to consent, my lord, if you will teach her to know my meaning; for maids, well summer’d and warm kept, are like flies at Bartholomew-tide, blind, though they have their eyes; and then they will endure handling, which before would not abide looking on.

KING HENRY. This moral ties me over to time and a hot summer; and so I shall catch the fly, your cousin, in the latter end, and she must be blind too.

BURGUNDY. As love is, my lord, before it loves.

KING HENRY. It is so; and you may, some of you, thank love for my blindness, who cannot see many a fair French city for one fair French maid that stands in my way.

FRENCH KING. Yes, my lord, you see them perspectively, the cities turn’d into a maid; for they are all girdled with maiden walls that no war hath entered.

KING HENRY. Shall Kate be my wife?

FRENCH KING. So please you.

KING HENRY. I am content, so the maiden cities you talk of may wait on her; so the maid that stood in the way for my wish shall show me the way to my will.

FRENCH KING. We have consented to all terms of reason.

KING HENRY. Is’t so, my lords of England?

WESTMORLAND. The king hath granted every article; His daughter first, and then in sequel all, According to their firm proposed natures.

EXETER. Only he hath not yet subscribed this: where your Majesty demands, that the King of France, having any occasion to write for matter of grant, shall name your Highness in this form and with this addition, in French, Notre très-cher fils Henri, Roi d’Angleterre, Héritier de France; and thus in Latin, Praeclarissimus filius noster Henricus, rex Angliae et haeres Franciae.

FRENCH KING. Nor this I have not, brother, so denied But our request shall make me let it pass.

KING HENRY. I pray you then, in love and dear alliance, Let that one article rank with the rest; And thereupon give me your daughter.

FRENCH KING. Take her, fair son, and from her blood raise up Issue to me; that the contending kingdoms Of France and England, whose very shores look pale With envy of each other’s happiness, May cease their hatred; and this dear conjunction Plant neighbourhood and Christian-like accord In their sweet bosoms, that never war advance His bleeding sword ’twixt England and fair France.

LORDS. Amen!

KING HENRY. Now, welcome, Kate; and bear me witness all, That here I kiss her as my sovereign queen.

QUEEN ISABEL. God, the best maker of all marriages, Combine your hearts in one, your realms in one! As man and wife, being two, are one in love, So be there ’twixt your kingdoms such a spousal, That never may ill office, or fell jealousy, Which troubles oft the bed of blessed marriage, Thrust in between the paction of these kingdoms, To make divorce of their incorporate league; That English may as French, French Englishmen, Receive each other. God speak this Amen!

ALL. Amen!

KING HENRY. Prepare we for our marriage; on which day, My Lord of Burgundy, we’ll take your oath, And all the peers’, for surety of our leagues, Then shall I swear to Kate, and you to me; And may our oaths well kept and prosperous be!

[Sennet. Exeunt.]

CHORUS. Thus far, with rough and all-unable pen, Our bending author hath pursu’d the story, In little room confining mighty men, Mangling by starts the full course of their glory. Small time, but in that small most greatly lived This star of England. Fortune made his sword, By which the world’s best garden he achieved, And of it left his son imperial lord. Henry the Sixth, in infant bands crown’d King Of France and England, did this king succeed; Whose state so many had the managing, That they lost France and made his England bleed: Which oft our stage hath shown; and, for their sake, In your fair minds let this acceptance take.

THE FIRST PART OF HENRY THE SIXTH

ACT I Scene I. Westminster Abbey Scene II. France. Before Orleans Scene III. London. Before the Tower Scene IV. Orleans Scene V. Before Orleans Scene VI. Orleans

ACT II SCENE I. Before Orleans SCENE II. Orleans. Within the town SCENE III. Auvergne. The Countess’s castle SCENE IV. London. The Temple Garden SCENE V. The Tower of London

ACT III SCENE I. London. The Parliament House SCENE II. France. Before Rouen SCENE III. The plains near Rouen SCENE IV. Paris. The Palace

ACT IV SCENE I. Paris. The Palace SCENE II. Before Bordeaux SCENE III. Plains in Gascony SCENE IV. Other plains in Gascony SCENE V. The English camp near Bordeaux SCENE VI. A field of battle SCENE VII. Another part of the field

ACT V SCENE I. London. The Palace SCENE II. France. Plains in Anjou SCENE III. Before Angiers SCENE IV. Camp of the Duke of York in Anjou SCENE V. London. The royal palace

KING HENRY the Sixth DUKE OF GLOUCESTER, uncle to the King, and Protector DUKE OF BEDFORD, uncle to the King, and Regent of France DUKE OF EXETER, (Thomas Beaufort), great-uncle to the King BISHOP OF WINCHESTER (Henry Beaufort), great-uncle to the King, afterwards Cardinal DUKE OF SOMERSET (John Beaufort) RICHARD PLANTAGENET, son of Richard, late Earl of Cambridge, afterwards Duke of York EARL OF WARWICK EARL OF SALISBURY EARL OF SUFFOLK LORD TALBOT, afterwards Earl of Shrewsbury JOHN TALBOT, his son Edmund MORTIMER, Earl of March SIR JOHN FASTOLF SIR WILLIAM LUCY SIR WILLIAM GLANSDALE SIR THOMAS GARGRAVE MAYOR of London WOODVILLE, Lieutenant of the Tower VERNON, of the White-Rose or York faction BASSET, of the Red-Rose or Lancaster faction A LAWYER Mortimer’s JAILERS

CHARLES, Dauphin, and afterwards King of France REIGNIER, Duke of Anjou, and titular King of Naples DUKE OF BURGUNDY DUKE OF ALENÇON BASTARD OF ORLEANS Governor of Paris MASTER GUNNER of Orleans and BOY, his son General of the French forces in Bordeaux A French Sergeant. A Porter An old Shepherd, father to Joan la Pucelle

MARGARET, daughter to Reignier, afterwards married to King Henry COUNTESS OF AUVERGNE JOAN LA PUCELLE, commonly called Joan of Arc

Lords, Warders of the Tower, Heralds, Officers, Soldiers, Messengers, and Attendants.

Fiends appearing to Joan la Pucelle

SCENE: Partly in England and partly in France

SCENE I. Westminster Abbey.

Dead March. Enter the funeral of King Henry the Fifth, attended on by the Duke of Bedford, Regent of France; the Duke of Gloucester, Protector; the Duke of Exeter, the Earl of Warwick, the Bishop of Winchester, the Duke of Somerset with Heralds, &c.

BEDFORD. Hung be the heavens with black, yield day to night! Comets, importing change of times and states, Brandish your crystal tresses in the sky, And with them scourge the bad revolting stars That have consented unto Henry’s death: King Henry the Fifth, too famous to live long! England ne’er lost a king of so much worth.

GLOUCESTER. England ne’er had a king until his time. Virtue he had, deserving to command; His brandish’d sword did blind men with his beams; His arms spread wider than a dragon’s wings; His sparkling eyes, replete with wrathful fire, More dazzled and drove back his enemies Than mid-day sun fierce bent against their faces. What should I say? His deeds exceed all speech. He ne’er lift up his hand but conquered.

EXETER. We mourn in black; why mourn we not in blood? Henry is dead and never shall revive. Upon a wooden coffin we attend, And Death’s dishonourable victory We with our stately presence glorify, Like captives bound to a triumphant car. What! Shall we curse the planets of mishap That plotted thus our glory’s overthrow? Or shall we think the subtle-witted French Conjurers and sorcerers, that, afraid of him, By magic verses have contriv’d his end?

WINCHESTER. He was a king bless’d of the King of kings; Unto the French the dreadful judgement-day So dreadful will not be as was his sight. The battles of the Lord of Hosts he fought: The Church’s prayers made him so prosperous.

GLOUCESTER. The Church! Where is it? Had not churchmen pray’d, His thread of life had not so soon decay’d. None do you like but an effeminate prince, Whom like a school-boy you may overawe.

WINCHESTER. Gloucester, whate’er we like, thou art Protector, And lookest to command the Prince and realm. Thy wife is proud; she holdeth thee in awe More than God or religious churchmen may.

GLOUCESTER. Name not religion, for thou lov’st the flesh, And ne’er throughout the year to church thou go’st, Except it be to pray against thy foes.

BEDFORD. Cease, cease these jars, and rest your minds in peace; Let’s to the altar; heralds, wait on us. Instead of gold, we’ll offer up our arms, Since arms avail not, now that Henry’s dead. Posterity, await for wretched years, When at their mothers’ moist eyes babes shall suck, Our isle be made a nourish of salt tears, And none but women left to wail the dead. Henry the Fifth, thy ghost I invocate: Prosper this realm, keep it from civil broils, Combat with adverse planets in the heavens. A far more glorious star thy soul will make Than Julius Caesar or bright—

MESSENGER. My honourable lords, health to you all! Sad tidings bring I to you out of France, Of loss, of slaughter, and discomfiture: Guienne, Champaigne, Rheims, Rouen, Orleans, Paris, Guysors, Poictiers, are all quite lost.

BEDFORD. What say’st thou, man, before dead Henry’s corse? Speak softly, or the loss of those great towns Will make him burst his lead and rise from death.

GLOUCESTER. Is Paris lost? Is Rouen yielded up? If Henry were recall’d to life again, These news would cause him once more yield the ghost.

EXETER. How were they lost? What treachery was us’d?

MESSENGER. No treachery, but want of men and money. Amongst the soldiers this is muttered: That here you maintain several factions And whilst a field should be dispatch’d and fought, You are disputing of your generals. One would have lingering wars with little cost; Another would fly swift, but wanteth wings; A third thinks, without expense at all, By guileful fair words peace may be obtain’d. Awake, awake, English nobility! Let not sloth dim your honours new-begot. Cropp’d are the flower-de-luces in your arms; Of England’s coat one half is cut away.

[He exits.]

EXETER. Were our tears wanting to this funeral, These tidings would call forth their flowing tides.

BEDFORD. Me they concern; Regent I am of France. Give me my steeled coat. I’ll fight for France. Away with these disgraceful wailing robes! Wounds will I lend the French instead of eyes, To weep their intermissive miseries.

Enter to them another Messenger.

MESSENGER. Lords, view these letters full of bad mischance. France is revolted from the English quite, Except some petty towns of no import. The Dauphin Charles is crowned king in Rheims; The Bastard of Orleans with him is join’d; Reignier, Duke of Anjou, doth take his part; The Duke of Alençon flieth to his side.

EXETER. The Dauphin crowned king! All fly to him! O, whither shall we fly from this reproach?

GLOUCESTER. We will not fly but to our enemies’ throats. Bedford, if thou be slack, I’ll fight it out.

BEDFORD. Gloucester, why doubt’st thou of my forwardness? An army have I muster’d in my thoughts, Wherewith already France is overrun.

MESSENGER. My gracious lords, to add to your laments, Wherewith you now bedew King Henry’s hearse, I must inform you of a dismal fight Betwixt the stout Lord Talbot and the French.

WINCHESTER. What! Wherein Talbot overcame, is’t so?

MESSENGER. O no, wherein Lord Talbot was o’erthrown. The circumstance I’ll tell you more at large. The tenth of August last this dreadful lord, Retiring from the siege of Orleans, Having full scarce six thousand in his troop, By three and twenty thousand of the French Was round encompassed and set upon. No leisure had he to enrank his men; He wanted pikes to set before his archers; Instead whereof sharp stakes pluck’d out of hedges They pitched in the ground confusedly To keep the horsemen off from breaking in. More than three hours the fight continued; Where valiant Talbot, above human thought, Enacted wonders with his sword and lance. Hundreds he sent to hell, and none durst stand him; Here, there, and everywhere, enrag’d he slew. The French exclaim’d the devil was in arms; All the whole army stood agaz’d on him. His soldiers, spying his undaunted spirit, “A Talbot! a Talbot!” cried out amain, And rush’d into the bowels of the battle. Here had the conquest fully been seal’d up If Sir John Fastolf had not play’d the coward. He, being in the vaward, plac’d behind With purpose to relieve and follow them, Cowardly fled, not having struck one stroke. Hence grew the general wrack and massacre. Enclosed were they with their enemies. A base Walloon, to win the Dauphin’s grace, Thrust Talbot with a spear into the back, Whom all France, with their chief assembled strength, Durst not presume to look once in the face.

BEDFORD. Is Talbot slain? Then I will slay myself, For living idly here, in pomp and ease, Whilst such a worthy leader, wanting aid, Unto his dastard foemen is betray’d.

MESSENGER. O no, he lives, but is took prisoner, And Lord Scales with him, and Lord Hungerford; Most of the rest slaughter’d or took likewise.

BEDFORD. His ransom there is none but I shall pay. I’ll hale the Dauphin headlong from his throne; His crown shall be the ransom of my friend; Four of their lords I’ll change for one of ours. Farewell, my masters; to my task will I; Bonfires in France forthwith I am to make To keep our great Saint George’s feast withal. Ten thousand soldiers with me I will take, Whose bloody deeds shall make all Europe quake.

MESSENGER. So you had need; for Orleans is besieg’d The English army is grown weak and faint; The Earl of Salisbury craveth supply And hardly keeps his men from mutiny, Since they, so few, watch such a multitude.

EXETER. Remember, lords, your oaths to Henry sworn, Either to quell the Dauphin utterly, Or bring him in obedience to your yoke.

BEDFORD. I do remember it, and here take my leave To go about my preparation.

GLOUCESTER. I’ll to the Tower with all the haste I can To view th’ artillery and munition; And then I will proclaim young Henry king.

EXETER. To Eltham will I, where the young King is, Being ordain’d his special governor; And for his safety there I’ll best devise.

WINCHESTER. Each hath his place and function to attend. I am left out; for me nothing remains. But long I will not be Jack out of office. The King from Eltham I intend to steal, And sit at chiefest stern of public weal.

SCENE II. France. Before Orleans

Sound a Flourish. Enter Charles, Alençon and Reignier, marching with Drum and Soldiers.

CHARLES. Mars his true moving, even as in the heavens So in the earth, to this day is not known. Late did he shine upon the English side; Now we are victors; upon us he smiles. What towns of any moment but we have? At pleasure here we lie near Orleans, Otherwhiles the famish’d English, like pale ghosts, Faintly besiege us one hour in a month.

ALENÇON. They want their porridge and their fat bull beeves. Either they must be dieted like mules And have their provender tied to their mouths, Or piteous they will look, like drowned mice.

REIGNIER. Let’s raise the siege. Why live we idly here? Talbot is taken, whom we wont to fear. Remaineth none but mad-brain’d Salisbury, And he may well in fretting spend his gall; Nor men nor money hath he to make war.

CHARLES. Sound, sound alarum! We will rush on them. Now for the honour of the forlorn French! Him I forgive my death that killeth me When he sees me go back one foot or fly.

Here alarum; they are beaten back by the English, with great loss. Re-enter Charles, Alençon and Reignier.

CHARLES. Who ever saw the like? What men have I! Dogs, cowards, dastards! I would ne’er have fled But that they left me ’midst my enemies.

REIGNIER. Salisbury is a desperate homicide; He fighteth as one weary of his life. The other lords, like lions wanting food, Do rush upon us as their hungry prey.

ALENÇON. Froissart, a countryman of ours, records, England all Olivers and Rowlands bred During the time Edward the Third did reign. More truly now may this be verified; For none but Samsons and Goliases It sendeth forth to skirmish. One to ten! Lean raw-bon’d rascals! Who would e’er suppose They had such courage and audacity?

CHARLES. Let’s leave this town; for they are hare-brain’d slaves, And hunger will enforce them to be more eager. Of old I know them; rather with their teeth The walls they’ll tear down than forsake the siege.

REIGNIER. I think by some odd gimmers or device Their arms are set like clocks, still to strike on; Else ne’er could they hold out so as they do. By my consent, we’ll even let them alone.

ALENÇON. Be it so.

Enter the Bastard of Orleans.

BASTARD. Where’s the Prince Dauphin? I have news for him.

CHARLES. Bastard of Orleans, thrice welcome to us.

BASTARD. Methinks your looks are sad, your cheer appall’d. Hath the late overthrow wrought this offence? Be not dismay’d, for succour is at hand. A holy maid hither with me I bring, Which, by a vision sent to her from heaven Ordained is to raise this tedious siege And drive the English forth the bounds of France. The spirit of deep prophecy she hath, Exceeding the nine sibyls of old Rome. What’s past and what’s to come she can descry. Speak, shall I call her in? Believe my words, For they are certain and unfallible.

CHARLES. Go, call her in.

[Exit Bastard.]

But first, to try her skill, Reignier, stand thou as Dauphin in my place; Question her proudly; let thy looks be stern. By this means shall we sound what skill she hath.

Re-enter the Bastard of Orleans, with Joan la Pucelle.

REIGNIER. Fair maid, is ’t thou wilt do these wondrous feats?

PUCELLE. Reignier is ’t thou that thinkest to beguile me? Where is the Dauphin? Come, come from behind; I know thee well, though never seen before. Be not amazed, there’s nothing hid from me. In private will I talk with thee apart. Stand back, you lords, and give us leave awhile.

REIGNIER. She takes upon her bravely at first dash.

PUCELLE. Dauphin, I am by birth a shepherd’s daughter, My wit untrain’d in any kind of art. Heaven and our Lady gracious hath it pleased To shine on my contemptible estate. Lo, whilst I waited on my tender lambs, And to sun’s parching heat display’d my cheeks, God’s mother deigned to appear to me, And in a vision full of majesty Will’d me to leave my base vocation And free my country from calamity. Her aid she promised and assured success. In complete glory she reveal’d herself; And, whereas I was black and swart before, With those clear rays which she infused on me That beauty am I blest with which you may see. Ask me what question thou canst possible, And I will answer unpremeditated. My courage try by combat, if thou dar’st, And thou shalt find that I exceed my sex. Resolve on this; thou shalt be fortunate If thou receive me for thy warlike mate.

CHARLES. Thou hast astonish’d me with thy high terms. Only this proof I’ll of thy valour make: In single combat thou shalt buckle with me, And if thou vanquishest, thy words are true; Otherwise I renounce all confidence.

PUCELLE. I am prepared. Here is my keen-edg’d sword, Deck’d with five flower-de-luces on each side, The which at Touraine, in Saint Katharine’s churchyard, Out of a great deal of old iron I chose forth.

CHARLES. Then come, o’ God’s name; I fear no woman.

PUCELLE. And while I live, I’ll ne’er fly from a man.

[Here they fight, and Joan la Pucelle overcomes.]

CHARLES. Stay, stay thy hands; thou art an Amazon, And fightest with the sword of Deborah.

PUCELLE. Christ’s Mother helps me, else I were too weak.

CHARLES. Whoe’er helps thee, ’tis thou that must help me. Impatiently I burn with thy desire; My heart and hands thou hast at once subdued. Excellent Pucelle, if thy name be so, Let me thy servant and not sovereign be. ’Tis the French Dauphin sueth to thee thus.

PUCELLE. I must not yield to any rites of love, For my profession’s sacred from above. When I have chased all thy foes from hence, Then will I think upon a recompense.

CHARLES. Meantime look gracious on thy prostrate thrall.

REIGNIER. My lord, methinks, is very long in talk.

ALENÇON. Doubtless he shrives this woman to her smock; Else ne’er could he so long protract his speech.

REIGNIER. Shall we disturb him, since he keeps no mean?

ALENÇON. He may mean more than we poor men do know. These women are shrewd tempters with their tongues.

REIGNIER. My lord, where are you? What devise you on? Shall we give over Orleans, or no?

PUCELLE. Why, no, I say. Distrustful recreants! Fight till the last gasp; I will be your guard.

CHARLES. What she says I’ll confirm. We’ll fight it out.

PUCELLE. Assign’d am I to be the English scourge. This night the siege assuredly I’ll raise. Expect Saint Martin’s summer, halcyon’s days, Since I have entered into these wars. Glory is like a circle in the water, Which never ceaseth to enlarge itself Till by broad spreading it disperse to nought. With Henry’s death the English circle ends; Dispersed are the glories it included. Now am I like that proud insulting ship Which Caesar and his fortune bare at once.

CHARLES. Was Mahomet inspired with a dove? Thou with an eagle art inspired then. Helen, the mother of great Constantine, Nor yet Saint Philip’s daughters, were like thee. Bright star of Venus, fall’n down on the earth, How may I reverently worship thee enough?

ALENÇON. Leave off delays, and let us raise the siege.

REIGNIER. Woman, do what thou canst to save our honours; Drive them from Orleans and be immortalized.

CHARLES. Presently we’ll try. Come, let’s away about it. No prophet will I trust if she prove false.

SCENE III. London. Before the Tower.

Enter the Duke of Gloucester with his Servingmen in blue coats.

GLOUCESTER. I am come to survey the Tower this day. Since Henry’s death, I fear, there is conveyance. Where be these warders that they wait not here? Open the gates; ’tis Gloucester that calls.

FIRST WARDER. [Within.] Who’s there that knocks so imperiously?

FIRST SERVINGMAN. It is the noble Duke of Gloucester.

SECOND WARDER. [Within.] Whoe’er he be, you may not be let in.

FIRST SERVINGMAN. Villains, answer you so the Lord Protector?

FIRST WARDER. [Within.] The Lord protect him, so we answer him. We do no otherwise than we are will’d.

GLOUCESTER. Who willed you? Or whose will stands but mine? There’s none Protector of the realm but I. Break up the gates, I’ll be your warrantize. Shall I be flouted thus by dunghill grooms?

[Gloucester’s men rush at the Tower gates, and Woodville, the Lieutenant, speaks within.]

WOODVILLE. What noise is this? What traitors have we here?

GLOUCESTER. Lieutenant, is it you whose voice I hear? Open the gates; here’s Gloucester that would enter.

WOODVILLE. Have patience, noble Duke; I may not open; The Cardinal of Winchester forbids. From him I have express commandment That thou nor none of thine shall be let in.

GLOUCESTER. Faint-hearted Woodville, prizest him ’fore me? Arrogant Winchester, that haughty prelate Whom Henry, our late sovereign, ne’er could brook? Thou art no friend to God or to the King. Open the gates, or I’ll shut thee out shortly.

SERVINGMEN. Open the gates unto the Lord Protector, Or we’ll burst them open, if that you come not quickly.

Enter to the Protector at the Tower gates Winchester and his men in tawny coats.

WINCHESTER. How now, ambitious Humphrey! What means this?

GLOUCESTER. Peel’d priest, dost thou command me to be shut out?

WINCHESTER. I do, thou most usurping proditor, And not Protector, of the King or realm.

GLOUCESTER. Stand back, thou manifest conspirator, Thou that contrived’st to murder our dead lord; Thou that giv’st whores indulgences to sin: I’ll canvass thee in thy broad cardinal’s hat, If thou proceed in this thy insolence.

WINCHESTER. Nay, stand thou back; I will not budge a foot. This be Damascus, be thou cursed Cain, To slay thy brother Abel, if thou wilt.

GLOUCESTER. I will not slay thee, but I’ll drive thee back. Thy scarlet robes, as a child’s bearing-cloth, I’ll use to carry thee out of this place.

WINCHESTER. Do what thou dar’st, I beard thee to thy face.

GLOUCESTER. What, am I dared and bearded to my face? Draw, men, for all this privileged place. Blue coats to tawny coats. Priest, beware your beard; I mean to tug it and to cuff you soundly. Under my feet I’ll stamp thy cardinal’s hat; In spite of Pope or dignities of church, Here by the cheeks I’ll drag thee up and down.

WINCHESTER. Gloucester, thou wilt answer this before the Pope.

GLOUCESTER. Winchester goose, I cry, “a rope, a rope!” Now beat them hence; why do you let them stay? Thee I’ll chase hence, thou wolf in sheep’s array. Out, tawny coats! Out, scarlet hypocrite!

Here Gloucester’s men beat out the Cardinal’s men, and enter in the hurly-burly the Mayor of London and his Officers.

MAYOR. Fie, lords, that you, being supreme magistrates, Thus contumeliously should break the peace!

GLOUCESTER. Peace, Mayor! Thou know’st little of my wrongs. Here’s Beaufort, that regards nor God nor king, Hath here distrain’d the Tower to his use.

WINCHESTER. Here’s Gloucester, a foe to citizens, One that still motions war and never peace, O’ercharging your free purses with large fines; That seeks to overthrow religion, Because he is Protector of the realm, And would have armour here out of the Tower, To crown himself king and suppress the Prince.

GLOUCESTER. I will not answer thee with words, but blows.

[Here they skirmish again.]

MAYOR. Nought rests for me in this tumultuous strife But to make open proclamation. Come, officer, as loud as e’er thou canst, cry.

OFFICER. All manner of men assembled here in arms this day against God’s peace and the King’s, we charge and command you, in his Highness’ name, to repair to your several dwelling-places; and not to wear, handle, or use any sword, weapon, or dagger, henceforward, upon pain of death.

GLOUCESTER. Cardinal, I’ll be no breaker of the law; But we shall meet and break our minds at large.

WINCHESTER. Gloucester, we will meet, to thy cost, be sure; Thy heart-blood I will have for this day’s work.

MAYOR. I’ll call for clubs, if you will not away. This Cardinal’s more haughty than the devil.

GLOUCESTER. Mayor, farewell. Thou dost but what thou mayst.

WINCHESTER. Abominable Gloucester, guard thy head, For I intend to have it ere long.

[Exeunt, severally, Gloucester and Winchester with their Servingmen.]

MAYOR. See the coast clear’d, and then we will depart. Good God, these nobles should such stomachs bear! I myself fight not once in forty year.

SCENE IV. Orleans.

Enter, on the walls, a Master Gunner and his Boy.

MASTER GUNNER. Sirrah, thou know’st how Orleans is besieged, And how the English have the suburbs won.

BOY. Father, I know; and oft have shot at them, Howe’er unfortunate I miss’d my aim.

MASTER GUNNER. But now thou shalt not. Be thou ruled by me. Chief master-gunner am I of this town; Something I must do to procure me grace. The Prince’s espials have informed me How the English, in the suburbs close intrench’d, Wont, through a secret grate of iron bars In yonder tower, to overpeer the city, And thence discover how with most advantage They may vex us with shot or with assault. To intercept this inconvenience, A piece of ordnance ’gainst it I have placed And even these three days have I watch’d, If I could see them. Now do thou watch, for I can stay no longer. If thou spy’st any, run and bring me word; And thou shalt find me at the Governor’s.

BOY. Father, I warrant you; take you no care; I’ll never trouble you if I may spy them.

Enter, on the turrets, Salisbury and Talbot, Sir William Glansdale, Sir Thomas Gargrave and others.

SALISBURY. Talbot, my life, my joy, again return’d! How wert thou handled, being prisoner? Or by what means got’st thou to be releas’d? Discourse, I prithee, on this turret’s top.

TALBOT. The Duke of Bedford had a prisoner Call’d the brave Lord Ponton de Santrailles; For him was I exchanged and ransomed. But with a baser man of arms by far Once in contempt they would have barter’d me, Which I disdaining scorn’d, and craved death Rather than I would be so vile-esteem’d. In fine, redeem’d I was as I desired. But O, the treacherous Fastolf wounds my heart, Whom with my bare fists I would execute If I now had him brought into my power.

SALISBURY. Yet tell’st thou not how thou wert entertain’d.

TALBOT. With scoffs and scorns and contumelious taunts. In open market-place produced they me To be a public spectacle to all. Here, said they, is the terror of the French, The scarecrow that affrights our children so. Then broke I from the officers that led me, And with my nails digg’d stones out of the ground To hurl at the beholders of my shame. My grisly countenance made others fly; None durst come near for fear of sudden death. In iron walls they deem’d me not secure; So great fear of my name ’mongst them were spread That they supposed I could rend bars of steel And spurn in pieces posts of adamant. Wherefore a guard of chosen shot I had, That walk’d about me every minute while; And if I did but stir out of my bed, Ready they were to shoot me to the heart.

Enter the Boy with a linstock.

SALISBURY. I grieve to hear what torments you endured, But we will be revenged sufficiently. Now it is supper-time in Orleans. Here, through this grate, I count each one And view the Frenchmen how they fortify. Let us look in; the sight will much delight thee. Sir Thomas Gargrave and Sir William Glansdale, Let me have your express opinions Where is best place to make our battery next.

GARGRAVE. I think, at the north gate, for there stand lords.

GLANSDALE. And I, here, at the bulwark of the bridge.

TALBOT. For aught I see, this city must be famish’d, Or with light skirmishes enfeebled.

Here they shoot, and Salisbury and Gargrave fall down.

SALISBURY. O Lord, have mercy on us, wretched sinners!

GARGRAVE. O Lord, have mercy on me, woeful man!

TALBOT. What chance is this that suddenly hath cross’d us? Speak, Salisbury; at least, if thou canst speak! How far’st thou, mirror of all martial men? One of thy eyes and thy cheek’s side struck off! Accursed tower, accursed fatal hand That hath contrived this woeful tragedy! In thirteen battles Salisbury o’ercame; Henry the Fifth he first train’d to the wars; Whilst any trump did sound, or drum struck up, His sword did ne’er leave striking in the field. Yet liv’st thou, Salisbury? Though thy speech doth fail, One eye thou hast to look to heaven for grace. The sun with one eye vieweth all the world. Heaven, be thou gracious to none alive, If Salisbury wants mercy at thy hands! Sir Thomas Gargrave, hast thou any life? Speak unto Talbot; nay, look up to him. Bear hence his body; I will help to bury it.

[Exeunt some with the body of Gargrave.]

Salisbury, cheer thy spirit with this comfort, Thou shalt not die whiles— He beckons with his hand and smiles on me, As who should say “When I am dead and gone, Remember to avenge me on the French.” Plantagenet, I will; and, like thee, Nero, Play on the lute, beholding the towns burn. Wretched shall France be only in thy name.

[Here an alarum, and it thunders and lightens.]

What stir is this? What tumult’s in the heavens? Whence cometh this alarum and the noise?

MESSENGER. My lord, my lord, the French have gather’d head. The Dauphin, with one Joan la Pucelle join’d, A holy prophetess new risen up, Is come with a great power to raise the siege.

[Here Salisbury lifteth himself up and groans.]

TALBOT. Hear, hear how dying Salisbury doth groan; It irks his heart he cannot be revenged. Frenchmen, I’ll be a Salisbury to you. Pucelle or puzel, dolphin or dogfish, Your hearts I’ll stamp out with my horse’s heels And make a quagmire of your mingled brains. Convey we Salisbury into his tent, And then we’ll try what these dastard Frenchmen dare.

[Alarum. Exeunt.]

SCENE V. Before Orleans.

Here an alarum again, and Talbot pursueth the Dauphin and driveth him; then enter Joan la Pucelle, driving Englishmen before her, and exit after them. Then re-enter Talbot.

TALBOT. Where is my strength, my valour, and my force? Our English troops retire, I cannot stay them. A woman clad in armour chaseth them.

Enter La Pucelle.

Here, here she comes. I’ll have a bout with thee; Devil or devil’s dam, I’ll conjure thee. Blood will I draw on thee, thou art a witch, And straightway give thy soul to him thou serv’st.

PUCELLE. Come, come, ’tis only I that must disgrace thee.

[Here they fight.]

TALBOT. Heavens, can you suffer hell so to prevail? My breast I’ll burst with straining of my courage, And from my shoulders crack my arms asunder, But I will chastise this high-minded strumpet.

[They fight again.]

PUCELLE. Talbot, farewell; thy hour is not yet come. I must go victual Orleans forthwith.

[A short alarum. Then enter the town with soldiers.]

O’ertake me, if thou canst. I scorn thy strength. Go, go, cheer up thy hungry-starved men; Help Salisbury to make his testament. This day is ours, as many more shall be.

TALBOT. My thoughts are whirled like a potter’s wheel; I know not where I am, nor what I do. A witch by fear, not force, like Hannibal, Drives back our troops and conquers as she lists. So bees with smoke and doves with noisome stench Are from their hives and houses driven away. They call’d us for our fierceness, English dogs; Now like to whelps we crying run away.

Hark, countrymen, either renew the fight, Or tear the lions out of England’s coat; Renounce your soil, give sheep in lions’ stead. Sheep run not half so treacherous from the wolf, Or horse or oxen from the leopard, As you fly from your oft-subdued slaves.

[Alarum. Here another skirmish.]

It will not be! Retire into your trenches. You all consented unto Salisbury’s death, For none would strike a stroke in his revenge. Pucelle is enter’d into Orleans, In spite of us or aught that we could do. O, would I were to die with Salisbury! The shame hereof will make me hide my head.

[Exit Talbot. Alarum; retreat.]

SCENE VI. Orleans.

Flourish. Enter on the walls La Pucelle, Charles, Reignier, Alençon and Soldiers.

PUCELLE. Advance our waving colours on the walls; Rescued is Orleans from the English. Thus Joan la Pucelle hath perform’d her word.

CHARLES. Divinest creature, Astraea’s daughter, How shall I honour thee for this success? Thy promises are like Adonis’ gardens That one day bloom’d and fruitful were the next. France, triumph in thy glorious prophetess! Recover’d is the town of Orleans. More blessed hap did ne’er befall our state.

REIGNIER. Why ring not bells aloud throughout the town? Dauphin, command the citizens make bonfires And feast and banquet in the open streets To celebrate the joy that God hath given us.

ALENÇON. All France will be replete with mirth and joy When they shall hear how we have play’d the men.

CHARLES. ’Tis Joan, not we, by whom the day is won; For which I will divide my crown with her, And all the priests and friars in my realm Shall in procession sing her endless praise. A statelier pyramis to her I’ll rear Than Rhodope’s of Memphis ever was; In memory of her when she is dead, Her ashes, in an urn more precious Than the rich-jewel’d coffer of Darius, Transported shall be at high festivals Before the kings and queens of France. No longer on Saint Denis will we cry, But Joan la Pucelle shall be France’s saint. Come in, and let us banquet royally After this golden day of victory.

SCENE I. Before Orleans.

Enter a Sergeant of a band, with two Sentinels.

SERGEANT. Sirs, take your places and be vigilant. If any noise or soldier you perceive Near to the walls, by some apparent sign Let us have knowledge at the court of guard.

FIRST SENTINEL. Sergeant, you shall.

[Exit Sergeant.]

Thus are poor servitors, When others sleep upon their quiet beds, Constrain’d to watch in darkness, rain, and cold.

Enter Talbot, Bedford, Burgundy, and forces, with scaling-ladders.

TALBOT. Lord Regent, and redoubted Burgundy, By whose approach the regions of Artois, Walloon and Picardy are friends to us, This happy night the Frenchmen are secure, Having all day caroused and banqueted. Embrace we then this opportunity, As fitting best to quittance their deceit Contriv’d by art and baleful sorcery.

BEDFORD. Coward of France, how much he wrongs his fame, Despairing of his own arm’s fortitude, To join with witches and the help of hell!

BURGUNDY. Traitors have never other company. But what’s that Pucelle whom they term so pure?

TALBOT. A maid, they say.

BEDFORD. A maid! And be so martial!

BURGUNDY. Pray God she prove not masculine ere long, If underneath the standard of the French She carry armour as she hath begun.

TALBOT. Well, let them practice and converse with spirits. God is our fortress, in whose conquering name Let us resolve to scale their flinty bulwarks.

BEDFORD. Ascend, brave Talbot; we will follow thee.

TALBOT. Not all together. Better far, I guess, That we do make our entrance several ways, That if it chance the one of us do fail, The other yet may rise against their force.

BEDFORD. Agreed. I’ll to yond corner.

BURGUNDY. And I to this.

TALBOT. And here will Talbot mount, or make his grave. Now, Salisbury, for thee, and for the right Of English Henry, shall this night appear How much in duty I am bound to both.

SENTINEL. Arm! Arm! The enemy doth make assault!

[Cry: “St George,” “A Talbot!”]

The French leap over the walls in their shirts. Enter several ways the Bastard of Orleans, Alençon and Reignier, half ready and half unready.

ALENÇON. How now, my lords? What, all unready so?

BASTARD. Unready! Ay, and glad we ’scap’d so well.

REIGNIER. ’Twas time, I trow, to wake and leave our beds, Hearing alarums at our chamber-doors.

ALENÇON. Of all exploits since first I follow’d arms Ne’er heard I of a warlike enterprise More venturous or desperate than this.

BASTARD. I think this Talbot be a fiend of hell.

REIGNIER. If not of hell, the heavens, sure, favour him.

ALENÇON. Here cometh Charles. I marvel how he sped.

Enter Charles and La Pucelle.

BASTARD. Tut, holy Joan was his defensive guard.

CHARLES. Is this thy cunning, thou deceitful dame? Didst thou at first, to flatter us withal, Make us partakers of a little gain, That now our loss might be ten times so much?

PUCELLE. Wherefore is Charles impatient with his friend? At all times will you have my power alike? Sleeping or waking, must I still prevail, Or will you blame and lay the fault on me? Improvident soldiers, had your watch been good, This sudden mischief never could have fall’n.

CHARLES. Duke of Alençon, this was your default, That, being captain of the watch tonight, Did look no better to that weighty charge.

ALENÇON. Had all your quarters been as safely kept As that whereof I had the government, We had not been thus shamefully surprised.

BASTARD. Mine was secure.

REIGNIER. And so was mine, my lord.

CHARLES. And for myself, most part of all this night, Within her quarter and mine own precinct I was employ’d in passing to and fro About relieving of the sentinels. Then how or which way should they first break in?

PUCELLE. Question, my lords, no further of the case, How or which way; ’tis sure they found some place But weakly guarded, where the breach was made. And now there rests no other shift but this: To gather our soldiers, scattered and dispersed, And lay new platforms to endamage them.

Alarum. Enter an English Soldier, crying “A Talbot! A Talbot!” They fly, leaving their clothes behind.

SOLDIER. I’ll be so bold to take what they have left. The cry of “Talbot” serves me for a sword; For I have loaden me with many spoils, Using no other weapon but his name.

SCENE II. Orleans. Within the town.

Enter Talbot, Bedford, Burgundy, a Captain and others.

BEDFORD. The day begins to break, and night is fled, Whose pitchy mantle over-veil’d the earth. Here sound retreat and cease our hot pursuit.

[Retreat sounded.]

TALBOT. Bring forth the body of old Salisbury, And here advance it in the market-place, The middle centre of this cursed town.

Dead March. Enter with the body of Salisbury.

Now have I paid my vow unto his soul; For every drop of blood was drawn from him There hath at least five Frenchmen died tonight. And that hereafter ages may behold What ruin happen’d in revenge of him, Within their chiefest temple I’ll erect A tomb, wherein his corpse shall be interr’d; Upon the which, that everyone may read, Shall be engraved the sack of Orleans, The treacherous manner of his mournful death And what a terror he had been to France.

[Exit Funeral.]

But, lords, in all our bloody massacre, I muse we met not with the Dauphin’s grace, His new-come champion, virtuous Joan of Arc, Nor any of his false confederates.

BEDFORD. ’Tis thought, Lord Talbot, when the fight began, Rous’d on the sudden from their drowsy beds, They did amongst the troops of armed men Leap o’er the walls for refuge in the field.

BURGUNDY. Myself, as far as I could well discern For smoke and dusky vapors of the night, Am sure I scared the Dauphin and his trull, When arm in arm they both came swiftly running, Like to a pair of loving turtle-doves That could not live asunder day or night. After that things are set in order here, We’ll follow them with all the power we have.

MESSENGER. All hail, my lords! Which of this princely train Call ye the warlike Talbot, for his acts So much applauded through the realm of France?

TALBOT. Here is the Talbot. Who would speak with him?

MESSENGER. The virtuous lady, Countess of Auvergne, With modesty admiring thy renown, By me entreats, great lord, thou wouldst vouchsafe To visit her poor castle where she lies, That she may boast she hath beheld the man Whose glory fills the world with loud report.

BURGUNDY. Is it even so? Nay, then I see our wars Will turn unto a peaceful comic sport, When ladies crave to be encounter’d with. You may not, my lord, despise her gentle suit.

TALBOT. Ne’er trust me then; for when a world of men Could not prevail with all their oratory, Yet hath a woman’s kindness over-ruled. And therefore tell her I return great thanks, And in submission will attend on her. Will not your honours bear me company?

BEDFORD. No, truly, it is more than manners will; And I have heard it said, unbidden guests Are often welcomest when they are gone.

TALBOT. Well then, alone, since there’s no remedy, I mean to prove this lady’s courtesy. Come hither, Captain. [Whispers.] You perceive my mind?

CAPTAIN. I do, my lord, and mean accordingly.

SCENE III. Auvergne. The Countess’s castle.

Enter the Countess and her Porter.

COUNTESS. Porter, remember what I gave in charge; And when you have done so, bring the keys to me.

PORTER. Madam, I will.

COUNTESS. The plot is laid. If all things fall out right, I shall as famous be by this exploit As Scythian Tomyris by Cyrus’ death. Great is the rumour of this dreadful knight, And his achievements of no less account. Fain would mine eyes be witness with mine ears, To give their censure of these rare reports.

Enter Messenger and Talbot.

MESSENGER. Madam, according as your ladyship desired, By message craved, so is Lord Talbot come.

COUNTESS. And he is welcome. What, is this the man?

MESSENGER. Madam, it is.

COUNTESS. Is this the scourge of France? Is this the Talbot, so much fear’d abroad That with his name the mothers still their babes? I see report is fabulous and false. I thought I should have seen some Hercules, A second Hector, for his grim aspect, And large proportion of his strong-knit limbs. Alas, this is a child, a silly dwarf! It cannot be this weak and writhled shrimp Should strike such terror to his enemies.

TALBOT. Madam, I have been bold to trouble you; But since your ladyship is not at leisure, I’ll sort some other time to visit you.

COUNTESS. What means he now? Go ask him whither he goes.

MESSENGER. Stay, my Lord Talbot, for my lady craves To know the cause of your abrupt departure.

TALBOT. Marry, for that she’s in a wrong belief, I go to certify her Talbot’s here.

Enter Porter with keys.

COUNTESS. If thou be he, then art thou prisoner.

TALBOT. Prisoner! To whom?

COUNTESS. To me, blood-thirsty lord; And for that cause I train’d thee to my house. Long time thy shadow hath been thrall to me, For in my gallery thy picture hangs. But now the substance shall endure the like, And I will chain these legs and arms of thine, That hast by tyranny these many years Wasted our country, slain our citizens, And sent our sons and husbands captivate.

TALBOT. Ha, ha, ha!

COUNTESS. Laughest thou, wretch? Thy mirth shall turn to moan.

TALBOT. I laugh to see your ladyship so fond To think that you have aught but Talbot’s shadow Whereon to practice your severity.

COUNTESS. Why, art not thou the man?

TALBOT. I am indeed.

COUNTESS. Then have I substance too.

TALBOT. No, no, I am but shadow of myself. You are deceived, my substance is not here; For what you see is but the smallest part And least proportion of humanity. I tell you, madam, were the whole frame here, It is of such a spacious lofty pitch Your roof were not sufficient to contain ’t.

COUNTESS. This is a riddling merchant for the nonce; He will be here, and yet he is not here. How can these contrarieties agree?

TALBOT. That will I show you presently.

Winds his horn. Drums strike up; a peal of ordnance. Enter Soldiers.

How say you, madam? Are you now persuaded That Talbot is but shadow of himself? These are his substance, sinews, arms and strength, With which he yoketh your rebellious necks, Razeth your cities and subverts your towns, And in a moment makes them desolate.

COUNTESS. Victorious Talbot, pardon my abuse. I find thou art no less than fame hath bruited, And more than may be gather’d by thy shape. Let my presumption not provoke thy wrath, For I am sorry that with reverence I did not entertain thee as thou art.

TALBOT. Be not dismay’d, fair lady, nor misconster The mind of Talbot, as you did mistake The outward composition of his body. What you have done hath not offended me; Nor other satisfaction do I crave But only, with your patience, that we may Taste of your wine and see what cates you have, For soldiers’ stomachs always serve them well.

COUNTESS. With all my heart, and think me honoured To feast so great a warrior in my house.

SCENE IV. London. The Temple Garden.

Enter the Earls of Somerset, Suffolk, and Warwick; Richard Plantagenet, Vernon and another Lawyer.

PLANTAGENET. Great lords and gentlemen, what means this silence? Dare no man answer in a case of truth?

SUFFOLK. Within the Temple Hall we were too loud; The garden here is more convenient.

PLANTAGENET. Then say at once if I maintain’d the truth; Or else was wrangling Somerset in th’ error?

SUFFOLK. Faith, I have been a truant in the law And never yet could frame my will to it; And therefore frame the law unto my will.

SOMERSET. Judge you, my Lord of Warwick, then, between us.

WARWICK. Between two hawks, which flies the higher pitch; Between two dogs, which hath the deeper mouth; Between two blades, which bears the better temper; Between two horses, which doth bear him best; Between two girls, which hath the merriest eye; I have perhaps some shallow spirit of judgement; But in these nice sharp quillets of the law, Good faith, I am no wiser than a daw.

PLANTAGENET. Tut, tut, here is a mannerly forbearance! The truth appears so naked on my side That any purblind eye may find it out.

SOMERSET. And on my side it is so well apparell’d, So clear, so shining and so evident, That it will glimmer through a blind man’s eye.

PLANTAGENET. Since you are tongue-tied and so loath to speak, In dumb significants proclaim your thoughts: Let him that is a true-born gentleman And stands upon the honour of his birth, If he suppose that I have pleaded truth, From off this brier pluck a white rose with me.

SOMERSET. Let him that is no coward nor no flatterer, But dare maintain the party of the truth, Pluck a red rose from off this thorn with me.

WARWICK. I love no colours, and without all colour Of base insinuating flattery I pluck this white rose with Plantagenet.

SUFFOLK. I pluck this red rose with young Somerset, And say withal I think he held the right.

VERNON. Stay, lords and gentlemen, and pluck no more Till you conclude that he upon whose side The fewest roses are cropp’d from the tree Shall yield the other in the right opinion.

SOMERSET. Good Master Vernon, it is well objected: If I have fewest, I subscribe in silence.

PLANTAGENET. And I.

VERNON. Then for the truth and plainness of the case, I pluck this pale and maiden blossom here, Giving my verdict on the white rose side.

SOMERSET. Prick not your finger as you pluck it off, Lest, bleeding, you do paint the white rose red, And fall on my side so against your will.

VERNON. If I, my lord, for my opinion bleed, Opinion shall be surgeon to my hurt And keep me on the side where still I am.

SOMERSET. Well, well, come on, who else?

LAWYER. Unless my study and my books be false,

[To Somerset.]

The argument you held was wrong in law; In sign whereof I pluck a white rose too.

PLANTAGENET. Now, Somerset, where is your argument?

SOMERSET. Here in my scabbard, meditating that Shall dye your white rose in a bloody red.

PLANTAGENET. Meantime your cheeks do counterfeit our roses; For pale they look with fear, as witnessing The truth on our side.

SOMERSET. No, Plantagenet, ’Tis not for fear but anger that thy cheeks Blush for pure shame to counterfeit our roses, And yet thy tongue will not confess thy error.

PLANTAGENET. Hath not thy rose a canker, Somerset?

SOMERSET. Hath not thy rose a thorn, Plantagenet?

PLANTAGENET. Ay, sharp and piercing, to maintain his truth; Whiles thy consuming canker eats his falsehood.

SOMERSET. Well, I’ll find friends to wear my bleeding roses, That shall maintain what I have said is true, Where false Plantagenet dare not be seen.

PLANTAGENET. Now, by this maiden blossom in my hand, I scorn thee and thy fashion, peevish boy.

SUFFOLK. Turn not thy scorns this way, Plantagenet.

PLANTAGENET. Proud Pole, I will, and scorn both him and thee.

SUFFOLK. I’ll turn my part thereof into thy throat.

SOMERSET. Away, away, good William de la Pole! We grace the yeoman by conversing with him.

WARWICK. Now, by God’s will, thou wrong’st him, Somerset; His grandfather was Lionel Duke of Clarence, Third son to the third Edward King of England. Spring crestless yeomen from so deep a root?

PLANTAGENET. He bears him on the place’s privilege, Or durst not for his craven heart, say thus.

SOMERSET. By Him that made me, I’ll maintain my words On any plot of ground in Christendom. Was not thy father, Richard Earl of Cambridge, For treason executed in our late king’s days? And, by his treason, stand’st not thou attainted, Corrupted, and exempt from ancient gentry? His trespass yet lives guilty in thy blood; And, till thou be restored, thou art a yeoman.

PLANTAGENET. My father was attached, not attainted, Condemn’d to die for treason, but no traitor; And that I’ll prove on better men than Somerset, Were growing time once ripen’d to my will. For your partaker Pole and you yourself, I’ll note you in my book of memory, To scourge you for this apprehension. Look to it well, and say you are well warn’d.

SOMERSET. Ah, thou shalt find us ready for thee still; And know us by these colours for thy foes, For these my friends in spite of thee shall wear.

PLANTAGENET. And, by my soul, this pale and angry rose, As cognizance of my blood-drinking hate, Will I for ever and my faction wear, Until it wither with me to my grave, Or flourish to the height of my degree.

SUFFOLK. Go forward, and be chok’d with thy ambition! And so farewell until I meet thee next.

SOMERSET. Have with thee, Pole. Farewell, ambitious Richard.

PLANTAGENET. How I am braved and must perforce endure it!

WARWICK. This blot that they object against your house Shall be wiped out in the next parliament Call’d for the truce of Winchester and Gloucester; And if thou be not then created York, I will not live to be accounted Warwick. Meantime, in signal of my love to thee, Against proud Somerset and William Pole, Will I upon thy party wear this rose. And here I prophesy: this brawl today, Grown to this faction in the Temple Garden, Shall send between the Red Rose and the White A thousand souls to death and deadly night.

PLANTAGENET. Good Master Vernon, I am bound to you, That you on my behalf would pluck a flower.

VERNON. In your behalf still will I wear the same.

LAWYER. And so will I.

PLANTAGENET. Thanks, gentlemen. Come, let us four to dinner. I dare say This quarrel will drink blood another day.

SCENE V. The Tower of London.

Enter Mortimer, brought in a chair, and Jailers.

MORTIMER. Kind keepers of my weak decaying age, Let dying Mortimer here rest himself. Even like a man new haled from the rack, So fare my limbs with long imprisonment; And these gray locks, the pursuivants of death, Nestor-like aged in an age of care, Argue the end of Edmund Mortimer. These eyes, like lamps whose wasting oil is spent, Wax dim, as drawing to their exigent; Weak shoulders, overborne with burdening grief, And pithless arms, like to a wither’d vine That droops his sapless branches to the ground. Yet are these feet, whose strengthless stay is numb, Unable to support this lump of clay, Swift-winged with desire to get a grave, As witting I no other comfort have. But tell me, keeper, will my nephew come?

FIRST JAILER. Richard Plantagenet, my lord, will come. We sent unto the Temple, unto his chamber, And answer was return’d that he will come.

MORTIMER. Enough. My soul shall then be satisfied. Poor gentleman, his wrong doth equal mine. Since Henry Monmouth first began to reign, Before whose glory I was great in arms, This loathsome sequestration have I had; And even since then hath Richard been obscured, Deprived of honour and inheritance. But now the arbitrator of despairs, Just Death, kind umpire of men’s miseries, With sweet enlargement doth dismiss me hence. I would his troubles likewise were expired, That so he might recover what was lost.

Enter Richard Plantagenet.

FIRST JAILER. My lord, your loving nephew now is come.

MORTIMER. Richard Plantagenet, my friend, is he come?

PLANTAGENET. Ay, noble uncle, thus ignobly used, Your nephew, late despised Richard, comes.

MORTIMER. Direct mine arms I may embrace his neck And in his bosom spend my latter gasp. O, tell me when my lips do touch his cheeks, That I may kindly give one fainting kiss. And now declare, sweet stem from York’s great stock, Why didst thou say of late thou wert despised?

PLANTAGENET. First, lean thine aged back against mine arm, And, in that ease, I’ll tell thee my disease. This day, in argument upon a case, Some words there grew ’twixt Somerset and me; Among which terms he used his lavish tongue And did upbraid me with my father’s death; Which obloquy set bars before my tongue, Else with the like I had requited him. Therefore, good uncle, for my father’s sake, In honour of a true Plantagenet, And for alliance’ sake, declare the cause My father, Earl of Cambridge, lost his head.

MORTIMER. That cause, fair nephew, that imprison’d me And hath detain’d me all my flowering youth Within a loathsome dungeon, there to pine, Was cursed instrument of his decease.

PLANTAGENET. Discover more at large what cause that was, For I am ignorant and cannot guess.

MORTIMER. I will, if that my fading breath permit And death approach not ere my tale be done. Henry the Fourth, grandfather to this king, Deposed his nephew Richard, Edward’s son, The first-begotten and the lawful heir Of Edward king, the third of that descent; During whose reign the Percies of the north, Finding his usurpation most unjust, Endeavour’d my advancement to the throne. The reason moved these warlike lords to this Was, for that—young King Richard thus removed, Leaving no heir begotten of his body— I was the next by birth and parentage; For by my mother I derived am From Lionel Duke of Clarence, third son To King Edward the Third; whereas he From John of Gaunt doth bring his pedigree, Being but fourth of that heroic line. But mark: as in this haughty great attempt They labored to plant the rightful heir, I lost my liberty and they their lives. Long after this, when Henry the Fifth, Succeeding his father Bolingbroke, did reign, Thy father, Earl of Cambridge then, derived From famous Edmund Langley, Duke of York, Marrying my sister that thy mother was, Again, in pity of my hard distress. Levied an army, weening to redeem And have install’d me in the diadem. But, as the rest, so fell that noble earl And was beheaded. Thus the Mortimers, In whom the title rested, were suppress’d.

PLANTAGENET. Of which, my lord, your honour is the last.

MORTIMER. True; and thou seest that I no issue have, And that my fainting words do warrant death. Thou art my heir; the rest I wish thee gather. But yet be wary in thy studious care.

PLANTAGENET. Thy grave admonishments prevail with me. But yet methinks, my father’s execution Was nothing less than bloody tyranny.

MORTIMER. With silence, nephew, be thou politic; Strong-fixed is the house of Lancaster, And like a mountain, not to be removed. But now thy uncle is removing hence, As princes do their courts when they are cloy’d With long continuance in a settled place.

PLANTAGENET. O uncle, would some part of my young years Might but redeem the passage of your age!

MORTIMER. Thou dost then wrong me, as that slaughterer doth Which giveth many wounds when one will kill. Mourn not, except thou sorrow for my good; Only give order for my funeral. And so farewell, and fair be all thy hopes, And prosperous be thy life in peace and war!

PLANTAGENET. And peace, no war, befall thy parting soul! In prison hast thou spent a pilgrimage, And like a hermit overpass’d thy days. Well, I will lock his counsel in my breast; And what I do imagine, let that rest. Keepers, convey him hence; and I myself Will see his burial better than his life.

[Exeunt Jailers, bearing out the body of Mortimer.]

Here dies the dusky torch of Mortimer, Choked with ambition of the meaner sort. And for those wrongs, those bitter injuries, Which Somerset hath offer’d to my house, I doubt not but with honour to redress; And therefore haste I to the Parliament, Either to be restored to my blood, Or make mine ill th’ advantage of my good.

SCENE I. London. The Parliament House.

Flourish. Enter King, Exeter, Gloucester, the Bishop of Winchester, Richard Plantagenet, Warwick, and Somerset, Suffolk, and others. Gloucester offers to put up a bill. Winchester snatches it, tears it.

WINCHESTER. Com’st thou with deep premeditated lines, With written pamphlets studiously devised, Humphrey of Gloucester? If thou canst accuse Or aught intend’st to lay unto my charge, Do it without invention, suddenly; As I with sudden and extemporal speech Purpose to answer what thou canst object.

GLOUCESTER. Presumptuous priest, this place commands my patience, Or thou shouldst find thou hast dishonour’d me. Think not, although in writing I preferr’d The manner of thy vile outrageous crimes, That therefore I have forged, or am not able Verbatim to rehearse the method of my pen. No, prelate; such is thy audacious wickedness, Thy lewd, pestiferous, and dissentious pranks, As very infants prattle of thy pride. Thou art a most pernicious usurer, Froward by nature, enemy to peace; Lascivious, wanton, more than well beseems A man of thy profession and degree; And for thy treachery, what’s more manifest, In that thou laid’st a trap to take my life, As well at London Bridge as at the Tower? Beside, I fear me, if thy thoughts are sifted, The King, thy sovereign, is not quite exempt From envious malice of thy swelling heart.

WINCHESTER. Gloucester, I do defy thee. Lords, vouchsafe To give me hearing what I shall reply. If I were covetous, ambitious, or perverse, As he will have me, how am I so poor? Or how haps it I seek not to advance Or raise myself, but keep my wonted calling? And for dissension, who preferreth peace More than I do, except I be provoked? No, my good lords, it is not that offends; It is not that that hath incensed the Duke. It is because no one should sway but he, No one but he should be about the King; And that engenders thunder in his breast And makes him roar these accusations forth. But he shall know I am as good—

GLOUCESTER. As good! Thou bastard of my grandfather!

WINCHESTER. Ay, lordly sir; for what are you, I pray, But one imperious in another’s throne?

GLOUCESTER. Am I not Protector, saucy priest?

WINCHESTER. And am not I a prelate of the church?

GLOUCESTER. Yes, as an outlaw in a castle keeps, And useth it to patronage his theft.

WINCHESTER. Unreverent Gloucester!

GLOUCESTER. Thou art reverend Touching thy spiritual function, not thy life.

WINCHESTER. Rome shall remedy this.

GLOUCESTER. Roam thither, then.

WARWICK. My lord, it were your duty to forbear.

SOMERSET. Ay, so the bishop be not overborne. Methinks my lord should be religious, And know the office that belongs to such.

WARWICK. Methinks his lordship should be humbler; It fitteth not a prelate so to plead.

SOMERSET. Yes, when his holy state is touch’d so near.

WARWICK. State holy or unhallow’d, what of that? Is not his Grace Protector to the King?

PLANTAGENET. [Aside.] Plantagenet, I see, must hold his tongue, Lest it be said, “Speak, sirrah, when you should; Must your bold verdict enter talk with lords?” Else would I have a fling at Winchester.

KING HENRY. Uncles of Gloucester and of Winchester, The special watchmen of our English weal, I would prevail, if prayers might prevail, To join your hearts in love and amity. O, what a scandal is it to our crown That two such noble peers as ye should jar! Believe me, lords, my tender years can tell Civil dissension is a viperous worm That gnaws the bowels of the commonwealth.

[A noise within, “Down with the tawny-coats!”.]

What tumult’s this?

WARWICK. An uproar, I dare warrant, Begun through malice of the Bishop’s men.

[A noise again, “Stones! stones!”]

Enter Mayor.

MAYOR. O, my good lords, and virtuous Henry, Pity the city of London, pity us! The Bishop and the Duke of Gloucester’s men, Forbidden late to carry any weapon, Have fill’d their pockets full of pebble stones And, banding themselves in contrary parts, Do pelt so fast at one another’s pate That many have their giddy brains knock’d out; Our windows are broke down in every street, And we for fear compell’d to shut our shops.

Enter Servingmen in skirmish with bloody pates.

KING HENRY. We charge you, on allegiance to ourself, To hold your slaughtering hands and keep the peace. Pray, uncle Gloucester, mitigate this strife.

FIRST SERVINGMAN. Nay, if we be forbidden stones, we’ll fall to it with our teeth.

SECOND SERVINGMAN. Do what ye dare, we are as resolute.

[Skirmish again.]

GLOUCESTER. You of my household, leave this peevish broil, And set this unaccustom’d fight aside.

THIRD SERVINGMAN. My lord, we know your Grace to be a man Just and upright, and, for your royal birth, Inferior to none but to his Majesty; And ere that we will suffer such a prince, So kind a father of the commonweal, To be disgraced by an inkhorn mate, We and our wives and children all will fight And have our bodies slaughter’d by thy foes.

FIRST SERVINGMAN. Ay, and the very parings of our nails Shall pitch a field when we are dead.

[Begin again.]

GLOUCESTER. Stay, stay, I say! And if you love me, as you say you do, Let me persuade you to forbear awhile.

KING HENRY. O, how this discord doth afflict my soul! Can you, my Lord of Winchester, behold My sighs and tears, and will not once relent? Who should be pitiful, if you be not? Or who should study to prefer a peace If holy churchmen take delight in broils?

WARWICK. Yield, my Lord Protector; yield, Winchester; Except you mean with obstinate repulse To slay your sovereign and destroy the realm. You see what mischief and what murder too, Hath been enacted through your enmity; Then be at peace, except ye thirst for blood.

WINCHESTER. He shall submit, or I will never yield.

GLOUCESTER. Compassion on the King commands me stoop, Or I would see his heart out, ere the priest Should ever get that privilege of me.

WARWICK. Behold, my Lord of Winchester, the Duke Hath banish’d moody discontented fury, As by his smoothed brows it doth appear. Why look you still so stern and tragical?

GLOUCESTER. Here, Winchester, I offer thee my hand.

KING HENRY. Fie, uncle Beaufort! I have heard you preach That malice was a great and grievous sin; And will not you maintain the thing you teach, But prove a chief offender in the same?

WARWICK. Sweet King! The bishop hath a kindly gird. For shame, my Lord of Winchester, relent! What, shall a child instruct you what to do?

WINCHESTER. Well, Duke of Gloucester, I will yield to thee; Love for thy love and hand for hand I give.

GLOUCESTER. [Aside.] Ay, but, I fear me, with a hollow heart.— See here, my friends and loving countrymen, This token serveth for a flag of truce Betwixt ourselves and all our followers, So help me God, as I dissemble not!

WINCHESTER. [Aside.] So help me God, as I intend it not!

KING HENRY. O loving uncle, kind Duke of Gloucester, How joyful am I made by this contract! Away, my masters, trouble us no more, But join in friendship, as your lords have done.

FIRST SERVINGMAN. Content. I’ll to the surgeon’s.

SECOND SERVINGMAN. And so will I.

THIRD SERVINGMAN. And I will see what physic the tavern affords.

[Exeunt Servingmen, Mayor, &c.]

WARWICK. Accept this scroll, most gracious sovereign, Which in the right of Richard Plantagenet We do exhibit to your Majesty.

GLOUCESTER. Well urged, my Lord of Warwick. For, sweet prince, An if your Grace mark every circumstance, You have great reason to do Richard right, Especially for those occasions At Eltham Place I told your Majesty.

KING HENRY. And those occasions, uncle, were of force; Therefore, my loving lords, our pleasure is That Richard be restored to his blood.

WARWICK. Let Richard be restored to his blood; So shall his father’s wrongs be recompensed.

WINCHESTER. As will the rest, so willeth Winchester.

KING HENRY. If Richard will be true, not that alone But all the whole inheritance I give That doth belong unto the house of York, From whence you spring by lineal descent.

PLANTAGENET. Thy humble servant vows obedience And humble service till the point of death.

KING HENRY. Stoop then and set your knee against my foot; And in reguerdon of that duty done I girt thee with the valiant sword of York. Rise, Richard, like a true Plantagenet, And rise created princely Duke of York.

PLANTAGENET. And so thrive Richard as thy foes may fall! And as my duty springs, so perish they That grudge one thought against your Majesty!

ALL. Welcome, high prince, the mighty Duke of York!

SOMERSET. [Aside.] Perish, base prince, ignoble Duke of York!

GLOUCESTER. Now will it best avail your Majesty To cross the seas and to be crown’d in France. The presence of a king engenders love Amongst his subjects and his loyal friends, As it disanimates his enemies.

KING HENRY. When Gloucester says the word, King Henry goes; For friendly counsel cuts off many foes.

GLOUCESTER. Your ships already are in readiness.

[Sennet. Flourish. Exeunt all but Exeter.]

EXETER. Ay, we may march in England or in France, Not seeing what is likely to ensue. This late dissension grown betwixt the peers Burns under feigned ashes of forged love, And will at last break out into a flame; As festered members rot but by degree Till bones and flesh and sinews fall away, So will this base and envious discord breed. And now I fear that fatal prophecy Which in the time of Henry named the Fifth Was in the mouth of every sucking babe: That Henry born at Monmouth should win all, And Henry born at Windsor lose all, Which is so plain that Exeter doth wish His days may finish ere that hapless time.

SCENE II. France. Before Rouen.

Enter La Pucelle with four Soldiers with sacks upon their backs.

PUCELLE. These are the city gates, the gates of Rouen, Through which our policy must make a breach. Take heed, be wary how you place your words; Talk like the vulgar sort of market men That come to gather money for their corn. If we have entrance, as I hope we shall, And that we find the slothful watch but weak, I’ll by a sign give notice to our friends, That Charles the Dauphin may encounter them.

FIRST SOLDIER. Our sacks shall be a mean to sack the city, And we be lords and rulers over Rouen; Therefore we’ll knock. [Knocks.]

WATCH. [Within.] Qui est la?

PUCELLE. Paysans, la pauvres gens de France: Poor market folks that come to sell their corn.

WATCH. Enter, go in; the market bell is rung.

PUCELLE. Now, Rouen, I’ll shake thy bulwarks to the ground.

Enter Charles, the Bastard of Orleans, Alençon, Reignier and forces.

CHARLES. Saint Denis bless this happy stratagem, And once again we’ll sleep secure in Rouen.

BASTARD. Here enter’d Pucelle and her practisants; Now she is there, how will she specify Here is the best and safest passage in?

REIGNIER. By thrusting out a torch from yonder tower, Which, once discern’d, shows that her meaning is: No way to that, for weakness, which she enter’d.

Enter La Pucelle, on the top, thrusting out a torch burning.

PUCELLE. Behold, this is the happy wedding torch That joineth Rouen unto her countrymen, But burning fatal to the Talbonites.

BASTARD. See, noble Charles, the beacon of our friend; The burning torch, in yonder turret stands.

CHARLES. Now shine it like a comet of revenge, A prophet to the fall of all our foes!

REIGNIER. Defer no time, delays have dangerous ends; Enter and cry, “The Dauphin!” presently, And then do execution on the watch.

An alarum. Enter Talbot in an excursion.

TALBOT. France, thou shalt rue this treason with thy tears, If Talbot but survive thy treachery. Pucelle, that witch, that damned sorceress, Hath wrought this hellish mischief unawares, That hardly we escaped the pride of France.

An alarum. Excursions. Bedford, brought in sick in a chair. Enter Talbot and Burgundy without: within, La Pucelle, Charles, Bastard, Alençon, and Reignier on the walls.

PUCELLE. Good morrow, gallants! Want ye corn for bread? I think the Duke of Burgundy will fast Before he’ll buy again at such a rate. ’Twas full of darnel. Do you like the taste?

BURGUNDY. Scoff on, vile fiend and shameless courtezan! I trust ere long to choke thee with thine own, And make thee curse the harvest of that corn.

CHARLES. Your Grace may starve, perhaps, before that time.

BEDFORD. O, let no words, but deeds, revenge this treason!

PUCELLE. What will you do, good graybeard? Break a lance And run a tilt at Death within a chair?

TALBOT. Foul fiend of France and hag of all despite, Encompass’d with thy lustful paramours, Becomes it thee to taunt his valiant age And twit with cowardice a man half dead? Damsel, I’ll have a bout with you again, Or else let Talbot perish with this shame.

PUCELLE. Are ye so hot? Yet, Pucelle, hold thy peace; If Talbot do but thunder, rain will follow.

[The English whisper together in council.]

God speed the Parliament! Who shall be the Speaker?

TALBOT. Dare ye come forth and meet us in the field?

PUCELLE. Belike your lordship takes us then for fools, To try if that our own be ours or no.

TALBOT. I speak not to that railing Hecate, But unto thee, Alençon, and the rest; Will ye, like soldiers, come and fight it out?

ALENÇON. Seignieur, no.

TALBOT. Seignieur, hang! Base muleteers of France! Like peasant foot-boys do they keep the walls, And dare not take up arms like gentlemen.

PUCELLE. Away, captains! Let’s get us from the walls, For Talbot means no goodness by his looks. Goodbye, my lord; we came but to tell you That we are here.

[Exeunt from the walls.]

TALBOT. And there will we be too, ere it be long, Or else reproach be Talbot’s greatest fame! Vow, Burgundy, by honour of thy house, Prick’d on by public wrongs sustain’d in France, Either to get the town again or die. And I, as sure as English Henry lives, And as his father here was conqueror, As sure as in this late-betrayed town Great Coeur-de-lion’s heart was buried, So sure I swear to get the town or die.

BURGUNDY. My vows are equal partners with thy vows.

TALBOT. But, ere we go, regard this dying prince, The valiant Duke of Bedford. Come, my lord, We will bestow you in some better place, Fitter for sickness and for crazy age.

BEDFORD. Lord Talbot, do not so dishonour me. Here will I sit before the walls of Rouen, And will be partner of your weal or woe.

BURGUNDY. Courageous Bedford, let us now persuade you.

BEDFORD. Not to be gone from hence; for once I read That stout Pendragon in his litter sick Came to the field and vanquished his foes. Methinks I should revive the soldiers’ hearts, Because I ever found them as myself.

TALBOT. Undaunted spirit in a dying breast! Then be it so. Heavens keep old Bedford safe! And now no more ado, brave Burgundy, But gather we our forces out of hand And set upon our boasting enemy.

[Exeunt all but Bedford and Attendants.]

An alarum. Excursions. Enter Sir John Fastolf and a Captain.

CAPTAIN. Whither away, Sir John Fastolf, in such haste?

FASTOLF. Whither away? To save myself by flight. We are like to have the overthrow again.

CAPTAIN. What! Will you fly, and leave Lord Talbot?

FASTOLF. Ay, All the Talbots in the world, to save my life.

CAPTAIN. Cowardly knight, ill fortune follow thee!

Retreat. Excursions. La Pucelle, Alençon and Charles fly.

BEDFORD. Now, quiet soul, depart when heaven please, For I have seen our enemies’ overthrow. What is the trust or strength of foolish man? They that of late were daring with their scoffs Are glad and fain by flight to save themselves.

[Bedford dies, and is carried in by two in his chair.]

An alarum. Enter Talbot, Burgundy and the rest.

TALBOT. Lost, and recover’d in a day again! This is a double honour, Burgundy. Yet heavens have glory for this victory!

BURGUNDY. Warlike and martial Talbot, Burgundy Enshrines thee in his heart, and there erects Thy noble deeds as valour’s monuments.

TALBOT. Thanks, gentle Duke. But where is Pucelle now? I think her old familiar is asleep. Now where’s the Bastard’s braves, and Charles his gleeks? What, all amort? Rouen hangs her head for grief That such a valiant company are fled. Now will we take some order in the town, Placing therein some expert officers, And then depart to Paris to the King, For there young Henry with his nobles lie.

BURGUNDY. What wills Lord Talbot pleaseth Burgundy.

TALBOT. But yet, before we go, let’s not forget The noble Duke of Bedford late deceased, But see his exequies fulfill’d in Rouen. A braver soldier never couched lance, A gentler heart did never sway in court; But kings and mightiest potentates must die, For that’s the end of human misery.

SCENE III. The plains near Rouen.

Enter Charles, the Bastard of Orleans, Alençon, La Pucelle and forces.

PUCELLE. Dismay not, princes, at this accident, Nor grieve that Rouen is so recovered. Care is no cure, but rather corrosive, For things that are not to be remedied. Let frantic Talbot triumph for a while And like a peacock sweep along his tail; We’ll pull his plumes and take away his train, If Dauphin and the rest will be but ruled.

CHARLES. We have been guided by thee hitherto, And of thy cunning had no diffidence. One sudden foil shall never breed distrust

BASTARD. Search out thy wit for secret policies, And we will make thee famous through the world.

ALENÇON. We’ll set thy statue in some holy place, And have thee reverenced like a blessed saint. Employ thee then, sweet virgin, for our good.

PUCELLE. Then thus it must be; this doth Joan devise: By fair persuasions mix’d with sugar’d words We will entice the Duke of Burgundy To leave the Talbot and to follow us.

CHARLES. Ay, marry, sweeting, if we could do that, France were no place for Henry’s warriors; Nor should that nation boast it so with us, But be extirped from our provinces.

ALENÇON. For ever should they be expulsed from France, And not have title of an earldom here.

PUCELLE. Your honours shall perceive how I will work To bring this matter to the wished end.

[Drum sounds afar off.]

Hark! By the sound of drum you may perceive Their powers are marching unto Paris-ward.

[Here sound an English march.]

There goes the Talbot, with his colours spread, And all the troops of English after him.

[French march.]

Now in the rearward comes the Duke and his. Fortune in favour makes him lag behind. Summon a parley; we will talk with him.

[Trumpets sound a parley.]

CHARLES. A parley with the Duke of Burgundy!

Enter Burgundy.

BURGUNDY. Who craves a parley with the Burgundy?

PUCELLE. The princely Charles of France, thy countryman.

BURGUNDY. What say’st thou, Charles? for I am marching hence.

CHARLES. Speak, Pucelle, and enchant him with thy words.

PUCELLE. Brave Burgundy, undoubted hope of France, Stay, let thy humble handmaid speak to thee.

BURGUNDY. Speak on, but be not over-tedious.

PUCELLE. Look on thy country, look on fertile France, And see the cities and the towns defaced By wasting ruin of the cruel foe. As looks the mother on her lowly babe When death doth close his tender dying eyes, See, see the pining malady of France; Behold the wounds, the most unnatural wounds, Which thou thyself hast given her woeful breast. O, turn thy edged sword another way; Strike those that hurt, and hurt not those that help. One drop of blood drawn from thy country’s bosom Should grieve thee more than streams of foreign gore. Return thee therefore with a flood of tears, And wash away thy country’s stained spots.

BURGUNDY. Either she hath bewitch’d me with her words, Or nature makes me suddenly relent.

PUCELLE. Besides, all French and France exclaims on thee, Doubting thy birth and lawful progeny. Who join’st thou with but with a lordly nation That will not trust thee but for profit’s sake? When Talbot hath set footing once in France, And fashion’d thee that instrument of ill, Who then but English Henry will be lord, And thou be thrust out like a fugitive? Call we to mind, and mark but this for proof: Was not the Duke of Orleans thy foe? And was he not in England prisoner? But when they heard he was thine enemy, They set him free without his ransom paid, In spite of Burgundy and all his friends. See then, thou fight’st against thy countrymen, And join’st with them will be thy slaughtermen. Come, come, return; return, thou wandering lord; Charles and the rest will take thee in their arms.

BURGUNDY. I am vanquished; these haughty words of hers Have batter’d me like roaring cannon-shot, And made me almost yield upon my knees. Forgive me, country, and sweet countrymen! And, lords, accept this hearty kind embrace. My forces and my power of men are yours. So, farewell, Talbot; I’ll no longer trust thee.

PUCELLE. [Aside.] Done like a Frenchman: turn and turn again.

CHARLES. Welcome, brave Duke! Thy friendship makes us fresh.

BASTARD. And doth beget new courage in our breasts.

ALENÇON. Pucelle hath bravely play’d her part in this, And doth deserve a coronet of gold.

CHARLES. Now let us on, my lords, and join our powers, And seek how we may prejudice the foe.

SCENE IV. Paris. The Palace.

Enter the King, Gloucester, Bishop of Winchester, Exeter, York, Warwick and Vernon; Suffolk, Somerset, Basset and others. To them, with his soldiers, Talbot.

TALBOT. My gracious Prince, and honourable peers, Hearing of your arrival in this realm, I have awhile given truce unto my wars To do my duty to my sovereign; In sign whereof, this arm, that hath reclaim’d To your obedience fifty fortresses, Twelve cities and seven walled towns of strength, Beside five hundred prisoners of esteem, Lets fall his sword before your Highness’ feet, And with submissive loyalty of heart Ascribes the glory of his conquest got First to my God, and next unto your Grace. [Kneels.]

KING HENRY. Is this the Lord Talbot, uncle Gloucester, That hath so long been resident in France?

GLOUCESTER. Yes, if it please your Majesty, my liege.

KING HENRY. Welcome, brave captain and victorious lord! When I was young, as yet I am not old, I do remember how my father said A stouter champion never handled sword. Long since we were resolved of your truth, Your faithful service, and your toil in war; Yet never have you tasted our reward, Or been reguerdon’d with so much as thanks. Because till now we never saw your face. Therefore, stand up; and for these good deserts We here create you Earl of Shrewsbury; And in our coronation take your place.

[Sennet. Flourish. Exeunt all but Vernon and Basset.]

VERNON. Now, sir, to you that were so hot at sea, Disgracing of these colours that I wear In honour of my noble Lord of York, Dar’st thou maintain the former words thou spak’st?

BASSET. Yes, sir, as well as you dare patronage The envious barking of your saucy tongue Against my lord the Duke of Somerset.

VERNON. Sirrah, thy lord I honour as he is.

BASSET. Why, what is he? As good a man as York.

VERNON. Hark ye; not so: in witness, take ye that.

BASSET. Villain, thou knowest the law of arms is such That whoso draws a sword, ’tis present death, Or else this blow should broach thy dearest blood. But I’ll unto his Majesty, and crave I may have liberty to venge this wrong; When thou shalt see I’ll meet thee to thy cost.

VERNON. Well, miscreant, I’ll be there as soon as you; And, after, meet you sooner than you would.

SCENE I. Paris. The Palace.

Enter the King, Gloucester, Bishop of Winchester, Talbot, Exeter, York, and Warwick; Suffolk, Somerset, the Governor of Paris, and others.

GLOUCESTER. Lord bishop, set the crown upon his head.

WINCHESTER. God save King Henry, of that name the Sixth!

GLOUCESTER. Now, Governor of Paris, take your oath, That you elect no other king but him; Esteem none friends but such as are his friends, And none your foes but such as shall pretend Malicious practices against his state: This shall ye do, so help you righteous God!

Enter Sir John Fastolf.

FASTOLF. My gracious sovereign, as I rode from Calais, To haste unto your coronation, A letter was deliver’d to my hands, Writ to your Grace from th’ Duke of Burgundy.

TALBOT. Shame to the Duke of Burgundy and thee! I vow’d, base knight, when I did meet thee next, To tear the Garter from thy craven’s leg, [Plucking it off.] Which I have done, because unworthily Thou wast installed in that high degree. Pardon me, princely Henry, and the rest. This dastard, at the battle of Patay, When but in all I was six thousand strong And that the French were almost ten to one, Before we met or that a stroke was given, Like to a trusty squire did run away; In which assault we lost twelve hundred men; Myself and divers gentlemen beside Were there surprised and taken prisoners. Then judge, great lords, if I have done amiss, Or whether that such cowards ought to wear This ornament of knighthood, yea or no?

GLOUCESTER. To say the truth, this fact was infamous And ill beseeming any common man, Much more a knight, a captain, and a leader.

TALBOT. When first this Order was ordain’d, my lords, Knights of the Garter were of noble birth, Valiant and virtuous, full of haughty courage, Such as were grown to credit by the wars; Not fearing death nor shrinking for distress, But always resolute in most extremes. He then that is not furnish’d in this sort Doth but usurp the sacred name of knight, Profaning this most honourable Order, And should, if I were worthy to be judge, Be quite degraded, like a hedge-born swain That doth presume to boast of gentle blood.

KING HENRY. Stain to thy countrymen, thou hear’st thy doom! Be packing, therefore, thou that wast a knight; Henceforth we banish thee on pain of death.

[Exit Fastolf.]

And now, my Lord Protector, view the letter Sent from our uncle, Duke of Burgundy.

GLOUCESTER. What means his Grace, that he hath changed his style? No more but, plain and bluntly, “To the King”! Hath he forgot he is his sovereign? Or doth this churlish superscription Pretend some alteration in good will? What’s here? [Reads] “I have, upon especial cause, Moved with compassion of my country’s wrack, Together with the pitiful complaints Of such as your oppression feeds upon, Forsaken your pernicious faction And join’d with Charles, the rightful King of France.” O monstrous treachery! Can this be so, That in alliance, amity, and oaths, There should be found such false dissembling guile?

KING HENRY. What! Doth my uncle Burgundy revolt?

GLOUCESTER. He doth, my lord, and is become your foe.

KING HENRY. Is that the worst this letter doth contain?

GLOUCESTER. It is the worst, and all, my lord, he writes.

KING HENRY. Why, then, Lord Talbot there shall talk with him And give him chastisement for this abuse. How say you, my lord, are you not content?

TALBOT. Content, my liege! Yes, but that I am prevented, I should have begg’d I might have been employ’d.

KING HENRY. Then gather strength and march unto him straight; Let him perceive how ill we brook his treason, And what offence it is to flout his friends.

TALBOT. I go, my lord, in heart desiring still You may behold confusion of your foes.

Enter Vernon and Basset.

VERNON. Grant me the combat, gracious sovereign.

BASSET. And me, my lord, grant me the combat too.

YORK. This is my servant; hear him, noble prince.

SOMERSET. And this is mine, sweet Henry, favour him.

KING HENRY. Be patient, lords, and give them leave to speak. Say, gentlemen, what makes you thus exclaim, And wherefore crave you combat, or with whom?

VERNON. With him, my lord, for he hath done me wrong.

BASSET. And I with him, for he hath done me wrong.

KING HENRY. What is that wrong whereof you both complain? First let me know, and then I’ll answer you.

BASSET. Crossing the sea from England into France, This fellow here, with envious carping tongue, Upbraided me about the rose I wear, Saying the sanguine colour of the leaves Did represent my master’s blushing cheeks When stubbornly he did repugn the truth About a certain question in the law Argued betwixt the Duke of York and him; With other vile and ignominious terms. In confutation of which rude reproach, And in defence of my lord’s worthiness, I crave the benefit of law of arms.

VERNON. And that is my petition, noble lord; For though he seem with forged quaint conceit To set a gloss upon his bold intent, Yet know, my lord, I was provoked by him, And he first took exceptions at this badge, Pronouncing that the paleness of this flower Bewray’d the faintness of my master’s heart.

YORK. Will not this malice, Somerset, be left?

SOMERSET. Your private grudge, my Lord of York, will out, Though ne’er so cunningly you smother it.

KING HENRY. Good Lord, what madness rules in brainsick men, When for so slight and frivolous a cause Such factious emulations shall arise! Good cousins both, of York and Somerset, Quiet yourselves, I pray, and be at peace.

YORK. Let this dissension first be tried by fight, And then your Highness shall command a peace.

SOMERSET. The quarrel toucheth none but us alone; Betwixt ourselves let us decide it then.

YORK. There is my pledge; accept it, Somerset.

VERNON. Nay, let it rest where it began at first.

BASSET. Confirm it so, mine honourable lord.

GLOUCESTER. Confirm it so! Confounded be your strife! And perish ye, with your audacious prate! Presumptuous vassals, are you not ashamed With this immodest clamorous outrage To trouble and disturb the King and us? And you, my lords, methinks you do not well To bear with their perverse objections, Much less to take occasion from their mouths To raise a mutiny betwixt yourselves. Let me persuade you take a better course.

EXETER. It grieves his Highness. Good my lords, be friends.

KING HENRY. Come hither, you that would be combatants: Henceforth I charge you, as you love our favour, Quite to forget this quarrel and the cause. And you, my lords, remember where we are: In France, amongst a fickle wavering nation; If they perceive dissension in our looks, And that within ourselves we disagree, How will their grudging stomachs be provoked To willful disobedience, and rebel! Beside, what infamy will there arise When foreign princes shall be certified That for a toy, a thing of no regard, King Henry’s peers and chief nobility Destroy’d themselves and lost the realm of France! O, think upon the conquest of my father, My tender years, and let us not forgo That for a trifle that was bought with blood! Let me be umpire in this doubtful strife. I see no reason if I wear this rose,

[Putting on a red rose.]

That anyone should therefore be suspicious I more incline to Somerset than York. Both are my kinsmen, and I love them both. As well they may upbraid me with my crown Because, forsooth, the King of Scots is crown’d. But your discretions better can persuade Than I am able to instruct or teach; And therefore, as we hither came in peace, So let us still continue peace and love. Cousin of York, we institute your Grace To be our Regent in these parts of France; And, good my Lord of Somerset, unite Your troops of horsemen with his bands of foot; And like true subjects, sons of your progenitors, Go cheerfully together and digest Your angry choler on your enemies. Ourself, my Lord Protector, and the rest After some respite will return to Calais; From thence to England, where I hope ere long To be presented, by your victories, With Charles, Alençon, and that traitorous rout.

[Flourish. Exeunt all but York, Warwick, Exeter and Vernon.]

WARWICK. My Lord of York, I promise you the King Prettily, methought, did play the orator.

YORK. And so he did; but yet I like it not, In that he wears the badge of Somerset.

WARWICK. Tush, that was but his fancy; blame him not; I dare presume, sweet prince, he thought no harm.

YORK. An if I wist he did—but let it rest; Other affairs must now be managed.

[Exeunt all but Exeter.]

EXETER. Well didst thou, Richard, to suppress thy voice; For, had the passions of thy heart burst out, I fear we should have seen decipher’d there More rancorous spite, more furious raging broils, Than yet can be imagined or supposed. But howsoe’er, no simple man that sees This jarring discord of nobility, This shouldering of each other in the court, This factious bandying of their favourites, But sees it doth presage some ill event. ’Tis much when scepters are in children’s hands; But more when envy breeds unkind division: There comes the ruin, there begins confusion.

SCENE II. Before Bordeaux.

Enter Talbot with trump and drum.

TALBOT. Go to the gates of Bordeaux, trumpeter. Summon their general unto the wall.

Trumpet sounds. Enter General and others aloft.

English John Talbot, captains, calls you forth, Servant in arms to Harry King of England; And thus he would: Open your city gates, Be humble to us, call my sovereign yours, And do him homage as obedient subjects, And I’ll withdraw me and my bloody power. But if you frown upon this proffer’d peace, You tempt the fury of my three attendants, Lean Famine, quartering Steel, and climbing Fire, Who in a moment even with the earth Shall lay your stately and air-braving towers, If you forsake the offer of their love.

GENERAL. Thou ominous and fearful owl of death, Our nation’s terror and their bloody scourge! The period of thy tyranny approacheth. On us thou canst not enter but by death; For, I protest, we are well fortified And strong enough to issue out and fight. If thou retire, the Dauphin, well appointed, Stands with the snares of war to tangle thee. On either hand thee there are squadrons pitch’d To wall thee from the liberty of flight; And no way canst thou turn thee for redress But Death doth front thee with apparent spoil, And pale Destruction meets thee in the face. Ten thousand French have ta’en the sacrament To rive their dangerous artillery Upon no Christian soul but English Talbot. Lo, there thou stand’st, a breathing valiant man Of an invincible unconquer’d spirit. This is the latest glory of thy praise That I, thy enemy, due thee withal; For ere the glass, that now begins to run, Finish the process of his sandy hour, These eyes, that see thee now well coloured, Shall see thee wither’d, bloody, pale, and dead.

[Drum afar off.]

Hark, hark, the Dauphin’s drum, a warning bell, Sings heavy music to thy timorous soul, And mine shall ring thy dire departure out.

[Exeunt General, etc.]

TALBOT. He fables not; I hear the enemy. Out, some light horsemen, and peruse their wings. O, negligent and heedless discipline! How are we park’d and bounded in a pale, A little herd of England’s timorous deer, Mazed with a yelping kennel of French curs! If we be English deer, be then in blood; Not rascal-like, to fall down with a pinch, But rather, moody-mad and desperate stags, Turn on the bloody hounds with heads of steel And make the cowards stand aloof at bay. Sell every man his life as dear as mine, And they shall find dear deer of us, my friends. God and Saint George, Talbot and England’s right, Prosper our colours in this dangerous fight!

SCENE III. Plains in Gascony.

Enter a Messenger that meets York. Enter York with trumpet and many soldiers

YORK. Are not the speedy scouts return’d again That dogg’d the mighty army of the Dauphin?

MESSENGER. They are return’d, my lord, and give it out That he is march’d to Bordeaux with his power, To fight with Talbot. As he march’d along, By your espials were discovered Two mightier troops than that the Dauphin led, Which join’d with him and made their march for Bordeaux.

YORK. A plague upon that villain Somerset That thus delays my promised supply Of horsemen that were levied for this siege! Renowned Talbot doth expect my aid, And I am louted by a traitor villain And cannot help the noble chevalier. God comfort him in this necessity! If he miscarry, farewell wars in France.

Enter Sir William Lucy.

LUCY. Thou princely leader of our English strength, Never so needful on the earth of France, Spur to the rescue of the noble Talbot, Who now is girdled with a waist of iron, And hemm’d about with grim destruction. To Bordeaux, warlike Duke! To Bordeaux, York! Else farewell, Talbot, France, and England’s honour.

YORK. O God, that Somerset, who in proud heart Doth stop my cornets, were in Talbot’s place! So should we save a valiant gentleman By forfeiting a traitor and a coward. Mad ire and wrathful fury makes me weep That thus we die while remiss traitors sleep.

LUCY. O, send some succour to the distress’d lord!

YORK. He dies, we lose; I break my warlike word; We mourn, France smiles; we lose, they daily get, All long of this vile traitor Somerset.

LUCY. Then God take mercy on brave Talbot’s soul, And on his son young John, who two hours since I met in travel toward his warlike father. This seven years did not Talbot see his son; And now they meet where both their lives are done.

YORK. Alas, what joy shall noble Talbot have To bid his young son welcome to his grave? Away! Vexation almost stops my breath, That sunder’d friends greet in the hour of death. Lucy, farewell. No more my fortune can But curse the cause I cannot aid the man. Maine, Blois, Poictiers, and Tours, are won away, Long all of Somerset and his delay.

[Exit, with his soldiers.]

LUCY. Thus, while the vulture of sedition Feeds in the bosom of such great commanders, Sleeping neglection doth betray to loss The conquest of our scarce-cold conqueror, That ever-living man of memory, Henry the Fifth. Whiles they each other cross, Lives, honours, lands, and all hurry to loss.

SCENE IV. Other plains in Gascony.

Enter Somerset with his army; a Captain of Talbot’s with him.

SOMERSET. It is too late; I cannot send them now. This expedition was by York and Talbot Too rashly plotted. All our general force Might with a sally of the very town Be buckled with. The over-daring Talbot Hath sullied all his gloss of former honour By this unheedful, desperate, wild adventure. York set him on to fight and die in shame That, Talbot dead, great York might bear the name.

CAPTAIN. Here is Sir William Lucy, who with me Set from our o’er-match’d forces forth for aid.

SOMERSET. How now, Sir William, whither were you sent?

LUCY. Whither, my lord? From bought and sold Lord Talbot, Who, ring’d about with bold adversity, Cries out for noble York and Somerset To beat assailing Death from his weak legions; And whiles the honourable captain there Drops bloody sweat from his war-wearied limbs, And, in advantage lingering, looks for rescue, You, his false hopes, the trust of England’s honour, Keep off aloof with worthless emulation. Let not your private discord keep away The levied succours that should lend him aid, While he, renowned noble gentleman, Yield up his life unto a world of odds. Orleans the Bastard, Charles, Burgundy, Alençon, Reignier, compass him about, And Talbot perisheth by your default.

SOMERSET. York set him on; York should have sent him aid.

LUCY. And York as fast upon your Grace exclaims, Swearing that you withhold his levied host Collected for this expedition.

SOMERSET. York lies; he might have sent and had the horse. I owe him little duty, and less love, And take foul scorn to fawn on him by sending.

LUCY. The fraud of England, not the force of France, Hath now entrapp’d the noble-minded Talbot. Never to England shall he bear his life, But dies betray’d to fortune by your strife.

SOMERSET. Come, go; I will dispatch the horsemen straight. Within six hours they will be at his aid.

LUCY. Too late comes rescue; he is ta’en or slain, For fly he could not if he would have fled; And fly would Talbot never, though he might.

SOMERSET. If he be dead, brave Talbot, then adieu!

LUCY. His fame lives in the world, his shame in you.

SCENE V. The English camp near Bordeaux.

Enter Talbot and John his son.

TALBOT. O young John Talbot, I did send for thee To tutor thee in stratagems of war, That Talbot’s name might be in thee revived When sapless age and weak unable limbs Should bring thy father to his drooping chair. But—O malignant and ill-boding stars!— Now thou art come unto a feast of death, A terrible and unavoided danger. Therefore, dear boy, mount on my swiftest horse, And I’ll direct thee how thou shalt escape By sudden flight. Come, dally not, be gone.

JOHN TALBOT. Is my name Talbot? And am I your son? And shall I fly? O, if you love my mother, Dishonour not her honourable name, To make a bastard and a slave of me! The world will say, he is not Talbot’s blood, That basely fled when noble Talbot stood.

TALBOT. Fly, to revenge my death if I be slain.

JOHN TALBOT. He that flies so will ne’er return again.

TALBOT. If we both stay, we both are sure to die.

JOHN TALBOT. Then let me stay and, father, do you fly. Your loss is great, so your regard should be; My worth unknown, no loss is known in me. Upon my death the French can little boast; In yours they will, in you all hopes are lost. Flight cannot stain the honour you have won; But mine it will, that no exploit have done. You fled for vantage, everyone will swear; But if I bow, they’ll say it was for fear. There is no hope that ever I will stay If the first hour I shrink and run away. Here on my knee I beg mortality, Rather than life preserved with infamy.

TALBOT. Shall all thy mother’s hopes lie in one tomb?

JOHN TALBOT. Ay, rather than I’ll shame my mother’s womb.

TALBOT. Upon my blessing, I command thee go.

JOHN TALBOT. To fight I will, but not to fly the foe.

TALBOT. Part of thy father may be saved in thee.

JOHN TALBOT. No part of him but will be shame in me.

TALBOT. Thou never hadst renown, nor canst not lose it.

JOHN TALBOT. Yes, your renowned name; shall flight abuse it?

TALBOT. Thy father’s charge shall clear thee from that stain.

JOHN TALBOT. You cannot witness for me, being slain. If death be so apparent, then both fly.

TALBOT. And leave my followers here to fight and die? My age was never tainted with such shame.

JOHN TALBOT. And shall my youth be guilty of such blame? No more can I be sever’d from your side Than can yourself yourself in twain divide. Stay, go, do what you will, the like do I; For live I will not, if my father die.

TALBOT. Then here I take my leave of thee, fair son, Born to eclipse thy life this afternoon. Come, side by side together live and die, And soul with soul from France to heaven fly.

SCENE VI. A field of battle.

Alarum. Excursions, wherein Talbot’s son is hemmed about, and Talbot rescues him.

TALBOT. Saint George and victory! Fight, soldiers, fight! The Regent hath with Talbot broke his word, And left us to the rage of France his sword. Where is John Talbot? Pause, and take thy breath; I gave thee life and rescued thee from death.

JOHN TALBOT. O, twice my father, twice am I thy son! The life thou gav’st me first was lost and done, Till with thy warlike sword, despite of fate, To my determined time thou gav’st new date.

TALBOT. When from the Dauphin’s crest thy sword struck fire, It warm’d thy father’s heart with proud desire Of bold-faced victory. Then leaden age, Quicken’d with youthful spleen and warlike rage, Beat down Alençon, Orleans, Burgundy, And from the pride of Gallia rescued thee. The ireful Bastard Orleans, that drew blood From thee, my boy, and had the maidenhood Of thy first fight, I soon encountered, And, interchanging blows, I quickly shed Some of his bastard blood, and in disgrace Bespoke him thus: “Contaminated, base, And misbegotten blood I spill of thine, Mean and right poor, for that pure blood of mine, Which thou didst force from Talbot, my brave boy.” Here, purposing the Bastard to destroy, Came in strong rescue. Speak, thy father’s care, Art thou not weary, John? How dost thou fare? Wilt thou yet leave the battle, boy, and fly, Now thou art seal’d the son of chivalry? Fly, to revenge my death when I am dead; The help of one stands me in little stead. O, too much folly is it, well I wot, To hazard all our lives in one small boat! If I today die not with Frenchmen’s rage, Tomorrow I shall die with mickle age. By me they nothing gain an if I stay; ’Tis but the short’ning of my life one day. In thee thy mother dies, our household’s name, My death’s revenge, thy youth, and England’s fame. All these and more we hazard by thy stay; All these are saved if thou wilt fly away.

JOHN TALBOT. The sword of Orleans hath not made me smart; These words of yours draw life-blood from my heart. On that advantage, bought with such a shame, To save a paltry life and slay bright fame, Before young Talbot from old Talbot fly, The coward horse that bears me fall and die! And like me to the peasant boys of France, To be shame’s scorn and subject of mischance! Surely, by all the glory you have won, An if I fly, I am not Talbot’s son. Then talk no more of flight, it is no boot; If son to Talbot, die at Talbot’s foot.

TALBOT. Then follow thou thy desperate sire of Crete, Thou Icarus; thy life to me is sweet. If thou wilt fight, fight by thy father’s side, And, commendable proved, let’s die in pride.

Alarum. Excursions. Enter old Talbot led by a Servant.

TALBOT. Where is my other life? Mine own is gone. O, where’s young Talbot? Where is valiant John? Triumphant Death, smear’d with captivity, Young Talbot’s valour makes me smile at thee. When he perceived me shrink and on my knee, His bloody sword he brandish’d over me, And like a hungry lion did commence Rough deeds of rage and stern impatience; But when my angry guardant stood alone, Tendering my ruin and assail’d of none, Dizzy-ey’d fury and great rage of heart Suddenly made him from my side to start Into the clustering battle of the French; And in that sea of blood my boy did drench His over-mounting spirit; and there died My Icarus, my blossom, in his pride.

SERVANT. O my dear lord, lo where your son is borne!

Enter soldiers, with the body of young Talbot.

TALBOT. Thou antic Death, which laugh’st us here to scorn, Anon, from thy insulting tyranny, Coupled in bonds of perpetuity, Two Talbots, winged through the lither sky, In thy despite shall scape mortality. O thou whose wounds become hard-favour’d Death, Speak to thy father ere thou yield thy breath! Brave Death by speaking, whether he will or no; Imagine him a Frenchman and thy foe. Poor boy, he smiles, methinks, as who should say, Had Death been French, then Death had died today. Come, come, and lay him in his father’s arms; My spirit can no longer bear these harms. Soldiers, adieu! I have what I would have, Now my old arms are young John Talbot’s grave.

Enter Charles, Alençon, Burgundy, Bastard, La Pucelle and forces.

CHARLES. Had York and Somerset brought rescue in, We should have found a bloody day of this.

BASTARD. How the young whelp of Talbot’s, raging-wood, Did flesh his puny sword in Frenchmen’s blood!

PUCELLE. Once I encounter’d him, and thus I said: “Thou maiden youth, be vanquish’d by a maid.” But with a proud majestical high scorn He answer’d thus: “Young Talbot was not born To be the pillage of a giglot wench.” So, rushing in the bowels of the French, He left me proudly, as unworthy fight.

BURGUNDY. Doubtless he would have made a noble knight. See, where he lies inhearsed in the arms Of the most bloody nurser of his harms.

BASTARD. Hew them to pieces, hack their bones asunder, Whose life was England’s glory, Gallia’s wonder.

CHARLES. O, no, forbear! For that which we have fled During the life, let us not wrong it dead.

Enter Sir William Lucy and a French Herald.

LUCY. Herald, conduct me to the Dauphin’s tent, To know who hath obtain’d the glory of the day.

CHARLES. On what submissive message art thou sent?

LUCY. Submission, Dauphin! ’Tis a mere French word. We English warriors wot not what it means. I come to know what prisoners thou hast ta’en, And to survey the bodies of the dead.

CHARLES. For prisoners ask’st thou? Hell our prison is. But tell me whom thou seek’st.

LUCY. But where’s the great Alcides of the field, Valiant Lord Talbot, Earl of Shrewsbury, Created for his rare success in arms Great Earl of Washford, Waterford, and Valence, Lord Talbot of Goodrig and Urchinfield, Lord Strange of Blackmere, Lord Verdun of Alton, Lord Cromwell of Wingfield, Lord Furnival of Sheffield, The thrice victorious Lord of Falconbridge, Knight of the noble Order of Saint George, Worthy Saint Michael, and the Golden Fleece, Great Marshal to Henry the Sixth Of all his wars within the realm of France?

PUCELLE. Here’s a silly stately style indeed! The Turk, that two and fifty kingdoms hath, Writes not so tedious a style as this. Him that thou magnifiest with all these titles Stinking and fly-blown lies here at our feet.

LUCY. Is Talbot slain, the Frenchman’s only scourge, Your kingdom’s terror and black Nemesis? O, were mine eye-balls into bullets turn’d, That I in rage might shoot them at your faces! O, that I could but call these dead to life! It were enough to fright the realm of France. Were but his picture left amongst you here, It would amaze the proudest of you all. Give me their bodies, that I may bear them hence And give them burial as beseems their worth.

PUCELLE. I think this upstart is old Talbot’s ghost, He speaks with such a proud commanding spirit. For God’s sake, let him have them; to keep them here, They would but stink and putrify the air.

CHARLES. Go, take their bodies hence.

LUCY. I’ll bear them hence; But from their ashes shall be rear’d A phoenix that shall make all France afeard.

CHARLES. So we be rid of them, do with them what thou wilt. And now to Paris in this conquering vein. All will be ours, now bloody Talbot’s slain.

SCENE I. London. The Palace.

Sennet. Enter King, Gloucester and Exeter.

KING HENRY. Have you perused the letters from the Pope, The Emperor, and the Earl of Armagnac?

GLOUCESTER. I have, my lord; and their intent is this: They humbly sue unto your Excellence To have a godly peace concluded of Between the realms of England and of France.

KING HENRY. How doth your Grace affect their motion?

GLOUCESTER. Well, my good lord, and as the only means To stop effusion of our Christian blood And stablish quietness on every side.

KING HENRY. Ay, marry, uncle, for I always thought It was both impious and unnatural That such immanity and bloody strife Should reign among professors of one faith.

GLOUCESTER. Beside, my lord, the sooner to effect And surer bind this knot of amity, The Earl of Armagnac, near knit to Charles, A man of great authority in France, Proffers his only daughter to your Grace In marriage, with a large and sumptuous dowry.

KING HENRY. Marriage, uncle! Alas, my years are young! And fitter is my study and my books Than wanton dalliance with a paramour. Yet call th’ ambassadors; and, as you please, So let them have their answers every one. I shall be well content with any choice Tends to God’s glory and my country’s weal.

Enter Winchester in Cardinal’s habit, a Legate and two Ambassadors.

EXETER. What, is my Lord of Winchester install’d And call’d unto a cardinal’s degree? Then I perceive that will be verified Henry the Fifth did sometime prophesy: “If once he come to be a cardinal, He’ll make his cap co-equal with the crown.”

KING HENRY. My Lords Ambassadors, your several suits Have been consider’d and debated on. Your purpose is both good and reasonable; And therefore are we certainly resolved To draw conditions of a friendly peace, Which by my Lord of Winchester we mean Shall be transported presently to France.

GLOUCESTER. And for the proffer of my lord your master, I have inform’d his Highness so at large, As liking of the lady’s virtuous gifts, Her beauty and the value of her dower, He doth intend she shall be England’s Queen.

KING HENRY. In argument and proof of which contract, Bear her this jewel, pledge of my affection. And so, my Lord Protector, see them guarded And safely brought to Dover; where inshipp’d, Commit them to the fortune of the sea.

[Exeunt all but Winchester and Legate.]

WINCHESTER. Stay my lord legate; you shall first receive The sum of money which I promised Should be deliver’d to his Holiness For clothing me in these grave ornaments.

LEGATE. I will attend upon your lordship’s leisure.

WINCHESTER. [Aside.] Now Winchester will not submit, I trow, Or be inferior to the proudest peer. Humphrey of Gloucester, thou shalt well perceive That neither in birth or for authority, The Bishop will be overborne by thee. I’ll either make thee stoop and bend thy knee, Or sack this country with a mutiny.

SCENE II. France. Plains in Anjou.

Enter Charles, Burgundy, Alençon, Bastard, Reignier, La Pucelle and forces.

CHARLES. These news, my lords, may cheer our drooping spirits: ’Tis said the stout Parisians do revolt And turn again unto the warlike French.

ALENÇON. Then march to Paris, royal Charles of France, And keep not back your powers in dalliance.

PUCELLE. Peace be amongst them, if they turn to us; Else ruin combat with their palaces!

Enter Scout.

SCOUT. Success unto our valiant general, And happiness to his accomplices!

CHARLES. What tidings send our scouts? I prithee, speak.

SCOUT. The English army, that divided was Into two parties, is now conjoin’d in one, And means to give you battle presently.

CHARLES. Somewhat too sudden, sirs, the warning is; But we will presently provide for them.

BURGUNDY. I trust the ghost of Talbot is not there. Now he is gone, my lord, you need not fear.

PUCELLE. Of all base passions, fear is most accursed. Command the conquest, Charles, it shall be thine; Let Henry fret and all the world repine.

CHARLES. Then on, my lords; and France be fortunate!

SCENE III. Before Angiers.

Alarum. Excursions. Enter La Pucelle.

PUCELLE. The Regent conquers, and the Frenchmen fly. Now help, ye charming spells and periapts; And ye choice spirits that admonish me, And give me signs of future accidents. [Thunder] You speedy helpers, that are substitutes Under the lordly monarch of the north, Appear and aid me in this enterprise.

Enter Fiends.

This speed and quick appearance argues proof Of your accustom’d diligence to me. Now, ye familiar spirits that are cull’d Out of the powerful regions under earth, Help me this once, that France may get the field.

[They walk and speak not.]

O, hold me not with silence over-long! Where I was wont to feed you with my blood, I’ll lop a member off and give it you In earnest of a further benefit, So you do condescend to help me now.

[They hang their heads.]

No hope to have redress? My body shall Pay recompense if you will grant my suit.

[They shake their heads.]

Cannot my body nor blood-sacrifice Entreat you to your wonted furtherance? Then take my soul; my body, soul and all, Before that England give the French the foil.

[They depart.]

See, they forsake me. Now the time is come That France must vail her lofty-plumed crest And let her head fall into England’s lap. My ancient incantations are too weak, And hell too strong for me to buckle with. Now, France, thy glory droopeth to the dust.

Excursions. Burgundy and York fight hand to hand. The French fly. La Pucelle is taken.

YORK. Damsel of France, I think I have you fast. Unchain your spirits now with spelling charms, And try if they can gain your liberty. A goodly prize, fit for the devil’s grace! See, how the ugly witch doth bend her brows, As if with Circe she would change my shape!

PUCELLE. Chang’d to a worser shape thou canst not be.

YORK. O, Charles the Dauphin is a proper man; No shape but his can please your dainty eye.

PUCELLE. A plaguing mischief light on Charles and thee! And may ye both be suddenly surprised By bloody hands, in sleeping on your beds!

YORK. Fell banning hag, enchantress, hold thy tongue!

PUCELLE. I prithee, give me leave to curse awhile.

YORK. Curse, miscreant, when thou com’st to the stake.

Alarum. Enter Suffolk with Margaret in his hand.

SUFFOLK. Be what thou wilt, thou art my prisoner.

[Gazes on her.]

O fairest beauty, do not fear nor fly! For I will touch thee but with reverent hands, I kiss these fingers for eternal peace, And lay them gently on thy tender side. Who art thou? Say, that I may honour thee.

MARGARET. Margaret my name, and daughter to a king, The King of Naples, whosoe’er thou art.

SUFFOLK. An earl I am, and Suffolk am I call’d. Be not offended, nature’s miracle, Thou art allotted to be ta’en by me. So doth the swan her downy cygnets save, Keeping them prisoner underneath her wings. Yet, if this servile usage once offend, Go and be free again as Suffolk’s friend.

[She is going.]

O, stay! I have no power to let her pass; My hand would free her, but my heart says no. As plays the sun upon the glassy streams, Twinkling another counterfeited beam, So seems this gorgeous beauty to mine eyes. Fain would I woo her, yet I dare not speak. I’ll call for pen and ink, and write my mind. Fie, de la Pole, disable not thyself; Hast not a tongue? Is she not here? Wilt thou be daunted at a woman’s sight? Ay, beauty’s princely majesty is such Confounds the tongue and makes the senses rough.

MARGARET. Say, Earl of Suffolk, if thy name be so, What ransom must I pay before I pass? For I perceive I am thy prisoner.

SUFFOLK. How canst thou tell she will deny thy suit, Before thou make a trial of her love?

MARGARET. Why speak’st thou not? What ransom must I pay?

SUFFOLK. She’s beautiful, and therefore to be woo’d; She is a woman, therefore to be won.

MARGARET. Wilt thou accept of ransom, yea, or no?

SUFFOLK. Fond man, remember that thou hast a wife; Then how can Margaret be thy paramour?

MARGARET. I were best leave him, for he will not hear.

SUFFOLK. There all is marr’d; there lies a cooling card.

MARGARET. He talks at random; sure, the man is mad.

SUFFOLK. And yet a dispensation may be had.

MARGARET. And yet I would that you would answer me.

SUFFOLK. I’ll win this Lady Margaret. For whom? Why, for my king. Tush, that’s a wooden thing!

MARGARET. He talks of wood. It is some carpenter.

SUFFOLK. Yet so my fancy may be satisfied, And peace established between these realms. But there remains a scruple in that too; For though her father be the King of Naples, Duke of Anjou and Maine, yet is he poor, And our nobility will scorn the match.

MARGARET. Hear ye, captain, are you not at leisure?

SUFFOLK. It shall be so, disdain they ne’er so much. Henry is youthful and will quickly yield. Madam, I have a secret to reveal.

MARGARET. What though I be enthrall’d? He seems a knight, And will not any way dishonour me.

MARGARET. Perhaps I shall be rescued by the French; And then I need not crave his courtesy.

SUFFOLK. Sweet madam, give me hearing in a cause.

MARGARET. Tush, women have been captivate ere now.

SUFFOLK. Lady, wherefore talk you so?

MARGARET. I cry you mercy, ’tis but quid for quo.

SUFFOLK. Say, gentle princess, would you not suppose Your bondage happy, to be made a queen?

MARGARET. To be a queen in bondage is more vile Than is a slave in base servility; For princes should be free.

SUFFOLK. And so shall you, If happy England’s royal king be free.

MARGARET. Why, what concerns his freedom unto me?

SUFFOLK. I’ll undertake to make thee Henry’s queen, To put a golden scepter in thy hand And set a precious crown upon thy head, If thou wilt condescend to be my—

MARGARET. What?

SUFFOLK. His love.

MARGARET. I am unworthy to be Henry’s wife.

SUFFOLK. No, gentle madam, I unworthy am To woo so fair a dame to be his wife, And have no portion in the choice myself. How say you, madam, are ye so content?

MARGARET. An if my father please, I am content.

SUFFOLK. Then call our captains and our colours forth. And, madam, at your father’s castle walls We’ll crave a parley, to confer with him.

A parley sounded. Enter Reignier on the walls.

See, Reignier, see, thy daughter prisoner!

REIGNIER. To whom?

SUFFOLK. To me.

REIGNIER. Suffolk, what remedy? I am a soldier, and unapt to weep Or to exclaim on fortune’s fickleness.

SUFFOLK. Yes, there is remedy enough, my lord: Consent, and for thy honour give consent, Thy daughter shall be wedded to my king, Whom I with pain have woo’d and won thereto; And this her easy-held imprisonment Hath gain’d thy daughter princely liberty.

REIGNIER. Speaks Suffolk as he thinks?

SUFFOLK. Fair Margaret knows That Suffolk doth not flatter, face, or feign.

REIGNIER. Upon thy princely warrant, I descend To give thee answer of thy just demand.

[Exit from the walls.]

SUFFOLK. And here I will expect thy coming.

Trumpets sound. Enter Reignier, below.

REIGNIER. Welcome, brave earl, into our territories. Command in Anjou what your honour pleases.

SUFFOLK. Thanks, Reignier, happy for so sweet a child, Fit to be made companion with a king. What answer makes your Grace unto my suit?

REIGNIER. Since thou dost deign to woo her little worth To be the princely bride of such a lord, Upon condition I may quietly Enjoy mine own, the country Maine and Anjou, Free from oppression or the stroke of war, My daughter shall be Henry’s, if he please.

SUFFOLK. That is her ransom; I deliver her; And those two counties I will undertake Your Grace shall well and quietly enjoy.

REIGNIER. And I again, in Henry’s royal name, As deputy unto that gracious king, Give thee her hand for sign of plighted faith.

SUFFOLK. Reignier of France, I give thee kingly thanks, Because this is in traffic of a king. [Aside.] And yet, methinks, I could be well content To be mine own attorney in this case. I’ll over then to England with this news, And make this marriage to be solemnized. So, farewell, Reignier; set this diamond safe In golden palaces, as it becomes.

REIGNIER. I do embrace thee as I would embrace The Christian prince, King Henry, were he here.

MARGARET. Farewell, my lord; good wishes, praise, and prayers Shall Suffolk ever have of Margaret. [Going].

SUFFOLK. Farewell, sweet madam; but hark you, Margaret, No princely commendations to my king?

MARGARET. Such commendations as becomes a maid, A virgin and his servant, say to him.

SUFFOLK. Words sweetly placed and modestly directed. But, madam, I must trouble you again: No loving token to his Majesty?

MARGARET. Yes, my good lord; a pure unspotted heart, Never yet taint with love, I send the King.

MARGARET. That for thyself. I will not so presume To send such peevish tokens to a king.

[Exeunt Reignier and Margaret.]

SUFFOLK. O, wert thou for myself! But, Suffolk, stay; Thou mayst not wander in that labyrinth. There Minotaurs and ugly treasons lurk. Solicit Henry with her wondrous praise. Bethink thee on her virtues that surmount, And natural graces that extinguish art; Repeat their semblance often on the seas, That, when thou com’st to kneel at Henry’s feet, Thou mayst bereave him of his wits with wonder.

SCENE IV. Camp of the Duke of York in Anjou.

Enter York, Warwick and others.

YORK. Bring forth that sorceress condemn’d to burn.

Enter La Pucelle, guarded, and a Shepherd.

SHEPHERD. Ah, Joan, this kills thy father’s heart outright! Have I sought every country far and near, And, now it is my chance to find thee out, Must I behold thy timeless cruel death? Ah, Joan, sweet daughter Joan, I’ll die with thee!

PUCELLE. Decrepit miser, base ignoble wretch! I am descended of a gentler blood. Thou art no father nor no friend of mine.

SHEPHERD. Out, out! My lords, as please you, ’tis not so; I did beget her, all the parish knows. Her mother liveth yet, can testify She was the first fruit of my bachelorship.

WARWICK. Graceless, wilt thou deny thy parentage?

YORK. This argues what her kind of life hath been, Wicked and vile; and so her death concludes.

SHEPHERD. Fie, Joan, that thou wilt be so obstacle! God knows thou art a collop of my flesh; And for thy sake have I shed many a tear. Deny me not, I prithee, gentle Joan.

PUCELLE. Peasant, avaunt! You have suborn’d this man Of purpose to obscure my noble birth.

SHEPHERD. ’Tis true, I gave a noble to the priest The morn that I was wedded to her mother. Kneel down and take my blessing, good my girl. Wilt thou not stoop? Now cursed be the time Of thy nativity! I would the milk Thy mother gave thee when thou suck’dst her breast Had been a little ratsbane for thy sake! Or else, when thou didst keep my lambs a-field, I wish some ravenous wolf had eaten thee! Dost thou deny thy father, cursed drab? O, burn her, burn her! Hanging is too good.

YORK. Take her away, for she hath lived too long, To fill the world with vicious qualities.

PUCELLE. First, let me tell you whom you have condemn’d: Not one begotten of a shepherd swain, But issued from the progeny of kings; Virtuous and holy, chosen from above, By inspiration of celestial grace, To work exceeding miracles on earth. I never had to do with wicked spirits. But you, that are polluted with your lusts, Stain’d with the guiltless blood of innocents, Corrupt and tainted with a thousand vices, Because you want the grace that others have, You judge it straight a thing impossible To compass wonders but by help of devils. No, misconceived! Joan of Arc hath been A virgin from her tender infancy, Chaste and immaculate in very thought; Whose maiden blood, thus rigorously effused, Will cry for vengeance at the gates of heaven.

YORK. Ay, ay; away with her to execution!

WARWICK. And hark ye, sirs; because she is a maid, Spare for no faggots, let there be enow. Place barrels of pitch upon the fatal stake, That so her torture may be shortened.

PUCELLE. Will nothing turn your unrelenting hearts? Then, Joan, discover thine infirmity, That warranteth by law to be thy privilege: I am with child, ye bloody homicides. Murder not then the fruit within my womb, Although ye hale me to a violent death.

YORK. Now heaven forfend! The holy maid with child?

WARWICK. The greatest miracle that e’er ye wrought! Is all your strict preciseness come to this?

YORK. She and the Dauphin have been juggling. I did imagine what would be her refuge.

SUFFOLK. And this withal. [Kisses her.]

WARWICK. Well, go to; we’ll have no bastards live, Especially since Charles must father it.

PUCELLE. You are deceived; my child is none of his. It was Alençon that enjoy’d my love.

YORK. Alençon, that notorious Machiavel! It dies and if it had a thousand lives.

PUCELLE. O, give me leave, I have deluded you. ’Twas neither Charles nor yet the Duke I named, But Reignier, King of Naples, that prevail’d.

WARWICK. A married man! That’s most intolerable.

YORK. Why, here’s a girl! I think she knows not well— There were so many—whom she may accuse.

WARWICK. It’s sign she hath been liberal and free.

YORK. And yet, forsooth, she is a virgin pure! Strumpet, thy words condemn thy brat and thee. Use no entreaty, for it is in vain.

PUCELLE. Then lead me hence, with whom I leave my curse: May never glorious sun reflex his beams Upon the country where you make abode; But darkness and the gloomy shade of death Environ you, till mischief and despair Drive you to break your necks or hang yourselves!

Enter Bishop of Winchester as Cardinal, attended.

WINCHESTER. Lord Regent, I do greet your Excellence With letters of commission from the King. For know, my lords, the states of Christendom, Moved with remorse of these outrageous broils, Have earnestly implored a general peace Betwixt our nation and the aspiring French; And here at hand the Dauphin and his train Approacheth to confer about some matter.

YORK. Is all our travail turn’d to this effect? After the slaughter of so many peers, So many captains, gentlemen and soldiers, That in this quarrel have been overthrown And sold their bodies for their country’s benefit, Shall we at last conclude effeminate peace? Have we not lost most part of all the towns, By treason, falsehood, and by treachery, Our great progenitors had conquered? O, Warwick, Warwick! I foresee with grief The utter loss of all the realm of France.

WARWICK. Be patient, York; if we conclude a peace, It shall be with such strict and severe covenants As little shall the Frenchmen gain thereby.

Enter Charles, Alençon, Bastard, Reignier and others.

CHARLES. Since, lords of England, it is thus agreed That peaceful truce shall be proclaim’d in France, We come to be informed by yourselves What the conditions of that league must be.

YORK. Break thou in pieces and consume to ashes, Thou foul accursed minister of hell!

YORK. Speak, Winchester, for boiling choler chokes The hollow passage of my poison’d voice By sight of these our baleful enemies.

WINCHESTER. Charles, and the rest, it is enacted thus: That, in regard King Henry gives consent, Of mere compassion and of lenity, To ease your country of distressful war, And suffer you to breathe in fruitful peace, You shall become true liegemen to his crown. And, Charles, upon condition thou wilt swear To pay him tribute and submit thyself, Thou shalt be placed as viceroy under him, And still enjoy the regal dignity.

ALENÇON. Must he be then as shadow of himself? Adorn his temples with a coronet, And yet, in substance and authority, Retain but privilege of a private man? This proffer is absurd and reasonless.

CHARLES. ’Tis known already that I am possess’d With more than half the Gallian territories, And therein reverenced for their lawful king. Shall I, for lucre of the rest unvanquish’d, Detract so much from that prerogative As to be call’d but viceroy of the whole? No, lord ambassador, I’ll rather keep That which I have than, coveting for more, Be cast from possibility of all.

YORK. Insulting Charles! Hast thou by secret means Used intercession to obtain a league, And, now the matter grows to compromise, Stand’st thou aloof upon comparison? Either accept the title thou usurp’st, Of benefit proceeding from our king And not of any challenge of desert, Or we will plague thee with incessant wars.

REIGNIER. My lord, you do not well in obstinacy To cavil in the course of this contract. If once it be neglected, ten to one We shall not find like opportunity.

ALENÇON. To say the truth, it is your policy To save your subjects from such massacre And ruthless slaughters as are daily seen By our proceeding in hostility; And therefore take this compact of a truce, Although you break it when your pleasure serves.

WARWICK. How say’st thou, Charles? Shall our condition stand?

CHARLES. It shall; only reserv’d you claim no interest In any of our towns of garrison.

YORK. Then swear allegiance to his Majesty, As thou art knight, never to disobey Nor be rebellious to the crown of England, Thou, nor thy nobles, to the crown of England.

[Charles and the rest give tokens of fealty.]

So, now dismiss your army when ye please; Hang up your ensigns, let your drums be still, For here we entertain a solemn peace.

SCENE V. London. The royal palace.

Enter Suffolk in conference with the King, Gloucester and Exeter.

KING HENRY. Your wondrous rare description, noble earl, Of beauteous Margaret hath astonish’d me. Her virtues graced with external gifts Do breed love’s settled passions in my heart, And like as rigor of tempestuous gusts Provokes the mightiest hulk against the tide, So am I driven by breath of her renown Either to suffer shipwreck or arrive Where I may have fruition of her love.

SUFFOLK. Tush, my good lord, this superficial tale Is but a preface of her worthy praise; The chief perfections of that lovely dame, Had I sufficient skill to utter them, Would make a volume of enticing lines, Able to ravish any dull conceit; And, which is more, she is not so divine, So full replete with choice of all delights, But with as humble lowliness of mind She is content to be at your command; Command, I mean, of virtuous chaste intents, To love and honour Henry as her lord.

KING HENRY. And otherwise will Henry ne’er presume. Therefore, my Lord Protector, give consent That Margaret may be England’s royal queen.

GLOUCESTER. So should I give consent to flatter sin. You know, my lord, your Highness is betroth’d Unto another lady of esteem. How shall we then dispense with that contract, And not deface your honour with reproach?

SUFFOLK. As doth a ruler with unlawful oaths; Or one that, at a triumph having vow’d To try his strength, forsaketh yet the lists By reason of his adversary’s odds. A poor earl’s daughter is unequal odds, And therefore may be broke without offence.

GLOUCESTER. Why, what, I pray, is Margaret more than that? Her father is no better than an earl, Although in glorious titles he excel.

SUFFOLK. Yes, my lord, her father is a king, The King of Naples and Jerusalem; And of such great authority in France As his alliance will confirm our peace, And keep the Frenchmen in allegiance.

GLOUCESTER. And so the Earl of Armagnac may do, Because he is near kinsman unto Charles.

EXETER. Beside, his wealth doth warrant a liberal dower, Where Reignier sooner will receive than give.

SUFFOLK. A dower, my lords? Disgrace not so your king, That he should be so abject, base, and poor, To choose for wealth and not for perfect love. Henry is able to enrich his queen, And not to seek a queen to make him rich; So worthless peasants bargain for their wives, As market-men for oxen, sheep, or horse. Marriage is a matter of more worth Than to be dealt in by attorneyship; Not whom we will, but whom his Grace affects, Must be companion of his nuptial bed. And therefore, lords, since he affects her most, Most of all these reasons bindeth us In our opinions she should be preferr’d. For what is wedlock forced but a hell, An age of discord and continual strife? Whereas the contrary bringeth bliss, And is a pattern of celestial peace. Whom should we match with Henry, being a king, But Margaret, that is daughter to a king? Her peerless feature, joined with her birth, Approves her fit for none but for a king; Her valiant courage and undaunted spirit, More than in women commonly is seen, Will answer our hope in issue of a king; For Henry, son unto a conqueror, Is likely to beget more conquerors, If with a lady of so high resolve As is fair Margaret he be link’d in love. Then yield, my lords; and here conclude with me That Margaret shall be queen, and none but she.

KING HENRY. Whether it be through force of your report, My noble Lord of Suffolk, or for that My tender youth was never yet attaint With any passion of inflaming love, I cannot tell; but this I am assured, I feel such sharp dissension in my breast, Such fierce alarums both of hope and fear, As I am sick with working of my thoughts. Take therefore shipping; post, my lord, to France; Agree to any covenants, and procure That Lady Margaret do vouchsafe to come To cross the seas to England and be crown’d King Henry’s faithful and anointed queen. For your expenses and sufficient charge, Among the people gather up a tenth. Be gone, I say; for till you do return, I rest perplexed with a thousand cares. And you, good uncle, banish all offence. If you do censure me by what you were, Not what you are, I know it will excuse This sudden execution of my will. And so conduct me where, from company, I may revolve and ruminate my grief.

GLOUCESTER. Ay, grief, I fear me, both at first and last.

[Exeunt Gloucester and Exeter.]

SUFFOLK. Thus Suffolk hath prevail’d; and thus he goes, As did the youthful Paris once to Greece, With hope to find the like event in love, But prosper better than the Troyan did. Margaret shall now be queen, and rule the King; But I will rule both her, the King, and realm.

THE SECOND PART OF KING HENRY THE SIXTH

ACT I Scene I. London. The palace Scene II. The Duke of Gloucester’s House Scene III. London. The palace Scene IV. Gloucester’s Garden

ACT II SCENE I. Saint Albans SCENE II. London. The Duke of York’s Garden SCENE III. A Hall of Justice SCENE IV. A Street

ACT III SCENE I. The Abbey at Bury St. Edmund’s SCENE II. Bury St. Edmund’s. A Room of State SCENE III. A Bedchamber

ACT IV SCENE I. The Coast of Kent SCENE II. Blackheath SCENE III. Another part of Blackheath SCENE IV. London. The Palace SCENE V. London. The Tower SCENE VI. London. Cannon Street SCENE VII. London. Smithfield SCENE VIII. Southwark SCENE IX. Kenilworth Castle SCENE X. Kent. Iden’s Garden

ACT V SCENE I. Fields between Dartford and Blackheath SCENE II. Saint Albans SCENE III. Fields near Saint Albans

KING HENRY THE SIXTH MARGARET, Queen to King Henry Humphrey, Duke of GLOUCESTER, his uncle ELEANOR, Duchess of Gloucester CARDINAL Beaufort, Bishop of Winchester, great-uncle to the King

DUKE OF SOMERSET DUKE OF SUFFOLK DUKE OF BUCKINGHAM LORD CLIFFORD YOUNG CLIFFORD, his son VAUX

Richard Plantagenet, Duke of YORK EDWARD and RICHARD, his sons EARL OF SALISBURY EARL OF WARWICK

THOMAS HORNER, an armourer PETER THUMP, his man JOHN HUME, a priest JOHN SOUTHWELL, a priest Margery JOURDAIN, a witch ROGER BOLINGBROKE, a conjurer SIMPCOX, an impostor Wife to Simpcox Mayor of Saint Albans SIR JOHN STANLEY Two Murderers A LIEUTENANT MASTER Master’s-Mate Walter WHITMORE Two Gentlemen, prisoners with Suffolk

Jack CADE, a rebel George BEVIS John HOLLAND DICK the butcher SMITH the weaver MICHAEL, etc., followers of Cade CLERK of Chartham SIR HUMPHREY STAFFORD WILLIAM STAFFORD, his brother LORD SCALES LORD SAYE MATTHEW GOUGH Alexander IDEN, a Kentish gentleman

Lords, Ladies, and Attendants, Petitioners, Aldermen, a Herald, a Beadle, Sheriff, and Officers, Citizens, Prentices, Falconers, Guards, Soldiers, Messengers, &c.

A Spirit

SCENE I. London. The palace

Flourish of trumpets, then hautboys. Enter the King, Gloucester, Salisbury, Warwick, and Cardinal Beaufort on the one side; the Queen, Suffolk, York, Somerset and Buckingham on the other.

SUFFOLK. As by your high imperial Majesty I had in charge at my depart for France, As procurator to your excellence, To marry Princess Margaret for your grace, So, in the famous ancient city Tours, In presence of the Kings of France and Sicil, The Dukes of Orleans, Calaber, Bretagne, and Alençon, Seven earls, twelve barons, and twenty reverend bishops, I have performed my task and was espoused, And humbly now upon my bended knee, In sight of England and her lordly peers, Deliver up my title in the Queen To your most gracious hands, that are the substance Of that great shadow I did represent: The happiest gift that ever marquess gave, The fairest queen that ever king received.

KING HENRY. Suffolk, arise.—Welcome, Queen Margaret. I can express no kinder sign of love Than this kind kiss.—O Lord, that lends me life, Lend me a heart replete with thankfulness! For Thou hast given me in this beauteous face A world of earthly blessings to my soul, If sympathy of love unite our thoughts.

QUEEN MARGARET. Great King of England and my gracious lord, The mutual conference that my mind hath had By day, by night, waking and in my dreams, In courtly company or at my beads, With you, mine alderliefest sovereign, Makes me the bolder to salute my King With ruder terms, such as my wit affords And overjoy of heart doth minister.

KING HENRY. Her sight did ravish, but her grace in speech, Her words yclad with wisdom’s majesty, Makes me from wondering fall to weeping joys, Such is the fulness of my heart’s content. Lords, with one cheerful voice welcome my love.

ALL. [Kneeling.] Long live Queen Margaret, England’s happiness!

QUEEN MARGARET. We thank you all.

SUFFOLK. My Lord Protector, so it please your grace, Here are the articles of contracted peace Between our sovereign and the French king Charles, For eighteen months concluded by consent.

GLOUCESTER. [Reads.] Imprimis, it is agreed between the French king Charles and William de la Pole, Marquess of Suffolk, ambassador for Henry, King of England, that the said Henry shall espouse the Lady Margaret, daughter unto Reignier King of Naples, Sicilia, and Jerusalem, and crown her Queen of England ere the thirtieth of May next ensuing. Item, that the duchy of Anjou and the county of Maine shall be released and delivered to the King her father—

[Lets the paper fall.]

KING HENRY. Uncle, how now?

GLOUCESTER. Pardon me, gracious lord. Some sudden qualm hath struck me at the heart And dimmed mine eyes, that I can read no further.

KING HENRY. Uncle of Winchester, I pray read on.

CARDINAL. [Reads.] Item, it is further agreed between them, that the duchies of Anjou and Maine shall be released and delivered to the King her father, and she sent over of the King of England’s own proper cost and charges, without having any dowry.

KING HENRY. They please us well.—Lord Marquess, kneel down. We here create thee the first Duke of Suffolk, And girt thee with the sword.—Cousin of York, We here discharge your grace from being regent I’ th’ parts of France, till term of eighteen months Be full expired.—Thanks, uncle Winchester, Gloucester, York, Buckingham, Somerset, Salisbury, and Warwick; We thank you all for this great favour done In entertainment to my princely Queen. Come, let us in, and with all speed provide To see her coronation be performed.

[Exeunt King, Queen and Suffolk.]

CARDINAL. Nephew, what means this passionate discourse, This peroration with such circumstance? For France, ’tis ours; and we will keep it still.

GLOUCESTER. Brave peers of England, pillars of the state, To you Duke Humphrey must unload his grief, Your grief, the common grief of all the land. What! Did my brother Henry spend his youth, His valour, coin, and people, in the wars? Did he so often lodge in open field, In winter’s cold and summer’s parching heat, To conquer France, his true inheritance? And did my brother Bedford toil his wits To keep by policy what Henry got? Have you yourselves, Somerset, Buckingham, Brave York, Salisbury, and victorious Warwick, Received deep scars in France and Normandy? Or hath mine uncle Beaufort and myself, With all the learned council of the realm, Studied so long, sat in the council house Early and late, debating to and fro How France and Frenchmen might be kept in awe, And had his highness in his infancy Crowned in Paris in despite of foes? And shall these labours and these honours die? Shall Henry’s conquest, Bedford’s vigilance, Your deeds of war, and all our counsel die? O peers of England, shameful is this league! Fatal this marriage, cancelling your fame, Blotting your names from books of memory, Razing the characters of your renown, Defacing monuments of conquered France, Undoing all, as all had never been!

GLOUCESTER. Ay, uncle, we will keep it if we can, But now it is impossible we should. Suffolk, the new-made duke that rules the roast, Hath given the duchy of Anjou and Maine Unto the poor King Reignier, whose large style Agrees not with the leanness of his purse.

SALISBURY. Now, by the death of Him that died for all, These counties were the keys of Normandy! But wherefore weeps Warwick, my valiant son?

WARWICK. For grief that they are past recovery; For, were there hope to conquer them again, My sword should shed hot blood, mine eyes no tears. Anjou and Maine! Myself did win them both, Those provinces these arms of mine did conquer; And are the cities that I got with wounds Delivered up again with peaceful words? Mort Dieu!

YORK. For Suffolk’s duke, may he be suffocate, That dims the honour of this warlike isle! France should have torn and rent my very heart Before I would have yielded to this league. I never read but England’s kings have had Large sums of gold and dowries with their wives; And our King Henry gives away his own, To match with her that brings no vantages.

GLOUCESTER. A proper jest, and never heard before, That Suffolk should demand a whole fifteenth For costs and charges in transporting her! She should have staid in France, and starved in France, Before—

CARDINAL. My Lord of Gloucester, now ye grow too hot. It was the pleasure of my lord the King.

GLOUCESTER. My Lord of Winchester, I know your mind. ’Tis not my speeches that you do mislike, But ’tis my presence that doth trouble ye. Rancour will out. Proud prelate, in thy face I see thy fury. If I longer stay, We shall begin our ancient bickerings.— Lordings, farewell; and say, when I am gone, I prophesied France will be lost ere long.

BUCKINGHAM. Why should he, then, protect our sovereign, He being of age to govern of himself? Cousin of Somerset, join you with me, And all together, with the Duke of Suffolk, We’ll quickly hoist Duke Humphrey from his seat.

CARDINAL. So, there goes our Protector in a rage. ’Tis known to you he is mine enemy, Nay, more, an enemy unto you all, And no great friend, I fear me, to the King. Consider, lords, he is the next of blood And heir apparent to the English crown. Had Henry got an empire by his marriage, And all the wealthy kingdoms of the west, There’s reason he should be displeased at it. Look to it, lords. Let not his smoothing words Bewitch your hearts; be wise and circumspect. What though the common people favour him, Calling him “Humphrey, the good Duke of Gloucester,” Clapping their hands, and crying with loud voice, “Jesu maintain your royal excellence!” With “God preserve the good Duke Humphrey!” I fear me, lords, for all this flattering gloss, He will be found a dangerous Protector.

CARDINAL. This weighty business will not brook delay; I’ll to the Duke of Suffolk presently.

SOMERSET. Cousin of Buckingham, though Humphrey’s pride And greatness of his place be grief to us, Yet let us watch the haughty cardinal; His insolence is more intolerable Than all the princes’ in the land beside. If Gloucester be displaced, he’ll be Protector.

BUCKINGHAM. Or thou or I, Somerset, will be Protector, Despite Duke Humphrey or the Cardinal.

[Exeunt Buckingham and Somerset.]

SALISBURY. Pride went before; Ambition follows him. While these do labour for their own preferment, Behoves it us to labour for the realm. I never saw but Humphrey Duke of Gloucester, Did bear him like a noble gentleman. Oft have I seen the haughty Cardinal, More like a soldier than a man o’ th’ church, As stout and proud as he were lord of all, Swear like a ruffian and demean himself Unlike the ruler of a commonweal.— Warwick my son, the comfort of my age, Thy deeds, thy plainness, and thy housekeeping, Hath won the greatest favour of the commons, Excepting none but good Duke Humphrey.— And, brother York, thy acts in Ireland, In bringing them to civil discipline, Thy late exploits done in the heart of France, When thou wert regent for our sovereign, Have made thee feared and honoured of the people. Join we together for the public good, In what we can to bridle and suppress The pride of Suffolk and the Cardinal, With Somerset’s and Buckingham’s ambition; And, as we may, cherish Duke Humphrey’s deeds While they do tend the profit of the land.

WARWICK. So God help Warwick, as he loves the land And common profit of his country!

YORK. And so says York, [Aside.] for he hath greatest cause.

SALISBURY. Then let’s make haste away and look unto the main.

WARWICK. Unto the main! O father, Maine is lost, That Maine which by main force Warwick did win, And would have kept so long as breath did last! Main chance, father, you meant; but I meant Maine, Which I will win from France, or else be slain.

[Exeunt Warwick and Salisbury.]

SCENE II. The Duke of Gloucester’s House

YORK. Anjou and Maine are given to the French; Paris is lost; the state of Normandy Stands on a tickle point now they are gone. Suffolk concluded on the articles, The peers agreed, and Henry was well pleased To change two dukedoms for a duke’s fair daughter. I cannot blame them all. What is’t to them? ’Tis thine they give away, and not their own. Pirates may make cheap pennyworths of their pillage, And purchase friends, and give to courtesans, Still revelling like lords till all be gone; Whileas the silly owner of the goods Weeps over them, and wrings his hapless hands, And shakes his head, and trembling stands aloof, While all is shared and all is borne away, Ready to starve and dare not touch his own. So York must sit and fret and bite his tongue, While his own lands are bargained for and sold. Methinks the realms of England, France, and Ireland Bear that proportion to my flesh and blood As did the fatal brand Althaea burnt Unto the prince’s heart of Calydon. Anjou and Maine both given unto the French! Cold news for me, for I had hope of France, Even as I have of fertile England’s soil. A day will come when York shall claim his own; And therefore I will take the Nevilles’ parts, And make a show of love to proud Duke Humphrey, And when I spy advantage, claim the crown, For that’s the golden mark I seek to hit. Nor shall proud Lancaster usurp my right, Nor hold the sceptre in his childish fist, Nor wear the diadem upon his head, Whose church-like humours fits not for a crown. Then, York, be still awhile till time do serve. Watch thou and wake when others be asleep, To pry into the secrets of the state; Till Henry, surfeiting in joys of love With his new bride and England’s dear-bought Queen, And Humphrey with the peers be fallen at jars. Then will I raise aloft the milk-white rose, With whose sweet smell the air shall be perfumed, And in my standard bear the arms of York, To grapple with the house of Lancaster; And force perforce I’ll make him yield the crown, Whose bookish rule hath pulled fair England down.

Enter Duke Humphrey of Gloucester and his wife Eleanor.

ELEANOR. Why droops my lord, like over-ripened corn Hanging the head at Ceres’ plenteous load? Why doth the great Duke Humphrey knit his brows, As frowning at the favours of the world? Why are thine eyes fixed to the sullen earth, Gazing on that which seems to dim thy sight? What seest thou there? King Henry’s diadem, Enchased with all the honours of the world? If so, gaze on, and grovel on thy face, Until thy head be circled with the same. Put forth thy hand, reach at the glorious gold. What, is’t too short? I’ll lengthen it with mine; And, having both together heaved it up, We’ll both together lift our heads to heaven, And never more abase our sight so low As to vouchsafe one glance unto the ground.

GLOUCESTER. O Nell, sweet Nell, if thou dost love thy lord, Banish the canker of ambitious thoughts. And may that hour when I imagine ill Against my King and nephew, virtuous Henry, Be my last breathing in this mortal world! My troublous dreams this night doth make me sad.

ELEANOR. What dreamed my lord? Tell me, and I’ll requite it With sweet rehearsal of my morning’s dream.

GLOUCESTER. Methought this staff, mine office-badge in court, Was broke in twain; by whom I have forgot, But, as I think, it was by th’ Cardinal, And on the pieces of the broken wand Were placed the heads of Edmund, Duke of Somerset And William de la Pole, first Duke of Suffolk. This was my dream; what it doth bode, God knows.

ELEANOR. Tut, this was nothing but an argument That he that breaks a stick of Gloucester’s grove Shall lose his head for his presumption. But list to me, my Humphrey, my sweet Duke: Methought I sat in seat of majesty In the cathedral church of Westminster And in that chair where kings and queens are crowned, Where Henry and Dame Margaret kneeled to me And on my head did set the diadem.

GLOUCESTER. Nay, Eleanor, then must I chide outright. Presumptuous dame, ill-nurtured Eleanor, Art thou not second woman in the realm, And the Protector’s wife, beloved of him? Hast thou not worldly pleasure at command, Above the reach or compass of thy thought? And wilt thou still be hammering treachery To tumble down thy husband and thyself From top of honour to disgrace’s feet? Away from me, and let me hear no more!

ELEANOR. What, what, my lord! Are you so choleric With Eleanor for telling but her dream? Next time I’ll keep my dreams unto myself, And not be checked.

GLOUCESTER. Nay, be not angry, I am pleased again.

MESSENGER. My Lord Protector, ’tis his highness’ pleasure You do prepare to ride unto Saint Albans, Whereas the King and Queen do mean to hawk.

GLOUCESTER. I go. Come, Nell, thou wilt ride with us?

ELEANOR. Yes, my good lord, I’ll follow presently.

[Exeunt Gloucester and Messenger.]

Follow I must; I cannot go before While Gloucester bears this base and humble mind. Were I a man, a duke, and next of blood, I would remove these tedious stumbling-blocks And smooth my way upon their headless necks; And, being a woman, I will not be slack To play my part in Fortune’s pageant.— Where are you there? Sir John! Nay, fear not, man, We are alone; here’s none but thee and I.

Enter Hume.

HUME. Jesus preserve your royal majesty!

ELEANOR. What sayst thou? Majesty! I am but grace.

HUME. But, by the grace of God, and Hume’s advice, Your grace’s title shall be multiplied.

ELEANOR. What sayst thou, man? Hast thou as yet conferred With Margery Jourdain, the cunning witch, With Roger Bolingbroke, the conjurer? And will they undertake to do me good?

HUME. This they have promised, to show your highness A spirit raised from depth of underground, That shall make answer to such questions As by your Grace shall be propounded him.

ELEANOR. It is enough, I’ll think upon the questions. When from Saint Albans we do make return, We’ll see these things effected to the full. Here, Hume, take this reward; make merry, man, With thy confederates in this weighty cause.

HUME. Hume must make merry with the Duchess’ gold. Marry, and shall. But, how now, Sir John Hume! Seal up your lips, and give no words but mum; The business asketh silent secrecy. Dame Eleanor gives gold to bring the witch; Gold cannot come amiss, were she a devil. Yet have I gold flies from another coast. I dare not say, from the rich cardinal And from the great and new-made Duke of Suffolk, Yet I do find it so. For, to be plain, They, knowing Dame Eleanor’s aspiring humour, Have hired me to undermine the Duchess And buzz these conjurations in her brain. They say “A crafty knave does need no broker”, Yet am I Suffolk and the cardinal’s broker. Hume, if you take not heed, you shall go near To call them both a pair of crafty knaves. Well, so its stands; and thus, I fear, at last Hume’s knavery will be the Duchess’ wrack, And her attainture will be Humphrey’s fall. Sort how it will, I shall have gold for all.

SCENE III. London. The palace

Enter Peter and Petitioners.

1 PETITIONER. My masters, let’s stand close. My Lord Protector will come this way by and by, and then we may deliver our supplications in the quill.

2 PETITIONER. Marry, the Lord protect him, for he’s a good man! Jesu bless him!

Enter Suffolk and Queen.

1 PETITIONER. Here he comes, methinks, and the Queen with him. I’ll be the first, sure.

2 PETITIONER. Come back, fool! This is the Duke of Suffolk and not my Lord Protector.

SUFFOLK. How now, fellow; wouldst anything with me?

1 PETITIONER. I pray, my lord, pardon me, I took ye for my Lord Protector.

QUEEN MARGARET. [Reading.] “To my Lord Protector.” Are your supplications to his lordship? Let me see them. What is thine?

1 PETITIONER. Mine is, an ’t please your grace, against John Goodman, my Lord Cardinal’s man, for keeping my house and lands, and wife and all, from me.

SUFFOLK. Thy wife too! That’s some wrong, indeed.—What’s yours?—What’s here! [Reads.] Against the Duke of Suffolk for enclosing the commons of Melford. How now, sir knave!

2 PETITIONER. Alas, sir, I am but a poor petitioner of our whole township.

PETER. [Giving his petition.] Against my master, Thomas Horner, for saying that the Duke of York was rightful heir to the crown.

QUEEN MARGARET. What sayst thou? Did the Duke of York say he was rightful heir to the crown?

PETER. That my master was? No, forsooth, my master said that he was, and that the King was an usurper.

SUFFOLK. Who is there?

Enter Servant.

Take this fellow in, and send for his master with a pursuivant presently.—We’ll hear more of your matter before the King.

[Exit Servant with Peter.]

QUEEN MARGARET. And as for you, that love to be protected Under the wings of our Protector’s grace, Begin your suits anew, and sue to him.

[Tears the supplications.]

Away, base cullions!—Suffolk, let them go.

ALL. Come, let’s be gone.

QUEEN MARGARET. My Lord of Suffolk, say, is this the guise, Is this the fashion in the court of England? Is this the government of Britain’s isle, And this the royalty of Albion’s king? What, shall King Henry be a pupil still Under the surly Gloucester’s governance? Am I a queen in title and in style, And must be made a subject to a duke? I tell thee, Pole, when in the city Tours Thou ran’st atilt in honour of my love And stol’st away the ladies’ hearts of France, I thought King Henry had resembled thee In courage, courtship, and proportion. But all his mind is bent to holiness, To number Ave-Maries on his beads. His champions are the prophets and apostles, His weapons holy saws of sacred writ, His study is his tilt-yard, and his loves Are brazen images of canonized saints. I would the college of the cardinals Would choose him pope and carry him to Rome And set the triple crown upon his head! That were a state fit for his holiness.

SUFFOLK. Madam, be patient. As I was cause Your highness came to England, so will I In England work your grace’s full content.

SUFFOLK. And he of these that can do most of all Cannot do more in England than the Nevilles; Salisbury and Warwick are no simple peers.

QUEEN MARGARET. Not all these lords do vex me half so much As that proud dame, the Lord Protector’s wife. She sweeps it through the court with troops of ladies, More like an empress than Duke Humphrey’s wife. Strangers in court do take her for the Queen. She bears a duke’s revenues on her back, And in her heart she scorns our poverty. Shall I not live to be avenged on her? Contemptuous base-born callet as she is, She vaunted ’mongst her minions t’ other day The very train of her worst wearing gown Was better worth than all my father’s lands Till Suffolk gave two dukedoms for his daughter.

SUFFOLK. Madam, myself have limed a bush for her And placed a quire of such enticing birds That she will light to listen to the lays And never mount to trouble you again. So let her rest; and, madam, list to me, For I am bold to counsel you in this: Although we fancy not the Cardinal, Yet must we join with him and with the lords Till we have brought Duke Humphrey in disgrace. As for the Duke of York, this late complaint Will make but little for his benefit. So, one by one, we’ll weed them all at last, And you yourself shall steer the happy helm.

QUEEN MARGARET. Beside the haughty Protector, have we Beaufort The imperious churchman, Somerset, Buckingham, And grumbling York; and not the least of these But can do more in England than the King.

Sound a sennet. Enter the King, Gloucester, Cardinal Beaufort, Somerset, Buckingham, Salisbury, York, Warwick and the Duchess of Gloucester.

KING HENRY. For my part, noble lords, I care not which; Or Somerset or York, all’s one to me.

YORK. If York have ill demeaned himself in France, Then let him be denied the regentship.

SOMERSET. If Somerset be unworthy of the place, Let York be regent; I will yield to him.

WARWICK. Whether your Grace be worthy, yea or no, Dispute not that; York is the worthier.

CARDINAL. Ambitious Warwick, let thy betters speak.

WARWICK. The Cardinal’s not my better in the field.

BUCKINGHAM. All in this presence are thy betters, Warwick.

WARWICK. Warwick may live to be the best of all.

SALISBURY. Peace, son!—And show some reason, Buckingham, Why Somerset should be preferred in this.

QUEEN MARGARET. Because the King, forsooth, will have it so.

GLOUCESTER. Madam, the King is old enough himself To give his censure. These are no women’s matters.

QUEEN MARGARET. If he be old enough, what needs your grace To be Protector of his excellence?

SUFFOLK. Resign it then, and leave thine insolence. Since thou wert king—as who is king but thou?— The commonwealth hath daily run to wrack, The Dauphin hath prevailed beyond the seas, And all the peers and nobles of the realm Have been as bondmen to thy sovereignty.

GLOUCESTER. Madam, I am Protector of the realm, And at his pleasure will resign my place.

CARDINAL. The commons hast thou racked; the clergy’s bags Are lank and lean with thy extortions.

SOMERSET. Thy sumptuous buildings and thy wife’s attire Have cost a mass of public treasury.

BUCKINGHAM. Thy cruelty in execution Upon offenders hath exceeded law, And left thee to the mercy of the law.

QUEEN MARGARET. Thy sale of offices and towns in France, If they were known, as the suspect is great, Would make thee quickly hop without thy head.

Give me my fan. What minion! Can ye not?

[She gives the Duchess a box on the ear.]

[Exit Gloucester. The Queen drops her fan.]

I cry your mercy, madam; was it you?

ELEANOR. Was’t I! Yea, I it was, proud Frenchwoman. Could I come near your beauty with my nails, I’d set my ten commandments in your face.

KING HENRY. Sweet aunt, be quiet; ’twas against her will.

ELEANOR. Against her will! Good King, look to ’t in time; She’ll hamper thee and dandle thee like a baby. Though in this place most master wear no breeches, She shall not strike Dame Eleanor unrevenged.

BUCKINGHAM. Lord Cardinal, I will follow Eleanor, And listen after Humphrey, how he proceeds. She’s tickled now; her fume needs no spurs, She’ll gallop far enough to her destruction.

GLOUCESTER. Now, lords, my choler being overblown With walking once about the quadrangle, I come to talk of commonwealth affairs. As for your spiteful false objections, Prove them, and I lie open to the law; But God in mercy so deal with my soul As I in duty love my king and country! But, to the matter that we have in hand: I say, my sovereign, York is meetest man To be your regent in the realm of France.

SUFFOLK. Before we make election, give me leave To show some reason, of no little force, That York is most unmeet of any man.

YORK. I’ll tell thee, Suffolk, why I am unmeet: First, for I cannot flatter thee in pride; Next, if I be appointed for the place, My Lord of Somerset will keep me here Without discharge, money, or furniture, Till France be won into the Dauphin’s hands. Last time, I danced attendance on his will Till Paris was besieged, famished, and lost.

WARWICK. That can I witness, and a fouler fact Did never traitor in the land commit.

SUFFOLK. Peace, headstrong Warwick!

WARWICK. Image of pride, why should I hold my peace?

Enter Horner the armourer and his man Peter, guarded.

SUFFOLK. Because here is a man accused of treason. Pray God the Duke of York excuse himself!

YORK. Doth anyone accuse York for a traitor?

KING HENRY. What mean’st thou, Suffolk? Tell me, what are these?

SUFFOLK. Please it your majesty, this is the man That doth accuse his master of high treason. His words were these: that Richard, Duke of York Was rightful heir unto the English crown, And that your majesty was an usurper.

KING HENRY. Say, man, were these thy words?

HORNER. An ’t shall please your majesty, I never said nor thought any such matter. God is my witness, I am falsely accused by the villain.

PETER. By these ten bones, my lords, he did speak them to me in the garret one night as we were scouring my Lord of York’s armour.

YORK. Base dunghill villain and mechanical, I’ll have thy head for this thy traitor’s speech!— I do beseech your royal majesty, Let him have all the rigour of the law.

HORNER. Alas, my lord, hang me if ever I spake the words. My accuser is my prentice; and when I did correct him for his fault the other day, he did vow upon his knees he would be even with me. I have good witness of this, therefore I beseech your majesty, do not cast away an honest man for a villain’s accusation.

KING HENRY. Uncle, what shall we say to this in law?

GLOUCESTER. This doom, my lord, if I may judge: Let Somerset be regent o’er the French, Because in York this breeds suspicion; And let these have a day appointed them For single combat in convenient place, For he hath witness of his servant’s malice. This is the law, and this Duke Humphrey’s doom.

SOMERSET. I humbly thank your royal Majesty.

HORNER. And I accept the combat willingly.

PETER. Alas, my lord, I cannot fight; for God’s sake, pity my case! The spite of man prevaileth against me. O Lord, have mercy upon me! I shall never be able to fight a blow. O Lord, my heart!

GLOUCESTER. Sirrah, or you must fight or else be hanged.

KING HENRY. Away with them to prison; and the day Of combat shall be the last of the next month. Come, Somerset, we’ll see thee sent away.

SCENE IV. Gloucester’s Garden

Enter the Witch Margery Jourdain, the two Priests, Hume, Southwell and Bolingbroke.

HUME. Come, my masters. The duchess, I tell you, expects performance of your promises.

BOLINGBROKE. Master Hume, we are therefore provided. Will her ladyship behold and hear our exorcisms?

HUME. Ay, what else? Fear you not her courage.

BOLINGBROKE. I have heard her reported to be a woman of an invincible spirit. But it shall be convenient, Master Hume, that you be by her aloft while we be busy below; and so, I pray you go, in God’s name, and leave us.

[Exit Hume.]

Mother Jourdain, be you prostrate and grovel on the earth. John Southwell, read you; and let us to our work.

Enter Duchess aloft, Hume following.

ELEANOR. Well said, my masters; and welcome all. To this gear, the sooner the better.

BOLINGBROKE. Patience, good lady; wizards know their times. Deep night, dark night, the silent of the night, The time of night when Troy was set on fire, The time when screech-owls cry and ban-dogs howl, And spirits walk and ghosts break up their graves; That time best fits the work we have in hand. Madam, sit you and fear not. Whom we raise We will make fast within a hallowed verge.

[Here they do the ceremonies belonging, and make the circle; Bolingbroke or Southwell reads “Conjuro te”, etc. It thunders and lightens terribly; then the Spirit riseth.]

SPIRIT. Adsum.

SPIRIT. Ask what thou wilt. That I had said and done!

M. JOURDAIN. Asnath, By the eternal God, whose name and power Thou tremblest at, answer that I shall ask; For till thou speak thou shalt not pass from hence.

BOLINGBROKE. [Reads.] First of the King: what shall of him become?

SPIRIT. The duke yet lives that Henry shall depose, But him outlive and die a violent death.

[As the Spirit speaks, Southwell writes the answer.]

BOLINGBROKE. [Reads.] What fates await the Duke of Suffolk?

SPIRIT. By water shall he die and take his end.

BOLINGBROKE. [Reads.] What shall befall the Duke of Somerset?

SPIRIT. Let him shun castles. Safer shall he be upon the sandy plains Than where castles mounted stand. Have done, for more I hardly can endure.

BOLINGBROKE. Descend to darkness and the burning lake! False fiend, avoid!

[Thunder and lightning. Exit Spirit.]

Enter the Duke of York and the Duke of Buckingham with their Guard, and Sir Humphrey Stafford, and break in.

YORK. Lay hands upon these traitors and their trash. Beldam, I think we watched you at an inch. What, madam, are you there? The King and commonweal Are deeply indebted for this piece of pains. My Lord Protector will, I doubt it not, See you well guerdoned for these good deserts.

ELEANOR. Not half so bad as thine to England’s king, Injurious duke, that threatest where’s no cause.

BUCKINGHAM. True, madam, none at all. What call you this? Away with them! Let them be clapped up close And kept asunder.—You, madam, shall with us.— Stafford, take her to thee.

[Exit Stafford.]

[Exeunt above, Duchess and Hume, guarded.]

We’ll see your trinkets here all forthcoming. All, away!

[Exeunt guard with Jourdain, Southwell, Bolingbroke, etc.]

YORK. Lord Buckingham, methinks you watched her well. A pretty plot, well chosen to build upon! Now, pray, my lord, let’s see the devil’s writ. What have we here? [Reads.] The duke yet lives that Henry shall depose. But him outlive and die a violent death. Why, this is just Aio te, Aeacida, Romanos vincere posse. Well, to the rest: Tell me what fate awaits the Duke of Suffolk? By water shall he die and take his end. What shall betide the Duke of Somerset? Let him shun castles; Safer shall he be upon the sandy plains Than where castles mounted stand. Come, come, my lords, these oracles Are hardly attained, and hardly understood. The King is now in progress towards Saint Albans, With him the husband of this lovely lady. Thither go these news as fast as horse can carry them. A sorry breakfast for my Lord Protector.

BUCKINGHAM. Your Grace shall give me leave, my Lord of York, To be the post, in hope of his reward.

YORK. At your pleasure, my good lord.

[Exit Buckingham.]

Who’s within there, ho!

Enter a Servingman.

Invite my Lords of Salisbury and Warwick To sup with me tomorrow night. Away!

SCENE I. Saint Albans

Enter the King, Queen, Gloucester, Cardinal and Suffolk with Falconers hallooing.

QUEEN MARGARET. Believe me, lords, for flying at the brook I saw not better sport these seven years’ day; Yet, by your leave, the wind was very high, And, ten to one, old Joan had not gone out.

KING HENRY. But what a point, my lord, your falcon made, And what a pitch she flew above the rest! To see how God in all His creatures works! Yea, man and birds are fain of climbing high.

SUFFOLK. No marvel, an it like your majesty, My Lord Protector’s hawks do tower so well; They know their master loves to be aloft, And bears his thoughts above his falcon’s pitch.

GLOUCESTER. My lord, ’tis but a base ignoble mind That mounts no higher than a bird can soar.

CARDINAL. I thought as much. He would be above the clouds.

GLOUCESTER. Ay, my Lord Cardinal, how think you by that? Were it not good your grace could fly to heaven?

KING HENRY. The treasury of everlasting joy.

CARDINAL. Thy heaven is on earth; thine eyes and thoughts Beat on a crown, the treasure of thy heart, Pernicious Protector, dangerous peer, That smooth’st it so with king and commonweal!

GLOUCESTER. What, cardinal, is your priesthood grown peremptory? Tantaene animis coelestibus irae? Churchmen so hot? Good uncle, hide such malice. With such holiness can you do it?

SUFFOLK. No malice, sir; no more than well becomes So good a quarrel and so bad a peer.

GLOUCESTER. As who, my lord?

SUFFOLK. Why, as you, my lord, An ’t like your lordly Lord Protectorship.

GLOUCESTER. Why, Suffolk, England knows thine insolence.

QUEEN MARGARET. And thy ambition, Gloucester.

KING HENRY. I prithee, peace, good queen, And whet not on these furious peers; For blessed are the peacemakers on earth.

CARDINAL. Let me be blessed for the peace I make Against this proud Protector, with my sword!

GLOUCESTER. [Aside to Cardinal.] Faith, holy uncle, would ’twere come to that!

CARDINAL. [Aside to Gloucester.] Marry, when thou dar’st.

GLOUCESTER. [Aside to Cardinal.] Make up no factious numbers for the matter, In thine own person answer thy abuse.

CARDINAL. [Aside to Gloucester.] Ay, where thou dar’st not peep; an if thou dar’st, This evening, on the east side of the grove.

KING HENRY. How now, my lords?

CARDINAL. Believe me, cousin Gloucester, Had not your man put up the fowl so suddenly, We had had more sport.—[Aside to Gloucester.] Come with thy two-hand sword.

GLOUCESTER. True, uncle. [Aside to Cardinal.] Are ye advised? The east side of the grove?

CARDINAL. [Aside to Gloucester.] I am with you.

KING HENRY. Why, how now, uncle Gloucester?

GLOUCESTER. Talking of hawking; nothing else, my lord. [Aside to Cardinal.] Now, by God’s mother, priest, I’ll shave your crown for this, Or all my fence shall fail.

CARDINAL. [Aside to Gloucester.] Medice, teipsum.— Protector, see to ’t well, protect yourself.

KING HENRY. The winds grow high; so do your stomachs, lords. How irksome is this music to my heart! When such strings jar, what hope of harmony? I pray, my lords, let me compound this strife.

Enter a Townsman of Saint Albans, crying, “A miracle!”

GLOUCESTER. What means this noise? Fellow, what miracle dost thou proclaim?

TOWNSMAN. A miracle! A miracle!

SUFFOLK. Come to the King, and tell him what miracle.

TOWNSMAN. Forsooth, a blind man at Saint Alban’s shrine, Within this half hour, hath received his sight, A man that ne’er saw in his life before.

KING HENRY. Now, God be praised, that to believing souls Gives light in darkness, comfort in despair!

Enter the Mayor of Saint Albans and his brethren, bearing Simpcox between two in a chair, Simpcox’s Wife following.

CARDINAL. Here comes the townsmen on procession, To present your highness with the man.

KING HENRY. Great is his comfort in this earthly vale, Although by his sight his sin be multiplied.

GLOUCESTER. Stand by, my masters. Bring him near the King. His highness’ pleasure is to talk with him.

KING HENRY. Good fellow, tell us here the circumstance, That we for thee may glorify the Lord. What, hast thou been long blind and now restored?

SIMPCOX. Born blind, an ’t please your grace.

WIFE. Ay, indeed, was he.

SUFFOLK. What woman is this?

WIFE. His wife, an ’t like your worship.

GLOUCESTER. Hadst thou been his mother, thou couldst have better told.

KING HENRY. Where wert thou born?

SIMPCOX. At Berwick in the north, an ’t like your grace.

KING HENRY. Poor soul, God’s goodness hath been great to thee. Let never day nor night unhallowed pass, But still remember what the Lord hath done.

QUEEN MARGARET. Tell me, good fellow, cam’st thou here by chance, Or of devotion, to this holy shrine?

SIMPCOX. God knows, of pure devotion; being called A hundred times and oftener, in my sleep, By good Saint Alban, who said “Simpcox, come, Come, offer at my shrine, and I will help thee.”

WIFE. Most true, forsooth; and many time and oft Myself have heard a voice to call him so.

CARDINAL. What, art thou lame?

SIMPCOX. Ay, God Almighty help me!

SUFFOLK. How cam’st thou so?

SIMPCOX. A fall off of a tree.

WIFE. A plum-tree, master.

GLOUCESTER. How long hast thou been blind?

SIMPCOX. O, born so, master.

GLOUCESTER. What, and wouldst climb a tree?

SIMPCOX. But that in all my life, when I was a youth.

WIFE. Too true; and bought his climbing very dear.

GLOUCESTER. Mass, thou lov’dst plums well, that wouldst venture so.

SIMPCOX. Alas, good master, my wife desired some damsons, And made me climb, with danger of my life.

GLOUCESTER. A subtle knave! But yet it shall not serve.— Let me see thine eyes. Wink now. Now open them. In my opinion yet thou seest not well.

SIMPCOX. Yes, master, clear as day, I thank God and Saint Alban.

GLOUCESTER. Sayst thou me so? What colour is this cloak of?

SIMPCOX. Red, master, red as blood.

GLOUCESTER. Why, that’s well said. What colour is my gown of?

SIMPCOX. Black, forsooth, coal-black as jet.

KING HENRY. Why, then, thou know’st what colour jet is of?

SUFFOLK. And yet, I think, jet did he never see.

GLOUCESTER. But cloaks and gowns before this day, a many.

WIFE. Never before this day in all his life.

SIMPCOX. Alas, master, I know not.

GLOUCESTER. What’s his name?

GLOUCESTER. Tell me, sirrah, what’s my name?

SIMPCOX. I know not.

SIMPCOX. No, indeed, master.

GLOUCESTER. What’s thine own name?

GLOUCESTER. Nor his?

SIMPCOX. Sander Simpcox, an if it please you, master.

GLOUCESTER. Then, Sander, sit there, the lyingest knave in Christendom. If thou hadst been born blind, thou mightst as well have known all our names as thus to name the several colours we do wear. Sight may distinguish of colours; but suddenly to nominate them all, it is impossible.—My lords, Saint Alban here hath done a miracle; and would ye not think his cunning to be great that could restore this cripple to his legs again?

SIMPCOX. O master, that you could!

GLOUCESTER. My masters of Saint Albans, have you not beadles in your town, and things called whips?

MAYOR. Yes, my lord, if it please your grace.

GLOUCESTER. Then send for one presently.

MAYOR. Sirrah, go fetch the beadle hither straight.

[Exit a Townsman.]

GLOUCESTER. Now fetch me a stool hither by and by.—Now, sirrah, if you mean to save yourself from whipping, leap me over this stool and run away.

SIMPCOX. Alas, master, I am not able to stand alone. You go about to torture me in vain.

GLOUCESTER. Well, sir, we must have you find your legs. Sirrah beadle, whip him till he leap over that same stool.

Enter a Beadle with whips.

BEADLE. I will, my lord.—Come on, sirrah; off with your doublet quickly.

SIMPCOX. Alas, master, what shall I do? I am not able to stand.

[After the Beadle hath hit him once, he leaps over the stool and runs away; and they follow and cry, “A miracle!”]

KING HENRY. O God, seest Thou this, and bearest so long?

QUEEN MARGARET. It made me laugh to see the villain run.

GLOUCESTER. Follow the knave, and take this drab away.

WIFE. Alas, sir, we did it for pure need.

GLOUCESTER. Let them be whipped through every market town Till they come to Berwick, from whence they came.

[Exeunt Wife, Beadle, Mayor, etc.]

CARDINAL. Duke Humphrey has done a miracle today.

SUFFOLK. True, made the lame to leap and fly away.

GLOUCESTER. But you have done more miracles than I. You made in a day, my lord, whole towns to fly.

Enter Buckingham.

KING HENRY. What tidings with our cousin Buckingham?

BUCKINGHAM. Such as my heart doth tremble to unfold. A sort of naughty persons, lewdly bent, Under the countenance and confederacy Of Lady Eleanor, the Protector’s wife, The ringleader and head of all this rout, Have practised dangerously against your state, Dealing with witches and with conjurers, Whom we have apprehended in the fact, Raising up wicked spirits from under ground, Demanding of King Henry’s life and death, And other of your highness’ Privy Council, As more at large your Grace shall understand.

CARDINAL. [Aside to Gloucester.] And so, my Lord Protector, by this means Your lady is forthcoming yet at London. This news, I think, hath turned your weapon’s edge; ’Tis like, my lord, you will not keep your hour.

GLOUCESTER. Ambitious churchman, leave to afflict my heart. Sorrow and grief have vanquished all my powers, And, vanquished as I am, I yield to thee, Or to the meanest groom.

KING HENRY. O God, what mischiefs work the wicked ones, Heaping confusion on their own heads thereby!

QUEEN MARGARET. Gloucester, see here the tainture of thy nest, And look thyself be faultless, thou wert best.

GLOUCESTER. Madam, for myself, to heaven I do appeal How I have loved my king and commonweal; And, for my wife, I know not how it stands. Sorry I am to hear what I have heard. Noble she is; but if she have forgot Honour and virtue, and conversed with such As like to pitch defile nobility, I banish her my bed and company And give her as a prey to law and shame That hath dishonoured Gloucester’s honest name.

KING HENRY. Well, for this night we will repose us here; Tomorrow toward London back again, To look into this business thoroughly, And call these foul offenders to their answers, And poise the cause in Justice’ equal scales, Whose beam stands sure, whose rightful cause prevails.

SCENE II. London. The Duke of York’s Garden

Enter York, Salisbury and Warwick.

YORK. Now, my good Lords of Salisbury and Warwick, Our simple supper ended, give me leave In this close walk to satisfy myself In craving your opinion of my title, Which is infallible, to England’s crown.

SALISBURY. My lord, I long to hear it at full.

WARWICK. Sweet York, begin; and if thy claim be good, The Nevilles are thy subjects to command.

YORK. Then thus: Edward the Third, my lords, had seven sons: The first, Edward the Black Prince, Prince of Wales; The second, William of Hatfield; and the third, Lionel, Duke of Clarence; next to whom Was John of Gaunt, the Duke of Lancaster; The fifth was Edmund Langley, Duke of York; The sixth was Thomas of Woodstock, Duke of Gloucester; William of Windsor was the seventh and last. Edward the Black Prince died before his father And left behind him Richard, his only son, Who after Edward the Third’s death reigned as king, Till Henry Bolingbroke, Duke of Lancaster, The eldest son and heir of John of Gaunt, Crowned by the name of Henry the Fourth, Seized on the realm, deposed the rightful king, Sent his poor queen to France, from whence she came, And him to Pomfret; where, as all you know, Harmless Richard was murdered traitorously.

WARWICK. Father, the Duke hath told the truth; Thus got the house of Lancaster the crown.

YORK. Which now they hold by force and not by right; For Richard, the first son’s heir, being dead, The issue of the next son should have reigned.

SALISBURY. But William of Hatfield died without an heir.

YORK. The third son, Duke of Clarence, from whose line I claim the crown, had issue, Philippa, a daughter, Who married Edmund Mortimer, Earl of March. Edmund had issue, Roger, Earl of March; Roger had issue, Edmund, Anne, and Eleanor.

SALISBURY. This Edmund, in the reign of Bolingbroke, As I have read, laid claim unto the crown And, but for Owen Glendower, had been king, Who kept him in captivity till he died. But to the rest.

YORK. His eldest sister, Anne, My mother, being heir unto the crown, Married Richard Earl of Cambridge, who was son To Edmund Langley, Edward the Third’s fifth son. By her I claim the kingdom; she was heir To Roger, Earl of March, who was the son Of Edmund Mortimer, who married Philippa, Sole daughter unto Lionel, Duke of Clarence. So, if the issue of the elder son Succeed before the younger, I am king.

WARWICK. What plain proceeding is more plain than this? Henry doth claim the crown from John of Gaunt, The fourth son; York claims it from the third. Till Lionel’s issue fails, his should not reign; It fails not yet, but flourishes in thee And in thy sons, fair slips of such a stock. Then, father Salisbury, kneel we together, And in this private plot be we the first That shall salute our rightful sovereign With honour of his birthright to the crown.

BOTH. Long live our sovereign Richard, England’s king!

SUFFOLK. Lady, vouchsafe to listen what I say.

YORK. We thank you, lords. But I am not your king Till I be crowned, and that my sword be stained With heart-blood of the house of Lancaster; And that’s not suddenly to be performed, But with advice and silent secrecy. Do you as I do in these dangerous days— Wink at the Duke of Suffolk’s insolence, At Beaufort’s pride, at Somerset’s ambition, At Buckingham, and all the crew of them, Till they have snared the shepherd of the flock, That virtuous prince, the good Duke Humphrey. ’Tis that they seek; and they, in seeking that, Shall find their deaths, if York can prophesy.

SALISBURY. My lord, break we off; we know your mind at full.

WARWICK. My heart assures me that the Earl of Warwick Shall one day make the Duke of York a king.

YORK. And, Neville, this I do assure myself: Richard shall live to make the Earl of Warwick The greatest man in England but the king.

SCENE III. A Hall of Justice

Sound trumpets. Enter the King, the Queen, Gloucester, York, Suffolk and Salisbury; the Duchess of Gloucester, Margery Jourdain, Southwell, Hume and Bolingbroke under guard.

KING HENRY. Stand forth, Dame Eleanor Cobham, Gloucester’s wife. In sight of God and us, your guilt is great; Receive the sentence of the law for sins Such as by God’s book are adjudged to death. You four, from hence to prison back again; From thence unto the place of execution. The witch in Smithfield shall be burnt to ashes, And you three shall be strangled on the gallows. You, madam, for you are more nobly born, Despoiled of your honour in your life, Shall, after three days’ open penance done, Live in your country here in banishment, With Sir John Stanley in the Isle of Man.

ELEANOR. Welcome is banishment; welcome were my death.

GLOUCESTER. Eleanor, the law, thou seest, hath judged thee. I cannot justify whom the law condemns.

[Exeunt Duchess and the other prisoners, guarded.]

Mine eyes are full of tears, my heart of grief. Ah, Humphrey, this dishonour in thine age Will bring thy head with sorrow to the ground!— I beseech your majesty, give me leave to go; Sorrow would solace, and mine age would ease.

KING HENRY. Stay, Humphrey Duke of Gloucester. Ere thou go, Give up thy staff. Henry will to himself Protector be; and God shall be my hope, My stay, my guide, and lantern to my feet. And go in peace, Humphrey, no less beloved Than when thou wert Protector to thy king.

QUEEN MARGARET. I see no reason why a king of years Should be to be protected like a child. God and King Henry govern England’s realm! Give up your staff, sir, and the King his realm.

GLOUCESTER. My staff? Here, noble Henry, is my staff. As willingly do I the same resign As e’er thy father Henry made it mine; And even as willingly at thy feet I leave it As others would ambitiously receive it. Farewell, good King. When I am dead and gone, May honourable peace attend thy throne.

QUEEN MARGARET. Why, now is Henry King and Margaret Queen, And Humphrey Duke of Gloucester scarce himself, That bears so shrewd a maim. Two pulls at once; His lady banished, and a limb lopped off. This staff of honour raught, there let it stand Where it best fits to be, in Henry’s hand.

SUFFOLK. Thus droops this lofty pine and hangs his sprays; Thus Eleanor’s pride dies in her youngest days.

YORK. Lords, let him go.—Please it your majesty, This is the day appointed for the combat, And ready are the appellant and defendant, The armourer and his man, to enter the lists, So please your highness to behold the fight.

QUEEN MARGARET. Ay, good my lord; for purposely therefore Left I the court to see this quarrel tried.

KING HENRY. I’ God’s name, see the lists and all things fit. Here let them end it, and God defend the right!

YORK. I never saw a fellow worse bested, Or more afraid to fight, than is the appellant, The servant of his armourer, my lords.

Enter at one door Horner the armourer, and his Neighbours, drinking to him so much that he is drunk; and he enters with a drum before him and his staff with a sandbag fastened to it; and at the other door Peter, his man, with a drum and sandbag, and Prentices drinking to him.

1 NEIGHBOUR. Here, neighbour Horner, I drink to you in a cup of sack; and fear not, neighbour, you shall do well enough.

2 NEIGHBOUR. And here, neighbour, here’s a cup of charneco.

3 NEIGHBOUR. And here’s a pot of good double beer, neighbour. Drink, and fear not your man.

HORNER. Let it come, i’ faith, and I’ll pledge you all; and a fig for Peter!

1 PRENTICE. Here, Peter, I drink to thee, and be not afraid.

2 PRENTICE. Be merry, Peter, and fear not thy master. Fight for credit of the prentices.

PETER. I thank you all. Drink, and pray for me, I pray you, for I think I have taken my last draught in this world. Here, Robin, an if I die, I give thee my apron; and, Will, thou shalt have my hammer; and here, Tom, take all the money that I have. O Lord bless me! I pray God, for I am never able to deal with my master, he hath learnt so much fence already.

SALISBURY. Come, leave your drinking and fall to blows. Sirrah, what’s thy name?

PETER. Peter, forsooth.

SALISBURY. Peter? What more?

PETER. Thump.

SALISBURY. Thump! Then see thou thump thy master well.

HORNER. Masters, I am come hither, as it were, upon my man’s instigation, to prove him a knave and myself an honest man; and touching the Duke of York, I will take my death I never meant him any ill, nor the King, nor the Queen; and therefore, Peter, have at thee with a downright blow!

YORK. Dispatch! This knave’s tongue begins to double. Sound, trumpets. Alarum to the combatants!

[They fight, and Peter strikes him down.]

HORNER. Hold, Peter, hold! I confess, I confess treason.

YORK. Take away his weapon.—Fellow, thank God and the good wine in thy master’s way.

PETER. O God, have I overcome mine enemies in this presence? O Peter, thou hast prevailed in right!

KING HENRY. Go, take hence that traitor from our sight, For by his death we do perceive his guilt. And God in justice hath revealed to us The truth and innocence of this poor fellow, Which he had thought to have murdered wrongfully. Come, fellow, follow us for thy reward.

[Sound a flourish. Exeunt.]

SCENE IV. A Street

Enter Gloucester and his Servingmen in mourning cloaks.

GLOUCESTER. Thus sometimes hath the brightest day a cloud, And after summer evermore succeeds Barren winter, with his wrathful nipping cold; So cares and joys abound, as seasons fleet. Sirs, what’s o’clock?

SERVINGMEN. Ten, my lord.

GLOUCESTER. Ten is the hour that was appointed me To watch the coming of my punished duchess. Uneath may she endure the flinty streets, To tread them with her tender-feeling feet. Sweet Nell, ill can thy noble mind abrook The abject people gazing on thy face With envious looks, laughing at thy shame, That erst did follow thy proud chariot wheels When thou didst ride in triumph through the streets. But, soft! I think she comes; and I’ll prepare My tear-stained eyes to see her miseries.

Enter the Duchess of Gloucester in a white sheet, and a taper burning in her hand; with Sir John Stanley, the Sheriff, and Officers.

SERVINGMEN. So please your Grace, we’ll take her from the sheriff.

GLOUCESTER. No, stir not for your lives; let her pass by.

ELEANOR. Come you, my lord, to see my open shame? Now thou dost penance too. Look how they gaze! See how the giddy multitude do point, And nod their heads, and throw their eyes on thee. Ah, Gloucester, hide thee from their hateful looks, And, in thy closet pent up, rue my shame, And ban thine enemies, both mine and thine!

GLOUCESTER. Be patient, gentle Nell, forget this grief.

ELEANOR. Ah, Gloucester, teach me to forget myself! For whilst I think I am thy married wife And thou a prince, Protector of this land, Methinks I should not thus be led along, Mailed up in shame, with papers on my back, And followed with a rabble that rejoice To see my tears and hear my deep-fet groans. The ruthless flint doth cut my tender feet, And when I start, the envious people laugh And bid me be advised how I tread. Ah, Humphrey, can I bear this shameful yoke? Trowest thou that e’er I’ll look upon the world, Or count them happy that enjoy the sun? No, dark shall be my light and night my day; To think upon my pomp shall be my hell. Sometimes I’ll say, I am Duke Humphrey’s wife, And he a prince and ruler of the land; Yet so he ruled and such a prince he was As he stood by whilst I, his forlorn duchess, Was made a wonder and a pointing-stock To every idle rascal follower. But be thou mild and blush not at my shame, Nor stir at nothing till the axe of death Hang over thee, as, sure, it shortly will. For Suffolk, he that can do all in all With her that hateth thee and hates us all, And York and impious Beaufort, that false priest, Have all limed bushes to betray thy wings; And fly thou how thou canst, they’ll tangle thee. But fear not thou until thy foot be snared, Nor never seek prevention of thy foes.

GLOUCESTER. Ah, Nell, forbear! Thou aimest all awry. I must offend before I be attainted; And had I twenty times so many foes, And each of them had twenty times their power, All these could not procure me any scathe So long as I am loyal, true, and crimeless. Wouldst have me rescue thee from this reproach? Why, yet thy scandal were not wiped away, But I in danger for the breach of law. Thy greatest help is quiet, gentle Nell. I pray thee, sort thy heart to patience; These few days’ wonder will be quickly worn.

Enter a Herald.

HERALD. I summon your grace to his majesty’s parliament, Holden at Bury the first of this next month.

GLOUCESTER. And my consent ne’er asked herein before? This is close dealing. Well, I will be there.

[Exit Herald.]

My Nell, I take my leave; and, master sheriff, Let not her penance exceed the King’s commission.

SHERIFF. An ’t please your grace, here my commission stays, And Sir John Stanley is appointed now To take her with him to the Isle of Man.

GLOUCESTER. Must you, Sir John, protect my lady here?

STANLEY. So am I given in charge, may ’t please your grace.

GLOUCESTER. Entreat her not the worse in that I pray You use her well. The world may laugh again, And I may live to do you kindness if You do it her. And so, Sir John, farewell.

ELEANOR. What, gone, my lord, and bid me not farewell?

GLOUCESTER. Witness my tears, I cannot stay to speak.

[Exeunt Gloucester and Servingmen.]

ELEANOR. Art thou gone too? All comfort go with thee, For none abides with me; my joy is death; Death, at whose name I oft have been afeard, Because I wished this world’s eternity. Stanley, I prithee, go, and take me hence, I care not whither, for I beg no favour, Only convey me where thou art commanded.

STANLEY. Why, madam, that is to the Isle of Man, There to be used according to your state.

ELEANOR. That’s bad enough, for I am but reproach; And shall I then be used reproachfully?

STANLEY. Like to a duchess, and Duke Humphrey’s lady; According to that state you shall be used.

ELEANOR. Sheriff, farewell, and better than I fare, Although thou hast been conduct of my shame.

SHERIFF. It is my office; and, madam, pardon me.

ELEANOR. Ay, ay, farewell; thy office is discharged. Come, Stanley, shall we go?

STANLEY. Madam, your penance done, throw off this sheet, And go we to attire you for our journey.

ELEANOR. My shame will not be shifted with my sheet, No, it will hang upon my richest robes And show itself, attire me how I can. Go, lead the way, I long to see my prison.

SCENE I. The Abbey at Bury St. Edmund’s

Sound a sennet. Enter the King, the Queen, Cardinal Beaufort, Suffolk, York, Buckingham, Salisbury and Warwick to the Parliament.

KING HENRY. I muse my Lord of Gloucester is not come. ’Tis not his wont to be the hindmost man, Whate’er occasion keeps him from us now.

QUEEN MARGARET. Can you not see, or will ye not observe The strangeness of his altered countenance? With what a majesty he bears himself, How insolent of late he is become, How proud, how peremptory, and unlike himself? We know the time since he was mild and affable; And if we did but glance a far-off look, Immediately he was upon his knee, That all the court admired him for submission. But meet him now, and be it in the morn When everyone will give the time of day, He knits his brow and shows an angry eye And passeth by with stiff unbowed knee, Disdaining duty that to us belongs. Small curs are not regarded when they grin, But great men tremble when the lion roars; And Humphrey is no little man in England. First note that he is near you in descent, And should you fall, he is the next will mount. Me seemeth then it is no policy, Respecting what a rancorous mind he bears And his advantage following your decease, That he should come about your royal person Or be admitted to your Highness’ Council. By flattery hath he won the commons’ hearts; And when he please to make commotion, ’Tis to be feared they all will follow him. Now ’tis the spring, and weeds are shallow-rooted; Suffer them now, and they’ll o’ergrow the garden And choke the herbs for want of husbandry. The reverent care I bear unto my lord Made me collect these dangers in the Duke. If it be fond, can it a woman’s fear; Which fear if better reasons can supplant, I will subscribe and say I wronged the Duke. My Lord of Suffolk, Buckingham, and York, Reprove my allegation if you can, Or else conclude my words effectual.

SUFFOLK. Well hath your highness seen into this Duke; And, had I first been put to speak my mind, I think I should have told your grace’s tale. The Duchess by his subornation, Upon my life, began her devilish practices; Or, if he were not privy to those faults, Yet, by reputing of his high descent, As next the King he was successive heir, And such high vaunts of his nobility— Did instigate the bedlam brain-sick Duchess By wicked means to frame our sovereign’s fall. Smooth runs the water where the brook is deep, And in his simple show he harbours treason. The fox barks not when he would steal the lamb. No, no, my sovereign, Gloucester is a man Unsounded yet and full of deep deceit.

CARDINAL. Did he not, contrary to form of law, Devise strange deaths for small offences done?

YORK. And did he not, in his protectorship, Levy great sums of money through the realm For soldiers’ pay in France, and never sent it? By means whereof the towns each day revolted.

BUCKINGHAM. Tut, these are petty faults to faults unknown, Which time will bring to light in smooth Duke Humphrey.

KING HENRY. My lords, at once: the care you have of us To mow down thorns that would annoy our foot Is worthy praise; but, shall I speak my conscience, Our kinsman Gloucester is as innocent From meaning treason to our royal person As is the sucking lamb or harmless dove. The Duke is virtuous, mild, and too well given To dream on evil or to work my downfall.

QUEEN MARGARET. Ah, what’s more dangerous than this fond affiance? Seems he a dove? His feathers are but borrowed, For he’s disposed as the hateful raven. Is he a lamb? His skin is surely lent him, For he’s inclined as is the ravenous wolves. Who cannot steal a shape that means deceit? Take heed, my lord; the welfare of us all Hangs on the cutting short that fraudful man.

Enter Somerset.

SOMERSET. All health unto my gracious sovereign!

KING HENRY. Welcome, Lord Somerset. What news from France?

SOMERSET. That all your interest in those territories Is utterly bereft you; all is lost.

KING HENRY. Cold news, Lord Somerset; but God’s will be done.

YORK. [Aside.] Cold news for me, for I had hope of France As firmly as I hope for fertile England. Thus are my blossoms blasted in the bud, And caterpillars eat my leaves away; But I will remedy this gear ere long, Or sell my title for a glorious grave.

GLOUCESTER. All happiness unto my lord the King! Pardon, my liege, that I have staid so long.

SUFFOLK. Nay, Gloucester, know that thou art come too soon, Unless thou wert more loyal than thou art. I do arrest thee of high treason here.

GLOUCESTER. Well, Suffolk, thou shalt not see me blush, Nor change my countenance for this arrest. A heart unspotted is not easily daunted. The purest spring is not so free from mud As I am clear from treason to my sovereign. Who can accuse me? Wherein am I guilty?

YORK. ’Tis thought, my lord, that you took bribes of France, And, being Protector, stayed the soldiers’ pay, By means whereof his highness hath lost France.

GLOUCESTER. Is it but thought so? What are they that think it? I never robbed the soldiers of their pay, Nor ever had one penny bribe from France. So help me God, as I have watched the night, Ay, night by night, in studying good for England! That doit that e’er I wrested from the King, Or any groat I hoarded to my use, Be brought against me at my trial day! No, many a pound of mine own proper store, Because I would not tax the needy commons, Have I dispursed to the garrisons And never asked for restitution.

CARDINAL. It serves you well, my lord, to say so much.

GLOUCESTER. I say no more than truth, so help me God!

YORK. In your protectorship you did devise Strange tortures for offenders never heard of, That England was defamed by tyranny.

GLOUCESTER. Why, ’tis well known that, whiles I was Protector, Pity was all the fault that was in me; For I should melt at an offender’s tears, And lowly words were ransom for their fault. Unless it were a bloody murderer, Or foul felonious thief that fleeced poor passengers, I never gave them condign punishment. Murder indeed, that bloody sin, I tortured Above the felon or what trespass else.

SUFFOLK. My lord, these faults are easy, quickly answered; But mightier crimes are laid unto your charge Whereof you cannot easily purge yourself. I do arrest you in his highness’ name, And here commit you to my Lord Cardinal To keep until your further time of trial.

KING HENRY. My Lord of Gloucester, ’tis my special hope That you will clear yourself from all suspense. My conscience tells me you are innocent.

GLOUCESTER. Ah, gracious lord, these days are dangerous. Virtue is choked with foul ambition, And charity chased hence by rancour’s hand; Foul subornation is predominant, And equity exiled your highness’ land. I know their complot is to have my life; And if my death might make this island happy And prove the period of their tyranny, I would expend it with all willingness. But mine is made the prologue to their play; For thousands more, that yet suspect no peril, Will not conclude their plotted tragedy. Beaufort’s red sparkling eyes blab his heart’s malice, And Suffolk’s cloudy brow his stormy hate; Sharp Buckingham unburdens with his tongue The envious load that lies upon his heart; And dogged York, that reaches at the moon, Whose overweening arm I have plucked back, By false accuse doth level at my life. And you, my sovereign lady, with the rest, Causeless have laid disgraces on my head And with your best endeavour have stirred up My liefest liege to be mine enemy. Ay, all of you have laid your heads together— Myself had notice of your conventicles— And all to make away my guiltless life. I shall not want false witness to condemn me, Nor store of treasons to augment my guilt. The ancient proverb will be well effected: “A staff is quickly found to beat a dog.”

CARDINAL. My liege, his railing is intolerable. If those that care to keep your royal person From treason’s secret knife and traitor’s rage Be thus upbraided, chid, and rated at, And the offender granted scope of speech, ’Twill make them cool in zeal unto your grace.

SUFFOLK. Hath he not twit our sovereign lady here With ignominious words, though clerkly couched, As if she had suborned some to swear False allegations to o’erthrow his state?

QUEEN MARGARET. But I can give the loser leave to chide.

GLOUCESTER. Far truer spoke than meant. I lose, indeed. Beshrew the winners, for they played me false! And well such losers may have leave to speak.

BUCKINGHAM. He’ll wrest the sense and hold us here all day. Lord Cardinal, he is your prisoner.

CARDINAL. Sirs, take away the Duke, and guard him sure.

GLOUCESTER. Ah, thus King Henry throws away his crutch Before his legs be firm to bear his body. Thus is the shepherd beaten from thy side, And wolves are gnarling who shall gnaw thee first. Ah, that my fear were false; ah, that it were! For, good King Henry, thy decay I fear.

[Exit Gloucester, guarded.]

KING HENRY. My lords, what to your wisdoms seemeth best Do, or undo, as if ourself were here.

QUEEN MARGARET. What, will your highness leave the parliament?

KING HENRY. Ay, Margaret; my heart is drowned with grief, Whose flood begins to flow within mine eyes, My body round engirt with misery; For what’s more miserable than discontent? Ah, uncle Humphrey, in thy face I see The map of honour, truth, and loyalty; And yet, good Humphrey, is the hour to come That e’er I proved thee false or feared thy faith. What louring star now envies thy estate That these great lords and Margaret our Queen Do seek subversion of thy harmless life? Thou never didst them wrong nor no man wrong. And as the butcher takes away the calf And binds the wretch and beats it when it strains, Bearing it to the bloody slaughterhouse, Even so remorseless have they borne him hence; And as the dam runs lowing up and down, Looking the way her harmless young one went, And can do naught but wail her darling’s loss, Even so myself bewails good Gloucester’s case With sad unhelpful tears, and with dimmed eyes Look after him, and cannot do him good, So mighty are his vowed enemies. His fortunes I will weep and ’twixt each groan Say “Who’s a traitor? Gloucester he is none.”

[Exeunt all but Queen, Cardinal Beaufort, Suffolk and York; Somerset remains apart.]

QUEEN MARGARET. Free lords, cold snow melts with the sun’s hot beams. Henry my lord is cold in great affairs, Too full of foolish pity; and Gloucester’s show Beguiles him, as the mournful crocodile With sorrow snares relenting passengers, Or as the snake, rolled in a flowering bank, With shining checkered slough, doth sting a child That for the beauty thinks it excellent. Believe me, lords, were none more wise than I— And yet herein I judge mine own wit good— This Gloucester should be quickly rid the world, To rid us from the fear we have of him.

CARDINAL. That he should die is worthy policy, But yet we want a colour for his death. ’Tis meet he be condemned by course of law.

SUFFOLK. But, in my mind, that were no policy. The King will labour still to save his life, The commons haply rise to save his life, And yet we have but trivial argument, More than mistrust, that shows him worthy death.

YORK. So that, by this, you would not have him die.

SUFFOLK. Ah, York, no man alive so fain as I!

YORK. ’Tis York that hath more reason for his death. But, my Lord Cardinal, and you, my Lord of Suffolk, Say as you think, and speak it from your souls: Were ’t not all one an empty eagle were set To guard the chicken from a hungry kite, As place Duke Humphrey for the King’s Protector?

QUEEN MARGARET. So the poor chicken should be sure of death.

SUFFOLK. Madam, ’tis true; and were ’t not madness then To make the fox surveyor of the fold, Who being accused a crafty murderer, His guilt should be but idly posted over Because his purpose is not executed? No, let him die in that he is a fox, By nature proved an enemy to the flock, Before his chaps be stained with crimson blood, As Humphrey, proved by reasons, to my liege. And do not stand on quillets how to slay him; Be it by gins, by snares, by subtlety, Sleeping or waking, ’tis no matter how, So he be dead; for that is good deceit Which mates him first that first intends deceit.

QUEEN MARGARET. Thrice-noble Suffolk, ’tis resolutely spoke.

SUFFOLK. Not resolute, except so much were done, For things are often spoke and seldom meant; But that my heart accordeth with my tongue, Seeing the deed is meritorious, And to preserve my sovereign from his foe, Say but the word, and I will be his priest.

CARDINAL. But I would have him dead, my Lord of Suffolk, Ere you can take due orders for a priest. Say you consent and censure well the deed, And I’ll provide his executioner. I tender so the safety of my liege.

SUFFOLK. Here is my hand, the deed is worthy doing.

QUEEN MARGARET. And so say I.

YORK. And I. And now we three have spoke it, It skills not greatly who impugns our doom.

Enter a Post.

POST. Great lords, from Ireland am I come amain To signify that rebels there are up And put the Englishmen unto the sword. Send succours, lords, and stop the rage betime, Before the wound do grow uncurable; For, being green, there is great hope of help.

CARDINAL. A breach that craves a quick expedient stop! What counsel give you in this weighty cause?

YORK. That Somerset be sent as regent thither. ’Tis meet that lucky ruler be employed; Witness the fortune he hath had in France.

SOMERSET. If York, with all his far-fet policy, Had been the regent there instead of me, He never would have stayed in France so long.

YORK. No, not to lose it all as thou hast done. I rather would have lost my life betimes Than bring a burden of dishonour home By staying there so long till all were lost. Show me one scar charactered on thy skin; Men’s flesh preserved so whole do seldom win.

QUEEN MARGARET. Nay then, this spark will prove a raging fire If wind and fuel be brought to feed it with. No more, good York. Sweet Somerset, be still. Thy fortune, York, hadst thou been regent there, Might happily have proved far worse than his.

YORK. What, worse than naught? Nay, then a shame take all!

SOMERSET. And, in the number, thee that wishest shame!

CARDINAL. My Lord of York, try what your fortune is. Th’ uncivil kerns of Ireland are in arms And temper clay with blood of Englishmen. To Ireland will you lead a band of men, Collected choicely, from each county some, And try your hap against the Irishmen?

YORK. I will, my lord, so please his majesty.

SUFFOLK. Why, our authority is his consent, And what we do establish he confirms. Then, noble York, take thou this task in hand.

YORK. I am content. Provide me soldiers, lords, Whiles I take order for mine own affairs.

SUFFOLK. A charge, Lord York, that I will see performed. But now return we to the false Duke Humphrey.

CARDINAL. No more of him; for I will deal with him That henceforth he shall trouble us no more. And so break off; the day is almost spent. Lord Suffolk, you and I must talk of that event.

YORK. My Lord of Suffolk, within fourteen days At Bristol I expect my soldiers; For there I’ll ship them all for Ireland.

SUFFOLK. I’ll see it truly done, my Lord of York.

[Exeunt all but York.]

YORK. Now, York, or never, steel thy fearful thoughts, And change misdoubt to resolution. Be that thou hop’st to be, or what thou art Resign to death; it is not worth th’ enjoying. Let pale-faced fear keep with the mean-born man And find no harbour in a royal heart. Faster than springtime showers comes thought on thought, And not a thought but thinks on dignity. My brain, more busy than the labouring spider Weaves tedious snares to trap mine enemies. Well, nobles, well, ’tis politicly done, To send me packing with an host of men; I fear me you but warm the starved snake, Who, cherished in your breasts, will sting your hearts. ’Twas men I lacked, and you will give them me; I take it kindly, yet be well assured You put sharp weapons in a madman’s hands. Whiles I in Ireland nourish a mighty band, I will stir up in England some black storm Shall blow ten thousand souls to heaven or hell; And this fell tempest shall not cease to rage Until the golden circuit on my head, Like to the glorious sun’s transparent beams, Do calm the fury of this mad-bred flaw. And for a minister of my intent, I have seduced a headstrong Kentishman, John Cade of Ashford, To make commotion, as full well he can, Under the title of John Mortimer. In Ireland have I seen this stubborn Cade Oppose himself against a troop of kerns, And fought so long till that his thighs with darts Were almost like a sharp-quilled porpentine; And in the end being rescued, I have seen Him caper upright like a wild Morisco, Shaking the bloody darts as he his bells. Full often, like a shag-haired crafty kern, Hath he conversed with the enemy, And undiscovered come to me again And given me notice of their villainies. This devil here shall be my substitute; For that John Mortimer, which now is dead, In face, in gait, in speech, he doth resemble. By this I shall perceive the commons’ mind, How they affect the house and claim of York. Say he be taken, racked, and tortured, I know no pain they can inflict upon him Will make him say I moved him to those arms. Say that he thrive, as ’tis great like he will, Why then from Ireland come I with my strength And reap the harvest which that rascal sowed. For Humphrey being dead, as he shall be, And Henry put apart, the next for me.

SCENE II. Bury St. Edmund’s. A Room of State

Enter two or three Murderers running over the stage, from the murder of Duke Humphrey.

1 MURDERER. Run to my Lord of Suffolk; let him know We have dispatched the Duke as he commanded.

2 MURDERER. O that it were to do! What have we done? Didst ever hear a man so penitent?

Enter Suffolk.

1 MURDERER. Here comes my lord.

SUFFOLK. Now, sirs, have you dispatched this thing?

1 MURDERER. Ay, my good lord, he’s dead.

SUFFOLK. Why, that’s well said. Go, get you to my house; I will reward you for this venturous deed. The King and all the peers are here at hand. Have you laid fair the bed? Is all things well, According as I gave directions?

1 MURDERER. ’Tis, my good lord.

SUFFOLK. Away, be gone!

[Exeunt Murderers.]

Sound trumpets. Enter the King, the Queen, Cardinal Beaufort, Somerset with attendants.

KING HENRY. Go, call our uncle to our presence straight; Say we intend to try his grace today If he be guilty, as ’tis published.

SUFFOLK. I’ll call him presently, my noble lord.

KING HENRY. Lords, take your places; and, I pray you all, Proceed no straiter ’gainst our uncle Gloucester Than from true evidence of good esteem He be approved in practice culpable.

QUEEN MARGARET. God forbid any malice should prevail That faultless may condemn a nobleman! Pray God he may acquit him of suspicion!

KING HENRY. I thank thee, Meg; these words content me much.

How now? Why look’st thou pale? Why tremblest thou? Where is our uncle? What’s the matter, Suffolk?

SUFFOLK. Dead in his bed, my lord; Gloucester is dead.

QUEEN MARGARET. Marry, God forfend!

CARDINAL. God’s secret judgment! I did dream tonight The Duke was dumb and could not speak a word.

[The King swoons.]

QUEEN MARGARET. How fares my lord? Help, lords! the King is dead.

SOMERSET. Rear up his body; wring him by the nose.

QUEEN MARGARET. Run, go, help, help! O Henry, ope thine eyes!

SUFFOLK. He doth revive again. Madam, be patient.

KING HENRY. O heavenly God!

QUEEN MARGARET. How fares my gracious lord?

SUFFOLK. Comfort, my sovereign! Gracious Henry, comfort!

KING HENRY. What, doth my Lord of Suffolk comfort me? Came he right now to sing a raven’s note, Whose dismal tune bereft my vital powers, And thinks he that the chirping of a wren, By crying comfort from a hollow breast, Can chase away the first-conceived sound? Hide not thy poison with such sugared words; Lay not thy hands on me. Forbear, I say! Their touch affrights me as a serpent’s sting. Thou baleful messenger, out of my sight! Upon thy eyeballs murderous tyranny Sits in grim majesty to fright the world. Look not upon me, for thine eyes are wounding. Yet do not go away; come, basilisk, And kill the innocent gazer with thy sight. For in the shade of death I shall find joy, In life but double death, now Gloucester’s dead.

QUEEN MARGARET. Why do you rate my Lord of Suffolk thus? Although the Duke was enemy to him, Yet he most Christian-like laments his death. And for myself, foe as he was to me, Might liquid tears or heart-offending groans Or blood-consuming sighs recall his life, I would be blind with weeping, sick with groans, Look pale as primrose with blood-drinking sighs, And all to have the noble Duke alive. What know I how the world may deem of me? For it is known we were but hollow friends. It may be judged I made the Duke away; So shall my name with slander’s tongue be wounded And princes’ courts be filled with my reproach. This get I by his death. Ay me, unhappy! To be a queen, and crowned with infamy!

KING HENRY. Ah, woe is me for Gloucester, wretched man!

QUEEN MARGARET. Be woe for me, more wretched than he is. What, dost thou turn away and hide thy face? I am no loathsome leper. Look on me. What, art thou, like the adder, waxen deaf? Be poisonous too and kill thy forlorn Queen. Is all thy comfort shut in Gloucester’s tomb? Why, then, Dame Margaret was ne’er thy joy. Erect his statue and worship it, And make my image but an alehouse sign. Was I for this nigh wracked upon the sea And twice by awkward wind from England’s bank Drove back again unto my native clime? What boded this, but well forewarning wind Did seem to say “Seek not a scorpion’s nest, Nor set no footing on this unkind shore?” What did I then, but cursed the gentle gusts And he that loosed them forth their brazen caves And bid them blow towards England’s blessed shore Or turn our stern upon a dreadful rock? Yet Aeolus would not be a murderer, But left that hateful office unto thee. The pretty-vaulting sea refused to drown me, Knowing that thou wouldst have me drowned on shore With tears as salt as sea, through thy unkindness. The splitting rocks cowered in the sinking sands And would not dash me with their ragged sides, Because thy flinty heart, more hard than they, Might in thy palace perish Margaret. As far as I could ken thy chalky cliffs, When from thy shore the tempest beat us back, I stood upon the hatches in the storm, And when the dusky sky began to rob My earnest-gaping sight of thy land’s view, I took a costly jewel from my neck— A heart it was, bound in with diamonds— And threw it towards thy land. The sea received it, And so I wished thy body might my heart. And even with this I lost fair England’s view, And bid mine eyes be packing with my heart, And called them blind and dusky spectacles, For losing ken of Albion’s wished coast. How often have I tempted Suffolk’s tongue, The agent of thy foul inconstancy, To sit and witch me, as Ascanius did When he to madding Dido would unfold His father’s acts commenced in burning Troy! Am I not witched like her? Or thou not false like him? Ay me, I can no more! Die, Margaret, For Henry weeps that thou dost live so long.

Noise within. Enter Warwick, Salisbury and many Commons.

WARWICK. It is reported, mighty sovereign, That good Duke Humphrey traitorously is murdered By Suffolk and the Cardinal Beaufort’s means. The commons, like an angry hive of bees That want their leader, scatter up and down And care not who they sting in his revenge. Myself have calmed their spleenful mutiny, Until they hear the order of his death.

KING HENRY. That he is dead, good Warwick, ’tis too true; But how he died God knows, not Henry. Enter his chamber, view his breathless corpse, And comment then upon his sudden death.

WARWICK. That shall I do, my liege.—Stay, Salisbury, With the rude multitude till I return.

[Warwick exits through one door; Salisbury and Commons exit through another.]

KING HENRY. O Thou that judgest all things, stay my thoughts, My thoughts that labour to persuade my soul Some violent hands were laid on Humphrey’s life. If my suspect be false, forgive me, God, For judgment only doth belong to Thee. Fain would I go to chafe his paly lips With twenty thousand kisses, and to drain Upon his face an ocean of salt tears, To tell my love unto his dumb deaf trunk, And with my fingers feel his hand unfeeling; But all in vain are these mean obsequies. And to survey his dead and earthy image, What were it but to make my sorrow greater?

Enter Warwick and others, bearing Gloucester’s body on a bed.

WARWICK. Come hither, gracious sovereign, view this body.

KING HENRY. That is to see how deep my grave is made, For with his soul fled all my worldly solace; For seeing him, I see my life in death.

WARWICK. As surely as my soul intends to live With that dread King that took our state upon Him To free us from His Father’s wrathful curse, I do believe that violent hands were laid Upon the life of this thrice-famed duke.

SUFFOLK. A dreadful oath, sworn with a solemn tongue! What instance gives Lord Warwick for his vow?

WARWICK. See how the blood is settled in his face. Oft have I seen a timely-parted ghost, Of ashy semblance, meagre, pale, and bloodless, Being all descended to the labouring heart, Who, in the conflict that it holds with death, Attracts the same for aidance ’gainst the enemy, Which with the heart there cools and ne’er returneth To blush and beautify the cheek again. But see, his face is black and full of blood, His eyeballs further out than when he lived, Staring full ghastly like a strangled man; His hair upreared, his nostrils stretched with struggling, His hands abroad displayed, as one that grasped And tugged for life and was by strength subdued. Look, on the sheets his hair, you see, is sticking; His well-proportioned beard made rough and rugged, Like to the summer’s corn by tempest lodged. It cannot be but he was murdered here; The least of all these signs were probable.

SUFFOLK. Why, Warwick, who should do the Duke to death? Myself and Beaufort had him in protection, And we, I hope, sir, are no murderers.

WARWICK. But both of you were vowed Duke Humphrey’s foes, And you, forsooth, had the good Duke to keep. ’Tis like you would not feast him like a friend, And ’tis well seen he found an enemy.

QUEEN MARGARET. Then you, belike, suspect these noblemen As guilty of Duke Humphrey’s timeless death.

WARWICK. Who finds the heifer dead and bleeding fresh And sees fast by a butcher with an axe, But will suspect ’twas he that made the slaughter? Who finds the partridge in the puttock’s nest But may imagine how the bird was dead, Although the kite soar with unbloodied beak? Even so suspicious is this tragedy.

QUEEN MARGARET. Are you the butcher, Suffolk? Where’s your knife? Is Beaufort termed a kite? Where are his talons?

SUFFOLK. I wear no knife to slaughter sleeping men, But here’s a vengeful sword, rusted with ease, That shall be scoured in his rancorous heart That slanders me with murder’s crimson badge. Say, if thou dar’st, proud Lord of Warwickshire, That I am faulty in Duke Humphrey’s death.

[Exeunt Cardinal, Somerset and others.]

WARWICK. What dares not Warwick, if false Suffolk dare him?

QUEEN MARGARET. He dares not calm his contumelious spirit, Nor cease to be an arrogant controller, Though Suffolk dare him twenty thousand times.

WARWICK. Madam, be still, with reverence may I say; For every word you speak in his behalf Is slander to your royal dignity.

SUFFOLK. Blunt-witted lord, ignoble in demeanour! If ever lady wronged her lord so much, Thy mother took into her blameful bed Some stern untutored churl, and noble stock Was graft with crab-tree slip, whose fruit thou art, And never of the Nevilles’ noble race.

WARWICK. But that the guilt of murder bucklers thee And I should rob the deathsman of his fee, Quitting thee thereby of ten thousand shames, And that my sovereign’s presence makes me mild, I would, false murderous coward, on thy knee Make thee beg pardon for thy passed speech And say it was thy mother that thou meant’st, That thou thyself wast born in bastardy; And after all this fearful homage done, Give thee thy hire and send thy soul to hell, Pernicious blood-sucker of sleeping men!

SUFFOLK. Thou shalt be waking while I shed thy blood, If from this presence thou dar’st go with me.

WARWICK. Away even now, or I will drag thee hence. Unworthy though thou art, I’ll cope with thee And do some service to Duke Humphrey’s ghost.

[Exeunt Suffolk and Warwick.]

KING HENRY. What stronger breastplate than a heart untainted? Thrice is he armed that hath his quarrel just, And he but naked, though locked up in steel, Whose conscience with injustice is corrupted.

QUEEN MARGARET. What noise is this?

Enter Suffolk and Warwick with their weapons drawn.

KING HENRY. Why, how now, lords? Your wrathful weapons drawn Here in our presence? Dare you be so bold? Why, what tumultuous clamour have we here?

SUFFOLK. The traitorous Warwick with the men of Bury Set all upon me, mighty sovereign.

SALISBURY. [To the Commons, entering.] Sirs, stand apart; the King shall know your mind.— Dread lord, the commons send you word by me, Unless Lord Suffolk straight be done to death, Or banished fair England’s territories, They will by violence tear him from your palace And torture him with grievous lingering death. They say, by him the good Duke Humphrey died; They say, in him they fear your highness’ death; And mere instinct of love and loyalty, Free from a stubborn opposite intent, As being thought to contradict your liking, Makes them thus forward in his banishment. They say, in care of your most royal person, That if your highness should intend to sleep And charge that no man should disturb your rest, In pain of your dislike or pain of death, Yet, notwithstanding such a strait edict, Were there a serpent seen, with forked tongue, That slyly glided towards your majesty, It were but necessary you were waked, Lest, being suffered in that harmful slumber, The mortal worm might make the sleep eternal. And therefore do they cry, though you forbid, That they will guard you, whe’er you will or no, From such fell serpents as false Suffolk is, With whose envenomed and fatal sting Your loving uncle, twenty times his worth, They say, is shamefully bereft of life.

COMMONS. [Within.] An answer from the King, my Lord of Salisbury!

SUFFOLK. ’Tis like the commons, rude unpolished hinds, Could send such message to their sovereign. But you, my lord, were glad to be employed, To show how quaint an orator you are. But all the honour Salisbury hath won Is that he was the lord ambassador Sent from a sort of tinkers to the King.

COMMONS. [Within.] An answer from the King, or we will all break in!

KING HENRY. Go, Salisbury, and tell them all from me, I thank them for their tender loving care; And had I not been cited so by them, Yet did I purpose as they do entreat. For, sure, my thoughts do hourly prophesy Mischance unto my state by Suffolk’s means. And therefore, by His majesty I swear, Whose far unworthy deputy I am, He shall not breathe infection in this air But three days longer, on the pain of death.

QUEEN MARGARET. O Henry, let me plead for gentle Suffolk!

KING HENRY. Ungentle Queen, to call him gentle Suffolk! No more, I say; if thou dost plead for him, Thou wilt but add increase unto my wrath. Had I but said, I would have kept my word; But when I swear, it is irrevocable. If, after three days’ space, thou here be’st found On any ground that I am ruler of, The world shall not be ransom for thy life. Come, Warwick, come, good Warwick, go with me; I have great matters to impart to thee.

[Exeunt all but Queen and Suffolk.]

QUEEN MARGARET. Mischance and sorrow go along with you! Heart’s discontent and sour affliction Be playfellows to keep you company! There’s two of you; the devil make a third! And threefold vengeance tend upon your steps!

SUFFOLK. Cease, gentle Queen, these execrations, And let thy Suffolk take his heavy leave.

QUEEN MARGARET. Fie, coward woman and soft-hearted wretch! Has thou not spirit to curse thine enemies?

SUFFOLK. A plague upon them! Wherefore should I curse them? Could curses kill, as doth the mandrake’s groan, I would invent as bitter searching terms, As curst, as harsh and horrible to hear, Delivered strongly through my fixed teeth, With full as many signs of deadly hate, As lean-faced Envy in her loathsome cave. My tongue should stumble in mine earnest words; Mine eyes should sparkle like the beaten flint; Mine hair be fixed on end, as one distract; Ay, every joint should seem to curse and ban; And even now my burdened heart would break Should I not curse them. Poison be their drink! Gall, worse than gall, the daintiest that they taste! Their sweetest shade a grove of cypress-trees! Their chiefest prospect murdering basilisks; Their softest touch as smart as lizards’ stings! Their music frightful as the serpent’s hiss, And boding screech-owls make the consort full! All the foul terrors in dark-seated hell—

QUEEN MARGARET. Enough, sweet Suffolk; thou torment’st thyself, And these dread curses, like the sun ’gainst glass, Or like an overcharged gun, recoil And turns the force of them upon thyself.

SUFFOLK. You bade me ban, and will you bid me leave? Now, by the ground that I am banished from, Well could I curse away a winter’s night, Though standing naked on a mountain top Where biting cold would never let grass grow, And think it but a minute spent in sport.

QUEEN MARGARET. O, let me entreat thee cease. Give me thy hand, That I may dew it with my mournful tears; Nor let the rain of heaven wet this place To wash away my woeful monuments. O, could this kiss be printed in thy hand, That thou mightst think upon these by the seal, Through whom a thousand sighs are breathed for thee! So, get thee gone, that I may know my grief; ’Tis but surmised whiles thou art standing by, As one that surfeits thinking on a want. I will repeal thee, or, be well assured, Adventure to be banished myself; And banished I am, if but from thee. Go; speak not to me, even now be gone! O, go not yet! Even thus two friends condemned Embrace and kiss and take ten thousand leaves, Loather a hundred times to part than die. Yet now farewell, and farewell life with thee.

SUFFOLK. Thus is poor Suffolk ten times banished, Once by the King, and three times thrice by thee. ’Tis not the land I care for, wert thou thence. A wilderness is populous enough, So Suffolk had thy heavenly company; For where thou art, there is the world itself, With every several pleasure in the world; And where thou art not, desolation. I can no more. Live thou to joy thy life, Myself no joy in nought but that thou liv’st.

Enter Vaux.

QUEEN MARGARET. Whither goes Vaux so fast? What news, I prithee?

VAUX. To signify unto his majesty That Cardinal Beaufort is at point of death; For suddenly a grievous sickness took him, That makes him gasp and stare and catch the air, Blaspheming God and cursing men on earth. Sometime he talks as if Duke Humphrey’s ghost Were by his side; sometime he calls the King And whispers to his pillow, as to him, The secrets of his overcharged soul. And I am sent to tell his majesty That even now he cries aloud for him.

QUEEN MARGARET. Go tell this heavy message to the King.

[Exit Vaux.]

Ay me! What is this world? What news are these! But wherefore grieve I at an hour’s poor loss, Omitting Suffolk’s exile, my soul’s treasure? Why only, Suffolk, mourn I not for thee, And with the southern clouds contend in tears, Theirs for the earth’s increase, mine for my sorrows’? Now get thee hence. The King, thou know’st, is coming; If thou be found by me thou art but dead.

SUFFOLK. If I depart from thee, I cannot live; And in thy sight to die, what were it else But like a pleasant slumber in thy lap? Here could I breathe my soul into the air, As mild and gentle as the cradle-babe Dying with mother’s dug between its lips; Where, from thy sight, I should be raging mad And cry out for thee to close up mine eyes, To have thee with thy lips to stop my mouth. So shouldst thou either turn my flying soul, Or I should breathe it so into thy body, And then it lived in sweet Elysium. To die by thee were but to die in jest; From thee to die were torture more than death. O, let me stay, befall what may befall!

QUEEN MARGARET. Away! Though parting be a fretful corrosive, It is applied to a deathful wound. To France, sweet Suffolk! Let me hear from thee, For whereso’er thou art in this world’s globe I’ll have an Iris that shall find thee out.

SUFFOLK. I go.

QUEEN MARGARET. And take my heart with thee.

SUFFOLK. A jewel, locked into the woefull’st cask That ever did contain a thing of worth. Even as a splitted bark, so sunder we. This way fall I to death.

QUEEN MARGARET. This way for me.

SCENE III. A Bedchamber

Enter the King, Salisbury and Warwick, to the Cardinal in bed.

KING HENRY. How fares my lord? Speak, Beaufort, to thy sovereign.

CARDINAL. If thou be’st Death, I’ll give thee England’s treasure, Enough to purchase such another island, So thou wilt let me live and feel no pain.

KING HENRY. Ah, what a sign it is of evil life Where death’s approach is seen so terrible!

WARWICK. Beaufort, it is thy sovereign speaks to thee.

CARDINAL. Bring me unto my trial when you will. Died he not in his bed? Where should he die? Can I make men live, whe’er they will or no? O, torture me no more! I will confess. Alive again? Then show me where he is. I’ll give a thousand pound to look upon him. He hath no eyes, the dust hath blinded them. Comb down his hair; look, look, it stands upright, Like lime-twigs set to catch my winged soul. Give me some drink, and bid the apothecary Bring the strong poison that I bought of him.

KING HENRY. O Thou eternal mover of the heavens, Look with a gentle eye upon this wretch! O, beat away the busy meddling fiend That lays strong siege unto this wretch’s soul, And from his bosom purge this black despair!

WARWICK. See how the pangs of death do make him grin!

SALISBURY. Disturb him not; let him pass peaceably.

KING HENRY. Peace to his soul, if God’s good pleasure be! Lord Cardinal, if thou think’st on heaven’s bliss, Hold up thy hand, make signal of thy hope. He dies and makes no sign. O God, forgive him!

WARWICK. So bad a death argues a monstrous life.

KING HENRY. Forbear to judge, for we are sinners all. Close up his eyes, and draw the curtain close, And let us all to meditation.

SCENE I. The Coast of Kent

Alarum. Fight at sea. Ordnance goes off. Enter a Lieutenant, Suffolk, disguised, a prisoner. The Master, a Master’s Mate, Walter Whitmore, and prisoners.

LIEUTENANT. The gaudy, blabbing, and remorseful day Is crept into the bosom of the sea; And now loud-howling wolves arouse the jades That drag the tragic melancholy night, Who, with their drowsy, slow, and flagging wings Clip dead men’s graves and from their misty jaws Breathe foul contagious darkness in the air. Therefore bring forth the soldiers of our prize; For, whilst our pinnace anchors in the Downs, Here shall they make their ransom on the sand, Or with their blood stain this discoloured shore. Master, this prisoner freely give I thee, And thou that art his mate, make boot of this; The other, Walter Whitmore, is thy share.

1 GENTLEMAN. What is my ransom, master? Let me know.

MASTER. A thousand crowns, or else lay down your head.

MATE. And so much shall you give, or off goes yours.

LIEUTENANT. What, think you much to pay two thousand crowns, And bear the name and port of gentlemen? Cut both the villains’ throats—for die you shall. The lives of those which we have lost in fight Be counterpoised with such a petty sum!

1 GENTLEMAN. I’ll give it, sir, and therefore spare my life.

2 GENTLEMAN. And so will I, and write home for it straight.

WHITMORE. [To Suffolk.] I lost mine eye in laying the prize aboard, And therefore to revenge it shalt thou die; And so should these, if I might have my will.

LIEUTENANT. Be not so rash; take ransom, let him live.

SUFFOLK. Look on my George; I am a gentleman. Rate me at what thou wilt, thou shalt be paid.

WHITMORE. And so am I; my name is Walter Whitmore. How now! Why starts thou? What, doth death affright?

SUFFOLK. Thy name affrights me, in whose sound is death. A cunning man did calculate my birth And told me that by water I should die. Yet let not this make thee be bloody-minded; Thy name is Gaultier, being rightly sounded.

WHITMORE. Gaultier or Walter, which it is, I care not. Never yet did base dishonour blur our name But with our sword we wiped away the blot. Therefore, when merchant-like I sell revenge, Broke be my sword, my arms torn and defaced, And I proclaimed a coward through the world!

SUFFOLK. Stay, Whitmore, for thy prisoner is a prince, The Duke of Suffolk, William de la Pole.

WHITMORE. The Duke of Suffolk, muffled up in rags?

SUFFOLK. Ay, but these rags are no part of the Duke. Jove sometime went disguised, and why not I?

LIEUTENANT. But Jove was never slain, as thou shalt be.

SUFFOLK. Obscure and lowly swain, King Henry’s blood, The honourable blood of Lancaster, Must not be shed by such a jaded groom. Hast thou not kissed thy hand and held my stirrup? Bareheaded plodded by my foot-cloth mule, And thought thee happy when I shook my head? How often hast thou waited at my cup, Fed from my trencher, kneeled down at the board, When I have feasted with Queen Margaret? Remember it, and let it make thee crestfallen, Ay, and allay thus thy abortive pride. How in our voiding lobby hast thou stood And duly waited for my coming forth? This hand of mine hath writ in thy behalf, And therefore shall it charm thy riotous tongue.

WHITMORE. Speak, captain, shall I stab the forlorn swain?

LIEUTENANT. First let my words stab him, as he hath me.

SUFFOLK. Base slave, thy words are blunt, and so art thou.

LIEUTENANT. Convey him hence, and on our longboat’s side Strike off his head.

SUFFOLK. Thou dar’st not, for thy own.

LIEUTENANT. Yes, poll!

SUFFOLK. Pole!

LIEUTENANT. Pool! Sir Pool! Lord! Ay, kennel, puddle, sink, whose filth and dirt Troubles the silver spring where England drinks; Now will I dam up this thy yawning mouth For swallowing the treasure of the realm. Thy lips that kissed the Queen shall sweep the ground; And thou that smiledst at good Duke Humphrey’s death Against the senseless winds shalt grin in vain, Who in contempt shall hiss at thee again. And wedded be thou to the hags of hell, For daring to affy a mighty lord Unto the daughter of a worthless king, Having neither subject, wealth, nor diadem. By devilish policy art thou grown great And, like ambitious Sylla, overgorged With gobbets of thy mother’s bleeding heart. By thee Anjou and Maine were sold to France, The false revolting Normans thorough thee Disdain to call us lord, and Picardy Hath slain their governors, surprised our forts, And sent the ragged soldiers wounded home. The princely Warwick, and the Nevilles all, Whose dreadful swords were never drawn in vain, As hating thee are rising up in arms. And now the house of York, thrust from the crown By shameful murder of a guiltless king And lofty, proud, encroaching tyranny, Burns with revenging fire, whose hopeful colours Advance our half-faced sun, striving to shine, Under the which is writ “Invitis nubibus.” The commons here in Kent are up in arms; And, to conclude, reproach and beggary Is crept into the palace of our King, And all by thee.—Away! Convey him hence.

SUFFOLK. O that I were a god, to shoot forth thunder Upon these paltry, servile, abject drudges! Small things make base men proud. This villain here, Being captain of a pinnace, threatens more Than Bargulus the strong Illyrian pirate. Drones suck not eagles’ blood but rob beehives. It is impossible that I should die By such a lowly vassal as thyself. Thy words move rage and not remorse in me. I go of message from the Queen to France; I charge thee waft me safely ’cross the Channel.

LIEUTENANT. Walter.

WHITMORE. Come, Suffolk, I must waft thee to thy death.

SUFFOLK. Pene gelidus timor occupat artus. It is thee I fear.

WHITMORE. Thou shalt have cause to fear before I leave thee. What, are ye daunted now? Now will ye stoop?

1 GENTLEMAN. My gracious lord, entreat him, speak him fair.

SUFFOLK. Suffolk’s imperial tongue is stern and rough, Used to command, untaught to plead for favour. Far be it we should honour such as these With humble suit. No, rather let my head Stoop to the block than these knees bow to any Save to the God of heaven and to my King; And sooner dance upon a bloody pole Than stand uncovered to the vulgar groom. True nobility is exempt from fear; More can I bear than you dare execute.

LIEUTENANT. Hale him away, and let him talk no more.

SUFFOLK. Come, soldiers, show what cruelty ye can, That this my death may never be forgot! Great men oft die by vile Bezonians. A Roman sworder and banditto slave Murdered sweet Tully; Brutus’ bastard hand Stabbed Julius Caesar; savage islanders Pompey the Great; and Suffolk dies by pirates.

[Exeunt Whitmore and others with Suffolk.]

LIEUTENANT. And as for these whose ransom we have set, It is our pleasure one of them depart. Therefore come you with us, and let him go.

[Exeunt all but the 1 Gentleman.]

Enter Whitmore with Suffolk’s body and head.

WHITMORE. There let his head and lifeless body lie, Until the Queen his mistress bury it.

1 GENTLEMAN. O barbarous and bloody spectacle! His body will I bear unto the King. If he revenge it not, yet will his friends; So will the Queen, that living held him dear.

[Exit with the body.]

SCENE II. Blackheath

Enter George Bevis and John Holland.

BEVIS. Come, and get thee a sword, though made of a lath; they have been up these two days.

HOLLAND. They have the more need to sleep now, then.

BEVIS. I tell thee, Jack Cade the clothier means to dress the commonwealth, and turn it, and set a new nap upon it.

HOLLAND. So he had need, for ’tis threadbare. Well, I say it was never merry world in England since gentlemen came up.

BEVIS. O miserable age! Virtue is not regarded in handicraftsmen.

HOLLAND. The nobility think scorn to go in leather aprons.

BEVIS. Nay, more, the King’s Council are no good workmen.

HOLLAND. True; and yet it is said, “Labour in thy vocation,” which is as much to say as, “Let the magistrates be labouring men;” and therefore should we be magistrates.

BEVIS. Thou hast hit it; for there’s no better sign of a brave mind than a hard hand.

HOLLAND. I see them! I see them! There’s Best’s son, the tanner of Wingham.

BEVIS. He shall have the skin of our enemies, to make dog’s leather of.

HOLLAND. And Dick the butcher.

BEVIS. Then is sin struck down like an ox, and iniquity’s throat cut like a calf.

HOLLAND. And Smith the weaver.

BEVIS. Argo, their thread of life is spun.

HOLLAND. Come, come, let’s fall in with them.

Drum. Enter Cade, Dick the Butcher, Smith the Weaver and a Sawyer with infinite numbers carrying long staves.

CADE. We, John Cade, so termed of our supposed father—

DICK. [Aside.] Or rather, of stealing a cade of herrings.

CADE. For our enemies shall fall before us, inspired with the spirit of putting down kings and princes. Command silence.

DICK. Silence!

CADE. My father was a Mortimer—

DICK. [Aside.] He was an honest man and a good bricklayer.

CADE. My mother a Plantagenet—

DICK. [Aside.] I knew her well; she was a midwife.

CADE. My wife descended of the Lacies—

DICK. [Aside.] She was indeed a pedler’s daughter, and sold many laces.

SMITH. [Aside.] But now of late, not able to travel with her furred pack, she washes bucks here at home.

CADE. Therefore am I of an honourable house.

DICK. [Aside.] Ay, by my faith, the field is honourable; and there was he born, under a hedge, for his father had never a house but the cage.

CADE. Valiant I am.

SMITH. [Aside.] He must needs; for beggary is valiant.

CADE. I am able to endure much.

DICK. [Aside.] No question of that; for I have seen him whipped three market-days together.

CADE. I fear neither sword nor fire.

SMITH. [Aside.] He need not fear the sword, for his coat is of proof.

DICK. [Aside.] But methinks he should stand in fear of fire, being burnt i’ th’ hand for stealing of sheep.

CADE. Be brave, then, for your captain is brave, and vows reformation. There shall be in England seven halfpenny loaves sold for a penny; the three-hooped pot shall have ten hoops, and I will make it felony to drink small beer. All the realm shall be in common, and in Cheapside shall my palfrey go to grass. And when I am king, as king I will be—

ALL. God save your majesty!

CADE. I thank you, good people.—There shall be no money; all shall eat and drink on my score, and I will apparel them all in one livery, that they may agree like brothers and worship me their lord.

DICK. The first thing we do, let’s kill all the lawyers.

CADE. Nay, that I mean to do. Is not this a lamentable thing, that of the skin of an innocent lamb should be made parchment; that parchment, being scribbled o’er, should undo a man? Some say the bee stings, but I say ’tis the bee’s wax; for I did but seal once to a thing, and I was never mine own man since. How now? Who’s there?

Enter some, bringing in the Clerk of Chartham.

SMITH. The clerk of Chartham. He can write and read and cast account.

CADE. O, monstrous!

SMITH. We took him setting of boys’ copies.

CADE. Here’s a villain!

SMITH. H’as a book in his pocket with red letters in ’t.

CADE. Nay, then, he is a conjurer.

DICK. Nay, he can make obligations and write court-hand.

CADE. I am sorry for ’t. The man is a proper man, of mine honour; unless I find him guilty, he shall not die.—Come hither, sirrah, I must examine thee. What is thy name?

CLERK. Emmanuel.

DICK. They use to write it on the top of letters. ’Twill go hard with you.

CADE. Let me alone. Dost thou use to write thy name? Or hast thou a mark to thyself, like a honest, plain-dealing man?

CLERK. Sir, I thank God, I have been so well brought up that I can write my name.

ALL. He hath confessed. Away with him! He’s a villain and a traitor.

CADE. Away with him, I say! Hang him with his pen and inkhorn about his neck.

[Exit one with the Clerk.]

Enter Michael.

MICHAEL. Where’s our general?

CADE. Here I am, thou particular fellow.

MICHAEL. Fly, fly, fly! Sir Humphrey Stafford and his brother are hard by, with the King’s forces.

CADE. Stand, villain, stand, or I’ll fell thee down. He shall be encountered with a man as good as himself. He is but a knight, is he?

MICHAEL. No.

CADE. To equal him, I will make myself a knight presently. [Kneels.] Rise up Sir John Mortimer. [Rises.] Now have at him!

Enter Sir Humphrey Stafford and his Brother with Drum and soldiers.

STAFFORD. Rebellious hinds, the filth and scum of Kent, Marked for the gallows, lay your weapons down; Home to your cottages, forsake this groom. The King is merciful, if you revolt.

BROTHER. But angry, wrathful, and inclined to blood, If you go forward. Therefore yield, or die.

CADE. As for these silken-coated slaves, I pass not. It is to you, good people, that I speak, Over whom, in time to come, I hope to reign, For I am rightful heir unto the crown.

STAFFORD. Villain, thy father was a plasterer, And thou thyself a shearman, art thou not?

CADE. And Adam was a gardener.

BROTHER. And what of that?

CADE. Marry, this: Edmund Mortimer, Earl of March, Married the Duke of Clarence’ daughter, did he not?

STAFFORD. Ay, sir.

CADE. By her he had two children at one birth.

BROTHER. That’s false.

CADE. Ay, there’s the question; but I say ’tis true. The elder of them, being put to nurse, Was by a beggar-woman stolen away, And, ignorant of his birth and parentage, Became a bricklayer when he came to age. His son am I; deny it if you can.

DICK. Nay, ’tis too true; therefore he shall be King.

SMITH. Sir, he made a chimney in my father’s house, and the bricks are alive at this day to testify it; therefore deny it not.

STAFFORD. And will you credit this base drudge’s words, That speaks he knows not what?

ALL. Ay, marry, will we; therefore get ye gone.

BROTHER. Jack Cade, the Duke of York hath taught you this.

CADE. [Aside.] He lies, for I invented it myself.—Go to, sirrah, tell the King from me that, for his father’s sake, Henry the Fifth, in whose time boys went to span-counter for French crowns, I am content he shall reign, but I’ll be Protector over him.

DICK. And furthermore, we’ll have the Lord Saye’s head for selling the dukedom of Maine.

CADE. And good reason, for thereby is England mained and fain to go with a staff, but that my puissance holds it up. Fellow kings, I tell you that that Lord Saye hath gelded the commonwealth and made it an eunuch; and more than that, he can speak French, and therefore he is a traitor.

STAFFORD. O gross and miserable ignorance!

CADE. Nay, answer if you can. The Frenchmen are our enemies; go to, then, I ask but this: can he that speaks with the tongue of an enemy be a good counsellor, or no?

ALL. No, no, and therefore we’ll have his head.

BROTHER. Well, seeing gentle words will not prevail, Assail them with the army of the King.

STAFFORD. Herald, away, and throughout every town Proclaim them traitors that are up with Cade; That those which fly before the battle ends May, even in their wives’ and children’s sight, Be hanged up for example at their doors. And you that be the King’s friends, follow me.

[Exeunt the two Staffords and soldiers.]

CADE. And you that love the commons follow me. Now show yourselves men; ’tis for liberty. We will not leave one lord, one gentleman; Spare none but such as go in clouted shoon, For they are thrifty honest men and such As would, but that they dare not, take our parts.

DICK. They are all in order and march toward us.

CADE. But then are we in order when we are most out of order. Come, march forward.

SCENE III. Another part of Blackheath

[Alarums to the fight, wherein both the Staffords are slain. Enter Cade and the rest.

CADE. Where’s Dick, the butcher of Ashford?

DICK. Here, sir.

CADE. They fell before thee like sheep and oxen, and thou behaved’st thyself as if thou hadst been in thine own slaughterhouse. Therefore thus will I reward thee: the Lent shall be as long again as it is, and thou shalt have a licence to kill for a hundred lacking one.

DICK. I desire no more.

CADE. And, to speak truth, thou deservest no less. This monument of the victory will I bear. [putting on Sir Humphrey’s brigandine] And the bodies shall be dragged at my horse heels till I do come to London, where we will have the Mayor’s sword borne before us.

DICK. If we mean to thrive and do good, break open the gaols and let out the prisoners.

CADE. Fear not that, I warrant thee. Come, let’s march towards London.

SCENE IV. London. The Palace

Enter the King with a supplication, and the Queen with Suffolk’s head, the Duke of Buckingham and the Lord Saye.

QUEEN MARGARET. [Aside.] Oft have I heard that grief softens the mind And makes it fearful and degenerate; Think therefore on revenge and cease to weep. But who can cease to weep and look on this? Here may his head lie on my throbbing breast; But where’s the body that I should embrace?

BUCKINGHAM. What answer makes your grace to the rebels’ supplication?

KING HENRY. I’ll send some holy bishop to entreat, For God forbid so many simple souls Should perish by the sword! And I myself, Rather than bloody war shall cut them short, Will parley with Jack Cade their general. But stay, I’ll read it over once again.

QUEEN MARGARET. [Aside.] Ah, barbarous villains! Hath this lovely face Ruled, like a wandering planet, over me, And could it not enforce them to relent That were unworthy to behold the same?

KING HENRY. Lord Saye, Jack Cade hath sworn to have thy head.

SAYE. Ay, but I hope your highness shall have his.

QUEEN MARGARET. No, my love, I should not mourn, but die for thee.

KING HENRY. How now, madam? Still lamenting and mourning for Suffolk’s death? I fear me, love, if that I had been dead, Thou wouldst not have mourned so much for me.

KING HENRY. How now, what news? Why com’st thou in such haste?

MESSENGER. The rebels are in Southwark; fly, my lord! Jack Cade proclaims himself Lord Mortimer, Descended from the Duke of Clarence’ house, And calls your grace usurper openly, And vows to crown himself in Westminster. His army is a ragged multitude Of hinds and peasants, rude and merciless. Sir Humphrey Stafford and his brother’s death Hath given them heart and courage to proceed. All scholars, lawyers, courtiers, gentlemen, They call false caterpillars, and intend their death.

KING HENRY. O graceless men! They know not what they do.

BUCKINGHAM. My gracious lord, retire to Killingworth Until a power be raised to put them down.

QUEEN MARGARET. Ah, were the Duke of Suffolk now alive, These Kentish rebels would be soon appeased!

KING HENRY. Lord Saye, the traitors hate thee; Therefore away with us to Killingworth.

SAYE. So might your grace’s person be in danger. The sight of me is odious in their eyes; And therefore in this city will I stay And live alone as secret as I may.

MESSENGER. Jack Cade hath gotten London Bridge; The citizens fly and forsake their houses. The rascal people, thirsting after prey, Join with the traitor, and they jointly swear To spoil the city and your royal court.

BUCKINGHAM. Then linger not, my lord; away, take horse!

KING HENRY. Come, Margaret. God, our hope, will succour us.

QUEEN MARGARET. [Aside.] My hope is gone, now Suffolk is deceased.

KING HENRY. Farewell, my lord. Trust not the Kentish rebels.

BUCKINGHAM. Trust nobody, for fear you be betrayed.

SAYE. The trust I have is in mine innocence, And therefore am I bold and resolute.

SCENE V. London. The Tower

Enter Lord Scales upon the Tower, walking. Then enter two or three Citizens below.

SCALES. How now? Is Jack Cade slain?

1 CITIZEN. No, my lord, nor likely to be slain; for they have won the Bridge, killing all those that withstand them. The Lord Mayor craves aid of your honour from the Tower to defend the city from the rebels.

SCALES. Such aid as I can spare you shall command, But I am troubled here with them myself; The rebels have assayed to win the Tower. But get you to Smithfield and gather head, And thither I will send you Matthew Gough. Fight for your king, your country, and your lives! And so farewell, for I must hence again.

SCENE VI. London. Cannon Street

Enter Jack Cade and the rest, and strikes his staff on London Stone.

CADE. Now is Mortimer lord of this city. And here, sitting upon London Stone, I charge and command that, of the city’s cost, the Pissing Conduit run nothing but claret wine this first year of our reign. And now henceforward it shall be treason for any that calls me other than Lord Mortimer.

Enter a Soldier, running.

SOLDIER. Jack Cade! Jack Cade!

CADE. Knock him down there.

[They kill him.]

DICK. If this fellow be wise, he’ll never call ye Jack Cade more. I think he hath a very fair warning. My lord, there’s an army gathered together in Smithfield.

CADE. Come then, let’s go fight with them. But first, go and set London Bridge on fire; and, if you can, burn down the Tower too. Come, let’s away.

SCENE VII. London. Smithfield

Alarums. Matthew Gough is slain, and all the rest. Then enter Jack Cade with his company.

CADE. So, sirs. Now go some and pull down the Savoy; others to th’ Inns of Court; down with them all.

DICK. I have a suit unto your lordship.

CADE. Be it a lordship, thou shalt have it for that word.

DICK. Only that the laws of England may come out of your mouth.

HOLLAND. [Aside.] Mass, ’twill be sore law, then; for he was thrust in the mouth with a spear, and ’tis not whole yet.

SMITH. [Aside.] Nay, John, it will be stinking law, for his breath stinks with eating toasted cheese.

CADE. I have thought upon it, it shall be so. Away, burn all the records of the realm. My mouth shall be the parliament of England.

HOLLAND. [Aside.] Then we are like to have biting statutes, unless his teeth be pulled out.

CADE. And henceforward all things shall be in common.

MESSENGER. My lord, a prize, a prize! Here’s the Lord Saye, which sold the towns in France; he that made us pay one-and-twenty fifteens, and one shilling to the pound, the last subsidy.

Enter George Bevis with the Lord Saye.

CADE. Well, he shall be beheaded for it ten times. Ah, thou say, thou serge, nay, thou buckram lord! Now art thou within point-blank of our jurisdiction regal. What canst thou answer to my majesty for giving up of Normandy unto Mounsieur Basimecu, the Dauphin of France? Be it known unto thee by these presence, even the presence of Lord Mortimer, that I am the besom that must sweep the court clean of such filth as thou art. Thou hast most traitorously corrupted the youth of the realm in erecting a grammar school; and whereas, before, our forefathers had no other books but the score and the tally, thou hast caused printing to be used, and, contrary to the King, his crown, and dignity, thou hast built a paper-mill. It will be proved to thy face that thou hast men about thee that usually talk of a noun and a verb, and such abominable words as no Christian ear can endure to hear. Thou hast appointed justices of peace, to call poor men before them about matters they were not able to answer. Moreover, thou hast put them in prison, and because they could not read, thou hast hanged them, when indeed only for that cause they have been most worthy to live. Thou dost ride on a foot-cloth, dost thou not?

SAYE. What of that?

CADE. Marry, thou ought’st not to let thy horse wear a cloak when honester men than thou go in their hose and doublets.

DICK. And work in their shirt too; as myself, for example, that am a butcher.

SAYE. You men of Kent—

DICK. What say you of Kent?

SAYE. Nothing but this; ’tis bona terra, mala gens.

CADE. Away with him, away with him! He speaks Latin.

SAYE. Hear me but speak, and bear me where you will. Kent, in the Commentaries Caesar writ, Is termed the civil’st place of all this isle. Sweet is the country, because full of riches; The people liberal, valiant, active, wealthy; Which makes me hope you are not void of pity. I sold not Maine, I lost not Normandy, Yet to recover them would lose my life. Justice with favour have I always done; Prayers and tears have moved me, gifts could never. When have I aught exacted at your hands Kent to maintain the King, the realm, and you? Large gifts have I bestowed on learned clerks, Because my book preferred me to the King. And seeing ignorance is the curse of God, Knowledge the wing wherewith we fly to heaven, Unless you be possessed with devilish spirits, You cannot but forbear to murder me. This tongue hath parleyed unto foreign kings For your behoof—

CADE. Tut, when struck’st thou one blow in the field?

SAYE. Great men have reaching hands; oft have I struck Those that I never saw, and struck them dead.

GEORGE. O monstrous coward! What, to come behind folks?

SAYE. These cheeks are pale for watching for your good.

CADE. Give him a box o’ th’ ear, and that will make ’em red again.

SAYE. Long sitting to determine poor men’s causes Hath made me full of sickness and diseases.

CADE. Ye shall have a hempen caudle then, and the help of hatchet.

DICK. Why dost thou quiver, man?

SAYE. The palsy, and not fear, provokes me.

CADE. Nay, he nods at us, as who should say, “I’ll be even with you.” I’ll see if his head will stand steadier on a pole or no. Take him away, and behead him.

SAYE. Tell me, wherein have I offended most? Have I affected wealth or honour? Speak. Are my chests filled up with extorted gold? Is my apparel sumptuous to behold? Whom have I injured, that ye seek my death? These hands are free from guiltless bloodshedding, This breast from harbouring foul deceitful thoughts. O, let me live!

CADE. [Aside.] I feel remorse in myself with his words, but I’ll bridle it. He shall die, an it be but for pleading so well for his life. Away with him! He has a familiar under his tongue; he speaks not i’ God’s name. Go, take him away, I say, and strike off his head presently; and then break into his son-in-law’s house, Sir James Cromer, and strike off his head, and bring them both upon two poles hither.

ALL. It shall be done.

SAYE. Ah, countrymen, if when you make your prayers, God should be so obdurate as yourselves, How would it fare with your departed souls? And therefore yet relent, and save my life.

CADE. Away with him! And do as I command ye.

[Exeunt some with Lord Saye.]

The proudest peer in the realm shall not wear a head on his shoulders unless he pay me tribute; there shall not a maid be married but she shall pay to me her maidenhead ere they have it. Men shall hold of me in capite; and we charge and command that their wives be as free as heart can wish or tongue can tell.

DICK. My lord, when shall we go to Cheapside and take up commodities upon our bills?

CADE. Marry, presently.

ALL. O, brave!

Enter one with the heads.

CADE. But is not this braver? Let them kiss one another, for they loved well when they were alive. Now part them again, lest they consult about the giving up of some more towns in France. Soldiers, defer the spoil of the city until night; for with these borne before us instead of maces will we ride through the streets, and at every corner have them kiss. Away!

SCENE VIII. Southwark

Alarum and retreat. Enter Cade and all his rabblement.

CADE. Up Fish Street! Down Saint Magnus’ Corner! Kill and knock down! Throw them into Thames! [Sound a parley.] What noise is this I hear? Dare any be so bold to sound retreat or parley when I command them kill?

Enter Buckingham and old Clifford attended.

BUCKINGHAM. Ay, here they be that dare and will disturb thee. Know, Cade, we come ambassadors from the King Unto the commons, whom thou hast misled, And here pronounce free pardon to them all That will forsake thee and go home in peace.

CLIFFORD. What say ye, countrymen? Will ye relent And yield to mercy whilst ’tis offered you, Or let a rebel lead you to your deaths? Who loves the King and will embrace his pardon, Fling up his cap, and say “God save his Majesty!” Who hateth him and honours not his father, Henry the Fifth, that made all France to quake, Shake he his weapon at us and pass by.

ALL. God save the King! God save the King!

CADE. What, Buckingham and Clifford, are ye so brave? And you, base peasants, do ye believe him? Will you needs be hanged with your pardons about your necks? Hath my sword therefore broke through London gates, that you should leave me at the White Hart in Southwark? I thought ye would never have given out these arms till you had recovered your ancient freedom; but you are all recreants and dastards, and delight to live in slavery to the nobility. Let them break your backs with burdens, take your houses over your heads, ravish your wives and daughters before your faces. For me, I will make shift for one, and so God’s curse light upon you all!

ALL. We’ll follow Cade! We’ll follow Cade!

CLIFFORD. Is Cade the son of Henry the Fifth, That thus you do exclaim you’ll go with him? Will he conduct you through the heart of France And make the meanest of you earls and dukes? Alas, he hath no home, no place to fly to, Nor knows he how to live but by the spoil, Unless by robbing of your friends and us. Were ’t not a shame that whilst you live at jar The fearful French, whom you late vanquished, Should make a start o’er seas and vanquish you? Methinks already in this civil broil I see them lording it in London streets, Crying “Villiago!” unto all they meet. Better ten thousand base-born Cades miscarry Than you should stoop unto a Frenchman’s mercy. To France, to France, and get what you have lost! Spare England, for it is your native coast. Henry hath money, you are strong and manly; God on our side, doubt not of victory.

ALL. A Clifford! A Clifford! We’ll follow the King and Clifford.

CADE. Was ever feather so lightly blown to and fro as this multitude? The name of Henry the Fifth hales them to an hundred mischiefs and makes them leave me desolate. I see them lay their heads together to surprise me. My sword make way for me, for here is no staying.—In despite of the devils and hell, have through the very middest of you! And heavens and honour be witness that no want of resolution in me, but only my followers’ base and ignominious treasons, makes me betake me to my heels.

BUCKINGHAM. What, is he fled? Go some, and follow him; And he that brings his head unto the King Shall have a thousand crowns for his reward.

[Exeunt some of them.]

Follow me, soldiers; we’ll devise a mean To reconcile you all unto the King.

SCENE IX. Kenilworth Castle

Sound trumpets. Enter King, Queen and Somerset on the terrace, aloft.

KING HENRY. Was ever king that joyed an earthly throne And could command no more content than I? No sooner was I crept out of my cradle But I was made a king at nine months old. Was never subject longed to be a king As I do long and wish to be a subject.

Enter Buckingham and old Clifford.

BUCKINGHAM. Health and glad tidings to your majesty!

KING HENRY. Why, Buckingham, is the traitor Cade surprised? Or is he but retired to make him strong?

Enter below multitudes with halters about their necks.

CLIFFORD. He is fled, my lord, and all his powers do yield, And humbly thus, with halters on their necks, Expect your highness’ doom of life or death.

KING HENRY. Then, heaven, set ope thy everlasting gates To entertain my vows of thanks and praise! Soldiers, this day have you redeemed your lives And showed how well you love your prince and country. Continue still in this so good a mind, And Henry, though he be infortunate, Assure yourselves, will never be unkind. And so, with thanks and pardon to you all, I do dismiss you to your several countries.

MESSENGER. Please it your grace to be advertised The Duke of York is newly come from Ireland, And with a puissant and a mighty power Of gallowglasses and stout kerns Is marching hitherward in proud array, And still proclaimeth, as he comes along, His arms are only to remove from thee The Duke of Somerset, whom he terms a traitor.

KING HENRY. Thus stands my state, ’twixt Cade and York distressed, Like to a ship that, having scaped a tempest, Is straightway calmed and boarded with a pirate. But now is Cade driven back, his men dispersed, And now is York in arms to second him. I pray thee, Buckingham, go and meet him, And ask him what’s the reason of these arms. Tell him I’ll send Duke Edmund to the Tower.— And, Somerset, we will commit thee thither, Until his army be dismissed from him.

SOMERSET. My lord, I’ll yield myself to prison willingly, Or unto death, to do my country good.

KING HENRY. In any case, be not too rough in terms, For he is fierce and cannot brook hard language.

BUCKINGHAM. I will, my lord, and doubt not so to deal As all things shall redound unto your good.

KING HENRY. Come, wife, let’s in, and learn to govern better; For yet may England curse my wretched reign.

SCENE X. Kent. Iden’s Garden

Enter Cade.

CADE. Fie on ambitions! Fie on myself, that have a sword and yet am ready to famish! These five days have I hid me in these woods and durst not peep out, for all the country is laid for me; but now am I so hungry that if I might have a lease of my life for a thousand years, I could stay no longer. Wherefore, o’er a brick wall have I climbed into this garden, to see if I can eat grass, or pick a sallet another while, which is not amiss to cool a man’s stomach this hot weather. And I think this word “sallet” was born to do me good; for many a time, but for a sallet, my brain-pan had been cleft with a brown bill; and many a time, when I have been dry and bravely marching, it hath served me instead of a quart pot to drink in; and now the word “sallet” must serve me to feed on.

Enter Iden and his men.

IDEN. Lord, who would live turmoiled in the court And may enjoy such quiet walks as these? This small inheritance my father left me Contenteth me, and worth a monarchy. I seek not to wax great by others’ waning, Or gather wealth, I care not with what envy; Sufficeth that I have maintains my state And sends the poor well pleased from my gate.

CADE. Here’s the lord of the soil come to seize me for a stray, for entering his fee-simple without leave.—Ah, villain, thou wilt betray me and get a thousand crowns of the King by carrying my head to him; but I’ll make thee eat iron like an ostrich, and swallow my sword like a great pin, ere thou and I part.

IDEN. Why, rude companion, whatsoe’er thou be, I know thee not; why, then, should I betray thee? Is ’t not enough to break into my garden And, like a thief, to come to rob my grounds, Climbing my walls in spite of me the owner, But thou wilt brave me with these saucy terms?

CADE. Brave thee? Ay, by the best blood that ever was broached, and beard thee too. Look on me well: I have eat no meat these five days, yet come thou and thy five men, and if I do not leave you all as dead as a doornail, I pray God I may never eat grass more.

IDEN. Nay, it shall ne’er be said, while England stands, That Alexander Iden, an esquire of Kent, Took odds to combat a poor famished man. Oppose thy steadfast-gazing eyes to mine, See if thou canst outface me with thy looks. Set limb to limb and thou art far the lesser; Thy hand is but a finger to my fist, Thy leg a stick compared with this truncheon. My foot shall fight with all the strength thou hast; And if mine arm be heaved in the air, Thy grave is digged already in the earth. As for words, whose greatness answers words, Let this my sword report what speech forbears.

CADE. By my valour, the most complete champion that ever I heard! Steel, if thou turn the edge, or cut not out the burly-boned clown in chines of beef ere thou sleep in thy sheath, I beseech God on my knees thou mayst be turned to hobnails.

[Here they fight and Cade falls.]

O, I am slain! Famine and no other hath slain me. Let ten thousand devils come against me, and give me but the ten meals I have lost, and I’d defy them all. Wither, garden; and be henceforth a burying place to all that do dwell in this house, because the unconquered soul of Cade is fled.

IDEN. Is’t Cade that I have slain, that monstrous traitor? Sword, I will hallow thee for this thy deed, And hang thee o’er my tomb when I am dead. Ne’er shall this blood be wiped from thy point, But thou shalt wear it as a herald’s coat To emblaze the honour that thy master got.

CADE. Iden, farewell, and be proud of thy victory. Tell Kent from me she hath lost her best man, and exhort all the world to be cowards; for I, that never feared any, am vanquished by famine, not by valour.

IDEN. How much thou wrong’st me, heaven be my judge. Die, damned wretch, the curse of her that bare thee! And as I thrust thy body in with my sword, So wish I, I might thrust thy soul to hell. Hence will I drag thee headlong by the heels Unto a dunghill, which shall be thy grave, And there cut off thy most ungracious head, Which I will bear in triumph to the King, Leaving thy trunk for crows to feed upon.

SCENE I. Fields between Dartford and Blackheath

Enter York and his army of Irish, with drum and colours.

YORK. From Ireland thus comes York to claim his right And pluck the crown from feeble Henry’s head. Ring, bells, aloud; burn, bonfires, clear and bright, To entertain great England’s lawful king. Ah, sancta majestas, who would not buy thee dear? Let them obey that knows not how to rule. This hand was made to handle nought but gold. I cannot give due action to my words Except a sword or sceptre balance it. A sceptre shall it have, have I a soul, On which I’ll toss the fleur-de-luce of France.

Whom have we here? Buckingham, to disturb me? The King hath sent him, sure. I must dissemble.

BUCKINGHAM. York, if thou meanest well, I greet thee well.

YORK. Humphrey of Buckingham, I accept thy greeting. Art thou a messenger, or come of pleasure?

BUCKINGHAM. A messenger from Henry, our dread liege, To know the reason of these arms in peace; Or why thou, being a subject as I am, Against thy oath and true allegiance sworn, Should raise so great a power without his leave, Or dare to bring thy force so near the court.

YORK. [Aside.] Scarce can I speak, my choler is so great. O, I could hew up rocks and fight with flint, I am so angry at these abject terms; And now, like Ajax Telamonius, On sheep or oxen could I spend my fury. I am far better born than is the King, More like a king, more kingly in my thoughts. But I must make fair weather yet awhile, Till Henry be more weak and I more strong.— Buckingham, I prithee, pardon me, That I have given no answer all this while; My mind was troubled with deep melancholy. The cause why I have brought this army hither Is to remove proud Somerset from the King, Seditious to his grace and to the state.

BUCKINGHAM. That is too much presumption on thy part; But if thy arms be to no other end, The King hath yielded unto thy demand: The Duke of Somerset is in the Tower.

YORK. Upon thine honour, is he prisoner?

BUCKINGHAM. Upon mine honour, he is prisoner.

YORK. Then, Buckingham, I do dismiss my powers. Soldiers, I thank you all; disperse yourselves; Meet me tomorrow in Saint George’s field, You shall have pay and everything you wish.

And let my sovereign, virtuous Henry, Command my eldest son, nay, all my sons, As pledges of my fealty and love, I’ll send them all as willing as I live. Lands, goods, horse, armour, anything I have Is his to use, so Somerset may die.

BUCKINGHAM. York, I commend this kind submission. We twain will go into his highness’ tent.

Enter King and Attendants.

KING HENRY. Buckingham, doth York intend no harm to us That thus he marcheth with thee arm in arm?

YORK. In all submission and humility York doth present himself unto your highness.

KING HENRY. Then what intends these forces thou dost bring?

YORK. To heave the traitor Somerset from hence And fight against that monstrous rebel Cade, Who since I heard to be discomfited.

Enter Iden with Cade’s head.

IDEN. If one so rude and of so mean condition May pass into the presence of a king, Lo, I present your grace a traitor’s head, The head of Cade, whom I in combat slew.

KING HENRY. The head of Cade! Great God, how just art Thou! O, let me view his visage, being dead, That living wrought me such exceeding trouble. Tell me, my friend, art thou the man that slew him?

IDEN. I was, an ’t like your majesty.

KING HENRY. How art thou called? And what is thy degree?

IDEN. Alexander Iden, that’s my name; A poor esquire of Kent, that loves his King.

BUCKINGHAM. So please it you, my lord, ’twere not amiss He were created knight for his good service.

KING HENRY. Iden, kneel down. [He kneels.] Rise up a knight. We give thee for reward a thousand marks, And will that thou henceforth attend on us.

IDEN. May Iden live to merit such a bounty, And never live but true unto his liege!

[Rises.]

Enter Queen and Somerset.

KING HENRY. See, Buckingham, Somerset comes with the Queen. Go, bid her hide him quickly from the Duke.

QUEEN MARGARET. For thousand Yorks he shall not hide his head, But boldly stand and front him to his face.

YORK. How now? Is Somerset at liberty? Then, York, unloose thy long-imprisoned thoughts, And let thy tongue be equal with thy heart. Shall I endure the sight of Somerset? False king, why hast thou broken faith with me, Knowing how hardly I can brook abuse? “King” did I call thee? No, thou art not king, Not fit to govern and rule multitudes, Which dar’st not, no, nor canst not rule a traitor. That head of thine doth not become a crown; Thy hand is made to grasp a palmer’s staff, And not to grace an awful princely sceptre. That gold must round engirt these brows of mine, Whose smile and frown, like to Achilles’ spear, Is able with the change to kill and cure. Here is a hand to hold a sceptre up And with the same to act controlling laws. Give place! By heaven, thou shalt rule no more O’er him whom heaven created for thy ruler.

SOMERSET. O monstrous traitor! I arrest thee, York, Of capital treason ’gainst the King and crown. Obey, audacious traitor, kneel for grace.

YORK. Wouldst have me kneel? First let me ask of these If they can brook I bow a knee to man. Sirrah, call in my sons to be my bail.

[Exit Attendant.]

I know, ere they will have me go to ward, They’ll pawn their swords for my enfranchisement.

QUEEN MARGARET. Call hither Clifford; bid him come amain, To say if that the bastard boys of York Shall be the surety for their traitor father.

YORK. O blood-bespotted Neapolitan, Outcast of Naples, England’s bloody scourge! The sons of York, thy betters in their birth, Shall be their father’s bail; and bane to those That for my surety will refuse the boys!

Enter Edward and Richard.

See where they come; I’ll warrant they’ll make it good.

Enter old Clifford and his Son.

QUEEN MARGARET. And here comes Clifford to deny their bail.

CLIFFORD. Health and all happiness to my lord the King.

YORK. I thank thee, Clifford. Say, what news with thee? Nay, do not fright us with an angry look. We are thy sovereign, Clifford, kneel again. For thy mistaking so, we pardon thee.

CLIFFORD. This is my king, York, I do not mistake; But thou mistakes me much to think I do. To Bedlam with him! Is the man grown mad?

KING HENRY. Ay, Clifford; a bedlam and ambitious humour Makes him oppose himself against his king.

CLIFFORD. He is a traitor; let him to the Tower, And chop away that factious pate of his.

QUEEN MARGARET. He is arrested, but will not obey; His sons, he says, shall give their words for him.

YORK. Will you not, sons?

EDWARD. Ay, noble father, if our words will serve.

RICHARD. And if words will not, then our weapons shall.

CLIFFORD. Why, what a brood of traitors have we here!

YORK. Look in a glass, and call thy image so. I am thy king, and thou a false-heart traitor. Call hither to the stake my two brave bears, That with the very shaking of their chains They may astonish these fell-lurking curs. Bid Salisbury and Warwick come to me.

Enter the Earls of Warwick and Salisbury.

CLIFFORD. Are these thy bears? We’ll bait thy bears to death And manacle the bearherd in their chains, If thou dar’st bring them to the baiting-place.

RICHARD. Oft have I seen a hot o’erweening cur Run back and bite because he was withheld, Who, being suffered with the bear’s fell paw, Hath clapped his tail between his legs and cried; And such a piece of service will you do If you oppose yourselves to match Lord Warwick.

CLIFFORD. Hence, heap of wrath, foul indigested lump, As crooked in thy manners as thy shape!

YORK. Nay, we shall heat you thoroughly anon.

CLIFFORD. Take heed, lest by your heat you burn yourselves.

KING HENRY. Why, Warwick, hath thy knee forgot to bow? Old Salisbury, shame to thy silver hair, Thou mad misleader of thy brainsick son! What, wilt thou on thy deathbed play the ruffian, And seek for sorrow with thy spectacles? O, where is faith? O, where is loyalty? If it be banished from the frosty head, Where shall it find a harbour in the earth? Wilt thou go dig a grave to find out war, And shame thine honourable age with blood? Why art thou old, and want’st experience? Or wherefore dost abuse it, if thou hast it? For shame, in duty bend thy knee to me That bows unto the grave with mickle age.

SALISBURY. My lord, I have considered with myself The title of this most renowned duke, And in my conscience do repute his grace The rightful heir to England’s royal seat.

KING HENRY. Hast thou not sworn allegiance unto me?

SALISBURY. I have.

KING HENRY. Canst thou dispense with heaven for such an oath?

SALISBURY. It is great sin to swear unto a sin, But greater sin to keep a sinful oath. Who can be bound by any solemn vow To do a murderous deed, to rob a man, To force a spotless virgin’s chastity, To reave the orphan of his patrimony, To wring the widow from her customed right, And have no other reason for this wrong But that he was bound by a solemn oath?

QUEEN MARGARET. A subtle traitor needs no sophister.

KING HENRY. Call Buckingham, and bid him arm himself.

YORK. Call Buckingham, and all the friends thou hast, I am resolved for death or dignity.

CLIFFORD. The first I warrant thee, if dreams prove true.

WARWICK. You were best to go to bed and dream again, To keep thee from the tempest of the field.

CLIFFORD. I am resolved to bear a greater storm Than any thou canst conjure up today; And that I’ll write upon thy burgonet, Might I but know thee by thy household badge.

WARWICK. Now, by my father’s badge, old Neville’s crest, The rampant bear chained to the ragged staff, This day I’ll wear aloft my burgonet, As on a mountain top the cedar shows That keeps his leaves in spite of any storm, Even to affright thee with the view thereof.

CLIFFORD. And from thy burgonet I’ll rend thy bear And tread it under foot with all contempt, Despite the bearherd that protects the bear.

YOUNG CLIFFORD. And so to arms, victorious father, To quell the rebels and their complices.

RICHARD. Fie, charity, for shame! Speak not in spite, For you shall sup with Jesu Christ tonight.

YOUNG CLIFFORD. Foul stigmatic, that’s more than thou canst tell.

RICHARD. If not in heaven, you’ll surely sup in hell.

SCENE II. Saint Albans

The sign of the Castle Inn is displayed. Alarums to the battle. Enter Warwick.

WARWICK. Clifford of Cumberland, ’tis Warwick calls; An if thou dost not hide thee from the bear, Now, when the angry trumpet sounds alarum And dead men’s cries do fill the empty air, Clifford, I say, come forth and fight with me! Proud northern lord, Clifford of Cumberland, Warwick is hoarse with calling thee to arms.

How now, my noble lord? What, all afoot?

YORK. The deadly-handed Clifford slew my steed, But match to match I have encountered him And made a prey for carrion kites and crows Even of the bonny beast he loved so well.

Enter old Clifford.

WARWICK. Of one or both of us the time is come.

YORK. Hold, Warwick, seek thee out some other chase, For I myself must hunt this deer to death.

WARWICK. Then, nobly, York; ’tis for a crown thou fight’st. As I intend, Clifford, to thrive today, It grieves my soul to leave thee unassailed.

CLIFFORD. What seest thou in me, York? Why dost thou pause?

YORK. With thy brave bearing should I be in love, But that thou art so fast mine enemy.

CLIFFORD. Nor should thy prowess want praise and esteem, But that ’tis shown ignobly and in treason.

YORK. So let it help me now against thy sword As I in justice and true right express it!

CLIFFORD. My soul and body on the action both!

YORK. A dreadful lay! Address thee instantly.

[They fight and Clifford falls.]

CLIFFORD. La fin couronne les oeuvres.

YORK. Thus war hath given thee peace, for thou art still. Peace with his soul, heaven, if it be thy will!

Enter young Clifford.

YOUNG CLIFFORD. Shame and confusion! All is on the rout, Fear frames disorder, and disorder wounds Where it should guard. O war, thou son of hell, Whom angry heavens do make their minister, Throw in the frozen bosoms of our part Hot coals of vengeance! Let no soldier fly. He that is truly dedicate to war Hath no self-love; nor he that loves himself Hath not essentially but by circumstance, The name of valour. [Sees his dead father.] O, let the vile world end And the premised flames of the last day Knit earth and heaven together! Now let the general trumpet blow his blast, Particularities and petty sounds To cease! Wast thou ordained, dear father, To lose thy youth in peace, and to achieve The silver livery of advised age, And, in thy reverence and thy chair-days, thus To die in ruffian battle? Even at this sight My heart is turned to stone, and while ’tis mine It shall be stony. York not our old men spares; No more will I their babes; tears virginal Shall be to me even as the dew to fire, And beauty, that the tyrant oft reclaims, Shall to my flaming wrath be oil and flax. Henceforth I will not have to do with pity. Meet I an infant of the house of York, Into as many gobbets will I cut it As wild Medea young Absyrtus did. In cruelty will I seek out my fame.

[He takes him up on his back.]

Come, thou new ruin of old Clifford’s house; As did Aeneas old Anchises bear, So bear I thee upon my manly shoulders; But then Aeneas bare a living load, Nothing so heavy as these woes of mine.

[Exit, bearing off his father.]

Enter Richard and Somerset to fight. Somerset is killed.

RICHARD. So, lie thou there; For underneath an alehouse’ paltry sign, The Castle in Saint Albans, Somerset Hath made the wizard famous in his death. Sword, hold thy temper; heart, be wrathful still! Priests pray for enemies, but princes kill.

Fight. Excursions. Enter King, Queen and others.

QUEEN MARGARET. Away, my lord! You are slow, for shame, away!

KING HENRY. Can we outrun the heavens? Good Margaret, stay.

QUEEN MARGARET. What are you made of? You’ll nor fight nor fly. Now is it manhood, wisdom, and defence To give the enemy way, and to secure us By what we can, which can no more but fly.

[Alarum afar off.]

If you be ta’en, we then should see the bottom Of all our fortunes; but if we haply scape, As well we may, if not through your neglect, We shall to London get, where you are loved And where this breach now in our fortunes made May readily be stopped.

YOUNG CLIFFORD. But that my heart’s on future mischief set, I would speak blasphemy ere bid you fly; But fly you must; uncurable discomfit Reigns in the hearts of all our present parts. Away, for your relief! And we will live To see their day and them our fortune give. Away, my lord, away!

SCENE III. Fields near Saint Albans

Alarum. Retreat. Enter York, Richard, Warwick and Soldiers with drum and colours.

YORK. Of Salisbury, who can report of him, That winter lion, who in rage forgets Aged contusions and all brush of time, And, like a gallant in the brow of youth, Repairs him with occasion? This happy day Is not itself, nor have we won one foot, If Salisbury be lost.

RICHARD. My noble father, Three times today I holp him to his horse, Three times bestrid him; thrice I led him off, Persuaded him from any further act; But still, where danger was, still there I met him, And like rich hangings in a homely house, So was his will in his old feeble body. But, noble as he is, look where he comes.

Now, by my sword, well hast thou fought today.

SALISBURY. By th’ mass, so did we all. I thank you, Richard. God knows how long it is I have to live, And it hath pleased him that three times today You have defended me from imminent death. Well, lords, we have not got that which we have; ’Tis not enough our foes are this time fled, Being opposites of such repairing nature.

YORK. I know our safety is to follow them; For, as I hear, the King is fled to London To call a present court of parliament. Let us pursue him ere the writs go forth. What says Lord Warwick? Shall we after them?

WARWICK. After them? Nay, before them, if we can. Now, by my hand, lords, ’twas a glorious day. Saint Albans battle won by famous York Shall be eternized in all age to come. Sound drums and trumpets, and to London all; And more such days as these to us befall!

THE THIRD PART OF KING HENRY THE SIXTH

ACT I Scene I. London. The Parliament House Scene II. Sandal Castle Scene III. Plains near Sandal Castle Scene IV. The Same

ACT II Scene I. A plain near Mortimer’s Cross in Herefordshire Scene II. Before York Scene III. A field of battle between Towton and Saxton, in Yorkshire Scene IV. Another Part of the Field Scene V. Another Part of the Field Scene VI. Another Part of the Field

ACT III Scene I. A Forest in the North of England Scene II. The Palace Scene III. France. The King’s Palace

ACT IV Scene I. London. The Palace Scene II. A Plain in Warwickshire Scene III. Edward’s Camp near Warwick Scene IV. London. The Palace Scene V. A park near Middleham Castle in Yorkshire Scene VI. London. The Tower Scene VII. Before York Scene VIII. London. The Palace

ACT V Scene I. Coventry Scene II. A Field of Battle near Barnet Scene III. Another Part of the Field Scene IV. Plains near Tewkesbury Scene V. Another part of the Field Scene VI. London. The Tower Scene VII. London. The Palace

KING HENRY the Sixth QUEEN MARGARET PRINCE EDWARD, Prince of Wales, his son DUKE OF SOMERSET DUKE OF EXETER EARL OF OXFORD EARL OF NORTHUMBERLAND EARL OF WESTMORELAND LORD CLIFFORD RICHARD PLANTAGENET, Duke of York EDWARD, Earl of March, afterwards King Edward IV., his son GEORGE, afterwards Duke of Clarence, his son RICHARD, afterwards Duke of Gloucester, his son EDMUND, Earl of Rutland, his son DUKE OF NORFOLK MARQUESS OF MONTAGUE EARL OF WARWICK EARL OF PEMBROKE LORD HASTINGS LORD STAFFORD SIR JOHN MORTIMER, uncle to the Duke of York SIR HUGH MORTIMER, uncle to the Duke of York LADY GREY, afterwards Queen Elizabeth to Edward IV EARL RIVERS, brother to Lady Grey HENRY, Earl of Richmond, a youth SIR WILLIAM STANLEY SIR JOHN MONTGOMERY SIR JOHN SOMERVILLE KING LEWIS the Eleventh, King of France BONA, sister to the French Queen Tutor to Rutland Mayor of York Lieutenant of the Tower A Nobleman Two Keepers A Huntsman A Son that has killed his father A Father that has killed his son

Soldiers, Attendants, Messengers, Watchmen, etc.

SCENE: England and France

SCENE I. London. The Parliament House

Alarum. Enter Duke of York, Edward, Richard, Norfolk, Montague, Warwick and Soldiers, all wearing the white rose.

WARWICK. I wonder how the King escaped our hands.

YORK. While we pursued the horsemen of the north, He slyly stole away and left his men; Whereat the great Lord of Northumberland, Whose warlike ears could never brook retreat, Cheered up the drooping army; and himself, Lord Clifford, and Lord Stafford, all abreast, Charged our main battle’s front, and breaking in, Were by the swords of common soldiers slain.

EDWARD. Lord Stafford’s father, Duke of Buckingham, Is either slain or wounded dangerous; I cleft his beaver with a downright blow. That this is true, father, behold his blood.

[Showing his bloody sword.]

MONTAGUE. And, brother, here’s the Earl of Wiltshire’s blood,

[To York, showing his.]

Whom I encountered as the battles joined.

RICHARD. Speak thou for me, and tell them what I did.

[Throwing down the Duke of Somerset’s head.]

YORK. Richard hath best deserved of all my sons. But is your Grace dead, my Lord of Somerset?

NORFOLK. Such hope have all the line of John of Gaunt!

RICHARD. Thus do I hope to shake King Henry’s head.

WARWICK. And so do I. Victorious Prince of York, Before I see thee seated in that throne Which now the house of Lancaster usurps, I vow by heaven these eyes shall never close. This is the palace of the fearful king, And this the regal seat. Possess it, York, For this is thine, and not King Henry’s heirs’.

YORK. Assist me, then, sweet Warwick, and I will; For hither we have broken in by force.

NORFOLK. We’ll all assist you; he that flies shall die.

YORK. Thanks, gentle Norfolk. Stay by me, my lords; And, soldiers, stay and lodge by me this night.

WARWICK. And when the King comes, offer him no violence, Unless he seek to thrust you out perforce.

YORK. The Queen this day here holds her parliament, But little thinks we shall be of her council. By words or blows here let us win our right.

RICHARD. Armed as we are, let’s stay within this house.

WARWICK. The bloody parliament shall this be called, Unless Plantagenet, Duke of York, be king, And bashful Henry deposed, whose cowardice Hath made us bywords to our enemies.

YORK. Then leave me not, my lords; be resolute. I mean to take possession of my right.

WARWICK. Neither the King, nor he that loves him best, The proudest he that holds up Lancaster, Dares stir a wing if Warwick shake his bells. I’ll plant Plantagenet, root him up who dares. Resolve thee, Richard; claim the English crown.

[Warwick leads York to the throne, who seats himself.]

Flourish. Enter King Henry, Clifford, Northumberland, Westmoreland, Exeter and the rest, all wearing the red rose.

KING HENRY. My lords, look where the sturdy rebel sits, Even in the chair of state! Belike he means, Backed by the power of Warwick, that false peer, To aspire unto the crown and reign as king. Earl of Northumberland, he slew thy father, And thine, Lord Clifford; and you both have vowed revenge On him, his sons, his favourites, and his friends.

NORTHUMBERLAND. If I be not, heavens be revenged on me!

CLIFFORD. The hope thereof makes Clifford mourn in steel.

WESTMORELAND. What, shall we suffer this? Let’s pluck him down. My heart for anger burns. I cannot brook it.

KING HENRY. Be patient, gentle Earl of Westmoreland.

CLIFFORD. Patience is for poltroons, such as he. He durst not sit there had your father lived. My gracious lord, here in the parliament Let us assail the family of York.

NORTHUMBERLAND. Well hast thou spoken, cousin. Be it so.

KING HENRY. Ah, know you not the city favours them, And they have troops of soldiers at their beck?

EXETER. But when the Duke is slain, they’ll quickly fly.

KING HENRY. Far be the thought of this from Henry’s heart, To make a shambles of the Parliament House! Cousin of Exeter, frowns, words, and threats Shall be the war that Henry means to use.

[They advance to the Duke.]

Thou factious Duke of York, descend my throne, And kneel for grace and mercy at my feet; I am thy sovereign.

YORK. I am thine.

EXETER. For shame, come down. He made thee Duke of York.

YORK. ’Twas my inheritance, as the earldom was.

EXETER. Thy father was a traitor to the crown.

WARWICK. Exeter, thou art a traitor to the crown In following this usurping Henry.

CLIFFORD. Whom should he follow but his natural king?

WARWICK. True, Clifford, that’s Richard, Duke of York.

KING HENRY. And shall I stand, and thou sit in my throne?

YORK. It must and shall be so. Content thyself.

WARWICK. Be Duke of Lancaster. Let him be king.

WESTMORELAND. He is both King and Duke of Lancaster; And that the Lord of Westmoreland shall maintain.

WARWICK. And Warwick shall disprove it. You forget That we are those which chased you from the field And slew your fathers, and with colours spread Marched through the city to the palace gates.

NORTHUMBERLAND. Yes, Warwick, I remember it to my grief; And, by his soul, thou and thy house shall rue it.

WESTMORELAND. Plantagenet, of thee and these thy sons, Thy kinsmen, and thy friends, I’ll have more lives Than drops of blood were in my father’s veins.

CLIFFORD. Urge it no more; lest that, instead of words, I send thee, Warwick, such a messenger As shall revenge his death before I stir.

WARWICK. Poor Clifford, how I scorn his worthless threats!

YORK. Will you we show our title to the crown? If not, our swords shall plead it in the field.

KING HENRY. What title hast thou, traitor, to the crown? Thy father was, as thou art, Duke of York; Thy grandfather, Roger Mortimer, Earl of March. I am the son of Henry the Fifth, Who made the Dauphin and the French to stoop, And seized upon their towns and provinces.

WARWICK. Talk not of France, sith thou hast lost it all.

KING HENRY. The Lord Protector lost it, and not I. When I was crowned I was but nine months old.

RICHARD. You are old enough now, and yet, methinks, you lose. Father, tear the crown from the usurper’s head.

EDWARD. Sweet father, do so; set it on your head.

MONTAGUE. Good brother, as thou lov’st and honourest arms, Let’s fight it out and not stand cavilling thus.

RICHARD. Sound drums and trumpets, and the King will fly.

YORK. Sons, peace!

KING HENRY. Peace thou, and give King Henry leave to speak.

WARWICK. Plantagenet shall speak first. Hear him, lords, And be you silent and attentive too, For he that interrupts him shall not live.

KING HENRY. Think’st thou that I will leave my kingly throne, Wherein my grandsire and my father sat? No. First shall war unpeople this my realm; Ay, and their colours, often borne in France, And now in England, to our heart’s great sorrow, Shall be my winding-sheet. Why faint you, lords? My title’s good, and better far than his.

WARWICK. Prove it, Henry, and thou shalt be king.

KING HENRY. Henry the Fourth by conquest got the crown.

YORK. ’Twas by rebellion against his king.

KING HENRY. [Aside.] I know not what to say; my title’s weak. Tell me, may not a king adopt an heir?

YORK. What then?

KING HENRY. An if he may, then am I lawful king; For Richard, in the view of many lords, Resigned the crown to Henry the Fourth, Whose heir my father was, and I am his.

YORK. He rose against him, being his sovereign, And made him to resign his crown perforce.

WARWICK. Suppose, my lords, he did it unconstrained, Think you ’twere prejudicial to his crown?

EXETER. No, for he could not so resign his crown But that the next heir should succeed and reign.

KING HENRY. Art thou against us, Duke of Exeter?

EXETER. His is the right, and therefore pardon me.

YORK. Why whisper you, my lords, and answer not?

EXETER. My conscience tells me he is lawful king.

KING HENRY. [Aside.] All will revolt from me and turn to him.

NORTHUMBERLAND. Plantagenet, for all the claim thou lay’st, Think not that Henry shall be so deposed.

WARWICK. Deposed he shall be, in despite of all.

NORTHUMBERLAND. Thou art deceived. ’Tis not thy southern power, Of Essex, Norfolk, Suffolk, nor of Kent, Which makes thee thus presumptuous and proud, Can set the Duke up in despite of me.

CLIFFORD. King Henry, be thy title right or wrong, Lord Clifford vows to fight in thy defence. May that ground gape and swallow me alive, Where I shall kneel to him that slew my father!

KING HENRY. O Clifford, how thy words revive my heart!

YORK. Henry of Lancaster, resign thy crown. What mutter you, or what conspire you, lords?

WARWICK. Do right unto this princely Duke of York, Or I will fill the house with armed men, And over the chair of state where now he sits, Write up his title with usurping blood.

[He stamps with his foot, and the Soldiers show themselves.]

KING HENRY. My Lord of Warwick, hear but one word: Let me for this my lifetime reign as king.

YORK. Confirm the crown to me, and to mine heirs, And thou shalt reign in quiet while thou liv’st.

KING HENRY. I am content. Richard Plantagenet, Enjoy the kingdom after my decease.

CLIFFORD. What wrong is this unto the Prince your son!

WARWICK. What good is this to England and himself!

WESTMORELAND. Base, fearful, and despairing Henry!

CLIFFORD. How hast thou injured both thyself and us!

WESTMORELAND. I cannot stay to hear these articles.

NORTHUMBERLAND. Nor I.

CLIFFORD. Come, cousin, let us tell the Queen these news.

WESTMORELAND. Farewell, faint-hearted and degenerate king, In whose cold blood no spark of honour bides.

NORTHUMBERLAND. Be thou a prey unto the house of York, And die in bands for this unmanly deed!

CLIFFORD. In dreadful war mayst thou be overcome, Or live in peace abandoned and despised!

[Exeunt Westmoreland, Northumberland and Clifford.]

WARWICK. Turn this way, Henry, and regard them not.

EXETER. They seek revenge, and therefore will not yield.

KING HENRY. Ah, Exeter!

WARWICK. Why should you sigh, my lord?

KING HENRY. Not for myself, Lord Warwick, but my son, Whom I unnaturally shall disinherit. But be it as it may, [To York.] I here entail The crown to thee and to thine heirs for ever; Conditionally, that here thou take an oath To cease this civil war, and whilst I live, To honour me as thy king and sovereign, And neither by treason nor hostility To seek to put me down and reign thyself.

YORK. This oath I willingly take and will perform.

[Coming from the throne.]

WARWICK. Long live King Henry! Plantagenet, embrace him.

KING HENRY. And long live thou, and these thy forward sons!

YORK. Now York and Lancaster are reconciled.

EXETER. Accursed be he that seeks to make them foes!

Sennet. Here they come down.

YORK. Farewell, my gracious lord. I’ll to my castle.

WARWICK. And I’ll keep London with my soldiers.

NORFOLK. And I to Norfolk with my followers.

MONTAGUE. And I unto the sea from whence I came.

[Exeunt York and his Sons, Warwick, Norfolk, Montague and their Soldiers.]

KING HENRY. And I with grief and sorrow to the court.

Enter Queen Margaret and the Prince of Wales.

EXETER. Here comes the Queen, whose looks bewray her anger. I’ll steal away.

KING HENRY. Exeter, so will I.

[Going.]

QUEEN MARGARET. Nay, go not from me; I will follow thee.

KING HENRY. Be patient, gentle Queen, and I will stay.

QUEEN MARGARET. Who can be patient in such extremes? Ah, wretched man, would I had died a maid, And never seen thee, never borne thee son, Seeing thou hast proved so unnatural a father. Hath he deserved to lose his birthright thus? Hadst thou but loved him half so well as I, Or felt that pain which I did for him once, Or nourished him as I did with my blood, Thou wouldst have left thy dearest heart-blood there, Rather than have made that savage duke thine heir And disinherited thine only son.

PRINCE EDWARD. Father, you cannot disinherit me. If you be king, why should not I succeed?

KING HENRY. Pardon me, Margaret; pardon me, sweet son. The Earl of Warwick and the Duke enforced me.

QUEEN MARGARET. Enforced thee! Art thou King, and wilt be forced? I shame to hear thee speak. Ah, timorous wretch, Thou hast undone thyself, thy son, and me, And given unto the house of York such head As thou shalt reign but by their sufferance. To entail him and his heirs unto the crown, What is it but to make thy sepulchre And creep into it far before thy time? Warwick is Chancellor and the lord of Calais; Stern Falconbridge commands the narrow seas; The Duke is made Protector of the realm; And yet shalt thou be safe? Such safety finds The trembling lamb environed with wolves. Had I been there, which am a silly woman, The soldiers should have tossed me on their pikes Before I would have granted to that act. But thou prefer’st thy life before thine honour. And seeing thou dost, I here divorce myself Both from thy table, Henry, and thy bed, Until that act of parliament be repealed Whereby my son is disinherited. The northern lords that have forsworn thy colours Will follow mine if once they see them spread; And spread they shall be, to thy foul disgrace And utter ruin of the house of York. Thus do I leave thee. Come, son, let’s away: Our army is ready; come, we’ll after them.

KING HENRY. Stay, gentle Margaret, and hear me speak.

QUEEN MARGARET. Thou hast spoke too much already. Get thee gone.

KING HENRY. Gentle son Edward, thou wilt stay with me?

QUEEN MARGARET. Ay, to be murdered by his enemies.

PRINCE EDWARD. When I return with victory from the field I’ll see your Grace. Till then I’ll follow her.

QUEEN MARGARET. Come, son, away; we may not linger thus.

[Exeunt Queen Margaret and the Prince.]

KING HENRY. Poor queen! How love to me and to her son Hath made her break out into terms of rage! Revenged may she be on that hateful Duke, Whose haughty spirit, winged with desire, Will cost my crown, and like an empty eagle Tire on the flesh of me and of my son. The loss of those three lords torments my heart. I’ll write unto them and entreat them fair. Come, cousin, you shall be the messenger.

EXETER. And I, I hope, shall reconcile them all.

SCENE II. Sandal Castle

Enter Edward, Richard and Montague.

RICHARD. Brother, though I be youngest, give me leave.

EDWARD. No, I can better play the orator.

MONTAGUE. But I have reasons strong and forcible.

Enter the Duke of York.

YORK. Why, how now, sons and brother, at a strife? What is your quarrel? How began it first?

EDWARD. No quarrel, but a slight contention.

YORK. About what?

RICHARD. About that which concerns your Grace and us: The crown of England, father, which is yours.

YORK. Mine, boy? Not till King Henry be dead.

RICHARD. Your right depends not on his life or death.

EDWARD. Now you are heir, therefore enjoy it now. By giving the house of Lancaster leave to breathe, It will outrun you, father, in the end.

YORK. I took an oath that he should quietly reign.

EDWARD. But for a kingdom any oath may be broken. I would break a thousand oaths to reign one year.

RICHARD. No; God forbid your Grace should be forsworn.

YORK. I shall be, if I claim by open war.

RICHARD. I’ll prove the contrary if you’ll hear me speak.

YORK. Thou canst not, son; it is impossible.

RICHARD. An oath is of no moment, being not took Before a true and lawful magistrate That hath authority over him that swears. Henry had none, but did usurp the place; Then, seeing ’twas he that made you to depose, Your oath, my lord, is vain and frivolous. Therefore, to arms! And, father, do but think How sweet a thing it is to wear a crown, Within whose circuit is Elysium And all that poets feign of bliss and joy. Why do we linger thus? I cannot rest Until the white rose that I wear be dyed Even in the lukewarm blood of Henry’s heart.

YORK. Richard, enough; I will be king, or die. Brother, thou shalt to London presently, And whet on Warwick to this enterprise. Thou, Richard, shalt to the Duke of Norfolk And tell him privily of our intent. You, Edward, shall unto my Lord Cobham, With whom the Kentishmen will willingly rise. In them I trust; for they are soldiers, Witty, courteous, liberal, full of spirit. While you are thus employed, what resteth more But that I seek occasion how to rise, And yet the King not privy to my drift, Nor any of the house of Lancaster?

But stay. What news? Why com’st thou in such post?

MESSENGER. The Queen, with all the northern earls and lords Intend here to besiege you in your castle. She is hard by with twenty thousand men; And therefore fortify your hold, my lord.

YORK. Ay, with my sword. What, think’st thou that we fear them? Edward and Richard, you shall stay with me; My brother Montague shall post to London. Let noble Warwick, Cobham, and the rest, Whom we have left protectors of the King, With powerful policy strengthen themselves, And trust not simple Henry nor his oaths.

MONTAGUE. Brother, I go; I’ll win them, fear it not. And thus most humbly I do take my leave.

Enter Sir John and Sir Hugh Mortimer.

YORK. Sir John and Sir Hugh Mortimer, mine uncles, You are come to Sandal in a happy hour; The army of the Queen mean to besiege us.

SIR JOHN. She shall not need; we’ll meet her in the field.

YORK. What, with five thousand men?

RICHARD. Ay, with five hundred, father, for a need. A woman’s general; what should we fear?

[A march afar off.]

EDWARD. I hear their drums. Let’s set our men in order, And issue forth and bid them battle straight.

YORK. Five men to twenty! Though the odds be great, I doubt not, uncle, of our victory. Many a battle have I won in France Whenas the enemy hath been ten to one. Why should I not now have the like success?

SCENE III. Plains near Sandal Castle

Alarums. Enter Rutland and his Tutor.

RUTLAND. Ah, whither shall I fly to scape their hands? Ah, tutor, look where bloody Clifford comes.

Enter Clifford and Soldiers.

CLIFFORD. Chaplain, away! Thy priesthood saves thy life. As for the brat of this accursed duke Whose father slew my father, he shall die.

TUTOR. And I, my lord, will bear him company.

CLIFFORD. Soldiers, away with him!

TUTOR. Ah, Clifford, murder not this innocent child, Lest thou be hated both of God and man.

[Exit, dragged off by Soldiers.]

CLIFFORD. How now? Is he dead already? Or is it fear That makes him close his eyes? I’ll open them.

RUTLAND. So looks the pent-up lion o’er the wretch That trembles under his devouring paws; And so he walks, insulting o’er his prey, And so he comes to rend his limbs asunder. Ah, gentle Clifford, kill me with thy sword, And not with such a cruel threat’ning look. Sweet Clifford, hear me speak before I die. I am too mean a subject for thy wrath; Be thou revenged on men, and let me live.

CLIFFORD. In vain thou speak’st, poor boy; my father’s blood Hath stopped the passage where thy words should enter.

RUTLAND. Then let my father’s blood open it again; He is a man, and, Clifford, cope with him.

CLIFFORD. Had I thy brethren here, their lives and thine Were not revenge sufficient for me. No, if I digged up thy forefathers’ graves And hung their rotten coffins up in chains, It could not slake mine ire nor ease my heart. The sight of any of the house of York Is as a fury to torment my soul; And till I root out their accursed line And leave not one alive, I live in hell. Therefore—

[Lifting his hand.]

RUTLAND. O, let me pray before I take my death! To thee I pray; sweet Clifford, pity me!

CLIFFORD. Such pity as my rapier’s point affords.

RUTLAND. I never did thee harm; why wilt thou slay me?

CLIFFORD. Thy father hath.

RUTLAND. But ’twas ere I was born. Thou hast one son; for his sake pity me, Lest in revenge thereof, sith God is just, He be as miserably slain as I. Ah, let me live in prison all my days, And when I give occasion of offence Then let me die, for now thou hast no cause.

CLIFFORD. No cause? Thy father slew my father; therefore die.

[Clifford stabs him.]

RUTLAND. Di faciant laudis summa sit ista tuae!

CLIFFORD. Plantagenet! I come, Plantagenet! And this thy son’s blood cleaving to my blade Shall rust upon my weapon till thy blood, Congealed with this, do make me wipe off both.

SCENE IV. The Same

Alarum. Enter Richard, Duke of York.

YORK. The army of the Queen hath got the field. My uncles both are slain in rescuing me; And all my followers to the eager foe Turn back and fly like ships before the wind, Or lambs pursued by hunger-starved wolves. My sons, God knows what hath bechanced them; But this I know, they have demeaned themselves Like men born to renown by life or death. Three times did Richard make a lane to me, And thrice cried “Courage, father, fight it out!” And full as oft came Edward to my side With purple falchion painted to the hilt In blood of those that had encountered him; And when the hardiest warriors did retire, Richard cried “Charge, and give no foot of ground!” And cried “A crown, or else a glorious tomb! A sceptre, or an earthly sepulchre!” With this we charged again; but, out, alas! We budged again, as I have seen a swan With bootless labour swim against the tide And spend her strength with over-matching waves.

[A short alarum within.]

Ah, hark, the fatal followers do pursue, And I am faint and cannot fly their fury; And were I strong, I would not shun their fury. The sands are numbered that makes up my life; Here must I stay, and here my life must end.

Enter Queen Margaret, Clifford, Northumberland, the young Prince Edward and Soldiers.

Come, bloody Clifford, rough Northumberland, I dare your quenchless fury to more rage. I am your butt, and I abide your shot.

NORTHUMBERLAND. Yield to our mercy, proud Plantagenet.

CLIFFORD. Ay, to such mercy as his ruthless arm With downright payment showed unto my father. Now Phaëthon hath tumbled from his car, And made an evening at the noontide prick.

YORK. My ashes, as the phoenix, may bring forth A bird that will revenge upon you all; And in that hope I throw mine eyes to heaven, Scorning whate’er you can afflict me with. Why come you not? What, multitudes, and fear?

CLIFFORD. So cowards fight when they can fly no further; So doves do peck the falcon’s piercing talons; So desperate thieves, all hopeless of their lives, Breathe out invectives ’gainst the officers.

YORK. O Clifford, but bethink thee once again, And in thy thought o’errun my former time; And, if thou canst for blushing, view this face, And bite thy tongue, that slanders him with cowardice Whose frown hath made thee faint and fly ere this.

CLIFFORD. I will not bandy with thee word for word, But buckle with thee blows twice two for one.

QUEEN MARGARET. Hold, valiant Clifford; for a thousand causes I would prolong awhile the traitor’s life. Wrath makes him deaf; speak thou, Northumberland.

NORTHUMBERLAND. Hold, Clifford, do not honour him so much To prick thy finger, though to wound his heart. What valour were it, when a cur doth grin, For one to thrust his hand between his teeth, When he might spurn him with his foot away? It is war’s prize to take all vantages, And ten to one is no impeach of valour.

[They lay hands on York, who struggles.]

CLIFFORD. Ay, ay, so strives the woodcock with the gin.

NORTHUMBERLAND. So doth the cony struggle in the net.

[York is taken prisoner.]

YORK. So triumph thieves upon their conquered booty; So true men yield, with robbers so o’ermatched.

NORTHUMBERLAND. What would your Grace have done unto him now?

QUEEN MARGARET. Brave warriors, Clifford and Northumberland, Come, make him stand upon this molehill here, That raught at mountains with outstretched arms, Yet parted but the shadow with his hand. What, was it you that would be England’s king? Was ’t you that revelled in our parliament And made a preachment of your high descent? Where are your mess of sons to back you now, The wanton Edward and the lusty George? And where’s that valiant crook-back prodigy, Dicky your boy, that with his grumbling voice Was wont to cheer his dad in mutinies? Or, with the rest, where is your darling Rutland? Look, York, I stained this napkin with the blood That valiant Clifford with his rapier’s point Made issue from the bosom of the boy; And if thine eyes can water for his death, I give thee this to dry thy cheeks withal. Alas, poor York, but that I hate thee deadly I should lament thy miserable state. I prithee grieve to make me merry, York; Stamp, rave, and fret, that I may sing and dance. What, hath thy fiery heart so parched thine entrails That not a tear can fall for Rutland’s death? Why art thou patient, man? Thou shouldst be mad; And I, to make thee mad, do mock thee thus. Stamp, rave, and fret, that I may sing and dance. Thou would’st be fee’d, I see, to make me sport; York cannot speak unless he wear a crown. A crown for York! And, lords, bow low to him. Hold you his hands whilst I do set it on.

[Putting a paper crown on his head.]

Ay, marry, sir, now looks he like a king. Ay, this is he that took King Henry’s chair, And this is he was his adopted heir. But how is it that great Plantagenet Is crowned so soon and broke his solemn oath? As I bethink me, you should not be king Till our King Henry had shook hands with Death. And will you pale your head in Henry’s glory, And rob his temples of the diadem, Now in his life, against your holy oath? O, ’tis a fault too too unpardonable. Off with the crown, and, with the crown, his head; And whilst we breathe, take time to do him dead.

CLIFFORD. That is my office, for my father’s sake.

QUEEN MARGARET. Nay, stay; let’s hear the orisons he makes.

YORK. She-wolf of France, but worse than wolves of France, Whose tongue more poisons than the adder’s tooth! How ill-beseeming is it in thy sex To triumph like an Amazonian trull Upon their woes whom Fortune captivates! But that thy face is vizard-like, unchanging, Made impudent with use of evil deeds, I would assay, proud queen, to make thee blush. To tell thee whence thou cam’st, of whom derived, Were shame enough to shame thee, wert thou not shameless. Thy father bears the type of King of Naples, Of both the Sicils, and Jerusalem, Yet not so wealthy as an English yeoman. Hath that poor monarch taught thee to insult? It needs not, nor it boots thee not, proud queen; Unless the adage must be verified, That beggars mounted run their horse to death. ’Tis beauty that doth oft make women proud; But God he knows thy share thereof is small. ’Tis virtue that doth make them most admired; The contrary doth make thee wondered at. ’Tis government that makes them seem divine; The want thereof makes thee abominable. Thou art as opposite to every good As the Antipodes are unto us, Or as the south to the Septentrion. O tiger’s heart wrapped in a woman’s hide! How couldst thou drain the life-blood of the child, To bid the father wipe his eyes withal, And yet be seen to bear a woman’s face? Women are soft, mild, pitiful, and flexible; Thou stern, obdurate, flinty, rough, remorseless. Bid’st thou me rage? Why, now thou hast thy wish: Wouldst have me weep? Why, now thou hast thy will; For raging wind blows up incessant showers, And when the rage allays, the rain begins. These tears are my sweet Rutland’s obsequies, And every drop cries vengeance for his death ’Gainst thee, fell Clifford, and thee, false Frenchwoman.

NORTHUMBERLAND. Beshrew me, but his passion moves me so That hardly can I check my eyes from tears.

YORK. That face of his the hungry cannibals Would not have touched, would not have stained with blood; But you are more inhuman, more inexorable, O, ten times more than tigers of Hyrcania. See, ruthless queen, a hapless father’s tears. This cloth thou dipped’st in blood of my sweet boy, And I with tears do wash the blood away. Keep thou the napkin, and go boast of this; And if thou tell’st the heavy story right, Upon my soul, the hearers will shed tears; Yea, even my foes will shed fast-falling tears And say “Alas, it was a piteous deed.” There, take the crown, and with the crown my curse; And in thy need such comfort come to thee As now I reap at thy too cruel hand! Hard-hearted Clifford, take me from the world, My soul to heaven, my blood upon your heads!

NORTHUMBERLAND. Had he been slaughter-man to all my kin, I should not for my life but weep with him, To see how inly sorrow gripes his soul.

QUEEN MARGARET. What, weeping-ripe, my Lord Northumberland? Think but upon the wrong he did us all, And that will quickly dry thy melting tears.

CLIFFORD. Here’s for my oath, here’s for my father’s death.

[Stabbing him.]

QUEEN MARGARET. And here’s to right our gentle-hearted king.

YORK. Open thy gate of mercy, gracious God! My soul flies through these wounds to seek out Thee.

QUEEN MARGARET. Off with his head, and set it on York gates; So York may overlook the town of York.

SCENE I. A plain near Mortimer’s Cross in Herefordshire

A march. Enter Edward and Richard and their power.

EDWARD. I wonder how our princely father scaped, Or whether he be scaped away or no From Clifford’s and Northumberland’s pursuit. Had he been ta’en, we should have heard the news; Had he been slain, we should have heard the news; Or had he scaped, methinks we should have heard The happy tidings of his good escape. How fares my brother? Why is he so sad?

RICHARD. I cannot joy until I be resolved Where our right valiant father is become. I saw him in the battle range about, And watched him how he singled Clifford forth. Methought he bore him in the thickest troop As doth a lion in a herd of neat; Or as a bear, encompassed round with dogs, Who having pinched a few and made them cry, The rest stand all aloof and bark at him. So fared our father with his enemies; So fled his enemies my warlike father. Methinks ’tis pride enough to be his son. See how the morning opes her golden gates And takes her farewell of the glorious sun. How well resembles it the prime of youth, Trimmed like a younker prancing to his love!

EDWARD. Dazzle mine eyes, or do I see three suns?

RICHARD. Three glorious suns, each one a perfect sun; Not separated with the racking clouds, But severed in a pale clear-shining sky. See, see, they join, embrace, and seem to kiss, As if they vowed some league inviolable. Now are they but one lamp, one light, one sun. In this the heaven figures some event.

EDWARD. ’Tis wondrous strange, the like yet never heard of. I think it cites us, brother, to the field, That we, the sons of brave Plantagenet, Each one already blazing by our meeds, Should notwithstanding join our lights together, And overshine the earth, as this the world. Whate’er it bodes, henceforward will I bear Upon my target three fair shining suns.

RICHARD. Nay, bear three daughters: by your leave I speak it, You love the breeder better than the male.

Enter a Messenger, blowing.

But what art thou, whose heavy looks foretell Some dreadful story hanging on thy tongue?

MESSENGER. Ah, one that was a woeful looker-on When as the noble Duke of York was slain, Your princely father and my loving lord.

EDWARD. O, speak no more, for I have heard too much!

RICHARD. Say how he died, for I will hear it all.

MESSENGER. Environed he was with many foes, And stood against them as the hope of Troy Against the Greeks that would have entered Troy. But Hercules himself must yield to odds; And many strokes, though with a little axe, Hews down and fell the hardest-timbered oak. By many hands your father was subdued, But only slaughtered by the ireful arm Of unrelenting Clifford and the Queen, Who crowned the gracious duke in high despite, Laughed in his face; and when with grief he wept, The ruthless Queen gave him to dry his cheeks A napkin steeped in the harmless blood Of sweet young Rutland, by rough Clifford slain. And after many scorns, many foul taunts, They took his head, and on the gates of York They set the same; and there it doth remain, The saddest spectacle that e’er I viewed.

EDWARD. Sweet Duke of York, our prop to lean upon, Now thou art gone, we have no staff, no stay. O Clifford, boisterous Clifford, thou hast slain The flower of Europe for his chivalry; And treacherously hast thou vanquished him, For hand to hand he would have vanquished thee. Now my soul’s palace is become a prison. Ah, would she break from hence, that this my body Might in the ground be closed up in rest! For never henceforth shall I joy again; Never, O, never, shall I see more joy!

RICHARD. I cannot weep, for all my body’s moisture Scarce serves to quench my furnace-burning heart; Nor can my tongue unload my heart’s great burthen, For selfsame wind that I should speak withal Is kindling coals that fires all my breast And burns me up with flames that tears would quench. To weep is to make less the depth of grief: Tears, then, for babes; blows and revenge for me! Richard, I bear thy name; I’ll venge thy death, Or die renowned by attempting it.

EDWARD. His name that valiant duke hath left with thee; His dukedom and his chair with me is left.

RICHARD. Nay, if thou be that princely eagle’s bird, Show thy descent by gazing ’gainst the sun; For chair and dukedom, throne and kingdom say, Either that is thine, or else thou wert not his.

March. Enter Warwick, Marquess Montague and their army.

WARWICK. How now, fair lords! What fare? What news abroad?

RICHARD. Great Lord of Warwick, if we should recount Our baleful news, and at each word’s deliverance Stab poniards in our flesh till all were told, The words would add more anguish than the wounds. O valiant lord, the Duke of York is slain!

EDWARD. O, Warwick, Warwick, that Plantagenet Which held thee dearly as his soul’s redemption Is by the stern Lord Clifford done to death.

WARWICK. Ten days ago I drowned these news in tears, And now, to add more measure to your woes, I come to tell you things sith then befall’n. After the bloody fray at Wakefield fought, Where your brave father breathed his latest gasp, Tidings, as swiftly as the posts could run, Were brought me of your loss and his depart. I, then in London, keeper of the King, Mustered my soldiers, gathered flocks of friends, And very well appointed, as I thought, Marched toward Saint Albans to intercept the Queen, Bearing the King in my behalf along; For by my scouts I was advertised That she was coming with a full intent To dash our late decree in Parliament Touching King Henry’s oath and your succession. Short tale to make, we at Saint Albans met, Our battles joined, and both sides fiercely fought. But, whether ’twas the coldness of the King, Who looked full gently on his warlike Queen, That robbed my soldiers of their heated spleen, Or whether ’twas report of her success; Or more than common fear of Clifford’s rigour, Who thunders to his captives blood and death, I cannot judge; but, to conclude with truth, Their weapons like to lightning came and went; Our soldiers’, like the night-owl’s lazy flight, Or like an idle thresher with a flail, Fell gently down, as if they struck their friends. I cheered them up with justice of our cause, With promise of high pay and great rewards, But all in vain; they had no heart to fight, And we in them no hope to win the day; So that we fled: the King unto the Queen; Lord George your brother, Norfolk, and myself, In haste, post-haste, are come to join with you; For in the Marches here we heard you were, Making another head to fight again.

EDWARD. Where is the Duke of Norfolk, gentle Warwick? And when came George from Burgundy to England?

WARWICK. Some six miles off the Duke is with the soldiers; And for your brother, he was lately sent From your kind aunt, Duchess of Burgundy, With aid of soldiers to this needful war.

RICHARD. ’Twas odds, belike, when valiant Warwick fled. Oft have I heard his praises in pursuit, But ne’er till now his scandal of retire.

WARWICK. Nor now my scandal, Richard, dost thou hear; For thou shalt know this strong right hand of mine Can pluck the diadem from faint Henry’s head And wring the awful sceptre from his fist, Were he as famous and as bold in war As he is famed for mildness, peace, and prayer.

RICHARD. I know it well, Lord Warwick; blame me not. ’Tis love I bear thy glories makes me speak. But in this troublous time what’s to be done? Shall we go throw away our coats of steel And wrap our bodies in black mourning gowns, Numbering our Ave-Maries with our beads? Or shall we on the helmets of our foes Tell our devotion with revengeful arms? If for the last, say ay, and to it, lords.

WARWICK. Why, therefore Warwick came to seek you out, And therefore comes my brother Montague. Attend me, lords. The proud insulting Queen, With Clifford and the haught Northumberland, And of their feather many moe proud birds, Have wrought the easy-melting King like wax. He swore consent to your succession, His oath enrolled in the Parliament; And now to London all the crew are gone, To frustrate both his oath and what beside May make against the house of Lancaster. Their power, I think, is thirty thousand strong. Now, if the help of Norfolk and myself, With all the friends that thou, brave Earl of March, Amongst the loving Welshmen canst procure, Will but amount to five and twenty thousand, Why, via, to London will we march amain, And once again bestride our foaming steeds, And once again cry “Charge upon our foes!” But never once again turn back and fly.

RICHARD. Ay, now methinks I hear great Warwick speak. Ne’er may he live to see a sunshine day That cries “Retire,” if Warwick bid him stay.

EDWARD. Lord Warwick, on thy shoulder will I lean; And when thou fail’st—as God forbid the hour!— Must Edward fall, which peril heaven forfend!

WARWICK. No longer Earl of March, but Duke of York. The next degree is England’s royal throne; For King of England shalt thou be proclaimed In every borough as we pass along, And he that throws not up his cap for joy Shall for the fault make forfeit of his head. King Edward, valiant Richard, Montague, Stay we no longer dreaming of renown, But sound the trumpets and about our task.

RICHARD. Then, Clifford, were thy heart as hard as steel, As thou hast shown it flinty by thy deeds, I come to pierce it, or to give thee mine.

EDWARD. Then strike up, drums! God and Saint George for us!

WARWICK. How now, what news?

MESSENGER. The Duke of Norfolk sends you word by me, The Queen is coming with a puissant host, And craves your company for speedy counsel.

WARWICK. Why then it sorts; brave warriors, let’s away.

SCENE II. Before York

Flourish. Enter King Henry, Queen Margaret, the Prince of Wales, Clifford and Northumberland with drums and trumpets.

QUEEN MARGARET. Welcome, my lord, to this brave town of York. Yonder’s the head of that arch-enemy That sought to be encompassed with your crown. Doth not the object cheer your heart, my lord?

KING HENRY. Ay, as the rocks cheer them that fear their wrack! To see this sight, it irks my very soul. Withhold revenge, dear God! ’Tis not my fault, Nor wittingly have I infringed my vow.

CLIFFORD. My gracious liege, this too much lenity And harmful pity must be laid aside. To whom do lions cast their gentle looks? Not to the beast that would usurp their den. Whose hand is that the forest bear doth lick? Not his that spoils her young before her face. Who scapes the lurking serpent’s mortal sting? Not he that sets his foot upon her back. The smallest worm will turn, being trodden on, And doves will peck in safeguard of their brood. Ambitious York did level at thy crown, Thou smiling while he knit his angry brows. He, but a duke, would have his son a king, And raise his issue like a loving sire; Thou, being a king, blest with a goodly son, Didst yield consent to disinherit him, Which argued thee a most unloving father. Unreasonable creatures feed their young; And though man’s face be fearful to their eyes, Yet, in protection of their tender ones, Who hath not seen them, even with those wings Which sometime they have used with fearful flight, Make war with him that climbed unto their nest, Offering their own lives in their young’s defence? For shame, my liege, make them your precedent. Were it not pity that this goodly boy Should lose his birthright by his father’s fault, And long hereafter say unto his child, “What my great-grandfather and grandsire got, My careless father fondly gave away?” Ah, what a shame were this! Look on the boy, And let his manly face, which promiseth Successful fortune, steel thy melting heart To hold thine own and leave thine own with him.

KING HENRY. Full well hath Clifford played the orator, Inferring arguments of mighty force. But, Clifford, tell me, didst thou never hear That things ill got had ever bad success? And happy always was it for that son Whose father for his hoarding went to hell? I’ll leave my son my virtuous deeds behind, And would my father had left me no more; For all the rest is held at such a rate As brings a thousand-fold more care to keep Than in possession any jot of pleasure. Ah, cousin York, would thy best friends did know How it doth grieve me that thy head is here!

QUEEN MARGARET. My lord, cheer up your spirits; our foes are nigh, And this soft courage makes your followers faint. You promised knighthood to our forward son. Unsheathe your sword and dub him presently.— Edward, kneel down.

KING HENRY. Edward Plantagenet, arise a knight; And learn this lesson: draw thy sword in right.

PRINCE EDWARD. My gracious father, by your kingly leave, I’ll draw it as apparent to the crown, And in that quarrel use it to the death.

CLIFFORD. Why, that is spoken like a toward prince.

MESSENGER. Royal commanders, be in readiness; For with a band of thirty thousand men Comes Warwick, backing of the Duke of York, And in the towns, as they do march along, Proclaims him king, and many fly to him. Darraign your battle, for they are at hand.

CLIFFORD. I would your highness would depart the field. The Queen hath best success when you are absent.

QUEEN MARGARET. Ay, good my lord, and leave us to our fortune.

KING HENRY. Why, that’s my fortune too; therefore I’ll stay.

NORTHUMBERLAND. Be it with resolution then to fight.

PRINCE EDWARD. My royal father, cheer these noble lords, And hearten those that fight in your defence. Unsheathe your sword, good father; cry “Saint George!”

March. Enter Edward, George, Richard, Warwick, Norfolk, Montague and Soldiers.

EDWARD. Now, perjured Henry, wilt thou kneel for grace And set thy diadem upon my head, Or bide the mortal fortune of the field?

QUEEN MARGARET. Go rate thy minions, proud insulting boy! Becomes it thee to be thus bold in terms Before thy sovereign and thy lawful king?

EDWARD. I am his king, and he should bow his knee. I was adopted heir by his consent. Since when, his oath is broke; for, as I hear, You that are king, though he do wear the crown, Have caused him by new act of Parliament To blot out me and put his own son in.

CLIFFORD. And reason too: Who should succeed the father but the son?

RICHARD. Are you there, butcher? O, I cannot speak!

CLIFFORD. Ay, crook-back; here I stand, to answer thee, Or any he, the proudest of thy sort.

RICHARD. ’Twas you that killed young Rutland, was it not?

CLIFFORD. Ay, and old York, and yet not satisfied.

RICHARD. For God’s sake, lords, give signal to the fight.

WARWICK. What sayst thou, Henry, wilt thou yield the crown?

QUEEN MARGARET. Why, how now, long-tongued Warwick, dare you speak? When you and I met at Saint Albans last, Your legs did better service than your hands.

WARWICK. Then ’twas my turn to fly, and now ’tis thine.

CLIFFORD. You said so much before, and yet you fled.

WARWICK. ’Twas not your valour, Clifford, drove me thence.

NORTHUMBERLAND. No, nor your manhood that durst make you stay.

RICHARD. Northumberland, I hold thee reverently. Break off the parley; for scarce I can refrain The execution of my big-swoln heart Upon that Clifford, that cruel child-killer.

CLIFFORD. I slew thy father; call’st thou him a child?

RICHARD. Ay, like a dastard and a treacherous coward, As thou didst kill our tender brother Rutland, But ere sunset I’ll make thee curse the deed.

KING HENRY. Have done with words, my lords, and hear me speak.

QUEEN MARGARET. Defy them then, or else hold close thy lips.

KING HENRY. I prithee, give no limits to my tongue. I am a king, and privileged to speak.

CLIFFORD. My liege, the wound that bred this meeting here Cannot be cured by words; therefore be still.

RICHARD. Then, executioner, unsheathe thy sword. By Him that made us all, I am resolved That Clifford’s manhood lies upon his tongue.

EDWARD. Say, Henry, shall I have my right, or no? A thousand men have broke their fasts today That ne’er shall dine unless thou yield the crown.

WARWICK. If thou deny, their blood upon thy head; For York in justice puts his armour on.

PRINCE EDWARD. If that be right which Warwick says is right, There is no wrong, but everything is right.

RICHARD. Whoever got thee, there thy mother stands; For well I wot thou hast thy mother’s tongue.

QUEEN MARGARET. But thou art neither like thy sire nor dam, But like a foul misshapen stigmatic, Marked by the Destinies to be avoided, As venom toads or lizards’ dreadful stings.

RICHARD. Iron of Naples, hid with English gilt, Whose father bears the title of a king, As if a channel should be called the sea, Sham’st thou not, knowing whence thou art extraught, To let thy tongue detect thy base-born heart?

EDWARD. A wisp of straw were worth a thousand crowns To make this shameless callet know herself. Helen of Greece was fairer far than thou, Although thy husband may be Menelaus; And ne’er was Agamemnon’s brother wronged By that false woman as this king by thee. His father revelled in the heart of France, And tamed the King, and made the Dauphin stoop; And had he matched according to his state, He might have kept that glory to this day; But when he took a beggar to his bed And graced thy poor sire with his bridal day, Even then that sunshine brewed a shower for him That washed his father’s fortunes forth of France And heaped sedition on his crown at home. For what hath broached this tumult but thy pride? Hadst thou been meek, our title still had slept; And we, in pity of the gentle king, Had slipped our claim until another age.

GEORGE. But when we saw our sunshine made thy spring, And that thy summer bred us no increase, We set the axe to thy usurping root; And though the edge hath something hit ourselves, Yet know thou, since we have begun to strike, We’ll never leave till we have hewn thee down Or bathed thy growing with our heated bloods.

EDWARD. And in this resolution I defy thee; Not willing any longer conference, Since thou deniest the gentle King to speak. Sound trumpets! Let our bloody colours wave; And either victory or else a grave!

QUEEN MARGARET. Stay, Edward.

EDWARD. No, wrangling woman, we’ll no longer stay. These words will cost ten thousand lives this day.

SCENE III. A field of battle between Towton and Saxton, in Yorkshire

Alarums. Excursions. Enter Warwick.

WARWICK. Forspent with toil, as runners with a race, I lay me down a little while to breathe; For strokes received, and many blows repaid, Have robbed my strong-knit sinews of their strength, And spite of spite, needs must I rest awhile.

Enter Edward, running.

EDWARD. Smile, gentle heaven, or strike, ungentle death; For this world frowns and Edward’s sun is clouded.

WARWICK. How now, my lord, what hap? What hope of good?

Enter George.

GEORGE. Our hap is loss, our hope but sad despair; Our ranks are broke and ruin follows us. What counsel give you? Whither shall we fly?

EDWARD. Bootless is flight, they follow us with wings; And weak we are and cannot shun pursuit.

Enter Richard.

RICHARD. Ah, Warwick, why hast thou withdrawn thyself? Thy brother’s blood the thirsty earth hath drunk, Broached with the steely point of Clifford’s lance; And in the very pangs of death he cried, Like to a dismal clangor heard from far, “Warwick, revenge! Brother, revenge my death!” So, underneath the belly of their steeds, That stained their fetlocks in his smoking blood, The noble gentleman gave up the ghost.

WARWICK. Then let the earth be drunken with our blood; I’ll kill my horse because I will not fly. Why stand we like soft-hearted women here, Wailing our losses whiles the foe doth rage, And look upon, as if the tragedy Were played in jest by counterfeiting actors? Here on my knee I vow to God above I’ll never pause again, never stand still, Till either death hath closed these eyes of mine, Or Fortune given me measure of revenge.

EDWARD. O Warwick, I do bend my knee with thine, And in this vow do chain my soul to thine! And, ere my knee rise from the earth’s cold face, I throw my hands, mine eyes, my heart to Thee, Thou setter up and plucker down of kings, Beseeching Thee, if with Thy will it stands That to my foes this body must be prey, Yet that Thy brazen gates of heaven may ope, And give sweet passage to my sinful soul. Now, lords, take leave until we meet again, Where’er it be, in heaven or in earth.

RICHARD. Brother, give me thy hand; and, gentle Warwick, Let me embrace thee in my weary arms. I, that did never weep, now melt with woe That winter should cut off our spring-time so.

WARWICK. Away, away! Once more, sweet lords, farewell.

GEORGE. Yet let us all together to our troops, And give them leave to fly that will not stay, And call them pillars that will stand to us; And if we thrive, promise them such rewards As victors wear at the Olympian games. This may plant courage in their quailing breasts, For yet is hope of life and victory. Forslow no longer; make we hence amain.

SCENE IV. Another Part of the Field

Excursions. Enter Richard and Clifford.

RICHARD. Now, Clifford, I have singled thee alone. Suppose this arm is for the Duke of York, And this for Rutland; both bound to revenge, Wert thou environed with a brazen wall.

CLIFFORD. Now, Richard, I am with thee here alone. This is the hand that stabbed thy father York, And this the hand that slew thy brother Rutland; And here’s the heart that triumphs in their death And cheers these hands that slew thy sire and brother To execute the like upon thyself; And so have at thee!

They fight. Warwick comes; Clifford flies.

RICHARD. Nay, Warwick, single out some other chase; For I myself will hunt this wolf to death.

SCENE V. Another Part of the Field

Enter King Henry.

KING HENRY. This battle fares like to the morning’s war, When dying clouds contend with growing light, What time the shepherd, blowing of his nails, Can neither call it perfect day nor night. Now sways it this way, like a mighty sea Forced by the tide to combat with the wind; Now sways it that way, like the selfsame sea Forced to retire by fury of the wind. Sometime the flood prevails, and then the wind; Now one the better, then another best, Both tugging to be victors, breast to breast, Yet neither conqueror nor conquered. So is the equal poise of this fell war. Here on this molehill will I sit me down. To whom God will, there be the victory! For Margaret my queen, and Clifford too, Have chid me from the battle, swearing both They prosper best of all when I am thence. Would I were dead, if God’s good will were so; For what is in this world but grief and woe? O God! Methinks it were a happy life To be no better than a homely swain; To sit upon a hill, as I do now, To carve out dials quaintly, point by point, Thereby to see the minutes how they run: How many make the hour full complete, How many hours brings about the day, How many days will finish up the year, How many years a mortal man may live. When this is known, then to divide the times: So many hours must I tend my flock; So many hours must I take my rest; So many hours must I contemplate; So many hours must I sport myself; So many days my ewes have been with young; So many weeks ere the poor fools will ean; So many years ere I shall shear the fleece. So minutes, hours, days, months, and years, Passed over to the end they were created, Would bring white hairs unto a quiet grave. Ah, what a life were this! How sweet, how lovely! Gives not the hawthorn bush a sweeter shade To shepherds looking on their silly sheep Than doth a rich embroidered canopy To kings that fear their subjects’ treachery? O, yes, it doth; a thousand-fold it doth. And to conclude, the shepherd’s homely curds, His cold thin drink out of his leather bottle, His wonted sleep under a fresh tree’s shade, All which secure and sweetly he enjoys, Is far beyond a prince’s delicates— His viands sparkling in a golden cup, His body couched in a curious bed, When care, mistrust, and treason waits on him.

Alarum. Enter a Son that hath killed his father, bringing in the dead body.

SON. Ill blows the wind that profits nobody. This man, whom hand to hand I slew in fight, May be possessed with some store of crowns; And I, that haply take them from him now, May yet ere night yield both my life and them To some man else, as this dead man doth me. Who’s this? O God! It is my father’s face, Whom in this conflict I unwares have killed. O heavy times, begetting such events! From London by the King was I pressed forth; My father, being the Earl of Warwick’s man, Came on the part of York, pressed by his master; And I, who at his hands received my life, Have by my hands of life bereaved him. Pardon me, God, I knew not what I did; And pardon, father, for I knew not thee. My tears shall wipe away these bloody marks, And no more words till they have flowed their fill.

KING HENRY. O piteous spectacle! O bloody times! Whiles lions war and battle for their dens, Poor harmless lambs abide their enmity. Weep, wretched man, I’ll aid thee tear for tear; And let our hearts and eyes, like civil war, Be blind with tears and break o’ercharged with grief.

Enter a Father who has killed his son, with the body in his arms.

FATHER. Thou that so stoutly hath resisted me, Give me thy gold, if thou hast any gold, For I have bought it with an hundred blows. But let me see: is this our foeman’s face? Ah, no, no, no; it is mine only son! Ah, boy, if any life be left in thee, Throw up thine eye! See, see what showers arise, Blown with the windy tempest of my heart Upon thy wounds, that kill mine eye and heart! O, pity, God, this miserable age! What stratagems, how fell, how butcherly, Erroneous, mutinous, and unnatural, This deadly quarrel daily doth beget! O boy, thy father gave thee life too soon, And hath bereft thee of thy life too late!

KING HENRY. Woe above woe, grief more than common grief! O that my death would stay these ruthful deeds! O pity, pity, gentle heaven, pity! The red rose and the white are on his face, The fatal colours of our striving houses; The one his purple blood right well resembles, The other his pale cheeks, methinks, presenteth. Wither one rose, and let the other flourish! If you contend, a thousand lives must wither.

SON. How will my mother for a father’s death Take on with me and ne’er be satisfied!

FATHER. How will my wife for slaughter of my son Shed seas of tears and ne’er be satisfied!

KING HENRY. How will the country for these woeful chances Misthink the King and not be satisfied!

SON. Was ever son so rued a father’s death?

FATHER. Was ever father so bemoaned his son?

KING HENRY. Was ever king so grieved for subjects’ woe? Much is your sorrow, mine ten times so much.

SON. I’ll bear thee hence, where I may weep my fill.

FATHER. These arms of mine shall be thy winding-sheet; My heart, sweet boy, shall be thy sepulchre, For from my heart thine image ne’er shall go. My sighing breast shall be thy funeral bell; And so obsequious will thy father be, Even for the loss of thee, having no more, As Priam was for all his valiant sons. I’ll bear thee hence; and let them fight that will, For I have murdered where I should not kill.

KING HENRY. Sad-hearted men, much overgone with care, Here sits a king more woeful than you are.

Alarums. Excursions. Enter Queen Margaret, Prince of Wales and Exeter.

PRINCE EDWARD. Fly, father, fly, for all your friends are fled, And Warwick rages like a chafed bull. Away, for death doth hold us in pursuit.

QUEEN MARGARET. Mount you, my lord; towards Berwick post amain. Edward and Richard, like a brace of greyhounds Having the fearful flying hare in sight, With fiery eyes sparkling for very wrath, And bloody steel grasped in their ireful hands, Are at our backs; and therefore hence amain.

EXETER. Away, for vengeance comes along with them. Nay, stay not to expostulate; make speed, Or else come after; I’ll away before.

KING HENRY. Nay, take me with thee, good sweet Exeter; Not that I fear to stay, but love to go Whither the Queen intends. Forward; away!

SCENE VI. Another Part of the Field

A loud alarum. Enter Clifford, wounded.

CLIFFORD. Here burns my candle out; ay, here it dies, Which whiles it lasted gave King Henry light. O Lancaster, I fear thy overthrow More than my body’s parting with my soul! My love and fear glued many friends to thee; And, now I fall, thy tough commixtures melts, Impairing Henry, strengthening misproud York. The common people swarm like summer flies; And whither fly the gnats but to the sun? And who shines now but Henry’s enemies? O Phoebus, hadst thou never given consent That Phaëthon should check thy fiery steeds, Thy burning car never had scorched the earth! And, Henry, hadst thou swayed as kings should do, Or as thy father and his father did, Giving no ground unto the house of York, They never then had sprung like summer flies; I, and ten thousand in this luckless realm Had left no mourning widows for our death, And thou this day hadst kept thy chair in peace. For what doth cherish weeds but gentle air? And what makes robbers bold but too much lenity? Bootless are plaints, and cureless are my wounds; No way to fly, nor strength to hold out flight. The foe is merciless and will not pity, For at their hands I have deserved no pity. The air hath got into my deadly wounds, And much effuse of blood doth make me faint. Come, York and Richard, Warwick, and the rest; I stabbed your fathers’ bosoms, split my breast.

[He faints.]

Alarum and retreat. Enter Edward, George, Richard, Montague, Warwick and Soldiers.

EDWARD. Now breathe we, lords. Good fortune bids us pause And smooth the frowns of war with peaceful looks. Some troops pursue the bloody-minded Queen That led calm Henry, though he were a king, As doth a sail, filled with a fretting gust, Command an argosy to stem the waves. But think you, lords, that Clifford fled with them?

WARWICK. No, ’tis impossible he should escape; For, though before his face I speak the words, Your brother Richard marked him for the grave, And whereso’er he is, he’s surely dead.

[Clifford groans and dies.]

RICHARD. Whose soul is that which takes her heavy leave? A deadly groan, like life and death’s departing.

EDWARD. See who it is; and, now the battle’s ended, If friend or foe, let him be gently used.

RICHARD. Revoke that doom of mercy, for ’tis Clifford, Who, not contented that he lopped the branch In hewing Rutland when his leaves put forth, But set his murdering knife unto the root From whence that tender spray did sweetly spring, I mean our princely father, Duke of York.

WARWICK. From off the gates of York fetch down the head, Your father’s head, which Clifford placed there; Instead whereof let this supply the room. Measure for measure must be answered.

EDWARD. Bring forth that fatal screech-owl to our house, That nothing sung but death to us and ours; Now death shall stop his dismal threatening sound, And his ill-boding tongue no more shall speak.

[Soldiers bring the body forward.]

WARWICK. I think his understanding is bereft. Speak, Clifford, dost thou know who speaks to thee? Dark cloudy death o’ershades his beams of life, And he nor sees nor hears us, what we say.

RICHARD. O, would he did, and so, perhaps, he doth! ’Tis but his policy to counterfeit, Because he would avoid such bitter taunts Which in the time of death he gave our father.

GEORGE. If so thou think’st, vex him with eager words.

RICHARD. Clifford, ask mercy, and obtain no grace.

EDWARD. Clifford, repent in bootless penitence.

WARWICK. Clifford, devise excuses for thy faults.

GEORGE. While we devise fell tortures for thy faults.

RICHARD. Thou didst love York, and I am son to York.

EDWARD. Thou pitied’st Rutland, I will pity thee.

GEORGE. Where’s Captain Margaret to fence you now?

WARWICK. They mock thee, Clifford; swear as thou wast wont.

RICHARD. What, not an oath? Nay then, the world goes hard When Clifford cannot spare his friends an oath. I know by that he’s dead; and, by my soul, If this right hand would buy but two hours’ life, That I in all despite might rail at him, This hand should chop it off, and with the issuing blood Stifle the villain whose unstaunched thirst York and young Rutland could not satisfy.

WARWICK. Ay, but he’s dead. Off with the traitor’s head, And rear it in the place your father’s stands. And now to London with triumphant march, There to be crowned England’s royal king; From whence shall Warwick cut the sea to France, And ask the Lady Bona for thy queen. So shalt thou sinew both these lands together, And, having France thy friend, thou shalt not dread The scattered foe that hopes to rise again; For though they cannot greatly sting to hurt, Yet look to have them buzz to offend thine ears. First will I see the coronation, And then to Brittany I’ll cross the sea To effect this marriage, so it please my lord.

EDWARD. Even as thou wilt, sweet Warwick, let it be; For in thy shoulder do I build my seat, And never will I undertake the thing Wherein thy counsel and consent is wanting. Richard, I will create thee Duke of Gloucester; And George, of Clarence. Warwick, as ourself, Shall do and undo as him pleaseth best.

RICHARD. Let me be Duke of Clarence, George of Gloucester, For Gloucester’s dukedom is too ominous.

WARWICK. Tut, that’s a foolish observation. Richard, be Duke of Gloucester. Now to London, To see these honours in possession.

SCENE I. A Forest in the North of England

Enter two Keepers with crossbows in their hands.

1 KEEPER. Under this thick-grown brake we’ll shroud ourselves, For through this laund anon the deer will come; And in this covert will we make our stand, Culling the principal of all the deer.

2 KEEPER. I’ll stay above the hill, so both may shoot.

1 KEEPER. That cannot be; the noise of thy crossbow Will scare the herd, and so my shoot is lost. Here stand we both, and aim we at the best; And, for the time shall not seem tedious, I’ll tell thee what befell me on a day In this self place where now we mean to stand.

2 KEEPER. Here comes a man; let’s stay till he be past.

Enter King Henry, disguised, with a prayer-book.

KING HENRY. From Scotland am I stolen, even of pure love, To greet mine own land with my wishful sight. No, Harry, Harry, ’tis no land of thine; Thy place is filled, thy sceptre wrung from thee, Thy balm washed off wherewith thou wast anointed. No bending knee will call thee Caesar now, No humble suitors press to speak for right, No, not a man comes for redress of thee; For how can I help them and not myself?

1 KEEPER. Ay, here’s a deer whose skin’s a keeper’s fee. This is the quondam king; let’s seize upon him.

KING HENRY. Let me embrace thee, sour adversity, For wise men say it is the wisest course.

2 KEEPER. Why linger we? Let us lay hands upon him.

1 KEEPER. Forbear awhile; we’ll hear a little more.

KING HENRY. My queen and son are gone to France for aid; And, as I hear, the great commanding Warwick Is thither gone to crave the French King’s sister To wife for Edward. If this news be true, Poor queen and son, your labour is but lost, For Warwick is a subtle orator, And Lewis a prince soon won with moving words. By this account, then, Margaret may win him, For she’s a woman to be pitied much. Her sighs will make a batt’ry in his breast, Her tears will pierce into a marble heart; The tiger will be mild whiles she doth mourn, And Nero will be tainted with remorse To hear and see her plaints, her brinish tears. Ay, but she’s come to beg, Warwick to give; She on his left side craving aid for Henry; He on his right asking a wife for Edward. She weeps and says her Henry is deposed; He smiles and says his Edward is installed; That she, poor wretch, for grief can speak no more; Whiles Warwick tells his title, smooths the wrong, Inferreth arguments of mighty strength, And in conclusion wins the King from her With promise of his sister, and what else, To strengthen and support King Edward’s place. O Margaret, thus ’twill be; and thou, poor soul, Art then forsaken, as thou went’st forlorn.

2 KEEPER. Say, what art thou, that talk’st of kings and queens?

KING HENRY. More than I seem, and less than I was born to: A man at least, for less I should not be; And men may talk of kings, and why not I?

2 KEEPER. Ay, but thou talk’st as if thou wert a king.

KING HENRY. Why, so I am, in mind; and that’s enough.

2 KEEPER. But, if thou be a king, where is thy crown?

KING HENRY. My crown is in my heart, not on my head; Not decked with diamonds and Indian stones, Not to be seen. My crown is called content; A crown it is that seldom kings enjoy.

2 KEEPER. Well, if you be a king crowned with content, Your crown content and you must be contented To go along with us; for, as we think, You are the king King Edward hath deposed; And we his subjects, sworn in all allegiance, Will apprehend you as his enemy.

KING HENRY. But did you never swear, and break an oath?

2 KEEPER. No, never such an oath; nor will not now.

KING HENRY. Where did you dwell when I was King of England?

2 KEEPER. Here in this country, where we now remain.

KING HENRY. I was anointed king at nine months old; My father and my grandfather were kings, And you were sworn true subjects unto me. And tell me, then, have you not broke your oaths?

1 KEEPER. No, for we were subjects but while you were king.

KING HENRY. Why, am I dead? Do I not breathe a man? Ah, simple men, you know not what you swear. Look, as I blow this feather from my face, And as the air blows it to me again, Obeying with my wind when I do blow, And yielding to another when it blows, Commanded always by the greater gust, Such is the lightness of you common men. But do not break your oaths; for of that sin My mild entreaty shall not make you guilty. Go where you will, the King shall be commanded; And be you kings; command, and I’ll obey.

1 KEEPER. We are true subjects to the King, King Edward.

KING HENRY. So would you be again to Henry If he were seated as King Edward is.

1 KEEPER. We charge you, in God’s name and the King’s To go with us unto the officers.

KING HENRY. In God’s name, lead; your king’s name be obeyed, And what God will, that let your king perform; And what he will, I humbly yield unto.

SCENE II. The Palace

Enter King Edward, Richard (Duke of Gloucester), George (Duke of Clarence) and Lady Grey.

KING EDWARD. Brother of Gloucester, at Saint Albans field This lady’s husband, Sir John Grey, was slain, His land then seized on by the conqueror. Her suit is now to repossess those lands, Which we in justice cannot well deny, Because in quarrel of the house of York The worthy gentleman did lose his life.

RICHARD. Your Highness shall do well to grant her suit; It were dishonour to deny it her.

KING EDWARD. It were no less; but yet I’ll make a pause.

RICHARD. [Aside to George.] Yea, is it so? I see the lady hath a thing to grant Before the King will grant her humble suit.

GEORGE. [Aside to Richard.] He knows the game; how true he keeps the wind!

RICHARD. [Aside to George.] Silence!

KING EDWARD. Widow, we will consider of your suit, And come some other time to know our mind.

LADY GREY. Right gracious lord, I cannot brook delay. May it please your Highness to resolve me now, And what your pleasure is shall satisfy me.

RICHARD. [Aside to George.] Ay, widow? Then I’ll warrant you all your lands, An if what pleases him shall pleasure you. Fight closer, or, good faith, you’ll catch a blow.

GEORGE. [Aside to Richard.] I fear her not, unless she chance to fall.

RICHARD. [Aside to George.] God forbid that, for he’ll take vantages.

KING EDWARD. How many children hast thou, widow? Tell me.

GEORGE. [Aside to Richard.] I think he means to beg a child of her.

RICHARD. [Aside to George.] Nay, whip me then; he’ll rather give her two.

LADY GREY. Three, my most gracious lord.

RICHARD. [Aside to George.] You shall have four if you’ll be ruled by him.

KING EDWARD. ’Twere pity they should lose their father’s lands.

LADY GREY. Be pitiful, dread lord, and grant it then.

KING EDWARD. Lords, give us leave; I’ll try this widow’s wit.

RICHARD. [Aside to George.] Ay, good leave have you; for you will have leave Till youth take leave and leave you to the crutch.

[Richard and George stand aside.]

KING EDWARD. Now tell me, madam, do you love your children?

LADY GREY. Ay, full as dearly as I love myself.

KING EDWARD. And would you not do much to do them good?

LADY GREY. To do them good I would sustain some harm.

KING EDWARD. Then get your husband’s lands to do them good.

LADY GREY. Therefore I came unto your majesty.

KING EDWARD. I’ll tell you how these lands are to be got.

LADY GREY. So shall you bind me to your Highness’ service.

KING EDWARD. What service wilt thou do me if I give them?

LADY GREY. What you command that rests in me to do.

KING EDWARD. But you will take exceptions to my boon.

LADY GREY. No, gracious lord, except I cannot do it.

KING EDWARD. Ay, but thou canst do what I mean to ask.

LADY GREY. Why, then, I will do what your Grace commands.

RICHARD. [Aside to George.] He plies her hard; and much rain wears the marble.

GEORGE. [Aside to Richard.] As red as fire! Nay, then her wax must melt.

LADY GREY. Why stops my lord? Shall I not hear my task?

KING EDWARD. An easy task; ’tis but to love a king.

LADY GREY. That’s soon performed, because I am a subject.

KING EDWARD. Why, then, thy husband’s lands I freely give thee.

LADY GREY. I take my leave with many thousand thanks.

RICHARD. [Aside to George.] The match is made; she seals it with a curtsy.

KING EDWARD. But stay thee; ’tis the fruits of love I mean.

LADY GREY. The fruits of love I mean, my loving liege.

KING EDWARD. Ay, but, I fear me, in another sense. What love, thinkst thou, I sue so much to get?

LADY GREY. My love till death, my humble thanks, my prayers; That love which virtue begs, and virtue grants.

KING EDWARD. No, by my troth, I did not mean such love.

LADY GREY. Why, then, you mean not as I thought you did.

KING EDWARD. But now you partly may perceive my mind.

LADY GREY. My mind will never grant what I perceive Your Highness aims at, if I aim aright.

KING EDWARD. To tell thee plain, I aim to lie with thee.

LADY GREY. To tell you plain, I had rather lie in prison.

KING EDWARD. Why, then thou shalt not have thy husband’s lands.

LADY GREY. Why, then mine honesty shall be my dower, For by that loss I will not purchase them.

KING EDWARD. Therein thou wrong’st thy children mightily.

LADY GREY. Herein your Highness wrongs both them and me. But, mighty lord, this merry inclination Accords not with the sadness of my suit. Please you dismiss me either with ay or no.

KING EDWARD. Ay, if thou wilt say ay to my request; No, if thou dost say no to my demand.

LADY GREY. Then no, my lord. My suit is at an end.

RICHARD. [Aside to George.] The widow likes him not, she knits her brows.

GEORGE. [Aside to Richard.] He is the bluntest wooer in Christendom.

KING EDWARD. [Aside.] Her looks doth argue her replete with modesty; Her words doth show her wit incomparable; All her perfections challenge sovereignty. One way or other, she is for a king, And she shall be my love, or else my queen.— Say that King Edward take thee for his queen?

LADY GREY. ’Tis better said than done, my gracious lord. I am a subject fit to jest withal, But far unfit to be a sovereign.

KING EDWARD. Sweet widow, by my state I swear to thee, I speak no more than what my soul intends; And that is to enjoy thee for my love.

LADY GREY. And that is more than I will yield unto. I know I am too mean to be your queen, And yet too good to be your concubine.

KING EDWARD. You cavil, widow; I did mean my queen.

LADY GREY. ’Twill grieve your Grace my sons should call you father.

KING EDWARD. No more than when my daughters call thee mother. Thou art a widow, and thou hast some children; And, by God’s mother, I, being but a bachelor, Have other some. Why, ’tis a happy thing To be the father unto many sons. Answer no more, for thou shalt be my queen.

RICHARD. [Aside to George.] The ghostly father now hath done his shrift.

GEORGE. [Aside to Richard.] When he was made a shriver, ’twas for shift.

KING EDWARD. Brothers, you muse what chat we two have had.

Richard and George come forward.

RICHARD. The widow likes it not, for she looks very sad.

KING EDWARD. You’d think it strange if I should marry her.

GEORGE. To whom, my lord?

KING EDWARD. Why, Clarence, to myself.

RICHARD. That would be ten days’ wonder at the least.

GEORGE. That’s a day longer than a wonder lasts.

RICHARD. By so much is the wonder in extremes.

KING EDWARD. Well, jest on, brothers. I can tell you both Her suit is granted for her husband’s lands.

Enter a Nobleman.

NOBLEMAN. My gracious lord, Henry your foe is taken, And brought your prisoner to your palace gate.

KING EDWARD. See that he be conveyed unto the Tower. And go we, brothers, to the man that took him, To question of his apprehension. Widow, go you along. Lords, use her honourably.

[Exeunt all but Richard.]

RICHARD. Ay, Edward will use women honourably. Would he were wasted, marrow, bones, and all, That from his loins no hopeful branch may spring, To cross me from the golden time I look for! And yet, between my soul’s desire and me— The lustful Edward’s title buried— Is Clarence, Henry, and his son young Edward, And all the unlooked-for issue of their bodies, To take their rooms ere I can place myself. A cold premeditation for my purpose! Why then I do but dream on sovereignty; Like one that stands upon a promontory And spies a far-off shore where he would tread, Wishing his foot were equal with his eye, And chides the sea that sunders him from thence, Saying he’ll lade it dry to have his way. So do I wish the crown, being so far off, And so I chide the means that keeps me from it; And so I say I’ll cut the causes off, Flattering me with impossibilities. My eye’s too quick, my heart o’erweens too much, Unless my hand and strength could equal them. Well, say there is no kingdom then for Richard, What other pleasure can the world afford? I’ll make my heaven in a lady’s lap, And deck my body in gay ornaments, And ’witch sweet ladies with my words and looks. O miserable thought, and more unlikely Than to accomplish twenty golden crowns. Why, Love forswore me in my mother’s womb, And, for I should not deal in her soft laws, She did corrupt frail Nature with some bribe To shrink mine arm up like a withered shrub; To make an envious mountain on my back, Where sits Deformity to mock my body; To shape my legs of an unequal size; To disproportion me in every part, Like to a chaos, or an unlicked bear-whelp That carries no impression like the dam. And am I then a man to be beloved? O monstrous fault to harbour such a thought! Then, since this earth affords no joy to me But to command, to check, to o’erbear such As are of better person than myself, I’ll make my heaven to dream upon the crown, And, whiles I live, t’ account this world but hell Until my misshaped trunk that bear this head Be round impaled with a glorious crown. And yet I know not how to get the crown, For many lives stand between me and home; And I, like one lost in a thorny wood, That rents the thorns, and is rent with the thorns, Seeking a way, and straying from the way, Not knowing how to find the open air, But toiling desperately to find it out, Torment myself to catch the English crown. And from that torment I will free myself, Or hew my way out with a bloody axe. Why, I can smile, and murder while I smile, And cry “Content!” to that which grieves my heart, And wet my cheeks with artificial tears, And frame my face to all occasions. I’ll drown more sailors than the mermaid shall, I’ll slay more gazers than the basilisk; I’ll play the orator as well as Nestor, Deceive more slyly than Ulysses could, And, like a Sinon, take another Troy. I can add colours to the chameleon, Change shapes with Proteus for advantages, And set the murderous Machiavel to school. Can I do this, and cannot get a crown? Tut, were it farther off, I’ll pluck it down.

SCENE III. France. The King’s Palace

Flourish. Enter Lewis, the French King, his sister the Lady Bona, his Admiral called Bourbon, Prince Edward, Queen Margaret, and the Earl of Oxford. Lewis sits, and riseth up again.

KING LEWIS. Fair Queen of England, worthy Margaret, Sit down with us. It ill befits thy state And birth that thou shouldst stand while Lewis doth sit.

QUEEN MARGARET. No, mighty King of France. Now Margaret Must strike her sail and learn awhile to serve Where kings command. I was, I must confess, Great Albion’s queen in former golden days; But now mischance hath trod my title down And with dishonour laid me on the ground, Where I must take like seat unto my fortune And to my humble seat conform myself.

KING LEWIS. Why, say, fair queen, whence springs this deep despair?

QUEEN MARGARET. From such a cause as fills mine eyes with tears And stops my tongue, while heart is drowned in cares.

KING LEWIS. Whate’er it be, be thou still like thyself, And sit thee by our side. Yield not thy neck

[Seats her by him.]

To Fortune’s yoke, but let thy dauntless mind Still ride in triumph over all mischance. Be plain, Queen Margaret, and tell thy grief; It shall be eased if France can yield relief.

QUEEN MARGARET. Those gracious words revive my drooping thoughts And give my tongue-tied sorrows leave to speak. Now, therefore, be it known to noble Lewis That Henry, sole possessor of my love, Is, of a king, become a banished man And forced to live in Scotland a forlorn; While proud ambitious Edward, Duke of York, Usurps the regal title and the seat Of England’s true-anointed lawful king. This is the cause that I, poor Margaret, With this my son, Prince Edward, Henry’s heir, Am come to crave thy just and lawful aid; And if thou fail us, all our hope is done. Scotland hath will to help, but cannot help; Our people and our peers are both misled, Our treasure seized, our soldiers put to flight, And, as thou seest, ourselves in heavy plight.

KING LEWIS. Renowned queen, with patience calm the storm While we bethink a means to break it off.

QUEEN MARGARET. The more we stay, the stronger grows our foe.

KING LEWIS. The more I stay, the more I’ll succour thee.

QUEEN MARGARET. O, but impatience waiteth on true sorrow. And see where comes the breeder of my sorrow.

KING LEWIS. What’s he approacheth boldly to our presence?

QUEEN MARGARET. Our Earl of Warwick, Edward’s greatest friend.

KING LEWIS. Welcome, brave Warwick. What brings thee to France?

[He descends. Queen Margaret rises.]

QUEEN MARGARET. Ay, now begins a second storm to rise, For this is he that moves both wind and tide.

WARWICK. From worthy Edward, king of Albion, My lord and sovereign, and thy vowed friend, I come, in kindness and unfeigned love, First, to do greetings to thy royal person, And then to crave a league of amity, And lastly, to confirm that amity With nuptial knot, if thou vouchsafe to grant That virtuous Lady Bona, thy fair sister, To England’s king in lawful marriage.

QUEEN MARGARET. [Aside.] If that go forward, Henry’s hope is done.

WARWICK. [To Bona.] And, gracious madam, in our king’s behalf, I am commanded, with your leave and favour, Humbly to kiss your hand, and with my tongue To tell the passion of my sovereign’s heart, Where fame, late entering at his heedful ears, Hath placed thy beauty’s image and thy virtue.

QUEEN MARGARET. King Lewis and Lady Bona, hear me speak Before you answer Warwick. His demand Springs not from Edward’s well-meant honest love, But from deceit, bred by necessity; For how can tyrants safely govern home Unless abroad they purchase great alliance? To prove him tyrant this reason may suffice, That Henry liveth still; but were he dead, Yet here Prince Edward stands, King Henry’s son. Look therefore, Lewis, that by this league and marriage Thou draw not on thy danger and dishonour; For though usurpers sway the rule awhile, Yet heavens are just, and time suppresseth wrongs.

WARWICK. Injurious Margaret!

PRINCE EDWARD. And why not Queen?

WARWICK. Because thy father Henry did usurp, And thou no more art prince than she is queen.

OXFORD. Then Warwick disannuls great John of Gaunt, Which did subdue the greatest part of Spain; And after John of Gaunt, Henry the Fourth, Whose wisdom was a mirror to the wisest; And after that wise prince, Henry the Fifth, Who by his prowess conquered all France. From these our Henry lineally descends.

WARWICK. Oxford, how haps it in this smooth discourse You told not how Henry the Sixth hath lost All that which Henry the Fifth had gotten? Methinks these peers of France should smile at that. But for the rest: you tell a pedigree Of threescore and two years, a silly time To make prescription for a kingdom’s worth.

OXFORD. Why, Warwick, canst thou speak against thy liege, Whom thou obeyed’st thirty and six years, And not bewray thy treason with a blush?

WARWICK. Can Oxford, that did ever fence the right, Now buckler falsehood with a pedigree? For shame! Leave Henry, and call Edward king.

OXFORD. Call him my king by whose injurious doom My elder brother, the Lord Aubrey Vere, Was done to death? And more than so, my father, Even in the downfall of his mellowed years, When nature brought him to the door of death? No, Warwick, no; while life upholds this arm, This arm upholds the house of Lancaster.

WARWICK. And I the house of York.

KING LEWIS. Queen Margaret, Prince Edward, and Oxford, Vouchsafe at our request to stand aside While I use further conference with Warwick.

[They stand aloof.]

QUEEN MARGARET. Heavens grant that Warwick’s words bewitch him not!

KING LEWIS. Now, Warwick, tell me, even upon thy conscience, Is Edward your true king? For I were loath To link with him that were not lawful chosen.

WARWICK. Thereon I pawn my credit and mine honour.

KING LEWIS. But is he gracious in the people’s eye?

WARWICK. The more that Henry was unfortunate.

KING LEWIS. Then further, all dissembling set aside, Tell me for truth the measure of his love Unto our sister Bona.

WARWICK. Such it seems As may beseem a monarch like himself. Myself have often heard him say and swear That this his love was an eternal plant, Whereof the root was fixed in virtue’s ground, The leaves and fruit maintained with beauty’s sun, Exempt from envy, but not from disdain, Unless the Lady Bona quit his pain.

KING LEWIS. Now, sister, let us hear your firm resolve.

BONA. Your grant or your denial shall be mine. [To Warwick] Yet I confess that often ere this day, When I have heard your king’s desert recounted, Mine ear hath tempted judgment to desire.

KING LEWIS. Then, Warwick, thus: our sister shall be Edward’s. And now forthwith shall articles be drawn Touching the jointure that your king must make, Which with her dowry shall be counterpoised. Draw near, Queen Margaret, and be a witness That Bona shall be wife to the English king.

PRINCE EDWARD. To Edward, but not to the English king.

QUEEN MARGARET. Deceitful Warwick, it was thy device By this alliance to make void my suit. Before thy coming Lewis was Henry’s friend.

KING LEWIS. And still is friend to him and Margaret. But if your title to the crown be weak, As may appear by Edward’s good success, Then ’tis but reason that I be released From giving aid which late I promised. Yet shall you have all kindness at my hand That your estate requires and mine can yield.

WARWICK. Henry now lives in Scotland, at his ease, Where, having nothing, nothing can he lose. And as for you yourself, our quondam queen, You have a father able to maintain you, And better ’twere you troubled him than France.

QUEEN MARGARET. Peace, impudent and shameless Warwick, Proud setter up and puller down of kings! I will not hence till with my talk and tears, Both full of truth, I make King Lewis behold Thy sly conveyance and thy lord’s false love; For both of you are birds of selfsame feather.

[Post blowing a horn within.]

KING LEWIS. Warwick, this is some post to us or thee.

Enter the Post.

POST. My lord ambassador, these letters are for you. Sent from your brother, Marquess Montague. These from our king unto your Majesty. And, madam, these for you, from whom I know not.

[They all read their letters.]

OXFORD. I like it well that our fair Queen and mistress Smiles at her news while Warwick frowns at his.

PRINCE EDWARD. Nay, mark how Lewis stamps as he were nettled. I hope all’s for the best.

KING LEWIS. Warwick, what are thy news? And yours, fair Queen?

QUEEN MARGARET. Mine, such as fill my heart with unhoped joys.

WARWICK. Mine, full of sorrow and heart’s discontent.

KING LEWIS. What, has your king married the Lady Grey, And now, to soothe your forgery and his, Sends me a paper to persuade me patience? Is this th’ alliance that he seeks with France? Dare he presume to scorn us in this manner?

QUEEN MARGARET. I told your majesty as much before; This proveth Edward’s love and Warwick’s honesty.

WARWICK. King Lewis, I here protest in sight of heaven, And by the hope I have of heavenly bliss, That I am clear from this misdeed of Edward’s— No more my king, for he dishonours me, But most himself, if he could see his shame. Did I forget that by the house of York My father came untimely to his death? Did I let pass th’ abuse done to my niece? Did I impale him with the regal crown? Did I put Henry from his native right? And am I guerdoned at the last with shame? Shame on himself, for my desert is honour; And to repair my honour lost for him, I here renounce him and return to Henry. My noble Queen, let former grudges pass, And henceforth I am thy true servitor. I will revenge his wrong to Lady Bona, And replant Henry in his former state.

QUEEN MARGARET. Warwick, these words have turned my hate to love; And I forgive and quite forget old faults, And joy that thou becom’st King Henry’s friend.

WARWICK. So much his friend, ay, his unfeigned friend, That if King Lewis vouchsafe to furnish us With some few bands of chosen soldiers, I’ll undertake to land them on our coast And force the tyrant from his seat by war. ’Tis not his new-made bride shall succour him; And as for Clarence, as my letters tell me, He’s very likely now to fall from him For matching more for wanton lust than honour, Or than for strength and safety of our country.

BONA. Dear brother, how shall Bona be revenged But by thy help to this distressed queen?

QUEEN MARGARET. Renowned prince, how shall poor Henry live Unless thou rescue him from foul despair?

BONA. My quarrel and this English queen’s are one.

WARWICK. And mine, fair Lady Bona, joins with yours.

KING LEWIS. And mine with hers, and thine, and Margaret’s. Therefore, at last I firmly am resolved You shall have aid.

QUEEN MARGARET. Let me give humble thanks for all at once.

KING LEWIS. Then, England’s messenger, return in post And tell false Edward, thy supposed king, That Lewis of France is sending over maskers To revel it with him and his new bride. Thou seest what’s past; go fear thy king withal.

BONA. Tell him, in hope he’ll prove a widower shortly, I’ll wear the willow garland for his sake.

QUEEN MARGARET. Tell him my mourning weeds are laid aside, And I am ready to put armour on.

WARWICK. Tell him from me that he hath done me wrong, And therefore I’ll uncrown him ere ’t be long. There’s thy reward; be gone.

[Exit Post.]

KING LEWIS. But, Warwick, Thou and Oxford, with five thousand men, Shall cross the seas and bid false Edward battle; And, as occasion serves, this noble Queen And prince shall follow with a fresh supply. Yet, ere thou go, but answer me one doubt: What pledge have we of thy firm loyalty?

WARWICK. This shall assure my constant loyalty: That if our Queen and this young prince agree, I’ll join mine eldest daughter and my joy To him forthwith in holy wedlock bands.

QUEEN MARGARET. Yes, I agree, and thank you for your motion. Son Edward, she is fair and virtuous, Therefore delay not, give thy hand to Warwick, And with thy hand thy faith irrevocable That only Warwick’s daughter shall be thine.

PRINCE EDWARD. Yes, I accept her, for she well deserves it; And here, to pledge my vow, I give my hand.

[He gives his hand to Warwick.]

KING LEWIS. Why stay we now? These soldiers shall be levied, And thou, Lord Bourbon, our High Admiral, Shall waft them over with our royal fleet. I long till Edward fall by war’s mischance For mocking marriage with a dame of France.

[Exeunt all but Warwick.]

WARWICK. I came from Edward as ambassador, But I return his sworn and mortal foe. Matter of marriage was the charge he gave me, But dreadful war shall answer his demand. Had he none else to make a stale but me? Then none but I shall turn his jest to sorrow. I was the chief that raised him to the crown, And I’ll be chief to bring him down again: Not that I pity Henry’s misery, But seek revenge on Edward’s mockery.

SCENE I. London. The Palace

Enter Richard (Duke of Gloucester), George (Duke of Clarence), Somerset and Montague.

RICHARD. Now tell me, brother Clarence, what think you Of this new marriage with the Lady Grey? Hath not our brother made a worthy choice?

GEORGE. Alas, you know ’tis far from hence to France! How could he stay till Warwick made return?

SOMERSET. My lords, forbear this talk; here comes the King.

Flourish. Enter King Edward, attended; Lady Grey as Queen Elizabeth; Pembroke, Stafford, Hastings and others. Four stand on one side, and four on the other.

RICHARD. And his well-chosen bride.

GEORGE. I mind to tell him plainly what I think.

KING EDWARD. Now, brother of Clarence, how like you our choice, That you stand pensive as half malcontent?

GEORGE. As well as Lewis of France or the Earl of Warwick, Which are so weak of courage and in judgment That they’ll take no offence at our abuse.

KING EDWARD. Suppose they take offence without a cause, They are but Lewis and Warwick; I am Edward, Your King and Warwick’s, and must have my will.

RICHARD. And shall have your will, because our King. Yet hasty marriage seldom proveth well.

KING EDWARD. Yea, brother Richard, are you offended too?

RICHARD. Not I. No, God forbid that I should wish them severed Whom God hath joined together. Ay, and ’twere pity To sunder them that yoke so well together.

KING EDWARD. Setting your scorns and your mislike aside, Tell me some reason why the Lady Grey Should not become my wife and England’s queen. And you too, Somerset and Montague, Speak freely what you think.

GEORGE. Then this is mine opinion: that King Lewis Becomes your enemy for mocking him About the marriage of the Lady Bona.

RICHARD. And Warwick, doing what you gave in charge, Is now dishonoured by this new marriage.

KING EDWARD. What if both Lewis and Warwick be appeased By such invention as I can devise?

MONTAGUE. Yet to have joined with France in such alliance Would more have strengthened this our commonwealth ’Gainst foreign storms than any home-bred marriage.

HASTINGS. Why, knows not Montague that of itself England is safe, if true within itself?

MONTAGUE. But the safer when ’tis backed with France.

HASTINGS. ’Tis better using France than trusting France. Let us be backed with God and with the seas Which He hath giv’n for fence impregnable, And with their helps only defend ourselves. In them and in ourselves our safety lies.

GEORGE. For this one speech Lord Hastings well deserves To have the heir of the Lord Hungerford.

KING EDWARD. Ay, what of that? It was my will and grant; And for this once my will shall stand for law.

RICHARD. And yet, methinks, your Grace hath not done well To give the heir and daughter of Lord Scales Unto the brother of your loving bride. She better would have fitted me or Clarence; But in your bride you bury brotherhood.

GEORGE. Or else you would not have bestowed the heir Of the Lord Bonville on your new wife’s son, And leave your brothers to go speed elsewhere.

KING EDWARD. Alas, poor Clarence, is it for a wife That thou art malcontent? I will provide thee.

GEORGE. In choosing for yourself you showed your judgment, Which being shallow, you shall give me leave To play the broker in mine own behalf; And to that end I shortly mind to leave you.

KING EDWARD. Leave me or tarry, Edward will be king, And not be tied unto his brother’s will.

QUEEN ELIZABETH. My lords, before it pleased his Majesty To raise my state to title of a queen, Do me but right, and you must all confess That I was not ignoble of descent, And meaner than myself have had like fortune. But as this title honours me and mine, So your dislikes, to whom I would be pleasing, Doth cloud my joys with danger and with sorrow.

KING EDWARD. My love, forbear to fawn upon their frowns. What danger or what sorrow can befall thee So long as Edward is thy constant friend And their true sovereign, whom they must obey? Nay, whom they shall obey, and love thee too, Unless they seek for hatred at my hands; Which if they do, yet will I keep thee safe, And they shall feel the vengeance of my wrath.

RICHARD. [Aside.] I hear, yet say not much, but think the more.

KING EDWARD. Now, messenger, what letters or what news From France?

POST. My sovereign liege, no letters, and few words, But such as I, without your special pardon, Dare not relate.

KING EDWARD. Go to, we pardon thee. Therefore, in brief, Tell me their words as near as thou canst guess them. What answer makes King Lewis unto our letters?

POST. At my depart these were his very words: “Go tell false Edward, thy supposed king, That Lewis of France is sending over maskers To revel it with him and his new bride.”

KING EDWARD. Is Lewis so brave? Belike he thinks me Henry. But what said Lady Bona to my marriage?

POST. These were her words, uttered with mild disdain: “Tell him, in hope he’ll prove a widower shortly, I’ll wear the willow garland for his sake.”

KING EDWARD. I blame not her; she could say little less; She had the wrong. But what said Henry’s queen? For I have heard that she was there in place.

POST. “Tell him,” quoth she “my mourning weeds are done, And I am ready to put armour on.”

KING EDWARD. Belike she minds to play the Amazon. But what said Warwick to these injuries?

POST. He, more incensed against your Majesty Than all the rest, discharged me with these words: “Tell him from me that he hath done me wrong, And therefore I’ll uncrown him ere ’t be long.”

KING EDWARD. Ha! Durst the traitor breathe out so proud words? Well, I will arm me, being thus forewarned. They shall have wars and pay for their presumption. But say, is Warwick friends with Margaret?

POST. Ay, gracious sovereign, they are so linked in friendship That young Prince Edward marries Warwick’s daughter.

GEORGE. Belike the elder; Clarence will have the younger. Now, brother king, farewell, and sit you fast, For I will hence to Warwick’s other daughter; That, though I want a kingdom, yet in marriage I may not prove inferior to yourself. You that love me and Warwick, follow me.

[Exit George and Somerset follows.]

RICHARD. [Aside.] Not I. My thoughts aim at a further matter; I stay not for the love of Edward, but the crown.

KING EDWARD. Clarence and Somerset both gone to Warwick! Yet am I armed against the worst can happen, And haste is needful in this desperate case. Pembroke and Stafford, you in our behalf Go levy men and make prepare for war; They are already, or quickly will be, landed. Myself in person will straight follow you.

[Exeunt Pembroke and Stafford.]

But, ere I go, Hastings and Montague, Resolve my doubt. You twain, of all the rest, Are near to Warwick by blood and by alliance. Tell me if you love Warwick more than me. If it be so, then both depart to him. I rather wish you foes than hollow friends. But if you mind to hold your true obedience, Give me assurance with some friendly vow, That I may never have you in suspect.

MONTAGUE. So God help Montague as he proves true!

HASTINGS. And Hastings as he favours Edward’s cause!

KING EDWARD. Now, brother Richard, will you stand by us?

RICHARD. Ay, in despite of all that shall withstand you.

KING EDWARD. Why, so! Then am I sure of victory. Now, therefore, let us hence, and lose no hour Till we meet Warwick with his foreign power.

SCENE II. A Plain in Warwickshire

Enter Warwick and Oxford in England, with French Soldiers.

WARWICK. Trust me, my lord, all hitherto goes well; The common people by numbers swarm to us.

Enter George (Duke of Clarence) and Somerset.

But see where Somerset and Clarence comes. Speak suddenly, my lords: are we all friends?

GEORGE. Fear not that, my lord.

WARWICK. Then, gentle Clarence, welcome unto Warwick; And welcome, Somerset. I hold it cowardice To rest mistrustful where a noble heart Hath pawned an open hand in sign of love; Else might I think that Clarence, Edward’s brother, Were but a feigned friend to our proceedings. But welcome, sweet Clarence; my daughter shall be thine. And now what rests but, in night’s coverture, Thy brother being carelessly encamped, His soldiers lurking in the towns about, And but attended by a simple guard, We may surprise and take him at our pleasure? Our scouts have found the adventure very easy; That, as Ulysses and stout Diomede With sleight and manhood stole to Rhesus’ tents, And brought from thence the Thracian fatal steeds, So we, well covered with the night’s black mantle, At unawares may beat down Edward’s guard, And seize himself. I say not, slaughter him, For I intend but only to surprise him. You that will follow me to this attempt, Applaud the name of Henry with your leader.

[They all cry “Henry!”]

Why then, let’s on our way in silent sort, For Warwick and his friends, God and Saint George!

SCENE III. Edward’s Camp near Warwick

Enter three Watchmen to guard the King’s tent.

1 WATCHMAN. Come on, my masters, each man take his stand. The King by this is set him down to sleep.

2 WATCHMAN. What, will he not to bed?

1 WATCHMAN. Why, no; for he hath made a solemn vow Never to lie and take his natural rest Till Warwick or himself be quite suppressed.

2 WATCHMAN. Tomorrow, then, belike shall be the day, If Warwick be so near as men report.

3 WATCHMAN. But say, I pray, what nobleman is that That with the King here resteth in his tent?

1 WATCHMAN. ’Tis the Lord Hastings, the King’s chiefest friend.

3 WATCHMAN. O, is it so? But why commands the King That his chief followers lodge in towns about him, While he himself keeps in the cold field?

2 WATCHMAN. ’Tis the more honour, because more dangerous.

3 WATCHMAN. Ay, but give me worship and quietness; I like it better than dangerous honour. If Warwick knew in what estate he stands, ’Tis to be doubted he would waken him.

1 WATCHMAN. Unless our halberds did shut up his passage.

2 WATCHMAN. Ay, wherefore else guard we his royal tent But to defend his person from night-foes?

Enter Warwick, George (Duke of Clarence), Oxford, Somerset and French Soldiers, silent all.

WARWICK. This is his tent; and see where stand his guard. Courage, my masters! Honour now or never! But follow me, and Edward shall be ours.

1 WATCHMAN. Who goes there?

2 WATCHMAN. Stay, or thou diest.

[Warwick and the rest cry all, “Warwick! Warwick!” and set upon the guard, who fly, crying “Arm! Arm!” Warwick and the rest following them.]

The drum playing and trumpet sounding, enter Warwick, Somerset, and the rest, bringing the King out in his gown, sitting in a chair. Richard (Duke of Gloucester) and Hastings fly over the stage.

SOMERSET. What are they that fly there?

WARWICK. Richard and Hastings. Let them go. Here is the Duke.

KING EDWARD. The Duke? Why, Warwick, when we parted, Thou call’dst me king?

WARWICK. Ay, but the case is altered. When you disgraced me in my embassade, Then I degraded you from being king, And come now to create you Duke of York. Alas, how should you govern any kingdom That know not how to use ambassadors, Nor how to be contented with one wife, Nor how to use your brothers brotherly, Nor how to study for the people’s welfare, Nor how to shroud yourself from enemies?

KING EDWARD. Yea, brother of Clarence, art thou here too? Nay, then I see that Edward needs must down. Yet, Warwick, in despite of all mischance Of thee thyself and all thy complices, Edward will always bear himself as king. Though Fortune’s malice overthrow my state, My mind exceeds the compass of her wheel.

WARWICK. Then for his mind be Edward England’s king;

[Takes off his crown.]

But Henry now shall wear the English crown And be true king indeed, thou but the shadow. My lord of Somerset, at my request, See that forthwith Duke Edward be conveyed Unto my brother, Archbishop of York. When I have fought with Pembroke and his fellows, I’ll follow you and tell what answer Lewis and the Lady Bona send to him. Now, for a while farewell, good Duke of York.

[They begin to lead him out forcibly.]

KING EDWARD. What fates impose, that men must needs abide; It boots not to resist both wind and tide.

[Exit King Edward, led out; Somerset with him.]

OXFORD. What now remains, my lords, for us to do, But march to London with our soldiers?

WARWICK. Ay, that’s the first thing that we have to do, To free King Henry from imprisonment And see him seated in the regal throne.

Enter Queen Elizabeth and Rivers.

RIVERS. Madam, what makes you in this sudden change?

QUEEN ELIZABETH. Why, brother Rivers, are you yet to learn What late misfortune is befall’n King Edward?

RIVERS. What, loss of some pitched battle against Warwick?

QUEEN ELIZABETH. No, but the loss of his own royal person.

RIVERS. Then is my sovereign slain?

QUEEN ELIZABETH. Ay, almost slain, for he is taken prisoner, Either betrayed by falsehood of his guard Or by his foe surprised at unawares; And, as I further have to understand, Is new committed to the Bishop of York, Fell Warwick’s brother and by that our foe.

RIVERS. These news, I must confess, are full of grief; Yet, gracious madam, bear it as you may. Warwick may lose that now hath won the day.

QUEEN ELIZABETH. Till then, fair hope must hinder life’s decay; And I the rather wean me from despair For love of Edward’s offspring in my womb. This is it that makes me bridle passion And bear with mildness my misfortune’s cross, Ay, ay, for this I draw in many a tear And stop the rising of blood-sucking sighs, Lest with my sighs or tears I blast or drown King Edward’s fruit, true heir to th’ English crown.

RIVERS. But, madam, where is Warwick then become?

QUEEN ELIZABETH. I am informed that he comes towards London To set the crown once more on Henry’s head. Guess thou the rest: King Edward’s friends must down. But to prevent the tyrant’s violence— For trust not him that hath once broken faith— I’ll hence forthwith unto the sanctuary To save at least the heir of Edward’s right. There shall I rest secure from force and fraud. Come, therefore, let us fly while we may fly. If Warwick take us, we are sure to die.

SCENE V. A park near Middleham Castle in Yorkshire

Enter Richard (Duke of Gloucester), Lord Hastings, Sir William Stanley and others.

RICHARD. Now, my Lord Hastings and Sir William Stanley, Leave off to wonder why I drew you hither Into this chiefest thicket of the park. Thus stands the case: you know our King, my brother, Is prisoner to the Bishop here, at whose hands He hath good usage and great liberty, And often but attended with weak guard, Comes hunting this way to disport himself. I have advertised him by secret means That if about this hour he make this way, Under the colour of his usual game, He shall here find his friends with horse and men To set him free from his captivity.

Enter King Edward and a Huntsman with him.

HUNTSMAN. This way, my lord, for this way lies the game.

KING EDWARD. Nay, this way, man. See where the huntsmen stand. Now, brother of Gloucester, Lord Hastings, and the rest, Stand you thus close to steal the Bishop’s deer?

RICHARD. Brother, the time and case requireth haste; Your horse stands ready at the park corner.

KING EDWARD. But whither shall we then?

HASTINGS. To Lynn, my lord, and shipped from thence to Flanders.

RICHARD. Well guessed, believe me, for that was my meaning.

KING EDWARD. Stanley, I will requite thy forwardness.

RICHARD. But wherefore stay we? ’Tis no time to talk.

KING EDWARD. Huntsman, what sayst thou? Wilt thou go along?

HUNTSMAN. Better do so than tarry and be hanged.

RICHARD. Come then, away! Let’s ha’ no more ado.

KING EDWARD. Bishop, farewell; shield thee from Warwick’s frown, And pray that I may repossess the crown.

SCENE VI. London. The Tower

Enter King Henry, George (Duke of Clarence), Warwick, Somerset, young Richmond, Oxford, Montague, and Lieutenant of the Tower.

KING HENRY. Master Lieutenant, now that God and friends Have shaken Edward from the regal seat And turned my captive state to liberty, My fear to hope, my sorrows unto joys, At our enlargement what are thy due fees?

LIEUTENANT. Subjects may challenge nothing of their sovereigns; But if an humble prayer may prevail, I then crave pardon of your Majesty.

KING HENRY. For what, lieutenant? For well using me? Nay, be thou sure I’ll well requite thy kindness, For that it made my imprisonment a pleasure; Ay, such a pleasure as incaged birds Conceive when, after many moody thoughts, At last by notes of household harmony They quite forget their loss of liberty. But, Warwick, after God thou sett’st me free, And chiefly therefore I thank God and thee; He was the author, thou the instrument. Therefore, that I may conquer Fortune’s spite, By living low where Fortune cannot hurt me, And that the people of this blessed land May not be punished with my thwarting stars, Warwick, although my head still wear the crown, I here resign my government to thee, For thou art fortunate in all thy deeds.

WARWICK. Your Grace hath still been famed for virtuous, And now may seem as wise as virtuous By spying and avoiding Fortune’s malice, For few men rightly temper with the stars; Yet in this one thing let me blame your Grace, For choosing me when Clarence is in place.

GEORGE. No, Warwick, thou art worthy of the sway, To whom the heavens in thy nativity Adjudged an olive branch and laurel crown, As likely to be blest in peace and war; And therefore I yield thee my free consent.

WARWICK. And I choose Clarence only for Protector.

KING HENRY. Warwick and Clarence, give me both your hands. Now join your hands, and with your hands your hearts, That no dissension hinder government. I make you both Protectors of this land, While I myself will lead a private life And in devotion spend my latter days, To sin’s rebuke and my Creator’s praise.

WARWICK. What answers Clarence to his sovereign’s will?

GEORGE. That he consents, if Warwick yield consent, For on thy fortune I repose myself.

WARWICK. Why, then, though loath, yet I must be content. We’ll yoke together, like a double shadow To Henry’s body, and supply his place; I mean, in bearing weight of government, While he enjoys the honour and his ease. And, Clarence, now then it is more than needful Forthwith that Edward be pronounced a traitor And all his lands and goods be confiscate.

GEORGE. What else? And that succession be determined.

WARWICK. Ay, therein Clarence shall not want his part.

KING HENRY. But with the first of all your chief affairs Let me entreat—for I command no more— That Margaret your Queen and my son Edward Be sent for to return from France with speed; For till I see them here, by doubtful fear My joy of liberty is half eclipsed.

GEORGE. It shall be done, my sovereign, with all speed.

KING HENRY. My Lord of Somerset, what youth is that Of whom you seem to have so tender care?

SOMERSET. My liege, it is young Henry, Earl of Richmond.

KING HENRY. Come hither, England’s hope. If secret powers

[Lays his hand on his head.]

Suggest but truth to my divining thoughts, This pretty lad will prove our country’s bliss. His looks are full of peaceful majesty, His head by nature framed to wear a crown, His hand to wield a sceptre, and himself Likely in time to bless a regal throne. Make much of him, my lords, for this is he Must help you more than you are hurt by me.

WARWICK. What news, my friend?

POST. That Edward is escaped from your brother And fled, as he hears since, to Burgundy.

WARWICK. Unsavoury news! But how made he escape?

POST. He was conveyed by Richard, Duke of Gloucester And the Lord Hastings, who attended him In secret ambush on the forest side And from the Bishop’s huntsmen rescued him, For hunting was his daily exercise.

WARWICK. My brother was too careless of his charge. But let us hence, my sovereign, to provide A salve for any sore that may betide.

[Exeunt all but Somerset, Richmond and Oxford.]

SOMERSET. My lord, I like not of this flight of Edward’s, For doubtless Burgundy will yield him help, And we shall have more wars before ’t be long. As Henry’s late presaging prophecy Did glad my heart with hope of this young Richmond, So doth my heart misgive me, in these conflicts What may befall him, to his harm and ours. Therefore, Lord Oxford, to prevent the worst, Forthwith we’ll send him hence to Brittany Till storms be past of civil enmity.

OXFORD. Ay, for if Edward repossess the crown, ’Tis like that Richmond with the rest shall down.

SOMERSET. It shall be so. He shall to Brittany. Come therefore, let’s about it speedily.

SCENE VII. Before York

Flourish. Enter King Edward, Richard (Duke of Gloucester), Hastings and Soldiers.

KING EDWARD. Now, brother Richard, Lord Hastings, and the rest, Yet thus far Fortune maketh us amends, And says that once more I shall interchange My waned state for Henry’s regal crown. Well have we passed and now repassed the seas, And brought desired help from Burgundy. What then remains, we being thus arrived From Ravenspurgh haven before the gates of York, But that we enter as into our dukedom?

RICHARD. The gates made fast! Brother, I like not this; For many men that stumble at the threshold Are well foretold that danger lurks within.

KING EDWARD. Tush, man, abodements must not now affright us. By fair or foul means we must enter in, For hither will our friends repair to us.

HASTINGS. My liege, I’ll knock once more to summon them.

Enter on the walls, the Mayor of York and his Brethren.

MAYOR. My lords, we were forewarned of your coming And shut the gates for safety of ourselves, For now we owe allegiance unto Henry.

KING EDWARD. But, master Mayor, if Henry be your king, Yet Edward, at the least, is Duke of York.

MAYOR. True, my good lord, I know you for no less.

KING EDWARD. Why, and I challenge nothing but my dukedom, As being well content with that alone.

RICHARD. [Aside.] But when the fox hath once got in his nose, He’ll soon find means to make the body follow.

HASTINGS. Why, master Mayor, why stand you in a doubt? Open the gates; we are King Henry’s friends.

MAYOR. Ay, say you so? The gates shall then be opened.

[He descends.]

RICHARD. A wise, stout captain, and soon persuaded.

HASTINGS. The good old man would fain that all were well, So ’twere not long of him; but, being entered, I doubt not, I, but we shall soon persuade Both him and all his brothers unto reason.

Enter the Mayor and two Aldermen below.

KING EDWARD. So, master Mayor, these gates must not be shut But in the night or in the time of war. What, fear not, man, but yield me up the keys;

[Takes his keys.]

For Edward will defend the town and thee And all those friends that deign to follow me.

March. Enter Montgomery with drum and Soldiers.

RICHARD. Brother, this is Sir John Montgomery, Our trusty friend unless I be deceived.

KING EDWARD. Welcome, Sir John! But why come you in arms?

MONTGOMERY. To help King Edward in his time of storm, As every loyal subject ought to do.

KING EDWARD. Thanks, good Montgomery; but we now forget Our title to the crown, and only claim Our dukedom till God please to send the rest.

MONTGOMERY. Then fare you well, for I will hence again. I came to serve a king, and not a duke. Drummer, strike up, and let us march away.

[The drum begins to march.]

KING EDWARD. Nay, stay, Sir John, a while, and we’ll debate By what safe means the crown may be recovered.

MONTGOMERY. What talk you of debating? In few words, If you’ll not here proclaim yourself our king, I’ll leave you to your fortune and be gone To keep them back that come to succour you. Why shall we fight if you pretend no title?

RICHARD. Why, brother, wherefore stand you on nice points?

KING EDWARD. When we grow stronger, then we’ll make our claim. Till then ’tis wisdom to conceal our meaning.

HASTINGS. Away with scrupulous wit! Now arms must rule.

RICHARD. And fearless minds climb soonest unto crowns. Brother, we will proclaim you out of hand; The bruit thereof will bring you many friends.

KING EDWARD. Then be it as you will; for ’tis my right, And Henry but usurps the diadem.

MONTGOMERY. Ay, now my sovereign speaketh like himself, And now will I be Edward’s champion.

HASTINGS. Sound, trumpet; Edward shall be here proclaimed. Come, fellow soldier, make thou proclamation.

[Gives him a paper. Flourish.]

SOLDIER. [Reads.] Edward the Fourth, by the Grace of God, King of England and France, and Lord of Ireland, etc.

MONTGOMERY. And whoso’er gainsays King Edward’s right, By this I challenge him to single fight.

[Throws down his gauntlet.]

ALL. Long live Edward the Fourth!

KING EDWARD. Thanks, brave Montgomery, and thanks unto you all. If Fortune serve me, I’ll requite this kindness. Now for this night let’s harbour here in York, And when the morning sun shall raise his car Above the border of this horizon We’ll forward towards Warwick and his mates; For well I wot that Henry is no soldier. Ah, froward Clarence, how evil it beseems thee To flatter Henry and forsake thy brother! Yet, as we may, we’ll meet both thee and Warwick. Come on, brave soldiers; doubt not of the day, And, that once gotten, doubt not of large pay.

SCENE VIII. London. The Palace

Flourish. Enter King Henry, Warwick, Montague, George (Duke of Clarence), Oxford and Exeter.

WARWICK. What counsel, lords? Edward from Belgia, With hasty Germans and blunt Hollanders, Hath passed in safety through the Narrow Seas, And with his troops doth march amain to London; And many giddy people flock to him.

KING HENRY. Let’s levy men and beat him back again.

GEORGE. A little fire is quickly trodden out, Which, being suffered, rivers cannot quench.

WARWICK. In Warwickshire I have true-hearted friends, Not mutinous in peace, yet bold in war. Those will I muster up; and thou, son Clarence, Shalt stir up in Suffolk, Norfolk, and in Kent The knights and gentlemen to come with thee. Thou, brother Montague, in Buckingham, Northampton, and in Leicestershire shalt find Men well inclined to hear what thou command’st. And thou, brave Oxford, wondrous well beloved, In Oxfordshire shalt muster up thy friends. My sovereign, with the loving citizens, Like to his island girt in with the ocean, Or modest Dian circled with her nymphs, Shall rest in London till we come to him. Fair lords, take leave and stand not to reply. Farewell, my sovereign.

KING HENRY. Farewell, my Hector, and my Troy’s true hope.

GEORGE. In sign of truth, I kiss your Highness’ hand.

KING HENRY. Well-minded Clarence, be thou fortunate.

MONTAGUE. Comfort, my lord; and so I take my leave.

OXFORD. And thus [kissing Henry’s hand] I seal my truth, and bid adieu.

KING HENRY. Sweet Oxford, and my loving Montague, And all at once, once more a happy farewell.

WARWICK. Farewell, sweet lords; let’s meet at Coventry.

[Exeunt all but King Henry and Exeter.]

KING HENRY. Here at the palace will I rest a while. Cousin of Exeter, what thinks your lordship? Methinks the power that Edward hath in field Should not be able to encounter mine.

EXETER. The doubt is that he will seduce the rest.

KING HENRY. That’s not my fear; my meed hath got me fame. I have not stopped mine ears to their demands, Nor posted off their suits with slow delays; My pity hath been balm to heal their wounds, My mildness hath allayed their swelling griefs, My mercy dried their water-flowing tears. I have not been desirous of their wealth Nor much oppressed them with great subsidies, Nor forward of revenge, though they much erred. Then why should they love Edward more than me? No, Exeter, these graces challenge grace; And when the lion fawns upon the lamb, The lamb will never cease to follow him.

[Shout within “A York! A York!”]

EXETER. Hark, hark, my lord, what shouts are these?

Enter King Edward, Richard (Duke of Gloucester) and Soldiers.

KING EDWARD. Seize on the shame-faced Henry, bear him hence, And once again proclaim us King of England. You are the fount that makes small brooks to flow. Now stops thy spring; my sea shall suck them dry And swell so much the higher by their ebb. Hence with him to the Tower. Let him not speak.

[Exeunt some with King Henry.]

And, lords, towards Coventry bend we our course, Where peremptory Warwick now remains. The sun shines hot, and, if we use delay, Cold biting winter mars our hoped-for hay.

RICHARD. Away betimes, before his forces join, And take the great-grown traitor unawares. Brave warriors, march amain towards Coventry.

SCENE I. Coventry

Enter, Warwick, the Mayor of Coventry, two Messengers and others, upon the walls.

WARWICK. Where is the post that came from valiant Oxford? How far hence is thy lord, mine honest fellow?

1 MESSENGER. By this at Dunsmore, marching hitherward.

WARWICK. How far off is our brother Montague? Where is the post that came from Montague?

2 MESSENGER. By this at Daintry, with a puissant troop.

Enter Sir John Somerville.

WARWICK. Say, Somerville, what says my loving son? And, by thy guess, how nigh is Clarence now?

SOMERVILLE. At Southam I did leave him with his forces And do expect him here some two hours hence.

[Drum heard.]

WARWICK. Then Clarence is at hand; I hear his drum.

SOMERVILLE. It is not his, my lord; here Southam lies. The drum your honour hears marcheth from Warwick.

WARWICK. Who should that be? Belike, unlooked-for friends.

SOMERVILLE. They are at hand, and you shall quickly know.

March. Flourish. Enter King Edward, Richard (Duke of Gloucester) and Soldiers.

KING EDWARD. Go, trumpet, to the walls and sound a parle.

RICHARD. See how the surly Warwick mans the wall.

WARWICK. O, unbid spite! Is sportful Edward come? Where slept our scouts, or how are they seduced, That we could hear no news of his repair?

KING EDWARD. Now, Warwick, wilt thou ope the city gates, Speak gentle words and humbly bend thy knee? Call Edward King and at his hands beg mercy, And he shall pardon thee these outrages.

WARWICK. Nay, rather, wilt thou draw thy forces hence, Confess who set thee up and plucked thee down, Call Warwick patron and be penitent, And thou shalt still remain the Duke of York.

RICHARD. I thought, at least, he would have said the King; Or did he make the jest against his will?

WARWICK. Is not a dukedom, sir, a goodly gift?

RICHARD. Ay, by my faith, for a poor earl to give; I’ll do thee service for so good a gift.

WARWICK. ’Twas I that gave the kingdom to thy brother.

KING EDWARD. Why, then, ’tis mine, if but by Warwick’s gift.

WARWICK. Thou art no Atlas for so great a weight; And, weakling, Warwick takes his gift again; And Henry is my King, Warwick his subject.

KING EDWARD. But Warwick’s king is Edward’s prisoner; And, gallant Warwick, do but answer this: What is the body when the head is off?

RICHARD. Alas, that Warwick had no more forecast, But, whiles he thought to steal the single ten, The king was slily fingered from the deck! You left poor Henry at the Bishop’s palace, And ten to one you’ll meet him in the Tower.

KING EDWARD. ’Tis even so; yet you are Warwick still.

RICHARD. Come, Warwick, take the time; kneel down, kneel down. Nay, when? Strike now, or else the iron cools.

WARWICK. I had rather chop this hand off at a blow And with the other fling it at thy face, Than bear so low a sail to strike to thee.

KING EDWARD. Sail how thou canst, have wind and tide thy friend, This hand, fast wound about thy coal-black hair, Shall, whiles thy head is warm and new cut off, Write in the dust this sentence with thy blood: “Wind-changing Warwick now can change no more.”

Enter Oxford with drum and colours.

WARWICK. O cheerful colours! See where Oxford comes!

OXFORD. Oxford, Oxford, for Lancaster!

[He and his forces enter the city.]

RICHARD. The gates are open; let us enter too.

KING EDWARD. So other foes may set upon our backs. Stand we in good array, for they no doubt Will issue out again and bid us battle; If not, the city being but of small defence, We’ll quietly rouse the traitors in the same.

WARWICK. O, welcome, Oxford, for we want thy help.

Enter Montague with drum and colours.

MONTAGUE. Montague, Montague, for Lancaster!

RICHARD. Thou and thy brother both shall buy this treason Even with the dearest blood your bodies bear.

KING EDWARD. The harder matched, the greater victory. My mind presageth happy gain and conquest.

Enter Somerset with drum and colours.

SOMERSET. Somerset, Somerset, for Lancaster!

RICHARD. Two of thy name, both Dukes of Somerset, Have sold their lives unto the House of York; And thou shalt be the third if this sword hold.

Enter George (Duke of Clarence) with drum and colours.

WARWICK. And lo, where George of Clarence sweeps along, Of force enough to bid his brother battle; With whom an upright zeal to right prevails More than the nature of a brother’s love.

[Richard and George whisper.]

Come, Clarence, come; thou wilt if Warwick call.

GEORGE. Father of Warwick, know you what this means?

[Taking the red rose from his hat and throws the rose at Warwick.]

Look here, I throw my infamy at thee. I will not ruinate my father’s house, Who gave his blood to lime the stones together, And set up Lancaster. Why, trowest thou, Warwick, That Clarence is so harsh, so blunt, unnatural, To bend the fatal instruments of war Against his brother and his lawful King? Perhaps thou wilt object my holy oath. To keep that oath were more impiety Than Jephthah’s when he sacrificed his daughter. I am so sorry for my trespass made That, to deserve well at my brother’s hands, I here proclaim myself thy mortal foe, With resolution, whereso’er I meet thee— As I will meet thee if thou stir abroad— To plague thee for thy foul misleading me. And so, proud-hearted Warwick, I defy thee, And to my brother turn my blushing cheeks. Pardon me, Edward, I will make amends. And, Richard, do not frown upon my faults, For I will henceforth be no more unconstant.

KING EDWARD. Now, welcome more, and ten times more beloved, Than if thou never hadst deserved our hate.

RICHARD. Welcome, good Clarence; this is brother-like.

WARWICK. O passing traitor, perjured and unjust!

KING EDWARD. What, Warwick, wilt thou leave the town and fight? Or shall we beat the stones about thine ears?

WARWICK. Alas! I am not cooped here for defence! I will away towards Barnet presently And bid thee battle, Edward, if thou dar’st.

KING EDWARD. Yes, Warwick, Edward dares, and leads the way. Lords, to the field! Saint George and victory!

[Exeunt. March. Warwick and his company follows.]

SCENE II. A Field of Battle near Barnet

Alarum and excursions. Enter King Edward bringing forth Warwick wounded.

KING EDWARD. So, lie thou there. Die thou, and die our fear, For Warwick was a bug that feared us all. Now, Montague, sit fast; I seek for thee, That Warwick’s bones may keep thine company.

WARWICK. Ah, who is nigh? Come to me, friend or foe, And tell me who is victor, York or Warwick? Why ask I that? My mangled body shows, My blood, my want of strength, my sick heart shows That I must yield my body to the earth And, by my fall, the conquest to my foe. Thus yields the cedar to the axe’s edge, Whose arms gave shelter to the princely eagle, Under whose shade the ramping lion slept, Whose top branch overpeered Jove’s spreading tree, And kept low shrubs from winter’s pow’rful wind. These eyes, that now are dimmed with death’s black veil, Have been as piercing as the midday sun, To search the secret treasons of the world; The wrinkles in my brows, now filled with blood, Were likened oft to kingly sepulchres, For who lived King but I could dig his grave? And who durst smile when Warwick bent his brow? Lo, now my glory smeared in dust and blood! My parks, my walks, my manors that I had, Even now forsake me; and of all my lands Is nothing left me but my body’s length. Why, what is pomp, rule, reign, but earth and dust? And live we how we can, yet die we must.

Enter Oxford and Somerset.

SOMERSET. Ah, Warwick, Warwick, wert thou as we are, We might recover all our loss again. The Queen from France hath brought a puissant power; Even now we heard the news. Ah, couldst thou fly!

WARWICK. Why, then I would not fly. Ah, Montague! If thou be there, sweet brother, take my hand And with thy lips keep in my soul awhile. Thou lov’st me not; for, brother, if thou didst, Thy tears would wash this cold congealed blood That glues my lips and will not let me speak. Come quickly, Montague, or I am dead.

SOMERSET. Ah, Warwick, Montague hath breathed his last, And to the latest gasp cried out for Warwick, And said “Commend me to my valiant brother.” And more he would have said, and more he spoke, Which sounded like a cannon in a vault, That mought not be distinguished; but at last I well might hear, delivered with a groan, “O farewell, Warwick!”

WARWICK. Sweet rest his soul! Fly, lords, and save yourselves, For Warwick bids you all farewell, to meet in heaven.

[He dies.]

OXFORD. Away, away, to meet the Queen’s great power!

[Here they bear away his body. Exeunt.]

SCENE III. Another Part of the Field

Flourish. Enter King Edward in triumph, with Richard, George and the rest.

KING EDWARD. Thus far our fortune keeps an upward course, And we are graced with wreaths of victory. But in the midst of this bright-shining day, I spy a black, suspicious, threat’ning cloud That will encounter with our glorious sun Ere he attain his easeful western bed. I mean, my lords, those powers that the Queen Hath raised in Gallia have arrived our coast And, as we hear, march on to fight with us.

GEORGE. A little gale will soon disperse that cloud And blow it to the source from whence it came; Thy very beams will dry those vapours up, For every cloud engenders not a storm.

RICHARD. The Queen is valued thirty thousand strong, And Somerset, with Oxford, fled to her. If she have time to breathe, be well assured Her faction will be full as strong as ours.

KING EDWARD. We are advertised by our loving friends That they do hold their course toward Tewkesbury. We, having now the best at Barnet field, Will thither straight, for willingness rids way; And, as we march, our strength will be augmented In every county as we go along. Strike up the drum! cry “Courage!” and away.

SCENE IV. Plains near Tewkesbury

Flourish. March. Enter Queen Margaret, Prince Edward, Somerset, Oxford and Soldiers.

QUEEN MARGARET. Great lords, wise men ne’er sit and wail their loss, But cheerly seek how to redress their harms. What though the mast be now blown overboard, The cable broke, the holding-anchor lost, And half our sailors swallowed in the flood? Yet lives our pilot still. Is ’t meet that he Should leave the helm and, like a fearful lad, With tearful eyes add water to the sea And give more strength to that which hath too much, Whiles in his moan the ship splits on the rock, Which industry and courage might have saved? Ah, what a shame, ah, what a fault were this! Say Warwick was our anchor; what of that? And Montague our topmast; what of him? Our slaughtered friends the tackles; what of these? Why, is not Oxford here another anchor? And Somerset another goodly mast? The friends of France our shrouds and tacklings? And, though unskilful, why not Ned and I For once allowed the skilful pilot’s charge? We will not from the helm to sit and weep, But keep our course, though the rough wind say no, From shelves and rocks that threaten us with wrack. As good to chide the waves as speak them fair. And what is Edward but a ruthless sea? What Clarence but a quicksand of deceit? And Richard but a ragged fatal rock? All these the enemies to our poor bark? Say you can swim: alas, ’tis but a while! Tread on the sand: why, there you quickly sink; Bestride the rock: the tide will wash you off, Or else you famish; that’s a threefold death. This speak I, lords, to let you understand, If case some one of you would fly from us, That there’s no hoped-for mercy with the brothers More than with ruthless waves, with sands, and rocks. Why, courage then! What cannot be avoided ’Twere childish weakness to lament or fear.

PRINCE EDWARD. Methinks a woman of this valiant spirit Should, if a coward heard her speak these words, Infuse his breast with magnanimity And make him, naked, foil a man at arms. I speak not this as doubting any here; For did I but suspect a fearful man, He should have leave to go away betimes, Lest in our need he might infect another And make him of the like spirit to himself. If any such be here, as God forbid! Let him depart before we need his help.

OXFORD. Women and children of so high a courage, And warriors faint! Why, ’twere perpetual shame. O, brave young Prince, thy famous grandfather Doth live again in thee. Long mayst thou live To bear his image and renew his glories!

SOMERSET. And he that will not fight for such a hope, Go home to bed and, like the owl by day, If he arise, be mocked and wondered at.

QUEEN MARGARET. Thanks, gentle Somerset. Sweet Oxford, thanks.

PRINCE EDWARD. And take his thanks that yet hath nothing else.

MESSENGER. Prepare you, lords, for Edward is at hand Ready to fight; therefore be resolute.

OXFORD. I thought no less. It is his policy To haste thus fast, to find us unprovided.

SOMERSET. But he’s deceived; we are in readiness.

QUEEN MARGARET. This cheers my heart, to see your forwardness.

OXFORD. Here pitch our battle; hence we will not budge.

Flourish and march. Enter King Edward, Richard, George and Soldiers.

KING EDWARD. Brave followers, yonder stands the thorny wood Which by the heaven’s assistance and your strength Must by the roots be hewn up yet ere night. I need not add more fuel to your fire, For, well I wot, ye blaze to burn them out. Give signal to the fight, and to it, lords!

QUEEN MARGARET. Lords, knights, and gentlemen, what I should say My tears gainsay; for every word I speak Ye see I drink the water of my eye. Therefore, no more but this: Henry, your sovereign, Is prisoner to the foe, his state usurped, His realm a slaughter-house, his subjects slain, His statutes cancelled, and his treasure spent; And yonder is the wolf that makes this spoil. You fight in justice. Then, in God’s name, lords, Be valiant and give signal to the fight.

[Alarum, retreat, excursions. Exeunt both armies]

SCENE V. Another part of the Field

Flourish. Enter King Edward, Richard, George and Soldiers; with Queen Margaret, Oxford and Somerset as prisoners.

KING EDWARD. Now here a period of tumultuous broils. Away with Oxford to Hames Castle straight. For Somerset, off with his guilty head. Go, bear them hence; I will not hear them speak.

OXFORD. For my part, I’ll not trouble thee with words.

SOMERSET. Nor I, but stoop with patience to my fortune.

[Exeunt Oxford and Somerset, guarded.]

QUEEN MARGARET. So part we sadly in this troublous world, To meet with joy in sweet Jerusalem.

KING EDWARD. Is proclamation made that who finds Edward Shall have a high reward, and he his life?

RICHARD. It is, and lo where youthful Edward comes.

Enter soldiers with Prince Edward.

KING EDWARD. Bring forth the gallant; let us hear him speak. What, can so young a man begin to prick? Edward, what satisfaction canst thou make For bearing arms, for stirring up my subjects, And all the trouble thou hast turned me to?

PRINCE EDWARD. Speak like a subject, proud, ambitious York. Suppose that I am now my father’s mouth; Resign thy chair, and where I stand kneel thou, Whilst I propose the selfsame words to thee Which, traitor, thou wouldst have me answer to.

QUEEN MARGARET. Ah, thy father had been so resolved!

RICHARD. That you might still have worn the petticoat And ne’er have stol’n the breech from Lancaster.

PRINCE EDWARD. Let Aesop fable in a winter’s night; His currish riddle sorts not with this place.

RICHARD. By heaven, brat, I’ll plague you for that word.

QUEEN MARGARET. Ay, thou wast born to be a plague to men.

RICHARD. For God’s sake, take away this captive scold.

PRINCE EDWARD. Nay, take away this scolding crookback rather.

KING EDWARD. Peace, wilful boy, or I will charm your tongue.

GEORGE. Untutored lad, thou art too malapert.

PRINCE EDWARD. I know my duty; you are all undutiful. Lascivious Edward, and thou perjured George, And thou misshapen Dick, I tell ye all I am your better, traitors as ye are, And thou usurp’st my father’s right and mine.

KING EDWARD. Take that, the likeness of this railer here.

[Stabs him.]

RICHARD. Sprawl’st thou? Take that to end thy agony.

GEORGE. And there’s for twitting me with perjury.

QUEEN MARGARET. O, kill me too!

RICHARD. Marry, and shall.

[Offers to kill her.]

KING EDWARD. Hold, Richard, hold; for we have done too much.

RICHARD. Why should she live to fill the world with words?

KING EDWARD. What, doth she swoon? Use means for her recovery.

RICHARD. Clarence, excuse me to the King my brother. I’ll hence to London on a serious matter. Ere ye come there, be sure to hear some news.

GEORGE. What? What?

RICHARD. The Tower, the Tower!

QUEEN MARGARET. O Ned, sweet Ned, speak to thy mother, boy. Canst thou not speak? O traitors, murderers! They that stabbed Caesar shed no blood at all, Did not offend, nor were not worthy blame, If this foul deed were by to equal it. He was a man; this, in respect, a child, And men ne’er spend their fury on a child. What’s worse than murderer, that I may name it? No, no, my heart will burst an if I speak; And I will speak, that so my heart may burst. Butchers and villains, bloody cannibals! How sweet a plant have you untimely cropped! You have no children, butchers; if you had, The thought of them would have stirred up remorse. But if you ever chance to have a child, Look in his youth to have him so cut off As, deathsmen, you have rid this sweet young prince!

KING EDWARD. Away with her; go bear her hence perforce.

QUEEN MARGARET. Nay, never bear me hence, dispatch me here. Here sheathe thy sword; I’ll pardon thee my death. What, wilt thou not? Then, Clarence, do it thou.

GEORGE. By heaven, I will not do thee so much ease.

QUEEN MARGARET. Good Clarence, do; sweet Clarence, do thou do it.

GEORGE. Didst thou not hear me swear I would not do it?

QUEEN MARGARET. Ay, but thou usest to forswear thyself. ’Twas sin before, but now ’tis charity. What, wilt thou not? Where is that devil’s butcher, Richard, Hard-favoured Richard? Richard, where art thou? Thou art not here. Murder is thy alms-deed; Petitioners for blood thou ne’er putt’st back.

KING EDWARD. Away, I say! I charge ye, bear her hence.

QUEEN MARGARET. So come to you and yours as to this prince!

[She is taken out.]

KING EDWARD. Where’s Richard gone?

GEORGE. To London all in post, and, as I guess, To make a bloody supper in the Tower.

KING EDWARD. He’s sudden if a thing comes in his head. Now march we hence. Discharge the common sort With pay and thanks, and let’s away to London And see our gentle Queen how well she fares. By this, I hope, she hath a son for me.

Enter King Henry and Richard, with the Lieutenant on the walls.

RICHARD. Good day, my lord. What, at your book so hard?

KING HENRY. Ay, my good lord—my lord, I should say rather. ’Tis sin to flatter; “good” was little better: “Good Gloucester” and “good devil” were alike, And both preposterous; therefore, not “good lord”.

RICHARD. Sirrah, leave us to ourselves; we must confer.

[Exit Lieutenant.]

KING HENRY. So flies the reckless shepherd from the wolf; So first the harmless sheep doth yield his fleece, And next his throat unto the butcher’s knife. What scene of death hath Roscius now to act?

RICHARD. Suspicion always haunts the guilty mind; The thief doth fear each bush an officer.

KING HENRY. The bird that hath been limed in a bush With trembling wings misdoubteth every bush; And I, the hapless male to one sweet bird, Have now the fatal object in my eye Where my poor young was limed, was caught, and killed.

RICHARD. Why, what a peevish fool was that of Crete That taught his son the office of a fowl! And yet, for all his wings, the fool was drowned.

KING HENRY. I, Daedalus; my poor boy, Icarus; Thy father, Minos, that denied our course; The sun that seared the wings of my sweet boy, Thy brother Edward; and thyself, the sea Whose envious gulf did swallow up his life. Ah, kill me with thy weapon, not with words! My breast can better brook thy dagger’s point Than can my ears that tragic history. But wherefore dost thou come? Is ’t for my life?

RICHARD. Think’st thou I am an executioner?

KING HENRY. A persecutor I am sure thou art. If murdering innocents be executing, Why, then thou art an executioner.

RICHARD. Thy son I killed for his presumption.

KING HENRY. Hadst thou been killed when first thou didst presume, Thou hadst not lived to kill a son of mine. And thus I prophesy: that many a thousand Which now mistrust no parcel of my fear, And many an old man’s sigh, and many a widow’s, And many an orphan’s water-standing eye, Men for their sons’, wives for their husbands’, Orphans for their parents’ timeless death, Shall rue the hour that ever thou wast born. The owl shrieked at thy birth, an evil sign; The night-crow cried, aboding luckless time; Dogs howled, and hideous tempest shook down trees; The raven rooked her on the chimney’s top, And chatt’ring pies in dismal discord sung; Thy mother felt more than a mother’s pain, And yet brought forth less than a mother’s hope, To wit, an indigested and deformed lump, Not like the fruit of such a goodly tree. Teeth hadst thou in thy head when thou wast born, To signify thou cam’st to bite the world; And, if the rest be true which I have heard, Thou cam’st—

RICHARD. I’ll hear no more. Die, prophet, in thy speech.

For this, amongst the rest, was I ordained.

KING HENRY. Ay, and for much more slaughter after this. O God, forgive my sins, and pardon thee!

RICHARD. What, will the aspiring blood of Lancaster Sink in the ground? I thought it would have mounted. See how my sword weeps for the poor King’s death. O, may such purple tears be always shed From those that wish the downfall of our house! If any spark of life be yet remaining, Down, down to hell; and say I sent thee thither—

[Stabs him again.]

I that have neither pity, love, nor fear. Indeed, ’tis true that Henry told me of, For I have often heard my mother say I came into the world with my legs forward. Had I not reason, think ye, to make haste And seek their ruin that usurped our right? The midwife wondered, and the women cried “O, Jesus bless us, he is born with teeth!” And so I was, which plainly signified That I should snarl, and bite, and play the dog. Then, since the heavens have shaped my body so, Let hell make crooked my mind to answer it. I have no brother, I am like no brother; And this word “love,” which greybeards call divine, Be resident in men like one another, And not in me. I am myself alone. Clarence, beware; thou keep’st me from the light, But I will sort a pitchy day for thee; For I will buzz abroad such prophecies That Edward shall be fearful of his life; And then, to purge his fear, I’ll be thy death. King Henry and the Prince his son are gone; Clarence, thy turn is next, and then the rest, Counting myself but bad till I be best. I’ll throw thy body in another room, And triumph, Henry, in thy day of doom.

SCENE VII. London. The Palace

Flourish. Enter King Edward, Queen Elizabeth, George, Richard, Hastings, Nurse, carrying infant Prince Edward, and Attendants.

KING EDWARD. Once more we sit in England’s royal throne, Repurchased with the blood of enemies. What valiant foemen, like to autumn’s corn, Have we mowed down in tops of all their pride! Three Dukes of Somerset, threefold renowned For hardy and undoubted champions; Two Cliffords, as the father and the son; And two Northumberlands; two braver men Ne’er spurred their coursers at the trumpet’s sound; With them the two brave bears, Warwick and Montague, That in their chains fettered the kingly lion And made the forest tremble when they roared. Thus have we swept suspicion from our seat And made our footstool of security. Come hither, Bess, and let me kiss my boy. Young Ned, for thee thine uncles and myself Have in our armours watched the winter’s night, Went all afoot in summer’s scalding heat, That thou mightst repossess the crown in peace; And of our labours thou shalt reap the gain.

RICHARD. [Aside.] I’ll blast his harvest, if your head were laid; For yet I am not looked on in the world. This shoulder was ordained so thick to heave, And heave it shall some weight or break my back. Work thou the way, and that shall execute.

KING EDWARD. Clarence and Gloucester, love my lovely Queen; And kiss your princely nephew, brothers both.

GEORGE. The duty that I owe unto your Majesty I seal upon the lips of this sweet babe.

QUEEN ELIZABETH. Thanks, noble Clarence; worthy brother, thanks.

RICHARD. And, that I love the tree from whence thou sprang’st, Witness the loving kiss I give the fruit. [Aside.] To say the truth, so Judas kissed his master And cried “All hail!” when as he meant all harm.

KING EDWARD. Now am I seated as my soul delights, Having my country’s peace and brothers’ loves.

GEORGE. What will your Grace have done with Margaret? Reignier, her father, to the King of France Hath pawned the Sicils and Jerusalem, And hither have they sent it for her ransom.

KING EDWARD. Away with her and waft her hence to France. And now what rests but that we spend the time With stately triumphs, mirthful comic shows, Such as befits the pleasure of the court? Sound drums and trumpets! Farewell, sour annoy! For here, I hope, begins our lasting joy.

KING HENRY THE EIGHTH

ACT I Prologue. Scene I. London. An ante-chamber in the palace Scene II. The same. The council-chamber Scene III. An ante-chamber in the palace Scene IV. A Hall in York Place

ACT II Scene I. Westminster. A street Scene II. An ante-chamber in the palace Scene III. An ante-chamber of the Queen’s apartments Scene IV. A hall in Blackfriars

ACT III Scene I. London. The Queen’s apartments Scene II. Ante-chamber to the King’s apartment

ACT IV Scene I. A street in Westminster Scene II. Kimbolton

ACT V Scene I. A gallery in the palace Scene II. Lobby before the council-chamber Scene III. The palace yard Scene IV. The palace Epilogue

DUKE OF NORFOLK DUKE OF SUFFOLK

CARDINAL WOLSEY SECRETARIES to Wolsey CROMWELL, servant to Wolsey CARDINAL CAMPEIUS GARDINER, Bishop of Winchester PAGE to Gardiner

QUEEN KATHERINE, wife to King Henry, afterwards divorced GRIFFITH, gentleman usher to Queen Katherine PATIENCE, woman to Queen Katherine Queen’s GENTLEMAN USHER CAPUTIUS, Ambassador from the Emperor Charles V

DUKE OF BUCKINGHAM LORD ABERGAVENNY, Buckingham’s son-in-law EARL OF SURREY, Buckingham’s son-in-law SIR NICHOLAS VAUX SURVEYOR to the Duke of Buckingham BRANDON SERGEANT-at-Arms Three Gentlemen

ANNE BULLEN, her Maid of Honour, afterwards Queen An OLD LADY, friend to Anne Bullen LORD CHAMBERLAIN LORD SANDYS (called also SIR WILLIAM SANDYS) SIR THOMAS LOVELL SIR HENRY GUILDFORD

BISHOP OF LINCOLN CRANMER, archbishop of Canterbury LORD CHANCELLOR GARTER King-of-Arms SIR ANTHONY DENNY DOCTOR BUTTS, physician to the King Door-KEEPER of the Council-chamber PORTER, and his Man A CRIER PROLOGUE EPILOGUE

Spirits, Several Lords and Ladies in the Dumb Shows; Women attending upon the Queen; Scribes, Officers, Guards, and other Attendants

SCENE: London; Westminster; Kimbolton

THE PROLOGUE. I come no more to make you laugh. Things now That bear a weighty and a serious brow, Sad, high, and working, full of state and woe, Such noble scenes as draw the eye to flow, We now present. Those that can pity, here May, if they think it well, let fall a tear; The subject will deserve it. Such as give Their money out of hope they may believe May here find truth too. Those that come to see Only a show or two, and so agree The play may pass, if they be still and willing, I’ll undertake may see away their shilling Richly in two short hours. Only they That come to hear a merry bawdy play, A noise of targets, or to see a fellow In a long motley coat guarded with yellow, Will be deceived. For, gentle hearers, know To rank our chosen truth with such a show As fool and fight is, beside forfeiting Our own brains and the opinion that we bring To make that only true we now intend, Will leave us never an understanding friend. Therefore, for goodness’ sake, and as you are known The first and happiest hearers of the town, Be sad, as we would make ye. Think ye see The very persons of our noble story As they were living; think you see them great, And followed with the general throng and sweat Of thousand friends; then, in a moment, see How soon this mightiness meets misery; And if you can be merry then, I’ll say A man may weep upon his wedding day.

SCENE I. London. An ante-chamber in the palace.

Enter the Duke of Norfolk at one door; at the other, the Duke of Buckingham and the Lord Abergavenny.

BUCKINGHAM. Good morrow, and well met. How have ye done Since last we saw in France?

NORFOLK. I thank your Grace, Healthful, and ever since a fresh admirer Of what I saw there.

BUCKINGHAM. An untimely ague Stayed me a prisoner in my chamber when Those suns of glory, those two lights of men, Met in the vale of Andren.

NORFOLK. ’Twixt Guynes and Arde. I was then present, saw them salute on horseback, Beheld them when they lighted, how they clung In their embracement, as they grew together— Which had they, what four throned ones could have weighed Such a compounded one?

BUCKINGHAM. All the whole time I was my chamber’s prisoner.

NORFOLK. Then you lost The view of earthly glory. Men might say, Till this time pomp was single, but now married To one above itself. Each following day Became the next day’s master, till the last Made former wonders its. Today the French, All clinquant, all in gold, like heathen gods, Shone down the English; and tomorrow, they Made Britain India: every man that stood Showed like a mine. Their dwarfish pages were As cherubins, all gilt. The madams too, Not used to toil, did almost sweat to bear The pride upon them, that their very labour Was to them as a painting. Now this masque Was cried incomparable; and th’ ensuing night Made it a fool and beggar. The two kings, Equal in lustre, were now best, now worst, As presence did present them: him in eye, Still him in praise; and being present both, ’Twas said they saw but one, and no discerner Durst wag his tongue in censure. When these suns— For so they phrase ’em—by their heralds challenged The noble spirits to arms, they did perform Beyond thought’s compass, that former fabulous story, Being now seen possible enough, got credit, That Bevis was believed.

BUCKINGHAM. O, you go far.

NORFOLK. As I belong to worship and affect In honour honesty, the tract of everything Would by a good discourser lose some life, Which action’s self was tongue to. All was royal; To the disposing of it nought rebelled; Order gave each thing view; the office did Distinctly his full function.

BUCKINGHAM. Who did guide, I mean, who set the body and the limbs Of this great sport together, as you guess?

NORFOLK. One, certes, that promises no element In such a business.

BUCKINGHAM. I pray you who, my lord?

NORFOLK. All this was ordered by the good discretion Of the right reverend Cardinal of York.

BUCKINGHAM. The devil speed him! No man’s pie is freed From his ambitious finger. What had he To do in these fierce vanities? I wonder That such a keech can with his very bulk Take up the rays o’ th’ beneficial sun And keep it from the earth.

NORFOLK. Surely, sir, There’s in him stuff that puts him to these ends; For, being not propped by ancestry, whose grace Chalks successors their way, nor called upon For high feats done to th’ crown; neither allied To eminent assistants, but spider-like, Out of his self-drawing web, he gives us note The force of his own merit makes his way A gift that heaven gives for him, which buys A place next to the King.

ABERGAVENNY. I cannot tell What heaven hath given him—let some graver eye Pierce into that—but I can see his pride Peep through each part of him. Whence has he that? If not from hell, the devil is a niggard, Or has given all before, and he begins A new hell in himself.

BUCKINGHAM. Why the devil, Upon this French going-out, took he upon him, Without the privity o’ th’ King, t’ appoint Who should attend on him? He makes up the file Of all the gentry, for the most part such To whom as great a charge as little honour He meant to lay upon; and his own letter, The honourable board of council out, Must fetch him in he papers.

ABERGAVENNY. I do know Kinsmen of mine, three at the least, that have By this so sickened their estates that never They shall abound as formerly.

BUCKINGHAM. O, many Have broke their backs with laying manors on ’em For this great journey. What did this vanity But minister communication of A most poor issue?

NORFOLK. Grievingly I think The peace between the French and us not values The cost that did conclude it.

BUCKINGHAM. Every man, After the hideous storm that followed, was A thing inspired and, not consulting, broke Into a general prophecy, that this tempest, Dashing the garment of this peace, aboded The sudden breach on’t.

NORFOLK. Which is budded out, For France hath flawed the league, and hath attached Our merchants’ goods at Bordeaux.

ABERGAVENNY. Is it therefore Th’ ambassador is silenced?

NORFOLK. Marry, is’t.

ABERGAVENNY. A proper title of a peace, and purchased At a superfluous rate!

BUCKINGHAM. Why, all this business Our reverend Cardinal carried.

NORFOLK. Like it your Grace, The state takes notice of the private difference Betwixt you and the Cardinal. I advise you— And take it from a heart that wishes towards you Honour and plenteous safety—that you read The Cardinal’s malice and his potency Together; to consider further that What his high hatred would effect wants not A minister in his power. You know his nature, That he’s revengeful, and I know his sword Hath a sharp edge; it’s long, and ’t may be said It reaches far, and where ’twill not extend, Thither he darts it. Bosom up my counsel; You’ll find it wholesome. Lo, where comes that rock That I advise your shunning.

Enter Cardinal Wolsey, the purse borne before him, certain of the Guard and two Secretaries with papers. The Cardinal in his passage fixeth his eye on Buckingham, and Buckingham on him, both full of disdain.

WOLSEY. The Duke of Buckingham’s surveyor, ha? Where’s his examination?

SECRETARY. Here, so please you.

WOLSEY. Is he in person ready?

SECRETARY. Ay, please your Grace.

WOLSEY. Well, we shall then know more, and Buckingham Shall lessen this big look.

[Exeunt Cardinal Wolsey and his train.]

BUCKINGHAM. This butcher’s cur is venom-mouthed, and I Have not the power to muzzle him; therefore best Not wake him in his slumber. A beggar’s book Outworths a noble’s blood.

NORFOLK. What, are you chafed? Ask God for temp’rance. That’s the appliance only Which your disease requires.

BUCKINGHAM. I read in ’s looks Matter against me, and his eye reviled Me as his abject object. At this instant He bores me with some trick. He’s gone to th’ King. I’ll follow, and outstare him.

NORFOLK. Stay, my lord, And let your reason with your choler question What ’tis you go about. To climb steep hills Requires slow pace at first. Anger is like A full hot horse, who being allowed his way, Self-mettle tires him. Not a man in England Can advise me like you; be to yourself As you would to your friend.

BUCKINGHAM. I’ll to the King, And from a mouth of honour quite cry down This Ipswich fellow’s insolence, or proclaim There’s difference in no persons.

NORFOLK. Be advised. Heat not a furnace for your foe so hot That it do singe yourself. We may outrun By violent swiftness that which we run at, And lose by over-running. Know you not, The fire that mounts the liquor till ’t run o’er, In seeming to augment it wastes it? Be advised. I say again, there is no English soul More stronger to direct you than yourself, If with the sap of reason you would quench, Or but allay the fire of passion.

BUCKINGHAM. Sir, I am thankful to you, and I’ll go along By your prescription; but this top-proud fellow— Whom from the flow of gall I name not, but From sincere motions—by intelligence, And proofs as clear as founts in July when We see each grain of gravel, I do know To be corrupt and treasonous.

NORFOLK. Say not “treasonous.”

BUCKINGHAM. To th’ King I’ll say’t, and make my vouch as strong As shore of rock. Attend. This holy fox, Or wolf, or both—for he is equal ravenous As he is subtle, and as prone to mischief As able to perform’t, his mind and place Infecting one another, yea, reciprocally— Only to show his pomp as well in France As here at home, suggests the King our master To this last costly treaty, th’ interview, That swallowed so much treasure, and like a glass Did break i’ th’ rinsing.

NORFOLK. Faith, and so it did.

BUCKINGHAM. Pray give me favour, sir. This cunning Cardinal The articles o’ th’ combination drew As himself pleased; and they were ratified As he cried “Thus let be,” to as much end As give a crutch to the dead. But our Count-Cardinal Has done this, and ’tis well, for worthy Wolsey, Who cannot err, he did it. Now this follows— Which, as I take it, is a kind of puppy To the old dam treason—Charles the Emperor, Under pretence to see the Queen his aunt— For ’twas indeed his colour, but he came To whisper Wolsey—here makes visitation. His fears were that the interview betwixt England and France might through their amity Breed him some prejudice, for from this league Peeped harms that menaced him. He privily Deals with our Cardinal, and, as I trow— Which I do well, for I am sure the Emperor Paid ere he promised, whereby his suit was granted Ere it was asked. But when the way was made And paved with gold, the Emperor thus desired That he would please to alter the King’s course And break the foresaid peace. Let the King know, As soon he shall by me, that thus the Cardinal Does buy and sell his honour as he pleases And for his own advantage.

NORFOLK. I am sorry To hear this of him, and could wish he were Something mistaken in’t.

BUCKINGHAM. No, not a syllable. I do pronounce him in that very shape He shall appear in proof.

Enter Brandon, a Sergeant-at-arms before him, and two or three of the Guard.

BRANDON. Your office, sergeant: execute it.

SERGEANT. Sir, My lord the Duke of Buckingham, and Earl Of Hereford, Stafford, and Northampton, I Arrest thee of high treason, in the name Of our most sovereign King.

BUCKINGHAM. Lo you, my lord, The net has fall’n upon me. I shall perish Under device and practice.

BRANDON. I am sorry To see you ta’en from liberty, to look on The business present. ’Tis his Highness’ pleasure You shall to th’ Tower.

BUCKINGHAM. It will help nothing To plead mine innocence, for that dye is on me Which makes my whit’st part black. The will of heaven Be done in this and all things. I obey. O my Lord Abergavenny, fare you well.

BRANDON. Nay, he must bear you company. [To Abergavenny.] The King Is pleased you shall to th’ Tower, till you know How he determines further.

ABERGAVENNY. As the Duke said, The will of heaven be done, and the King’s pleasure By me obeyed.

BRANDON. Here is warrant from The King t’ attach Lord Montague, and the bodies Of the Duke’s confessor, John de la Car, One Gilbert Peck, his chancellor—

BUCKINGHAM. So, so; These are the limbs o’ th’ plot. No more, I hope?

BRANDON. A monk o’ th’ Chartreux.

BUCKINGHAM. O, Nicholas Hopkins?

BRANDON. He.

BUCKINGHAM. My surveyor is false. The o’er-great Cardinal Hath showed him gold. My life is spanned already. I am the shadow of poor Buckingham, Whose figure even this instant cloud puts on By dark’ning my clear sun. My lord, farewell.

SCENE II. The same. The council-chamber.

Cornets. Enter King Henry, leaning on the Cardinal’s shoulder, the Nobles, and Sir Thomas Lovell; the Cardinal places himself under the King’s feet on his right side.

KING. My life itself, and the best heart of it, Thanks you for this great care. I stood i’ th’ level Of a full-charged confederacy, and give thanks To you that choked it. Let be called before us That gentleman of Buckingham’s; in person I’ll hear his confessions justify, And point by point the treasons of his master He shall again relate.

A noise within crying “Room for the Queen!” Enter Queen Katherine, ushered by the Duke of Norfolk and the Duke of Suffolk. She kneels. The King riseth from his state, takes her up and kisses her.

QUEEN KATHERINE. Nay, we must longer kneel; I am a suitor.

KING. Arise, and take place by us.

[He placeth her by him.]

Half your suit Never name to us; you have half our power; The other moiety ere you ask is given. Repeat your will and take it.

QUEEN KATHERINE. Thank your Majesty. That you would love yourself, and in that love Not unconsidered leave your honour nor The dignity of your office, is the point Of my petition.

KING. Lady mine, proceed.

QUEEN KATHERINE. I am solicited, not by a few, And those of true condition, that your subjects Are in great grievance. There have been commissions Sent down among ’em which hath flawed the heart Of all their loyalties; wherein, although, My good Lord Cardinal, they vent reproaches Most bitterly on you as putter-on Of these exactions, yet the King our master, Whose honour heaven shield from soil, even he escapes not Language unmannerly, yea, such which breaks The sides of loyalty, and almost appears In loud rebellion.

NORFOLK. Not “almost appears,” It doth appear; for, upon these taxations, The clothiers all, not able to maintain The many to them longing, have put off The spinsters, carders, fullers, weavers, who, Unfit for other life, compelled by hunger And lack of other means, in desperate manner Daring the event to th’ teeth, are all in uproar, And danger serves among them.

KING. Taxation? Wherein? And what taxation? My Lord Cardinal, You that are blamed for it alike with us, Know you of this taxation?

WOLSEY. Please you, sir, I know but of a single part in aught Pertains to th’ state, and front but in that file Where others tell steps with me.

QUEEN KATHERINE. No, my lord? You know no more than others? But you frame Things that are known alike, which are not wholesome To those which would not know them, and yet must Perforce be their acquaintance. These exactions Whereof my sovereign would have note, they are Most pestilent to the hearing, and to bear ’em, The back is sacrifice to the load. They say They are devised by you, or else you suffer Too hard an exclamation.

KING. Still exaction! The nature of it? In what kind, let’s know, Is this exaction?

QUEEN KATHERINE. I am much too venturous In tempting of your patience, but am boldened Under your promised pardon. The subjects’ grief Comes through commissions, which compels from each The sixth part of his substance, to be levied Without delay; and the pretence for this Is named your wars in France. This makes bold mouths. Tongues spit their duties out, and cold hearts freeze Allegiance in them. Their curses now Live where their prayers did; and it’s come to pass This tractable obedience is a slave To each incensed will. I would your Highness Would give it quick consideration, for There is no primer business.

KING. By my life, This is against our pleasure.

WOLSEY. And for me, I have no further gone in this than by A single voice, and that not passed me but By learned approbation of the judges. If I am Traduced by ignorant tongues, which neither know My faculties nor person, yet will be The chronicles of my doing, let me say ’Tis but the fate of place, and the rough brake That virtue must go through. We must not stint Our necessary actions in the fear To cope malicious censurers, which ever, As ravenous fishes, do a vessel follow That is new-trimmed, but benefit no further Than vainly longing. What we oft do best, By sick interpreters, once weak ones, is Not ours or not allowed; what worst, as oft, Hitting a grosser quality, is cried up For our best act. If we shall stand still In fear our motion will be mocked or carped at, We should take root here where we sit, Or sit state-statues only.

KING. Things done well, And with a care, exempt themselves from fear; Things done without example, in their issue Are to be feared. Have you a precedent Of this commission? I believe, not any. We must not rend our subjects from our laws And stick them in our will. Sixth part of each? A trembling contribution! Why, we take From every tree lop, bark, and part o’ t’ timber, And though we leave it with a root, thus hacked, The air will drink the sap. To every county Where this is questioned send our letters with Free pardon to each man that has denied The force of this commission. Pray, look to’t; I put it to your care.

WOLSEY. [Aside to his Secretary.] A word with you. Let there be letters writ to every shire Of the King’s grace and pardon. The grieved commons Hardly conceive of me. Let it be noised That through our intercession this revokement And pardon comes. I shall anon advise you Further in the proceeding.

[Exit Secretary.]

Enter Surveyor.

QUEEN KATHERINE. I am sorry that the Duke of Buckingham Is run in your displeasure.

KING. It grieves many. The gentleman is learned and a most rare speaker; To nature none more bound; his training such That he may furnish and instruct great teachers And never seek for aid out of himself. Yet see, When these so noble benefits shall prove Not well disposed, the mind growing once corrupt, They turn to vicious forms, ten times more ugly Than ever they were fair. This man so complete, Who was enrolled ’mongst wonders, and when we, Almost with ravished list’ning, could not find His hour of speech a minute—he, my lady, Hath into monstrous habits put the graces That once were his, and is become as black As if besmeared in hell. Sit by us. You shall hear— This was his gentleman in trust—of him Things to strike honour sad. Bid him recount The fore-recited practices, whereof We cannot feel too little, hear too much.

WOLSEY. Stand forth, and with bold spirit relate what you, Most like a careful subject, have collected Out of the Duke of Buckingham.

KING. Speak freely.

SURVEYOR. First, it was usual with him—every day It would infect his speech—that if the King Should without issue die, he’ll carry it so To make the sceptre his. These very words I’ve heard him utter to his son-in-law, Lord Abergavenny; to whom by oath he menaced Revenge upon the Cardinal.

WOLSEY. Please your Highness, note This dangerous conception in this point, Not friended by his wish to your high person His will is most malignant, and it stretches Beyond you to your friends.

QUEEN KATHERINE. My learned Lord Cardinal, Deliver all with charity.

KING. Speak on. How grounded he his title to the crown? Upon our fail? To this point hast thou heard him At any time speak aught?

SURVEYOR. He was brought to this By a vain prophecy of Nicholas Henton.

KING. What was that Henton?

SURVEYOR. Sir, a Chartreux friar, His confessor, who fed him every minute With words of sovereignty.

KING. How know’st thou this?

SURVEYOR. Not long before your Highness sped to France, The Duke being at the Rose, within the parish Saint Laurence Poultney, did of me demand What was the speech among the Londoners Concerning the French journey. I replied, Men fear the French would prove perfidious, To the King’s danger. Presently the Duke Said ’twas the fear indeed, and that he doubted ’Twould prove the verity of certain words Spoke by a holy monk, “that oft,” says he, “Hath sent to me, wishing me to permit John de la Car, my chaplain, a choice hour To hear from him a matter of some moment; Whom after under the confession’s seal He solemnly had sworn that what he spoke My chaplain to no creature living but To me should utter, with demure confidence This pausingly ensued: ‘Neither the King nor’s heirs, Tell you the Duke—shall prosper. Bid him strive To gain the love o’ th’ commonalty. The Duke Shall govern England.’”

QUEEN KATHERINE. If I know you well, You were the Duke’s surveyor, and lost your office On the complaint o’ th’ tenants. Take good heed You charge not in your spleen a noble person And spoil your nobler soul. I say, take heed— Yes, heartily beseech you.

KING. Let him on. Go forward.

SURVEYOR. On my soul, I’ll speak but truth. I told my lord the Duke, by th’ devil’s illusions The monk might be deceived, and that ’twas dangerous For him to ruminate on this so far until It forged him some design, which, being believed, It was much like to do. He answered, “Tush, It can do me no damage,” adding further That had the King in his last sickness failed, The Cardinal’s and Sir Thomas Lovell’s heads Should have gone off.

KING. Ha! What, so rank? Ah ha! There’s mischief in this man. Canst thou say further?

SURVEYOR. I can, my liege.

KING. Proceed.

SURVEYOR. Being at Greenwich, After your Highness had reproved the Duke About Sir William Bulmer—

KING. I remember Of such a time, being my sworn servant, The Duke retained him his. But on. What hence?

SURVEYOR. “If,” quoth he, “I for this had been committed,” As to the Tower, I thought, “I would have played The part my father meant to act upon Th’ usurper Richard who, being at Salisbury, Made suit to come in ’s presence; which if granted, As he made semblance of his duty, would Have put his knife into him.”

KING. A giant traitor!

WOLSEY. Now, madam, may his Highness live in freedom, And this man out of prison?

QUEEN KATHERINE. God mend all.

KING. There’s something more would out of thee. What sayst?

SURVEYOR. After “the Duke his father,” with “the knife,” He stretched him, and with one hand on his dagger, Another spread on ’s breast, mounting his eyes, He did discharge a horrible oath, whose tenour Was, were he evil used, he would outgo His father by as much as a performance Does an irresolute purpose.

KING. There’s his period, To sheathe his knife in us. He is attached. Call him to present trial. If he may Find mercy in the law, ’tis his; if none, Let him not seek ’t of us. By day and night, He’s traitor to th’ height!

SCENE III. An ante-chamber in the palace.

Enter Lord Chamberlain and Lord Sandys.

CHAMBERLAIN. Is’t possible the spells of France should juggle Men into such strange mysteries?

SANDYS. New customs, Though they be never so ridiculous— Nay, let ’em be unmanly—yet are followed.

CHAMBERLAIN. As far as I see, all the good our English Have got by the late voyage is but merely A fit or two o’ th’ face; but they are shrewd ones, For when they hold ’em, you would swear directly Their very noses had been counsellors To Pepin or Clotharius, they keep state so.

SANDYS. They have all new legs, and lame ones. One would take it, That never saw ’em pace before, the spavin Or springhalt reigned among ’em.

CHAMBERLAIN. Death! My lord, Their clothes are after such a pagan cut to’t, That, sure, they’ve worn out Christendom.

Enter Sir Thomas Lovell.

How now? What news, Sir Thomas Lovell?

LOVELL. Faith, my lord, I hear of none but the new proclamation That’s clapped upon the court gate.

CHAMBERLAIN. What is’t for?

LOVELL. The reformation of our travelled gallants That fill the court with quarrels, talk, and tailors.

CHAMBERLAIN. I’m glad ’tis there. Now I would pray our monsieurs To think an English courtier may be wise And never see the Louvre.

LOVELL. They must either, For so run the conditions, leave those remnants Of fool and feather that they got in France, With all their honourable points of ignorance Pertaining thereunto, as fights and fireworks, Abusing better men than they can be Out of a foreign wisdom, renouncing clean The faith they have in tennis and tall stockings, Short blistered breeches, and those types of travel, And understand again like honest men, Or pack to their old playfellows. There, I take it, They may, cum privilegio, oui away The lag end of their lewdness and be laughed at.

SANDYS. ’Tis time to give ’em physic, their diseases Are grown so catching.

CHAMBERLAIN. What a loss our ladies Will have of these trim vanities!

LOVELL. Ay, marry, There will be woe indeed, lords. The sly whoresons Have got a speeding trick to lay down ladies. A French song and a fiddle has no fellow.

SANDYS. The devil fiddle ’em! I am glad they are going, For sure, there’s no converting of ’em. Now An honest country lord, as I am, beaten A long time out of play, may bring his plainsong And have an hour of hearing, and, by ’r Lady, Held current music too.

CHAMBERLAIN. Well said, Lord Sandys. Your colt’s tooth is not cast yet.

SANDYS. No, my lord, Nor shall not while I have a stump.

CHAMBERLAIN. Sir Thomas, Whither were you a-going?

LOVELL. To the Cardinal’s. Your lordship is a guest too.

CHAMBERLAIN. O, ’tis true. This night he makes a supper, and a great one, To many lords and ladies. There will be The beauty of this kingdom, I’ll assure you.

LOVELL. That churchman bears a bounteous mind indeed, A hand as fruitful as the land that feeds us. His dews fall everywhere.

CHAMBERLAIN. No doubt he’s noble; He had a black mouth that said other of him.

SANDYS. He may, my lord; has wherewithal. In him Sparing would show a worse sin than ill doctrine. Men of his way should be most liberal; They are set here for examples.

CHAMBERLAIN. True, they are so, But few now give so great ones. My barge stays. Your lordship shall along. Come, good Sir Thomas, We shall be late else, which I would not be, For I was spoke to, with Sir Henry Guildford, This night to be comptrollers.

SANDYS. I am your lordship’s.

SCENE IV. A Hall in York Place.

Hautboys. A small table under a state for the Cardinal, a longer table for the guests. Then enter Anne Bullen and divers other Ladies and Gentlemen as guests, at one door. At another door enter Sir Henry Guildford.

GUILDFORD. Ladies, a general welcome from his Grace Salutes ye all. This night he dedicates To fair content and you. None here, he hopes, In all this noble bevy has brought with her One care abroad. He would have all as merry As, first, good company, good wine, good welcome Can make good people.

Enter Lord Chamberlain, Lord Sandys and Sir Thomas Lovell.

O, my lord, you’re tardy. The very thought of this fair company Clapped wings to me.

CHAMBERLAIN. You are young, Sir Harry Guildford.

SANDYS. Sir Thomas Lovell, had the Cardinal But half my lay thoughts in him, some of these Should find a running banquet ere they rested, I think would better please ’em. By my life, They are a sweet society of fair ones.

LOVELL. O, that your lordship were but now confessor To one or two of these!

SANDYS. I would I were. They should find easy penance.

LOVELL. Faith, how easy?

SANDYS. As easy as a down bed would afford it.

CHAMBERLAIN. Sweet ladies, will it please you sit? Sir Harry, Place you that side; I’ll take the charge of this. His Grace is ent’ring. Nay, you must not freeze; Two women placed together makes cold weather. My Lord Sandys, you are one will keep ’em waking. Pray, sit between these ladies.

SANDYS. By my faith, And thank your lordship. By your leave, sweet ladies. If I chance to talk a little wild, forgive me; I had it from my father.

ANNE. Was he mad, sir?

SANDYS. O, very mad, exceeding mad in love too; But he would bite none. Just as I do now, He would kiss you twenty with a breath.

[Kisses her.]

CHAMBERLAIN. Well said, my lord. So, now you’re fairly seated. gentlemen, The penance lies on you if these fair ladies Pass away frowning.

SANDYS. For my little cure, Let me alone.

Hautboys. Enter Cardinal Wolsey and takes his state.

WOLSEY. You’re welcome, my fair guests. That noble lady Or gentleman that is not freely merry Is not my friend. This, to confirm my welcome; And to you all, good health.

SANDYS. Your Grace is noble. Let me have such a bowl may hold my thanks And save me so much talking.

WOLSEY. My Lord Sandys, I am beholding to you. Cheer your neighbours. Ladies, you are not merry. Gentlemen, Whose fault is this?

SANDYS. The red wine first must rise In their fair cheeks, my lord; then we shall have ’em Talk us to silence.

ANNE. You are a merry gamester, My Lord Sandys.

SANDYS. Yes, if I make my play. Here’s to your ladyship; and pledge it, madam, For ’tis to such a thing—

ANNE. You cannot show me.

SANDYS. I told your Grace they would talk anon.

[Drum and trumpet. Chambers discharged.]

WOLSEY. What’s that?

CHAMBERLAIN. Look out there, some of ye.

WOLSEY. What warlike voice, And to what end, is this? Nay, ladies, fear not. By all the laws of war you’re privileged.

CHAMBERLAIN. How now, what is’t?

SERVANT. A noble troop of strangers, For so they seem. They’ve left their barge and landed, And hither make, as great ambassadors From foreign princes.

WOLSEY. Good Lord Chamberlain, Go, give ’em welcome—you can speak the French tongue— And pray receive ’em nobly, and conduct ’em Into our presence, where this heaven of beauty Shall shine at full upon them. Some attend him.

[Exit Chamberlain, attended. All rise, and tables removed.]

You have now a broken banquet, but we’ll mend it. A good digestion to you all; and once more I shower a welcome on ye. Welcome all!

Hautboys. Enter King and others as masquers, habited like shepherds, ushered by the Lord Chamberlain. They pass directly before the Cardinal and gracefully salute him.

A noble company! What are their pleasures?

CHAMBERLAIN. Because they speak no English, thus they prayed To tell your Grace: that having heard by fame Of this so noble and so fair assembly This night to meet here, they could do no less, Out of the great respect they bear to beauty, But leave their flocks and, under your fair conduct, Crave leave to view these ladies and entreat An hour of revels with ’em.

WOLSEY. Say, Lord Chamberlain, They have done my poor house grace; for which I pay ’em A thousand thanks and pray ’em take their pleasures.

[The masquers choose ladies. The King chooses Anne Bullen.]

KING. The fairest hand I ever touched! O beauty, Till now I never knew thee.

[Music. Dance.]

WOLSEY. My lord!

CHAMBERLAIN. Your Grace?

WOLSEY. Pray tell ’em thus much from me: There should be one amongst ’em, by his person More worthy this place than myself, to whom, If I but knew him, with my love and duty I would surrender it.

CHAMBERLAIN. I will, my lord.

[Whispers with the Masquers.]

WOLSEY. What say they?

CHAMBERLAIN. Such a one they all confess There is indeed, which they would have your Grace Find out, and he will take it.

WOLSEY. Let me see, then. By all your good leaves, gentlemen; here I’ll make My royal choice.

KING. [Unmasking.] Ye have found him, Cardinal. You hold a fair assembly; you do well, lord. You are a churchman, or I’ll tell you, Cardinal, I should judge now unhappily.

WOLSEY. I am glad Your Grace is grown so pleasant.

KING. My Lord Chamberlain, Prithee come hither. What fair lady’s that?

CHAMBERLAIN. An’t please your Grace, Sir Thomas Bullen’s daughter, The Viscount Rochford, one of her Highness’ women.

KING. By heaven, she is a dainty one. Sweetheart, I were unmannerly to take you out And not to kiss you. A health, gentlemen! Let it go round.

WOLSEY. Sir Thomas Lovell, is the banquet ready I’ th’ privy chamber?

LOVELL. Yes, my lord.

WOLSEY. Your Grace, I fear, with dancing is a little heated.

KING. I fear, too much.

WOLSEY. There’s fresher air, my lord, In the next chamber.

KING. Lead in your ladies, every one. Sweet partner, I must not yet forsake you. Let’s be merry, Good my Lord Cardinal, I have half a dozen healths To drink to these fair ladies, and a measure To lead ’em once again, and then let’s dream Who’s best in favour. Let the music knock it.

[Exeunt with trumpets.]

SCENE I. Westminster. A street.

Enter two Gentlemen at several doors.

FIRST GENTLEMAN. Whither away so fast?

SECOND GENTLEMAN. O, God save ye. Even to the Hall, to hear what shall become Of the great Duke of Buckingham.

FIRST GENTLEMAN. I’ll save you That labour, sir. All’s now done but the ceremony Of bringing back the prisoner.

SECOND GENTLEMAN. Were you there?

FIRST GENTLEMAN. Yes, indeed, was I.

SECOND GENTLEMAN. Pray speak what has happened.

FIRST GENTLEMAN. You may guess quickly what.

SECOND GENTLEMAN. Is he found guilty?

FIRST GENTLEMAN. Yes, truly is he, and condemned upon’t.

SECOND GENTLEMAN. I am sorry for’t.

FIRST GENTLEMAN. So are a number more.

SECOND GENTLEMAN. But pray, how passed it?

FIRST GENTLEMAN. I’ll tell you in a little. The great Duke Came to the bar, where to his accusations He pleaded still not guilty and alleged Many sharp reasons to defeat the law. The King’s attorney on the contrary Urged on the examinations, proofs, confessions Of divers witnesses, which the Duke desired To have brought viva voce to his face; At which appeared against him his surveyor, Sir Gilbert Peck his chancellor, and John Car, Confessor to him, with that devil monk, Hopkins, that made this mischief.

SECOND GENTLEMAN. That was he That fed him with his prophecies?

FIRST GENTLEMAN. The same. All these accused him strongly, which he fain Would have flung from him, but, indeed he could not. And so his peers, upon this evidence, Have found him guilty of high treason. Much He spoke, and learnedly, for life, but all Was either pitied in him or forgotten.

SECOND GENTLEMAN. After all this, how did he bear himself?

FIRST GENTLEMAN. When he was brought again to th’ bar to hear His knell rung out, his judgement, he was stirred With such an agony, he sweat extremely And something spoke in choler, ill and hasty. But he fell to himself again, and sweetly In all the rest showed a most noble patience.

SECOND GENTLEMAN. I do not think he fears death.

FIRST GENTLEMAN. Sure he does not; He never was so womanish. The cause He may a little grieve at.

SECOND GENTLEMAN. Certainly The Cardinal is the end of this.

FIRST GENTLEMAN. ’Tis likely, By all conjectures: first, Kildare’s attainder, Then deputy of Ireland, who removed, Earl Surrey was sent thither, and in haste too, Lest he should help his father.

SECOND GENTLEMAN. That trick of state Was a deep envious one.

FIRST GENTLEMAN. At his return No doubt he will requite it. This is noted, And generally, whoever the King favours, The Cardinal instantly will find employment, And far enough from court too.

SECOND GENTLEMAN. All the commons Hate him perniciously and, o’ my conscience, Wish him ten fathom deep. This duke as much They love and dote on, call him bounteous Buckingham, The mirror of all courtesy.

Enter Buckingham from his arraignment. Tipstaves before him, the axe with the edge towards him, Halberds on each side, accompanied with Sir Thomas Lovell, Sir Nicholas Vaux, Sir William Sandys and common people.

FIRST GENTLEMAN. Stay there, sir, And see the noble ruined man you speak of.

SECOND GENTLEMAN. Let’s stand close and behold him.

BUCKINGHAM. All good people, You that thus far have come to pity me, Hear what I say, and then go home and lose me. I have this day received a traitor’s judgement, And by that name must die; yet heaven bear witness, And if I have a conscience, let it sink me, Even as the axe falls, if I be not faithful! The law I bear no malice for my death; ’T has done, upon the premises, but justice. But those that sought it I could wish more Christians. Be what they will, I heartily forgive ’em. Yet let ’em look they glory not in mischief, Nor build their evils on the graves of great men, For then my guiltless blood must cry against ’em. For further life in this world I ne’er hope, Nor will I sue, although the King have mercies More than I dare make faults. You few that loved me And dare be bold to weep for Buckingham, His noble friends and fellows, whom to leave Is only bitter to him, only dying, Go with me like good angels to my end, And as the long divorce of steel falls on me, Make of your prayers one sweet sacrifice, And lift my soul to heaven. Lead on, i’ God’s name.

LOVELL. I do beseech your Grace, for charity, If ever any malice in your heart Were hid against me, now to forgive me frankly.

BUCKINGHAM. Sir Thomas Lovell, I as free forgive you As I would be forgiven. I forgive all. There cannot be those numberless offences ’Gainst me that I cannot take peace with. No black envy Shall mark my grave. Commend me to his Grace, And if he speak of Buckingham, pray tell him You met him half in heaven. My vows and prayers Yet are the King’s and, till my soul forsake, Shall cry for blessings on him. May he live Longer than I have time to tell his years; Ever beloved and loving may his rule be; And when old Time shall lead him to his end, Goodness and he fill up one monument!

LOVELL. To th’ waterside I must conduct your Grace, Then give my charge up to Sir Nicholas Vaux, Who undertakes you to your end.

VAUX. Prepare there! The Duke is coming. See the barge be ready, And fit it with such furniture as suits The greatness of his person.

BUCKINGHAM. Nay, Sir Nicholas, Let it alone. My state now will but mock me. When I came hither, I was Lord High Constable And Duke of Buckingham; now, poor Edward Bohun. Yet I am richer than my base accusers, That never knew what truth meant. I now seal it, And with that blood will make ’em one day groan for’t. My noble father, Henry of Buckingham, Who first raised head against usurping Richard, Flying for succour to his servant Banister, Being distressed, was by that wretch betrayed, And, without trial, fell. God’s peace be with him. Henry the Seventh succeeding, truly pitying My father’s loss, like a most royal prince, Restored me to my honours and out of ruins Made my name once more noble. Now his son, Henry the Eighth, life, honour, name, and all That made me happy at one stroke has taken For ever from the world. I had my trial, And must needs say a noble one, which makes me A little happier than my wretched father. Yet thus far we are one in fortunes: both Fell by our servants, by those men we loved most— A most unnatural and faithless service. Heaven has an end in all; yet, you that hear me, This from a dying man receive as certain: Where you are liberal of your loves and counsels Be sure you be not loose; for those you make friends And give your hearts to, when they once perceive The least rub in your fortunes, fall away Like water from ye, never found again But where they mean to sink ye. All good people, Pray for me. I must now forsake ye. The last hour Of my long weary life is come upon me. Farewell. And when you would say something that is sad, Speak how I fell. I have done; and God forgive me.

[Exeunt Duke and train.]

FIRST GENTLEMAN. O, this is full of pity. Sir, it calls, I fear, too many curses on their heads That were the authors.

SECOND GENTLEMAN. If the Duke be guiltless, ’Tis full of woe. Yet I can give you inkling Of an ensuing evil, if it fall, Greater than this.

FIRST GENTLEMAN. Good angels keep it from us! What may it be? You do not doubt my faith, sir?

SECOND GENTLEMAN. This secret is so weighty, ’twill require A strong faith to conceal it.

FIRST GENTLEMAN. Let me have it. I do not talk much.

SECOND GENTLEMAN. I am confident; You shall, sir. Did you not of late days hear A buzzing of a separation Between the King and Katherine?

FIRST GENTLEMAN. Yes, but it held not; For when the King once heard it, out of anger He sent command to the Lord Mayor straight To stop the rumour and allay those tongues That durst disperse it.

SECOND GENTLEMAN. But that slander, sir, Is found a truth now, for it grows again Fresher than e’er it was, and held for certain The King will venture at it. Either the Cardinal, Or some about him near, have, out of malice To the good Queen, possessed him with a scruple That will undo her. To confirm this too, Cardinal Campeius is arrived, and lately, As all think, for this business.

FIRST GENTLEMAN. ’Tis the Cardinal; And merely to revenge him on the Emperor For not bestowing on him at his asking, The archbishopric of Toledo this is purposed.

SECOND GENTLEMAN. I think you have hit the mark. But is’t not cruel That she should feel the smart of this? The Cardinal Will have his will, and she must fall.

FIRST GENTLEMAN. ’Tis woeful. We are too open here to argue this. Let’s think in private more.

SCENE II. An ante-chamber in the palace.

Enter Lord Chamberlain, reading this letter.

CHAMBERLAIN. My lord, the horses your lordship sent for, with all the care had I saw well chosen, ridden, and furnished. They were young and handsome, and of the best breed in the north. When they were ready to set out for London, a man of my Lord Cardinal’s, by commission and main power, took ’em from me, with this reason: his master would be served before a subject, if not before the King; which stopped our mouths, sir. I fear he will indeed. Well, let him have them. He will have all, I think.

Enter to the Lord Chamberlain, the Dukes of Norfolk and Suffolk.

NORFOLK. Well met, my Lord Chamberlain.

CHAMBERLAIN. Good day to both your Graces.

SUFFOLK. How is the King employed?

CHAMBERLAIN. I left him private, Full of sad thoughts and troubles.

NORFOLK. What’s the cause?

CHAMBERLAIN. It seems the marriage with his brother’s wife Has crept too near his conscience.

SUFFOLK. No, his conscience Has crept too near another lady.

NORFOLK. ’Tis so. This is the Cardinal’s doing, the king-cardinal. That blind priest, like the eldest son of Fortune, Turns what he list. The King will know him one day.

SUFFOLK. Pray God he do! He’ll never know himself else.

NORFOLK. How holily he works in all his business, And with what zeal! For, now he has cracked the league Between us and the Emperor, the Queen’s great nephew, He dives into the King’s soul and there scatters Dangers, doubts, wringing of the conscience, Fears and despairs—and all these for his marriage. And out of all these to restore the King, He counsels a divorce, a loss of her That like a jewel has hung twenty years About his neck, yet never lost her lustre; Of her that loves him with that excellence That angels love good men with; even of her That, when the greatest stroke of fortune falls, Will bless the King. And is not this course pious?

CHAMBERLAIN. Heaven keep me from such counsel! ’Tis most true: These news are everywhere, every tongue speaks ’em, And every true heart weeps for’t. All that dare Look into these affairs see this main end, The French king’s sister. Heaven will one day open The King’s eyes, that so long have slept upon This bold bad man.

SUFFOLK. And free us from his slavery.

NORFOLK. We had need pray, And heartily, for our deliverance, Or this imperious man will work us all From princes into pages. All men’s honours Lie like one lump before him, to be fashioned Into what pitch he please.

SUFFOLK. For me, my lords, I love him not, nor fear him; there’s my creed. As I am made without him, so I’ll stand, If the King please. His curses and his blessings Touch me alike, they’re breath I not believe in. I knew him, and I know him; so I leave him To him that made him proud, the Pope.

NORFOLK. Let’s in, And with some other business put the King From these sad thoughts that work too much upon him. My lord, you’ll bear us company?

CHAMBERLAIN. Excuse me; The King has sent me otherwhere. Besides, You’ll find a most unfit time to disturb him. Health to your lordships.

NORFOLK. Thanks, my good Lord Chamberlain.

[Exit Lord Chamberlain, and the King draws the curtain and sits reading pensively.]

SUFFOLK. How sad he looks! Sure, he is much afflicted.

KING. Who’s there? Ha?

NORFOLK. Pray God he be not angry.

KING. Who’s there, I say? How dare you thrust yourselves Into my private meditations? Who am I? Ha?

NORFOLK. A gracious king that pardons all offences Malice ne’er meant. Our breach of duty this way Is business of estate, in which we come To know your royal pleasure.

KING. Ye are too bold. Go to; I’ll make ye know your times of business. Is this an hour for temporal affairs, ha?

Enter Wolsey and Campeius with a commission.

Who’s there? My good Lord Cardinal? O my Wolsey, The quiet of my wounded conscience, Thou art a cure fit for a king. [To Campeius.] You’re welcome, Most learned reverend sir, into our kingdom; Use us and it. [To Wolsey.] My good lord, have great care I be not found a talker.

WOLSEY. Sir, you cannot. I would your Grace would give us but an hour Of private conference.

KING. [To Norfolk and Suffolk.] We are busy. Go.

NORFOLK. [Aside to Suffolk.] This priest has no pride in him?

SUFFOLK. [Aside to Norfolk.] Not to speak of. I would not be so sick, though, for his place. But this cannot continue.

NORFOLK. [Aside to Suffolk.] If it do, I’ll venture one have-at-him.

SUFFOLK. [Aside to Norfolk.] I another.

[Exeunt Norfolk and Suffolk.]

WOLSEY. Your Grace has given a precedent of wisdom Above all princes in committing freely Your scruple to the voice of Christendom. Who can be angry now? What envy reach you? The Spaniard, tied by blood and favour to her, Must now confess, if they have any goodness, The trial just and noble. All the clerks— I mean the learned ones in Christian kingdoms— Have their free voices. Rome, the nurse of judgement, Invited by your noble self, hath sent One general tongue unto us, this good man, This just and learned priest, Cardinal Campeius, Whom once more I present unto your Highness.

KING. And once more in mine arms I bid him welcome, And thank the holy conclave for their loves. They have sent me such a man I would have wished for.

CAMPEIUS. Your Grace must needs deserve all strangers’ loves, You are so noble. To your Highness’ hand I tender my commission, by whose virtue, The court of Rome commanding, you, my Lord Cardinal of York, are joined with me their servant In the unpartial judging of this business.

KING. Two equal men. The Queen shall be acquainted Forthwith for what you come. Where’s Gardiner?

WOLSEY. I know your Majesty has always loved her So dear in heart not to deny her that A woman of less place might ask by law: Scholars allowed freely to argue for her.

KING. Ay, and the best she shall have, and my favour To him that does best. God forbid else. Cardinal, Prithee call Gardiner to me, my new secretary. I find him a fit fellow.

Enter Gardiner.

WOLSEY. [Aside to Gardiner.] Give me your hand. Much joy and favour to you; You are the King’s now.

GARDINER. [Aside to Wolsey.] But to be commanded For ever by your Grace, whose hand has raised me.

KING. Come hither, Gardiner.

[The King and Gardiner walk and whisper.]

CAMPEIUS. My lord of York, was not one Doctor Pace In this man’s place before him?

WOLSEY. Yes, he was.

CAMPEIUS. Was he not held a learned man?

WOLSEY. Yes, surely.

CAMPEIUS. Believe me, there’s an ill opinion spread, then Even of yourself, Lord Cardinal.

WOLSEY. How? Of me?

CAMPEIUS. They will not stick to say you envied him And fearing he would rise—he was so virtuous— Kept him a foreign man still, which so grieved him That he ran mad and died.

WOLSEY. Heav’n’s peace be with him! That’s Christian care enough. For living murmurers There’s places of rebuke. He was a fool, For he would needs be virtuous. That good fellow, If I command him, follows my appointment. I will have none so near else. Learn this, brother: We live not to be griped by meaner persons.

KING. Deliver this with modesty to th’ Queen.

[Exit Gardiner.]

The most convenient place that I can think of For such receipt of learning is Blackfriars. There ye shall meet about this weighty business. My Wolsey, see it furnished. O, my lord, Would it not grieve an able man to leave So sweet a bedfellow? But, conscience, conscience! O, ’tis a tender place, and I must leave her.

SCENE III. An ante-chamber of the Queen’s apartments.

Enter Anne Bullen and an Old Lady.

ANNE. Not for that neither. Here’s the pang that pinches: His Highness having lived so long with her, and she So good a lady that no tongue could ever Pronounce dishonour of her—by my life, She never knew harm-doing—O, now, after So many courses of the sun enthroned, Still growing in a majesty and pomp, the which To leave a thousandfold more bitter than ’Tis sweet at first t’ acquire—after this process, To give her the avaunt, it is a pity Would move a monster.

OLD LADY. Hearts of most hard temper Melt and lament for her.

ANNE. O, God’s will! Much better She ne’er had known pomp; though’t be temporal, Yet if that quarrel, Fortune, do divorce It from the bearer, ’tis a sufferance panging As soul and body’s severing.

OLD LADY. Alas, poor lady, She’s a stranger now again.

ANNE. So much the more Must pity drop upon her. Verily, I swear, ’tis better to be lowly born And range with humble livers in content Than to be perked up in a glist’ring grief, And wear a golden sorrow.

OLD LADY. Our content Is our best having.

ANNE. By my troth and maidenhead, I would not be a queen.

OLD LADY. Beshrew me, I would, And venture maidenhead for’t; and so would you, For all this spice of your hypocrisy. You, that have so fair parts of woman on you, Have too a woman’s heart, which ever yet Affected eminence, wealth, sovereignty; Which, to say sooth, are blessings; and which gifts, Saving your mincing, the capacity Of your soft cheveril conscience would receive, If you might please to stretch it.

ANNE. Nay, good troth.

OLD LADY. Yes, troth and troth. You would not be a queen?

ANNE. No, not for all the riches under heaven.

OLD LADY. ’Tis strange. A threepence bowed would hire me, Old as I am, to queen it. But I pray you, What think you of a duchess? Have you limbs To bear that load of title?

ANNE. No, in truth.

OLD LADY. Then you are weakly made. Pluck off a little. I would not be a young count in your way For more than blushing comes to. If your back Cannot vouchsafe this burden, ’tis too weak Ever to get a boy.

ANNE. How you do talk! I swear again I would not be a queen For all the world.

OLD LADY. In faith, for little England You’d venture an emballing. I myself Would for Caernarfonshire, although there longed No more to th’ crown but that. Lo, who comes here?

Enter Lord Chamberlain.

CHAMBERLAIN. Good morrow, ladies. What were’t worth to know The secret of your conference?

ANNE. My good lord, Not your demand; it values not your asking. Our mistress’ sorrows we were pitying.

CHAMBERLAIN. It was a gentle business, and becoming The action of good women. There is hope All will be well.

ANNE. Now, I pray God, amen!

CHAMBERLAIN. You bear a gentle mind, and heavenly blessings Follow such creatures. That you may, fair lady, Perceive I speak sincerely, and high note’s Ta’en of your many virtues, the King’s Majesty Commends his good opinion of you, and Does purpose honour to you no less flowing Than Marchioness of Pembroke, to which title A thousand pound a year annual support Out of his grace he adds.

ANNE. I do not know What kind of my obedience I should tender. More than my all is nothing; nor my prayers Are not words duly hallowed, nor my wishes More worth than empty vanities; yet prayers and wishes Are all I can return. Beseech your lordship, Vouchsafe to speak my thanks and my obedience, As from a blushing handmaid, to his Highness, Whose health and royalty I pray for.

CHAMBERLAIN. Lady, I shall not fail t’ approve the fair conceit The King hath of you. [Aside.] I have perused her well. Beauty and honour in her are so mingled That they have caught the King; and who knows yet But from this lady may proceed a gem To lighten all this isle? I’ll to the King, And say I spoke with you.

ANNE. My honoured lord.

[Exit Lord Chamberlain.]

OLD LADY. Why, this it is: see, see! I have been begging sixteen years in court, Am yet a courtier beggarly, nor could Come pat betwixt too early and too late For any suit of pounds; and you, O fate! A very fresh fish here—fie, fie, fie upon This compelled fortune!—have your mouth filled up Before you open it.

ANNE. This is strange to me.

OLD LADY. How tastes it? Is it bitter? Forty pence, no. There was a lady once—’tis an old story— That would not be a queen, that would she not, For all the mud in Egypt. Have you heard it?

ANNE. Come, you are pleasant.

OLD LADY. With your theme, I could O’ermount the lark. The Marchioness of Pembroke? A thousand pounds a year for pure respect? No other obligation? By my life, That promises more thousands; honour’s train Is longer than his foreskirt. By this time I know your back will bear a duchess. Say, Are you not stronger than you were?

ANNE. Good lady, Make yourself mirth with your particular fancy, And leave me out on’t. Would I had no being If this salute my blood a jot. It faints me To think what follows. The Queen is comfortless, and we forgetful In our long absence. Pray do not deliver What here you’ve heard to her.

OLD LADY. What do you think me?

SCENE IV. A hall in Blackfriars.

Trumpets, sennet, and cornets. Enter two Vergers, with short silver wands; next them, two Scribes, in the habit of doctors; after them, the Archbishop of Canterbury alone; after him, the Bishops of Lincoln, Ely, Rochester, and Saint Asaph; next them, with some small distance, follows a Gentleman bearing the purse with the great seal, and a cardinal’s hat; then two Priests, bearing each a silver cross; then a Gentleman Usher bare-headed, accompanied with a Sergeant-at-arms bearing a silver mace; then two Gentlemen, bearing two great silver pillars; after them, side by side, the two Cardinals; two Noblemen with the sword and mace. The King takes place under the cloth of state. The two Cardinals sit under him as judges. The Queen takes place some distance from the King. The Bishops place themselves on each side the court, in manner of consistory; below them the Scribes. The Lords sit next the Bishops. The rest of the Attendants stand in convenient order about the stage.

WOLSEY. Whilst our commission from Rome is read, Let silence be commanded.

KING. What’s the need? It hath already publicly been read, And on all sides th’ authority allowed; You may then spare that time.

WOLSEY. Be’t so. Proceed.

SCRIBE. Say, “Henry King of England, come into the court.”

CRIER. Henry King of England, come into the court.

KING. Here.

SCRIBE. Say, “Katherine Queen of England, come into the court.”

CRIER. Katherine Queen of England, come into the court.

[The Queen makes no answer, rises out of her chair, goes about the court, comes to the King, and kneels at his feet; then speaks.]

QUEEN KATHERINE. Sir, I desire you do me right and justice, And to bestow your pity on me; for I am a most poor woman and a stranger, Born out of your dominions, having here No judge indifferent nor no more assurance Of equal friendship and proceeding. Alas, sir, In what have I offended you? What cause Hath my behaviour given to your displeasure That thus you should proceed to put me off And take your good grace from me? Heaven witness I have been to you a true and humble wife, At all times to your will conformable, Ever in fear to kindle your dislike, Yea, subject to your countenance, glad or sorry As I saw it inclined. When was the hour I ever contradicted your desire, Or made it not mine too? Or which of your friends Have I not strove to love, although I knew He were mine enemy? What friend of mine That had to him derived your anger did I Continue in my liking? Nay, gave notice He was from thence discharged? Sir, call to mind That I have been your wife in this obedience Upward of twenty years, and have been blessed With many children by you. If, in the course And process of this time, you can report, And prove it too, against mine honour aught, My bond to wedlock, or my love and duty Against your sacred person, in God’s name, Turn me away and let the foul’st contempt Shut door upon me, and so give me up To the sharp’st kind of justice. Please you, sir, The King your father was reputed for A prince most prudent, of an excellent And unmatched wit and judgement. Ferdinand, My father, King of Spain, was reckoned one The wisest prince that there had reigned by many A year before. It is not to be questioned That they had gathered a wise council to them Of every realm, that did debate this business, Who deemed our marriage lawful. Wherefore I humbly Beseech you, sir, to spare me till I may Be by my friends in Spain advised, whose counsel I will implore. If not, i’ th’ name of God, Your pleasure be fulfilled.

WOLSEY. You have here, lady, And of your choice, these reverend fathers, men Of singular integrity and learning, Yea, the elect o’ th’ land, who are assembled To plead your cause. It shall be therefore bootless That longer you desire the court, as well For your own quiet as to rectify What is unsettled in the King.

CAMPEIUS. His Grace Hath spoken well and justly. Therefore, madam, It’s fit this royal session do proceed, And that without delay their arguments Be now produced and heard.

QUEEN KATHERINE. Lord Cardinal, To you I speak.

WOLSEY. Your pleasure, madam.

QUEEN KATHERINE. Sir, I am about to weep; but, thinking that We are a queen, or long have dreamed so, certain The daughter of a king, my drops of tears I’ll turn to sparks of fire.

WOLSEY. Be patient yet.

QUEEN KATHERINE. I will, when you are humble; nay, before, Or God will punish me. I do believe, Induced by potent circumstances, that You are mine enemy, and make my challenge You shall not be my judge; for it is you Have blown this coal betwixt my lord and me, Which God’s dew quench! Therefore I say again, I utterly abhor, yea, from my soul Refuse you for my judge, whom, yet once more, I hold my most malicious foe and think not At all a friend to truth.

WOLSEY. I do profess You speak not like yourself, who ever yet Have stood to charity and displayed th’ effects Of disposition gentle and of wisdom O’ertopping woman’s power. Madam, you do me wrong. I have no spleen against you, nor injustice For you or any. How far I have proceeded, Or how far further shall, is warranted By a commission from the Consistory, Yea, the whole Consistory of Rome. You charge me That I have “blown this coal”. I do deny it. The King is present. If it be known to him That I gainsay my deed, how may he wound, And worthily, my falsehood, yea, as much As you have done my truth. If he know That I am free of your report, he knows I am not of your wrong. Therefore in him It lies to cure me, and the cure is to Remove these thoughts from you, the which before His Highness shall speak in, I do beseech You, gracious madam, to unthink your speaking And to say so no more.

QUEEN KATHERINE. My lord, my lord, I am a simple woman, much too weak T’ oppose your cunning. You’re meek and humble-mouthed; You sign your place and calling, in full seeming, With meekness and humility; but your heart Is crammed with arrogancy, spleen, and pride. You have, by fortune and his Highness’ favours, Gone slightly o’er low steps, and now are mounted Where powers are your retainers, and your words, Domestics to you, serve your will as ’t please Yourself pronounce their office. I must tell you, You tender more your person’s honour than Your high profession spiritual; that again I do refuse you for my judge; and here, Before you all, appeal unto the Pope, To bring my whole cause ’fore his Holiness, And to be judged by him.

[She curtsies to the King and offers to depart.]

CAMPEIUS. The Queen is obstinate, Stubborn to justice, apt to accuse it, and Disdainful to be tried by’t. ’Tis not well. She’s going away.

KING. Call her again.

CRIER. Katherine, Queen of England, come into the court.

GENTLEMAN USHER. Madam, you are called back.

QUEEN KATHERINE. What need you note it? Pray you keep your way. When you are called, return. Now, the Lord help! They vex me past my patience. Pray you, pass on. I will not tarry; no, nor ever more Upon this business my appearance make In any of their courts.

[Exeunt Queen and her Attendants.]

KING. Go thy ways, Kate. That man i’ th’ world who shall report he has A better wife, let him in naught be trusted, For speaking false in that. Thou art, alone— If thy rare qualities, sweet gentleness, Thy meekness saint-like, wife-like government, Obeying in commanding, and thy parts Sovereign and pious else, could speak thee out— The queen of earthly queens. She’s noble born, And like her true nobility she has Carried herself towards me.

WOLSEY. Most gracious sir, In humblest manner I require your Highness That it shall please you to declare, in hearing Of all these ears—for where I am robbed and bound, There must I be unloosed, although not there At once and fully satisfied—whether ever I Did broach this business to your Highness, or Laid any scruple in your way which might Induce you to the question on’t? or ever Have to you, but with thanks to God for such A royal lady, spake one the least word that might Be to the prejudice of her present state, Or touch of her good person?

KING. My Lord Cardinal, I do excuse you; yea, upon mine honour, I free you from’t. You are not to be taught That you have many enemies that know not Why they are so, but, like to village curs, Bark when their fellows do. By some of these The Queen is put in anger. You’re excused. But will you be more justified? You ever Have wished the sleeping of this business, never desired It to be stirred, but oft have hindered, oft, The passages made toward it. On my honour, I speak my good Lord Cardinal to this point And thus far clear him. Now, what moved me to’t, I will be bold with time and your attention. Then mark th’ inducement. Thus it came; give heed to’t: My conscience first received a tenderness, Scruple, and prick on certain speeches uttered By th’ Bishop of Bayonne, then French ambassador, Who had been hither sent on the debating A marriage ’twixt the Duke of Orleans and Our daughter Mary. I’ th’ progress of this business, Ere a determinate resolution, he, I mean the Bishop, did require a respite, Wherein he might the King his lord advertise Whether our daughter were legitimate, Respecting this our marriage with the dowager, Sometimes our brother’s wife. This respite shook The bosom of my conscience, entered me, Yea, with a splitting power, and made to tremble The region of my breast; which forced such way That many mazed considerings did throng And pressed in with this caution. First, methought I stood not in the smile of heaven, who had Commanded nature that my lady’s womb, If it conceived a male child by me, should Do no more offices of life to’t than The grave does to th’ dead; for her male issue Or died where they were made, or shortly after This world had aired them. Hence I took a thought This was a judgement on me, that my kingdom, Well worthy the best heir o’ th’ world, should not Be gladded in’t by me. Then follows that I weighed the danger which my realms stood in By this my issue’s fail, and that gave to me Many a groaning throe. Thus hulling in The wild sea of my conscience, I did steer Toward this remedy whereupon we are Now present here together. That’s to say, I meant to rectify my conscience, which I then did feel full sick, and yet not well, By all the reverend fathers of the land And doctors learned. First I began in private With you, my Lord of Lincoln. You remember How under my oppression I did reek When I first moved you.

LINCOLN. Very well, my liege.

KING. I have spoke long. Be pleased yourself to say How far you satisfied me.

LINCOLN. So please your Highness, The question did at first so stagger me, Bearing a state of mighty moment in’t And consequence of dread, that I committed The daring’st counsel which I had to doubt And did entreat your Highness to this course Which you are running here.

KING. I then moved you, My Lord of Canterbury, and got your leave To make this present summons. Unsolicited I left no reverend person in this court, But by particular consent proceeded Under your hands and seals. Therefore go on, For no dislike i’ th’ world against the person Of the good queen, but the sharp thorny points Of my alleged reasons, drives this forward. Prove but our marriage lawful, by my life And kingly dignity, we are contented To wear our mortal state to come with her, Katherine, our Queen, before the primest creature That’s paragoned o’ th’ world.

CAMPEIUS. So please your Highness, The Queen being absent, ’tis a needful fitness That we adjourn this court till further day. Meanwhile must be an earnest motion Made to the Queen to call back her appeal She intends unto his Holiness.

KING. [Aside.] I may perceive These cardinals trifle with me. I abhor This dilatory sloth and tricks of Rome. My learned and well-beloved servant, Cranmer, Prithee return. With thy approach, I know, My comfort comes along.—Break up the court! I say, set on.

[Exeunt in manner as they entered.]

SCENE I. London. The Queen’s apartments.

Enter Queen and her Women, as at work.

QUEEN KATHERINE. Take thy lute, wench. My soul grows sad with troubles. Sing, and disperse ’em, if thou canst. Leave working.

WOMAN [sings song.]

Orpheus with his lute made trees And the mountain tops that freeze Bow themselves when he did sing. To his music plants and flowers Ever sprung, as sun and showers There had made a lasting spring.

Everything that heard him play, Even the billows of the sea, Hung their heads and then lay by. In sweet music is such art, Killing care and grief of heart Fall asleep or, hearing, die.

QUEEN KATHERINE. How now?

GENTLEMAN. An’t please your Grace, the two great Cardinals Wait in the presence.

QUEEN KATHERINE. Would they speak with me?

GENTLEMAN. They willed me say so, madam.

QUEEN KATHERINE. Pray their Graces To come near.

What can be their business With me, a poor weak woman, fallen from favour? I do not like their coming. Now I think on’t, They should be good men, their affairs as righteous. But all hoods make not monks.

Enter the two Cardinals, Wolsey and Campeius.

WOLSEY. Peace to your Highness.

QUEEN KATHERINE. Your Graces find me here part of housewife; I would be all, against the worst may happen. What are your pleasures with me, reverend lords?

WOLSEY. May it please you, noble madam, to withdraw Into your private chamber, we shall give you The full cause of our coming.

QUEEN KATHERINE. Speak it here. There’s nothing I have done yet, o’ my conscience, Deserves a corner. Would all other women Could speak this with as free a soul as I do! My lords, I care not, so much I am happy Above a number, if my actions Were tried by every tongue, every eye saw ’em, Envy and base opinion set against ’em, I know my life so even. If your business Seek me out, and that way I am wife in, Out with it boldly. Truth loves open dealing.

WOLSEY. Tanta est erga te mentis integritas, regina serenissima—

QUEEN KATHERINE. O, good my lord, no Latin. I am not such a truant since my coming As not to know the language I have lived in. A strange tongue makes my cause more strange, suspicious. Pray speak in English. Here are some will thank you, If you speak truth, for their poor mistress’ sake. Believe me, she has had much wrong. Lord Cardinal, The willing’st sin I ever yet committed May be absolved in English.

WOLSEY. Noble lady, I am sorry my integrity should breed— And service to his Majesty and you— So deep suspicion, where all faith was meant. We come not by the way of accusation, To taint that honour every good tongue blesses, Nor to betray you any way to sorrow— You have too much, good lady—but to know How you stand minded in the weighty difference Between the King and you, and to deliver, Like free and honest men, our just opinions And comforts to your cause.

CAMPEIUS. Most honoured madam, My Lord of York, out of his noble nature, Zeal, and obedience he still bore your Grace, Forgetting, like a good man, your late censure Both of his truth and him—which was too far— Offers, as I do, in a sign of peace, His service and his counsel.

QUEEN KATHERINE. [Aside.] To betray me. My lords, I thank you both for your good wills. Ye speak like honest men; pray God ye prove so. But how to make ye suddenly an answer In such a point of weight, so near mine honour— More near my life, I fear—with my weak wit, And to such men of gravity and learning, In truth I know not. I was set at work Among my maids, full little, God knows, looking Either for such men or such business. For her sake that I have been—for I feel The last fit of my greatness—good your Graces, Let me have time and counsel for my cause. Alas, I am a woman friendless, hopeless.

WOLSEY. Madam, you wrong the King’s love with these fears; Your hopes and friends are infinite.

QUEEN KATHERINE. In England But little for my profit. Can you think, lords, That any Englishman dare give me counsel? Or be a known friend, ’gainst his Highness’ pleasure, Though he be grown so desperate to be honest, And live a subject? Nay, forsooth, my friends, They that much weigh out my afflictions, They that my trust must grow to, live not here. They are, as all my other comforts, far hence In mine own country, lords.

CAMPEIUS. I would your Grace Would leave your griefs and take my counsel.

QUEEN KATHERINE. How, sir?

CAMPEIUS. Put your main cause into the King’s protection. He’s loving and most gracious. ’Twill be much Both for your honour better and your cause, For if the trial of the law o’ertake ye, You’ll part away disgraced.

WOLSEY. He tells you rightly.

QUEEN KATHERINE. Ye tell me what ye wish for both: my ruin. Is this your Christian counsel? Out upon ye! Heaven is above all yet; there sits a judge That no king can corrupt.

CAMPEIUS. Your rage mistakes us.

QUEEN KATHERINE. The more shame for ye! Holy men I thought ye, Upon my soul, two reverend cardinal virtues; But cardinal sins and hollow hearts I fear ye. Mend ’em, for shame, my lords. Is this your comfort, The cordial that ye bring a wretched lady, A woman lost among ye, laughed at, scorned? I will not wish ye half my miseries; I have more charity. But say I warned ye. Take heed, for heaven’s sake, take heed, lest at once The burden of my sorrows fall upon ye.

WOLSEY. Madam, this is a mere distraction. You turn the good we offer into envy.

QUEEN KATHERINE. Ye turn me into nothing. Woe upon ye And all such false professors! Would you have me— If you have any justice, any pity, If ye be anything but churchmen’s habits— Put my sick cause into his hands that hates me? Alas, ’has banished me his bed already, His love, too, long ago. I am old, my lords, And all the fellowship I hold now with him Is only my obedience. What can happen To me above this wretchedness? All your studies Make me a curse like this.

CAMPEIUS. Your fears are worse.

QUEEN KATHERINE. Have I lived thus long—let me speak myself, Since virtue finds no friends—a wife, a true one— A woman, I dare say without vainglory, Never yet branded with suspicion— Have I with all my full affections Still met the King, loved him next heav’n, obeyed him, Been, out of fondness, superstitious to him, Almost forgot my prayers to content him, And am I thus rewarded? ’Tis not well, lords. Bring me a constant woman to her husband, One that ne’er dreamed a joy beyond his pleasure, And to that woman, when she has done most, Yet will I add an honour: a great patience.

WOLSEY. Madam, you wander from the good we aim at.

QUEEN KATHERINE. My lord, I dare not make myself so guilty To give up willingly that noble title Your master wed me to. Nothing but death Shall e’er divorce my dignities.

WOLSEY. Pray hear me.

QUEEN KATHERINE. Would I had never trod this English earth Or felt the flatteries that grow upon it! Ye have angels’ faces, but heaven knows your hearts. What will become of me now, wretched lady? I am the most unhappy woman living. [To her Women.] Alas, poor wenches, where are now your fortunes? Shipwrecked upon a kingdom where no pity, No friends, no hope, no kindred weep for me, Almost no grave allowed me, like the lily That once was mistress of the field and flourished, I’ll hang my head and perish.

WOLSEY. If your Grace Could but be brought to know our ends are honest, You’d feel more comfort. Why should we, good lady, Upon what cause, wrong you? Alas, our places, The way of our profession, is against it. We are to cure such sorrows, not to sow ’em. For goodness’ sake, consider what you do, How you may hurt yourself, ay, utterly Grow from the King’s acquaintance, by this carriage. The hearts of princes kiss obedience, So much they love it, but to stubborn spirits They swell and grow as terrible as storms. I know you have a gentle, noble temper, A soul as even as a calm. Pray think us Those we profess: peacemakers, friends, and servants.

CAMPEIUS. Madam, you’ll find it so. You wrong your virtues With these weak women’s fears. A noble spirit, As yours was put into you, ever casts Such doubts, as false coin, from it. The King loves you; Beware you lose it not. For us, if you please To trust us in your business, we are ready To use our utmost studies in your service.

QUEEN KATHERINE. Do what ye will, my lords, and pray forgive me If I have used myself unmannerly. You know I am a woman, lacking wit To make a seemly answer to such persons. Pray do my service to his Majesty. He has my heart yet, and shall have my prayers While I shall have my life. Come, reverend fathers, Bestow your counsels on me. She now begs That little thought, when she set footing here, She should have bought her dignities so dear.

SCENE II. Ante-chamber to the King’s apartment.

Enter the Duke of Norfolk, Duke of Suffolk, Lord Surrey and Lord Chamberlain.

NORFOLK. If you will now unite in your complaints And force them with a constancy, the Cardinal Cannot stand under them. If you omit The offer of this time, I cannot promise But that you shall sustain more new disgraces With these you bear already.

SURREY. I am joyful To meet the least occasion that may give me Remembrance of my father-in-law the Duke, To be revenged on him.

SUFFOLK. Which of the peers Have uncontemned gone by him, or at least Strangely neglected? When did he regard The stamp of nobleness in any person Out of himself?

CHAMBERLAIN. My lords, you speak your pleasures. What he deserves of you and me I know; What we can do to him—though now the time Gives way to us—I much fear. If you cannot Bar his access to th’ King, never attempt Anything on him, for he hath a witchcraft Over the King in ’s tongue.

NORFOLK. O, fear him not. His spell in that is out. The King hath found Matter against him that for ever mars The honey of his language. No, he’s settled, Not to come off, in his displeasure.

SURREY. Sir, I should be glad to hear such news as this Once every hour.

NORFOLK. Believe it, this is true. In the divorce his contrary proceedings Are all unfolded, wherein he appears As I would wish mine enemy.

SURREY. How came His practices to light?

SUFFOLK. Most strangely.

SURREY. O, how, how?

SUFFOLK. The Cardinal’s letters to the Pope miscarried, And came to th’ eye o’ the King, wherein was read How that the Cardinal did entreat his Holiness To stay the judgement o’ th’ divorce; for if It did take place, “I do” quoth he “perceive My king is tangled in affection to A creature of the Queen’s, Lady Anne Bullen.”

SURREY. Has the King this?

SUFFOLK. Believe it.

SURREY. Will this work?

CHAMBERLAIN. The King in this perceives him how he coasts And hedges his own way. But in this point All his tricks founder, and he brings his physic After his patient’s death. The King already Hath married the fair lady.

SURREY. Would he had!

SUFFOLK. May you be happy in your wish, my lord, For I profess you have it.

SURREY. Now, all my joy Trace the conjunction!

SUFFOLK. My amen to’t!

NORFOLK. All men’s.

SUFFOLK. There’s order given for her coronation. Marry, this is yet but young, and may be left To some ears unrecounted. But, my lords, She is a gallant creature, and complete In mind and feature. I persuade me, from her Will fall some blessing to this land which shall In it be memorized.

SURREY. But will the King Digest this letter of the Cardinal’s? The Lord forbid!

NORFOLK. Marry, amen!

SUFFOLK. No, no. There be more wasps that buzz about his nose Will make this sting the sooner. Cardinal Campeius Is stolen away to Rome; hath ta’en no leave; Has left the cause o’ th’ King unhandled, and Is posted, as the agent of our Cardinal, To second all his plot. I do assure you The King cried “Ha!” at this.

CHAMBERLAIN. Now, God incense him, And let him cry “Ha!” louder.

NORFOLK. But, my lord, When returns Cranmer?

SUFFOLK. He is returned in his opinions, which Have satisfied the King for his divorce, Together with all famous colleges Almost in Christendom. Shortly, I believe, His second marriage shall be published, and Her coronation. Katherine no more Shall be called Queen, but Princess Dowager And widow to Prince Arthur.

NORFOLK. This same Cranmer’s A worthy fellow, and hath ta’en much pain In the King’s business.

SUFFOLK. He has, and we shall see him For it an archbishop.

NORFOLK. So I hear.

SUFFOLK. ’Tis so.

Enter Wolsey and Cromwell.

The Cardinal!

NORFOLK. Observe, observe; he’s moody.

WOLSEY. The packet, Cromwell, Gave’t you the King?

CROMWELL. To his own hand, in ’s bedchamber.

WOLSEY. Looked he o’ th’ inside of the paper?

CROMWELL. Presently He did unseal them, and the first he viewed, He did it with a serious mind; a heed Was in his countenance. You he bade Attend him here this morning.

WOLSEY. Is he ready To come abroad?

CROMWELL. I think by this he is.

WOLSEY. Leave me a while.

[Exit Cromwell.]

[Aside.] It shall be to the Duchess of Alençon, The French king’s sister; he shall marry her. Anne Bullen? No; I’ll no Anne Bullens for him. There’s more in’t than fair visage. Bullen? No, we’ll no Bullens. Speedily I wish To hear from Rome. The Marchioness of Pembroke!

NORFOLK. He’s discontented.

SUFFOLK. Maybe he hears the King Does whet his anger to him.

SURREY. Sharp enough, Lord, for thy justice!

WOLSEY. [Aside.] The late queen’s gentlewoman, a knight’s daughter, To be her mistress’ mistress? The Queen’s Queen? This candle burns not clear. ’Tis I must snuff it; Then out it goes. What though I know her virtuous And well deserving? Yet I know her for A spleeny Lutheran, and not wholesome to Our cause, that she should lie i’ th’ bosom of Our hard-ruled King. Again, there is sprung up An heretic, an arch-one, Cranmer, one Hath crawled into the favour of the King And is his oracle.

NORFOLK. He is vexed at something.

Enter King, reading a schedule, and Lovell.

SURREY. I would ’twere something that would fret the string, The master-cord on ’s heart.

SUFFOLK. The King, the King!

KING. What piles of wealth hath he accumulated To his own portion! And what expense by th’ hour Seems to flow from him! How, i’ th’ name of thrift Does he rake this together? Now, my lords, Saw you the Cardinal?

NORFOLK. My lord, we have Stood here observing him. Some strange commotion Is in his brain. He bites his lip, and starts, Stops on a sudden, looks upon the ground, Then lays his finger on his temple; straight Springs out into fast gait; then stops again, Strikes his breast hard, and anon he casts His eye against the moon. In most strange postures We have seen him set himself.

KING. It may well be There is a mutiny in ’s mind. This morning Papers of state he sent me to peruse, As I required; and wot you what I found There—on my conscience, put unwittingly? Forsooth, an inventory, thus importing The several parcels of his plate, his treasure, Rich stuffs and ornaments of household, which I find at such proud rate that it outspeaks Possession of a subject.

NORFOLK. It’s heaven’s will! Some spirit put this paper in the packet To bless your eye withal.

KING. If we did think His contemplation were above the earth And fixed on spiritual object, he should still Dwell in his musings, but I am afraid His thinkings are below the moon, not worth His serious considering.

[King takes his seat; whispers Lovell, who goes to the Cardinal.]

WOLSEY. Heaven forgive me! Ever God bless your Highness.

KING. Good my lord, You are full of heavenly stuff, and bear the inventory Of your best graces in your mind, the which You were now running o’er. You have scarce time To steal from spiritual leisure a brief span To keep your earthly audit. Sure, in that I deem you an ill husband, and am glad To have you therein my companion.

WOLSEY. Sir, For holy offices I have a time; a time To think upon the part of business which I bear i’ th’ state; and Nature does require Her times of preservation, which perforce I, her frail son, amongst my brethren mortal, Must give my tendance to.

KING. You have said well.

WOLSEY. And ever may your Highness yoke together, As I will lend you cause, my doing well With my well saying.

KING. ’Tis well said again, And ’tis a kind of good deed to say well. And yet words are no deeds. My father loved you; He said he did, and with his deed did crown His word upon you. Since I had my office, I have kept you next my heart, have not alone Employed you where high profits might come home, But pared my present havings to bestow My bounties upon you.

WOLSEY. [Aside.] What should this mean?

SURREY. [Aside.] The Lord increase this business!

KING. Have I not made you The prime man of the state? I pray you tell me, If what I now pronounce you have found true, And, if you may confess it, say withal If you are bound to us or no. What say you?

WOLSEY. My sovereign, I confess your royal graces, Showered on me daily, have been more than could My studied purposes requite, which went Beyond all man’s endeavours. My endeavours Have ever come too short of my desires, Yet filed with my abilities. Mine own ends Have been mine so that evermore they pointed To th’ good of your most sacred person and The profit of the state. For your great graces Heaped upon me, poor undeserver, I Can nothing render but allegiant thanks, My prayers to heaven for you, my loyalty, Which ever has and ever shall be growing, Till death, that winter, kill it.

KING. Fairly answered. A loyal and obedient subject is Therein illustrated. The honour of it Does pay the act of it, as i’ th’ contrary, The foulness is the punishment. I presume That, as my hand has opened bounty to you, My heart dropped love, my power rained honour, more On you than any, so your hand and heart, Your brain, and every function of your power, Should, notwithstanding that your bond of duty, As ’twere in love’s particular, be more To me, your friend, than any.

WOLSEY. I do profess That for your Highness’ good I ever laboured More than mine own, that am, have, and will be. Though all the world should crack their duty to you And throw it from their soul, though perils did Abound as thick as thought could make ’em, and Appear in forms more horrid—yet my duty, As doth a rock against the chiding flood, Should the approach of this wild river break, And stand unshaken yours.

KING. ’Tis nobly spoken. Take notice, lords: he has a loyal breast, For you have seen him open’t.

[Giving him papers.]

Read o’er this, And after, this; and then to breakfast with What appetite you have.

[Exit King, frowning upon the Cardinal; the nobles throng after him, smiling and whispering.]

WOLSEY. What should this mean? What sudden anger’s this? How have I reaped it? He parted frowning from me, as if ruin Leaped from his eyes. So looks the chafed lion Upon the daring huntsman that has galled him, Then makes him nothing. I must read this paper— I fear, the story of his anger. ’Tis so. This paper has undone me. ’Tis th’ account Of all that world of wealth I have drawn together For mine own ends—indeed, to gain the popedom And fee my friends in Rome. O negligence, Fit for a fool to fall by! What cross devil Made me put this main secret in the packet I sent the King? Is there no way to cure this? No new device to beat this from his brains? I know ’twill stir him strongly; yet I know A way, if it take right, in spite of fortune, Will bring me off again. What’s this? “To th’ Pope”? The letter, as I live, with all the business I writ to ’s Holiness. Nay then, farewell! I have touched the highest point of all my greatness, And from that full meridian of my glory I haste now to my setting. I shall fall Like a bright exhalation in the evening, And no man see me more.

Enter to Wolsey, the Dukes of Norfolk and Suffolk, the Earl of Surrey, and the Lord Chamberlain.

NORFOLK. Hear the King’s pleasure, Cardinal, who commands you To render up the great seal presently Into our hands, and to confine yourself To Asher House, my Lord of Winchester’s, Till you hear further from his Highness.

WOLSEY. Stay. Where’s your commission, lords? Words cannot carry Authority so weighty.

SUFFOLK. Who dares cross ’em, Bearing the King’s will from his mouth expressly?

WOLSEY. Till I find more than will or words to do it— I mean your malice—know, officious lords, I dare and must deny it. Now I feel Of what coarse metal ye are moulded, envy! How eagerly ye follow my disgraces, As if it fed ye, and how sleek and wanton Ye appear in everything may bring my ruin! Follow your envious courses, men of malice; You have Christian warrant for ’em, and no doubt In time will find their fit rewards. That seal You ask with such a violence, the King, Mine and your master, with his own hand gave me; Bade me enjoy it, with the place and honours, During my life; and, to confirm his goodness, Tied it by letters-patents. Now, who’ll take it?

SURREY. The King that gave it.

WOLSEY. It must be himself, then.

SURREY. Thou art a proud traitor, priest.

WOLSEY. Proud lord, thou liest. Within these forty hours Surrey durst better Have burnt that tongue than said so.

SURREY. Thy ambition, Thou scarlet sin, robbed this bewailing land Of noble Buckingham, my father-in-law. The heads of all thy brother cardinals, With thee and all thy best parts bound together, Weighed not a hair of his. Plague of your policy! You sent me Deputy for Ireland, Far from his succour, from the King, from all That might have mercy on the fault thou gav’st him, Whilst your great goodness, out of holy pity, Absolved him with an axe.

WOLSEY. This, and all else This talking lord can lay upon my credit, I answer is most false. The Duke by law Found his deserts. How innocent I was From any private malice in his end, His noble jury and foul cause can witness. If I loved many words, lord, I should tell you You have as little honesty as honour, That in the way of loyalty and truth Toward the King, my ever royal master, Dare mate a sounder man than Surrey can be, And all that love his follies.

SURREY. By my soul, Your long coat, priest, protects you; thou shouldst feel My sword i’ th’ lifeblood of thee else. My lords, Can ye endure to hear this arrogance? And from this fellow? If we live thus tamely, To be thus jaded by a piece of scarlet, Farewell, nobility. Let his Grace go forward And dare us with his cap, like larks.

WOLSEY. All goodness Is poison to thy stomach.

SURREY. Yes, that goodness Of gleaning all the land’s wealth into one, Into your own hands, Cardinal, by extortion; The goodness of your intercepted packets You writ to the Pope against the King. Your goodness, Since you provoke me, shall be most notorious. My Lord of Norfolk, as you are truly noble, As you respect the common good, the state Of our despised nobility, our issues, Who, if he live, will scarce be gentlemen, Produce the grand sum of his sins, the articles Collected from his life. I’ll startle you Worse than the sacring bell when the brown wench Lay kissing in your arms, Lord Cardinal.

WOLSEY. How much, methinks, I could despise this man, But that I am bound in charity against it!

NORFOLK. Those articles, my lord, are in the King’s hand; But thus much, they are foul ones.

WOLSEY. So much fairer And spotless shall mine innocence arise When the King knows my truth.

SURREY. This cannot save you. I thank my memory I yet remember Some of these articles, and out they shall. Now, if you can blush and cry “Guilty,” Cardinal, You’ll show a little honesty.

WOLSEY. Speak on, sir; I dare your worst objections. If I blush, It is to see a nobleman want manners.

SURREY. I had rather want those than my head. Have at you! First, that without the King’s assent or knowledge, You wrought to be a legate, by which power You maimed the jurisdiction of all bishops.

NORFOLK. Then, that in all you writ to Rome, or else To foreign princes, “ego et rex meus” Was still inscribed, in which you brought the King To be your servant.

SUFFOLK. Then, that without the knowledge Either of King or Council, when you went Ambassador to the Emperor, you made bold To carry into Flanders the great seal.

SURREY. Item, you sent a large commission To Gregory de Cassado, to conclude, Without the King’s will or the state’s allowance, A league between his Highness and Ferrara.

SUFFOLK. That out of mere ambition you have caused Your holy hat to be stamped on the King’s coin.

SURREY. Then, that you have sent innumerable substance— By what means got, I leave to your own conscience— To furnish Rome and to prepare the ways You have for dignities, to the mere undoing Of all the kingdom. Many more there are, Which, since they are of you, and odious, I will not taint my mouth with.

CHAMBERLAIN. O my lord, Press not a falling man too far! ’Tis virtue. His faults lie open to the laws; let them, Not you, correct him. My heart weeps to see him So little of his great self.

SURREY. I forgive him.

SUFFOLK. Lord Cardinal, the King’s further pleasure is, Because all those things you have done of late By your power legative within this kingdom Fall into th’ compass of a praemunire, That therefore such a writ be sued against you To forfeit all your goods, lands, tenements, Chattels, and whatsoever, and to be Out of the King’s protection. This is my charge.

NORFOLK. And so we’ll leave you to your meditations How to live better. For your stubborn answer About the giving back the great seal to us, The King shall know it and, no doubt, shall thank you. So fare you well, my little good Lord Cardinal.

[Exeunt all but Wolsey.]

WOLSEY. So farewell to the little good you bear me. Farewell? A long farewell to all my greatness! This is the state of man: today he puts forth The tender leaves of hopes; tomorrow blossoms, And bears his blushing honours thick upon him; The third day comes a frost, a killing frost, And when he thinks, good easy man, full surely His greatness is a-ripening, nips his root, And then he falls, as I do. I have ventured, Like little wanton boys that swim on bladders, This many summers in a sea of glory, But far beyond my depth. My high-blown pride At length broke under me and now has left me, Weary and old with service, to the mercy Of a rude stream that must for ever hide me. Vain pomp and glory of this world, I hate ye! I feel my heart new opened. O, how wretched Is that poor man that hangs on princes’ favours! There is betwixt that smile we would aspire to, That sweet aspect of princes, and their ruin, More pangs and fears than wars or women have; And when he falls, he falls like Lucifer, Never to hope again.

Enter Cromwell, standing amazed.

Why, how now, Cromwell?

CROMWELL. I have no power to speak, sir.

WOLSEY. What, amazed At my misfortunes? Can thy spirit wonder A great man should decline? Nay, an you weep, I am fallen indeed.

CROMWELL. How does your Grace?

WOLSEY. Why, well. Never so truly happy, my good Cromwell. I know myself now, and I feel within me A peace above all earthly dignities, A still and quiet conscience. The King has cured me, I humbly thank his Grace, and from these shoulders, These ruined pillars, out of pity, taken A load would sink a navy: too much honour. O, ’tis a burden, Cromwell, ’tis a burden Too heavy for a man that hopes for heaven.

CROMWELL. I am glad your Grace has made that right use of it.

WOLSEY. I hope I have. I am able now, methinks, Out of a fortitude of soul I feel, To endure more miseries and greater far Than my weak-hearted enemies dare offer. What news abroad?

CROMWELL. The heaviest and the worst Is your displeasure with the King.

WOLSEY. God bless him.

CROMWELL. The next is that Sir Thomas More is chosen Lord Chancellor in your place.

WOLSEY. That’s somewhat sudden. But he’s a learned man. May he continue Long in his Highness’ favour, and do justice For truth’s sake and his conscience, that his bones, When he has run his course and sleeps in blessings, May have a tomb of orphans’ tears wept on him. What more?

CROMWELL. That Cranmer is returned with welcome, Installed Lord Archbishop of Canterbury.

WOLSEY. That’s news indeed.

CROMWELL. Last, that the Lady Anne, Whom the King hath in secrecy long married, This day was viewed in open as his Queen, Going to chapel, and the voice is now Only about her coronation.

WOLSEY. There was the weight that pulled me down. O Cromwell, The King has gone beyond me. All my glories In that one woman I have lost for ever. No sun shall ever usher forth mine honours, Or gild again the noble troops that waited Upon my smiles. Go, get thee from me, Cromwell. I am a poor fallen man, unworthy now To be thy lord and master. Seek the King; That sun, I pray, may never set! I have told him What and how true thou art. He will advance thee; Some little memory of me will stir him— I know his noble nature—not to let Thy hopeful service perish too. Good Cromwell, Neglect him not; make use now, and provide For thine own future safety.

CROMWELL. O my lord, Must I then leave you? Must I needs forgo So good, so noble, and so true a master? Bear witness, all that have not hearts of iron, With what a sorrow Cromwell leaves his lord. The King shall have my service, but my prayers For ever and for ever shall be yours.

WOLSEY. Cromwell, I did not think to shed a tear In all my miseries, but thou hast forced me, Out of thy honest truth, to play the woman. Let’s dry our eyes, and thus far hear me, Cromwell, And when I am forgotten, as I shall be, And sleep in dull cold marble, where no mention Of me more must be heard of, say, I taught thee; Say Wolsey, that once trod the ways of glory And sounded all the depths and shoals of honour, Found thee a way, out of his wreck, to rise in, A sure and safe one, though thy master missed it. Mark but my fall and that that ruined me. Cromwell, I charge thee, fling away ambition! By that sin fell the angels; how can man, then, The image of his maker, hope to win by it? Love thyself last; cherish those hearts that hate thee. Corruption wins not more than honesty. Still in thy right hand carry gentle peace To silence envious tongues. Be just, and fear not. Let all the ends thou aim’st at be thy country’s, Thy God’s, and truth’s. Then if thou fall’st, O Cromwell, Thou fall’st a blessed martyr! Serve the King. And, prithee, lead me in. There take an inventory of all I have. To the last penny; ’tis the King’s. My robe And my integrity to heaven is all I dare now call mine own. O Cromwell, Cromwell, Had I but served my God with half the zeal I served my king, He would not in mine age Have left me naked to mine enemies.

CROMWELL. Good sir, have patience.

WOLSEY. So I have. Farewell, The hopes of court! My hopes in heaven do dwell.

SCENE I. A street in Westminster.

Enter two Gentlemen, meeting one another.

FIRST GENTLEMAN. You’re well met once again.

SECOND GENTLEMAN. So are you.

FIRST GENTLEMAN. You come to take your stand here and behold The Lady Anne pass from her coronation?

SECOND GENTLEMAN. ’Tis all my business. At our last encounter, The Duke of Buckingham came from his trial.

FIRST GENTLEMAN. ’Tis very true. But that time offered sorrow, This, general joy.

SECOND GENTLEMAN. ’Tis well. The citizens, I am sure, have shown at full their royal minds, As, let ’em have their rights, they are ever forward In celebration of this day with shows, Pageants, and sights of honour.

FIRST GENTLEMAN. Never greater, Nor, I’ll assure you, better taken, sir.

SECOND GENTLEMAN. May I be bold to ask what that contains, That paper in your hand?

FIRST GENTLEMAN. Yes, ’tis the list Of those that claim their offices this day By custom of the coronation. The Duke of Suffolk is the first, and claims To be High Steward; next, the Duke of Norfolk, He to be Earl Marshal. You may read the rest.

SECOND GENTLEMAN. I thank you, sir. Had I not known those customs, I should have been beholding to your paper. But I beseech you, what’s become of Katherine, The Princess Dowager? How goes her business?

FIRST GENTLEMAN. That I can tell you too. The Archbishop Of Canterbury, accompanied with other Learned and reverend fathers of his order, Held a late court at Dunstable, six miles off From Ampthill where the Princess lay; to which She was often cited by them, but appeared not; And, to be short, for not appearance and The King’s late scruple, by the main assent Of all these learned men she was divorced, And the late marriage made of none effect; Since which she was removed to Kimbolton, Where she remains now sick.

SECOND GENTLEMAN. Alas, good lady!

[Trumpets.]

The trumpets sound. Stand close. The Queen is coming.

The order of the coronation.

1. A lively flourish of trumpets. 2. Then, two Judges. 3. Lord Chancellor, with purse and mace before him. 4. Choristers, singing. Music. 5. Mayor of London, bearing the mace. Then Garter, in his coat of arms, and on his head he wore a gilt copper crown. 6. Marquess Dorset, bearing a sceptre of gold, on his head a demi-coronal of gold. With him, the Earl of Surrey, bearing the rod of silver with the dove, crowned with an earl’s coronet. Collars of S’s. 7. Duke of Suffolk, in his robe of estate, his coronet on his head, bearing a long white wand, as High Steward. With him, the Duke of Norfolk, with the rod of marshalship, a coronet on his head. Collars of S’s. 8. A canopy, borne by four of the Cinque Ports; under it, the Queen in her robe, in her hair, richly adorned with pearl, crowned. On each side her, the Bishops of London and Winchester. 9. The old Duchess of Norfolk, in a coronal of gold wrought with flowers, bearing the Queen’s train. 10. Certain Ladies or Countesses, with plain circlets of gold without flowers.

[Exeunt, first passing over the stage in order and state, and then a great flourish of trumpets.]

SECOND GENTLEMAN. A royal train, believe me. These I know. Who’s that that bears the sceptre?

FIRST GENTLEMAN. Marquess Dorset, And that the Earl of Surrey with the rod.

SECOND GENTLEMAN. A bold brave gentleman. That should be The Duke of Suffolk.

FIRST GENTLEMAN. ’Tis the same: High Steward.

SECOND GENTLEMAN. And that my Lord of Norfolk?

FIRST GENTLEMAN. Yes.

SECOND GENTLEMAN. [Sees the Queen.] Heaven bless thee! Thou hast the sweetest face I ever looked on. Sir, as I have a soul, she is an angel. Our King has all the Indies in his arms, And more, and richer, when he strains that lady. I cannot blame his conscience.

FIRST GENTLEMAN. They that bear The cloth of honour over her are four barons Of the Cinque Ports.

SECOND GENTLEMAN. Those men are happy, and so are all are near her. I take it she that carries up the train Is that old noble lady, Duchess of Norfolk.

FIRST GENTLEMAN. It is, and all the rest are countesses.

SECOND GENTLEMAN. Their coronets say so. These are stars indeed.

FIRST GENTLEMAN. And sometimes falling ones.

SECOND GENTLEMAN. No more of that.

[Exit the last of the procession.]

Enter a third Gentleman.

God save you, sir. Where have you been broiling?

THIRD GENTLEMAN. Among the crowds i’ th’ Abbey, where a finger Could not be wedged in more. I am stifled With the mere rankness of their joy.

SECOND GENTLEMAN. You saw The ceremony?

THIRD GENTLEMAN. That I did.

FIRST GENTLEMAN. How was it?

THIRD GENTLEMAN. Well worth the seeing.

SECOND GENTLEMAN. Good sir, speak it to us.

THIRD GENTLEMAN. As well as I am able. The rich stream Of lords and ladies, having brought the Queen To a prepared place in the choir, fell off A distance from her, while her Grace sat down To rest a while, some half an hour or so, In a rich chair of state, opposing freely The beauty of her person to the people. Believe me, sir, she is the goodliest woman That ever lay by man, which when the people Had the full view of, such a noise arose As the shrouds make at sea in a stiff tempest, As loud and to as many tunes. Hats, cloaks, Doublets, I think, flew up, and had their faces Been loose, this day they had been lost. Such joy I never saw before. Great-bellied women That had not half a week to go, like rams In the old time of war, would shake the press And make ’em reel before ’em. No man living Could say “This is my wife” there, all were woven So strangely in one piece.

SECOND GENTLEMAN. But what followed?

THIRD GENTLEMAN. At length her Grace rose, and with modest paces Came to the altar, where she kneeled and saintlike Cast her fair eyes to heaven and prayed devoutly; Then rose again and bowed her to the people, When by the Archbishop of Canterbury She had all the royal makings of a queen, As holy oil, Edward Confessor’s crown, The rod, and bird of peace, and all such emblems Laid nobly on her; which performed, the choir, With all the choicest music of the kingdom, Together sung Te Deum. So she parted, And with the same full state paced back again To York Place, where the feast is held.

FIRST GENTLEMAN. Sir, You must no more call it “York Place”, that’s past; For since the Cardinal fell, that title’s lost. ’Tis now the King’s, and called “Whitehall”.

THIRD GENTLEMAN. I know it, But ’tis so lately altered that the old name Is fresh about me.

SECOND GENTLEMAN. What two reverend bishops Were those that went on each side of the Queen?

THIRD GENTLEMAN. Stokesley and Gardiner, the one of Winchester, Newly preferred from the King’s secretary; The other, London.

SECOND GENTLEMAN. He of Winchester Is held no great good lover of the Archbishop’s, The virtuous Cranmer.

THIRD GENTLEMAN. All the land knows that. However, yet there is no great breach. When it comes, Cranmer will find a friend will not shrink from him.

SECOND GENTLEMAN. Who may that be, I pray you?

THIRD GENTLEMAN. Thomas Cromwell, A man in much esteem with th’ King, and truly A worthy friend. The King has made him Master o’ th’ Jewel House, And one already of the Privy Council.

SECOND GENTLEMAN. He will deserve more.

THIRD GENTLEMAN. Yes, without all doubt. Come, gentlemen, ye shall go my way, Which is to th’ court, and there ye shall be my guests, Something I can command. As I walk thither, I’ll tell ye more.

BOTH. You may command us, sir.

SCENE II. Kimbolton.

Enter Katherine Dowager, sick, led between Griffith, her gentleman usher, and Patience, her woman.

GRIFFITH. How does your Grace?

QUEEN KATHERINE. O Griffith, sick to death. My legs like loaden branches bow to th’ earth, Willing to leave their burden. Reach a chair.

[She sits.]

So. Now, methinks, I feel a little ease. Didst thou not tell me, Griffith, as thou ledst me, That the great child of honour, Cardinal Wolsey, Was dead?

GRIFFITH. Yes, madam, but I think your Grace, Out of the pain you suffered, gave no ear to’t.

QUEEN KATHERINE. Prithee, good Griffith, tell me how he died. If well, he stepped before me happily For my example.

GRIFFITH. Well, the voice goes, madam. For after the stout Earl Northumberland Arrested him at York and brought him forward, As a man sorely tainted, to his answer, He fell sick suddenly and grew so ill He could not sit his mule.

QUEEN KATHERINE. Alas, poor man!

GRIFFITH. At last, with easy roads, he came to Leicester, Lodged in the abbey, where the reverend abbot, With all his covent, honourably received him; To whom he gave these words: “O father abbot, An old man, broken with the storms of state, Is come to lay his weary bones among ye. Give him a little earth for charity.” So went to bed, where eagerly his sickness Pursued him still; and three nights after this, About the hour of eight, which he himself Foretold should be his last, full of repentance, Continual meditations, tears, and sorrows, He gave his honours to the world again, His blessed part to heaven, and slept in peace.

QUEEN KATHERINE. So may he rest. His faults lie gently on him! Yet thus far, Griffith, give me leave to speak him, And yet with charity. He was a man Of an unbounded stomach, ever ranking Himself with princes; one that by suggestion Tied all the kingdom. Simony was fair-play. His own opinion was his law. I’ th’ presence He would say untruths, and be ever double Both in his words and meaning. He was never, But where he meant to ruin, pitiful. His promises were, as he then was, mighty; But his performance, as he is now, nothing. Of his own body he was ill, and gave The clergy ill example.

GRIFFITH. Noble madam, Men’s evil manners live in brass; their virtues We write in water. May it please your Highness To hear me speak his good now?

QUEEN KATHERINE. Yes, good Griffith; I were malicious else.

GRIFFITH. This Cardinal, Though from an humble stock, undoubtedly Was fashioned to much honour. From his cradle He was a scholar, and a ripe and good one, Exceeding wise, fair-spoken, and persuading; Lofty and sour to them that loved him not, But to those men that sought him, sweet as summer. And though he were unsatisfied in getting, Which was a sin, yet in bestowing, madam, He was most princely. Ever witness for him Those twins of learning that he raised in you, Ipswich and Oxford, one of which fell with him, Unwilling to outlive the good that did it; The other, though unfinished, yet so famous, So excellent in art, and still so rising, That Christendom shall ever speak his virtue. His overthrow heaped happiness upon him, For then, and not till then, he felt himself, And found the blessedness of being little. And, to add greater honours to his age Than man could give him, he died fearing God.

QUEEN KATHERINE. After my death I wish no other herald, No other speaker of my living actions, To keep mine honour from corruption But such an honest chronicler as Griffith. Whom I most hated living, thou hast made me, With thy religious truth and modesty, Now in his ashes honour. Peace be with him! Patience, be near me still, and set me lower: I have not long to trouble thee. Good Griffith, Cause the musicians play me that sad note I named my knell, whilst I sit meditating On that celestial harmony I go to.

[Sad and solemn music.]

GRIFFITH. She is asleep. Good wench, let’s sit down quiet, For fear we wake her. Softly, gentle Patience.

The vision.

Enter, solemnly tripping one after another, six Personages, clad in white robes, wearing on their heads garlands of bays, and golden vizards on their faces, branches of bays or palm in their hands. They first congee unto her, then dance; and, at certain changes, the first two hold a spare garland over her head, at which the other four make reverent curtsies. Then the two that held the garland deliver the same to the other next two, who observe the same order in their changes and holding the garland over her head; which done, they deliver the same garland to the last two, who likewise observe the same order. At which, as it were by inspiration, she makes in her sleep signs of rejoicing and holdeth up her hands to heaven. And so in their dancing, vanish, carrying the garland with them. The music continues.

QUEEN KATHERINE. Spirits of peace, where are ye? Are ye all gone, And leave me here in wretchedness behind ye?

GRIFFITH. Madam, we are here.

QUEEN KATHERINE. It is not you I call for. Saw ye none enter since I slept?

GRIFFITH. None, madam.

QUEEN KATHERINE. No? Saw you not, even now, a blessed troop Invite me to a banquet, whose bright faces Cast thousand beams upon me, like the sun? They promised me eternal happiness And brought me garlands, Griffith, which I feel I am not worthy yet to wear. I shall, assuredly.

GRIFFITH. I am most joyful, madam, such good dreams Possess your fancy.

QUEEN KATHERINE. Bid the music leave, They are harsh and heavy to me.

[Music ceases.]

PATIENCE. Do you note How much her Grace is altered on the sudden? How long her face is drawn? How pale she looks, And of an earthly cold? Mark her eyes.

GRIFFITH. She is going, wench. Pray, pray.

PATIENCE. Heaven comfort her!

MESSENGER. An’t like your Grace—

QUEEN KATHERINE. You are a saucy fellow. Deserve we no more reverence?

GRIFFITH. You are to blame, Knowing she will not lose her wonted greatness, To use so rude behaviour. Go to, kneel.

MESSENGER. I humbly do entreat your Highness’ pardon. My haste made me unmannerly. There is staying A gentleman sent from the King to see you.

QUEEN KATHERINE. Admit him entrance, Griffith. But this fellow Let me ne’er see again.

Enter Lord Caputius.

If my sight fail not, You should be lord ambassador from the Emperor, My royal nephew, and your name Caputius.

CAPUTIUS. Madam, the same. Your servant.

QUEEN KATHERINE. O my lord, The times and titles now are altered strangely With me since first you knew me. But I pray you, What is your pleasure with me?

CAPUTIUS. Noble lady, First, mine own service to your Grace; the next, The King’s request that I would visit you, Who grieves much for your weakness, and by me Sends you his princely commendations, And heartily entreats you take good comfort.

QUEEN KATHERINE. O my good lord, that comfort comes too late; ’Tis like a pardon after execution. That gentle physic given in time had cured me, But now I am past all comforts here but prayers. How does his Highness?

CAPUTIUS. Madam, in good health.

QUEEN KATHERINE. So may he ever do, and ever flourish, When I shall dwell with worms, and my poor name Banished the kingdom. Patience, is that letter I caused you write yet sent away?

PATIENCE. No, madam.

[Giving it to Katherine.]

QUEEN KATHERINE. Sir, I most humbly pray you to deliver This to my lord the King.

CAPUTIUS. Most willing, madam.

QUEEN KATHERINE. In which I have commended to his goodness The model of our chaste loves, his young daughter— The dews of heaven fall thick in blessings on her!— Beseeching him to give her virtuous breeding— She is young and of a noble modest nature; I hope she will deserve well—and a little To love her for her mother’s sake that loved him, Heaven knows how dearly. My next poor petition Is that his noble Grace would have some pity Upon my wretched women, that so long Have followed both my fortunes faithfully; Of which there is not one, I dare avow— And now I should not lie—but will deserve, For virtue and true beauty of the soul, For honesty and decent carriage, A right good husband. Let him be a noble; And sure those men are happy that shall have ’em. The last is for my men—they are the poorest, But poverty could never draw ’em from me— That they may have their wages duly paid ’em, And something over to remember me by. If heaven had pleased to have given me longer life And able means, we had not parted thus. These are the whole contents, and, good my lord, By that you love the dearest in this world, As you wish Christian peace to souls departed, Stand these poor people’s friend, and urge the King To do me this last right.

CAPUTIUS. By heaven, I will, Or let me lose the fashion of a man!

QUEEN KATHERINE. I thank you, honest lord. Remember me In all humility unto his Highness. Say his long trouble now is passing Out of this world. Tell him in death I blessed him, For so I will. Mine eyes grow dim. Farewell, My lord. Griffith, farewell. Nay, Patience, You must not leave me yet. I must to bed; Call in more women. When I am dead, good wench, Let me be used with honour. Strew me over With maiden flowers, that all the world may know I was a chaste wife to my grave. Embalm me, Then lay me forth. Although unqueened, yet like A queen and daughter to a king inter me. I can no more.

[Exeunt leading Katherine.]

SCENE I. A gallery in the palace.

Enter Gardiner, Bishop of Winchester, a Page with a torch before him, met by Sir Thomas Lovell.

GARDINER. It’s one o’clock, boy, is’t not?

PAGE. It hath struck.

GARDINER. These should be hours for necessities, Not for delights; times to repair our nature With comforting repose, and not for us To waste these times. Good hour of night, Sir Thomas! Whither so late?

LOVELL. Came you from the King, my lord?

GARDINER. I did, Sir Thomas, and left him at primero With the Duke of Suffolk.

LOVELL. I must to him too, Before he go to bed. I’ll take my leave.

GARDINER. Not yet, Sir Thomas Lovell. What’s the matter? It seems you are in haste. An if there be No great offence belongs to’t, give your friend Some touch of your late business. Affairs that walk, As they say spirits do, at midnight have In them a wilder nature than the business That seeks despatch by day.

LOVELL. My lord, I love you, And durst commend a secret to your ear Much weightier than this work. The Queen’s in labour— They say in great extremity, and feared She’ll with the labour end.

GARDINER. The fruit she goes with I pray for heartily, that it may find Good time, and live; but for the stock, Sir Thomas, I wish it grubbed up now.

LOVELL. Methinks I could Cry the amen, and yet my conscience says She’s a good creature and, sweet lady, does Deserve our better wishes.

GARDINER. But, sir, sir, Hear me, Sir Thomas. You’re a gentleman Of mine own way. I know you wise, religious; And let me tell you, it will ne’er be well, ’Twill not, Sir Thomas Lovell, take’t of me, Till Cranmer, Cromwell, her two hands, and she Sleep in their graves.

LOVELL. Now, sir, you speak of two The most remarked i’ th’ kingdom. As for Cromwell, Beside that of the Jewel House, is made Master O’ th’ Rolls, and the King’s secretary; further, sir, Stands in the gap and trade of more preferments, With which the time will load him. Th’ Archbishop Is the King’s hand and tongue, and who dare speak One syllable against him?

GARDINER. Yes, yes, Sir Thomas, There are that dare, and I myself have ventured To speak my mind of him. And indeed this day, Sir—I may tell it you, I think—I have Incensed the lords o’ th’ Council, that he is— For so I know he is, they know he is— A most arch heretic, a pestilence That does infect the land; with which they, moved, Have broken with the King, who hath so far Given ear to our complaint, of his great grace And princely care foreseeing those fell mischiefs Our reasons laid before him, hath commanded Tomorrow morning to the Council board He be convented. He’s a rank weed, Sir Thomas, And we must root him out. From your affairs I hinder you too long. Good night, Sir Thomas.

LOVELL. Many good nights, my lord. I rest your servant.

[Exeunt Gardiner and Page.]

Enter King and Suffolk.

KING. Charles, I will play no more tonight. My mind’s not on’t; you are too hard for me.

SUFFOLK. Sir, I did never win of you before.

KING. But little, Charles, Nor shall not, when my fancy’s on my play. Now, Lovell, from the Queen what is the news?

LOVELL. I could not personally deliver to her What you commanded me, but by her woman I sent your message, who returned her thanks In the great’st humbleness, and desired your Highness Most heartily to pray for her.

KING. What sayst thou, ha? To pray for her? What, is she crying out?

LOVELL. So said her woman, and that her suff’rance made Almost each pang a death.

KING. Alas, good lady!

SUFFOLK. God safely quit her of her burden, and With gentle travail, to the gladding of Your Highness with an heir!

KING. ’Tis midnight, Charles. Prithee, to bed, and in thy prayers remember Th’ estate of my poor Queen. Leave me alone, For I must think of that which company Will not be friendly to.

SUFFOLK. I wish your Highness A quiet night, and my good mistress will Remember in my prayers.

KING. Charles, good night.

[Exit Suffolk.]

Enter Sir Anthony Denny.

Well, sir, what follows?

DENNY. Sir, I have brought my lord the Archbishop, As you commanded me.

KING. Ha! Canterbury?

DENNY. Ay, my good lord.

KING. ’Tis true. Where is he, Denny?

DENNY. He attends your Highness’ pleasure.

KING. Bring him to us.

[Exit Denny.]

LOVELL. [Aside.] This is about that which the Bishop spake. I am happily come hither.

Enter Cranmer and Denny.

KING. Avoid the gallery. [Lovell seems to stay.] Ha! I have said. Be gone. What!

[Exeunt Lovell and Denny.]

CRANMER. [Aside.] I am fearful. Wherefore frowns he thus? ’Tis his aspect of terror. All’s not well.

KING. How now, my lord? You do desire to know Wherefore I sent for you.

CRANMER. [Kneeling.] It is my duty T’ attend your Highness’ pleasure.

KING. Pray you, arise, My good and gracious Lord of Canterbury. Come, you and I must walk a turn together. I have news to tell you. Come, come, give me your hand. Ah, my good lord, I grieve at what I speak, And am right sorry to repeat what follows. I have, and most unwillingly, of late Heard many grievous—I do say, my lord, Grievous—complaints of you, which, being considered, Have moved us and our Council that you shall This morning come before us, where I know, You cannot with such freedom purge yourself But that, till further trial in those charges Which will require your answer, you must take Your patience to you and be well contented To make your house our Tower. You a brother of us, It fits we thus proceed, or else no witness Would come against you.

CRANMER. [Kneeling.] I humbly thank your Highness, And am right glad to catch this good occasion Most throughly to be winnowed, where my chaff And corn shall fly asunder. For I know There’s none stands under more calumnious tongues Than I myself, poor man.

KING. Stand up, good Canterbury! Thy truth and thy integrity is rooted In us, thy friend. Give me thy hand. Stand up. Prithee, let’s walk. Now, by my halidom, What manner of man are you? My lord, I looked You would have given me your petition that I should have ta’en some pains to bring together Yourself and your accusers and to have heard you Without endurance, further.

CRANMER. Most dread liege, The good I stand on is my truth and honesty. If they shall fail, I with mine enemies Will triumph o’er my person, which I weigh not, Being of those virtues vacant. I fear nothing What can be said against me.

KING. Know you not How your state stands i’ th’ world, with the whole world? Your enemies are many, and not small; their practices Must bear the same proportion, and not ever The justice and the truth o’ th’ question carries The due o’ th’ verdict with it. At what ease Might corrupt minds procure knaves as corrupt To swear against you? Such things have been done. You are potently opposed, and with a malice Of as great size. Ween you of better luck, I mean in perjured witness, than your master, Whose minister you are, whiles here he lived Upon this naughty earth? Go to, go to. You take a precipice for no leap of danger, And woo your own destruction.

CRANMER. God and your Majesty Protect mine innocence, or I fall into The trap is laid for me.

KING. Be of good cheer. They shall no more prevail than we give way to. Keep comfort to you, and this morning see You do appear before them. If they shall chance, In charging you with matters, to commit you, The best persuasions to the contrary Fail not to use, and with what vehemency Th’ occasion shall instruct you. If entreaties Will render you no remedy, this ring Deliver them, and your appeal to us There make before them. Look, the good man weeps! He’s honest, on mine honour. God’s blest mother, I swear he is true-hearted, and a soul None better in my kingdom.—Get you gone, And do as I have bid you.

[Exit Cranmer.]

He has strangled His language in his tears.

LOVELL. [Within.] Come back! What mean you?

Enter Old Lady; Lovell follows.

OLD LADY. I’ll not come back. The tidings that I bring Will make my boldness manners. Now, good angels Fly o’er thy royal head and shade thy person Under their blessed wings!

KING. Now by thy looks I guess thy message. Is the Queen delivered? Say “Ay, and of a boy”.

OLD LADY. Ay, ay, my liege, And of a lovely boy. The God of heaven Both now and ever bless her! ’Tis a girl Promises boys hereafter. Sir, your Queen Desires your visitation, and to be Acquainted with this stranger. ’Tis as like you As cherry is to cherry.

KING. Lovell.

LOVELL. Sir?

KING. Give her an hundred marks. I’ll to the Queen.

[Exit King.]

OLD LADY. An hundred marks? By this light, I’ll ha’ more. An ordinary groom is for such payment. I will have more or scold it out of him. Said I for this the girl was like to him? I’ll have more, or else unsay’t. And now, While ’tis hot, I’ll put it to the issue.

SCENE II. Lobby before the council-chamber.

Enter Cranmer, Archbishop of Canterbury.

CRANMER. I hope I am not too late, and yet the gentleman That was sent to me from the Council prayed me To make great haste. All fast? What means this? Ho! Who waits there?

Enter Keeper.

Sure you know me?

KEEPER. Yes, my lord, But yet I cannot help you.

CRANMER. Why?

KEEPER. Your Grace must wait till you be called for.

Enter Doctor Butts.

CRANMER. So.

BUTTS. [Aside.] This is a piece of malice. I am glad I came this way so happily. The King Shall understand it presently.

CRANMER. [Aside.] ’Tis Butts, The King’s physician. As he passed along, How earnestly he cast his eyes upon me! Pray heaven he sound not my disgrace. For certain, This is of purpose laid by some that hate me— God turn their hearts! I never sought their malice— To quench mine honour. They would shame to make me Wait else at door, a fellow councillor, ’Mong boys, grooms, and lackeys. But their pleasures Must be fulfilled, and I attend with patience.

Enter the King and Butts at a window above.

BUTTS. I’ll show your Grace the strangest sight.

KING. What’s that, Butts?

BUTTS. I think your Highness saw this many a day.

KING. Body o’ me, where is it?

BUTTS. There, my lord: The high promotion of his Grace of Canterbury, Who holds his state at door, ’mongst pursuivants, Pages, and footboys.

KING. Ha! ’Tis he, indeed. Is this the honour they do one another? ’Tis well there’s one above ’em yet. I had thought They had parted so much honesty among ’em— At least good manners—as not thus to suffer A man of his place, and so near our favour, To dance attendance on their lordships’ pleasures, And at the door too, like a post with packets. By holy Mary, Butts, there’s knavery! Let ’em alone, and draw the curtain close. We shall hear more anon.

A council table brought in with chairs and stools and placed under the state. Enter Lord Chancellor, places himself at the upper end of the table on the left hand, a seat being left void above him, as for Canterbury’s seat. Duke of Suffolk, Duke of Norfolk, Surrey, Lord Chamberlain, Gardiner seat themselves in order on each side; Cromwell at lower end, as secretary.

CHANCELLOR. Speak to the business, master secretary. Why are we met in council?

CROMWELL. Please your honours, The chief cause concerns his Grace of Canterbury.

GARDINER. Has he had knowledge of it?

CROMWELL. Yes.

NORFOLK. Who waits there?

KEEPER. Without, my noble lords?

GARDINER. Yes.

KEEPER. My lord Archbishop, And has done half an hour, to know your pleasures.

CHANCELLOR. Let him come in.

KEEPER. Your Grace may enter now.

Cranmer approaches the council table.

CHANCELLOR. My good lord Archbishop, I’m very sorry To sit here at this present and behold That chair stand empty. But we all are men, In our own natures frail, and capable Of our flesh—few are angels—out of which frailty And want of wisdom, you that best should teach us, Have misdemeaned yourself, and not a little, Toward the King first, then his laws, in filling The whole realm, by your teaching and your chaplains’— For so we are informed—with new opinions, Divers and dangerous, which are heresies And, not reformed, may prove pernicious.

GARDINER. Which reformation must be sudden too, My noble lords; for those that tame wild horses Pace ’em not in their hands to make ’em gentle, But stop their mouth with stubborn bits and spur ’em Till they obey the manage. If we suffer, Out of our easiness and childish pity To one man’s honour, this contagious sickness, Farewell, all physic. And what follows then? Commotions, uproars, with a general taint Of the whole state, as of late days our neighbours, The upper Germany, can dearly witness, Yet freshly pitied in our memories.

CRANMER. My good lords, hitherto in all the progress Both of my life and office, I have laboured, And with no little study, that my teaching And the strong course of my authority Might go one way, and safely; and the end Was ever to do well. Nor is there living— I speak it with a single heart, my lords— A man that more detests, more stirs against, Both in his private conscience and his place, Defacers of a public peace than I do. Pray heaven the King may never find a heart With less allegiance in it! Men that make Envy and crooked malice nourishment Dare bite the best. I do beseech your lordships That, in this case of justice, my accusers, Be what they will, may stand forth face to face And freely urge against me.

SUFFOLK. Nay, my lord, That cannot be. You are a councillor, And by that virtue no man dare accuse you.

GARDINER. My lord, because we have business of more moment, We will be short with you. ’Tis his Highness’ pleasure And our consent, for better trial of you, From hence you be committed to the Tower, Where, being but a private man again, You shall know many dare accuse you boldly— More than, I fear, you are provided for.

CRANMER. Ah, my good Lord of Winchester, I thank you. You are always my good friend. If your will pass, I shall both find your lordship judge and juror, You are so merciful. I see your end: ’Tis my undoing. Love and meekness, lord, Become a churchman better than ambition. Win straying souls with modesty again; Cast none away. That I shall clear myself, Lay all the weight ye can upon my patience, I make as little doubt as you do conscience In doing daily wrongs. I could say more, But reverence to your calling makes me modest.

GARDINER. My lord, my lord, you are a sectary, That’s the plain truth. Your painted gloss discovers, To men that understand you, words and weakness.

CROMWELL. My Lord of Winchester, you are a little, By your good favour, too sharp. Men so noble, However faulty, yet should find respect For what they have been. ’Tis a cruelty To load a falling man.

GARDINER. Good master secretary, I cry your honour mercy: you may worst Of all this table say so.

CROMWELL. Why, my lord?

GARDINER. Do not I know you for a favourer Of this new sect? Ye are not sound.

CROMWELL. Not sound?

GARDINER. Not sound, I say.

CROMWELL. Would you were half so honest! Men’s prayers then would seek you, not their fears.

GARDINER. I shall remember this bold language.

CROMWELL. Do. Remember your bold life too.

CHANCELLOR. This is too much. Forbear, for shame, my lords.

GARDINER. I have done.

CROMWELL. And I.

CHANCELLOR. Then thus for you, my lord: it stands agreed, I take it, by all voices, that forthwith You be conveyed to th’ Tower a prisoner, There to remain till the King’s further pleasure Be known unto us. Are you all agreed, lords?

ALL. We are.

CRANMER. Is there no other way of mercy But I must needs to th’ Tower, my lords?

GARDINER. What other Would you expect? You are strangely troublesome. Let some o’ th’ guard be ready there.

Enter the guard.

CRANMER. For me? Must I go like a traitor thither?

GARDINER. Receive him, And see him safe i’ th’ Tower.

CRANMER. Stay, good my lords, I have a little yet to say. Look there, my lords. By virtue of that ring, I take my cause Out of the gripes of cruel men and give it To a most noble judge, the King my master.

CHAMBERLAIN. This is the King’s ring.

SURREY. ’Tis no counterfeit.

SUFFOLK. ’Tis the right ring, by heaven! I told ye all, When we first put this dangerous stone a-rolling, ’Twould fall upon ourselves.

NORFOLK. Do you think, my lords, The King will suffer but the little finger Of this man to be vexed?

CHAMBERLAIN. ’Tis now too certain. How much more is his life in value with him? Would I were fairly out on’t!

CROMWELL. My mind gave me, In seeking tales and informations Against this man, whose honesty the devil And his disciples only envy at, Ye blew the fire that burns ye. Now have at ye!

Enter King, frowning on them; takes his seat.

GARDINER. Dread sovereign, how much are we bound to heaven In daily thanks, that gave us such a prince, Not only good and wise, but most religious; One that, in all obedience, makes the Church The chief aim of his honour and, to strengthen That holy duty out of dear respect, His royal self in judgement comes to hear The cause betwixt her and this great offender.

KING. You were ever good at sudden commendations, Bishop of Winchester. But know I come not To hear such flattery now, and in my presence They are too thin and bare to hide offences. To me you cannot reach, you play the spaniel, And think with wagging of your tongue to win me; But whatsoe’er thou tak’st me for, I’m sure Thou hast a cruel nature and a bloody. [To Cranmer.] Good man, sit down. Now let me see the proudest He, that dares most, but wag his finger at thee. By all that’s holy, he had better starve Than but once think this place becomes thee not.

SURREY. May it please your Grace—

KING. No, sir, it does not please me. I had thought I had had men of some understanding And wisdom of my Council, but I find none. Was it discretion, lords, to let this man, This good man—few of you deserve that title— This honest man, wait like a lousy footboy At chamber door? And one as great as you are? Why, what a shame was this! Did my commission Bid ye so far forget yourselves? I gave ye Power as he was a councillor to try him, Not as a groom. There’s some of ye, I see, More out of malice than integrity, Would try him to the utmost, had ye mean, Which ye shall never have while I live.

CHANCELLOR. Thus far, My most dread sovereign, may it like your Grace To let my tongue excuse all. What was purposed Concerning his imprisonment was rather, If there be faith in men, meant for his trial And fair purgation to the world than malice, I’m sure, in me.

KING. Well, well, my lords, respect him. Take him, and use him well; he’s worthy of it. I will say thus much for him: if a prince May be beholding to a subject, I Am, for his love and service, so to him. Make me no more ado, but all embrace him. Be friends, for shame, my lords! My Lord of Canterbury, I have a suit which you must not deny me: That is, a fair young maid that yet wants baptism. You must be godfather and answer for her.

CRANMER. The greatest monarch now alive may glory In such an honour. How may I deserve it, That am a poor and humble subject to you?

KING. Come, come, my lord, you’d spare your spoons. You shall have two noble partners with you: the old Duchess of Norfolk and Lady Marquess Dorset. Will these please you? Once more, my Lord of Winchester, I charge you, Embrace and love this man.

GARDINER. With a true heart And brother-love I do it.

CRANMER. And let heaven Witness how dear I hold this confirmation.

KING. Good man, those joyful tears show thy true heart. The common voice, I see, is verified Of thee, which says thus: “Do my Lord of Canterbury A shrewd turn, and he is your friend for ever.” Come, lords, we trifle time away. I long To have this young one made a Christian. As I have made ye one, lords, one remain. So I grow stronger, you more honour gain.

SCENE III. The palace yard.

Noise and tumult within. Enter Porter and his Man.

PORTER. You’ll leave your noise anon, ye rascals. Do you take the court for Parish Garden? Ye rude slaves, leave your gaping.

ONE. [Within.] Good master porter, I belong to th’ larder.

PORTER. Belong to th’ gallows, and be hanged, ye rogue! Is this a place to roar in? Fetch me a dozen crab-tree staves, and strong ones. These are but switches to ’em. I’ll scratch your heads. You must be seeing christenings? Do you look for ale and cakes here, you rude rascals?

PORTER’S MAN. Pray, sir, be patient. ’Tis as much impossible— Unless we sweep ’em from the door with cannons— To scatter ’em as ’tis to make ’em sleep On May-day morning, which will never be. We may as well push against Paul’s as stir ’em.

PORTER. How got they in, and be hanged?

PORTER’S MAN. Alas, I know not. How gets the tide in? As much as one sound cudgel of four foot— You see the poor remainder—could distribute, I made no spare, sir.

PORTER. You did nothing, sir.

PORTER’S MAN. I am not Samson, nor Sir Guy, nor Colbrand, To mow ’em down before me; but if I spared any That had a head to hit, either young or old, He or she, cuckold or cuckold-maker, Let me ne’er hope to see a chine again— And that I would not for a cow, God save her!

ONE. [Within.] Do you hear, master porter?

PORTER. I shall be with you presently, good master puppy.— Keep the door close, sirrah.

PORTER’S MAN. What would you have me do?

PORTER. What should you do, but knock ’em down by th’ dozens? Is this Moorfields to muster in? Or have we some strange Indian with the great tool come to court, the women so besiege us? Bless me, what a fry of fornication is at door! On my Christian conscience, this one christening will beget a thousand; here will be father, godfather, and all together.

PORTER’S MAN. The spoons will be the bigger, sir. There is a fellow somewhat near the door—he should be a brazier by his face, for, o’ my conscience, twenty of the dog-days now reign in’s nose. All that stand about him are under the line; they need no other penance. That fire-drake did I hit three times on the head, and three times was his nose discharged against me. He stands there, like a mortar-piece, to blow us. There was a haberdasher’s wife of small wit near him that railed upon me till her pinked porringer fell off her head for kindling such a combustion in the state. I missed the meteor once and hit that woman, who cried out “Clubs!” when I might see from far some forty truncheoners draw to her succour, which were the hope o’ th’ Strand, where she was quartered. They fell on; I made good my place; at length they came to th’ broomstaff to me; I defied ’em still, when suddenly a file of boys behind ’em, loose shot, delivered such a shower of pebbles that I was fain to draw mine honour in and let ’em win the work. The devil was amongst ’em, I think, surely.

PORTER. These are the youths that thunder at a playhouse and fight for bitten apples, that no audience but the tribulation of Tower Hill or the limbs of Limehouse, their dear brothers, are able to endure. I have some of ’em in Limbo Patrum, and there they are like to dance these three days, besides the running banquet of two beadles that is to come.

CHAMBERLAIN. Mercy o’ me, what a multitude are here! They grow still too. From all parts they are coming, As if we kept a fair here! Where are these porters, These lazy knaves? You’ve made a fine hand, fellows! There’s a trim rabble let in. Are all these Your faithful friends o’ th’ suburbs? We shall have Great store of room, no doubt, left for the ladies, When they pass back from the christening.

PORTER. An’t please your honour, We are but men; and what so many may do, Not being torn a-pieces, we have done. An army cannot rule ’em.

CHAMBERLAIN. As I live, If the King blame me for’t, I’ll lay ye all By th’ heels, and suddenly, and on your heads Clap round fines for neglect. You’re lazy knaves, And here ye lie baiting of bombards, when Ye should do service. Hark, the trumpets sound! They’re come already from the christening. Go break among the press, and find a way out To let the troops pass fairly, or I’ll find A Marshalsea shall hold ye play these two months.

PORTER. Make way there for the Princess!

PORTER’S MAN. You great fellow, Stand close up, or I’ll make your head ache.

PORTER. You i’ th’ camlet, get up o’ th’ rail! I’ll peck you o’er the pales else.

SCENE IV. The palace.

Enter Trumpets, sounding; then two Aldermen, Lord Mayor, Garter, Cranmer, Duke of Norfolk with his marshal’s staff, Duke of Suffolk, two Noblemen bearing great standing bowls for the christening gifts; then four Noblemen bearing a canopy, under which the Duchess of Norfolk, godmother, bearing the child richly habited in a mantle, etc., train borne by a Lady; then follows the Marchioness Dorset, the other godmother, and Ladies. The troop pass once about the stage, and Garter speaks.

GARTER. Heaven, from thy endless goodness, send prosperous life, long and ever happy, to the high and mighty Princess of England, Elizabeth.

Flourish. Enter King and Guard.

CRANMER. [Kneeling.] And to your royal Grace and the good Queen, My noble partners and myself thus pray All comfort, joy, in this most gracious lady Heaven ever laid up to make parents happy May hourly fall upon ye!

KING. Thank you, good lord Archbishop. What is her name?

CRANMER. Elizabeth.

KING. Stand up, lord.

[The King kisses the child.]

With this kiss take my blessing: God protect thee, Into whose hand I give thy life.

CRANMER. Amen.

KING. My noble gossips, you’ve have been too prodigal. I thank ye heartily; so shall this lady, When she has so much English.

CRANMER. Let me speak, sir, For heaven now bids me; and the words I utter Let none think flattery, for they’ll find ’em truth. This royal infant—heaven still move about her!— Though in her cradle, yet now promises Upon this land a thousand thousand blessings, Which time shall bring to ripeness. She shall be— But few now living can behold that goodness— A pattern to all princes living with her And all that shall succeed. Saba was never More covetous of wisdom and fair virtue Than this pure soul shall be. All princely graces That mould up such a mighty piece as this is, With all the virtues that attend the good, Shall still be doubled on her. Truth shall nurse her; Holy and heavenly thoughts still counsel her. She shall be loved and feared. Her own shall bless her; Her foes shake like a field of beaten corn, And hang their heads with sorrow. Good grows with her. In her days every man shall eat in safety Under his own vine what he plants, and sing The merry songs of peace to all his neighbours. God shall be truly known, and those about her From her shall read the perfect ways of honour And by those claim their greatness, not by blood. Nor shall this peace sleep with her; but as when The bird of wonder dies, the maiden phoenix, Her ashes new create another heir As great in admiration as herself, So shall she leave her blessedness to one, When heaven shall call her from this cloud of darkness, Who from the sacred ashes of her honour Shall star-like rise as great in fame as she was And so stand fixed. Peace, plenty, love, truth, terror, That were the servants to this chosen infant, Shall then be his, and like a vine grow to him. Wherever the bright sun of heaven shall shine, His honour and the greatness of his name Shall be, and make new nations. He shall flourish, And, like a mountain cedar, reach his branches To all the plains about him. Our children’s children Shall see this and bless heaven.

KING. Thou speakest wonders.

CRANMER. She shall be to the happiness of England An aged princess; many days shall see her, And yet no day without a deed to crown it. Would I had known no more! But she must die, She must, the saints must have her; yet a virgin, A most unspotted lily, shall she pass to the ground, And all the world shall mourn her.

KING. O lord Archbishop, Thou hast made me now a man. Never before This happy child did I get anything. This oracle of comfort has so pleased me That when I am in heaven I shall desire To see what this child does and praise my Maker. I thank ye all. To you, my good Lord Mayor, And you, good brethren, I am much beholding. I have received much honour by your presence, And ye shall find me thankful. Lead the way, lords. Ye must all see the Queen, and she must thank ye; She will be sick else. This day, no man think ’Has business at his house, for all shall stay. This little one shall make it holiday.

Epilogue

Enter Epilogue.

EPILOGUE. ’Tis ten to one this play can never please All that are here. Some come to take their ease, And sleep an act or two—but those, we fear, We’ve frighted with our trumpets; so, ’tis clear, They’ll say ’tis naught—others, to hear the city Abused extremely and to cry “That’s witty!”— Which we have not done neither—that I fear All the expected good we’re like to hear For this play at this time is only in The merciful construction of good women, For such a one we showed ’em. If they smile And say ’twill do, I know within a while All the best men are ours; for ’tis ill hap If they hold when their ladies bid ’em clap.

THE LIFE AND DEATH OF KING JOHN

ACT I Scene I. Northampton. A Room of State in the Palace.

ACT II Scene I. France. Before the walls of Angiers.

ACT III Scene I. France. The French King’s tent. Scene II. The same. Plains near Angiers Scene III. The same. Scene IV. The same. The French King’s tent.

ACT IV Scene I. Northampton. A Room in the Castle. Scene II. The same. A Room of State in the Palace. Scene III. The same. Before the castle.

ACT V Scene I. Northampton. A Room in the Palace. Scene II. Near Saint Edmundsbury. The French Camp. Scene III. The same. The Field of Battle. Scene IV. The same. Another part of the same. Scene V. The same. The French camp. Scene VI. An open place in the neighborhood of Swinstead Abbey. Scene VII. The orchard of Swinstead Abbey.

KING JOHN. PRINCE HENRY, son to King John; afterwards KING HENRY III. ARTHUR, Duke of Brittany, nephew to King John. EARL OF PEMBROKE. EARL OF ESSEX. EARL OF SALISBURY. ROBERT BIGOT, Earl of Norfolk. HUBERT DE BURGH, Chamberlain to the King. ROBERT FAULCONBRIDGE, son to Sir Robert Faulconbridge. The BASTARD, PHILIP FAULCONBRIDGE, his half-brother, bastard son to King Richard I. JAMES GURNEY, servant to Lady Faulconbridge. PETER OF POMFRET, a prophet

KING PHILIP II., King of France. LOUIS, the Dauphin; son to King Philip II. DUKE OF AUSTRIA, also called Limoges. MELUN, a French lord. CHATILLION, Ambassador from France to King John. CARDINAL PANDULPH, the Pope’s legate.

QUEEN ELEANOR, Mother to King John and Widow of King Henry II. CONSTANCE, Mother to Arthur. BLANCHE OF SPAIN, Daughter to Alphonso, King of Castile, and Niece to King John. LADY FAULCONBRIDGE, Mother to the Bastard and Robert Faulconbridge.

Lords, Citizens of Angiers, Sheriff, Heralds, Officers, Soldiers, Executioners, Messengers and other Attendants.

SCENE: Sometimes in England, and sometimes in France.

SCENE I. Northampton. A Room of State in the Palace.

Enter King John, Queen Eleanor, Pembroke, Essex, Salisbury and others with Chatillion.

KING JOHN. Now, say, Chatillion, what would France with us?

CHATILLION. Thus, after greeting, speaks the King of France In my behaviour to the majesty, The borrow’d majesty, of England here.

QUEEN ELEANOR. A strange beginning: “borrow’d majesty”!

KING JOHN. Silence, good mother; hear the embassy.

CHATILLION. Philip of France, in right and true behalf Of thy deceased brother Geoffrey’s son, Arthur Plantagenet, lays most lawful claim To this fair island and the territories, To Ireland, Poitiers, Anjou, Touraine, Maine, Desiring thee to lay aside the sword Which sways usurpingly these several titles, And put the same into young Arthur’s hand, Thy nephew and right royal sovereign.

KING JOHN. What follows if we disallow of this?

CHATILLION. The proud control of fierce and bloody war, To enforce these rights so forcibly withheld.

KING JOHN. Here have we war for war and blood for blood, Controlment for controlment: so answer France.

CHATILLION. Then take my king’s defiance from my mouth, The farthest limit of my embassy.

KING JOHN. Bear mine to him, and so depart in peace. Be thou as lightning in the eyes of France, For ere thou canst report, I will be there, The thunder of my cannon shall be heard. So, hence! Be thou the trumpet of our wrath And sullen presage of your own decay.— An honourable conduct let him have. Pembroke, look to ’t. Farewell, Chatillion.

[Exeunt Chatillion and Pembroke.]

QUEEN ELEANOR. What now, my son! Have I not ever said How that ambitious Constance would not cease Till she had kindled France and all the world Upon the right and party of her son? This might have been prevented and made whole With very easy arguments of love, Which now the manage of two kingdoms must With fearful bloody issue arbitrate.

KING JOHN. Our strong possession and our right for us.

QUEEN ELEANOR. Your strong possession much more than your right, Or else it must go wrong with you and me: So much my conscience whispers in your ear, Which none but heaven and you and I shall hear.

Enter a Sheriff, who whispers to Essex.

ESSEX. My liege, here is the strangest controversy, Come from the country to be judg’d by you, That e’er I heard. Shall I produce the men?

KING JOHN. Let them approach.

[Exit Sheriff.]

Our abbeys and our priories shall pay This expedition’s charge.

Enter Robert Faulconbridge and Philip, his Bastard brother.

What men are you?

BASTARD. Your faithful subject I, a gentleman Born in Northamptonshire, and eldest son, As I suppose, to Robert Faulconbridge, A soldier by the honour-giving hand Of Cœur-de-lion knighted in the field.

KING JOHN. What art thou?

ROBERT. The son and heir to that same Faulconbridge.

KING JOHN. Is that the elder, and art thou the heir? You came not of one mother then, it seems.

BASTARD. Most certain of one mother, mighty king; That is well known; and, as I think, one father. But for the certain knowledge of that truth I put you o’er to heaven and to my mother. Of that I doubt, as all men’s children may.

QUEEN ELEANOR. Out on thee, rude man! Thou dost shame thy mother And wound her honour with this diffidence.

BASTARD. I, madam? No, I have no reason for it; That is my brother’s plea, and none of mine; The which if he can prove, he pops me out At least from fair five hundred pound a year. Heaven guard my mother’s honour and my land!

KING JOHN. A good blunt fellow. Why, being younger born, Doth he lay claim to thine inheritance?

BASTARD. I know not why, except to get the land. But once he slander’d me with bastardy. But whe’er I be as true begot or no, That still I lay upon my mother’s head; But that I am as well begot, my liege— Fair fall the bones that took the pains for me!— Compare our faces and be judge yourself. If old Sir Robert did beget us both And were our father, and this son like him, O old Sir Robert, father, on my knee I give heaven thanks I was not like to thee!

KING JOHN. Why, what a madcap hath heaven lent us here!

QUEEN ELEANOR. He hath a trick of Cœur-de-lion’s face; The accent of his tongue affecteth him. Do you not read some tokens of my son In the large composition of this man?

KING JOHN. Mine eye hath well examined his parts And finds them perfect Richard. Sirrah, speak, What doth move you to claim your brother’s land?

BASTARD. Because he hath a half-face, like my father. With half that face would he have all my land: A half-fac’d groat five hundred pound a year!

ROBERT. My gracious liege, when that my father liv’d, Your brother did employ my father much—

BASTARD. Well, sir, by this you cannot get my land. Your tale must be how he employ’d my mother.

ROBERT. And once dispatch’d him in an embassy To Germany, there with the emperor To treat of high affairs touching that time. Th’ advantage of his absence took the King And in the meantime sojourn’d at my father’s; Where how he did prevail I shame to speak; But truth is truth: large lengths of seas and shores Between my father and my mother lay, As I have heard my father speak himself, When this same lusty gentleman was got. Upon his death-bed he by will bequeath’d His lands to me, and took it, on his death That this my mother’s son was none of his; And if he were, he came into the world Full fourteen weeks before the course of time. Then, good my liege, let me have what is mine, My father’s land, as was my father’s will.

KING JOHN. Sirrah, your brother is legitimate; Your father’s wife did after wedlock bear him, And if she did play false, the fault was hers; Which fault lies on the hazards of all husbands That marry wives. Tell me, how if my brother, Who, as you say, took pains to get this son, Had of your father claim’d this son for his? In sooth, good friend, your father might have kept This calf, bred from his cow, from all the world; In sooth, he might; then, if he were my brother’s, My brother might not claim him; nor your father, Being none of his, refuse him. This concludes; My mother’s son did get your father’s heir; Your father’s heir must have your father’s land.

ROBERT. Shall then my father’s will be of no force To dispossess that child which is not his?

BASTARD. Of no more force to dispossess me, sir, Than was his will to get me, as I think.

QUEEN ELEANOR. Whether hadst thou rather be: a Faulconbridge And like thy brother, to enjoy thy land, Or the reputed son of Cœur-de-lion, Lord of thy presence and no land besides?

BASTARD. Madam, and if my brother had my shape And I had his, Sir Robert’s his, like him; And if my legs were two such riding-rods, My arms such eel-skins stuff’d, my face so thin That in mine ear I durst not stick a rose Lest men should say “Look where three-farthings goes!” And, to his shape, were heir to all this land, Would I might never stir from off this place, I would give it every foot to have this face. I would not be Sir Nob in any case.

QUEEN ELEANOR. I like thee well. Wilt thou forsake thy fortune, Bequeath thy land to him, and follow me? I am a soldier and now bound to France.

BASTARD. Brother, take you my land, I’ll take my chance. Your face hath got five hundred pound a year, Yet sell your face for five pence and ’tis dear. Madam, I’ll follow you unto the death.

QUEEN ELEANOR. Nay, I would have you go before me thither.

BASTARD. Our country manners give our betters way.

KING JOHN. What is thy name?

BASTARD. Philip, my liege, so is my name begun; Philip, good old Sir Robert’s wife’s eldest son.

KING JOHN. From henceforth bear his name whose form thou bearest. Kneel thou down Philip, but rise more great, Arise Sir Richard and Plantagenet.

BASTARD. Brother by th’ mother’s side, give me your hand. My father gave me honour, yours gave land. Now blessed be the hour, by night or day, When I was got, Sir Robert was away!

QUEEN ELEANOR. The very spirit of Plantagenet! I am thy grandam, Richard; call me so.

BASTARD. Madam, by chance but not by truth; what though? Something about, a little from the right, In at the window, or else o’er the hatch. Who dares not stir by day must walk by night, And have is have, however men do catch. Near or far off, well won is still well shot, And I am I, howe’er I was begot.

KING JOHN. Go, Faulconbridge; now hast thou thy desire. A landless knight makes thee a landed squire. Come, madam, and come, Richard, we must speed For France, for France, for it is more than need.

BASTARD. Brother, adieu, good fortune come to thee! For thou wast got i’ th’ way of honesty.

[Exeunt all but the Bastard.]

A foot of honour better than I was, But many a many foot of land the worse. Well, now can I make any Joan a lady. “Good den, Sir Richard!” “God-a-mercy, fellow!” And if his name be George, I’ll call him Peter; For new-made honour doth forget men’s names: ’Tis too respective and too sociable For your conversion. Now your traveller, He and his toothpick at my worship’s mess, And when my knightly stomach is suffic’d, Why then I suck my teeth and catechize My picked man of countries: “My dear sir,” Thus leaning on mine elbow I begin, “I shall beseech you”—that is Question now; And then comes Answer like an absey book: “O sir,” says Answer “at your best command; At your employment; at your service, sir.” “No, sir,” says Question, “I, sweet sir, at yours.” And so, ere Answer knows what Question would, Saving in dialogue of compliment, And talking of the Alps and Apennines, The Pyrenean and the river Po, It draws toward supper in conclusion so. But this is worshipful society, And fits the mounting spirit like myself; For he is but a bastard to the time That doth not smack of observation, And so am I, whether I smack or no; And not alone in habit and device, Exterior form, outward accoutrement, But from the inward motion to deliver Sweet, sweet, sweet poison for the age’s tooth, Which, though I will not practise to deceive, Yet, to avoid deceit, I mean to learn; For it shall strew the footsteps of my rising. But who comes in such haste in riding-robes? What woman-post is this? Hath she no husband That will take pains to blow a horn before her?

Enter Lady Faulconbridge and James Gurney.

O me, ’tis my mother!—How now, good lady? What brings you here to court so hastily?

LADY FAULCONBRIDGE. Where is that slave, thy brother? Where is he That holds in chase mine honour up and down?

BASTARD. My brother Robert, old Sir Robert’s son? Colbrand the giant, that same mighty man? Is it Sir Robert’s son that you seek so?

LADY FAULCONBRIDGE. Sir Robert’s son! Ay, thou unreverend boy, Sir Robert’s son. Why scorn’st thou at Sir Robert? He is Sir Robert’s son, and so art thou.

BASTARD. James Gurney, wilt thou give us leave awhile?

GURNEY. Good leave, good Philip.

BASTARD. Philip?—sparrow!—James, There’s toys abroad. Anon I’ll tell thee more.

[Exit Gurney.]

Madam, I was not old Sir Robert’s son. Sir Robert might have eat his part in me Upon Good Friday, and ne’er broke his fast. Sir Robert could do well—marry, to confess— Could … get me. Sir Robert could not do it. We know his handiwork. Therefore, good mother, To whom am I beholding for these limbs? Sir Robert never holp to make this leg.

LADY FAULCONBRIDGE. Hast thou conspired with thy brother too, That for thine own gain shouldst defend mine honour? What means this scorn, thou most untoward knave?

BASTARD. Knight, knight, good mother, Basilisco-like. What! I am dubb’d! I have it on my shoulder. But, mother, I am not Sir Robert’s son. I have disclaim’d Sir Robert and my land; Legitimation, name, and all is gone. Then, good my mother, let me know my father— Some proper man, I hope. Who was it, mother?

LADY FAULCONBRIDGE. Hast thou denied thyself a Faulconbridge?

BASTARD. As faithfully as I deny the devil.

LADY FAULCONBRIDGE. King Richard Cœur-de-lion was thy father. By long and vehement suit I was seduc’d To make room for him in my husband’s bed. Heaven lay not my transgression to my charge! Thou art the issue of my dear offence, Which was so strongly urg’d, past my defence.

BASTARD. Now, by this light, were I to get again, Madam, I would not wish a better father. Some sins do bear their privilege on earth, And so doth yours. Your fault was not your folly. Needs must you lay your heart at his dispose, Subjected tribute to commanding love, Against whose fury and unmatched force The aweless lion could not wage the fight, Nor keep his princely heart from Richard’s hand. He that perforce robs lions of their hearts May easily win a woman’s. Ay, my mother, With all my heart I thank thee for my father! Who lives and dares but say thou didst not well When I was got, I’ll send his soul to hell. Come, lady, I will show thee to my kin; And they shall say when Richard me begot, If thou hadst said him nay, it had been sin. Who says it was, he lies. I say ’twas not.

SCENE I. France. Before the walls of Angiers.

Enter, on one side, the Archduke of Austria and Forces; on the other, Philip King of France, Louis, Constance, Arthur and Forces.

LOUIS. Before Angiers well met, brave Austria. Arthur, that great forerunner of thy blood, Richard, that robb’d the lion of his heart And fought the holy wars in Palestine, By this brave duke came early to his grave. And, for amends to his posterity, At our importance hither is he come To spread his colours, boy, in thy behalf, And to rebuke the usurpation Of thy unnatural uncle, English John. Embrace him, love him, give him welcome hither.

ARTHUR. God shall forgive you Cœur-de-lion’s death The rather that you give his offspring life, Shadowing their right under your wings of war. I give you welcome with a powerless hand, But with a heart full of unstained love. Welcome before the gates of Angiers, duke.

LOUIS. A noble boy. Who would not do thee right?

AUSTRIA. Upon thy cheek lay I this zealous kiss, As seal to this indenture of my love: That to my home I will no more return, Till Angiers and the right thou hast in France, Together with that pale, that white-fac’d shore, Whose foot spurns back the ocean’s roaring tides And coops from other lands her islanders, Even till that England, hedg’d in with the main, That water-walled bulwark, still secure And confident from foreign purposes, Even till that utmost corner of the west Salute thee for her king; till then, fair boy, Will I not think of home, but follow arms.

CONSTANCE. O, take his mother’s thanks, a widow’s thanks, Till your strong hand shall help to give him strength To make a more requital to your love!

AUSTRIA. The peace of heaven is theirs that lift their swords In such a just and charitable war.

KING PHILIP. Well then, to work; our cannon shall be bent Against the brows of this resisting town. Call for our chiefest men of discipline, To cull the plots of best advantages. We’ll lay before this town our royal bones, Wade to the market-place in Frenchmen’s blood, But we will make it subject to this boy.

CONSTANCE. Stay for an answer to your embassy, Lest unadvis’d you stain your swords with blood. My Lord Chatillion may from England bring That right in peace which here we urge in war, And then we shall repent each drop of blood That hot rash haste so indirectly shed.

Enter Chatillion.

KING PHILIP. A wonder, lady! Lo, upon thy wish, Our messenger Chatillion is arriv’d. What England says, say briefly, gentle lord; We coldly pause for thee; Chatillion, speak.

CHATILLION. Then turn your forces from this paltry siege And stir them up against a mightier task. England, impatient of your just demands, Hath put himself in arms. The adverse winds, Whose leisure I have stay’d, have given him time To land his legions all as soon as I; His marches are expedient to this town, His forces strong, his soldiers confident. With him along is come the mother-queen, An Ate, stirring him to blood and strife; With her her niece, the Lady Blanche of Spain; With them a bastard of the King’s deceas’d. And all th’ unsettled humours of the land; Rash, inconsiderate, fiery voluntaries, With ladies’ faces and fierce dragons’ spleens, Have sold their fortunes at their native homes, Bearing their birthrights proudly on their backs, To make a hazard of new fortunes here. In brief, a braver choice of dauntless spirits Than now the English bottoms have waft o’er Did never float upon the swelling tide To do offence and scathe in Christendom.

[Drums beat within.]

The interruption of their churlish drums Cuts off more circumstance. They are at hand, To parley or to fight, therefore prepare.

KING PHILIP. How much unlook’d-for is this expedition!

AUSTRIA. By how much unexpected, by so much We must awake endeavour for defence, For courage mounteth with occasion. Let them be welcome, then; we are prepar’d.

Enter King John, Eleanor, Blanche, the Bastard, Pembroke, Lords and Forces.

KING JOHN. Peace be to France, if France in peace permit Our just and lineal entrance to our own; If not, bleed France, and peace ascend to heaven, Whiles we, God’s wrathful agent, do correct Their proud contempt that beats his peace to heaven.

KING PHILIP. Peace be to England, if that war return From France to England, there to live in peace. England we love; and for that England’s sake With burden of our armour here we sweat. This toil of ours should be a work of thine; But thou from loving England art so far That thou hast underwrought his lawful king, Cut off the sequence of posterity, Outfaced infant state, and done a rape Upon the maiden virtue of the crown. Look here upon thy brother Geoffrey’s face; These eyes, these brows, were moulded out of his: This little abstract doth contain that large Which died in Geoffrey, and the hand of time Shall draw this brief into as huge a volume. That Geoffrey was thy elder brother born, And this his son; England was Geoffrey’s right, And this is Geoffrey’s. In the name of God, How comes it then that thou art call’d a king, When living blood doth in these temples beat, Which owe the crown that thou o’ermasterest?

KING JOHN. From whom hast thou this great commission, France, To draw my answer from thy articles?

KING PHILIP. From that supernal judge that stirs good thoughts In any breast of strong authority, To look into the blots and stains of right. That judge hath made me guardian to this boy, Under whose warrant I impeach thy wrong And by whose help I mean to chastise it.

KING JOHN. Alack, thou dost usurp authority.

KING PHILIP. Excuse it is to beat usurping down.

QUEEN ELEANOR. Who is it thou dost call usurper, France?

CONSTANCE. Let me make answer: thy usurping son.

QUEEN ELEANOR. Out, insolent! Thy bastard shall be king, That thou mayst be a queen, and check the world!

CONSTANCE. My bed was ever to thy son as true As thine was to thy husband; and this boy Liker in feature to his father Geoffrey Than thou and John in manners; being as like As rain to water, or devil to his dam. My boy a bastard! By my soul, I think His father never was so true begot: It cannot be, and if thou wert his mother.

QUEEN ELEANOR. There’s a good mother, boy, that blots thy father.

CONSTANCE. There’s a good grandam, boy, that would blot thee.

AUSTRIA. Peace!

BASTARD. Hear the crier!

AUSTRIA. What the devil art thou?

BASTARD. One that will play the devil, sir, with you, An he may catch your hide and you alone. You are the hare of whom the proverb goes, Whose valour plucks dead lions by the beard. I’ll smoke your skin-coat an I catch you right; Sirrah, look to ’t; i’ faith I will, i’ faith.

BLANCHE. O, well did he become that lion’s robe That did disrobe the lion of that robe!

BASTARD. It lies as sightly on the back of him As great Alcides’ shows upon an ass. But, ass, I’ll take that burden from your back, Or lay on that shall make your shoulders crack.

AUSTRIA. What cracker is this same that deafs our ears With this abundance of superfluous breath?

KING PHILIP. Louis, determine what we shall do straight.

LOUIS. Women and fools, break off your conference.

KING PHILIP. King John, this is the very sum of all: England and Ireland, Anjou, Touraine, Maine, In right of Arthur do I claim of thee. Wilt thou resign them and lay down thy arms?

KING JOHN. My life as soon: I do defy thee, France. Arthur of Brittany, yield thee to my hand; And out of my dear love I’ll give thee more Than e’er the coward hand of France can win. Submit thee, boy.

QUEEN ELEANOR. Come to thy grandam, child.

CONSTANCE. Do, child, go to it grandam, child. Give grandam kingdom, and it grandam will Give it a plum, a cherry, and a fig. There’s a good grandam.

ARTHUR. Good my mother, peace! I would that I were low laid in my grave. I am not worth this coil that’s made for me.

QUEEN ELEANOR. His mother shames him so, poor boy, he weeps.

CONSTANCE. Now, shame upon you, whe’er she does or no! His grandam’s wrongs, and not his mother’s shames, Draws those heaven-moving pearls from his poor eyes, Which heaven shall take in nature of a fee. Ay, with these crystal beads heaven shall be brib’d To do him justice, and revenge on you.

QUEEN ELEANOR. Thou monstrous slanderer of heaven and earth!

CONSTANCE. Thou monstrous injurer of heaven and earth! Call not me slanderer. Thou and thine usurp The dominations, royalties, and rights Of this oppressed boy. This is thy eldest son’s son, Infortunate in nothing but in thee. Thy sins are visited in this poor child; The canon of the law is laid on him, Being but the second generation Removed from thy sin-conceiving womb.

KING JOHN. Bedlam, have done.

CONSTANCE. I have but this to say, That he is not only plagued for her sin, But God hath made her sin and her the plague On this removed issue, plagued for her And with her plague; her sin his injury Her injury the beadle to her sin, All punish’d in the person of this child, And all for her. A plague upon her!

QUEEN ELEANOR. Thou unadvised scold, I can produce A will that bars the title of thy son.

CONSTANCE. Ay, who doubts that? A will, a wicked will; A woman’s will; a cankered grandam’s will!

KING PHILIP. Peace, lady! Pause, or be more temperate. It ill beseems this presence to cry aim To these ill-tuned repetitions.— Some trumpet summon hither to the walls These men of Angiers. Let us hear them speak Whose title they admit, Arthur’s or John’s.

Trumpet sounds. Enter Citizens upon the walls.

CITIZEN. Who is it that hath warn’d us to the walls?

KING PHILIP. ’Tis France, for England.

KING JOHN. England for itself. You men of Angiers, and my loving subjects—

KING PHILIP. You loving men of Angiers, Arthur’s subjects, Our trumpet call’d you to this gentle parle—

KING JOHN. For our advantage; therefore hear us first. These flags of France, that are advanced here Before the eye and prospect of your town, Have hither march’d to your endamagement. The cannons have their bowels full of wrath, And ready mounted are they to spit forth Their iron indignation ’gainst your walls. All preparation for a bloody siege And merciless proceeding by these French Confronts your city’s eyes, your winking gates; And, but for our approach, those sleeping stones, That as a waist doth girdle you about, By the compulsion of their ordinance By this time from their fixed beds of lime Had been dishabited, and wide havoc made For bloody power to rush upon your peace. But on the sight of us your lawful king, Who painfully with much expedient march Have brought a countercheck before your gates, To save unscratch’d your city’s threatened cheeks, Behold, the French, amaz’d, vouchsafe a parle; And now, instead of bullets wrapp’d in fire, To make a shaking fever in your walls, They shoot but calm words folded up in smoke, To make a faithless error in your ears, Which trust accordingly, kind citizens, And let us in, your king, whose labour’d spirits Forwearied in this action of swift speed, Craves harbourage within your city walls.

KING PHILIP. When I have said, make answer to us both. Lo, in this right hand, whose protection Is most divinely vow’d upon the right Of him it holds, stands young Plantagenet, Son to the elder brother of this man, And king o’er him and all that he enjoys. For this down-trodden equity we tread In warlike march these greens before your town, Being no further enemy to you Than the constraint of hospitable zeal In the relief of this oppressed child Religiously provokes. Be pleased then To pay that duty which you truly owe To him that owes it, namely, this young prince, And then our arms, like to a muzzled bear, Save in aspect, hath all offence seal’d up; Our cannons’ malice vainly shall be spent Against th’ invulnerable clouds of heaven; And with a blessed and unvex’d retire, With unhack’d swords and helmets all unbruis’d, We will bear home that lusty blood again Which here we came to spout against your town, And leave your children, wives, and you, in peace. But if you fondly pass our proffer’d offer, ’Tis not the roundure of your old-fac’d walls Can hide you from our messengers of war, Though all these English, and their discipline Were harbour’d in their rude circumference. Then, tell us, shall your city call us lord In that behalf which we have challeng’d it? Or shall we give the signal to our rage And stalk in blood to our possession?

FIRST CITIZEN. In brief, we are the King of England’s subjects. For him, and in his right, we hold this town.

KING JOHN. Acknowledge then the King, and let me in.

CITIZEN. That can we not; but he that proves the King, To him will we prove loyal. Till that time Have we ramm’d up our gates against the world.

KING JOHN. Doth not the crown of England prove the King? And if not that, I bring you witnesses, Twice fifteen thousand hearts of England’s breed—

BASTARD. Bastards and else.

KING JOHN. To verify our title with their lives.

KING PHILIP. As many and as well-born bloods as those—

BASTARD. Some bastards too.

KING PHILIP. Stand in his face to contradict his claim.

FIRST CITIZEN. Till you compound whose right is worthiest, We for the worthiest hold the right from both.

KING JOHN. Then God forgive the sin of all those souls That to their everlasting residence, Before the dew of evening fall, shall fleet, In dreadful trial of our kingdom’s king!

KING PHILIP. Amen, Amen!—Mount, chevaliers! To arms!

BASTARD. Saint George, that swinged the dragon, and e’er since Sits on ’s horseback at mine hostess’ door, Teach us some fence! [To Austria.] Sirrah, were I at home, At your den, sirrah, with your lioness, I would set an ox-head to your lion’s hide, And make a monster of you.

AUSTRIA. Peace! No more.

BASTARD. O, tremble, for you hear the lion roar.

KING JOHN. Up higher to the plain; where we’ll set forth In best appointment all our regiments.

BASTARD. Speed, then, to take advantage of the field.

KING PHILIP. It shall be so; and at the other hill Command the rest to stand. God and our right!

Here, after excursions, enter a Herald of France with Trumpets, to the gates.

FRENCH HERALD. You men of Angiers, open wide your gates, And let young Arthur, Duke of Brittany, in, Who by the hand of France this day hath made Much work for tears in many an English mother, Whose sons lie scatter’d on the bleeding ground. Many a widow’s husband grovelling lies, Coldly embracing the discolour’d earth; And victory, with little loss, doth play Upon the dancing banners of the French, Who are at hand, triumphantly display’d, To enter conquerors, and to proclaim Arthur of Brittany England’s king and yours.

Enter English Herald with Trumpet.

ENGLISH HERALD. Rejoice, you men of Angiers, ring your bells: King John, your king and England’s, doth approach, Commander of this hot malicious day. Their armours, that march’d hence so silver-bright, Hither return all gilt with Frenchmen’s blood; There stuck no plume in any English crest That is removed by a staff of France, Our colours do return in those same hands That did display them when we first march’d forth; And, like a jolly troop of huntsmen, come Our lusty English, all with purpled hands, Dyed in the dying slaughter of their foes: Open your gates and give the victors way.

FIRST CITIZEN. Heralds, from off our towers, we might behold, From first to last, the onset and retire Of both your armies; whose equality By our best eyes cannot be censured: Blood hath bought blood, and blows have answer’d blows; Strength match’d with strength, and power confronted power: Both are alike, and both alike we like. One must prove greatest: while they weigh so even, We hold our town for neither, yet for both.

Enter on one side King John, Eleanor, Blanche, the Bastard and Forces; on the other, King Philip, Louis, Austria and Forces.

KING JOHN. France, hast thou yet more blood to cast away? Say, shall the current of our right run on, Whose passage, vex’d with thy impediment, Shall leave his native channel, and o’erswell With course disturb’d even thy confining shores, Unless thou let his silver water keep A peaceful progress to the ocean?

KING PHILIP. England, thou hast not sav’d one drop of blood In this hot trial, more than we of France; Rather, lost more. And by this hand I swear, That sways the earth this climate overlooks, Before we will lay down our just-borne arms, We’ll put thee down, ’gainst whom these arms we bear, Or add a royal number to the dead, Gracing the scroll that tells of this war’s loss With slaughter coupled to the name of kings.

BASTARD. Ha, majesty! How high thy glory towers When the rich blood of kings is set on fire! O, now doth Death line his dead chaps with steel; The swords of soldiers are his teeth, his fangs; And now he feasts, mousing the flesh of men, In undetermin’d differences of kings. Why stand these royal fronts amazed thus? Cry havoc, kings! Back to the stained field, You equal potents, fiery-kindled spirits! Then let confusion of one part confirm The other’s peace. Till then, blows, blood, and death!

KING JOHN. Whose party do the townsmen yet admit?

KING PHILIP. Speak, citizens, for England; who’s your king?

FIRST CITIZEN. The King of England, when we know the king.

KING PHILIP. Know him in us, that here hold up his right.

KING JOHN. In us, that are our own great deputy, And bear possession of our person here, Lord of our presence, Angiers, and of you.

FIRST CITIZEN. A greater power than we denies all this; And till it be undoubted, we do lock Our former scruple in our strong-barr’d gates: Kings of our fear, until our fears, resolv’d, Be by some certain king purg’d and depos’d.

BASTARD. By heaven, these scroyles of Angiers flout you, kings, And stand securely on their battlements As in a theatre, whence they gape and point At your industrious scenes and acts of death. Your royal presences be rul’d by me: Do like the mutines of Jerusalem, Be friends awhile, and both conjointly bend Your sharpest deeds of malice on this town: By east and west let France and England mount Their battering cannon charged to the mouths, Till their soul-fearing clamours have brawl’d down The flinty ribs of this contemptuous city: I’d play incessantly upon these jades, Even till unfenced desolation Leave them as naked as the vulgar air. That done, dissever your united strengths, And part your mingled colours once again; Turn face to face, and bloody point to point; Then, in a moment, Fortune shall cull forth Out of one side her happy minion, To whom in favour she shall give the day, And kiss him with a glorious victory. How like you this wild counsel, mighty states? Smacks it not something of the policy?

KING JOHN. Now, by the sky that hangs above our heads, I like it well. France, shall we knit our powers And lay this Angiers even with the ground; Then after fight who shall be king of it?

BASTARD. An if thou hast the mettle of a king, Being wrong’d as we are by this peevish town, Turn thou the mouth of thy artillery, As we will ours, against these saucy walls; And when that we have dash’d them to the ground, Why then defy each other, and pell-mell, Make work upon ourselves, for heaven or hell.

KING PHILIP. Let it be so. Say, where will you assault?

KING JOHN. We from the west will send destruction Into this city’s bosom.

AUSTRIA. I from the north.

KING PHILIP. Our thunder from the south Shall rain their drift of bullets on this town.

BASTARD. O prudent discipline! From north to south, Austria and France shoot in each other’s mouth: I’ll stir them to it.—Come, away, away!

FIRST CITIZEN. Hear us, great kings: vouchsafe awhile to stay, And I shall show you peace and fair-fac’d league; Win you this city without stroke or wound; Rescue those breathing lives to die in beds That here come sacrifices for the field: Persever not, but hear me, mighty kings.

KING JOHN. Speak on with favour; we are bent to hear.

FIRST CITIZEN. That daughter there of Spain, the Lady Blanche, Is niece to England. Look upon the years Of Louis the Dauphin and that lovely maid. If lusty love should go in quest of beauty, Where should he find it fairer than in Blanche? If zealous love should go in search of virtue, Where should he find it purer than in Blanche? If love ambitious sought a match of birth, Whose veins bound richer blood than Lady Blanche? Such as she is, in beauty, virtue, birth, Is the young Dauphin every way complete. If not complete of, say he is not she; And she again wants nothing, to name want, If want it be not that she is not he: He is the half part of a blessed man, Left to be finished by such a she; And she a fair divided excellence, Whose fulness of perfection lies in him. O, two such silver currents, when they join Do glorify the banks that bound them in; And two such shores to two such streams made one, Two such controlling bounds shall you be, kings, To these two princes, if you marry them. This union shall do more than battery can To our fast-closed gates; for at this match, With swifter spleen than powder can enforce, The mouth of passage shall we fling wide ope, And give you entrance. But without this match, The sea enraged is not half so deaf, Lions more confident, mountains and rocks More free from motion; no, not Death himself In mortal fury half so peremptory As we to keep this city.

BASTARD. Here’s a stay That shakes the rotten carcass of old Death Out of his rags! Here’s a large mouth indeed, That spits forth death and mountains, rocks and seas; Talks as familiarly of roaring lions As maids of thirteen do of puppy-dogs! What cannoneer begot this lusty blood? He speaks plain cannon, fire, and smoke, and bounce; He gives the bastinado with his tongue; Our ears are cudgell’d; not a word of his But buffets better than a fist of France. Zounds! I was never so bethump’d with words Since I first call’d my brother’s father dad.

QUEEN ELEANOR. Son, list to this conjunction, make this match. Give with our niece a dowry large enough, For by this knot thou shalt so surely tie Thy now unsur’d assurance to the crown, That yon green boy shall have no sun to ripe The bloom that promiseth a mighty fruit. I see a yielding in the looks of France; Mark how they whisper. Urge them while their souls Are capable of this ambition, Lest zeal, now melted by the windy breath Of soft petitions, pity, and remorse, Cool and congeal again to what it was.

FIRST CITIZEN. Why answer not the double majesties This friendly treaty of our threaten’d town?

KING PHILIP. Speak England first, that hath been forward first To speak unto this city. What say you?

KING JOHN. If that the Dauphin there, thy princely son, Can in this book of beauty read “I love,” Her dowry shall weigh equal with a queen. For Anjou, and fair Touraine, Maine, Poitiers, And all that we upon this side the sea— Except this city now by us besieg’d— Find liable to our crown and dignity, Shall gild her bridal bed, and make her rich In titles, honours, and promotions, As she in beauty, education, blood, Holds hand with any princess of the world.

KING PHILIP. What say’st thou, boy? Look in the lady’s face.

LOUIS. I do, my lord, and in her eye I find A wonder, or a wondrous miracle, The shadow of myself form’d in her eye; Which, being but the shadow of your son, Becomes a sun and makes your son a shadow. I do protest I never lov’d myself Till now infixed I beheld myself Drawn in the flattering table of her eye.

[Whispers with Blanche.]

BASTARD. [Aside.] Drawn in the flattering table of her eye! Hang’d in the frowning wrinkle of her brow, And quarter’d in her heart! He doth espy Himself love’s traitor. This is pity now, That, hang’d and drawn and quarter’d, there should be In such a love so vile a lout as he.

BLANCHE. My uncle’s will in this respect is mine. If he see aught in you that makes him like, That anything he sees, which moves his liking I can with ease translate it to my will; Or if you will, to speak more properly, I will enforce it eas’ly to my love. Further I will not flatter you, my lord, That all I see in you is worthy love, Than this: that nothing do I see in you, Though churlish thoughts themselves should be your judge, That I can find should merit any hate.

KING JOHN. What say these young ones? What say you, my niece?

BLANCHE. That she is bound in honour still to do What you in wisdom still vouchsafe to say.

KING JOHN. Speak then, Prince Dauphin. Can you love this lady?

LOUIS. Nay, ask me if I can refrain from love; For I do love her most unfeignedly.

KING JOHN. Then do I give Volquessen, Touraine, Maine, Poitiers, and Anjou, these five provinces, With her to thee; and this addition more, Full thirty thousand marks of English coin.— Philip of France, if thou be pleas’d withal, Command thy son and daughter to join hands.

KING PHILIP. It likes us well.—Young princes, close your hands.

AUSTRIA. And your lips too; for I am well assur’d That I did so when I was first assur’d.

KING PHILIP. Now, citizens of Angiers, ope your gates, Let in that amity which you have made; For at Saint Mary’s chapel presently The rites of marriage shall be solemniz’d. Is not the Lady Constance in this troop? I know she is not, for this match made up Her presence would have interrupted much. Where is she and her son? Tell me, who knows.

LOUIS. She is sad and passionate at your highness’ tent.

KING PHILIP. And, by my faith, this league that we have made Will give her sadness very little cure.— Brother of England, how may we content This widow lady? In her right we came; Which we, God knows, have turn’d another way, To our own vantage.

KING JOHN. We will heal up all; For we’ll create young Arthur Duke of Brittany, And Earl of Richmond; and this rich fair town We make him lord of. Call the Lady Constance. Some speedy messenger bid her repair To our solemnity. I trust we shall, If not fill up the measure of her will, Yet in some measure satisfy her so That we shall stop her exclamation. Go we, as well as haste will suffer us, To this unlook’d-for, unprepared pomp.

[Exeunt all but the Bastard. The Citizens retire from the walls.]

BASTARD. Mad world! mad kings! mad composition! John, to stop Arthur’s title in the whole, Hath willingly departed with a part; And France, whose armour conscience buckled on, Whom zeal and charity brought to the field As God’s own soldier, rounded in the ear With that same purpose-changer, that sly devil, That broker, that still breaks the pate of faith, That daily break-vow, he that wins of all, Of kings, of beggars, old men, young men, maids, Who having no external thing to lose But the word “maid,” cheats the poor maid of that, That smooth-fac’d gentleman, tickling commodity, Commodity, the bias of the world, The world, who of itself is peised well, Made to run even upon even ground, Till this advantage, this vile-drawing bias, This sway of motion, this commodity, Makes it take head from all indifferency, From all direction, purpose, course, intent. And this same bias, this commodity, This bawd, this broker, this all-changing word, Clapp’d on the outward eye of fickle France, Hath drawn him from his own determin’d aid, From a resolv’d and honourable war, To a most base and vile-concluded peace. And why rail I on this commodity? But for because he hath not woo’d me yet. Not that I have the power to clutch my hand When his fair angels would salute my palm; But for my hand, as unattempted yet, Like a poor beggar, raileth on the rich. Well, whiles I am a beggar, I will rail And say there is no sin but to be rich; And being rich, my virtue then shall be To say there is no vice but beggary. Since kings break faith upon commodity, Gain, be my lord, for I will worship thee!

SCENE I. France. The French King’s tent.

Enter Constance, Arthur and Salisbury.

CONSTANCE. Gone to be married? Gone to swear a peace? False blood to false blood join’d? Gone to be friends? Shall Louis have Blanche, and Blanche those provinces? It is not so; thou hast misspoke, misheard; Be well advis’d, tell o’er thy tale again. It cannot be; thou dost but say ’tis so. I trust I may not trust thee, for thy word Is but the vain breath of a common man. Believe me, I do not believe thee, man. I have a king’s oath to the contrary. Thou shalt be punish’d for thus frighting me, For I am sick and capable of fears, Oppress’d with wrongs, and therefore full of fears, A widow, husbandless, subject to fears, A woman, naturally born to fears, And though thou now confess thou didst but jest, With my vex’d spirits I cannot take a truce, But they will quake and tremble all this day. What dost thou mean by shaking of thy head? Why dost thou look so sadly on my son? What means that hand upon that breast of thine? Why holds thine eye that lamentable rheum, Like a proud river peering o’er his bounds? Be these sad signs confirmers of thy words? Then speak again—not all thy former tale, But this one word, whether thy tale be true.

SALISBURY. As true as I believe you think them false That give you cause to prove my saying true.

CONSTANCE. O, if thou teach me to believe this sorrow, Teach thou this sorrow how to make me die, And let belief and life encounter so As doth the fury of two desperate men Which in the very meeting fall and die. Louis marry Blanche? O boy, then where art thou? France friend with England? What becomes of me? Fellow, be gone. I cannot brook thy sight. This news hath made thee a most ugly man.

SALISBURY. What other harm have I, good lady, done, But spoke the harm that is by others done?

CONSTANCE. Which harm within itself so heinous is, As it makes harmful all that speak of it.

ARTHUR. I do beseech you, madam, be content.

CONSTANCE. If thou, that bid’st me be content, wert grim, Ugly, and sland’rous to thy mother’s womb, Full of unpleasing blots and sightless stains, Lame, foolish, crooked, swart, prodigious, Patch’d with foul moles and eye-offending marks, I would not care, I then would be content, For then I should not love thee; no, nor thou Become thy great birth, nor deserve a crown. But thou art fair, and at thy birth, dear boy, Nature and Fortune join’d to make thee great. Of Nature’s gifts thou mayst with lilies boast, And with the half-blown rose. But Fortune, O, She is corrupted, chang’d, and won from thee; She adulterates hourly with thine uncle John, And with her golden hand hath pluck’d on France To tread down fair respect of sovereignty, And made his majesty the bawd to theirs. France is a bawd to Fortune and King John, That strumpet Fortune, that usurping John! Tell me, thou fellow, is not France forsworn? Envenom him with words, or get thee gone, And leave those woes alone which I alone Am bound to underbear.

SALISBURY. Pardon me, madam, I may not go without you to the Kings.

CONSTANCE. Thou mayst, thou shalt; I will not go with thee. I will instruct my sorrows to be proud, For grief is proud and makes his owner stoop. To me and to the state of my great grief Let kings assemble; for my grief’s so great That no supporter but the huge firm earth Can hold it up. Here I and sorrows sit; Here is my throne, bid kings come bow to it.

[Seats herself on the ground.]

Enter King John, King Philip, Louis, Blanche, Eleanor, Bastard, Austria and attendants.

KING PHILIP. ’Tis true, fair daughter; and this blessed day Ever in France shall be kept festival. To solemnize this day the glorious sun Stays in his course and plays the alchemist, Turning with splendour of his precious eye The meagre cloddy earth to glittering gold. The yearly course that brings this day about Shall never see it but a holy day.

CONSTANCE. [Rising.] A wicked day, and not a holy day! What hath this day deserv’d? What hath it done That it in golden letters should be set Among the high tides in the calendar? Nay, rather turn this day out of the week, This day of shame, oppression, perjury. Or, if it must stand still, let wives with child Pray that their burdens may not fall this day, Lest that their hopes prodigiously be cross’d. But on this day let seamen fear no wrack; No bargains break that are not this day made; This day, all things begun come to ill end, Yea, faith itself to hollow falsehood change!

KING PHILIP. By heaven, lady, you shall have no cause To curse the fair proceedings of this day. Have I not pawn’d to you my majesty?

CONSTANCE. You have beguil’d me with a counterfeit Resembling majesty, which, being touch’d and tried, Proves valueless. You are forsworn, forsworn. You came in arms to spill mine enemies’ blood, But now in arms you strengthen it with yours. The grappling vigour and rough frown of war Is cold in amity and painted peace, And our oppression hath made up this league. Arm, arm, you heavens, against these perjur’d kings! A widow cries; be husband to me, heavens! Let not the hours of this ungodly day Wear out the day in peace; but, ere sunset, Set armed discord ’twixt these perjur’d kings! Hear me, O, hear me!

AUSTRIA. Lady Constance, peace!

CONSTANCE. War! war! no peace! Peace is to me a war. O Limoges, O Austria, thou dost shame That bloody spoil. Thou slave, thou wretch, thou coward! Thou little valiant, great in villainy! Thou ever strong upon the stronger side! Thou Fortune’s champion that dost never fight But when her humorous ladyship is by To teach thee safety! Thou art perjur’d too, And sooth’st up greatness. What a fool art thou, A ramping fool, to brag, and stamp, and swear Upon my party! Thou cold-blooded slave, Hast thou not spoke like thunder on my side? Been sworn my soldier, bidding me depend Upon thy stars, thy fortune, and thy strength? And dost thou now fall over to my foes? Thou wear a lion’s hide! Doff it for shame, And hang a calf’s-skin on those recreant limbs.

AUSTRIA. O that a man should speak those words to me!

BASTARD. And hang a calf’s-skin on those recreant limbs.

AUSTRIA. Thou dar’st not say so, villain, for thy life.

KING JOHN. We like not this. Thou dost forget thyself.

KING PHILIP. Here comes the holy legate of the Pope.

Enter Pandulph.

PANDULPH. Hail, you anointed deputies of heaven! To thee, King John, my holy errand is. I Pandulph, of fair Milan cardinal, And from Pope Innocent the legate here, Do in his name religiously demand Why thou against the church, our holy mother, So wilfully dost spurn; and force perforce Keep Stephen Langton, chosen Archbishop Of Canterbury, from that holy see. This, in our foresaid holy father’s name, Pope Innocent, I do demand of thee.

KING JOHN. What earthy name to interrogatories Can task the free breath of a sacred king? Thou canst not, cardinal, devise a name So slight, unworthy, and ridiculous, To charge me to an answer, as the pope. Tell him this tale; and from the mouth of England Add thus much more, that no Italian priest Shall tithe or toll in our dominions; But as we under God are supreme head, So, under Him, that great supremacy, Where we do reign, we will alone uphold Without th’ assistance of a mortal hand. So tell the pope, all reverence set apart To him and his usurp’d authority.

KING PHILIP. Brother of England, you blaspheme in this.

KING JOHN. Though you and all the kings of Christendom Are led so grossly by this meddling priest, Dreading the curse that money may buy out; And by the merit of vile gold, dross, dust, Purchase corrupted pardon of a man, Who in that sale sells pardon from himself; Though you and all the rest, so grossly led, This juggling witchcraft with revenue cherish, Yet I alone, alone do me oppose Against the pope, and count his friends my foes.

PANDULPH. Then, by the lawful power that I have, Thou shalt stand curs’d and excommunicate; And blessed shall he be that doth revolt From his allegiance to an heretic; And meritorious shall that hand be call’d, Canonized and worshipp’d as a saint, That takes away by any secret course Thy hateful life.

CONSTANCE. O, lawful let it be That I have room with Rome to curse awhile! Good father Cardinal, cry thou amen To my keen curses; for without my wrong There is no tongue hath power to curse him right.

PANDULPH. There’s law and warrant, lady, for my curse.

CONSTANCE. And for mine too. When law can do no right, Let it be lawful that law bar no wrong. Law cannot give my child his kingdom here, For he that holds his kingdom holds the law; Therefore, since law itself is perfect wrong, How can the law forbid my tongue to curse?

PANDULPH. Philip of France, on peril of a curse, Let go the hand of that arch-heretic, And raise the power of France upon his head, Unless he do submit himself to Rome.

QUEEN ELEANOR. Look’st thou pale, France? Do not let go thy hand.

CONSTANCE Look to that, devil, lest that France repent And by disjoining hands, hell lose a soul.

AUSTRIA. King Philip, listen to the cardinal.

BASTARD. And hang a calf’s-skin on his recreant limbs.

AUSTRIA. Well, ruffian, I must pocket up these wrongs, Because—

BASTARD. Your breeches best may carry them.

KING JOHN. Philip, what say’st thou to the cardinal?

CONSTANCE. What should he say, but as the cardinal?

LOUIS. Bethink you, father; for the difference Is purchase of a heavy curse from Rome, Or the light loss of England for a friend. Forgo the easier.

BLANCHE. That’s the curse of Rome.

CONSTANCE. O Louis, stand fast! The devil tempts thee here In likeness of a new untrimmed bride.

BLANCHE. The Lady Constance speaks not from her faith, But from her need.

CONSTANCE. O, if thou grant my need, Which only lives but by the death of faith, That need must needs infer this principle: That faith would live again by death of need. O then tread down my need, and faith mounts up; Keep my need up, and faith is trodden down!

KING JOHN. The King is mov’d, and answers not to this.

CONSTANCE. O, be remov’d from him, and answer well!

AUSTRIA. Do so, King Philip; hang no more in doubt.

BASTARD. Hang nothing but a calf’s-skin, most sweet lout.

KING PHILIP. I am perplex’d, and know not what to say.

PANDULPH. What canst thou say but will perplex thee more, If thou stand excommunicate and curs’d?

KING PHILIP. Good reverend father, make my person yours, And tell me how you would bestow yourself. This royal hand and mine are newly knit, And the conjunction of our inward souls Married in league, coupled and link’d together With all religious strength of sacred vows; The latest breath that gave the sound of words Was deep-sworn faith, peace, amity, true love Between our kingdoms and our royal selves; And even before this truce, but new before, No longer than we well could wash our hands To clap this royal bargain up of peace, Heaven knows, they were besmear’d and overstain’d With slaughter’s pencil, where revenge did paint The fearful difference of incensed kings. And shall these hands, so lately purg’d of blood, So newly join’d in love, so strong in both, Unyoke this seizure and this kind regreet? Play fast and loose with faith? So jest with heaven, Make such unconstant children of ourselves, As now again to snatch our palm from palm, Unswear faith sworn, and on the marriage-bed Of smiling peace to march a bloody host, And make a riot on the gentle brow Of true sincerity? O, holy sir, My reverend father, let it not be so! Out of your grace, devise, ordain, impose Some gentle order, and then we shall be blest To do your pleasure and continue friends.

PANDULPH. All form is formless, order orderless, Save what is opposite to England’s love. Therefore to arms! Be champion of our church, Or let the church, our mother, breathe her curse, A mother’s curse, on her revolting son. France, thou mayst hold a serpent by the tongue, A chafed lion by the mortal paw, A fasting tiger safer by the tooth, Than keep in peace that hand which thou dost hold.

KING PHILIP. I may disjoin my hand, but not my faith.

PANDULPH. So mak’st thou faith an enemy to faith, And like a civil war sett’st oath to oath, Thy tongue against thy tongue. O, let thy vow First made to heaven, first be to heaven perform’d, That is, to be the champion of our church. What since thou swor’st is sworn against thyself And may not be performed by thyself, For that which thou hast sworn to do amiss Is not amiss when it is truly done; And being not done, where doing tends to ill, The truth is then most done not doing it. The better act of purposes mistook Is to mistake again; though indirect, Yet indirection thereby grows direct, And falsehood falsehood cures, as fire cools fire Within the scorched veins of one new-burn’d. It is religion that doth make vows kept, But thou hast sworn against religion By what thou swear’st against the thing thou swear’st, And mak’st an oath the surety for thy truth Against an oath. The truth thou art unsure To swear, swears only not to be forsworn, Else what a mockery should it be to swear? But thou dost swear only to be forsworn, And most forsworn, to keep what thou dost swear. Therefore thy latter vows against thy first Is in thyself rebellion to thyself; And better conquest never canst thou make Than arm thy constant and thy nobler parts Against these giddy loose suggestions, Upon which better part our prayers come in, If thou vouchsafe them. But if not, then know The peril of our curses light on thee, So heavy as thou shalt not shake them off, But in despair die under the black weight.

AUSTRIA. Rebellion, flat rebellion!

BASTARD. Will’t not be? Will not a calf’s-skin stop that mouth of thine?

LOUIS. Father, to arms!

BLANCHE. Upon thy wedding-day? Against the blood that thou hast married? What, shall our feast be kept with slaughter’d men? Shall braying trumpets and loud churlish drums, Clamours of hell, be measures to our pomp? O husband, hear me! Ay, alack, how new Is “husband” in my mouth! Even for that name, Which till this time my tongue did ne’er pronounce, Upon my knee I beg, go not to arms Against mine uncle.

CONSTANCE. O, upon my knee, Made hard with kneeling, I do pray to thee, Thou virtuous Dauphin, alter not the doom Forethought by heaven!

BLANCHE. Now shall I see thy love. What motive may Be stronger with thee than the name of wife?

CONSTANCE. That which upholdeth him that thee upholds, His honour. O, thine honour, Louis, thine honour!

LOUIS. I muse your majesty doth seem so cold, When such profound respects do pull you on.

PANDULPH. I will denounce a curse upon his head.

KING PHILIP. Thou shalt not need. England, I will fall from thee.

CONSTANCE. O fair return of banish’d majesty!

QUEEN ELEANOR. O foul revolt of French inconstancy!

KING JOHN. France, thou shalt rue this hour within this hour.

BASTARD. Old Time the clock-setter, that bald sexton Time, Is it as he will? Well, then, France shall rue.

BLANCHE. The sun’s o’ercast with blood. Fair day, adieu! Which is the side that I must go withal? I am with both, each army hath a hand; And in their rage, I having hold of both, They whirl asunder and dismember me. Husband, I cannot pray that thou mayst win; Uncle, I needs must pray that thou mayst lose; Father, I may not wish the fortune thine; Grandam, I will not wish thy wishes thrive. Whoever wins, on that side shall I lose; Assured loss before the match be play’d.

LOUIS. Lady, with me, with me thy fortune lies.

BLANCHE. There where my fortune lives, there my life dies.

KING JOHN. Cousin, go draw our puissance together.

France, I am burn’d up with inflaming wrath; A rage whose heat hath this condition, That nothing can allay, nothing but blood, The blood, and dearest-valu’d blood, of France.

KING PHILIP. Thy rage shall burn thee up, and thou shalt turn To ashes, ere our blood shall quench that fire. Look to thyself, thou art in jeopardy.

KING JOHN. No more than he that threats. To arms let’s hie!

SCENE II. The same. Plains near Angiers

Alarums. Excursions. Enter the Bastard with Austria’s head.

BASTARD. Now, by my life, this day grows wondrous hot; Some airy devil hovers in the sky And pours down mischief. Austria’s head lie there, While Philip breathes.

Enter King John, Arthur and Hubert.

KING JOHN. Hubert, keep this boy.—Philip, make up. My mother is assailed in our tent, And ta’en, I fear.

BASTARD. My lord, I rescu’d her; Her highness is in safety, fear you not. But on, my liege; for very little pains Will bring this labour to an happy end.

SCENE III. The same.

Alarums, Excursions, Retreat. Enter King John, Eleanor, Arthur, the Bastard, Hubert and Lords.

KING JOHN. [To Eleanor] So shall it be; your grace shall stay behind So strongly guarded. [To Arthur] Cousin, look not sad. Thy grandam loves thee, and thy uncle will As dear be to thee as thy father was.

ARTHUR. O, this will make my mother die with grief!

KING JOHN. [To the Bastard] Cousin, away for England! Haste before, And, ere our coming, see thou shake the bags Of hoarding abbots; imprison’d angels Set at liberty. The fat ribs of peace Must by the hungry now be fed upon. Use our commission in his utmost force.

BASTARD. Bell, book, and candle shall not drive me back When gold and silver becks me to come on. I leave your highness. Grandam, I will pray, If ever I remember to be holy, For your fair safety; so, I kiss your hand.

QUEEN ELEANOR. Farewell, gentle cousin.

KING JOHN. Coz, farewell.

QUEEN ELEANOR. Come hither, little kinsman; hark, a word.

[She takes Arthur aside.]

KING JOHN. Come hither, Hubert. O my gentle Hubert, We owe thee much! Within this wall of flesh There is a soul counts thee her creditor, And with advantage means to pay thy love. And, my good friend, thy voluntary oath Lives in this bosom, dearly cherished. Give me thy hand. I had a thing to say, But I will fit it with some better tune. By heaven, Hubert, I am almost asham’d To say what good respect I have of thee.

HUBERT. I am much bounden to your majesty.

KING JOHN. Good friend, thou hast no cause to say so yet, But thou shalt have; and creep time ne’er so slow, Yet it shall come for me to do thee good. I had a thing to say, but let it go. The sun is in the heaven, and the proud day, Attended with the pleasures of the world, Is all too wanton and too full of gauds To give me audience. If the midnight bell Did, with his iron tongue and brazen mouth, Sound on into the drowsy race of night; If this same were a churchyard where we stand, And thou possessed with a thousand wrongs; Or if that surly spirit, melancholy, Had bak’d thy blood and made it heavy, thick, Which else runs tickling up and down the veins, Making that idiot, laughter, keep men’s eyes And strain their cheeks to idle merriment, A passion hateful to my purposes; Or if that thou couldst see me without eyes, Hear me without thine ears, and make reply Without a tongue, using conceit alone, Without eyes, ears, and harmful sound of words; Then, in despite of brooded watchful day, I would into thy bosom pour my thoughts. But, ah, I will not! Yet I love thee well; And, by my troth, I think thou lov’st me well.

HUBERT. So well that what you bid me undertake, Though that my death were adjunct to my act, By heaven, I would do it.

KING JOHN. Do not I know thou wouldst? Good Hubert, Hubert, Hubert, throw thine eye On yon young boy. I’ll tell thee what, my friend, He is a very serpent in my way; And wheresoe’er this foot of mine doth tread, He lies before me. Dost thou understand me? Thou art his keeper.

HUBERT. And I’ll keep him so That he shall not offend your majesty.

KING JOHN. Death.

HUBERT. My lord?

KING JOHN. A grave.

HUBERT. He shall not live.

KING JOHN. Enough. I could be merry now. Hubert, I love thee. Well, I’ll not say what I intend for thee. Remember. Madam, fare you well. I’ll send those powers o’er to your majesty.

QUEEN ELEANOR. My blessing go with thee!

KING JOHN. For England, cousin, go. Hubert shall be your man, attend on you With all true duty. On toward Calais, ho!

SCENE IV. The same. The French King’s tent.

Enter King Philip, Louis, Pandulph and Attendants.

KING PHILIP. So, by a roaring tempest on the flood A whole armado of convicted sail Is scattered and disjoin’d from fellowship.

PANDULPH. Courage and comfort! All shall yet go well.

KING PHILIP. What can go well, when we have run so ill. Are we not beaten? Is not Angiers lost? Arthur ta’en prisoner? Divers dear friends slain? And bloody England into England gone, O’erbearing interruption, spite of France?

LOUIS. What he hath won, that hath he fortified. So hot a speed with such advice dispos’d, Such temperate order in so fierce a cause, Doth want example. Who hath read or heard Of any kindred action like to this?

KING PHILIP. Well could I bear that England had this praise, So we could find some pattern of our shame.

Enter Constance.

Look who comes here! A grave unto a soul; Holding th’ eternal spirit, against her will, In the vile prison of afflicted breath. I prithee, lady, go away with me.

CONSTANCE. Lo, now, now see the issue of your peace!

KING PHILIP. Patience, good lady! Comfort, gentle Constance!

CONSTANCE. No, I defy all counsel, all redress, But that which ends all counsel, true redress, Death, death, O amiable, lovely death! Thou odoriferous stench, sound rottenness! Arise forth from the couch of lasting night, Thou hate and terror to prosperity, And I will kiss thy detestable bones And put my eyeballs in thy vaulty brows, And ring these fingers with thy household worms, And stop this gap of breath with fulsome dust, And be a carrion monster like thyself. Come, grin on me, and I will think thou smil’st, And buss thee as thy wife. Misery’s love, O, come to me!

KING PHILIP. O fair affliction, peace!

CONSTANCE. No, no, I will not, having breath to cry. O, that my tongue were in the thunder’s mouth! Then with a passion would I shake the world; And rouse from sleep that fell anatomy Which cannot hear a lady’s feeble voice, Which scorns a modern invocation.

PANDULPH. Lady, you utter madness, and not sorrow.

CONSTANCE. Thou art not holy to belie me so. I am not mad. This hair I tear is mine; My name is Constance; I was Geoffrey’s wife; Young Arthur is my son, and he is lost. I am not mad; I would to heaven I were! For then ’tis like I should forget myself. O, if I could, what grief should I forget! Preach some philosophy to make me mad, And thou shalt be canoniz’d, cardinal; For, being not mad but sensible of grief, My reasonable part produces reason How I may be deliver’d of these woes, And teaches me to kill or hang myself. If I were mad, I should forget my son, Or madly think a babe of clouts were he. I am not mad; too well, too well I feel The different plague of each calamity.

KING PHILIP. Bind up those tresses. O, what love I note In the fair multitude of those her hairs! Where but by a chance a silver drop hath fall’n, Even to that drop ten thousand wiry friends Do glue themselves in sociable grief, Like true, inseparable, faithful loves, Sticking together in calamity.

CONSTANCE. To England, if you will.

KING PHILIP. Bind up your hairs.

CONSTANCE. Yes, that I will; and wherefore will I do it? I tore them from their bonds and cried aloud, “O that these hands could so redeem my son, As they have given these hairs their liberty!” But now I envy at their liberty, And will again commit them to their bonds, Because my poor child is a prisoner. And, father cardinal, I have heard you say That we shall see and know our friends in heaven. If that be true, I shall see my boy again; For since the birth of Cain, the first male child, To him that did but yesterday suspire, There was not such a gracious creature born. But now will canker sorrow eat my bud And chase the native beauty from his cheek, And he will look as hollow as a ghost, As dim and meagre as an ague’s fit, And so he’ll die; and, rising so again, When I shall meet him in the court of heaven I shall not know him. Therefore never, never Must I behold my pretty Arthur more.

PANDULPH. You hold too heinous a respect of grief.

CONSTANCE. He talks to me that never had a son.

KING PHILIP. You are as fond of grief as of your child.

CONSTANCE. Grief fills the room up of my absent child, Lies in his bed, walks up and down with me, Puts on his pretty looks, repeats his words, Remembers me of all his gracious parts, Stuffs out his vacant garments with his form; Then have I reason to be fond of grief? Fare you well. Had you such a loss as I, I could give better comfort than you do. I will not keep this form upon my head,

[She unbinds her hair.]

When there is such disorder in my wit. O Lord! My boy, my Arthur, my fair son! My life, my joy, my food, my all the world! My widow-comfort, and my sorrows’ cure!

KING PHILIP. I fear some outrage, and I’ll follow her.

LOUIS. There’s nothing in this world can make me joy. Life is as tedious as a twice-told tale Vexing the dull ear of a drowsy man; And bitter shame hath spoil’d the sweet world’s taste, That it yields nought but shame and bitterness.

PANDULPH. Before the curing of a strong disease, Even in the instant of repair and health, The fit is strongest; evils that take leave On their departure most of all show evil. What have you lost by losing of this day?

LOUIS. All days of glory, joy, and happiness.

PANDULPH. If you had won it, certainly you had. No, no; when Fortune means to men most good, She looks upon them with a threat’ning eye. ’Tis strange to think how much King John hath lost In this which he accounts so clearly won. Are not you griev’d that Arthur is his prisoner?

LOUIS. As heartily as he is glad he hath him.

PANDULPH. Your mind is all as youthful as your blood. Now hear me speak with a prophetic spirit; For even the breath of what I mean to speak Shall blow each dust, each straw, each little rub, Out of the path which shall directly lead Thy foot to England’s throne; and therefore mark. John hath seiz’d Arthur; and it cannot be That, whiles warm life plays in that infant’s veins, The misplac’d John should entertain an hour, One minute, nay, one quiet breath of rest. A sceptre snatch’d with an unruly hand Must be boisterously maintain’d as gain’d. And he that stands upon a slipp’ry place Makes nice of no vile hold to stay him up. That John may stand, then, Arthur needs must fall. So be it, for it cannot be but so.

LOUIS. But what shall I gain by young Arthur’s fall?

PANDULPH. You, in the right of Lady Blanche your wife, May then make all the claim that Arthur did.

LOUIS. And lose it, life and all, as Arthur did.

PANDULPH. How green you are and fresh in this old world! John lays you plots; the times conspire with you; For he that steeps his safety in true blood Shall find but bloody safety and untrue. This act so evilly borne shall cool the hearts Of all his people, and freeze up their zeal, That none so small advantage shall step forth To check his reign, but they will cherish it; No natural exhalation in the sky, No scope of nature, no distemper’d day, No common wind, no customed event, But they will pluck away his natural cause And call them meteors, prodigies, and signs, Abortives, presages, and tongues of heaven, Plainly denouncing vengeance upon John.

LOUIS. Maybe he will not touch young Arthur’s life, But hold himself safe in his prisonment.

PANDULPH. O, sir, when he shall hear of your approach, If that young Arthur be not gone already, Even at that news he dies; and then the hearts Of all his people shall revolt from him, And kiss the lips of unacquainted change, And pick strong matter of revolt and wrath Out of the bloody fingers’ ends of John. Methinks I see this hurly all on foot; And, O, what better matter breeds for you Than I have nam’d! The bastard Faulconbridge Is now in England ransacking the church, Offending charity. If but a dozen French Were there in arms, they would be as a call To train ten thousand English to their side, Or as a little snow, tumbled about, Anon becomes a mountain. O noble Dauphin, Go with me to the King. ’Tis wonderful What may be wrought out of their discontent, Now that their souls are topful of offence. For England go. I will whet on the King.

LOUIS. Strong reasons makes strong actions. Let us go. If you say ay, the King will not say no.

SCENE I. Northampton. A Room in the Castle.

Enter Hubert and two Executioners.

HUBERT. Heat me these irons hot; and look thou stand Within the arras. When I strike my foot Upon the bosom of the ground, rush forth And bind the boy which you shall find with me Fast to the chair. Be heedful. Hence, and watch.

FIRST EXECUTIONER. I hope your warrant will bear out the deed.

HUBERT. Uncleanly scruples! Fear not you; look to’t.

[Exeunt Executioners.]

Young lad, come forth; I have to say with you.

Enter Arthur.

ARTHUR. Good morrow, Hubert.

HUBERT. Good morrow, little prince.

ARTHUR. As little prince, having so great a title To be more prince, as may be. You are sad.

HUBERT. Indeed, I have been merrier.

ARTHUR. Mercy on me! Methinks nobody should be sad but I. Yet, I remember, when I was in France, Young gentlemen would be as sad as night, Only for wantonness. By my christendom, So I were out of prison, and kept sheep, I should be as merry as the day is long; And so I would be here, but that I doubt My uncle practises more harm to me. He is afraid of me, and I of him. Is it my fault that I was Geoffrey’s son? No, indeed, is’t not; and I would to heaven I were your son, so you would love me, Hubert.

HUBERT. [Aside.] If I talk to him, with his innocent prate He will awake my mercy, which lies dead. Therefore I will be sudden and dispatch.

ARTHUR. Are you sick, Hubert? You look pale today. In sooth, I would you were a little sick, That I might sit all night and watch with you. I warrant I love you more than you do me.

HUBERT. [Aside.] His words do take possession of my bosom. Read here, young Arthur.

[Showing a paper.]

[Aside.] How now, foolish rheum! Turning dispiteous torture out of door! I must be brief, lest resolution drop Out at mine eyes in tender womanish tears.— Can you not read it? Is it not fair writ?

ARTHUR. Too fairly, Hubert, for so foul effect. Must you with hot irons burn out both mine eyes?

HUBERT. Young boy, I must.

ARTHUR. And will you?

HUBERT. And I will.

ARTHUR. Have you the heart? When your head did but ache, I knit my handkercher about your brows, The best I had, a princess wrought it me, And I did never ask it you again; And with my hand at midnight held your head, And, like the watchful minutes to the hour, Still and anon cheer’d up the heavy time, Saying ’What lack you?” and “Where lies your grief?” Or “What good love may I perform for you?” Many a poor man’s son would have lien still And ne’er have spoke a loving word to you; But you at your sick service had a prince. Nay, you may think my love was crafty love, And call it cunning. Do, an if you will. If heaven be pleas’d that you must use me ill, Why then you must. Will you put out mine eyes? These eyes that never did nor never shall So much as frown on you?

HUBERT. I have sworn to do it. And with hot irons must I burn them out.

ARTHUR. Ah, none but in this iron age would do it! The iron of itself, though heat red-hot, Approaching near these eyes would drink my tears And quench his fiery indignation Even in the matter of mine innocence; Nay, after that, consume away in rust, But for containing fire to harm mine eye. Are you more stubborn-hard than hammer’d iron? An if an angel should have come to me And told me Hubert should put out mine eyes, I would not have believ’d him. No tongue but Hubert’s.

HUBERT. [Stamps.] Come forth.

Enter Executioners with cords, irons, &c.

Do as I bid you do.

ARTHUR. O, save me, Hubert, save me! My eyes are out Even with the fierce looks of these bloody men.

HUBERT. Give me the iron, I say, and bind him here.

ARTHUR. Alas, what need you be so boist’rous-rough? I will not struggle, I will stand stone-still. For heaven sake, Hubert, let me not be bound! Nay, hear me, Hubert! Drive these men away, And I will sit as quiet as a lamb; I will not stir, nor wince, nor speak a word, Nor look upon the iron angerly. Thrust but these men away, and I’ll forgive you, Whatever torment you do put me to.

HUBERT. Go, stand within; let me alone with him.

FIRST EXECUTIONER. I am best pleas’d to be from such a deed.

ARTHUR. Alas, I then have chid away my friend! He hath a stern look but a gentle heart. Let him come back, that his compassion may Give life to yours.

HUBERT. Come, boy, prepare yourself.

ARTHUR. Is there no remedy?

HUBERT. None, but to lose your eyes.

ARTHUR. O heaven, that there were but a mote in yours, A grain, a dust, a gnat, a wandering hair, Any annoyance in that precious sense! Then, feeling what small things are boisterous there, Your vile intent must needs seem horrible.

HUBERT. Is this your promise? Go to, hold your tongue.

ARTHUR. Hubert, the utterance of a brace of tongues Must needs want pleading for a pair of eyes. Let me not hold my tongue. Let me not, Hubert, Or, Hubert, if you will, cut out my tongue, So I may keep mine eyes. O, spare mine eyes, Though to no use but still to look on you! Lo, by my troth, the instrument is cold And would not harm me.

HUBERT. I can heat it, boy.

ARTHUR. No, in good sooth; the fire is dead with grief, Being create for comfort, to be us’d In undeserv’d extremes. See else yourself. There is no malice in this burning coal; The breath of heaven hath blown his spirit out And strew’d repentant ashes on his head.

HUBERT. But with my breath I can revive it, boy.

ARTHUR. An if you do, you will but make it blush And glow with shame of your proceedings, Hubert. Nay, it perchance will sparkle in your eyes; And, like a dog that is compell’d to fight, Snatch at his master that doth tarre him on. All things that you should use to do me wrong Deny their office. Only you do lack That mercy which fierce fire and iron extends, Creatures of note for mercy-lacking uses.

HUBERT. Well, see to live; I will not touch thine eye For all the treasure that thine uncle owes. Yet I am sworn, and I did purpose, boy, With this same very iron to burn them out.

ARTHUR. O, now you look like Hubert! All this while You were disguised.

HUBERT. Peace; no more. Adieu. Your uncle must not know but you are dead. I’ll fill these dogged spies with false reports. And, pretty child, sleep doubtless and secure That Hubert, for the wealth of all the world, Will not offend thee.

ARTHUR. O heaven! I thank you, Hubert.

HUBERT. Silence; no more. Go closely in with me. Much danger do I undergo for thee.

SCENE II. The same. A Room of State in the Palace.

Enter King John, crowned, Pembroke, Salisbury and other Lords. The King takes his State.

KING JOHN. Here once again we sit, once again crown’d, And look’d upon, I hope, with cheerful eyes.

PEMBROKE. This “once again,” but that your highness pleas’d, Was once superfluous. You were crown’d before, And that high royalty was ne’er pluck’d off, The faiths of men ne’er stained with revolt; Fresh expectation troubled not the land With any long’d-for change or better state.

SALISBURY. Therefore, to be possess’d with double pomp, To guard a title that was rich before, To gild refined gold, to paint the lily, To throw a perfume on the violet, To smooth the ice, or add another hue Unto the rainbow, or with taper-light To seek the beauteous eye of heaven to garnish, Is wasteful and ridiculous excess.

PEMBROKE. But that your royal pleasure must be done, This act is as an ancient tale new told, And, in the last repeating, troublesome, Being urged at a time unseasonable.

SALISBURY. In this the antique and well-noted face Of plain old form is much disfigured; And, like a shifted wind unto a sail, It makes the course of thoughts to fetch about, Startles and frights consideration, Makes sound opinion sick and truth suspected, For putting on so new a fashion’d robe.

PEMBROKE. When workmen strive to do better than well, They do confound their skill in covetousness; And oftentimes excusing of a fault Doth make the fault the worse by the excuse, As patches set upon a little breach Discredit more in hiding of the fault Than did the fault before it was so patch’d.

SALISBURY. To this effect, before you were new-crown’d, We breath’d our counsel; but it pleas’d your highness To overbear it, and we are all well pleas’d, Since all and every part of what we would Doth make a stand at what your highness will.

KING JOHN. Some reasons of this double coronation I have possess’d you with, and think them strong; And more, more strong, when lesser is my fear, I shall indue you with. Meantime but ask What you would have reform’d that is not well, And well shall you perceive how willingly I will both hear and grant you your requests.

PEMBROKE. Then I, as one that am the tongue of these, To sound the purposes of all their hearts, Both for myself and them, but, chief of all, Your safety, for the which myself and them Bend their best studies, heartily request Th’ enfranchisement of Arthur, whose restraint Doth move the murmuring lips of discontent To break into this dangerous argument: If what in rest you have in right you hold, Why then your fears, which, as they say, attend The steps of wrong, should move you to mew up Your tender kinsman, and to choke his days With barbarous ignorance, and deny his youth The rich advantage of good exercise? That the time’s enemies may not have this To grace occasions, let it be our suit That you have bid us ask his liberty; Which for our goods we do no further ask Than whereupon our weal, on you depending, Counts it your weal he have his liberty.

KING JOHN. Let it be so. I do commit his youth To your direction.

Enter Hubert.

Hubert, what news with you?

[Taking him apart.]

PEMBROKE. This is the man should do the bloody deed. He show’d his warrant to a friend of mine. The image of a wicked heinous fault Lives in his eye; that close aspect of his Doth show the mood of a much troubled breast; And I do fearfully believe ’tis done What we so fear’d he had a charge to do.

SALISBURY. The colour of the King doth come and go Between his purpose and his conscience, Like heralds ’twixt two dreadful battles set. His passion is so ripe it needs must break.

PEMBROKE. And when it breaks, I fear will issue thence The foul corruption of a sweet child’s death.

KING JOHN. We cannot hold mortality’s strong hand. Good lords, although my will to give is living, The suit which you demand is gone and dead. He tells us Arthur is deceas’d tonight.

SALISBURY. Indeed, we fear’d his sickness was past cure.

PEMBROKE. Indeed, we heard how near his death he was, Before the child himself felt he was sick. This must be answer’d either here or hence.

KING JOHN. Why do you bend such solemn brows on me? Think you I bear the shears of destiny? Have I commandment on the pulse of life?

SALISBURY. It is apparent foul-play; and ’tis shame That greatness should so grossly offer it. So thrive it in your game, and so, farewell.

PEMBROKE. Stay yet, Lord Salisbury. I’ll go with thee And find th’ inheritance of this poor child, His little kingdom of a forced grave. That blood which ow’d the breadth of all this isle Three foot of it doth hold. Bad world the while! This must not be thus borne; this will break out To all our sorrows, and ere long, I doubt.

KING JOHN. They burn in indignation. I repent. There is no sure foundation set on blood, No certain life achiev’d by others’ death.

A fearful eye thou hast. Where is that blood That I have seen inhabit in those cheeks? So foul a sky clears not without a storm. Pour down thy weather: how goes all in France?

MESSENGER. From France to England. Never such a power For any foreign preparation Was levied in the body of a land. The copy of your speed is learn’d by them; For when you should be told they do prepare, The tidings comes that they are all arriv’d.

KING JOHN. O, where hath our intelligence been drunk? Where hath it slept? Where is my mother’s care, That such an army could be drawn in France, And she not hear of it?

MESSENGER. My liege, her ear Is stopp’d with dust. The first of April died Your noble mother; and as I hear, my lord, The Lady Constance in a frenzy died Three days before. But this from rumour’s tongue I idly heard; if true or false I know not.

KING JOHN. Withhold thy speed, dreadful occasion! O, make a league with me, till I have pleas’d My discontented peers! What! Mother dead? How wildly then walks my estate in France! Under whose conduct came those powers of France That thou for truth giv’st out are landed here?

MESSENGER. Under the Dauphin.

KING JOHN. Thou hast made me giddy With these in tidings.

Enter the Bastard and Peter of Pomfret.

Now, what says the world To your proceedings? Do not seek to stuff My head with more ill news, for it is full.

BASTARD. But if you be afeard to hear the worst, Then let the worst, unheard, fall on your head.

KING JOHN. Bear with me, cousin, for I was amaz’d Under the tide, but now I breathe again Aloft the flood, and can give audience To any tongue, speak it of what it will.

BASTARD. How I have sped among the clergymen The sums I have collected shall express. But as I travaill’d hither through the land, I find the people strangely fantasied; Possess’d with rumours, full of idle dreams, Not knowing what they fear, but full of fear. And here’s a prophet that I brought with me From forth the streets of Pomfret, whom I found With many hundreds treading on his heels; To whom he sung, in rude harsh-sounding rhymes, That, ere the next Ascension-day at noon, Your highness should deliver up your crown.

KING JOHN. Thou idle dreamer, wherefore didst thou so?

PETER OF POMFRET. Foreknowing that the truth will fall out so.

KING JOHN. Hubert, away with him; imprison him. And on that day at noon, whereon he says I shall yield up my crown, let him be hang’d. Deliver him to safety, and return, For I must use thee.

[Exit Hubert with Peter.]

O my gentle cousin, Hear’st thou the news abroad, who are arriv’d?

BASTARD. The French, my lord. Men’s mouths are full of it. Besides, I met Lord Bigot and Lord Salisbury, With eyes as red as new-enkindled fire, And others more, going to seek the grave Of Arthur, whom they say is kill’d tonight On your suggestion.

KING JOHN. Gentle kinsman, go And thrust thyself into their companies. I have a way to will their loves again. Bring them before me.

BASTARD. I will seek them out.

KING JOHN. Nay, but make haste, the better foot before! O, let me have no subject enemies When adverse foreigners affright my towns With dreadful pomp of stout invasion! Be Mercury, set feathers to thy heels, And fly like thought from them to me again.

BASTARD. The spirit of the time shall teach me speed.

KING JOHN. Spoke like a sprightful noble gentleman! Go after him; for he perhaps shall need Some messenger betwixt me and the peers; And be thou he.

MESSENGER. With all my heart, my liege.

KING JOHN. My mother dead!

HUBERT. My lord, they say five moons were seen tonight— Four fixed, and the fifth did whirl about The other four in wondrous motion.

KING JOHN. Five moons!

HUBERT. Old men and beldams in the streets Do prophesy upon it dangerously. Young Arthur’s death is common in their mouths. And when they talk of him, they shake their heads And whisper one another in the ear; And he that speaks doth gripe the hearer’s wrist, Whilst he that hears makes fearful action With wrinkled brows, with nods, with rolling eyes. I saw a smith stand with his hammer, thus, The whilst his iron did on the anvil cool, With open mouth swallowing a tailor’s news; Who, with his shears and measure in his hand, Standing on slippers, which his nimble haste Had falsely thrust upon contrary feet, Told of a many thousand warlike French That were embattailed and rank’d in Kent. Another lean unwash’d artificer Cuts off his tale and talks of Arthur’s death.

KING JOHN. Why seek’st thou to possess me with these fears? Why urgest thou so oft young Arthur’s death? Thy hand hath murder’d him. I had a mighty cause To wish him dead, but thou hadst none to kill him.

HUBERT. No had, my lord! Why, did you not provoke me?

KING JOHN. It is the curse of kings to be attended By slaves that take their humours for a warrant To break within the bloody house of life, And, on the winking of authority To understand a law, to know the meaning Of dangerous majesty, when perchance it frowns More upon humour than advis’d respect.

HUBERT. Here is your hand and seal for what I did.

KING JOHN. O, when the last account ’twixt heaven and earth Is to be made, then shall this hand and seal Witness against us to damnation! How oft the sight of means to do ill deeds Make deeds ill done! Hadst not thou been by, A fellow by the hand of nature mark’d, Quoted and sign’d to do a deed of shame, This murder had not come into my mind. But taking note of thy abhorr’d aspect, Finding thee fit for bloody villainy, Apt, liable to be employ’d in danger, I faintly broke with thee of Arthur’s death; And thou, to be endeared to a king, Made it no conscience to destroy a prince.

HUBERT. My lord—

KING JOHN. Hadst thou but shook thy head or made pause When I spake darkly what I purpos’d, Or turn’d an eye of doubt upon my face, As bid me tell my tale in express words, Deep shame had struck me dumb, made me break off, And those thy fears might have wrought fears in me. But thou didst understand me by my signs And didst in signs again parley with sin; Yea, without stop, didst let thy heart consent, And consequently thy rude hand to act The deed which both our tongues held vile to name. Out of my sight, and never see me more! My nobles leave me, and my state is brav’d, Even at my gates, with ranks of foreign powers. Nay, in the body of the fleshly land, This kingdom, this confine of blood and breath, Hostility and civil tumult reigns Between my conscience and my cousin’s death.

HUBERT. Arm you against your other enemies, I’ll make a peace between your soul and you. Young Arthur is alive. This hand of mine Is yet a maiden and an innocent hand, Not painted with the crimson spots of blood. Within this bosom never enter’d yet The dreadful motion of a murderous thought; And you have slander’d nature in my form, Which, howsoever rude exteriorly, Is yet the cover of a fairer mind Than to be butcher of an innocent child.

KING JOHN. Doth Arthur live? O, haste thee to the peers, Throw this report on their incensed rage, And make them tame to their obedience! Forgive the comment that my passion made Upon thy feature; for my rage was blind, And foul imaginary eyes of blood Presented thee more hideous than thou art. O, answer not, but to my closet bring The angry lords with all expedient haste. I conjure thee but slowly; run more fast.

SCENE III. The same. Before the castle.

Enter Arthur on the walls.

ARTHUR. The wall is high, and yet will I leap down. Good ground, be pitiful and hurt me not! There’s few or none do know me, If they did, This ship-boy’s semblance hath disguis’d me quite. I am afraid; and yet I’ll venture it. If I get down, and do not break my limbs, I’ll find a thousand shifts to get away. As good to die and go, as die and stay.

[Leaps down.]

O me, my uncle’s spirit is in these stones. Heaven take my soul, and England keep my bones!

Enter Pembroke, Salisbury and Bigot.

SALISBURY. Lords, I will meet him at Saint Edmundsbury; It is our safety, and we must embrace This gentle offer of the perilous time.

PEMBROKE. Who brought that letter from the cardinal?

SALISBURY. The Count Melun, a noble lord of France, Whose private with me of the Dauphin’s love Is much more general than these lines import.

BIGOT. Tomorrow morning let us meet him then.

SALISBURY. Or rather then set forward; for ’twill be Two long days’ journey, lords, or ere we meet.

Enter the Bastard.

BASTARD. Once more today well met, distemper’d lords! The King by me requests your presence straight.

SALISBURY. The King hath dispossess’d himself of us. We will not line his thin bestained cloak With our pure honours, nor attend the foot That leaves the print of blood where’er it walks. Return and tell him so. We know the worst.

BASTARD. Whate’er you think, good words, I think, were best.

SALISBURY. Our griefs, and not our manners, reason now.

BASTARD. But there is little reason in your grief; Therefore ’twere reason you had manners now.

PEMBROKE. Sir, sir, impatience hath his privilege.

BASTARD. ’Tis true, to hurt his master, no man’s else.

SALISBURY. This is the prison. What is he lies here?

[Seeing Arthur.]

PEMBROKE. O death, made proud with pure and princely beauty! The earth had not a hole to hide this deed.

SALISBURY. Murder, as hating what himself hath done, Doth lay it open to urge on revenge.

BIGOT. Or, when he doom’d this beauty to a grave, Found it too precious-princely for a grave.

SALISBURY. Sir Richard, what think you? Have you beheld, Or have you read or heard, or could you think, Or do you almost think, although you see, That you do see? Could thought, without this object, Form such another? This is the very top, The height, the crest, or crest unto the crest, Of murder’s arms. This is the bloodiest shame, The wildest savagery, the vilest stroke, That ever wall-ey’d wrath or staring rage Presented to the tears of soft remorse.

PEMBROKE. All murders past do stand excus’d in this. And this, so sole and so unmatchable, Shall give a holiness, a purity, To the yet unbegotten sin of times; And prove a deadly bloodshed but a jest, Exampled by this heinous spectacle.

BASTARD. It is a damned and a bloody work; The graceless action of a heavy hand, If that it be the work of any hand.

SALISBURY. If that it be the work of any hand? We had a kind of light what would ensue. It is the shameful work of Hubert’s hand, The practice and the purpose of the King, From whose obedience I forbid my soul, Kneeling before this ruin of sweet life, And breathing to his breathless excellence The incense of a vow, a holy vow, Never to taste the pleasures of the world, Never to be infected with delight, Nor conversant with ease and idleness, Till I have set a glory to this hand, By giving it the worship of revenge.

PEMBROKE and BIGOT. Our souls religiously confirm thy words.

HUBERT. Lords, I am hot with haste in seeking you. Arthur doth live; the King hath sent for you.

SALISBURY. O, he is bold and blushes not at death. Avaunt, thou hateful villain, get thee gone!

HUBERT. I am no villain.

SALISBURY. Must I rob the law?

[Drawing his sword.]

BASTARD. Your sword is bright, sir; put it up again.

SALISBURY. Not till I sheathe it in a murderer’s skin.

HUBERT. Stand back, Lord Salisbury, stand back, I say; By heaven, I think my sword’s as sharp as yours. I would not have you, lord, forget yourself, Nor tempt the danger of my true defence; Lest I, by marking of your rage, forget Your worth, your greatness, and nobility.

BIGOT. Out, dunghill! Dar’st thou brave a nobleman?

HUBERT. Not for my life. But yet I dare defend My innocent life against an emperor.

SALISBURY. Thou art a murderer.

HUBERT. Do not prove me so. Yet I am none. Whose tongue soe’er speaks false, Not truly speaks; who speaks not truly, lies.

PEMBROKE. Cut him to pieces.

BASTARD. Keep the peace, I say.

SALISBURY. Stand by, or I shall gall you, Faulconbridge.

BASTARD. Thou wert better gall the devil, Salisbury. If thou but frown on me, or stir thy foot, Or teach thy hasty spleen to do me shame, I’ll strike thee dead. Put up thy sword betime, Or I’ll so maul you and your toasting-iron That you shall think the devil is come from hell.

BIGOT. What wilt thou do, renowned Faulconbridge? Second a villain and a murderer?

HUBERT. Lord Bigot, I am none.

BIGOT. Who kill’d this prince?

HUBERT. ’Tis not an hour since I left him well. I honour’d him, I lov’d him, and will weep My date of life out for his sweet life’s loss.

SALISBURY. Trust not those cunning waters of his eyes, For villainy is not without such rheum; And he, long traded in it, makes it seem Like rivers of remorse and innocency. Away with me, all you whose souls abhor Th’ uncleanly savours of a slaughterhouse; For I am stifled with this smell of sin.

BIGOT. Away toward Bury, to the Dauphin there!

PEMBROKE. There tell the King he may inquire us out.

BASTARD. Here’s a good world! Knew you of this fair work? Beyond the infinite and boundless reach Of mercy, if thou didst this deed of death, Art thou damn’d, Hubert.

HUBERT. Do but hear me, sir.

BASTARD. Ha! I’ll tell thee what; Thou’rt damn’d as black—nay, nothing is so black; Thou art more deep damn’d than Prince Lucifer. There is not yet so ugly a fiend of hell As thou shalt be, if thou didst kill this child.

HUBERT. Upon my soul—

BASTARD. If thou didst but consent To this most cruel act, do but despair; And if thou want’st a cord, the smallest thread That ever spider twisted from her womb Will serve to strangle thee; a rush will be a beam To hang thee on; or wouldst thou drown thyself, Put but a little water in a spoon And it shall be as all the ocean, Enough to stifle such a villain up. I do suspect thee very grievously.

HUBERT. If I in act, consent, or sin of thought, Be guilty of the stealing that sweet breath Which was embounded in this beauteous clay, Let hell want pains enough to torture me! I left him well.

BASTARD. Go, bear him in thine arms. I am amaz’d, methinks, and lose my way Among the thorns and dangers of this world. How easy dost thou take all England up! From forth this morsel of dead royalty, The life, the right, and truth of all this realm Is fled to heaven; and England now is left To tug and scamble, and to part by th’ teeth The unow’d interest of proud-swelling state. Now for the bare-pick’d bone of majesty Doth dogged war bristle his angry crest And snarleth in the gentle eyes of peace. Now powers from home and discontents at home Meet in one line; and vast confusion waits, As doth a raven on a sick-fall’n beast, The imminent decay of wrested pomp. Now happy he whose cloak and cincture can Hold out this tempest. Bear away that child, And follow me with speed. I’ll to the King. A thousand businesses are brief in hand, And heaven itself doth frown upon the land.

SCENE I. Northampton. A Room in the Palace.

Enter King John, Pandulph with the crown, and Attendants.

KING JOHN. Thus have I yielded up into your hand The circle of my glory.

PANDULPH. [Giving King John the crown.] Take again From this my hand, as holding of the pope, Your sovereign greatness and authority.

KING JOHN. Now keep your holy word. Go meet the French, And from his holiness use all your power To stop their marches ’fore we are inflam’d. Our discontented counties do revolt; Our people quarrel with obedience, Swearing allegiance and the love of soul To stranger blood, to foreign royalty. This inundation of mistemper’d humour Rests by you only to be qualified. Then pause not; for the present time’s so sick That present med’cine must be minist’red Or overthrow incurable ensues.

PANDULPH. It was my breath that blew this tempest up, Upon your stubborn usage of the pope; But since you are a gentle convertite, My tongue shall hush again this storm of war And make fair weather in your blust’ring land. On this Ascension-day, remember well, Upon your oath of service to the pope, Go I to make the French lay down their arms.

KING JOHN. Is this Ascension-day? Did not the prophet Say that before Ascension-day at noon My crown I should give off? Even so I have. I did suppose it should be on constraint; But, heaven be thank’d, it is but voluntary.

BASTARD. All Kent hath yielded. Nothing there holds out But Dover Castle. London hath receiv’d, Like a kind host, the Dauphin and his powers. Your nobles will not hear you, but are gone To offer service to your enemy; And wild amazement hurries up and down The little number of your doubtful friends.

KING JOHN. Would not my lords return to me again After they heard young Arthur was alive?

BASTARD. They found him dead and cast into the streets, An empty casket, where the jewel of life By some damn’d hand was robb’d and ta’en away.

KING JOHN. That villain Hubert told me he did live.

BASTARD. So, on my soul, he did, for aught he knew. But wherefore do you droop? Why look you sad? Be great in act, as you have been in thought; Let not the world see fear and sad distrust Govern the motion of a kingly eye. Be stirring as the time; be fire with fire; Threaten the threat’ner, and outface the brow Of bragging horror. So shall inferior eyes, That borrow their behaviours from the great, Grow great by your example and put on The dauntless spirit of resolution. Away, and glister like the god of war When he intendeth to become the field. Show boldness and aspiring confidence. What, shall they seek the lion in his den, And fright him there? And make him tremble there? O, let it not be said! Forage, and run To meet displeasure farther from the doors, And grapple with him ere he come so nigh.

KING JOHN. The legate of the pope hath been with me, And I have made a happy peace with him; And he hath promis’d to dismiss the powers Led by the Dauphin.

BASTARD. O inglorious league! Shall we, upon the footing of our land, Send fair-play orders and make compromise, Insinuation, parley, and base truce To arms invasive? Shall a beardless boy, A cocker’d silken wanton, brave our fields, And flesh his spirit in a warlike soil, Mocking the air with colours idly spread, And find no check? Let us, my liege, to arms! Perchance the cardinal cannot make your peace; Or if he do, let it at least be said They saw we had a purpose of defence.

KING JOHN. Have thou the ordering of this present time.

BASTARD. Away, then, with good courage! Yet, I know Our party may well meet a prouder foe.

SCENE II. Near Saint Edmundsbury. The French Camp.

Enter, in arms, Louis, Salisbury, Melun, Pembroke, Bigot and soldiers.

LOUIS. My Lord Melun, let this be copied out, And keep it safe for our remembrance. Return the precedent to these lords again; That, having our fair order written down, Both they and we, perusing o’er these notes, May know wherefore we took the sacrament, And keep our faiths firm and inviolable.

SALISBURY. Upon our sides it never shall be broken. And, noble Dauphin, albeit we swear A voluntary zeal and an unurg’d faith To your proceedings; yet believe me, prince, I am not glad that such a sore of time Should seek a plaster by contemn’d revolt, And heal the inveterate canker of one wound By making many. O, it grieves my soul That I must draw this metal from my side To be a widow-maker! O, and there Where honourable rescue and defence Cries out upon the name of Salisbury! But such is the infection of the time, That, for the health and physic of our right, We cannot deal but with the very hand Of stern injustice and confused wrong. And is’t not pity, O my grieved friends, That we, the sons and children of this isle, Were born to see so sad an hour as this; Wherein we step after a stranger, march Upon her gentle bosom, and fill up Her enemies’ ranks? I must withdraw and weep Upon the spot of this enforced cause, To grace the gentry of a land remote, And follow unacquainted colours here. What, here? O nation, that thou couldst remove! That Neptune’s arms, who clippeth thee about, Would bear thee from the knowledge of thyself And grapple thee unto a pagan shore, Where these two Christian armies might combine The blood of malice in a vein of league, And not to spend it so unneighbourly!

LOUIS. A noble temper dost thou show in this; And great affections wrestling in thy bosom Doth make an earthquake of nobility. O, what a noble combat hast thou fought Between compulsion and a brave respect! Let me wipe off this honourable dew That silverly doth progress on thy cheeks. My heart hath melted at a lady’s tears, Being an ordinary inundation; But this effusion of such manly drops, This shower, blown up by tempest of the soul, Startles mine eyes and makes me more amaz’d Than had I seen the vaulty top of heaven Figur’d quite o’er with burning meteors. Lift up thy brow, renowned Salisbury, And with a great heart heave away this storm. Commend these waters to those baby eyes That never saw the giant world enrag’d, Nor met with fortune other than at feasts, Full of warm blood, of mirth, of gossiping. Come, come; for thou shalt thrust thy hand as deep Into the purse of rich prosperity As Louis himself.—So, nobles, shall you all, That knit your sinews to the strength of mine. And even there, methinks, an angel spake.

Look, where the holy legate comes apace, To give us warrant from the hand of heaven, And on our actions set the name of right With holy breath.

PANDULPH. Hail, noble prince of France! The next is this: King John hath reconcil’d Himself to Rome; his spirit is come in, That so stood out against the holy church, The great metropolis and see of Rome. Therefore thy threat’ning colours now wind up, And tame the savage spirit of wild war, That, like a lion foster’d up at hand, It may lie gently at the foot of peace And be no further harmful than in show.

LOUIS. Your grace shall pardon me, I will not back. I am too high-born to be propertied, To be a secondary at control, Or useful serving-man and instrument To any sovereign state throughout the world. Your breath first kindled the dead coal of wars Between this chastis’d kingdom and myself, And brought in matter that should feed this fire; And now ’tis far too huge to be blown out With that same weak wind which enkindled it. You taught me how to know the face of right, Acquainted me with interest to this land, Yea, thrust this enterprise into my heart; And come ye now to tell me John hath made His peace with Rome? What is that peace to me? I, by the honour of my marriage-bed, After young Arthur, claim this land for mine; And, now it is half-conquer’d, must I back Because that John hath made his peace with Rome? Am I Rome’s slave? What penny hath Rome borne, What men provided, what munition sent, To underprop this action? Is’t not I That undergo this charge? Who else but I, And such as to my claim are liable, Sweat in this business and maintain this war? Have I not heard these islanders shout out Vive le Roi! as I have bank’d their towns? Have I not here the best cards for the game To win this easy match play’d for a crown? And shall I now give o’er the yielded set? No, no, on my soul, it never shall be said.

PANDULPH. You look but on the outside of this work.

LOUIS. Outside or inside, I will not return Till my attempt so much be glorified As to my ample hope was promised Before I drew this gallant head of war, And cull’d these fiery spirits from the world, To outlook conquest and to win renown Even in the jaws of danger and of death.

[Trumpet sounds.]

What lusty trumpet thus doth summon us?

Enter the Bastard, attended.

BASTARD. According to the fair play of the world, Let me have audience; I am sent to speak, My holy lord of Milan, from the King I come to learn how you have dealt for him; And, as you answer, I do know the scope And warrant limited unto my tongue.

PANDULPH. The Dauphin is too wilful-opposite, And will not temporize with my entreaties; He flatly says he’ll not lay down his arms.

BASTARD. By all the blood that ever fury breath’d, The youth says well. Now hear our English king, For thus his royalty doth speak in me: He is prepar’d, and reason too he should. This apish and unmannerly approach, This harness’d masque and unadvised revel, This unhair’d sauciness and boyish troops, The King doth smile at; and is well prepar’d To whip this dwarfish war, these pigmy arms, From out the circle of his territories. That hand which had the strength, even at your door, To cudgel you and make you take the hatch, To dive like buckets in concealed wells, To crouch in litter of your stable planks, To lie like pawns lock’d up in chests and trunks, To hug with swine, to seek sweet safety out In vaults and prisons, and to thrill and shake Even at the crying of your nation’s crow, Thinking this voice an armed Englishman; Shall that victorious hand be feebled here That in your chambers gave you chastisement? No! Know the gallant monarch is in arms And like an eagle o’er his aery towers To souse annoyance that comes near his nest.— And you degenerate, you ingrate revolts, You bloody Neroes, ripping up the womb Of your dear mother England, blush for shame! For your own ladies and pale-visag’d maids Like Amazons come tripping after drums, Their thimbles into armed gauntlets change, Their needles to lances, and their gentle hearts To fierce and bloody inclination.

LOUIS. There end thy brave, and turn thy face in peace; We grant thou canst outscold us. Fare thee well; We hold our time too precious to be spent With such a brabbler.

PANDULPH. Give me leave to speak.

BASTARD. No, I will speak.

LOUIS. We will attend to neither. Strike up the drums; and let the tongue of war, Plead for our interest and our being here.

BASTARD. Indeed, your drums, being beaten, will cry out; And so shall you, being beaten. Do but start And echo with the clamour of thy drum, And even at hand a drum is ready brac’d That shall reverberate all as loud as thine. Sound but another, and another shall, As loud as thine, rattle the welkin’s ear And mock the deep-mouth’d thunder. For at hand, Not trusting to this halting legate here, Whom he hath us’d rather for sport than need, Is warlike John; and in his forehead sits A bare-ribb’d death, whose office is this day To feast upon whole thousands of the French.

LOUIS. Strike up our drums, to find this danger out.

BASTARD. And thou shalt find it, Dauphin, do not doubt.

SCENE III. The same. The Field of Battle.

Alarums. Enter King John and Hubert.

KING JOHN. How goes the day with us? O, tell me, Hubert.

HUBERT. Badly, I fear. How fares your majesty?

KING JOHN. This fever that hath troubled me so long Lies heavy on me. O, my heart is sick!

MESSENGER. My lord, your valiant kinsman, Faulconbridge, Desires your majesty to leave the field And send him word by me which way you go.

KING JOHN. Tell him, toward Swinstead, to the abbey there.

MESSENGER. Be of good comfort; for the great supply That was expected by the Dauphin here Are wrack’d three nights ago on Goodwin Sands. This news was brought to Richard but even now. The French fight coldly, and retire themselves.

KING JOHN. Ay me, this tyrant fever burns me up And will not let me welcome this good news. Set on toward Swinstead. To my litter straight. Weakness possesseth me, and I am faint.

SCENE IV. The same. Another part of the same.

Enter Salisbury, Pembroke and Bigot.

SALISBURY. I did not think the King so stor’d with friends.

PEMBROKE. Up once again; put spirit in the French. If they miscarry, we miscarry too.

SALISBURY. That misbegotten devil, Faulconbridge, In spite of spite, alone upholds the day.

PEMBROKE. They say King John, sore sick, hath left the field.

Enter Melun wounded, and led by Soldiers.

MELUN. Lead me to the revolts of England here.

SALISBURY. When we were happy we had other names.

PEMBROKE. It is the Count Melun.

SALISBURY. Wounded to death.

MELUN. Fly, noble English, you are bought and sold; Unthread the rude eye of rebellion And welcome home again discarded faith. Seek out King John and fall before his feet; For if the French be lords of this loud day, He means to recompense the pains you take By cutting off your heads. Thus hath he sworn, And I with him, and many more with me, Upon the altar at Saint Edmundsbury; Even on that altar where we swore to you Dear amity and everlasting love.

SALISBURY. May this be possible? May this be true?

MELUN. Have I not hideous death within my view, Retaining but a quantity of life, Which bleeds away even as a form of wax Resolveth from his figure ’gainst the fire? What in the world should make me now deceive, Since I must lose the use of all deceit? Why should I then be false, since it is true That I must die here and live hence by truth? I say again, if Louis do win the day, He is forsworn if e’er those eyes of yours Behold another day break in the east. But even this night, whose black contagious breath Already smokes about the burning crest Of the old, feeble, and day-wearied sun, Even this ill night, your breathing shall expire, Paying the fine of rated treachery Even with a treacherous fine of all your lives, If Louis by your assistance win the day. Commend me to one Hubert, with your king; The love of him, and this respect besides, For that my grandsire was an Englishman, Awakes my conscience to confess all this. In lieu whereof, I pray you, bear me hence From forth the noise and rumour of the field, Where I may think the remnant of my thoughts In peace, and part this body and my soul With contemplation and devout desires.

SALISBURY. We do believe thee, and beshrew my soul But I do love the favour and the form Of this most fair occasion, by the which We will untread the steps of damned flight, And like a bated and retired flood, Leaving our rankness and irregular course, Stoop low within those bounds we have o’erlook’d, And calmly run on in obedience Even to our ocean, to our great King John. My arm shall give thee help to bear thee hence; For I do see the cruel pangs of death Right in thine eye.—Away, my friends! New flight, And happy newness, that intends old right.

[Exeunt, leading off Melun.]

SCENE V. The same. The French camp.

Enter Louis and his train.

LOUIS. The sun of heaven, methought, was loath to set, But stay’d, and made the western welkin blush, When the English measure backward their own ground In faint retire. O, bravely came we off, When with a volley of our needless shot, After such bloody toil, we bid good night, And wound our tott’ring colours clearly up, Last in the field, and almost lords of it!

MESSENGER. Where is my prince, the Dauphin?

LOUIS. Here. What news?

MESSENGER. The Count Melun is slain; the English lords By his persuasion are again fall’n off, And your supply, which you have wish’d so long, Are cast away and sunk on Goodwin Sands.

LOUIS. Ah, foul shrewd news! Beshrew thy very heart! I did not think to be so sad tonight As this hath made me. Who was he that said King John did fly an hour or two before The stumbling night did part our weary powers?

MESSENGER. Whoever spoke it, it is true, my lord.

LOUIS. Well, keep good quarter and good care tonight. The day shall not be up so soon as I, To try the fair adventure of tomorrow.

SCENE VI. An open place in the neighborhood of Swinstead Abbey.

Enter the Bastard and Hubert, meeting.

HUBERT. Who’s there? Speak, ho! Speak quickly, or I shoot.

BASTARD. A friend. What art thou?

HUBERT. Of the part of England.

BASTARD. Whither dost thou go?

HUBERT. What’s that to thee? Why may I not demand Of thine affairs, as well as thou of mine?

BASTARD. Hubert, I think.

HUBERT. Thou hast a perfect thought. I will, upon all hazards, well believe Thou art my friend, that know’st my tongue so well. Who art thou?

BASTARD. Who thou wilt. And if thou please, Thou mayst befriend me so much as to think I come one way of the Plantagenets.

HUBERT. Unkind remembrance! Thou and eyeless night Have done me shame. Brave soldier, pardon me, That any accent breaking from thy tongue Should ’scape the true acquaintance of mine ear.

BASTARD. Come, come; sans compliment, what news abroad?

HUBERT. Why, here walk I in the black brow of night, To find you out.

BASTARD. Brief, then; and what’s the news?

HUBERT. O, my sweet sir, news fitting to the night, Black, fearful, comfortless, and horrible.

BASTARD. Show me the very wound of this ill news. I am no woman, I’ll not swoon at it.

HUBERT. The King, I fear, is poison’d by a monk. I left him almost speechless, and broke out To acquaint you with this evil, that you might The better arm you to the sudden time, Than if you had at leisure known of this.

BASTARD. How did he take it? Who did taste to him?

HUBERT. A monk, I tell you, a resolved villain, Whose bowels suddenly burst out. The King Yet speaks, and peradventure may recover.

BASTARD. Who didst thou leave to tend his majesty?

HUBERT. Why, know you not? The lords are all come back, And brought Prince Henry in their company; At whose request the King hath pardon’d them, And they are all about his majesty.

BASTARD. Withhold thine indignation, mighty heaven, And tempt us not to bear above our power! I’ll tell thee, Hubert, half my power this night, Passing these flats, are taken by the tide; These Lincoln Washes have devoured them; Myself, well mounted, hardly have escap’d. Away, before. Conduct me to the King; I doubt he will be dead or ere I come.

SCENE VII. The orchard of Swinstead Abbey.

Enter Prince Henry, Salisbury and Bigot.

PRINCE HENRY. It is too late. The life of all his blood Is touch’d corruptibly, and his pure brain, Which some suppose the soul’s frail dwelling-house, Doth, by the idle comments that it makes, Foretell the ending of mortality.

Enter Pembroke.

PEMBROKE. His Highness yet doth speak, and holds belief That, being brought into the open air, It would allay the burning quality Of that fell poison which assaileth him.

PRINCE HENRY. Let him be brought into the orchard here. Doth he still rage?

[Exit Bigot.]

PEMBROKE. He is more patient Than when you left him; even now he sung.

PRINCE HENRY. O vanity of sickness! Fierce extremes In their continuance will not feel themselves. Death, having prey’d upon the outward parts, Leaves them invisible, and his siege is now Against the mind, the which he pricks and wounds With many legions of strange fantasies, Which, in their throng and press to that last hold, Confound themselves. ’Tis strange that death should sing. I am the cygnet to this pale faint swan, Who chants a doleful hymn to his own death And from the organ-pipe of frailty sings His soul and body to their lasting rest.

SALISBURY. Be of good comfort, prince; for you are born To set a form upon that indigest Which he hath left so shapeless and so rude.

Enter Bigot and Attendants, who bring in King John in a chair.

KING JOHN. Ay, marry, now my soul hath elbow-room It would not out at windows nor at doors. There is so hot a summer in my bosom That all my bowels crumble up to dust. I am a scribbled form, drawn with a pen Upon a parchment, and against this fire Do I shrink up.

PRINCE HENRY. How fares your majesty?

KING JOHN. Poison’d, ill fare; dead, forsook, cast off, And none of you will bid the winter come To thrust his icy fingers in my maw, Nor let my kingdom’s rivers take their course Through my burn’d bosom, nor entreat the north To make his bleak winds kiss my parched lips And comfort me with cold. I do not ask you much, I beg cold comfort; and you are so strait, And so ingrateful, you deny me that.

PRINCE HENRY. O, that there were some virtue in my tears That might relieve you!

KING JOHN. The salt in them is hot. Within me is a hell; and there the poison Is, as a fiend, confin’d to tyrannize On unreprievable condemned blood.

BASTARD. O, I am scalded with my violent motion And spleen of speed to see your majesty!

KING JOHN. O cousin, thou art come to set mine eye. The tackle of my heart is crack’d and burn’d, And all the shrouds wherewith my life should sail Are turned to one thread, one little hair. My heart hath one poor string to stay it by, Which holds but till thy news be uttered; And then all this thou seest is but a clod And module of confounded royalty.

BASTARD. The Dauphin is preparing hitherward, Where God He knows how we shall answer him; For in a night the best part of my power, As I upon advantage did remove, Were in the Washes all unwarily Devoured by the unexpected flood.

[The King dies.]

SALISBURY. You breathe these dead news in as dead an ear. My liege! My lord!—But now a king, now thus.

PRINCE HENRY. Even so must I run on, and even so stop. What surety of the world, what hope, what stay, When this was now a king, and now is clay?

BASTARD. Art thou gone so? I do but stay behind To do the office for thee of revenge, And then my soul shall wait on thee to heaven, As it on earth hath been thy servant still. Now, now, you stars that move in your right spheres, Where be your powers? Show now your mended faiths, And instantly return with me again, To push destruction and perpetual shame Out of the weak door of our fainting land. Straight let us seek, or straight we shall be sought; The Dauphin rages at our very heels.

SALISBURY. It seems you know not, then, so much as we. The Cardinal Pandulph is within at rest, Who half an hour since came from the Dauphin, And brings from him such offers of our peace As we with honour and respect may take, With purpose presently to leave this war.

BASTARD. He will the rather do it when he sees Ourselves well sinewed to our defence.

SALISBURY. Nay, ’tis in a manner done already, For many carriages he hath dispatch’d To the sea-side, and put his cause and quarrel To the disposing of the cardinal, With whom yourself, myself, and other lords, If you think meet, this afternoon will post To consummate this business happily.

BASTARD. Let it be so. And you, my noble prince, With other princes that may best be spar’d, Shall wait upon your father’s funeral.

PRINCE HENRY. At Worcester must his body be interr’d; For so he will’d it.

BASTARD. Thither shall it, then, And happily may your sweet self put on The lineal state and glory of the land! To whom, with all submission, on my knee, I do bequeath my faithful services And true subjection everlastingly.

SALISBURY. And the like tender of our love we make, To rest without a spot for evermore.

PRINCE HENRY. I have a kind soul that would give you thanks And knows not how to do it but with tears.

BASTARD. O, let us pay the time but needful woe, Since it hath been beforehand with our griefs. This England never did, nor never shall, Lie at the proud foot of a conqueror, But when it first did help to wound itself. Now these her princes are come home again, Come the three corners of the world in arms And we shall shock them. Nought shall make us rue, If England to itself do rest but true.

THE TRAGEDY OF JULIUS CAESAR

ACT I Scene I. Rome. A street Scene II. The same. A public place Scene III. The same. A street

ACT II Scene I. Rome. Brutus’ orchard Scene II. A room in Caesar’s palace Scene III. A street near the Capitol Scene IV. Another part of the same street, before the house of Brutus

ACT III Scene I. Rome. Before the Capitol; the Senate sitting Scene II. The same. The Forum Scene III. The same. A street

ACT IV Scene I. A room in Antony’s house Scene II. Before Brutus’ tent, in the camp near Sardis Scene III. Within the tent of Brutus

ACT V Scene I. The plains of Philippi Scene II. The same. The field of battle Scene III. Another part of the field Scene IV. Another part of the field Scene V. Another part of the field

JULIUS CAESAR OCTAVIUS CAESAR, Triumvir after his death. MARCUS ANTONIUS, ” ” ” M. AEMILIUS LEPIDUS, ” ” ” CICERO, PUBLIUS, POPILIUS LENA, Senators. MARCUS BRUTUS, Conspirator against Caesar. CASSIUS, ” ” ” CASCA, ” ” ” TREBONIUS, ” ” ” LIGARIUS,” ” ” DECIUS BRUTUS, ” ” ” METELLUS CIMBER, ” ” ” CINNA, ” ” ” FLAVIUS, tribune MARULLUS, tribune ARTEMIDORUS, a Sophist of Cnidos. A Soothsayer CINNA, a poet. Another Poet. LUCILIUS, TITINIUS, MESSALA, young CATO, and VOLUMNIUS, Friends to Brutus and Cassius. VARRO, CLITUS, CLAUDIUS, STRATO, LUCIUS, DARDANIUS, Servants to Brutus PINDARUS, Servant to Cassius

CALPHURNIA, wife to Caesar PORTIA, wife to Brutus

The Ghost of Caesar

Senators, Citizens, Soldiers, Commoners, Messengers, and Servants.

SCENE: Rome, the conspirators’ camp near Sardis, and the plains of Philippi.

SCENE I. Rome. A street.

Enter Flavius, Marullus and a throng of Citizens.

FLAVIUS. Hence! home, you idle creatures, get you home. Is this a holiday? What, know you not, Being mechanical, you ought not walk Upon a labouring day without the sign Of your profession? Speak, what trade art thou?

CARPENTER. Why, sir, a carpenter.

MARULLUS. Where is thy leather apron and thy rule? What dost thou with thy best apparel on? You, sir, what trade are you?

COBBLER. Truly, sir, in respect of a fine workman, I am but, as you would say, a cobbler.

MARULLUS. But what trade art thou? Answer me directly.

COBBLER. A trade, sir, that I hope I may use with a safe conscience, which is indeed, sir, a mender of bad soles.

MARULLUS. What trade, thou knave? Thou naughty knave, what trade?

COBBLER. Nay, I beseech you, sir, be not out with me; yet, if you be out, sir, I can mend you.

MARULLUS. What mean’st thou by that? Mend me, thou saucy fellow!

COBBLER. Why, sir, cobble you.

FLAVIUS. Thou art a cobbler, art thou?

COBBLER. Truly, sir, all that I live by is with the awl; I meddle with no tradesman’s matters, nor women’s matters, but withal I am indeed, sir, a surgeon to old shoes: when they are in great danger, I recover them. As proper men as ever trod upon neat’s leather have gone upon my handiwork.

FLAVIUS. But wherefore art not in thy shop today? Why dost thou lead these men about the streets?

COBBLER. Truly, sir, to wear out their shoes, to get myself into more work. But indeed, sir, we make holiday to see Caesar, and to rejoice in his triumph.

MARULLUS. Wherefore rejoice? What conquest brings he home? What tributaries follow him to Rome, To grace in captive bonds his chariot wheels? You blocks, you stones, you worse than senseless things! O you hard hearts, you cruel men of Rome, Knew you not Pompey? Many a time and oft Have you climb’d up to walls and battlements, To towers and windows, yea, to chimney tops, Your infants in your arms, and there have sat The livelong day with patient expectation, To see great Pompey pass the streets of Rome. And when you saw his chariot but appear, Have you not made an universal shout, That Tiber trembled underneath her banks To hear the replication of your sounds Made in her concave shores? And do you now put on your best attire? And do you now cull out a holiday? And do you now strew flowers in his way, That comes in triumph over Pompey’s blood? Be gone! Run to your houses, fall upon your knees, Pray to the gods to intermit the plague That needs must light on this ingratitude.

FLAVIUS. Go, go, good countrymen, and, for this fault Assemble all the poor men of your sort, Draw them to Tiber banks, and weep your tears Into the channel, till the lowest stream Do kiss the most exalted shores of all.

See whether their basest metal be not mov’d; They vanish tongue-tied in their guiltiness. Go you down that way towards the Capitol; This way will I. Disrobe the images, If you do find them deck’d with ceremonies.

MARULLUS. May we do so? You know it is the feast of Lupercal.

FLAVIUS. It is no matter; let no images Be hung with Caesar’s trophies. I’ll about And drive away the vulgar from the streets; So do you too, where you perceive them thick. These growing feathers pluck’d from Caesar’s wing Will make him fly an ordinary pitch, Who else would soar above the view of men, And keep us all in servile fearfulness.

SCENE II. The same. A public place.

Enter, in procession, with music, Caesar; Antony, for the course; Calphurnia, Portia, Decius, Cicero, Brutus, Cassius and Casca; a great crowd following, among them a Soothsayer.

CAESAR. Calphurnia.

CASCA. Peace, ho! Caesar speaks.

CALPHURNIA. Here, my lord.

CAESAR. Stand you directly in Antonius’ way, When he doth run his course. Antonius.

ANTONY. Caesar, my lord?

CAESAR. Forget not in your speed, Antonius, To touch Calphurnia; for our elders say, The barren, touched in this holy chase, Shake off their sterile curse.

ANTONY. I shall remember. When Caesar says “Do this,” it is perform’d.

CAESAR. Set on; and leave no ceremony out.

[Music.]

SOOTHSAYER. Caesar!

CAESAR. Ha! Who calls?

CASCA. Bid every noise be still; peace yet again!

CAESAR. Who is it in the press that calls on me? I hear a tongue shriller than all the music, Cry “Caesar”! Speak. Caesar is turn’d to hear.

SOOTHSAYER. Beware the Ides of March.

CAESAR. What man is that?

BRUTUS. A soothsayer bids you beware the Ides of March.

CAESAR. Set him before me; let me see his face.

CASSIUS. Fellow, come from the throng; look upon Caesar.

CAESAR. What say’st thou to me now? Speak once again.

CAESAR. He is a dreamer; let us leave him. Pass.

[Sennet. Exeunt all but Brutus and Cassius.]

CASSIUS. Will you go see the order of the course?

BRUTUS. Not I.

CASSIUS. I pray you, do.

BRUTUS. I am not gamesome: I do lack some part Of that quick spirit that is in Antony. Let me not hinder, Cassius, your desires; I’ll leave you.

CASSIUS. Brutus, I do observe you now of late: I have not from your eyes that gentleness And show of love as I was wont to have. You bear too stubborn and too strange a hand Over your friend that loves you.

BRUTUS. Cassius, Be not deceived: if I have veil’d my look, I turn the trouble of my countenance Merely upon myself. Vexed I am Of late with passions of some difference, Conceptions only proper to myself, Which give some soil perhaps to my behaviors; But let not therefore my good friends be grieved (Among which number, Cassius, be you one) Nor construe any further my neglect, Than that poor Brutus, with himself at war, Forgets the shows of love to other men.

CASSIUS. Then, Brutus, I have much mistook your passion; By means whereof this breast of mine hath buried Thoughts of great value, worthy cogitations. Tell me, good Brutus, can you see your face?

BRUTUS. No, Cassius, for the eye sees not itself But by reflection, by some other thing.

CASSIUS. ’Tis just: And it is very much lamented, Brutus, That you have no such mirrors as will turn Your hidden worthiness into your eye, That you might see your shadow. I have heard Where many of the best respect in Rome, (Except immortal Caesar) speaking of Brutus, And groaning underneath this age’s yoke, Have wish’d that noble Brutus had his eyes.

BRUTUS. Into what dangers would you lead me, Cassius, That you would have me seek into myself For that which is not in me?

CASSIUS. Therefore, good Brutus, be prepared to hear; And since you know you cannot see yourself So well as by reflection, I, your glass, Will modestly discover to yourself That of yourself which you yet know not of. And be not jealous on me, gentle Brutus: Were I a common laugher, or did use To stale with ordinary oaths my love To every new protester; if you know That I do fawn on men, and hug them hard, And after scandal them; or if you know That I profess myself in banqueting, To all the rout, then hold me dangerous.

[Flourish and shout.]

BRUTUS. What means this shouting? I do fear the people Choose Caesar for their king.

CASSIUS. Ay, do you fear it? Then must I think you would not have it so.

BRUTUS. I would not, Cassius; yet I love him well, But wherefore do you hold me here so long? What is it that you would impart to me? If it be aught toward the general good, Set honour in one eye and death i’ the other, And I will look on both indifferently; For let the gods so speed me as I love The name of honour more than I fear death.

CASSIUS. I know that virtue to be in you, Brutus, As well as I do know your outward favour. Well, honour is the subject of my story. I cannot tell what you and other men Think of this life; but, for my single self, I had as lief not be as live to be In awe of such a thing as I myself. I was born free as Caesar; so were you; We both have fed as well, and we can both Endure the winter’s cold as well as he: For once, upon a raw and gusty day, The troubled Tiber chafing with her shores, Caesar said to me, “Dar’st thou, Cassius, now Leap in with me into this angry flood, And swim to yonder point?” Upon the word, Accoutred as I was, I plunged in, And bade him follow: so indeed he did. The torrent roar’d, and we did buffet it With lusty sinews, throwing it aside And stemming it with hearts of controversy. But ere we could arrive the point propos’d, Caesar cried, “Help me, Cassius, or I sink!” I, as Aeneas, our great ancestor, Did from the flames of Troy upon his shoulder The old Anchises bear, so from the waves of Tiber Did I the tired Caesar. And this man Is now become a god; and Cassius is A wretched creature, and must bend his body, If Caesar carelessly but nod on him. He had a fever when he was in Spain, And when the fit was on him I did mark How he did shake: ’tis true, this god did shake: His coward lips did from their colour fly, And that same eye whose bend doth awe the world Did lose his lustre. I did hear him groan: Ay, and that tongue of his, that bade the Romans Mark him, and write his speeches in their books, Alas, it cried, “Give me some drink, Titinius,” As a sick girl. Ye gods, it doth amaze me, A man of such a feeble temper should So get the start of the majestic world, And bear the palm alone.

[Shout. Flourish.]

BRUTUS. Another general shout? I do believe that these applauses are For some new honours that are heap’d on Caesar.

CASSIUS. Why, man, he doth bestride the narrow world Like a Colossus, and we petty men Walk under his huge legs, and peep about To find ourselves dishonourable graves. Men at some time are masters of their fates: The fault, dear Brutus, is not in our stars, But in ourselves, that we are underlings. “Brutus” and “Caesar”: what should be in that “Caesar”? Why should that name be sounded more than yours? Write them together, yours is as fair a name; Sound them, it doth become the mouth as well; Weigh them, it is as heavy; conjure with ’em, “Brutus” will start a spirit as soon as “Caesar.” Now in the names of all the gods at once, Upon what meat doth this our Caesar feed, That he is grown so great? Age, thou art sham’d! Rome, thou hast lost the breed of noble bloods! When went there by an age since the great flood, But it was fam’d with more than with one man? When could they say, till now, that talk’d of Rome, That her wide walls encompass’d but one man? Now is it Rome indeed, and room enough, When there is in it but one only man. O, you and I have heard our fathers say, There was a Brutus once that would have brook’d Th’ eternal devil to keep his state in Rome, As easily as a king!

BRUTUS. That you do love me, I am nothing jealous; What you would work me to, I have some aim: How I have thought of this, and of these times, I shall recount hereafter. For this present, I would not, so with love I might entreat you, Be any further mov’d. What you have said, I will consider; what you have to say I will with patience hear; and find a time Both meet to hear and answer such high things. Till then, my noble friend, chew upon this: Brutus had rather be a villager Than to repute himself a son of Rome Under these hard conditions as this time Is like to lay upon us.

CASSIUS. I am glad that my weak words Have struck but thus much show of fire from Brutus.

Enter Caesar and his Train.

BRUTUS. The games are done, and Caesar is returning.

CASSIUS. As they pass by, pluck Casca by the sleeve, And he will, after his sour fashion, tell you What hath proceeded worthy note today.

BRUTUS. I will do so. But, look you, Cassius, The angry spot doth glow on Caesar’s brow, And all the rest look like a chidden train: Calphurnia’s cheek is pale; and Cicero Looks with such ferret and such fiery eyes As we have seen him in the Capitol, Being cross’d in conference by some senators.

CASSIUS. Casca will tell us what the matter is.

CAESAR. Antonius.

ANTONY. Caesar?

CAESAR. Let me have men about me that are fat, Sleek-headed men, and such as sleep a-nights: Yond Cassius has a lean and hungry look; He thinks too much: such men are dangerous.

ANTONY. Fear him not, Caesar; he’s not dangerous; He is a noble Roman and well given.

CAESAR. Would he were fatter! But I fear him not: Yet if my name were liable to fear, I do not know the man I should avoid So soon as that spare Cassius. He reads much, He is a great observer, and he looks Quite through the deeds of men. He loves no plays, As thou dost, Antony; he hears no music. Seldom he smiles; and smiles in such a sort As if he mock’d himself and scorn’d his spirit That could be mov’d to smile at anything. Such men as he be never at heart’s ease Whiles they behold a greater than themselves, And therefore are they very dangerous. I rather tell thee what is to be fear’d Than what I fear; for always I am Caesar. Come on my right hand, for this ear is deaf, And tell me truly what thou think’st of him.

[Exeunt Caesar and his Train. Casca stays.]

CASCA. You pull’d me by the cloak; would you speak with me?

BRUTUS. Ay, Casca, tell us what hath chanc’d today, That Caesar looks so sad.

CASCA. Why, you were with him, were you not?

BRUTUS. I should not then ask Casca what had chanc’d.

CASCA. Why, there was a crown offer’d him; and being offer’d him, he put it by with the back of his hand, thus; and then the people fell a-shouting.

BRUTUS. What was the second noise for?

CASCA. Why, for that too.

CASSIUS. They shouted thrice: what was the last cry for?

BRUTUS. Was the crown offer’d him thrice?

CASCA. Ay, marry, was’t, and he put it by thrice, every time gentler than other; and at every putting-by mine honest neighbours shouted.

CASSIUS. Who offer’d him the crown?

CASCA. Why, Antony.

BRUTUS. Tell us the manner of it, gentle Casca.

CASCA. I can as well be hang’d, as tell the manner of it: it was mere foolery; I did not mark it. I saw Mark Antony offer him a crown; yet ’twas not a crown neither, ’twas one of these coronets; and, as I told you, he put it by once: but, for all that, to my thinking, he would fain have had it. Then he offered it to him again: then he put it by again: but, to my thinking, he was very loath to lay his fingers off it. And then he offered it the third time; he put it the third time by; and still, as he refus’d it, the rabblement hooted, and clapp’d their chopt hands, and threw up their sweaty night-caps, and uttered such a deal of stinking breath because Caesar refus’d the crown, that it had, almost, choked Caesar, for he swooned, and fell down at it. And for mine own part, I durst not laugh, for fear of opening my lips and receiving the bad air.

CASSIUS. But, soft! I pray you. What, did Caesar swoon?

CASCA. He fell down in the market-place, and foam’d at mouth, and was speechless.

BRUTUS. ’Tis very like: he hath the falling-sickness.

CASSIUS. No, Caesar hath it not; but you, and I, And honest Casca, we have the falling-sickness.

CASCA. I know not what you mean by that; but I am sure Caesar fell down. If the tag-rag people did not clap him and hiss him, according as he pleased and displeased them, as they use to do the players in the theatre, I am no true man.

BRUTUS. What said he when he came unto himself?

CASCA. Marry, before he fell down, when he perceived the common herd was glad he refused the crown, he pluck’d me ope his doublet, and offer’d them his throat to cut. And I had been a man of any occupation, if I would not have taken him at a word, I would I might go to hell among the rogues. And so he fell. When he came to himself again, he said, if he had done or said anything amiss, he desir’d their worships to think it was his infirmity. Three or four wenches where I stood cried, “Alas, good soul!” and forgave him with all their hearts. But there’s no heed to be taken of them: if Caesar had stabb’d their mothers, they would have done no less.

BRUTUS. And, after that, he came thus sad away?

CASCA. Ay.

CASSIUS. Did Cicero say anything?

CASCA. Ay, he spoke Greek.

CASSIUS. To what effect?

CASCA. Nay, and I tell you that, I’ll ne’er look you i’ the face again. But those that understood him smil’d at one another and shook their heads; but for mine own part, it was Greek to me. I could tell you more news too: Marullus and Flavius, for pulling scarfs off Caesar’s images, are put to silence. Fare you well. There was more foolery yet, if I could remember it.

CASSIUS. Will you sup with me tonight, Casca?

CASCA. No, I am promis’d forth.

CASSIUS. Will you dine with me tomorrow?

CASCA. Ay, if I be alive, and your mind hold, and your dinner worth the eating.

CASSIUS. Good. I will expect you.

CASCA. Do so; farewell both.

[Exit Casca.]

BRUTUS. What a blunt fellow is this grown to be! He was quick mettle when he went to school.

CASSIUS. So is he now in execution Of any bold or noble enterprise, However he puts on this tardy form. This rudeness is a sauce to his good wit, Which gives men stomach to digest his words With better appetite.

BRUTUS. And so it is. For this time I will leave you: Tomorrow, if you please to speak with me, I will come home to you; or, if you will, Come home to me, and I will wait for you.

CASSIUS. I will do so: till then, think of the world.

[Exit Brutus.]

Well, Brutus, thou art noble; yet I see, Thy honourable metal may be wrought From that it is dispos’d: therefore ’tis meet That noble minds keep ever with their likes; For who so firm that cannot be seduc’d? Caesar doth bear me hard, but he loves Brutus. If I were Brutus now, and he were Cassius, He should not humour me. I will this night, In several hands, in at his windows throw, As if they came from several citizens, Writings, all tending to the great opinion That Rome holds of his name; wherein obscurely Caesar’s ambition shall be glanced at. And after this, let Caesar seat him sure, For we will shake him, or worse days endure.

SCENE III. The same. A street.

Thunder and lightning. Enter, from opposite sides, Casca with his sword drawn, and Cicero.

CICERO. Good even, Casca: brought you Caesar home? Why are you breathless, and why stare you so?

CASCA. Are not you moved, when all the sway of earth Shakes like a thing unfirm? O Cicero, I have seen tempests, when the scolding winds Have riv’d the knotty oaks; and I have seen Th’ ambitious ocean swell and rage and foam, To be exalted with the threatening clouds: But never till tonight, never till now, Did I go through a tempest dropping fire. Either there is a civil strife in heaven, Or else the world too saucy with the gods, Incenses them to send destruction.

CICERO. Why, saw you anything more wonderful?

CASCA. A common slave, you’d know him well by sight, Held up his left hand, which did flame and burn Like twenty torches join’d, and yet his hand, Not sensible of fire remain’d unscorch’d. Besides, I ha’ not since put up my sword, Against the Capitol I met a lion, Who glared upon me, and went surly by, Without annoying me. And there were drawn Upon a heap a hundred ghastly women, Transformed with their fear; who swore they saw Men, all in fire, walk up and down the streets. And yesterday the bird of night did sit, Even at noonday upon the marketplace, Hooting and shrieking. When these prodigies Do so conjointly meet, let not men say, “These are their reasons; they are natural”; For I believe, they are portentous things Unto the climate that they point upon.

CICERO. Indeed, it is a strange-disposed time. But men may construe things after their fashion, Clean from the purpose of the things themselves. Comes Caesar to the Capitol tomorrow?

CASCA. He doth, for he did bid Antonius Send word to you he would be there tomorrow.

CICERO. Goodnight then, Casca: this disturbed sky Is not to walk in.

CASCA. Farewell, Cicero.

[Exit Cicero.]

Enter Cassius.

CASSIUS. Who’s there?

CASCA. A Roman.

CASSIUS. Casca, by your voice.

CASCA. Your ear is good. Cassius, what night is this!

CASSIUS. A very pleasing night to honest men.

CASCA. Who ever knew the heavens menace so?

CASSIUS. Those that have known the earth so full of faults. For my part, I have walk’d about the streets, Submitting me unto the perilous night; And, thus unbraced, Casca, as you see, Have bar’d my bosom to the thunder-stone; And when the cross blue lightning seem’d to open The breast of heaven, I did present myself Even in the aim and very flash of it.

CASCA. But wherefore did you so much tempt the Heavens? It is the part of men to fear and tremble, When the most mighty gods by tokens send Such dreadful heralds to astonish us.

CASSIUS. You are dull, Casca; and those sparks of life That should be in a Roman you do want, Or else you use not. You look pale and gaze, And put on fear and cast yourself in wonder, To see the strange impatience of the Heavens: But if you would consider the true cause Why all these fires, why all these gliding ghosts, Why birds and beasts, from quality and kind; Why old men, fools, and children calculate, Why all these things change from their ordinance, Their natures, and pre-formed faculties, To monstrous quality; why, you shall find That Heaven hath infus’d them with these spirits, To make them instruments of fear and warning Unto some monstrous state. Now could I, Casca, name to thee a man Most like this dreadful night, That thunders, lightens, opens graves, and roars, As doth the lion in the Capitol; A man no mightier than thyself, or me, In personal action; yet prodigious grown, And fearful, as these strange eruptions are.

CASCA. ’Tis Caesar that you mean; is it not, Cassius?

CASSIUS. Let it be who it is: for Romans now Have thews and limbs like to their ancestors; But, woe the while! our fathers’ minds are dead, And we are govern’d with our mothers’ spirits; Our yoke and sufferance show us womanish.

CASCA. Indeed, they say the senators tomorrow Mean to establish Caesar as a king; And he shall wear his crown by sea and land, In every place, save here in Italy.

CASSIUS. I know where I will wear this dagger then; Cassius from bondage will deliver Cassius: Therein, ye gods, you make the weak most strong; Therein, ye gods, you tyrants do defeat. Nor stony tower, nor walls of beaten brass, Nor airless dungeon, nor strong links of iron, Can be retentive to the strength of spirit; But life, being weary of these worldly bars, Never lacks power to dismiss itself. If I know this, know all the world besides, That part of tyranny that I do bear I can shake off at pleasure.

[Thunder still.]

CASCA. So can I: So every bondman in his own hand bears The power to cancel his captivity.

CASSIUS. And why should Caesar be a tyrant then? Poor man! I know he would not be a wolf, But that he sees the Romans are but sheep: He were no lion, were not Romans hinds. Those that with haste will make a mighty fire Begin it with weak straws. What trash is Rome, What rubbish, and what offal, when it serves For the base matter to illuminate So vile a thing as Caesar! But, O grief, Where hast thou led me? I, perhaps, speak this Before a willing bondman: then I know My answer must be made; but I am arm’d, And dangers are to me indifferent.

CASCA. You speak to Casca, and to such a man That is no fleering tell-tale. Hold, my hand: Be factious for redress of all these griefs, And I will set this foot of mine as far As who goes farthest.

CASSIUS. There’s a bargain made. Now know you, Casca, I have mov’d already Some certain of the noblest-minded Romans To undergo with me an enterprise Of honourable-dangerous consequence; And I do know by this, they stay for me In Pompey’s Porch: for now, this fearful night, There is no stir or walking in the streets; And the complexion of the element In favour’s like the work we have in hand, Most bloody, fiery, and most terrible.

Enter Cinna.

CASCA. Stand close awhile, for here comes one in haste.

CASSIUS. ’Tis Cinna; I do know him by his gait; He is a friend. Cinna, where haste you so?

CINNA. To find out you. Who’s that? Metellus Cimber?

CASSIUS. No, it is Casca, one incorporate To our attempts. Am I not stay’d for, Cinna?

CINNA. I am glad on’t. What a fearful night is this! There’s two or three of us have seen strange sights.

CASSIUS. Am I not stay’d for? tell me.

CINNA. Yes, you are. O Cassius, if you could But win the noble Brutus to our party—

CASSIUS. Be you content. Good Cinna, take this paper, And look you lay it in the praetor’s chair, Where Brutus may but find it; and throw this In at his window; set this up with wax Upon old Brutus’ statue: all this done, Repair to Pompey’s Porch, where you shall find us. Is Decius Brutus and Trebonius there?

CINNA. All but Metellus Cimber, and he’s gone To seek you at your house. Well, I will hie, And so bestow these papers as you bade me.

CASSIUS. That done, repair to Pompey’s theatre.

[Exit Cinna.]

Come, Casca, you and I will yet, ere day, See Brutus at his house: three parts of him Is ours already, and the man entire Upon the next encounter, yields him ours.

CASCA. O, he sits high in all the people’s hearts! And that which would appear offence in us, His countenance, like richest alchemy, Will change to virtue and to worthiness.

CASSIUS. Him, and his worth, and our great need of him, You have right well conceited. Let us go, For it is after midnight; and ere day, We will awake him, and be sure of him.

SCENE I. Rome. Brutus’ orchard.

Enter Brutus.

BRUTUS. What, Lucius, ho! I cannot, by the progress of the stars, Give guess how near to day.—Lucius, I say! I would it were my fault to sleep so soundly. When, Lucius, when? Awake, I say! What, Lucius!

Enter Lucius.

LUCIUS. Call’d you, my lord?

BRUTUS. Get me a taper in my study, Lucius: When it is lighted, come and call me here.

LUCIUS. I will, my lord.

BRUTUS. It must be by his death: and for my part, I know no personal cause to spurn at him, But for the general. He would be crown’d: How that might change his nature, there’s the question. It is the bright day that brings forth the adder, And that craves wary walking. Crown him?—that; And then, I grant, we put a sting in him, That at his will he may do danger with. Th’ abuse of greatness is, when it disjoins Remorse from power; and, to speak truth of Caesar, I have not known when his affections sway’d More than his reason. But ’tis a common proof, That lowliness is young ambition’s ladder, Whereto the climber-upward turns his face; But when he once attains the upmost round, He then unto the ladder turns his back, Looks in the clouds, scorning the base degrees By which he did ascend. So Caesar may; Then lest he may, prevent. And since the quarrel Will bear no colour for the thing he is, Fashion it thus: that what he is, augmented, Would run to these and these extremities: And therefore think him as a serpent’s egg Which hatch’d, would, as his kind grow mischievous; And kill him in the shell.

LUCIUS. The taper burneth in your closet, sir. Searching the window for a flint, I found This paper, thus seal’d up, and I am sure It did not lie there when I went to bed.

[Gives him the letter.]

BRUTUS. Get you to bed again; it is not day. Is not tomorrow, boy, the Ides of March?

LUCIUS. I know not, sir.

BRUTUS. Look in the calendar, and bring me word.

LUCIUS. I will, sir.

BRUTUS. The exhalations, whizzing in the air Give so much light that I may read by them.

[Opens the letter and reads.]

Brutus, thou sleep’st: awake and see thyself. Shall Rome, &c. Speak, strike, redress! “Brutus, thou sleep’st: awake!” Such instigations have been often dropp’d Where I have took them up. “Shall Rome, &c.” Thus must I piece it out: Shall Rome stand under one man’s awe? What, Rome? My ancestors did from the streets of Rome The Tarquin drive, when he was call’d a king. “Speak, strike, redress!” Am I entreated To speak and strike? O Rome, I make thee promise, If the redress will follow, thou receivest Thy full petition at the hand of Brutus.

LUCIUS. Sir, March is wasted fifteen days.

[Knock within.]

BRUTUS. ’Tis good. Go to the gate, somebody knocks.

[Exit Lucius.]

Since Cassius first did whet me against Caesar, I have not slept. Between the acting of a dreadful thing And the first motion, all the interim is Like a phantasma, or a hideous dream: The genius and the mortal instruments Are then in council; and the state of man, Like to a little kingdom, suffers then The nature of an insurrection.

LUCIUS. Sir, ’tis your brother Cassius at the door, Who doth desire to see you.

BRUTUS. Is he alone?

LUCIUS. No, sir, there are moe with him.

BRUTUS. Do you know them?

LUCIUS. No, sir, their hats are pluck’d about their ears, And half their faces buried in their cloaks, That by no means I may discover them By any mark of favour.

BRUTUS. Let ’em enter.

They are the faction. O conspiracy, Sham’st thou to show thy dangerous brow by night, When evils are most free? O, then, by day Where wilt thou find a cavern dark enough To mask thy monstrous visage? Seek none, conspiracy; Hide it in smiles and affability: For if thou path, thy native semblance on, Not Erebus itself were dim enough To hide thee from prevention.

Enter Cassius, Casca, Decius, Cinna, Metellus Cimber and Trebonius.

CASSIUS. I think we are too bold upon your rest: Good morrow, Brutus; do we trouble you?

BRUTUS. I have been up this hour, awake all night. Know I these men that come along with you?

CASSIUS. Yes, every man of them; and no man here But honours you; and everyone doth wish You had but that opinion of yourself Which every noble Roman bears of you. This is Trebonius.

BRUTUS. He is welcome hither.

CASSIUS. This Decius Brutus.

BRUTUS. He is welcome too.

CASSIUS. This, Casca; this, Cinna; and this, Metellus Cimber.

BRUTUS. They are all welcome. What watchful cares do interpose themselves Betwixt your eyes and night?

CASSIUS. Shall I entreat a word?

[They whisper.]

DECIUS. Here lies the east: doth not the day break here?

CASCA. No.

CINNA. O, pardon, sir, it doth; and yon grey lines That fret the clouds are messengers of day.

CASCA. You shall confess that you are both deceiv’d. Here, as I point my sword, the Sun arises; Which is a great way growing on the South, Weighing the youthful season of the year. Some two months hence, up higher toward the North He first presents his fire; and the high East Stands, as the Capitol, directly here.

BRUTUS. Give me your hands all over, one by one.

CASSIUS. And let us swear our resolution.

BRUTUS. No, not an oath. If not the face of men, The sufferance of our souls, the time’s abuse— If these be motives weak, break off betimes, And every man hence to his idle bed. So let high-sighted tyranny range on, Till each man drop by lottery. But if these, As I am sure they do, bear fire enough To kindle cowards, and to steel with valour The melting spirits of women; then, countrymen, What need we any spur but our own cause To prick us to redress? what other bond Than secret Romans, that have spoke the word, And will not palter? and what other oath Than honesty to honesty engag’d, That this shall be, or we will fall for it? Swear priests and cowards, and men cautelous, Old feeble carrions, and such suffering souls That welcome wrongs; unto bad causes swear Such creatures as men doubt; but do not stain The even virtue of our enterprise, Nor th’ insuppressive mettle of our spirits, To think that or our cause or our performance Did need an oath; when every drop of blood That every Roman bears, and nobly bears, Is guilty of a several bastardy, If he do break the smallest particle Of any promise that hath pass’d from him.

CASSIUS. But what of Cicero? Shall we sound him? I think he will stand very strong with us.

CASCA. Let us not leave him out.

CINNA. No, by no means.

METELLUS. O, let us have him, for his silver hairs Will purchase us a good opinion, And buy men’s voices to commend our deeds. It shall be said, his judgement rul’d our hands; Our youths and wildness shall no whit appear, But all be buried in his gravity.

BRUTUS. O, name him not; let us not break with him; For he will never follow anything That other men begin.

CASSIUS. Then leave him out.

CASCA. Indeed, he is not fit.

DECIUS. Shall no man else be touch’d but only Caesar?

CASSIUS. Decius, well urg’d. I think it is not meet, Mark Antony, so well belov’d of Caesar, Should outlive Caesar: we shall find of him A shrewd contriver; and you know, his means, If he improve them, may well stretch so far As to annoy us all; which to prevent, Let Antony and Caesar fall together.

BRUTUS. Our course will seem too bloody, Caius Cassius, To cut the head off, and then hack the limbs, Like wrath in death, and envy afterwards; For Antony is but a limb of Caesar. Let us be sacrificers, but not butchers, Caius. We all stand up against the spirit of Caesar, And in the spirit of men there is no blood. O, that we then could come by Caesar’s spirit, And not dismember Caesar! But, alas, Caesar must bleed for it! And, gentle friends, Let’s kill him boldly, but not wrathfully; Let’s carve him as a dish fit for the gods, Not hew him as a carcass fit for hounds. And let our hearts, as subtle masters do, Stir up their servants to an act of rage, And after seem to chide ’em. This shall mark Our purpose necessary, and not envious; Which so appearing to the common eyes, We shall be call’d purgers, not murderers. And for Mark Antony, think not of him; For he can do no more than Caesar’s arm When Caesar’s head is off.

CASSIUS. Yet I fear him; For in the ingrafted love he bears to Caesar—

BRUTUS. Alas, good Cassius, do not think of him: If he love Caesar, all that he can do Is to himself; take thought and die for Caesar. And that were much he should; for he is given To sports, to wildness, and much company.

TREBONIUS. There is no fear in him; let him not die; For he will live, and laugh at this hereafter.

BRUTUS. Peace! count the clock.

CASSIUS. The clock hath stricken three.

TREBONIUS. ’Tis time to part.

CASSIUS. But it is doubtful yet Whether Caesar will come forth today or no; For he is superstitious grown of late, Quite from the main opinion he held once Of fantasy, of dreams, and ceremonies. It may be these apparent prodigies, The unaccustom’d terror of this night, And the persuasion of his augurers, May hold him from the Capitol today.

DECIUS. Never fear that: if he be so resolved, I can o’ersway him, for he loves to hear That unicorns may be betray’d with trees, And bears with glasses, elephants with holes, Lions with toils, and men with flatterers. But when I tell him he hates flatterers, He says he does, being then most flattered. Let me work; For I can give his humour the true bent, And I will bring him to the Capitol.

CASSIUS. Nay, we will all of us be there to fetch him.

BRUTUS. By the eighth hour: is that the uttermost?

CINNA. Be that the uttermost; and fail not then.

METELLUS. Caius Ligarius doth bear Caesar hard, Who rated him for speaking well of Pompey; I wonder none of you have thought of him.

BRUTUS. Now, good Metellus, go along by him: He loves me well, and I have given him reason; Send him but hither, and I’ll fashion him.

CASSIUS. The morning comes upon’s. We’ll leave you, Brutus. And, friends, disperse yourselves; but all remember What you have said, and show yourselves true Romans.

BRUTUS. Good gentlemen, look fresh and merrily; Let not our looks put on our purposes, But bear it as our Roman actors do, With untired spirits and formal constancy. And so, good morrow to you everyone.

[Exeunt all but Brutus.]

Boy! Lucius! Fast asleep? It is no matter; Enjoy the honey-heavy dew of slumber: Thou hast no figures nor no fantasies, Which busy care draws in the brains of men; Therefore thou sleep’st so sound.

Enter Portia.

PORTIA. Brutus, my lord.

BRUTUS. Portia, what mean you? Wherefore rise you now? It is not for your health thus to commit Your weak condition to the raw cold morning.

PORTIA. Nor for yours neither. Y’ have ungently, Brutus, Stole from my bed; and yesternight at supper, You suddenly arose, and walk’d about, Musing and sighing, with your arms across; And when I ask’d you what the matter was, You star’d upon me with ungentle looks. I urg’d you further; then you scratch’d your head, And too impatiently stamp’d with your foot; Yet I insisted, yet you answer’d not, But with an angry wafture of your hand Gave sign for me to leave you. So I did, Fearing to strengthen that impatience Which seem’d too much enkindled; and withal Hoping it was but an effect of humour, Which sometime hath his hour with every man. It will not let you eat, nor talk, nor sleep; And could it work so much upon your shape As it hath much prevail’d on your condition, I should not know you, Brutus. Dear my lord, Make me acquainted with your cause of grief.

BRUTUS. I am not well in health, and that is all.

PORTIA. Brutus is wise, and, were he not in health, He would embrace the means to come by it.

BRUTUS. Why, so I do. Good Portia, go to bed.

PORTIA. Is Brutus sick, and is it physical To walk unbraced and suck up the humours Of the dank morning? What, is Brutus sick, And will he steal out of his wholesome bed To dare the vile contagion of the night, And tempt the rheumy and unpurged air To add unto his sickness? No, my Brutus; You have some sick offence within your mind, Which, by the right and virtue of my place, I ought to know of: and, upon my knees, I charm you, by my once commended beauty, By all your vows of love, and that great vow Which did incorporate and make us one, That you unfold to me, your self, your half, Why you are heavy, and what men tonight Have had resort to you; for here have been Some six or seven, who did hide their faces Even from darkness.

BRUTUS. Kneel not, gentle Portia.

PORTIA. I should not need, if you were gentle Brutus. Within the bond of marriage, tell me, Brutus, Is it excepted I should know no secrets That appertain to you? Am I your self But, as it were, in sort or limitation, To keep with you at meals, comfort your bed, And talk to you sometimes? Dwell I but in the suburbs Of your good pleasure? If it be no more, Portia is Brutus’ harlot, not his wife.

BRUTUS. You are my true and honourable wife, As dear to me as are the ruddy drops That visit my sad heart.

PORTIA. If this were true, then should I know this secret. I grant I am a woman; but withal A woman that Lord Brutus took to wife; I grant I am a woman; but withal A woman well reputed, Cato’s daughter. Think you I am no stronger than my sex, Being so father’d and so husbanded? Tell me your counsels, I will not disclose ’em. I have made strong proof of my constancy, Giving myself a voluntary wound Here, in the thigh: can I bear that with patience And not my husband’s secrets?

BRUTUS. O ye gods, Render me worthy of this noble wife!

[Knock.]

Hark, hark, one knocks. Portia, go in awhile; And by and by thy bosom shall partake The secrets of my heart. All my engagements I will construe to thee, All the charactery of my sad brows. Leave me with haste.

[Exit Portia.]

Enter Lucius with Ligarius.

Lucius, who’s that knocks?

LUCIUS. Here is a sick man that would speak with you.

BRUTUS. Caius Ligarius, that Metellus spake of. Boy, stand aside. Caius Ligarius, how?

LIGARIUS. Vouchsafe good-morrow from a feeble tongue.

BRUTUS. O, what a time have you chose out, brave Caius, To wear a kerchief! Would you were not sick!

LIGARIUS. I am not sick, if Brutus have in hand Any exploit worthy the name of honour.

BRUTUS. Such an exploit have I in hand, Ligarius, Had you a healthful ear to hear of it.

LIGARIUS. By all the gods that Romans bow before, I here discard my sickness. Soul of Rome! Brave son, derived from honourable loins! Thou, like an exorcist, hast conjur’d up My mortified spirit. Now bid me run, And I will strive with things impossible, Yea, get the better of them. What’s to do?

BRUTUS. A piece of work that will make sick men whole.

LIGARIUS. But are not some whole that we must make sick?

BRUTUS. That must we also. What it is, my Caius, I shall unfold to thee, as we are going, To whom it must be done.

LIGARIUS. Set on your foot, And with a heart new-fir’d I follow you, To do I know not what; but it sufficeth That Brutus leads me on.

[Thunder.]

BRUTUS. Follow me then.

SCENE II. A room in Caesar’s palace.

Thunder and lightning. Enter Caesar, in his nightgown.

CAESAR. Nor heaven nor earth have been at peace tonight: Thrice hath Calphurnia in her sleep cried out, “Help, ho! They murder Caesar!” Who’s within?

SERVANT. My lord?

CAESAR. Go bid the priests do present sacrifice, And bring me their opinions of success.

SERVANT. I will, my lord.

Enter Calphurnia.

CALPHURNIA. What mean you, Caesar? Think you to walk forth? You shall not stir out of your house today.

CAESAR. Caesar shall forth. The things that threaten’d me Ne’er look’d but on my back; when they shall see The face of Caesar, they are vanished.

CALPHURNIA. Caesar, I never stood on ceremonies, Yet now they fright me. There is one within, Besides the things that we have heard and seen, Recounts most horrid sights seen by the watch. A lioness hath whelped in the streets, And graves have yawn’d, and yielded up their dead; Fierce fiery warriors fight upon the clouds In ranks and squadrons and right form of war, Which drizzled blood upon the Capitol; The noise of battle hurtled in the air, Horses did neigh, and dying men did groan, And ghosts did shriek and squeal about the streets. O Caesar, these things are beyond all use, And I do fear them!

CAESAR. What can be avoided Whose end is purpos’d by the mighty gods? Yet Caesar shall go forth; for these predictions Are to the world in general as to Caesar.

CALPHURNIA. When beggars die, there are no comets seen; The heavens themselves blaze forth the death of princes.

CAESAR. Cowards die many times before their deaths; The valiant never taste of death but once. Of all the wonders that I yet have heard, It seems to me most strange that men should fear, Seeing that death, a necessary end, Will come when it will come.

What say the augurers?

SERVANT. They would not have you to stir forth today. Plucking the entrails of an offering forth, They could not find a heart within the beast.

CAESAR. The gods do this in shame of cowardice: Caesar should be a beast without a heart If he should stay at home today for fear. No, Caesar shall not. Danger knows full well That Caesar is more dangerous than he. We are two lions litter’d in one day, And I the elder and more terrible, And Caesar shall go forth.

CALPHURNIA. Alas, my lord, Your wisdom is consum’d in confidence. Do not go forth today: call it my fear That keeps you in the house, and not your own. We’ll send Mark Antony to the Senate-house, And he shall say you are not well today. Let me upon my knee prevail in this.

CAESAR. Mark Antony shall say I am not well, And for thy humour, I will stay at home.

Enter Decius.

Here’s Decius Brutus, he shall tell them so.

DECIUS. Caesar, all hail! Good morrow, worthy Caesar. I come to fetch you to the Senate-house.

CAESAR. And you are come in very happy time To bear my greeting to the Senators, And tell them that I will not come today. Cannot, is false; and that I dare not, falser: I will not come today. Tell them so, Decius.

CALPHURNIA. Say he is sick.

CAESAR. Shall Caesar send a lie? Have I in conquest stretch’d mine arm so far, To be afeard to tell grey-beards the truth? Decius, go tell them Caesar will not come.

DECIUS. Most mighty Caesar, let me know some cause, Lest I be laugh’d at when I tell them so.

CAESAR. The cause is in my will; I will not come. That is enough to satisfy the Senate. But for your private satisfaction, Because I love you, I will let you know: Calphurnia here, my wife, stays me at home. She dreamt tonight she saw my statue, Which like a fountain with an hundred spouts Did run pure blood; and many lusty Romans Came smiling, and did bathe their hands in it. And these does she apply for warnings and portents And evils imminent; and on her knee Hath begg’d that I will stay at home today.

DECIUS. This dream is all amiss interpreted: It was a vision fair and fortunate. Your statue spouting blood in many pipes, In which so many smiling Romans bath’d, Signifies that from you great Rome shall suck Reviving blood, and that great men shall press For tinctures, stains, relics, and cognizance. This by Calphurnia’s dream is signified.

CAESAR. And this way have you well expounded it.

DECIUS. I have, when you have heard what I can say; And know it now. The Senate have concluded To give this day a crown to mighty Caesar. If you shall send them word you will not come, Their minds may change. Besides, it were a mock Apt to be render’d, for someone to say, “Break up the Senate till another time, When Caesar’s wife shall meet with better dreams.” If Caesar hide himself, shall they not whisper “Lo, Caesar is afraid”? Pardon me, Caesar; for my dear dear love To your proceeding bids me tell you this, And reason to my love is liable.

CAESAR. How foolish do your fears seem now, Calphurnia! I am ashamed I did yield to them. Give me my robe, for I will go.

Enter Brutus, Ligarius, Metellus, Casca, Trebonius, Cinna and Publius.

And look where Publius is come to fetch me.

PUBLIUS. Good morrow, Caesar.

CAESAR. Welcome, Publius. What, Brutus, are you stirr’d so early too? Good morrow, Casca. Caius Ligarius, Caesar was ne’er so much your enemy As that same ague which hath made you lean. What is’t o’clock?

BRUTUS. Caesar, ’tis strucken eight.

CAESAR. I thank you for your pains and courtesy.

See! Antony, that revels long a-nights, Is notwithstanding up. Good morrow, Antony.

ANTONY. So to most noble Caesar.

CAESAR. Bid them prepare within. I am to blame to be thus waited for. Now, Cinna; now, Metellus; what, Trebonius! I have an hour’s talk in store for you: Remember that you call on me today; Be near me, that I may remember you.

TREBONIUS. Caesar, I will. [Aside.] and so near will I be, That your best friends shall wish I had been further.

CAESAR. Good friends, go in, and taste some wine with me; And we, like friends, will straightway go together.

BRUTUS. [Aside.] That every like is not the same, O Caesar, The heart of Brutus yearns to think upon.

SCENE III. A street near the Capitol.

Enter Artemidorus, reading a paper.

ARTEMIDORUS. “Caesar, beware of Brutus; take heed of Cassius; come not near Casca; have an eye to Cinna; trust not Trebonius; mark well Metellus Cimber; Decius Brutus loves thee not; thou hast wrong’d Caius Ligarius. There is but one mind in all these men, and it is bent against Caesar. If thou be’st not immortal, look about you: security gives way to conspiracy. The mighty gods defend thee! Thy lover, Artemidorus.” Here will I stand till Caesar pass along, And as a suitor will I give him this. My heart laments that virtue cannot live Out of the teeth of emulation. If thou read this, O Caesar, thou mayest live; If not, the Fates with traitors do contrive.

SCENE IV. Another part of the same street, before the house of Brutus.

Enter Portia and Lucius.

PORTIA. I pr’ythee, boy, run to the Senate-house; Stay not to answer me, but get thee gone. Why dost thou stay?

LUCIUS. To know my errand, madam.

PORTIA. I would have had thee there and here again, Ere I can tell thee what thou shouldst do there. [Aside.] O constancy, be strong upon my side, Set a huge mountain ’tween my heart and tongue! I have a man’s mind, but a woman’s might. How hard it is for women to keep counsel! Art thou here yet?

LUCIUS. Madam, what should I do? Run to the Capitol, and nothing else? And so return to you, and nothing else?

PORTIA. Yes, bring me word, boy, if thy lord look well, For he went sickly forth: and take good note What Caesar doth, what suitors press to him. Hark, boy, what noise is that?

LUCIUS. I hear none, madam.

PORTIA. Pr’ythee, listen well. I heard a bustling rumour, like a fray, And the wind brings it from the Capitol.

LUCIUS. Sooth, madam, I hear nothing.

Enter the Soothsayer.

PORTIA. Come hither, fellow: Which way hast thou been?

SOOTHSAYER. At mine own house, good lady.

PORTIA. What is’t o’clock?

SOOTHSAYER. About the ninth hour, lady.

PORTIA. Is Caesar yet gone to the Capitol?

SOOTHSAYER. Madam, not yet. I go to take my stand, To see him pass on to the Capitol.

PORTIA. Thou hast some suit to Caesar, hast thou not?

SOOTHSAYER. That I have, lady, if it will please Caesar To be so good to Caesar as to hear me, I shall beseech him to befriend himself.

PORTIA. Why, know’st thou any harm’s intended towards him?

SOOTHSAYER. None that I know will be, much that I fear may chance. Good morrow to you. Here the street is narrow. The throng that follows Caesar at the heels, Of Senators, of Praetors, common suitors, Will crowd a feeble man almost to death: I’ll get me to a place more void, and there Speak to great Caesar as he comes along.

PORTIA. I must go in. [Aside.] Ay me, how weak a thing The heart of woman is! O Brutus, The heavens speed thee in thine enterprise! Sure, the boy heard me. Brutus hath a suit That Caesar will not grant. O, I grow faint. Run, Lucius, and commend me to my lord; Say I am merry; come to me again, And bring me word what he doth say to thee.

SCENE I. Rome. Before the Capitol; the Senate sitting.

A crowd of people in the street leading to the Capitol. Flourish. Enter Caesar, Brutus, Cassius, Casca, Decius, Metellus, Trebonius, Cinna, Antony, Lepidus, Artemidorus, Publius, Popilius and the Soothsayer.

CAESAR. The Ides of March are come.

SOOTHSAYER. Ay, Caesar; but not gone.

ARTEMIDORUS. Hail, Caesar! Read this schedule.

DECIUS. Trebonius doth desire you to o’er-read, At your best leisure, this his humble suit.

ARTEMIDORUS. O Caesar, read mine first; for mine’s a suit That touches Caesar nearer. Read it, great Caesar.

CAESAR. What touches us ourself shall be last serv’d.

ARTEMIDORUS. Delay not, Caesar. Read it instantly.

CAESAR. What, is the fellow mad?

PUBLIUS. Sirrah, give place.

CASSIUS. What, urge you your petitions in the street? Come to the Capitol.

Caesar enters the Capitol, the rest following. All the Senators rise.

POPILIUS. I wish your enterprise today may thrive.

CASSIUS. What enterprise, Popilius?

POPILIUS. Fare you well.

[Advances to Caesar.]

BRUTUS. What said Popilius Lena?

CASSIUS. He wish’d today our enterprise might thrive. I fear our purpose is discovered.

BRUTUS. Look how he makes to Caesar: mark him.

CASSIUS. Casca, be sudden, for we fear prevention. Brutus, what shall be done? If this be known, Cassius or Caesar never shall turn back, For I will slay myself.

BRUTUS. Cassius, be constant: Popilius Lena speaks not of our purposes; For look, he smiles, and Caesar doth not change.

CASSIUS. Trebonius knows his time, for look you, Brutus, He draws Mark Antony out of the way.

[Exeunt Antony and Trebonius. Caesar and the Senators take their seats.]

DECIUS. Where is Metellus Cimber? Let him go, And presently prefer his suit to Caesar.

BRUTUS. He is address’d; press near and second him.

CINNA. Casca, you are the first that rears your hand.

CAESAR. Are we all ready? What is now amiss That Caesar and his Senate must redress?

METELLUS. Most high, most mighty, and most puissant Caesar, Metellus Cimber throws before thy seat An humble heart.

[Kneeling.]

CAESAR. I must prevent thee, Cimber. These couchings and these lowly courtesies Might fire the blood of ordinary men, And turn pre-ordinance and first decree Into the law of children. Be not fond, To think that Caesar bears such rebel blood That will be thaw’d from the true quality With that which melteth fools; I mean sweet words, Low-crooked curtsies, and base spaniel fawning. Thy brother by decree is banished: If thou dost bend, and pray, and fawn for him, I spurn thee like a cur out of my way. Know, Caesar dost not wrong, nor without cause Will he be satisfied.

METELLUS. Is there no voice more worthy than my own, To sound more sweetly in great Caesar’s ear For the repealing of my banish’d brother?

BRUTUS. I kiss thy hand, but not in flattery, Caesar; Desiring thee that Publius Cimber may Have an immediate freedom of repeal.

CAESAR. What, Brutus?

CASSIUS. Pardon, Caesar; Caesar, pardon: As low as to thy foot doth Cassius fall, To beg enfranchisement for Publius Cimber.

CAESAR. I could be well mov’d, if I were as you; If I could pray to move, prayers would move me: But I am constant as the northern star, Of whose true-fix’d and resting quality There is no fellow in the firmament. The skies are painted with unnumber’d sparks, They are all fire, and every one doth shine; But there’s but one in all doth hold his place. So in the world; ’tis furnish’d well with men, And men are flesh and blood, and apprehensive; Yet in the number I do know but one That unassailable holds on his rank, Unshak’d of motion: and that I am he, Let me a little show it, even in this, That I was constant Cimber should be banish’d, And constant do remain to keep him so.

CINNA. O Caesar,—

CAESAR. Hence! wilt thou lift up Olympus?

DECIUS. Great Caesar,—

CAESAR. Doth not Brutus bootless kneel?

CASCA. Speak, hands, for me!

[Casca stabs Caesar in the neck. Caesar catches hold of his arm. He is then stabbed by several other Conspirators, and at last by Marcus Brutus.]

CAESAR. Et tu, Brute?—Then fall, Caesar!

[Dies. The Senators and People retire in confusion.]

CINNA. Liberty! Freedom! Tyranny is dead! Run hence, proclaim, cry it about the streets.

CASSIUS. Some to the common pulpits and cry out, “Liberty, freedom, and enfranchisement!”

BRUTUS. People and Senators, be not affrighted. Fly not; stand still; ambition’s debt is paid.

CASCA. Go to the pulpit, Brutus.

DECIUS. And Cassius too.

BRUTUS. Where’s Publius?

CINNA. Here, quite confounded with this mutiny.

METELLUS. Stand fast together, lest some friend of Caesar’s Should chance—

BRUTUS. Talk not of standing. Publius, good cheer! There is no harm intended to your person, Nor to no Roman else. So tell them, Publius.

CASSIUS. And leave us, Publius; lest that the people Rushing on us, should do your age some mischief.

BRUTUS. Do so; and let no man abide this deed But we the doers.

Enter Trebonius.

CASSIUS. Where’s Antony?

TREBONIUS. Fled to his house amaz’d. Men, wives, and children stare, cry out, and run, As it were doomsday.

BRUTUS. Fates, we will know your pleasures. That we shall die, we know; ’tis but the time And drawing days out, that men stand upon.

CASCA. Why, he that cuts off twenty years of life Cuts off so many years of fearing death.

BRUTUS. Grant that, and then is death a benefit: So are we Caesar’s friends, that have abridg’d His time of fearing death. Stoop, Romans, stoop, And let us bathe our hands in Caesar’s blood Up to the elbows, and besmear our swords: Then walk we forth, even to the market-place, And waving our red weapons o’er our heads, Let’s all cry, “Peace, freedom, and liberty!”

CASSIUS. Stoop then, and wash. How many ages hence Shall this our lofty scene be acted over In States unborn, and accents yet unknown!

BRUTUS. How many times shall Caesar bleed in sport, That now on Pompey’s basis lies along, No worthier than the dust!

CASSIUS. So oft as that shall be, So often shall the knot of us be call’d The men that gave their country liberty.

DECIUS. What, shall we forth?

CASSIUS. Ay, every man away. Brutus shall lead; and we will grace his heels With the most boldest and best hearts of Rome.

BRUTUS. Soft, who comes here? A friend of Antony’s.

SERVANT. Thus, Brutus, did my master bid me kneel; Thus did Mark Antony bid me fall down; And, being prostrate, thus he bade me say: Brutus is noble, wise, valiant, and honest; Caesar was mighty, bold, royal, and loving; Say I love Brutus and I honour him; Say I fear’d Caesar, honour’d him, and lov’d him. If Brutus will vouchsafe that Antony May safely come to him, and be resolv’d How Caesar hath deserv’d to lie in death, Mark Antony shall not love Caesar dead So well as Brutus living; but will follow The fortunes and affairs of noble Brutus Thorough the hazards of this untrod state, With all true faith. So says my master Antony.

BRUTUS. Thy master is a wise and valiant Roman; I never thought him worse. Tell him, so please him come unto this place, He shall be satisfied and, by my honour, Depart untouch’d.

SERVANT. I’ll fetch him presently.

BRUTUS. I know that we shall have him well to friend.

CASSIUS. I wish we may: but yet have I a mind That fears him much; and my misgiving still Falls shrewdly to the purpose.

BRUTUS. But here comes Antony. Welcome, Mark Antony.

ANTONY. O mighty Caesar! Dost thou lie so low? Are all thy conquests, glories, triumphs, spoils, Shrunk to this little measure? Fare thee well. I know not, gentlemen, what you intend, Who else must be let blood, who else is rank: If I myself, there is no hour so fit As Caesar’s death’s hour; nor no instrument Of half that worth as those your swords, made rich With the most noble blood of all this world. I do beseech ye, if you bear me hard, Now, whilst your purpled hands do reek and smoke, Fulfill your pleasure. Live a thousand years, I shall not find myself so apt to die. No place will please me so, no means of death, As here by Caesar, and by you cut off, The choice and master spirits of this age.

BRUTUS. O Antony, beg not your death of us. Though now we must appear bloody and cruel, As by our hands and this our present act You see we do; yet see you but our hands And this the bleeding business they have done. Our hearts you see not; they are pitiful; And pity to the general wrong of Rome— As fire drives out fire, so pity pity— Hath done this deed on Caesar. For your part, To you our swords have leaden points, Mark Antony; Our arms in strength of malice, and our hearts Of brothers’ temper, do receive you in With all kind love, good thoughts, and reverence.

CASSIUS. Your voice shall be as strong as any man’s In the disposing of new dignities.

BRUTUS. Only be patient till we have appeas’d The multitude, beside themselves with fear, And then we will deliver you the cause Why I, that did love Caesar when I struck him, Have thus proceeded.

ANTONY. I doubt not of your wisdom. Let each man render me his bloody hand. First, Marcus Brutus, will I shake with you; Next, Caius Cassius, do I take your hand. Now, Decius Brutus, yours; now yours, Metellus; Yours, Cinna; and, my valiant Casca, yours; Though last, not least in love, yours, good Trebonius. Gentlemen all—alas, what shall I say? My credit now stands on such slippery ground, That one of two bad ways you must conceit me, Either a coward or a flatterer. That I did love thee, Caesar, O, ’tis true: If then thy spirit look upon us now, Shall it not grieve thee dearer than thy death, To see thy Antony making his peace, Shaking the bloody fingers of thy foes, Most noble, in the presence of thy corse? Had I as many eyes as thou hast wounds, Weeping as fast as they stream forth thy blood, It would become me better than to close In terms of friendship with thine enemies. Pardon me, Julius! Here wast thou bay’d, brave hart; Here didst thou fall; and here thy hunters stand, Sign’d in thy spoil, and crimson’d in thy lethe. O world, thou wast the forest to this hart; And this indeed, O world, the heart of thee. How like a deer strucken by many princes, Dost thou here lie!

CASSIUS. Mark Antony,—

ANTONY. Pardon me, Caius Cassius: The enemies of Caesar shall say this; Then, in a friend, it is cold modesty.

CASSIUS. I blame you not for praising Caesar so; But what compact mean you to have with us? Will you be prick’d in number of our friends, Or shall we on, and not depend on you?

ANTONY. Therefore I took your hands; but was indeed Sway’d from the point, by looking down on Caesar. Friends am I with you all, and love you all, Upon this hope, that you shall give me reasons Why, and wherein, Caesar was dangerous.

BRUTUS. Or else were this a savage spectacle. Our reasons are so full of good regard That were you, Antony, the son of Caesar, You should be satisfied.

ANTONY. That’s all I seek, And am moreover suitor that I may Produce his body to the market-place; And in the pulpit, as becomes a friend, Speak in the order of his funeral.

BRUTUS. You shall, Mark Antony.

CASSIUS. Brutus, a word with you. [Aside to Brutus.] You know not what you do. Do not consent That Antony speak in his funeral. Know you how much the people may be mov’d By that which he will utter?

BRUTUS. [Aside to Cassius.] By your pardon: I will myself into the pulpit first, And show the reason of our Caesar’s death. What Antony shall speak, I will protest He speaks by leave and by permission; And that we are contented Caesar shall Have all true rights and lawful ceremonies. It shall advantage more than do us wrong.

CASSIUS. [Aside to Brutus.] I know not what may fall; I like it not.

BRUTUS. Mark Antony, here, take you Caesar’s body. You shall not in your funeral speech blame us, But speak all good you can devise of Caesar, And say you do’t by our permission; Else shall you not have any hand at all About his funeral. And you shall speak In the same pulpit whereto I am going, After my speech is ended.

ANTONY. Be it so; I do desire no more.

BRUTUS. Prepare the body, then, and follow us.

[Exeunt all but Antony.]

ANTONY. O, pardon me, thou bleeding piece of earth, That I am meek and gentle with these butchers. Thou art the ruins of the noblest man That ever lived in the tide of times. Woe to the hand that shed this costly blood! Over thy wounds now do I prophesy, Which, like dumb mouths do ope their ruby lips To beg the voice and utterance of my tongue, A curse shall light upon the limbs of men; Domestic fury and fierce civil strife Shall cumber all the parts of Italy; Blood and destruction shall be so in use, And dreadful objects so familiar, That mothers shall but smile when they behold Their infants quartered with the hands of war; All pity chok’d with custom of fell deeds: And Caesar’s spirit, ranging for revenge, With Ate by his side come hot from Hell, Shall in these confines with a monarch’s voice Cry havoc and let slip the dogs of war, That this foul deed shall smell above the earth With carrion men, groaning for burial.

You serve Octavius Caesar, do you not?

SERVANT. I do, Mark Antony.

ANTONY. Caesar did write for him to come to Rome.

SERVANT. He did receive his letters, and is coming, And bid me say to you by word of mouth,— [Seeing the body.] O Caesar!

ANTONY. Thy heart is big, get thee apart and weep. Passion, I see, is catching; for mine eyes, Seeing those beads of sorrow stand in thine, Began to water. Is thy master coming?

SERVANT. He lies tonight within seven leagues of Rome.

ANTONY. Post back with speed, and tell him what hath chanc’d. Here is a mourning Rome, a dangerous Rome, No Rome of safety for Octavius yet. Hie hence, and tell him so. Yet stay awhile; Thou shalt not back till I have borne this corse Into the market-place: there shall I try, In my oration, how the people take The cruel issue of these bloody men; According to the which thou shalt discourse To young Octavius of the state of things. Lend me your hand.

[Exeunt with Caesar’s body.]

SCENE II. The same. The Forum.

Enter Brutus and goes into the pulpit, and Cassius, with a throng of Citizens.

CITIZENS. We will be satisfied; let us be satisfied.

BRUTUS. Then follow me, and give me audience, friends. Cassius, go you into the other street And part the numbers. Those that will hear me speak, let ’em stay here; Those that will follow Cassius, go with him; And public reasons shall be rendered Of Caesar’s death.

FIRST CITIZEN. I will hear Brutus speak.

SECOND CITIZEN. I will hear Cassius; and compare their reasons, When severally we hear them rendered.

[Exit Cassius, with some of the Citizens. Brutus goes into the rostrum.]

THIRD CITIZEN. The noble Brutus is ascended: silence!

BRUTUS. Be patient till the last. Romans, countrymen, and lovers, hear me for my cause; and be silent, that you may hear. Believe me for mine honour, and have respect to mine honour, that you may believe. Censure me in your wisdom, and awake your senses, that you may the better judge. If there be any in this assembly, any dear friend of Caesar’s, to him I say that Brutus’ love to Caesar was no less than his. If then that friend demand why Brutus rose against Caesar, this is my answer: Not that I loved Caesar less, but that I loved Rome more. Had you rather Caesar were living, and die all slaves, than that Caesar were dead, to live all free men? As Caesar loved me, I weep for him; as he was fortunate, I rejoice at it; as he was valiant, I honour him; but, as he was ambitious, I slew him. There is tears, for his love; joy for his fortune; honour for his valour; and death, for his ambition. Who is here so base, that would be a bondman? If any, speak; for him have I offended. Who is here so rude, that would not be a Roman? If any, speak; for him have I offended. Who is here so vile, that will not love his country? If any, speak; for him have I offended. I pause for a reply.

CITIZENS. None, Brutus, none.

BRUTUS. Then none have I offended. I have done no more to Caesar than you shall do to Brutus. The question of his death is enroll’d in the Capitol, his glory not extenuated, wherein he was worthy; nor his offences enforc’d, for which he suffered death.

Enter Antony and others, with Caesar’s body.

Here comes his body, mourned by Mark Antony, who, though he had no hand in his death, shall receive the benefit of his dying, a place in the commonwealth; as which of you shall not? With this I depart, that, as I slew my best lover for the good of Rome, I have the same dagger for myself, when it shall please my country to need my death.

CITIZENS. Live, Brutus! live, live!

FIRST CITIZEN. Bring him with triumph home unto his house.

SECOND CITIZEN. Give him a statue with his ancestors.

THIRD CITIZEN. Let him be Caesar.

FOURTH CITIZEN. Caesar’s better parts Shall be crown’d in Brutus.

FIRST CITIZEN. We’ll bring him to his house with shouts and clamours.

BRUTUS. My countrymen,—

SECOND CITIZEN. Peace! Silence! Brutus speaks.

FIRST CITIZEN. Peace, ho!

BRUTUS. Good countrymen, let me depart alone, And, for my sake, stay here with Antony. Do grace to Caesar’s corpse, and grace his speech Tending to Caesar’s glories, which Mark Antony, By our permission, is allow’d to make. I do entreat you, not a man depart, Save I alone, till Antony have spoke.

FIRST CITIZEN. Stay, ho! and let us hear Mark Antony.

THIRD CITIZEN. Let him go up into the public chair. We’ll hear him. Noble Antony, go up.

ANTONY. For Brutus’ sake, I am beholding to you.

[Goes up.]

FOURTH CITIZEN. What does he say of Brutus?

THIRD CITIZEN. He says, for Brutus’ sake He finds himself beholding to us all.

FOURTH CITIZEN. ’Twere best he speak no harm of Brutus here!

FIRST CITIZEN. This Caesar was a tyrant.

THIRD CITIZEN. Nay, that’s certain. We are blest that Rome is rid of him.

SECOND CITIZEN. Peace! let us hear what Antony can say.

ANTONY. You gentle Romans,—

CITIZENS. Peace, ho! let us hear him.

ANTONY. Friends, Romans, countrymen, lend me your ears; I come to bury Caesar, not to praise him. The evil that men do lives after them, The good is oft interred with their bones; So let it be with Caesar. The noble Brutus Hath told you Caesar was ambitious. If it were so, it was a grievous fault, And grievously hath Caesar answer’d it. Here, under leave of Brutus and the rest, For Brutus is an honourable man, So are they all, all honourable men, Come I to speak in Caesar’s funeral. He was my friend, faithful and just to me; But Brutus says he was ambitious, And Brutus is an honourable man. He hath brought many captives home to Rome, Whose ransoms did the general coffers fill: Did this in Caesar seem ambitious? When that the poor have cried, Caesar hath wept; Ambition should be made of sterner stuff: Yet Brutus says he was ambitious; And Brutus is an honourable man. You all did see that on the Lupercal I thrice presented him a kingly crown, Which he did thrice refuse. Was this ambition? Yet Brutus says he was ambitious; And sure he is an honourable man. I speak not to disprove what Brutus spoke, But here I am to speak what I do know. You all did love him once, not without cause; What cause withholds you then to mourn for him? O judgement, thou art fled to brutish beasts, And men have lost their reason. Bear with me. My heart is in the coffin there with Caesar, And I must pause till it come back to me.

FIRST CITIZEN. Methinks there is much reason in his sayings.

SECOND CITIZEN. If thou consider rightly of the matter, Caesar has had great wrong.

THIRD CITIZEN. Has he, masters? I fear there will a worse come in his place.

FOURTH CITIZEN. Mark’d ye his words? He would not take the crown; Therefore ’tis certain he was not ambitious.

FIRST CITIZEN. If it be found so, some will dear abide it.

SECOND CITIZEN. Poor soul, his eyes are red as fire with weeping.

THIRD CITIZEN. There’s not a nobler man in Rome than Antony.

FOURTH CITIZEN. Now mark him; he begins again to speak.

ANTONY. But yesterday the word of Caesar might Have stood against the world; now lies he there, And none so poor to do him reverence. O masters! If I were dispos’d to stir Your hearts and minds to mutiny and rage, I should do Brutus wrong and Cassius wrong, Who, you all know, are honourable men. I will not do them wrong; I rather choose To wrong the dead, to wrong myself and you, Than I will wrong such honourable men. But here’s a parchment with the seal of Caesar, I found it in his closet; ’tis his will: Let but the commons hear this testament, Which, pardon me, I do not mean to read, And they would go and kiss dead Caesar’s wounds, And dip their napkins in his sacred blood; Yea, beg a hair of him for memory, And, dying, mention it within their wills, Bequeathing it as a rich legacy Unto their issue.

FOURTH CITIZEN. We’ll hear the will. Read it, Mark Antony.

CITIZENS. The will, the will! We will hear Caesar’s will.

ANTONY. Have patience, gentle friends, I must not read it. It is not meet you know how Caesar loved you. You are not wood, you are not stones, but men; And being men, hearing the will of Caesar, It will inflame you, it will make you mad. ’Tis good you know not that you are his heirs; For if you should, O, what would come of it?

FOURTH CITIZEN. Read the will! We’ll hear it, Antony; You shall read us the will, Caesar’s will!

ANTONY. Will you be patient? Will you stay awhile? I have o’ershot myself to tell you of it. I fear I wrong the honourable men Whose daggers have stabb’d Caesar; I do fear it.

FOURTH CITIZEN. They were traitors. Honourable men!

CITIZENS. The will! The testament!

SECOND CITIZEN. They were villains, murderers. The will! Read the will!

ANTONY. You will compel me then to read the will? Then make a ring about the corpse of Caesar, And let me show you him that made the will. Shall I descend? and will you give me leave?

CITIZENS. Come down.

SECOND CITIZEN. Descend.

[He comes down.]

THIRD CITIZEN. You shall have leave.

FOURTH CITIZEN. A ring! Stand round.

FIRST CITIZEN. Stand from the hearse, stand from the body.

SECOND CITIZEN. Room for Antony, most noble Antony!

ANTONY. Nay, press not so upon me; stand far off.

CITIZENS. Stand back; room! bear back.

ANTONY. If you have tears, prepare to shed them now. You all do know this mantle. I remember The first time ever Caesar put it on; ’Twas on a Summer’s evening, in his tent, That day he overcame the Nervii. Look, in this place ran Cassius’ dagger through: See what a rent the envious Casca made: Through this the well-beloved Brutus stabb’d; And as he pluck’d his cursed steel away, Mark how the blood of Caesar follow’d it, As rushing out of doors, to be resolv’d If Brutus so unkindly knock’d, or no; For Brutus, as you know, was Caesar’s angel. Judge, O you gods, how dearly Caesar lov’d him. This was the most unkindest cut of all; For when the noble Caesar saw him stab, Ingratitude, more strong than traitors’ arms, Quite vanquish’d him: then burst his mighty heart; And in his mantle muffling up his face, Even at the base of Pompey’s statue Which all the while ran blood, great Caesar fell. O, what a fall was there, my countrymen! Then I, and you, and all of us fell down, Whilst bloody treason flourish’d over us. O, now you weep; and I perceive you feel The dint of pity. These are gracious drops. Kind souls, what weep you when you but behold Our Caesar’s vesture wounded? Look you here, Here is himself, marr’d, as you see, with traitors.

FIRST CITIZEN. O piteous spectacle!

SECOND CITIZEN. O noble Caesar!

THIRD CITIZEN. O woeful day!

FOURTH CITIZEN. O traitors, villains!

FIRST CITIZEN. O most bloody sight!

SECOND CITIZEN. We will be revenged.

CITIZENS. Revenge,—about,—seek,—burn,—fire,—kill,—slay,—let not a traitor live!

ANTONY. Stay, countrymen.

FIRST CITIZEN. Peace there! Hear the noble Antony.

SECOND CITIZEN. We’ll hear him, we’ll follow him, we’ll die with him.

ANTONY. Good friends, sweet friends, let me not stir you up To such a sudden flood of mutiny. They that have done this deed are honourable. What private griefs they have, alas, I know not, That made them do it. They’re wise and honourable, And will, no doubt, with reasons answer you. I come not, friends, to steal away your hearts. I am no orator, as Brutus is; But, as you know me all, a plain blunt man, That love my friend; and that they know full well That gave me public leave to speak of him. For I have neither wit, nor words, nor worth, Action, nor utterance, nor the power of speech, To stir men’s blood. I only speak right on. I tell you that which you yourselves do know, Show you sweet Caesar’s wounds, poor poor dumb mouths, And bid them speak for me. But were I Brutus, And Brutus Antony, there were an Antony Would ruffle up your spirits, and put a tongue In every wound of Caesar, that should move The stones of Rome to rise and mutiny.

CITIZENS. We’ll mutiny.

FIRST CITIZEN. We’ll burn the house of Brutus.

THIRD CITIZEN. Away, then! come, seek the conspirators.

ANTONY. Yet hear me, countrymen; yet hear me speak.

CITIZENS. Peace, ho! Hear Antony; most noble Antony.

ANTONY. Why, friends, you go to do you know not what. Wherein hath Caesar thus deserved your loves? Alas, you know not; I must tell you then. You have forgot the will I told you of.

CITIZENS. Most true; the will!—let’s stay, and hear the will.

ANTONY. Here is the will, and under Caesar’s seal. To every Roman citizen he gives, To every several man, seventy-five drachmas.

SECOND CITIZEN. Most noble Caesar! We’ll revenge his death.

THIRD CITIZEN. O, royal Caesar!

ANTONY. Hear me with patience.

CITIZENS. Peace, ho!

ANTONY. Moreover, he hath left you all his walks, His private arbors, and new-planted orchards, On this side Tiber; he hath left them you, And to your heirs forever; common pleasures, To walk abroad, and recreate yourselves. Here was a Caesar! when comes such another?

FIRST CITIZEN. Never, never. Come, away, away! We’ll burn his body in the holy place, And with the brands fire the traitors’ houses. Take up the body.

SECOND CITIZEN. Go, fetch fire.

THIRD CITIZEN. Pluck down benches.

FOURTH CITIZEN. Pluck down forms, windows, anything.

[Exeunt Citizens, with the body.]

ANTONY. Now let it work. Mischief, thou art afoot, Take thou what course thou wilt!

How now, fellow?

SERVANT. Sir, Octavius is already come to Rome.

ANTONY. Where is he?

SERVANT. He and Lepidus are at Caesar’s house.

ANTONY. And thither will I straight to visit him. He comes upon a wish. Fortune is merry, And in this mood will give us anything.

SERVANT. I heard him say Brutus and Cassius Are rid like madmen through the gates of Rome.

ANTONY. Belike they had some notice of the people, How I had moved them. Bring me to Octavius.

Enter Cinna, the poet, and after him the citizens.

CINNA. I dreamt tonight that I did feast with Caesar, And things unluckily charge my fantasy. I have no will to wander forth of doors, Yet something leads me forth.

FIRST CITIZEN. What is your name?

SECOND CITIZEN. Whither are you going?

THIRD CITIZEN. Where do you dwell?

FOURTH CITIZEN. Are you a married man or a bachelor?

SECOND CITIZEN. Answer every man directly.

FIRST CITIZEN. Ay, and briefly.

FOURTH CITIZEN. Ay, and wisely.

THIRD CITIZEN. Ay, and truly, you were best.

CINNA. What is my name? Whither am I going? Where do I dwell? Am I a married man or a bachelor? Then, to answer every man directly and briefly, wisely and truly. Wisely I say I am a bachelor.

SECOND CITIZEN. That’s as much as to say they are fools that marry; you’ll bear me a bang for that, I fear. Proceed, directly.

CINNA. Directly, I am going to Caesar’s funeral.

FIRST CITIZEN. As a friend, or an enemy?

CINNA. As a friend.

SECOND CITIZEN. That matter is answered directly.

FOURTH CITIZEN. For your dwelling, briefly.

CINNA. Briefly, I dwell by the Capitol.

THIRD CITIZEN. Your name, sir, truly.

CINNA. Truly, my name is Cinna.

FIRST CITIZEN. Tear him to pieces! He’s a conspirator.

CINNA. I am Cinna the poet, I am Cinna the poet.

FOURTH CITIZEN. Tear him for his bad verses, tear him for his bad verses.

CINNA. I am not Cinna the conspirator.

FOURTH CITIZEN. It is no matter, his name’s Cinna; pluck but his name out of his heart, and turn him going.

THIRD CITIZEN. Tear him, tear him! Come; brands, ho! firebrands. To Brutus’, to Cassius’; burn all. Some to Decius’ house, and some to Casca’s, some to Ligarius’. Away, go!

SCENE I. Rome. A room in Antony’s house.

Enter Antony, Octavius and Lepidus, seated at a table.

ANTONY. These many then shall die; their names are prick’d.

OCTAVIUS. Your brother too must die; consent you, Lepidus?

LEPIDUS. I do consent,—

OCTAVIUS. Prick him down, Antony.

LEPIDUS. Upon condition Publius shall not live, Who is your sister’s son, Mark Antony.

ANTONY. He shall not live; look, with a spot I damn him. But, Lepidus, go you to Caesar’s house; Fetch the will hither, and we shall determine How to cut off some charge in legacies.

LEPIDUS. What, shall I find you here?

OCTAVIUS. Or here, or at the Capitol.

[Exit Lepidus.]

ANTONY. This is a slight unmeritable man, Meet to be sent on errands. Is it fit, The three-fold world divided, he should stand One of the three to share it?

OCTAVIUS. So you thought him, And took his voice who should be prick’d to die In our black sentence and proscription.

ANTONY. Octavius, I have seen more days than you; And though we lay these honours on this man, To ease ourselves of divers sland’rous loads, He shall but bear them as the ass bears gold, To groan and sweat under the business, Either led or driven, as we point the way; And having brought our treasure where we will, Then take we down his load, and turn him off, Like to the empty ass, to shake his ears, And graze in commons.

OCTAVIUS. You may do your will; But he’s a tried and valiant soldier.

ANTONY. So is my horse, Octavius; and for that I do appoint him store of provender. It is a creature that I teach to fight, To wind, to stop, to run directly on, His corporal motion govern’d by my spirit. And, in some taste, is Lepidus but so: He must be taught, and train’d, and bid go forth: A barren-spirited fellow; one that feeds On objects, arts, and imitations, Which, out of use and stal’d by other men, Begin his fashion. Do not talk of him But as a property. And now, Octavius, Listen great things. Brutus and Cassius Are levying powers; we must straight make head. Therefore let our alliance be combin’d, Our best friends made, our means stretch’d; And let us presently go sit in council, How covert matters may be best disclos’d, And open perils surest answered.

OCTAVIUS. Let us do so: for we are at the stake, And bay’d about with many enemies; And some that smile have in their hearts, I fear, Millions of mischiefs.

SCENE II. Before Brutus’ tent, in the camp near Sardis.

Drum. Enter Brutus, Lucilius, Titinius and Soldiers; Pindarus meeting them; Lucius at some distance.

BRUTUS. Stand, ho!

LUCILIUS. Give the word, ho! and stand.

BRUTUS. What now, Lucilius! is Cassius near?

LUCILIUS. He is at hand, and Pindarus is come To do you salutation from his master.

[Pindarus gives a letter to Brutus.]

BRUTUS. He greets me well. Your master, Pindarus, In his own change, or by ill officers, Hath given me some worthy cause to wish Things done, undone: but, if he be at hand, I shall be satisfied.

PINDARUS. I do not doubt But that my noble master will appear Such as he is, full of regard and honour.

BRUTUS. He is not doubted. A word, Lucilius; How he received you, let me be resolv’d.

LUCILIUS. With courtesy and with respect enough, But not with such familiar instances, Nor with such free and friendly conference, As he hath us’d of old.

BRUTUS. Thou hast describ’d A hot friend cooling. Ever note, Lucilius, When love begins to sicken and decay It useth an enforced ceremony. There are no tricks in plain and simple faith; But hollow men, like horses hot at hand, Make gallant show and promise of their mettle;

[Low march within.]

But when they should endure the bloody spur, They fall their crests, and like deceitful jades Sink in the trial. Comes his army on?

LUCILIUS. They meant this night in Sardis to be quarter’d; The greater part, the horse in general, Are come with Cassius.

Enter Cassius and Soldiers.

BRUTUS. Hark! he is arriv’d. March gently on to meet him.

CASSIUS. Stand, ho!

BRUTUS. Stand, ho! Speak the word along.

FIRST SOLDIER. Stand!

SECOND SOLDIER. Stand!

THIRD SOLDIER. Stand!

CASSIUS. Most noble brother, you have done me wrong.

BRUTUS. Judge me, you gods; wrong I mine enemies? And if not so, how should I wrong a brother?

CASSIUS. Brutus, this sober form of yours hides wrongs; And when you do them—

BRUTUS. Cassius, be content. Speak your griefs softly, I do know you well. Before the eyes of both our armies here, Which should perceive nothing but love from us, Let us not wrangle. Bid them move away; Then in my tent, Cassius, enlarge your griefs, And I will give you audience.

CASSIUS. Pindarus, Bid our commanders lead their charges off A little from this ground.

BRUTUS. Lucilius, do you the like; and let no man Come to our tent till we have done our conference. Lucius and Titinius, guard our door.

SCENE III. Within the tent of Brutus.

Enter Brutus and Cassius.

CASSIUS. That you have wrong’d me doth appear in this: You have condemn’d and noted Lucius Pella For taking bribes here of the Sardians; Wherein my letters, praying on his side Because I knew the man, were slighted off.

BRUTUS. You wrong’d yourself to write in such a case.

CASSIUS. In such a time as this it is not meet That every nice offence should bear his comment.

BRUTUS. Let me tell you, Cassius, you yourself Are much condemn’d to have an itching palm, To sell and mart your offices for gold To undeservers.

CASSIUS. I an itching palm! You know that you are Brutus that speak this, Or, by the gods, this speech were else your last.

BRUTUS. The name of Cassius honours this corruption, And chastisement doth therefore hide his head.

CASSIUS. Chastisement!

BRUTUS. Remember March, the Ides of March remember: Did not great Julius bleed for justice’ sake? What villain touch’d his body, that did stab, And not for justice? What! Shall one of us, That struck the foremost man of all this world But for supporting robbers, shall we now Contaminate our fingers with base bribes, And sell the mighty space of our large honours For so much trash as may be grasped thus? I had rather be a dog, and bay the moon, Than such a Roman.

CASSIUS. Brutus, bait not me, I’ll not endure it. You forget yourself, To hedge me in. I am a soldier, I, Older in practice, abler than yourself To make conditions.

BRUTUS. Go to; you are not, Cassius.

CASSIUS. I am.

BRUTUS. I say you are not.

CASSIUS. Urge me no more, I shall forget myself; Have mind upon your health, tempt me no farther.

BRUTUS. Away, slight man!

CASSIUS. Is’t possible?

BRUTUS. Hear me, for I will speak. Must I give way and room to your rash choler? Shall I be frighted when a madman stares?

CASSIUS. O ye gods, ye gods! Must I endure all this?

BRUTUS. All this? ay, more: fret till your proud heart break; Go show your slaves how choleric you are, And make your bondmen tremble. Must I budge? Must I observe you? Must I stand and crouch Under your testy humour? By the gods, You shall digest the venom of your spleen, Though it do split you; for, from this day forth, I’ll use you for my mirth, yea, for my laughter, When you are waspish.

CASSIUS. Is it come to this?

BRUTUS. You say you are a better soldier: Let it appear so; make your vaunting true, And it shall please me well. For mine own part, I shall be glad to learn of noble men.

CASSIUS. You wrong me every way, you wrong me, Brutus. I said, an elder soldier, not a better: Did I say better?

BRUTUS. If you did, I care not.

CASSIUS. When Caesar liv’d, he durst not thus have mov’d me.

BRUTUS. Peace, peace! you durst not so have tempted him.

CASSIUS. I durst not?

BRUTUS. No.

CASSIUS. What? durst not tempt him?

BRUTUS. For your life you durst not.

CASSIUS. Do not presume too much upon my love. I may do that I shall be sorry for.

BRUTUS. You have done that you should be sorry for. There is no terror, Cassius, in your threats, For I am arm’d so strong in honesty, That they pass by me as the idle wind, Which I respect not. I did send to you For certain sums of gold, which you denied me; For I can raise no money by vile means: By Heaven, I had rather coin my heart, And drop my blood for drachmas, than to wring From the hard hands of peasants their vile trash By any indirection. I did send To you for gold to pay my legions, Which you denied me: was that done like Cassius? Should I have answer’d Caius Cassius so? When Marcus Brutus grows so covetous, To lock such rascal counters from his friends, Be ready, gods, with all your thunderbolts, Dash him to pieces!

CASSIUS. I denied you not.

BRUTUS. You did.

CASSIUS. I did not. He was but a fool That brought my answer back. Brutus hath riv’d my heart. A friend should bear his friend’s infirmities; But Brutus makes mine greater than they are.

BRUTUS. I do not, till you practise them on me.

CASSIUS. You love me not.

BRUTUS. I do not like your faults.

CASSIUS. A friendly eye could never see such faults.

BRUTUS. A flatterer’s would not, though they do appear As huge as high Olympus.

CASSIUS. Come, Antony, and young Octavius, come, Revenge yourselves alone on Cassius, For Cassius is a-weary of the world: Hated by one he loves; brav’d by his brother; Check’d like a bondman; all his faults observ’d, Set in a note-book, learn’d and conn’d by rote, To cast into my teeth. O, I could weep My spirit from mine eyes! There is my dagger, And here my naked breast; within, a heart Dearer than Plutus’ mine, richer than gold: If that thou be’st a Roman, take it forth. I, that denied thee gold, will give my heart: Strike as thou didst at Caesar; for I know, When thou didst hate him worst, thou lovedst him better Than ever thou lovedst Cassius.

BRUTUS. Sheathe your dagger. Be angry when you will, it shall have scope; Do what you will, dishonour shall be humour. O Cassius, you are yoked with a lamb That carries anger as the flint bears fire, Who, much enforced, shows a hasty spark, And straight is cold again.

CASSIUS. Hath Cassius liv’d To be but mirth and laughter to his Brutus, When grief and blood ill-temper’d vexeth him?

BRUTUS. When I spoke that, I was ill-temper’d too.

CASSIUS. Do you confess so much? Give me your hand.

BRUTUS. And my heart too.

CASSIUS. O Brutus!

CASSIUS. Have not you love enough to bear with me, When that rash humour which my mother gave me Makes me forgetful?

BRUTUS. Yes, Cassius; and from henceforth, When you are over-earnest with your Brutus, He’ll think your mother chides, and leave you so.

Enter Poet, followed by Lucilius, Titinius and Lucius.

POET. [Within.] Let me go in to see the generals, There is some grudge between ’em; ’tis not meet They be alone.

LUCILIUS. [Within.] You shall not come to them.

POET. [Within.] Nothing but death shall stay me.

CASSIUS. How now! What’s the matter?

POET. For shame, you generals! What do you mean? Love, and be friends, as two such men should be; For I have seen more years, I’m sure, than ye.

CASSIUS. Ha, ha! How vilely doth this cynic rhyme!

BRUTUS. Get you hence, sirrah. Saucy fellow, hence!

CASSIUS. Bear with him, Brutus; ’tis his fashion.

BRUTUS. I’ll know his humour when he knows his time. What should the wars do with these jigging fools? Companion, hence!

CASSIUS. Away, away, be gone!

[Exit Poet.]

BRUTUS. Lucilius and Titinius, bid the commanders Prepare to lodge their companies tonight.

CASSIUS. And come yourselves and bring Messala with you Immediately to us.

[Exeunt Lucilius and Titinius.]

BRUTUS. Lucius, a bowl of wine.

CASSIUS. I did not think you could have been so angry.

BRUTUS. O Cassius, I am sick of many griefs.

CASSIUS. Of your philosophy you make no use, If you give place to accidental evils.

BRUTUS. No man bears sorrow better. Portia is dead.

CASSIUS. Ha? Portia?

BRUTUS. She is dead.

CASSIUS. How ’scap’d I killing, when I cross’d you so? O insupportable and touching loss! Upon what sickness?

BRUTUS. Impatient of my absence, And grief that young Octavius with Mark Antony Have made themselves so strong; for with her death That tidings came. With this she fell distract, And, her attendants absent, swallow’d fire.

CASSIUS. And died so?

BRUTUS. Even so.

CASSIUS. O ye immortal gods!

Enter Lucius, with wine and a taper.

BRUTUS. Speak no more of her. Give me a bowl of wine. In this I bury all unkindness, Cassius.

CASSIUS. My heart is thirsty for that noble pledge. Fill, Lucius, till the wine o’erswell the cup. I cannot drink too much of Brutus’ love.

Enter Titinius and Messala.

BRUTUS. Come in, Titinius! Welcome, good Messala. Now sit we close about this taper here, And call in question our necessities.

CASSIUS. Portia, art thou gone?

BRUTUS. No more, I pray you. Messala, I have here received letters, That young Octavius and Mark Antony Come down upon us with a mighty power, Bending their expedition toward Philippi.

MESSALA. Myself have letters of the selfsame tenor.

BRUTUS. With what addition?

MESSALA. That by proscription and bills of outlawry Octavius, Antony, and Lepidus Have put to death an hundred Senators.

BRUTUS. Therein our letters do not well agree. Mine speak of seventy Senators that died By their proscriptions, Cicero being one.

CASSIUS. Cicero one!

MESSALA. Cicero is dead, And by that order of proscription. Had you your letters from your wife, my lord?

BRUTUS. No, Messala.

MESSALA. Nor nothing in your letters writ of her?

BRUTUS. Nothing, Messala.

MESSALA. That, methinks, is strange.

BRUTUS. Why ask you? Hear you aught of her in yours?

MESSALA. No, my lord.

BRUTUS. Now as you are a Roman, tell me true.

MESSALA. Then like a Roman bear the truth I tell, For certain she is dead, and by strange manner.

BRUTUS. Why, farewell, Portia. We must die, Messala. With meditating that she must die once, I have the patience to endure it now.

MESSALA. Even so great men great losses should endure.

CASSIUS. I have as much of this in art as you, But yet my nature could not bear it so.

BRUTUS. Well, to our work alive. What do you think Of marching to Philippi presently?

CASSIUS. I do not think it good.

BRUTUS. Your reason?

CASSIUS. This it is: ’Tis better that the enemy seek us; So shall he waste his means, weary his soldiers, Doing himself offence, whilst we, lying still, Are full of rest, defence, and nimbleness.

BRUTUS. Good reasons must of force give place to better. The people ’twixt Philippi and this ground Do stand but in a forced affection; For they have grudg’d us contribution. The enemy, marching along by them, By them shall make a fuller number up, Come on refresh’d, new-added, and encourag’d; From which advantage shall we cut him off If at Philippi we do face him there, These people at our back.

CASSIUS. Hear me, good brother.

BRUTUS. Under your pardon. You must note besides, That we have tried the utmost of our friends, Our legions are brim-full, our cause is ripe. The enemy increaseth every day; We, at the height, are ready to decline. There is a tide in the affairs of men, Which, taken at the flood, leads on to fortune; Omitted, all the voyage of their life Is bound in shallows and in miseries. On such a full sea are we now afloat, And we must take the current when it serves, Or lose our ventures.

CASSIUS. Then, with your will, go on: We’ll along ourselves, and meet them at Philippi.

BRUTUS. The deep of night is crept upon our talk, And nature must obey necessity, Which we will niggard with a little rest. There is no more to say?

CASSIUS. No more. Good night: Early tomorrow will we rise, and hence.

BRUTUS. Lucius! My gown.

Farewell now, good Messala. Good night, Titinius. Noble, noble Cassius, Good night, and good repose.

CASSIUS. O my dear brother! This was an ill beginning of the night. Never come such division ’tween our souls! Let it not, Brutus.

Enter Lucius with the gown.

BRUTUS. Everything is well.

CASSIUS. Good night, my lord.

BRUTUS. Good night, good brother.

TITINIUS and MESSALA. Good night, Lord Brutus.

BRUTUS. Farewell, everyone.

[Exeunt Cassius, Titinius and Messala.]

Give me the gown. Where is thy instrument?

LUCIUS. Here in the tent.

BRUTUS. What, thou speak’st drowsily? Poor knave, I blame thee not, thou art o’er-watch’d. Call Claudius and some other of my men; I’ll have them sleep on cushions in my tent.

LUCIUS. Varro and Claudius!

Enter Varro and Claudius.

VARRO. Calls my lord?

BRUTUS. I pray you, sirs, lie in my tent and sleep; It may be I shall raise you by-and-by On business to my brother Cassius.

VARRO. So please you, we will stand and watch your pleasure.

BRUTUS. I will not have it so; lie down, good sirs, It may be I shall otherwise bethink me. Look, Lucius, here’s the book I sought for so; I put it in the pocket of my gown.

[Servants lie down.]

LUCIUS. I was sure your lordship did not give it me.

BRUTUS. Bear with me, good boy, I am much forgetful. Canst thou hold up thy heavy eyes awhile, And touch thy instrument a strain or two?

LUCIUS. Ay, my lord, an’t please you.

BRUTUS. It does, my boy. I trouble thee too much, but thou art willing.

LUCIUS. It is my duty, sir.

BRUTUS. I should not urge thy duty past thy might; I know young bloods look for a time of rest.

LUCIUS. I have slept, my lord, already.

BRUTUS. It was well done, and thou shalt sleep again; I will not hold thee long. If I do live, I will be good to thee.

[Lucius plays and sings till he falls asleep.]

This is a sleepy tune. O murd’rous slumber, Layest thou thy leaden mace upon my boy, That plays thee music? Gentle knave, good night; I will not do thee so much wrong to wake thee. If thou dost nod, thou break’st thy instrument; I’ll take it from thee; and, good boy, good night. Let me see, let me see; is not the leaf turn’d down Where I left reading? Here it is, I think.

Enter the Ghost of Caesar.

How ill this taper burns! Ha! who comes here? I think it is the weakness of mine eyes That shapes this monstrous apparition. It comes upon me. Art thou anything? Art thou some god, some angel, or some devil, That mak’st my blood cold and my hair to stare? Speak to me what thou art.

GHOST. Thy evil spirit, Brutus.

BRUTUS. Why com’st thou?

GHOST. To tell thee thou shalt see me at Philippi.

BRUTUS. Well; then I shall see thee again?

GHOST. Ay, at Philippi.

BRUTUS. Why, I will see thee at Philippi then.

[Ghost vanishes.]

Now I have taken heart, thou vanishest. Ill spirit, I would hold more talk with thee. Boy! Lucius! Varro! Claudius! Sirs, awake! Claudius!

LUCIUS. The strings, my lord, are false.

BRUTUS. He thinks he still is at his instrument. Lucius, awake!

LUCIUS. My lord?

BRUTUS. Didst thou dream, Lucius, that thou so criedst out?

LUCIUS. My lord, I do not know that I did cry.

BRUTUS. Yes, that thou didst. Didst thou see anything?

LUCIUS. Nothing, my lord.

BRUTUS. Sleep again, Lucius. Sirrah Claudius! Fellow thou, awake!

VARRO. My lord?

CLAUDIUS. My lord?

BRUTUS. Why did you so cry out, sirs, in your sleep?

VARRO. CLAUDIUS. Did we, my lord?

BRUTUS. Ay. Saw you anything?

VARRO. No, my lord, I saw nothing.

CLAUDIUS. Nor I, my lord.

BRUTUS. Go and commend me to my brother Cassius; Bid him set on his powers betimes before, And we will follow.

VARRO. CLAUDIUS. It shall be done, my lord.

SCENE I. The plains of Philippi.

Enter Octavius, Antony and their Army.

OCTAVIUS. Now, Antony, our hopes are answered. You said the enemy would not come down, But keep the hills and upper regions. It proves not so; their battles are at hand, They mean to warn us at Philippi here, Answering before we do demand of them.

ANTONY. Tut, I am in their bosoms, and I know Wherefore they do it. They could be content To visit other places, and come down With fearful bravery, thinking by this face To fasten in our thoughts that they have courage; But ’tis not so.

MESSENGER. Prepare you, generals. The enemy comes on in gallant show; Their bloody sign of battle is hung out, And something to be done immediately.

ANTONY. Octavius, lead your battle softly on Upon the left hand of the even field.

OCTAVIUS. Upon the right hand I. Keep thou the left.

ANTONY. Why do you cross me in this exigent?

OCTAVIUS. I do not cross you; but I will do so.

[March.]

Drum. Enter Brutus, Cassius and their Army; Lucilius, Titinius, Messala and others.

BRUTUS. They stand, and would have parley.

CASSIUS. Stand fast, Titinius; we must out and talk.

OCTAVIUS. Mark Antony, shall we give sign of battle?

ANTONY. No, Caesar, we will answer on their charge. Make forth; the generals would have some words.

OCTAVIUS. Stir not until the signal.

BRUTUS. Words before blows: is it so, countrymen?

OCTAVIUS. Not that we love words better, as you do.

BRUTUS. Good words are better than bad strokes, Octavius.

ANTONY. In your bad strokes, Brutus, you give good words; Witness the hole you made in Caesar’s heart, Crying, “Long live! Hail, Caesar!”

CASSIUS. Antony, The posture of your blows are yet unknown; But for your words, they rob the Hybla bees, And leave them honeyless.

ANTONY. Not stingless too.

BRUTUS. O yes, and soundless too, For you have stol’n their buzzing, Antony, And very wisely threat before you sting.

ANTONY. Villains, you did not so when your vile daggers Hack’d one another in the sides of Caesar: You show’d your teeth like apes, and fawn’d like hounds, And bow’d like bondmen, kissing Caesar’s feet; Whilst damned Casca, like a cur, behind Struck Caesar on the neck. O you flatterers!

CASSIUS. Flatterers! Now, Brutus, thank yourself. This tongue had not offended so today, If Cassius might have rul’d.

OCTAVIUS. Come, come, the cause. If arguing makes us sweat, The proof of it will turn to redder drops. Look, I draw a sword against conspirators. When think you that the sword goes up again? Never, till Caesar’s three and thirty wounds Be well aveng’d; or till another Caesar Have added slaughter to the sword of traitors.

BRUTUS. Caesar, thou canst not die by traitors’ hands, Unless thou bring’st them with thee.

OCTAVIUS. So I hope. I was not born to die on Brutus’ sword.

BRUTUS. O, if thou wert the noblest of thy strain, Young man, thou couldst not die more honourable.

CASSIUS. A peevish school-boy, worthless of such honour, Join’d with a masker and a reveller.

ANTONY. Old Cassius still!

OCTAVIUS. Come, Antony; away! Defiance, traitors, hurl we in your teeth. If you dare fight today, come to the field; If not, when you have stomachs.

[Exeunt Octavius, Antony and their Army.]

CASSIUS. Why now, blow wind, swell billow, and swim bark! The storm is up, and all is on the hazard.

BRUTUS. Ho, Lucilius! Hark, a word with you.

LUCILIUS. My lord?

[Brutus and Lucilius talk apart.]

CASSIUS. Messala.

MESSALA. What says my General?

CASSIUS. Messala, This is my birth-day; as this very day Was Cassius born. Give me thy hand, Messala: Be thou my witness that against my will As Pompey was, am I compell’d to set Upon one battle all our liberties. You know that I held Epicurus strong, And his opinion. Now I change my mind, And partly credit things that do presage. Coming from Sardis, on our former ensign Two mighty eagles fell, and there they perch’d, Gorging and feeding from our soldiers’ hands, Who to Philippi here consorted us. This morning are they fled away and gone, And in their steads do ravens, crows, and kites Fly o’er our heads, and downward look on us, As we were sickly prey: their shadows seem A canopy most fatal, under which Our army lies, ready to give up the ghost.

MESSALA. Believe not so.

CASSIUS. I but believe it partly, For I am fresh of spirit, and resolv’d To meet all perils very constantly.

BRUTUS. Even so, Lucilius.

CASSIUS. Now, most noble Brutus, The gods today stand friendly, that we may, Lovers in peace, lead on our days to age! But, since the affairs of men rest still incertain, Let’s reason with the worst that may befall. If we do lose this battle, then is this The very last time we shall speak together: What are you then determined to do?

BRUTUS. Even by the rule of that philosophy By which I did blame Cato for the death Which he did give himself, I know not how, But I do find it cowardly and vile, For fear of what might fall, so to prevent The time of life, arming myself with patience To stay the providence of some high powers That govern us below.

CASSIUS. Then, if we lose this battle, You are contented to be led in triumph Thorough the streets of Rome?

BRUTUS. No, Cassius, no: think not, thou noble Roman, That ever Brutus will go bound to Rome; He bears too great a mind. But this same day Must end that work the Ides of March begun; And whether we shall meet again I know not. Therefore our everlasting farewell take. For ever, and for ever, farewell, Cassius. If we do meet again, why, we shall smile; If not, why then this parting was well made.

CASSIUS. For ever and for ever farewell, Brutus. If we do meet again, we’ll smile indeed; If not, ’tis true this parting was well made.

BRUTUS. Why then, lead on. O, that a man might know The end of this day’s business ere it come! But it sufficeth that the day will end, And then the end is known. Come, ho! away!

SCENE II. The same. The field of battle.

Alarum. Enter Brutus and Messala.

BRUTUS. Ride, ride, Messala, ride, and give these bills Unto the legions on the other side.

[Loud alarum.]

Let them set on at once; for I perceive But cold demeanor in Octavius’ wing, And sudden push gives them the overthrow. Ride, ride, Messala; let them all come down.

Alarum. Enter Cassius and Titinius.

CASSIUS. O, look, Titinius, look, the villains fly! Myself have to mine own turn’d enemy: This ensign here of mine was turning back; I slew the coward, and did take it from him.

TITINIUS. O Cassius, Brutus gave the word too early, Who, having some advantage on Octavius, Took it too eagerly: his soldiers fell to spoil, Whilst we by Antony are all enclos’d.

Enter Pindarus.

PINDARUS. Fly further off, my lord, fly further off; Mark Antony is in your tents, my lord. Fly, therefore, noble Cassius, fly far off.

CASSIUS. This hill is far enough. Look, look, Titinius; Are those my tents where I perceive the fire?

TITINIUS. They are, my lord.

CASSIUS. Titinius, if thou lovest me, Mount thou my horse and hide thy spurs in him, Till he have brought thee up to yonder troops And here again, that I may rest assur’d Whether yond troops are friend or enemy.

TITINIUS. I will be here again, even with a thought.

CASSIUS. Go, Pindarus, get higher on that hill, My sight was ever thick. Regard Titinius, And tell me what thou notest about the field.

[Pindarus goes up.]

This day I breathed first. Time is come round, And where I did begin, there shall I end. My life is run his compass. Sirrah, what news?

PINDARUS. [Above.] O my lord!

CASSIUS. What news?

PINDARUS. [Above.] Titinius is enclosed round about With horsemen, that make to him on the spur, Yet he spurs on. Now they are almost on him. Now, Titinius! Now some light. O, he lights too. He’s ta’en!

[Shout.]

And, hark! they shout for joy.

CASSIUS. Come down; behold no more. O, coward that I am, to live so long, To see my best friend ta’en before my face!

[Pindarus descends.]

Come hither, sirrah. In Parthia did I take thee prisoner; And then I swore thee, saving of thy life, That whatsoever I did bid thee do, Thou shouldst attempt it. Come now, keep thine oath. Now be a freeman; and with this good sword, That ran through Caesar’s bowels, search this bosom. Stand not to answer. Here, take thou the hilts; And when my face is cover’d, as ’tis now, Guide thou the sword.—Caesar, thou art reveng’d, Even with the sword that kill’d thee.

PINDARUS. So, I am free, yet would not so have been, Durst I have done my will. O Cassius! Far from this country Pindarus shall run, Where never Roman shall take note of him.

Enter Titinius with Messala.

MESSALA. It is but change, Titinius; for Octavius Is overthrown by noble Brutus’ power, As Cassius’ legions are by Antony.

TITINIUS. These tidings would well comfort Cassius.

MESSALA. Where did you leave him?

TITINIUS. All disconsolate, With Pindarus his bondman, on this hill.

MESSALA. Is not that he that lies upon the ground?

TITINIUS. He lies not like the living. O my heart!

MESSALA. Is not that he?

TITINIUS. No, this was he, Messala, But Cassius is no more. O setting sun, As in thy red rays thou dost sink to night, So in his red blood Cassius’ day is set. The sun of Rome is set. Our day is gone; Clouds, dews, and dangers come; our deeds are done. Mistrust of my success hath done this deed.

MESSALA. Mistrust of good success hath done this deed. O hateful Error, Melancholy’s child! Why dost thou show to the apt thoughts of men The things that are not? O Error, soon conceiv’d, Thou never com’st unto a happy birth, But kill’st the mother that engender’d thee!

TITINIUS. What, Pindarus! where art thou, Pindarus?

MESSALA. Seek him, Titinius, whilst I go to meet The noble Brutus, thrusting this report Into his ears. I may say thrusting it; For piercing steel and darts envenomed Shall be as welcome to the ears of Brutus As tidings of this sight.

TITINIUS. Hie you, Messala, And I will seek for Pindarus the while.

[Exit Messala.]

Why didst thou send me forth, brave Cassius? Did I not meet thy friends? And did not they Put on my brows this wreath of victory, And bid me give it thee? Didst thou not hear their shouts? Alas, thou hast misconstrued everything! But, hold thee, take this garland on thy brow; Thy Brutus bid me give it thee, and I Will do his bidding. Brutus, come apace, And see how I regarded Caius Cassius. By your leave, gods. This is a Roman’s part. Come, Cassius’ sword, and find Titinius’ heart.

Alarum. Enter Brutus, Messala, young Cato, Strato, Volumnius and Lucilius.

BRUTUS. Where, where, Messala, doth his body lie?

MESSALA. Lo, yonder, and Titinius mourning it.

BRUTUS. Titinius’ face is upward.

CATO. He is slain.

BRUTUS. O Julius Caesar, thou art mighty yet! Thy spirit walks abroad, and turns our swords In our own proper entrails.

[Low alarums.]

CATO. Brave Titinius! Look whether he have not crown’d dead Cassius!

BRUTUS. Are yet two Romans living such as these? The last of all the Romans, fare thee well! It is impossible that ever Rome Should breed thy fellow. Friends, I owe more tears To this dead man than you shall see me pay. I shall find time, Cassius, I shall find time. Come therefore, and to Thassos send his body. His funerals shall not be in our camp, Lest it discomfort us. Lucilius, come; And come, young Cato; let us to the field. Labeo and Flavius, set our battles on. ’Tis three o’clock; and Romans, yet ere night We shall try fortune in a second fight.

SCENE IV. Another part of the field.

Alarum. Enter fighting soldiers of both armies; then Brutus, Messala, young Cato, Lucilius, Flavius and others.

BRUTUS. Yet, countrymen, O, yet hold up your heads!

CATO. What bastard doth not? Who will go with me? I will proclaim my name about the field. I am the son of Marcus Cato, ho! A foe to tyrants, and my country’s friend. I am the son of Marcus Cato, ho!

[Charges the enemy.]

LUCILIUS. And I am Brutus, Marcus Brutus, I; Brutus, my country’s friend; know me for Brutus!

[Exit, charging the enemy. Cato is overpowered, and falls.]

LUCILIUS. O young and noble Cato, art thou down? Why, now thou diest as bravely as Titinius, And mayst be honour’d, being Cato’s son.

FIRST SOLDIER. Yield, or thou diest.

LUCILIUS. Only I yield to die: There is so much that thou wilt kill me straight;

[Offering money]

Kill Brutus, and be honour’d in his death.

FIRST SOLDIER. We must not. A noble prisoner!

SECOND SOLDIER. Room, ho! Tell Antony, Brutus is ta’en.

FIRST SOLDIER. I’ll tell the news. Here comes the General.

Brutus is ta’en, Brutus is ta’en, my lord.

LUCILIUS. Safe, Antony; Brutus is safe enough. I dare assure thee that no enemy Shall ever take alive the noble Brutus. The gods defend him from so great a shame! When you do find him, or alive or dead, He will be found like Brutus, like himself.

ANTONY. This is not Brutus, friend; but, I assure you, A prize no less in worth. Keep this man safe, Give him all kindness. I had rather have Such men my friends than enemies. Go on, And see whether Brutus be alive or dead; And bring us word unto Octavius’ tent How everything is chanc’d.

Enter Brutus, Dardanius, Clitus, Strato and Volumnius.

BRUTUS. Come, poor remains of friends, rest on this rock.

CLITUS. Statilius show’d the torch-light; but, my lord, He came not back: he is or ta’en or slain.

BRUTUS. Sit thee down, Clitus. Slaying is the word; It is a deed in fashion. Hark thee, Clitus.

[Whispering.]

CLITUS. What, I, my lord? No, not for all the world.

BRUTUS. Peace then, no words.

CLITUS. I’ll rather kill myself.

BRUTUS. Hark thee, Dardanius.

[Whispers him.]

DARDANIUS. Shall I do such a deed?

CLITUS. O Dardanius!

DARDANIUS. O Clitus!

CLITUS. What ill request did Brutus make to thee?

DARDANIUS. To kill him, Clitus. Look, he meditates.

CLITUS. Now is that noble vessel full of grief, That it runs over even at his eyes.

BRUTUS. Come hither, good Volumnius; list a word.

VOLUMNIUS. What says my lord?

BRUTUS. Why, this, Volumnius: The ghost of Caesar hath appear’d to me Two several times by night; at Sardis once, And this last night here in Philippi fields. I know my hour is come.

VOLUMNIUS. Not so, my lord.

BRUTUS. Nay I am sure it is, Volumnius. Thou seest the world, Volumnius, how it goes; Our enemies have beat us to the pit.

It is more worthy to leap in ourselves Than tarry till they push us. Good Volumnius, Thou know’st that we two went to school together; Even for that our love of old, I pr’ythee Hold thou my sword-hilts, whilst I run on it.

VOLUMNIUS. That’s not an office for a friend, my lord.

[Alarums still.]

CLITUS. Fly, fly, my lord! there is no tarrying here.

BRUTUS. Farewell to you; and you; and you, Volumnius. Strato, thou hast been all this while asleep; Farewell to thee too, Strato.—Countrymen, My heart doth joy, that yet in all my life I found no man but he was true to me. I shall have glory by this losing day More than Octavius and Mark Antony By this vile conquest shall attain unto. So fare you well at once; for Brutus’ tongue Hath almost ended his life’s history. Night hangs upon mine eyes; my bones would rest, That have but labour’d to attain this hour.

[Alarums. Cry within, “Fly, fly, fly!”.]

CLITUS. Fly, my lord, fly!

BRUTUS. Hence! I will follow.

[Exeunt Clitus, Dardanius and Volumnius.]

I pr’ythee, Strato, stay thou by thy lord. Thou art a fellow of a good respect; Thy life hath had some smatch of honour in it. Hold then my sword, and turn away thy face, While I do run upon it. Wilt thou, Strato?

STRATO. Give me your hand first. Fare you well, my lord.

BRUTUS. Farewell, good Strato.—Caesar, now be still: I kill’d not thee with half so good a will.

[He runs on his sword, and dies.]

Alarum. Retreat. Enter Antony, Octavius, Messala, Lucilius and the Army.

OCTAVIUS. What man is that?

MESSALA. My master’s man. Strato, where is thy master?

STRATO. Free from the bondage you are in, Messala. The conquerors can but make a fire of him; For Brutus only overcame himself, And no man else hath honour by his death.

LUCILIUS. So Brutus should be found. I thank thee, Brutus, That thou hast prov’d Lucilius’ saying true.

OCTAVIUS. All that serv’d Brutus, I will entertain them. Fellow, wilt thou bestow thy time with me?

STRATO. Ay, if Messala will prefer me to you.

OCTAVIUS. Do so, good Messala.

MESSALA. How died my master, Strato?

STRATO. I held the sword, and he did run on it.

MESSALA. Octavius, then take him to follow thee, That did the latest service to my master.

ANTONY. This was the noblest Roman of them all. All the conspirators save only he, Did that they did in envy of great Caesar; He only, in a general honest thought And common good to all, made one of them. His life was gentle, and the elements So mix’d in him that Nature might stand up And say to all the world, “This was a man!”

OCTAVIUS. According to his virtue let us use him With all respect and rites of burial. Within my tent his bones tonight shall lie, Most like a soldier, order’d honourably. So call the field to rest, and let’s away, To part the glories of this happy day.

THE TRAGEDY OF KING LEAR

ACT I Scene I. A Room of State in King Lear’s Palace Scene II. A Hall in the Earl of Gloucester’s Castle Scene III. A Room in the Duke of Albany’s Palace Scene IV. A Hall in Albany’s Palace Scene V. Court before the Duke of Albany’s Palace

ACT II Scene I. A court within the Castle of the Earl of Gloucester Scene II. Before Gloucester’s Castle Scene III. The open Country Scene IV. Before Gloucester’s Castle

ACT III Scene I. A Heath Scene II. Another part of the heath Scene III. A Room in Gloucester’s Castle Scene IV. A part of the Heath with a Hovel Scene V. A Room in Gloucester’s Castle Scene VI. A Chamber in a Farmhouse adjoining the Castle Scene VII. A Room in Gloucester’s Castle

ACT IV Scene I. The heath Scene II. Before the Duke of Albany’s Palace Scene III. The French camp near Dover Scene IV. The French camp. A Tent Scene V. A Room in Gloucester’s Castle Scene VI. The country near Dover Scene VII. A Tent in the French Camp

ACT V Scene I. The Camp of the British Forces near Dover Scene II. A field between the two Camps Scene III. The British Camp near Dover

LEAR, King of Britain. GONERIL, eldest daughter to Lear. REGAN, second daughter to Lear. CORDELIA, youngest daughter to Lear. DUKE of ALBANY, married to Goneril. DUKE of CORNWALL, married to Regan. KING of FRANCE. DUKE of BURGUNDY. EARL of GLOUCESTER. EDGAR, elder son to Gloucester. EDMUND, younger bastard son to Gloucester. EARL of KENT. FOOL. OSWALD, steward to Goneril. CURAN, a Courtier. OLD MAN, Tenant to Gloucester. Physician. An Officer employed by Edmund. Gentleman, attendant on Cordelia. A Herald. Servants to Cornwall.

Knights attending on the King, Officers, Messengers, Soldiers and Attendants.

SCENE: Britain

SCENE I. A Room of State in King Lear’s Palace

Enter Kent, Gloucester and Edmund.

KENT. I thought the King had more affected the Duke of Albany than Cornwall.

GLOUCESTER. It did always seem so to us; but now, in the division of the kingdom, it appears not which of the Dukes he values most, for qualities are so weighed that curiosity in neither can make choice of either’s moiety.

KENT. Is not this your son, my lord?

GLOUCESTER. His breeding, sir, hath been at my charge: I have so often blush’d to acknowledge him that now I am braz’d to’t.

KENT. I cannot conceive you.

GLOUCESTER. Sir, this young fellow’s mother could; whereupon she grew round-wombed, and had indeed, sir, a son for her cradle ere she had a husband for her bed. Do you smell a fault?

KENT. I cannot wish the fault undone, the issue of it being so proper.

GLOUCESTER. But I have a son, sir, by order of law, some year elder than this, who yet is no dearer in my account: though this knave came something saucily to the world before he was sent for, yet was his mother fair; there was good sport at his making, and the whoreson must be acknowledged. Do you know this noble gentleman, Edmund?

EDMUND. No, my lord.

GLOUCESTER. My Lord of Kent: remember him hereafter as my honourable friend.

EDMUND. My services to your lordship.

KENT. I must love you, and sue to know you better.

EDMUND. Sir, I shall study deserving.

GLOUCESTER. He hath been out nine years, and away he shall again. The King is coming.

[Sennet within.]

Enter Lear, Cornwall, Albany, Goneril, Regan, Cordelia and Attendants.

LEAR. Attend the lords of France and Burgundy, Gloucester.

GLOUCESTER. I shall, my lord.

[Exeunt Gloucester and Edmund.]

LEAR. Meantime we shall express our darker purpose. Give me the map there. Know that we have divided In three our kingdom: and ’tis our fast intent To shake all cares and business from our age; Conferring them on younger strengths, while we Unburden’d crawl toward death. Our son of Cornwall, And you, our no less loving son of Albany, We have this hour a constant will to publish Our daughters’ several dowers, that future strife May be prevented now. The princes, France and Burgundy, Great rivals in our youngest daughter’s love, Long in our court have made their amorous sojourn, And here are to be answer’d. Tell me, my daughters,— Since now we will divest us both of rule, Interest of territory, cares of state,— Which of you shall we say doth love us most? That we our largest bounty may extend Where nature doth with merit challenge.—Goneril, Our eldest born, speak first.

GONERIL. Sir, I love you more than word can wield the matter; Dearer than eyesight, space, and liberty; Beyond what can be valu’d, rich or rare; No less than life, with grace, health, beauty, honour; As much as child e’er lov’d, or father found; A love that makes breath poor and speech unable; Beyond all manner of so much I love you.

CORDELIA. [Aside.] What shall Cordelia speak? Love, and be silent.

LEAR. Of all these bounds, even from this line to this, With shadowy forests and with champains rich’d, With plenteous rivers and wide-skirted meads, We make thee lady: to thine and Albany’s issue Be this perpetual.—What says our second daughter, Our dearest Regan, wife of Cornwall? Speak.

REGAN. Sir, I am made of the self mettle as my sister, And prize me at her worth. In my true heart I find she names my very deed of love; Only she comes too short, that I profess Myself an enemy to all other joys Which the most precious square of sense possesses, And find I am alone felicitate In your dear highness’ love.

CORDELIA. [Aside.] Then poor Cordelia, And yet not so; since, I am sure, my love’s More ponderous than my tongue.

LEAR. To thee and thine hereditary ever Remain this ample third of our fair kingdom; No less in space, validity, and pleasure Than that conferr’d on Goneril.—Now, our joy, Although the last and least; to whose young love The vines of France and milk of Burgundy Strive to be interess’d; what can you say to draw A third more opulent than your sisters? Speak.

CORDELIA. Nothing, my lord.

LEAR. Nothing?

CORDELIA. Nothing.

LEAR. Nothing will come of nothing: speak again.

CORDELIA. Unhappy that I am, I cannot heave My heart into my mouth: I love your majesty According to my bond; no more nor less.

LEAR. How, how, Cordelia? Mend your speech a little, Lest you may mar your fortunes.

CORDELIA. Good my lord, You have begot me, bred me, lov’d me: I Return those duties back as are right fit, Obey you, love you, and most honour you. Why have my sisters husbands if they say They love you all? Haply, when I shall wed, That lord whose hand must take my plight shall carry Half my love with him, half my care and duty: Sure I shall never marry like my sisters, To love my father all.

LEAR. But goes thy heart with this?

CORDELIA. Ay, my good lord.

LEAR. So young, and so untender?

CORDELIA. So young, my lord, and true.

LEAR. Let it be so, thy truth then be thy dower: For, by the sacred radiance of the sun, The mysteries of Hecate and the night; By all the operation of the orbs, From whom we do exist and cease to be; Here I disclaim all my paternal care, Propinquity and property of blood, And as a stranger to my heart and me Hold thee from this for ever. The barbarous Scythian, Or he that makes his generation messes To gorge his appetite, shall to my bosom Be as well neighbour’d, pitied, and reliev’d, As thou my sometime daughter.

KENT. Good my liege,—

LEAR. Peace, Kent! Come not between the dragon and his wrath. I lov’d her most, and thought to set my rest On her kind nursery. [To Cordelia.] Hence and avoid my sight! So be my grave my peace, as here I give Her father’s heart from her! Call France. Who stirs? Call Burgundy! Cornwall and Albany, With my two daughters’ dowers digest this third: Let pride, which she calls plainness, marry her. I do invest you jointly with my power, Pre-eminence, and all the large effects That troop with majesty. Ourself, by monthly course, With reservation of an hundred knights, By you to be sustain’d, shall our abode Make with you by due turn. Only we shall retain The name, and all the addition to a king; the sway, Revenue, execution of the rest, Beloved sons, be yours; which to confirm, This coronet part between you. [Giving the crown.]

KENT. Royal Lear, Whom I have ever honour’d as my king, Lov’d as my father, as my master follow’d, As my great patron thought on in my prayers.—

LEAR. The bow is bent and drawn; make from the shaft.

KENT. Let it fall rather, though the fork invade The region of my heart: be Kent unmannerly When Lear is mad. What wouldst thou do, old man? Think’st thou that duty shall have dread to speak, When power to flattery bows? To plainness honour’s bound When majesty falls to folly. Reverse thy state; And in thy best consideration check This hideous rashness: answer my life my judgement, Thy youngest daughter does not love thee least; Nor are those empty-hearted, whose low sounds Reverb no hollowness.

LEAR. Kent, on thy life, no more.

KENT. My life I never held but as a pawn To wage against thine enemies; ne’er fear to lose it, Thy safety being the motive.

LEAR. Out of my sight!

KENT. See better, Lear; and let me still remain The true blank of thine eye.

LEAR. Now, by Apollo,—

KENT. Now by Apollo, King, Thou swear’st thy gods in vain.

LEAR. O vassal! Miscreant!

[Laying his hand on his sword.]

ALBANY and CORNWALL. Dear sir, forbear!

KENT. Kill thy physician, and the fee bestow Upon the foul disease. Revoke thy gift, Or, whilst I can vent clamour from my throat, I’ll tell thee thou dost evil.

LEAR. Hear me, recreant! on thine allegiance, hear me! Since thou hast sought to make us break our vows, Which we durst never yet, and with strain’d pride To come betwixt our sentences and our power, Which nor our nature, nor our place can bear, Our potency made good, take thy reward. Five days we do allot thee for provision, To shield thee from disasters of the world; And on the sixth to turn thy hated back Upon our kingdom: if, on the next day following, Thy banish’d trunk be found in our dominions, The moment is thy death. Away! By Jupiter, This shall not be revok’d.

KENT. Fare thee well, King: sith thus thou wilt appear, Freedom lives hence, and banishment is here. [To Cordelia.] The gods to their dear shelter take thee, maid, That justly think’st and hast most rightly said! [To Goneril and Regan.] And your large speeches may your deeds approve, That good effects may spring from words of love. Thus Kent, O princes, bids you all adieu; He’ll shape his old course in a country new.

Flourish. Re-enter Gloucester, with France, Burgundy and Attendants.

CORDELIA. Here’s France and Burgundy, my noble lord.

LEAR. My Lord of Burgundy, We first address toward you, who with this king Hath rivall’d for our daughter: what in the least Will you require in present dower with her, Or cease your quest of love?

BURGUNDY. Most royal majesty, I crave no more than hath your highness offer’d, Nor will you tender less.

LEAR. Right noble Burgundy, When she was dear to us, we did hold her so; But now her price is fall’n. Sir, there she stands: If aught within that little-seeming substance, Or all of it, with our displeasure piec’d, And nothing more, may fitly like your grace, She’s there, and she is yours.

BURGUNDY. I know no answer.

LEAR. Will you, with those infirmities she owes, Unfriended, new adopted to our hate, Dower’d with our curse, and stranger’d with our oath, Take her or leave her?

BURGUNDY. Pardon me, royal sir; Election makes not up in such conditions.

LEAR. Then leave her, sir; for, by the power that made me, I tell you all her wealth. [To France] For you, great king, I would not from your love make such a stray To match you where I hate; therefore beseech you T’avert your liking a more worthier way Than on a wretch whom nature is asham’d Almost t’acknowledge hers.

FRANCE. This is most strange, That she, who even but now was your best object, The argument of your praise, balm of your age, The best, the dearest, should in this trice of time Commit a thing so monstrous, to dismantle So many folds of favour. Sure her offence Must be of such unnatural degree That monsters it, or your fore-vouch’d affection Fall into taint; which to believe of her Must be a faith that reason without miracle Should never plant in me.

CORDELIA. I yet beseech your majesty, If for I want that glib and oily art To speak and purpose not; since what I well intend, I’ll do’t before I speak,—that you make known It is no vicious blot, murder, or foulness, No unchaste action or dishonour’d step, That hath depriv’d me of your grace and favour; But even for want of that for which I am richer, A still soliciting eye, and such a tongue As I am glad I have not, though not to have it Hath lost me in your liking.

LEAR. Better thou hadst Not been born than not to have pleas’d me better.

FRANCE. Is it but this?—a tardiness in nature Which often leaves the history unspoke That it intends to do? My lord of Burgundy, What say you to the lady? Love’s not love When it is mingled with regards that stands Aloof from the entire point. Will you have her? She is herself a dowry.

BURGUNDY. Royal King, Give but that portion which yourself propos’d, And here I take Cordelia by the hand, Duchess of Burgundy.

LEAR. Nothing: I have sworn; I am firm.

BURGUNDY. I am sorry, then, you have so lost a father That you must lose a husband.

CORDELIA. Peace be with Burgundy! Since that respects of fortunes are his love, I shall not be his wife.

FRANCE. Fairest Cordelia, that art most rich, being poor; Most choice forsaken; and most lov’d, despis’d! Thee and thy virtues here I seize upon: Be it lawful, I take up what’s cast away. Gods, gods! ’Tis strange that from their cold’st neglect My love should kindle to inflam’d respect. Thy dowerless daughter, King, thrown to my chance, Is queen of us, of ours, and our fair France: Not all the dukes of waterish Burgundy Can buy this unpriz’d precious maid of me. Bid them farewell, Cordelia, though unkind: Thou losest here, a better where to find.

LEAR. Thou hast her, France: let her be thine; for we Have no such daughter, nor shall ever see That face of hers again. Therefore be gone Without our grace, our love, our benison. Come, noble Burgundy.

[Flourish. Exeunt Lear, Burgundy, Cornwall, Albany, Gloucester and Attendants.]

FRANCE. Bid farewell to your sisters.

CORDELIA. The jewels of our father, with wash’d eyes Cordelia leaves you: I know you what you are; And like a sister am most loath to call Your faults as they are nam’d. Love well our father: To your professed bosoms I commit him: But yet, alas, stood I within his grace, I would prefer him to a better place. So farewell to you both.

REGAN. Prescribe not us our duties.

GONERIL. Let your study Be to content your lord, who hath receiv’d you At fortune’s alms. You have obedience scanted, And well are worth the want that you have wanted.

CORDELIA. Time shall unfold what plighted cunning hides: Who covers faults, at last shame derides. Well may you prosper.

FRANCE. Come, my fair Cordelia.

[Exeunt France and Cordelia.]

GONERIL. Sister, it is not little I have to say of what most nearly appertains to us both. I think our father will hence tonight.

REGAN. That’s most certain, and with you; next month with us.

GONERIL. You see how full of changes his age is; the observation we have made of it hath not been little: he always loved our sister most; and with what poor judgement he hath now cast her off appears too grossly.

REGAN. ’Tis the infirmity of his age: yet he hath ever but slenderly known himself.

GONERIL. The best and soundest of his time hath been but rash; then must we look from his age to receive not alone the imperfections of long-engrafted condition, but therewithal the unruly waywardness that infirm and choleric years bring with them.

REGAN. Such unconstant starts are we like to have from him as this of Kent’s banishment.

GONERIL. There is further compliment of leave-taking between France and him. Pray you let us hit together: if our father carry authority with such disposition as he bears, this last surrender of his will but offend us.

REGAN. We shall further think of it.

GONERIL. We must do something, and i’ th’ heat.

SCENE II. A Hall in the Earl of Gloucester’s Castle

Enter Edmund with a letter.

EDMUND. Thou, Nature, art my goddess; to thy law My services are bound. Wherefore should I Stand in the plague of custom, and permit The curiosity of nations to deprive me? For that I am some twelve or fourteen moonshines Lag of a brother? Why bastard? Wherefore base? When my dimensions are as well compact, My mind as generous, and my shape as true As honest madam’s issue? Why brand they us With base? With baseness? bastardy? Base, base? Who, in the lusty stealth of nature, take More composition and fierce quality Than doth within a dull stale tired bed Go to the creating a whole tribe of fops Got ’tween asleep and wake? Well then, Legitimate Edgar, I must have your land: Our father’s love is to the bastard Edmund As to the legitimate: fine word: legitimate! Well, my legitimate, if this letter speed, And my invention thrive, Edmund the base Shall top the legitimate. I grow, I prosper. Now, gods, stand up for bastards!

GLOUCESTER. Kent banish’d thus! and France in choler parted! And the King gone tonight! Prescrib’d his pow’r! Confin’d to exhibition! All this done Upon the gad!—Edmund, how now! What news?

EDMUND. So please your lordship, none.

[Putting up the letter.]

GLOUCESTER. Why so earnestly seek you to put up that letter?

EDMUND. I know no news, my lord.

GLOUCESTER. What paper were you reading?

EDMUND. Nothing, my lord.

GLOUCESTER. No? What needed then that terrible dispatch of it into your pocket? The quality of nothing hath not such need to hide itself. Let’s see. Come, if it be nothing, I shall not need spectacles.

EDMUND. I beseech you, sir, pardon me. It is a letter from my brother that I have not all o’er-read; and for so much as I have perus’d, I find it not fit for your o’er-looking.

GLOUCESTER. Give me the letter, sir.

EDMUND. I shall offend, either to detain or give it. The contents, as in part I understand them, are to blame.

GLOUCESTER. Let’s see, let’s see!

EDMUND. I hope, for my brother’s justification, he wrote this but as an essay, or taste of my virtue.

GLOUCESTER. [Reads.] ‘This policy and reverence of age makes the world bitter to the best of our times; keeps our fortunes from us till our oldness cannot relish them. I begin to find an idle and fond bondage in the oppression of aged tyranny; who sways not as it hath power, but as it is suffered. Come to me, that of this I may speak more. If our father would sleep till I waked him, you should enjoy half his revenue for ever, and live the beloved of your brother EDGAR.’ Hum! Conspiracy? ‘Sleep till I wake him, you should enjoy half his revenue.’—My son Edgar! Had he a hand to write this? A heart and brain to breed it in? When came this to you? Who brought it?

EDMUND. It was not brought me, my lord, there’s the cunning of it. I found it thrown in at the casement of my closet.

GLOUCESTER. You know the character to be your brother’s?

EDMUND. If the matter were good, my lord, I durst swear it were his; but in respect of that, I would fain think it were not.

GLOUCESTER. It is his.

EDMUND. It is his hand, my lord; but I hope his heart is not in the contents.

GLOUCESTER. Has he never before sounded you in this business?

EDMUND. Never, my lord. But I have heard him oft maintain it to be fit that, sons at perfect age, and fathers declined, the father should be as ward to the son, and the son manage his revenue.

GLOUCESTER. O villain, villain! His very opinion in the letter! Abhorred villain! Unnatural, detested, brutish villain! worse than brutish! Go, sirrah, seek him; I’ll apprehend him. Abominable villain, Where is he?

EDMUND. I do not well know, my lord. If it shall please you to suspend your indignation against my brother till you can derive from him better testimony of his intent, you should run a certain course; where, if you violently proceed against him, mistaking his purpose, it would make a great gap in your own honour, and shake in pieces the heart of his obedience. I dare pawn down my life for him, that he hath writ this to feel my affection to your honour, and to no other pretence of danger.

GLOUCESTER. Think you so?

EDMUND. If your honour judge it meet, I will place you where you shall hear us confer of this, and by an auricular assurance have your satisfaction, and that without any further delay than this very evening.

GLOUCESTER. He cannot be such a monster.

EDMUND. Nor is not, sure.

GLOUCESTER. To his father, that so tenderly and entirely loves him. Heaven and earth! Edmund, seek him out; wind me into him, I pray you: frame the business after your own wisdom. I would unstate myself to be in a due resolution.

EDMUND. I will seek him, sir, presently; convey the business as I shall find means, and acquaint you withal.

GLOUCESTER. These late eclipses in the sun and moon portend no good to us: though the wisdom of Nature can reason it thus and thus, yet nature finds itself scourged by the sequent effects. Love cools, friendship falls off, brothers divide: in cities, mutinies; in countries, discord; in palaces, treason; and the bond cracked ’twixt son and father. This villain of mine comes under the prediction; there’s son against father: the King falls from bias of nature; there’s father against child. We have seen the best of our time. Machinations, hollowness, treachery, and all ruinous disorders follow us disquietly to our graves. Find out this villain, Edmund; it shall lose thee nothing; do it carefully.—And the noble and true-hearted Kent banished! his offence, honesty! ’Tis strange.

EDMUND. This is the excellent foppery of the world, that, when we are sick in fortune, often the surfeits of our own behaviour, we make guilty of our disasters the sun, the moon, and the stars; as if we were villains on necessity; fools by heavenly compulsion; knaves, thieves, and treachers by spherical predominance; drunkards, liars, and adulterers by an enforced obedience of planetary influence; and all that we are evil in, by a divine thrusting on. An admirable evasion of whoremaster man, to lay his goatish disposition to the charge of a star. My father compounded with my mother under the dragon’s tail, and my nativity was under Ursa Major, so that it follows I am rough and lecherous. Fut! I should have been that I am, had the maidenliest star in the firmament twinkled on my bastardizing.

Enter Edgar.

Pat! he comes, like the catastrophe of the old comedy: my cue is villainous melancholy, with a sigh like Tom o’Bedlam.—O, these eclipses do portend these divisions! Fa, sol, la, mi.

EDGAR. How now, brother Edmund, what serious contemplation are you in?

EDMUND. I am thinking, brother, of a prediction I read this other day, what should follow these eclipses.

EDGAR. Do you busy yourself with that?

EDMUND. I promise you, the effects he writes of succeed unhappily: as of unnaturalness between the child and the parent; death, dearth, dissolutions of ancient amities; divisions in state, menaces and maledictions against King and nobles; needless diffidences, banishment of friends, dissipation of cohorts, nuptial breaches, and I know not what.

EDGAR. How long have you been a sectary astronomical?

EDMUND. Come, come! when saw you my father last?

EDGAR. The night gone by.

EDMUND. Spake you with him?

EDGAR. Ay, two hours together.

EDMUND. Parted you in good terms? Found you no displeasure in him, by word nor countenance?

EDGAR. None at all.

EDMUND. Bethink yourself wherein you may have offended him: and at my entreaty forbear his presence until some little time hath qualified the heat of his displeasure; which at this instant so rageth in him that with the mischief of your person it would scarcely allay.

EDGAR. Some villain hath done me wrong.

EDMUND. That’s my fear. I pray you have a continent forbearance till the speed of his rage goes slower; and, as I say, retire with me to my lodging, from whence I will fitly bring you to hear my lord speak: pray ye, go; there’s my key. If you do stir abroad, go armed.

EDGAR. Armed, brother?

EDMUND. Brother, I advise you to the best; I am no honest man if there be any good meaning toward you: I have told you what I have seen and heard. But faintly; nothing like the image and horror of it: pray you, away!

EDGAR. Shall I hear from you anon?

EDMUND. I do serve you in this business.

[Exit Edgar.]

A credulous father! and a brother noble, Whose nature is so far from doing harms That he suspects none; on whose foolish honesty My practices ride easy! I see the business. Let me, if not by birth, have lands by wit; All with me’s meet that I can fashion fit.

SCENE III. A Room in the Duke of Albany’s Palace

Enter Goneril and Oswald.

GONERIL. Did my father strike my gentleman for chiding of his fool?

OSWALD. Ay, madam.

GONERIL. By day and night, he wrongs me; every hour He flashes into one gross crime or other, That sets us all at odds; I’ll not endure it: His knights grow riotous, and himself upbraids us On every trifle. When he returns from hunting, I will not speak with him; say I am sick. If you come slack of former services, You shall do well; the fault of it I’ll answer.

[Horns within.]

OSWALD. He’s coming, madam; I hear him.

GONERIL. Put on what weary negligence you please, You and your fellows; I’d have it come to question: If he distaste it, let him to our sister, Whose mind and mine, I know, in that are one, Not to be overruled. Idle old man, That still would manage those authorities That he hath given away! Now, by my life, Old fools are babes again; and must be us’d With checks as flatteries, when they are seen abus’d. Remember what I have said.

OSWALD. Very well, madam.

GONERIL. And let his knights have colder looks among you; What grows of it, no matter; advise your fellows so; I would breed from hence occasions, and I shall, That I may speak. I’ll write straight to my sister To hold my very course. Prepare for dinner.

SCENE IV. A Hall in Albany’s Palace

Enter Kent, disguised.

KENT. If but as well I other accents borrow, That can my speech defuse, my good intent May carry through itself to that full issue For which I rais’d my likeness. Now, banish’d Kent, If thou canst serve where thou dost stand condemn’d, So may it come, thy master, whom thou lov’st, Shall find thee full of labours.

Horns within. Enter King Lear, Knights and Attendants.

LEAR. Let me not stay a jot for dinner; go get it ready.

How now! what art thou?

KENT. A man, sir.

LEAR. What dost thou profess? What wouldst thou with us?

KENT. I do profess to be no less than I seem; to serve him truly that will put me in trust; to love him that is honest; to converse with him that is wise and says little; to fear judgement; to fight when I cannot choose; and to eat no fish.

LEAR. What art thou?

KENT. A very honest-hearted fellow, and as poor as the King.

LEAR. If thou be’st as poor for a subject as he’s for a king, thou art poor enough. What wouldst thou?

KENT. Service.

LEAR. Who wouldst thou serve?

KENT. You.

LEAR. Dost thou know me, fellow?

KENT. No, sir; but you have that in your countenance which I would fain call master.

LEAR. What’s that?

KENT. Authority.

LEAR. What services canst thou do?

KENT. I can keep honest counsel, ride, run, mar a curious tale in telling it and deliver a plain message bluntly. That which ordinary men are fit for, I am qualified in, and the best of me is diligence.

LEAR. How old art thou?

KENT. Not so young, sir, to love a woman for singing; nor so old to dote on her for anything: I have years on my back forty-eight.

LEAR. Follow me; thou shalt serve me. If I like thee no worse after dinner, I will not part from thee yet. Dinner, ho, dinner! Where’s my knave? my fool? Go you and call my fool hither.

Enter Oswald.

You, you, sirrah, where’s my daughter?

OSWALD. So please you,—

LEAR. What says the fellow there? Call the clotpoll back.

[Exit a Knight.]

Where’s my fool? Ho, I think the world’s asleep.

Re-enter Knight.

How now! where’s that mongrel?

KNIGHT. He says, my lord, your daughter is not well.

LEAR. Why came not the slave back to me when I called him?

KNIGHT. Sir, he answered me in the roundest manner, he would not.

LEAR. He would not?

KNIGHT. My lord, I know not what the matter is; but to my judgement your highness is not entertained with that ceremonious affection as you were wont; there’s a great abatement of kindness appears as well in the general dependants as in the Duke himself also, and your daughter.

LEAR. Ha! say’st thou so?

KNIGHT. I beseech you pardon me, my lord, if I be mistaken; for my duty cannot be silent when I think your highness wronged.

LEAR. Thou but rememberest me of mine own conception: I have perceived a most faint neglect of late; which I have rather blamed as mine own jealous curiosity than as a very pretence and purpose of unkindness: I will look further into’t. But where’s my fool? I have not seen him this two days.

KNIGHT. Since my young lady’s going into France, sir, the fool hath much pined away.

LEAR. No more of that; I have noted it well. Go you and tell my daughter I would speak with her.

Go you, call hither my fool.

[Exit another Attendant.]

Re-enter Oswald.

O, you, sir, you, come you hither, sir: who am I, sir?

OSWALD. My lady’s father.

LEAR. My lady’s father! my lord’s knave: you whoreson dog! you slave! you cur!

OSWALD. I am none of these, my lord; I beseech your pardon.

LEAR. Do you bandy looks with me, you rascal?

[Striking him.]

OSWALD. I’ll not be struck, my lord.

KENT. Nor tripp’d neither, you base football player.

[Tripping up his heels.]

LEAR. I thank thee, fellow. Thou serv’st me, and I’ll love thee.

KENT. Come, sir, arise, away! I’ll teach you differences: away, away! If you will measure your lubber’s length again, tarry; but away! go to; have you wisdom? So.

[Pushes Oswald out.]

LEAR. Now, my friendly knave, I thank thee: there’s earnest of thy service.

[Giving Kent money.]

Enter Fool.

FOOL. Let me hire him too; here’s my coxcomb.

[Giving Kent his cap.]

LEAR. How now, my pretty knave, how dost thou?

FOOL. Sirrah, you were best take my coxcomb.

KENT. Why, fool?

FOOL. Why, for taking one’s part that’s out of favour. Nay, an thou canst not smile as the wind sits, thou’lt catch cold shortly: there, take my coxcomb: why, this fellow has banish’d two on’s daughters, and did the third a blessing against his will; if thou follow him, thou must needs wear my coxcomb. How now, nuncle! Would I had two coxcombs and two daughters!

LEAR. Why, my boy?

FOOL. If I gave them all my living, I’d keep my coxcombs myself. There’s mine; beg another of thy daughters.

LEAR. Take heed, sirrah, the whip.

FOOL. Truth’s a dog must to kennel; he must be whipped out, when the Lady Brach may stand by the fire and stink.

LEAR. A pestilent gall to me!

FOOL. Sirrah, I’ll teach thee a speech.

LEAR. Do.

FOOL. Mark it, nuncle: Have more than thou showest, Speak less than thou knowest, Lend less than thou owest, Ride more than thou goest, Learn more than thou trowest, Set less than thou throwest; Leave thy drink and thy whore, And keep in-a-door, And thou shalt have more Than two tens to a score.

KENT. This is nothing, fool.

FOOL. Then ’tis like the breath of an unfee’d lawyer, you gave me nothing for’t. Can you make no use of nothing, nuncle?

LEAR. Why, no, boy; nothing can be made out of nothing.

FOOL. [to Kent.] Prithee tell him, so much the rent of his land comes to: he will not believe a fool.

LEAR. A bitter fool.

FOOL. Dost thou know the difference, my boy, between a bitter fool and a sweet one?

LEAR. No, lad; teach me.

FOOL. That lord that counsell’d thee To give away thy land, Come place him here by me, Do thou for him stand. The sweet and bitter fool Will presently appear; The one in motley here, The other found out there.

LEAR. Dost thou call me fool, boy?

FOOL. All thy other titles thou hast given away; that thou wast born with.

KENT. This is not altogether fool, my lord.

FOOL. No, faith; lords and great men will not let me; if I had a monopoly out, they would have part on’t and ladies too, they will not let me have all the fool to myself; they’ll be snatching. Nuncle, give me an egg, and I’ll give thee two crowns.

LEAR. What two crowns shall they be?

FOOL. Why, after I have cut the egg i’ the middle and eat up the meat, the two crowns of the egg. When thou clovest thy crown i’ the middle and gav’st away both parts, thou bor’st thine ass on thy back o’er the dirt: thou hadst little wit in thy bald crown when thou gav’st thy golden one away. If I speak like myself in this, let him be whipped that first finds it so. [Singing.] Fools had ne’er less grace in a year; For wise men are grown foppish, And know not how their wits to wear, Their manners are so apish.

LEAR. When were you wont to be so full of songs, sirrah?

FOOL. I have used it, nuncle, e’er since thou mad’st thy daughters thy mothers; for when thou gav’st them the rod, and put’st down thine own breeches, [Singing.] Then they for sudden joy did weep, And I for sorrow sung, That such a king should play bo-peep, And go the fools among. Prithee, nuncle, keep a schoolmaster that can teach thy fool to lie; I would fain learn to lie.

LEAR. An you lie, sirrah, we’ll have you whipped.

FOOL. I marvel what kin thou and thy daughters are: they’ll have me whipped for speaking true; thou’lt have me whipped for lying; and sometimes I am whipped for holding my peace. I had rather be any kind o’thing than a fool: and yet I would not be thee, nuncle: thou hast pared thy wit o’both sides, and left nothing i’ the middle: here comes one o’ the parings.

Enter Goneril.

LEAR. How now, daughter? What makes that frontlet on? Methinks you are too much of late i’ the frown.

FOOL. Thou wast a pretty fellow when thou hadst no need to care for her frowning. Now thou art an O without a figure: I am better than thou art now. I am a fool, thou art nothing. [To Goneril.] Yes, forsooth, I will hold my tongue. So your face bids me, though you say nothing. Mum, mum, He that keeps nor crust nor crum, Weary of all, shall want some. [Pointing to Lear.] That’s a shealed peascod.

GONERIL. Not only, sir, this your all-licens’d fool, But other of your insolent retinue Do hourly carp and quarrel; breaking forth In rank and not-to-be-endured riots. Sir, I had thought, by making this well known unto you, To have found a safe redress; but now grow fearful, By what yourself too late have spoke and done, That you protect this course, and put it on By your allowance; which if you should, the fault Would not scape censure, nor the redresses sleep, Which, in the tender of a wholesome weal, Might in their working do you that offence Which else were shame, that then necessity Will call discreet proceeding.

FOOL. For you know, nuncle, The hedge-sparrow fed the cuckoo so long That it’s had it head bit off by it young. So out went the candle, and we were left darkling.

LEAR. Are you our daughter?

GONERIL. Come, sir, I would you would make use of that good wisdom, Whereof I know you are fraught; and put away These dispositions, which of late transform you From what you rightly are.

FOOL. May not an ass know when the cart draws the horse? Whoop, Jug! I love thee!

LEAR. Doth any here know me? This is not Lear; Doth Lear walk thus? speak thus? Where are his eyes? Either his notion weakens, his discernings Are lethargied. Ha! waking? ’Tis not so! Who is it that can tell me who I am?

FOOL. Lear’s shadow.

LEAR. I would learn that; for by the marks of sovereignty, knowledge and reason, I should be false persuaded I had daughters.

FOOL. Which they will make an obedient father.

LEAR. Your name, fair gentlewoman?

GONERIL. This admiration, sir, is much o’ the favour Of other your new pranks. I do beseech you To understand my purposes aright: As you are old and reverend, you should be wise. Here do you keep a hundred knights and squires; Men so disorder’d, so debosh’d and bold That this our court, infected with their manners, Shows like a riotous inn. Epicurism and lust Makes it more like a tavern or a brothel Than a grac’d palace. The shame itself doth speak For instant remedy. Be, then, desir’d By her that else will take the thing she begs A little to disquantity your train; And the remainder that shall still depend, To be such men as may besort your age, Which know themselves, and you.

LEAR. Darkness and devils! Saddle my horses; call my train together. Degenerate bastard! I’ll not trouble thee: Yet have I left a daughter.

GONERIL. You strike my people; and your disorder’d rabble Make servants of their betters.

Enter Albany.

LEAR. Woe that too late repents!— [To Albany.] O, sir, are you come? Is it your will? Speak, sir.—Prepare my horses. Ingratitude, thou marble-hearted fiend, More hideous when thou show’st thee in a child Than the sea-monster!

ALBANY. Pray, sir, be patient.

LEAR. [to Goneril.] Detested kite, thou liest. My train are men of choice and rarest parts, That all particulars of duty know; And in the most exact regard support The worships of their name. O most small fault, How ugly didst thou in Cordelia show! Which, like an engine, wrench’d my frame of nature From the fix’d place; drew from my heart all love, And added to the gall. O Lear, Lear, Lear! [Striking his head.] Beat at this gate that let thy folly in And thy dear judgement out! Go, go, my people.

ALBANY. My lord, I am guiltless, as I am ignorant Of what hath moved you.

LEAR. It may be so, my lord. Hear, nature, hear; dear goddess, hear! Suspend thy purpose, if thou didst intend To make this creature fruitful! Into her womb convey sterility! Dry up in her the organs of increase; And from her derogate body never spring A babe to honour her! If she must teem, Create her child of spleen, that it may live And be a thwart disnatur’d torment to her! Let it stamp wrinkles in her brow of youth; With cadent tears fret channels in her cheeks; Turn all her mother’s pains and benefits To laughter and contempt; that she may feel How sharper than a serpent’s tooth it is To have a thankless child! Away, away!

ALBANY. Now, gods that we adore, whereof comes this?

GONERIL. Never afflict yourself to know more of it; But let his disposition have that scope That dotage gives it.

Re-enter Lear.

LEAR. What, fifty of my followers at a clap? Within a fortnight?

ALBANY. What’s the matter, sir?

LEAR. I’ll tell thee. [To Goneril.] Life and death! I am asham’d That thou hast power to shake my manhood thus; That these hot tears, which break from me perforce, Should make thee worth them. Blasts and fogs upon thee! Th’untented woundings of a father’s curse Pierce every sense about thee! Old fond eyes, Beweep this cause again, I’ll pluck ye out, And cast you with the waters that you lose To temper clay. Ha! Let it be so. I have another daughter, Who, I am sure, is kind and comfortable: When she shall hear this of thee, with her nails She’ll flay thy wolvish visage. Thou shalt find That I’ll resume the shape which thou dost think I have cast off for ever.

[Exeunt Lear, Kent and Attendants.]

GONERIL. Do you mark that?

ALBANY. I cannot be so partial, Goneril, To the great love I bear you,—

GONERIL. Pray you, content. What, Oswald, ho! [To the Fool.] You, sir, more knave than fool, after your master.

FOOL. Nuncle Lear, nuncle Lear, tarry and take the fool with thee. A fox when one has caught her, And such a daughter, Should sure to the slaughter, If my cap would buy a halter; So the fool follows after.

GONERIL. This man hath had good counsel.—A hundred knights! ’Tis politic and safe to let him keep At point a hundred knights: yes, that on every dream, Each buzz, each fancy, each complaint, dislike, He may enguard his dotage with their powers, And hold our lives in mercy. Oswald, I say!

ALBANY. Well, you may fear too far.

GONERIL. Safer than trust too far: Let me still take away the harms I fear, Not fear still to be taken: I know his heart. What he hath utter’d I have writ my sister: If she sustain him and his hundred knights, When I have show’d th’unfitness,—

How now, Oswald! What, have you writ that letter to my sister?

GONERIL. Take you some company, and away to horse: Inform her full of my particular fear; And thereto add such reasons of your own As may compact it more. Get you gone; And hasten your return.

[Exit Oswald.]

No, no, my lord! This milky gentleness and course of yours, Though I condemn not, yet, under pardon, You are much more attask’d for want of wisdom Than prais’d for harmful mildness.

ALBANY. How far your eyes may pierce I cannot tell: Striving to better, oft we mar what’s well.

GONERIL. Nay then,—

ALBANY. Well, well; the event.

SCENE V. Court before the Duke of Albany’s Palace

Enter Lear, Kent and Fool.

LEAR. Go you before to Gloucester with these letters: acquaint my daughter no further with anything you know than comes from her demand out of the letter. If your diligence be not speedy, I shall be there afore you.

KENT. I will not sleep, my lord, till I have delivered your letter.

FOOL. If a man’s brains were in’s heels, were’t not in danger of kibes?

LEAR. Ay, boy.

FOOL. Then I prithee be merry; thy wit shall not go slipshod.

LEAR. Ha, ha, ha!

FOOL. Shalt see thy other daughter will use thee kindly, for though she’s as like this as a crab’s like an apple, yet I can tell what I can tell.

LEAR. What canst tell, boy?

FOOL. She’ll taste as like this as a crab does to a crab. Thou canst tell why one’s nose stands i’the middle on’s face?

LEAR. No.

FOOL. Why, to keep one’s eyes of either side’s nose, that what a man cannot smell out, he may spy into.

LEAR. I did her wrong.

FOOL. Canst tell how an oyster makes his shell?

FOOL. Nor I neither; but I can tell why a snail has a house.

LEAR. Why?

FOOL. Why, to put’s head in; not to give it away to his daughters, and leave his horns without a case.

LEAR. I will forget my nature. So kind a father! Be my horses ready?

FOOL. Thy asses are gone about ’em. The reason why the seven stars are no more than seven is a pretty reason.

LEAR. Because they are not eight?

FOOL. Yes indeed: thou wouldst make a good fool.

LEAR. To tak’t again perforce!—Monster ingratitude!

FOOL. If thou wert my fool, nuncle, I’d have thee beaten for being old before thy time.

LEAR. How’s that?

FOOL. Thou shouldst not have been old till thou hadst been wise.

LEAR. O, let me not be mad, not mad, sweet heaven! Keep me in temper; I would not be mad!

Enter Gentleman.

How now? are the horses ready?

GENTLEMAN. Ready, my lord.

LEAR. Come, boy.

FOOL. She that’s a maid now, and laughs at my departure, Shall not be a maid long, unless things be cut shorter.

SCENE I. A court within the Castle of the Earl of Gloucester

Enter Edmund and Curan, meeting.

EDMUND. Save thee, Curan.

CURAN. And you, sir. I have been with your father, and given him notice that the Duke of Cornwall and Regan his Duchess will be here with him this night.

EDMUND. How comes that?

CURAN. Nay, I know not. You have heard of the news abroad; I mean the whispered ones, for they are yet but ear-kissing arguments?

EDMUND. Not I: pray you, what are they?

CURAN. Have you heard of no likely wars toward, ’twixt the two dukes of Cornwall and Albany?

EDMUND. Not a word.

CURAN. You may do, then, in time. Fare you well, sir.

EDMUND. The Duke be here tonight? The better! best! This weaves itself perforce into my business. My father hath set guard to take my brother; And I have one thing, of a queasy question, Which I must act. Briefness and fortune work! Brother, a word, descend, brother, I say!

My father watches: O sir, fly this place; Intelligence is given where you are hid; You have now the good advantage of the night. Have you not spoken ’gainst the Duke of Cornwall? He’s coming hither; now, i’ the night, i’ the haste, And Regan with him: have you nothing said Upon his party ’gainst the Duke of Albany? Advise yourself.

EDGAR. I am sure on’t, not a word.

EDMUND. I hear my father coming:—pardon me; In cunning I must draw my sword upon you: Draw: seem to defend yourself: now quit you well. Yield: come before my father. Light, ho, here! Fly, brother. Torches, torches!—So farewell.

Some blood drawn on me would beget opinion Of my more fierce endeavour: [Wounds his arm.] I have seen drunkards Do more than this in sport. Father, father! Stop, stop! No help?

Enter Gloucester and Servants with torches.

GLOUCESTER. Now, Edmund, where’s the villain?

EDMUND. Here stood he in the dark, his sharp sword out, Mumbling of wicked charms, conjuring the moon To stand auspicious mistress.

GLOUCESTER. But where is he?

EDMUND. Look, sir, I bleed.

GLOUCESTER. Where is the villain, Edmund?

EDMUND. Fled this way, sir. When by no means he could,—

GLOUCESTER. Pursue him, ho! Go after.

[Exeunt Servants.]

—By no means what?

EDMUND. Persuade me to the murder of your lordship; But that I told him the revenging gods ’Gainst parricides did all their thunders bend; Spoke with how manifold and strong a bond The child was bound to the father; sir, in fine, Seeing how loathly opposite I stood To his unnatural purpose, in fell motion With his prepared sword, he charges home My unprovided body, latch’d mine arm; But when he saw my best alarum’d spirits, Bold in the quarrel’s right, rous’d to th’encounter, Or whether gasted by the noise I made, Full suddenly he fled.

GLOUCESTER. Let him fly far; Not in this land shall he remain uncaught; And found—dispatch’d. The noble Duke my master, My worthy arch and patron, comes tonight: By his authority I will proclaim it, That he which finds him shall deserve our thanks, Bringing the murderous coward to the stake; He that conceals him, death.

EDMUND. When I dissuaded him from his intent, And found him pight to do it, with curst speech I threaten’d to discover him: he replied, ‘Thou unpossessing bastard! dost thou think, If I would stand against thee, would the reposal Of any trust, virtue, or worth in thee Make thy words faith’d? No: what I should deny As this I would; ay, though thou didst produce My very character, I’d turn it all To thy suggestion, plot, and damned practice: And thou must make a dullard of the world, If they not thought the profits of my death Were very pregnant and potential spurs To make thee seek it.

GLOUCESTER. O strange and fast’ned villain! Would he deny his letter, said he? I never got him.

[Tucket within.]

Hark, the Duke’s trumpets! I know not why he comes. All ports I’ll bar; the villain shall not scape; The Duke must grant me that: besides, his picture I will send far and near, that all the kingdom May have due note of him; and of my land, Loyal and natural boy, I’ll work the means To make thee capable.

Enter Cornwall, Regan and Attendants.

CORNWALL. How now, my noble friend! since I came hither, Which I can call but now, I have heard strange news.

REGAN. If it be true, all vengeance comes too short Which can pursue th’offender. How dost, my lord?

GLOUCESTER. O madam, my old heart is crack’d, it’s crack’d!

REGAN. What, did my father’s godson seek your life? He whom my father nam’d? your Edgar?

GLOUCESTER. O lady, lady, shame would have it hid!

REGAN. Was he not companion with the riotous knights That tend upon my father?

GLOUCESTER. I know not, madam; ’tis too bad, too bad.

EDMUND. Yes, madam, he was of that consort.

REGAN. No marvel then though he were ill affected: ’Tis they have put him on the old man’s death, To have the expense and waste of his revenues. I have this present evening from my sister Been well inform’d of them; and with such cautions That if they come to sojourn at my house, I’ll not be there.

CORNWALL. Nor I, assure thee, Regan. Edmund, I hear that you have shown your father A childlike office.

EDMUND. It was my duty, sir.

GLOUCESTER. He did bewray his practice; and receiv’d This hurt you see, striving to apprehend him.

CORNWALL. Is he pursued?

GLOUCESTER. Ay, my good lord.

CORNWALL. If he be taken, he shall never more Be fear’d of doing harm: make your own purpose, How in my strength you please. For you, Edmund, Whose virtue and obedience doth this instant So much commend itself, you shall be ours: Natures of such deep trust we shall much need; You we first seize on.

EDMUND. I shall serve you, sir, truly, however else.

GLOUCESTER. For him I thank your grace.

CORNWALL. You know not why we came to visit you?

REGAN. Thus out of season, threading dark-ey’d night: Occasions, noble Gloucester, of some poise, Wherein we must have use of your advice. Our father he hath writ, so hath our sister, Of differences, which I best thought it fit To answer from our home; the several messengers From hence attend dispatch. Our good old friend, Lay comforts to your bosom; and bestow Your needful counsel to our business, Which craves the instant use.

GLOUCESTER. I serve you, madam: Your graces are right welcome.

SCENE II. Before Gloucester’s Castle

Enter Kent and Oswald, severally.

OSWALD. Good dawning to thee, friend: art of this house?

KENT. Ay.

OSWALD. Where may we set our horses?

KENT. I’ the mire.

OSWALD. Prithee, if thou lov’st me, tell me.

KENT. I love thee not.

OSWALD. Why then, I care not for thee.

KENT. If I had thee in Lipsbury pinfold, I would make thee care for me.

OSWALD. Why dost thou use me thus? I know thee not.

KENT. Fellow, I know thee.

OSWALD. What dost thou know me for?

KENT. A knave; a rascal; an eater of broken meats; a base, proud, shallow, beggarly, three-suited, hundred-pound, filthy, worsted-stocking knave; a lily-livered, action-taking, whoreson, glass-gazing, super-serviceable, finical rogue; one trunk-inheriting slave; one that wouldst be a bawd in way of good service, and art nothing but the composition of a knave, beggar, coward, pander, and the son and heir of a mongrel bitch: one whom I will beat into clamorous whining, if thou deniest the least syllable of thy addition.

OSWALD. Why, what a monstrous fellow art thou, thus to rail on one that’s neither known of thee nor knows thee?

KENT. What a brazen-faced varlet art thou, to deny thou knowest me! Is it two days ago since I tripped up thy heels and beat thee before the King? Draw, you rogue: for, though it be night, yet the moon shines; I’ll make a sop o’ the moonshine of you: draw, you whoreson cullionly barber-monger, draw!

OSWALD. Away! I have nothing to do with thee.

KENT. Draw, you rascal: you come with letters against the King; and take vanity the puppet’s part against the royalty of her father: draw, you rogue, or I’ll so carbonado your shanks:—draw, you rascal; come your ways!

OSWALD. Help, ho! murder! help!

KENT. Strike, you slave; stand, rogue, stand; you neat slave, strike!

OSWALD. Help, ho! murder! murder!

Enter Edmund, Cornwall, Regan, Gloucester and Servants.

EDMUND. How now! What’s the matter? Part!

KENT. With you, goodman boy, if you please: come, I’ll flesh ye; come on, young master.

GLOUCESTER. Weapons! arms! What’s the matter here?

CORNWALL. Keep peace, upon your lives, he dies that strikes again. What is the matter?

REGAN. The messengers from our sister and the King.

CORNWALL. What is your difference? Speak.

OSWALD. I am scarce in breath, my lord.

KENT. No marvel, you have so bestirr’d your valour. You cowardly rascal, nature disclaims in thee; a tailor made thee.

CORNWALL. Thou art a strange fellow: a tailor make a man?

KENT. Ay, a tailor, sir: a stonecutter or a painter could not have made him so ill, though he had been but two years at the trade.

CORNWALL. Speak yet, how grew your quarrel?

OSWALD. This ancient ruffian, sir, whose life I have spared at suit of his grey beard,—

KENT. Thou whoreson zed! thou unnecessary letter! My lord, if you’ll give me leave, I will tread this unbolted villain into mortar and daub the walls of a jakes with him. Spare my grey beard, you wagtail?

CORNWALL. Peace, sirrah! You beastly knave, know you no reverence?

KENT. Yes, sir; but anger hath a privilege.

CORNWALL. Why art thou angry?

KENT. That such a slave as this should wear a sword, Who wears no honesty. Such smiling rogues as these, Like rats, oft bite the holy cords a-twain Which are too intrince t’unloose; smooth every passion That in the natures of their lords rebel; Bring oil to fire, snow to their colder moods; Renege, affirm, and turn their halcyon beaks With every gale and vary of their masters, Knowing naught, like dogs, but following. A plague upon your epileptic visage! Smile you my speeches, as I were a fool? Goose, if I had you upon Sarum plain, I’d drive ye cackling home to Camelot.

CORNWALL. What, art thou mad, old fellow?

GLOUCESTER. How fell you out? Say that.

KENT. No contraries hold more antipathy Than I and such a knave.

CORNWALL. Why dost thou call him knave? What is his fault?

KENT. His countenance likes me not.

CORNWALL. No more perchance does mine, or his, or hers.

KENT. Sir, ’tis my occupation to be plain: I have seen better faces in my time Than stands on any shoulder that I see Before me at this instant.

CORNWALL. This is some fellow Who, having been prais’d for bluntness, doth affect A saucy roughness, and constrains the garb Quite from his nature: he cannot flatter, he, An honest mind and plain, he must speak truth! An they will take it, so; if not, he’s plain. These kind of knaves I know which in this plainness Harbour more craft and more corrupter ends Than twenty silly-ducking observants That stretch their duties nicely.

KENT. Sir, in good faith, in sincere verity, Under th’allowance of your great aspect, Whose influence, like the wreath of radiant fire On flickering Phoebus’ front,—

CORNWALL. What mean’st by this?

KENT. To go out of my dialect, which you discommend so much. I know, sir, I am no flatterer: he that beguiled you in a plain accent was a plain knave; which, for my part, I will not be, though I should win your displeasure to entreat me to’t.

CORNWALL. What was the offence you gave him?

OSWALD. I never gave him any: It pleas’d the King his master very late To strike at me, upon his misconstruction; When he, compact, and flattering his displeasure, Tripp’d me behind; being down, insulted, rail’d And put upon him such a deal of man, That worthied him, got praises of the King For him attempting who was self-subdu’d; And, in the fleshment of this dread exploit, Drew on me here again.

KENT. None of these rogues and cowards But Ajax is their fool.

CORNWALL. Fetch forth the stocks! You stubborn ancient knave, you reverent braggart, We’ll teach you.

KENT. Sir, I am too old to learn: Call not your stocks for me: I serve the King; On whose employment I was sent to you: You shall do small respect, show too bold malice Against the grace and person of my master, Stocking his messenger.

CORNWALL. Fetch forth the stocks! As I have life and honour, there shall he sit till noon.

REGAN. Till noon! Till night, my lord; and all night too!

KENT. Why, madam, if I were your father’s dog, You should not use me so.

REGAN. Sir, being his knave, I will.

[Stocks brought out.]

CORNWALL. This is a fellow of the selfsame colour Our sister speaks of. Come, bring away the stocks!

GLOUCESTER. Let me beseech your grace not to do so: His fault is much, and the good King his master Will check him for’t: your purpos’d low correction Is such as basest and contemned’st wretches For pilferings and most common trespasses, Are punish’d with. The King must take it ill That he, so slightly valued in his messenger, Should have him thus restrained.

CORNWALL. I’ll answer that.

REGAN. My sister may receive it much more worse, To have her gentleman abus’d, assaulted, For following her affairs. Put in his legs.

[Kent is put in the stocks.]

CORNWALL. Come, my good lord, away.

[Exeunt all but Gloucester and Kent.]

GLOUCESTER. I am sorry for thee, friend; ’tis the Duke’s pleasure, Whose disposition, all the world well knows, Will not be rubb’d nor stopp’d; I’ll entreat for thee.

KENT. Pray do not, sir: I have watch’d, and travell’d hard; Some time I shall sleep out, the rest I’ll whistle. A good man’s fortune may grow out at heels: Give you good morrow!

GLOUCESTER. The Duke’s to blame in this: ’twill be ill taken.

KENT. Good King, that must approve the common saw, Thou out of heaven’s benediction com’st To the warm sun. Approach, thou beacon to this under globe, That by thy comfortable beams I may Peruse this letter. Nothing almost sees miracles But misery. I know ’tis from Cordelia, Who hath most fortunately been inform’d Of my obscured course. And shall find time From this enormous state, seeking to give Losses their remedies. All weary and o’erwatch’d, Take vantage, heavy eyes, not to behold This shameful lodging. Fortune, good night: smile once more, turn thy wheel!

[He sleeps.]

SCENE III. The open Country

EDGAR. I heard myself proclaim’d, And by the happy hollow of a tree Escap’d the hunt. No port is free, no place That guard and most unusual vigilance Does not attend my taking. While I may scape I will preserve myself: and am bethought To take the basest and most poorest shape That ever penury in contempt of man, Brought near to beast: my face I’ll grime with filth, Blanket my loins; elf all my hair in knots, And with presented nakedness outface The winds and persecutions of the sky. The country gives me proof and precedent Of Bedlam beggars, who, with roaring voices, Strike in their numb’d and mortified bare arms Pins, wooden pricks, nails, sprigs of rosemary; And with this horrible object, from low farms, Poor pelting villages, sheep-cotes, and mills, Sometime with lunatic bans, sometime with prayers, Enforce their charity. Poor Turlygod! poor Tom, That’s something yet: Edgar I nothing am.

SCENE IV. Before Gloucester’s Castle; Kent in the stocks

Enter Lear, Fool and Gentleman.

LEAR. ’Tis strange that they should so depart from home, And not send back my messenger.

GENTLEMAN. As I learn’d, The night before there was no purpose in them Of this remove.

KENT. Hail to thee, noble master!

LEAR. Ha! Mak’st thou this shame thy pastime?

KENT. No, my lord.

FOOL. Ha, ha! he wears cruel garters. Horses are tied by the heads; dogs and bears by the neck, monkeys by the loins, and men by the legs: when a man is overlusty at legs, then he wears wooden nether-stocks.

LEAR. What’s he that hath so much thy place mistook To set thee here?

KENT. It is both he and she, Your son and daughter.

KENT. Yes.

LEAR. No, I say.

KENT. I say, yea.

LEAR. No, no; they would not.

KENT. Yes, they have.

LEAR. By Jupiter, I swear no.

KENT. By Juno, I swear ay.

LEAR. They durst not do’t. They could not, would not do’t; ’tis worse than murder, To do upon respect such violent outrage: Resolve me, with all modest haste, which way Thou mightst deserve or they impose this usage, Coming from us.

KENT. My lord, when at their home I did commend your highness’ letters to them, Ere I was risen from the place that show’d My duty kneeling, came there a reeking post, Stew’d in his haste, half breathless, panting forth From Goneril his mistress salutations; Deliver’d letters, spite of intermission, Which presently they read; on those contents, They summon’d up their meiny, straight took horse; Commanded me to follow and attend The leisure of their answer; gave me cold looks: And meeting here the other messenger, Whose welcome I perceiv’d had poison’d mine, Being the very fellow which of late Display’d so saucily against your highness, Having more man than wit about me, drew; He rais’d the house with loud and coward cries. Your son and daughter found this trespass worth The shame which here it suffers.

FOOL. Winter’s not gone yet, if the wild geese fly that way. Fathers that wear rags Do make their children blind, But fathers that bear bags Shall see their children kind. Fortune, that arrant whore, Ne’er turns the key to th’ poor. But for all this, thou shalt have as many dolours for thy daughters as thou canst tell in a year.

LEAR. O, how this mother swells up toward my heart! Hysterica passio, down, thou climbing sorrow, Thy element’s below! Where is this daughter?

KENT. With the earl, sir, here within.

LEAR. Follow me not; stay here.

GENTLEMAN. Made you no more offence but what you speak of?

KENT. None. How chance the King comes with so small a number?

FOOL. An thou hadst been set i’ the stocks for that question, thou hadst well deserved it.

FOOL. We’ll set thee to school to an ant, to teach thee there’s no labouring i’the winter. All that follow their noses are led by their eyes but blind men; and there’s not a nose among twenty but can smell him that’s stinking. Let go thy hold when a great wheel runs down a hill, lest it break thy neck with following it; but the great one that goes upward, let him draw thee after. When a wise man gives thee better counsel, give me mine again: I would have none but knaves follow it, since a fool gives it. That sir which serves and seeks for gain, And follows but for form, Will pack when it begins to rain, And leave thee in the storm. But I will tarry; the fool will stay, And let the wise man fly: The knave turns fool that runs away; The fool no knave perdy.

KENT. Where learn’d you this, fool?

FOOL. Not i’ the stocks, fool.

Enter Lear and Gloucester.

LEAR. Deny to speak with me? They are sick? they are weary? They have travell’d all the night? Mere fetches; The images of revolt and flying off. Fetch me a better answer.

GLOUCESTER. My dear lord, You know the fiery quality of the Duke; How unremovable and fix’d he is In his own course.

LEAR. Vengeance! plague! death! confusion! Fiery? What quality? Why, Gloucester, Gloucester, I’d speak with the Duke of Cornwall and his wife.

GLOUCESTER. Well, my good lord, I have inform’d them so.

LEAR. Inform’d them! Dost thou understand me, man?

LEAR. The King would speak with Cornwall; the dear father Would with his daughter speak, commands, tends, service, Are they inform’d of this? My breath and blood! Fiery? The fiery Duke, tell the hot Duke that— No, but not yet: maybe he is not well: Infirmity doth still neglect all office Whereto our health is bound: we are not ourselves When nature, being oppress’d, commands the mind To suffer with the body: I’ll forbear; And am fallen out with my more headier will, To take the indispos’d and sickly fit For the sound man. [Looking on Kent.] Death on my state! Wherefore Should he sit here? This act persuades me That this remotion of the Duke and her Is practice only. Give me my servant forth. Go tell the Duke and’s wife I’d speak with them, Now, presently: bid them come forth and hear me, Or at their chamber door I’ll beat the drum Till it cry sleep to death.

GLOUCESTER. I would have all well betwixt you.

LEAR. O me, my heart, my rising heart! But down!

FOOL. Cry to it, nuncle, as the cockney did to the eels when she put ’em i’ the paste alive; she knapped ’em o’ the coxcombs with a stick and cried ‘Down, wantons, down!’ ’Twas her brother that, in pure kindness to his horse buttered his hay.

Enter Cornwall, Regan, Gloucester and Servants.

LEAR. Good morrow to you both.

CORNWALL. Hail to your grace!

[Kent here set at liberty.]

REGAN. I am glad to see your highness.

LEAR. Regan, I think you are; I know what reason I have to think so: if thou shouldst not be glad, I would divorce me from thy mother’s tomb, Sepulchring an adultress. [To Kent] O, are you free? Some other time for that.—Beloved Regan, Thy sister’s naught: O Regan, she hath tied Sharp-tooth’d unkindness, like a vulture, here.

[Points to his heart.]

I can scarce speak to thee; thou’lt not believe With how deprav’d a quality—O Regan!

REGAN. I pray you, sir, take patience. I have hope You less know how to value her desert Than she to scant her duty.

LEAR. Say, how is that?

REGAN. I cannot think my sister in the least Would fail her obligation. If, sir, perchance She have restrain’d the riots of your followers, ’Tis on such ground, and to such wholesome end, As clears her from all blame.

LEAR. My curses on her.

REGAN. O, sir, you are old; Nature in you stands on the very verge Of her confine: you should be rul’d and led By some discretion, that discerns your state Better than you yourself. Therefore I pray you, That to our sister you do make return; Say you have wrong’d her, sir.

LEAR. Ask her forgiveness? Do you but mark how this becomes the house? ‘Dear daughter, I confess that I am old; [Kneeling.] Age is unnecessary: on my knees I beg That you’ll vouchsafe me raiment, bed, and food.’

REGAN. Good sir, no more! These are unsightly tricks: Return you to my sister.

LEAR. [Rising.] Never, Regan: She hath abated me of half my train; Look’d black upon me; struck me with her tongue, Most serpent-like, upon the very heart. All the stor’d vengeances of heaven fall On her ingrateful top! Strike her young bones, You taking airs, with lameness!

CORNWALL. Fie, sir, fie!

LEAR. You nimble lightnings, dart your blinding flames Into her scornful eyes! Infect her beauty, You fen-suck’d fogs, drawn by the powerful sun, To fall and blast her pride!

REGAN. O the blest gods! So will you wish on me when the rash mood is on.

LEAR. No, Regan, thou shalt never have my curse. Thy tender-hefted nature shall not give Thee o’er to harshness. Her eyes are fierce; but thine Do comfort, and not burn. ’Tis not in thee To grudge my pleasures, to cut off my train, To bandy hasty words, to scant my sizes, And, in conclusion, to oppose the bolt Against my coming in. Thou better know’st The offices of nature, bond of childhood, Effects of courtesy, dues of gratitude; Thy half o’ the kingdom hast thou not forgot, Wherein I thee endow’d.

REGAN. Good sir, to the purpose.

LEAR. Who put my man i’ the stocks?

CORNWALL. What trumpet’s that?

REGAN. I know’t, my sister’s: this approves her letter, That she would soon be here.

Is your lady come?

LEAR. This is a slave, whose easy borrowed pride Dwells in the fickle grace of her he follows. Out, varlet, from my sight!

CORNWALL. What means your grace?

LEAR. Who stock’d my servant? Regan, I have good hope Thou didst not know on’t. Who comes here? O heavens!

If you do love old men, if your sweet sway Allow obedience, if yourselves are old, Make it your cause; send down, and take my part! [To Goneril.] Art not asham’d to look upon this beard? O Regan, wilt thou take her by the hand?

GONERIL. Why not by the hand, sir? How have I offended? All’s not offence that indiscretion finds And dotage terms so.

LEAR. O sides, you are too tough! Will you yet hold? How came my man i’ the stocks?

CORNWALL. I set him there, sir: but his own disorders Deserv’d much less advancement.

REGAN. I pray you, father, being weak, seem so. If, till the expiration of your month, You will return and sojourn with my sister, Dismissing half your train, come then to me: I am now from home, and out of that provision Which shall be needful for your entertainment.

LEAR. Return to her, and fifty men dismiss’d? No, rather I abjure all roofs, and choose To wage against the enmity o’ the air; To be a comrade with the wolf and owl, Necessity’s sharp pinch! Return with her? Why, the hot-blooded France, that dowerless took Our youngest born, I could as well be brought To knee his throne, and, squire-like, pension beg To keep base life afoot. Return with her? Persuade me rather to be slave and sumpter To this detested groom.

LEAR. You? Did you?

[Pointing to Oswald.]

GONERIL. At your choice, sir.

LEAR. I prithee, daughter, do not make me mad: I will not trouble thee, my child; farewell: We’ll no more meet, no more see one another. But yet thou art my flesh, my blood, my daughter; Or rather a disease that’s in my flesh, Which I must needs call mine. Thou art a boil, A plague sore, or embossed carbuncle In my corrupted blood. But I’ll not chide thee; Let shame come when it will, I do not call it: I do not bid the thunder-bearer shoot, Nor tell tales of thee to high-judging Jove: Mend when thou canst; be better at thy leisure: I can be patient; I can stay with Regan, I and my hundred knights.

REGAN. Not altogether so, I look’d not for you yet, nor am provided For your fit welcome. Give ear, sir, to my sister; For those that mingle reason with your passion Must be content to think you old, and so— But she knows what she does.

LEAR. Is this well spoken?

REGAN. I dare avouch it, sir: what, fifty followers? Is it not well? What should you need of more? Yea, or so many, sith that both charge and danger Speak ’gainst so great a number? How in one house Should many people, under two commands, Hold amity? ’Tis hard; almost impossible.

GONERIL. Why might not you, my lord, receive attendance From those that she calls servants, or from mine?

REGAN. Why not, my lord? If then they chanc’d to slack ye, We could control them. If you will come to me,— For now I spy a danger,—I entreat you To bring but five-and-twenty: to no more Will I give place or notice.

LEAR. I gave you all,—

REGAN. And in good time you gave it.

LEAR. Made you my guardians, my depositaries; But kept a reservation to be followed With such a number. What, must I come to you With five-and-twenty, Regan, said you so?

REGAN. And speak’t again my lord; no more with me.

LEAR. Those wicked creatures yet do look well-favour’d When others are more wicked; not being the worst Stands in some rank of praise. [To Goneril.] I’ll go with thee: Thy fifty yet doth double five-and-twenty, And thou art twice her love.

GONERIL. Hear me, my lord: What need you five-and-twenty? Ten? Or five? To follow in a house where twice so many Have a command to tend you?

REGAN. What need one?

LEAR. O, reason not the need: our basest beggars Are in the poorest thing superfluous: Allow not nature more than nature needs, Man’s life is cheap as beast’s. Thou art a lady; If only to go warm were gorgeous, Why, nature needs not what thou gorgeous wear’st Which scarcely keeps thee warm. But, for true need,— You heavens, give me that patience, patience I need! You see me here, you gods, a poor old man, As full of grief as age; wretched in both! If it be you that stirs these daughters’ hearts Against their father, fool me not so much To bear it tamely; touch me with noble anger, And let not women’s weapons, water-drops, Stain my man’s cheeks! No, you unnatural hags, I will have such revenges on you both That all the world shall,—I will do such things,— What they are yet, I know not; but they shall be The terrors of the earth. You think I’ll weep; No, I’ll not weep:— [Storm and tempest.] I have full cause of weeping; but this heart Shall break into a hundred thousand flaws Or ere I’ll weep.—O fool, I shall go mad!

[Exeunt Lear, Gloucester, Kent and Fool.]

CORNWALL. Let us withdraw; ’twill be a storm.

REGAN. This house is little: the old man and his people Cannot be well bestow’d.

GONERIL. ’Tis his own blame; hath put himself from rest And must needs taste his folly.

REGAN. For his particular, I’ll receive him gladly, But not one follower.

GONERIL. So am I purpos’d. Where is my lord of Gloucester?

CORNWALL. Followed the old man forth, he is return’d.

GLOUCESTER. The King is in high rage.

CORNWALL. Whither is he going?

GLOUCESTER. He calls to horse; but will I know not whither.

CORNWALL. ’Tis best to give him way; he leads himself.

GONERIL. My lord, entreat him by no means to stay.

GLOUCESTER. Alack, the night comes on, and the high winds Do sorely ruffle; for many miles about There’s scarce a bush.

REGAN. O, sir, to wilful men The injuries that they themselves procure Must be their schoolmasters. Shut up your doors. He is attended with a desperate train, And what they may incense him to, being apt To have his ear abus’d, wisdom bids fear.

CORNWALL. Shut up your doors, my lord; ’tis a wild night. My Regan counsels well: come out o’ the storm.

SCENE I. A Heath

A storm with thunder and lightning. Enter Kent and a Gentleman, severally.

KENT. Who’s there, besides foul weather?

GENTLEMAN. One minded like the weather, most unquietly.

KENT. I know you. Where’s the King?

GENTLEMAN. Contending with the fretful elements; Bids the wind blow the earth into the sea, Or swell the curled waters ’bove the main, That things might change or cease; tears his white hair, Which the impetuous blasts with eyeless rage, Catch in their fury and make nothing of; Strives in his little world of man to outscorn The to-and-fro-conflicting wind and rain. This night, wherein the cub-drawn bear would couch, The lion and the belly-pinched wolf Keep their fur dry, unbonneted he runs, And bids what will take all.

KENT. But who is with him?

GENTLEMAN. None but the fool, who labours to out-jest His heart-struck injuries.

KENT. Sir, I do know you; And dare, upon the warrant of my note Commend a dear thing to you. There is division, Although as yet the face of it be cover’d With mutual cunning, ’twixt Albany and Cornwall; Who have, as who have not, that their great stars Throne’d and set high; servants, who seem no less, Which are to France the spies and speculations Intelligent of our state. What hath been seen, Either in snuffs and packings of the Dukes; Or the hard rein which both of them have borne Against the old kind King; or something deeper, Whereof, perchance, these are but furnishings;— But, true it is, from France there comes a power Into this scatter’d kingdom; who already, Wise in our negligence, have secret feet In some of our best ports, and are at point To show their open banner.—Now to you: If on my credit you dare build so far To make your speed to Dover, you shall find Some that will thank you making just report Of how unnatural and bemadding sorrow The King hath cause to plain. I am a gentleman of blood and breeding; And from some knowledge and assurance Offer this office to you.

GENTLEMAN. I will talk further with you.

KENT. No, do not. For confirmation that I am much more Than my out-wall, open this purse, and take What it contains. If you shall see Cordelia, As fear not but you shall, show her this ring; And she will tell you who your fellow is That yet you do not know. Fie on this storm! I will go seek the King.

GENTLEMAN. Give me your hand: have you no more to say?

KENT. Few words, but, to effect, more than all yet: That, when we have found the King, in which your pain That way, I’ll this; he that first lights on him Holla the other.

SCENE II. Another part of the heath

Storm continues. Enter Lear and Fool.

LEAR. Blow, winds, and crack your cheeks! Rage! blow! You cataracts and hurricanoes, spout Till you have drench’d our steeples, drown’d the cocks! You sulphurous and thought-executing fires, Vaunt-couriers to oak-cleaving thunderbolts, Singe my white head! And thou, all-shaking thunder, Strike flat the thick rotundity o’ the world! Crack nature’s moulds, all germens spill at once, That make ingrateful man!

FOOL. O nuncle, court holy-water in a dry house is better than this rain-water out o’ door. Good nuncle, in; and ask thy daughters blessing: here’s a night pities neither wise men nor fools.

LEAR. Rumble thy bellyful! Spit, fire! spout, rain! Nor rain, wind, thunder, fire are my daughters; I tax not you, you elements, with unkindness. I never gave you kingdom, call’d you children; You owe me no subscription: then let fall Your horrible pleasure. Here I stand your slave, A poor, infirm, weak, and despis’d old man: But yet I call you servile ministers, That will with two pernicious daughters join Your high-engender’d battles ’gainst a head So old and white as this! O! O! ’tis foul!

FOOL. He that has a house to put’s head in has a good head-piece. The codpiece that will house Before the head has any, The head and he shall louse: So beggars marry many. The man that makes his toe What he his heart should make Shall of a corn cry woe, And turn his sleep to wake. For there was never yet fair woman but she made mouths in a glass.

LEAR. No, I will be the pattern of all patience; I will say nothing.

Enter Kent.

KENT. Who’s there?

FOOL. Marry, here’s grace and a codpiece; that’s a wise man and a fool.

KENT. Alas, sir, are you here? Things that love night Love not such nights as these; the wrathful skies Gallow the very wanderers of the dark, And make them keep their caves. Since I was man, Such sheets of fire, such bursts of horrid thunder, Such groans of roaring wind and rain I never Remember to have heard. Man’s nature cannot carry Th’affliction, nor the fear.

LEAR. Let the great gods, That keep this dreadful pudder o’er our heads, Find out their enemies now. Tremble, thou wretch, That hast within thee undivulged crimes Unwhipp’d of justice. Hide thee, thou bloody hand; Thou perjur’d, and thou simular of virtue That art incestuous. Caitiff, to pieces shake That under covert and convenient seeming Hast practis’d on man’s life: close pent-up guilts, Rive your concealing continents, and cry These dreadful summoners grace. I am a man More sinn’d against than sinning.

KENT. Alack, bareheaded! Gracious my lord, hard by here is a hovel; Some friendship will it lend you ’gainst the tempest: Repose you there, whilst I to this hard house,— More harder than the stones whereof ’tis rais’d; Which even but now, demanding after you, Denied me to come in,—return, and force Their scanted courtesy.

LEAR. My wits begin to turn. Come on, my boy. How dost, my boy? Art cold? I am cold myself. Where is this straw, my fellow? The art of our necessities is strange, That can make vile things precious. Come, your hovel. Poor fool and knave, I have one part in my heart That’s sorry yet for thee.

FOOL. [Singing.] He that has and a little tiny wit, With heigh-ho, the wind and the rain, Must make content with his fortunes fit, Though the rain it raineth every day.

LEAR. True, boy. Come, bring us to this hovel.

[Exeunt Lear and Kent.]

FOOL. This is a brave night to cool a courtezan. I’ll speak a prophecy ere I go: When priests are more in word than matter; When brewers mar their malt with water; When nobles are their tailors’ tutors; No heretics burn’d, but wenches’ suitors; When every case in law is right; No squire in debt, nor no poor knight; When slanders do not live in tongues; Nor cut-purses come not to throngs; When usurers tell their gold i’ the field; And bawds and whores do churches build, Then shall the realm of Albion Come to great confusion: Then comes the time, who lives to see’t, That going shall be us’d with feet. This prophecy Merlin shall make; for I live before his time.

SCENE III. A Room in Gloucester’s Castle

Enter Gloucester and Edmund.

GLOUCESTER. Alack, alack, Edmund, I like not this unnatural dealing. When I desired their leave that I might pity him, they took from me the use of mine own house; charged me on pain of perpetual displeasure, neither to speak of him, entreat for him, or any way sustain him.

EDMUND. Most savage and unnatural!

GLOUCESTER. Go to; say you nothing. There is division between the Dukes, and a worse matter than that: I have received a letter this night;—’tis dangerous to be spoken;—I have locked the letter in my closet: these injuries the King now bears will be revenged home; there’s part of a power already footed: we must incline to the King. I will look him, and privily relieve him: go you and maintain talk with the Duke, that my charity be not of him perceived: if he ask for me, I am ill, and gone to bed. If I die for it, as no less is threatened me, the King my old master must be relieved. There is some strange thing toward, Edmund; pray you be careful.

EDMUND. This courtesy, forbid thee, shall the Duke Instantly know; and of that letter too. This seems a fair deserving, and must draw me That which my father loses, no less than all: The younger rises when the old doth fall.

SCENE IV. A part of the Heath with a Hovel

Storm continues. Enter Lear, Kent and Fool.

KENT. Here is the place, my lord; good my lord, enter: The tyranny of the open night’s too rough For nature to endure.

LEAR. Let me alone.

KENT. Good my lord, enter here.

LEAR. Wilt break my heart?

KENT. I had rather break mine own. Good my lord, enter.

LEAR. Thou think’st ’tis much that this contentious storm Invades us to the skin: so ’tis to thee, But where the greater malady is fix’d, The lesser is scarce felt. Thou’dst shun a bear; But if thy flight lay toward the raging sea, Thou’dst meet the bear i’ the mouth. When the mind’s free, The body’s delicate: the tempest in my mind Doth from my senses take all feeling else Save what beats there. Filial ingratitude! Is it not as this mouth should tear this hand For lifting food to’t? But I will punish home; No, I will weep no more. In such a night To shut me out! Pour on; I will endure: In such a night as this! O Regan, Goneril! Your old kind father, whose frank heart gave all, O, that way madness lies; let me shun that; No more of that.

LEAR. Prithee go in thyself; seek thine own ease: This tempest will not give me leave to ponder On things would hurt me more. But I’ll go in. [To the Fool.] In, boy; go first. You houseless poverty, Nay, get thee in. I’ll pray, and then I’ll sleep.

[Fool goes in.]

Poor naked wretches, wheresoe’er you are, That bide the pelting of this pitiless storm, How shall your houseless heads and unfed sides, Your loop’d and window’d raggedness, defend you From seasons such as these? O, I have ta’en Too little care of this! Take physic, pomp; Expose thyself to feel what wretches feel, That thou mayst shake the superflux to them And show the heavens more just.

EDGAR. [Within.] Fathom and half, fathom and half! Poor Tom!

[The Fool runs out from the hovel.]

FOOL. Come not in here, nuncle, here’s a spirit. Help me, help me!

KENT. Give me thy hand. Who’s there?

FOOL. A spirit, a spirit: he says his name’s poor Tom.

KENT. What art thou that dost grumble there i’ the straw? Come forth.

Enter Edgar, disguised as a madman.

EDGAR. Away! the foul fiend follows me! Through the sharp hawthorn blows the cold wind. Humh! go to thy cold bed, and warm thee.

LEAR. Didst thou give all to thy two daughters? And art thou come to this?

EDGAR. Who gives anything to poor Tom? Whom the foul fiend hath led through fire and through flame, through ford and whirlpool, o’er bog and quagmire; that hath laid knives under his pillow and halters in his pew, set ratsbane by his porridge; made him proud of heart, to ride on a bay trotting horse over four-inched bridges, to course his own shadow for a traitor. Bless thy five wits! Tom’s a-cold. O, do, de, do, de, do, de. Bless thee from whirlwinds, star-blasting, and taking! Do poor Tom some charity, whom the foul fiend vexes. There could I have him now, and there,—and there again, and there.

[Storm continues.]

LEAR. What, have his daughters brought him to this pass? Couldst thou save nothing? Didst thou give ’em all?

FOOL. Nay, he reserv’d a blanket, else we had been all shamed.

LEAR. Now all the plagues that in the pendulous air Hang fated o’er men’s faults light on thy daughters!

KENT. He hath no daughters, sir.

LEAR. Death, traitor! nothing could have subdu’d nature To such a lowness but his unkind daughters. Is it the fashion that discarded fathers Should have thus little mercy on their flesh? Judicious punishment! ’twas this flesh begot Those pelican daughters.

EDGAR. Pillicock sat on Pillicock hill, Alow, alow, loo loo!

FOOL. This cold night will turn us all to fools and madmen.

EDGAR. Take heed o’ th’ foul fiend: obey thy parents; keep thy word justly; swear not; commit not with man’s sworn spouse; set not thy sweet-heart on proud array. Tom’s a-cold.

LEAR. What hast thou been?

EDGAR. A serving-man, proud in heart and mind; that curled my hair; wore gloves in my cap; served the lust of my mistress’ heart, and did the act of darkness with her; swore as many oaths as I spake words, and broke them in the sweet face of heaven. One that slept in the contriving of lust, and waked to do it. Wine loved I deeply, dice dearly; and in woman out-paramour’d the Turk. False of heart, light of ear, bloody of hand; hog in sloth, fox in stealth, wolf in greediness, dog in madness, lion in prey. Let not the creaking of shoes nor the rustling of silks betray thy poor heart to woman. Keep thy foot out of brothels, thy hand out of plackets, thy pen from lender’s book, and defy the foul fiend. Still through the hawthorn blows the cold wind: says suum, mun, nonny. Dolphin my boy, boy, sessa! let him trot by.

[Storm still continues.]

LEAR. Why, thou wert better in thy grave than to answer with thy uncovered body this extremity of the skies. Is man no more than this? Consider him well. Thou owest the worm no silk, the beast no hide, the sheep no wool, the cat no perfume. Ha! here’s three on’s are sophisticated! Thou art the thing itself: unaccommodated man is no more but such a poor, bare, forked animal as thou art. Off, off, you lendings! Come, unbutton here.

[Tears off his clothes.]

FOOL. Prithee, nuncle, be contented; ’tis a naughty night to swim in. Now a little fire in a wild field were like an old lecher’s heart, a small spark, all the rest on’s body cold. Look, here comes a walking fire.

EDGAR. This is the foul fiend Flibbertigibbet: he begins at curfew, and walks till the first cock; he gives the web and the pin, squints the eye, and makes the harelip; mildews the white wheat, and hurts the poor creature of earth. Swithold footed thrice the old; He met the nightmare, and her nine-fold; Bid her alight and her troth plight, And aroint thee, witch, aroint thee!

KENT. How fares your grace?

Enter Gloucester with a torch.

LEAR. What’s he?

KENT. Who’s there? What is’t you seek?

GLOUCESTER. What are you there? Your names?

EDGAR. Poor Tom; that eats the swimming frog, the toad, the todpole, the wall-newt and the water; that in the fury of his heart, when the foul fiend rages, eats cow-dung for sallets; swallows the old rat and the ditch-dog; drinks the green mantle of the standing pool; who is whipped from tithing to tithing, and stocked, punished, and imprisoned; who hath had three suits to his back, six shirts to his body, Horse to ride, and weapon to wear. But mice and rats and such small deer, Have been Tom’s food for seven long year. Beware my follower. Peace, Smulkin; peace, thou fiend!

GLOUCESTER. What, hath your grace no better company?

EDGAR. The prince of darkness is a gentleman: Modo he’s call’d, and Mahu.

GLOUCESTER. Our flesh and blood, my lord, is grown so vile That it doth hate what gets it.

EDGAR. Poor Tom’s a-cold.

GLOUCESTER. Go in with me: my duty cannot suffer T’obey in all your daughters’ hard commands; Though their injunction be to bar my doors, And let this tyrannous night take hold upon you, Yet have I ventur’d to come seek you out, And bring you where both fire and food is ready.

LEAR. First let me talk with this philosopher. What is the cause of thunder?

KENT. Good my lord, take his offer; go into the house.

LEAR. I’ll talk a word with this same learned Theban. What is your study?

EDGAR. How to prevent the fiend and to kill vermin.

LEAR. Let me ask you one word in private.

KENT. Importune him once more to go, my lord; His wits begin t’unsettle.

GLOUCESTER. Canst thou blame him? His daughters seek his death. Ah, that good Kent! He said it would be thus, poor banish’d man! Thou sayest the King grows mad; I’ll tell thee, friend, I am almost mad myself. I had a son, Now outlaw’d from my blood; he sought my life But lately, very late: I lov’d him, friend, No father his son dearer: true to tell thee,

The grief hath craz’d my wits. What a night’s this! I do beseech your grace.

LEAR. O, cry you mercy, sir. Noble philosopher, your company.

EDGAR. Tom’s a-cold.

GLOUCESTER. In, fellow, there, into the hovel; keep thee warm.

LEAR. Come, let’s in all.

KENT. This way, my lord.

LEAR. With him; I will keep still with my philosopher.

KENT. Good my lord, soothe him; let him take the fellow.

GLOUCESTER. Take him you on.

KENT. Sirrah, come on; go along with us.

LEAR. Come, good Athenian.

GLOUCESTER. No words, no words, hush.

EDGAR. Child Rowland to the dark tower came, His word was still—Fie, foh, and fum, I smell the blood of a British man.

SCENE V. A Room in Gloucester’s Castle

Enter Cornwall and Edmund.

CORNWALL. I will have my revenge ere I depart his house.

EDMUND. How, my lord, I may be censured, that nature thus gives way to loyalty, something fears me to think of.

CORNWALL. I now perceive it was not altogether your brother’s evil disposition made him seek his death; but a provoking merit, set a-work by a reproveable badness in himself.

EDMUND. How malicious is my fortune, that I must repent to be just! This is the letter he spoke of, which approves him an intelligent party to the advantages of France. O heavens! that this treason were not; or not I the detector!

CORNWALL. Go with me to the Duchess.

EDMUND. If the matter of this paper be certain, you have mighty business in hand.

CORNWALL. True or false, it hath made thee Earl of Gloucester. Seek out where thy father is, that he may be ready for our apprehension.

EDMUND. [Aside.] If I find him comforting the King, it will stuff his suspicion more fully. I will persever in my course of loyalty, though the conflict be sore between that and my blood.

CORNWALL. I will lay trust upon thee; and thou shalt find a dearer father in my love.

SCENE VI. A Chamber in a Farmhouse adjoining the Castle

Enter Gloucester, Lear, Kent, Fool and Edgar.

GLOUCESTER. Here is better than the open air; take it thankfully. I will piece out the comfort with what addition I can: I will not be long from you.

KENT. All the power of his wits have given way to his impatience:— the gods reward your kindness!

[Exit Gloucester.]

EDGAR. Frateretto calls me; and tells me Nero is an angler in the lake of darkness. Pray, innocent, and beware the foul fiend.

FOOL. Prithee, nuncle, tell me whether a madman be a gentleman or a yeoman.

LEAR. A king, a king!

FOOL. No, he’s a yeoman that has a gentleman to his son; for he’s a mad yeoman that sees his son a gentleman before him.

LEAR. To have a thousand with red burning spits Come hissing in upon ’em.

EDGAR. The foul fiend bites my back.

FOOL. He’s mad that trusts in the tameness of a wolf, a horse’s health, a boy’s love, or a whore’s oath.

LEAR. It shall be done; I will arraign them straight. [To Edgar.] Come, sit thou here, most learned justicer; [To the Fool.] Thou, sapient sir, sit here. Now, you she-foxes!—

EDGAR. Look, where he stands and glares! Want’st thou eyes at trial, madam? Come o’er the bourn, Bessy, to me.

FOOL. Her boat hath a leak, And she must not speak Why she dares not come over to thee.

EDGAR. The foul fiend haunts poor Tom in the voice of a nightingale. Hoppedance cries in Tom’s belly for two white herring. Croak not, black angel; I have no food for thee.

KENT. How do you, sir? Stand you not so amaz’d; Will you lie down and rest upon the cushions?

LEAR. I’ll see their trial first. Bring in their evidence. [To Edgar.] Thou, robed man of justice, take thy place. [To the Fool.] And thou, his yokefellow of equity, Bench by his side. [To Kent.] You are o’ the commission, Sit you too.

EDGAR. Let us deal justly. Sleepest or wakest thou, jolly shepherd? Thy sheep be in the corn; And for one blast of thy minikin mouth Thy sheep shall take no harm. Purr! the cat is grey.

LEAR. Arraign her first; ’tis Goneril. I here take my oath before this honourable assembly, she kicked the poor King her father.

FOOL. Come hither, mistress. Is your name Goneril?

LEAR. She cannot deny it.

FOOL. Cry you mercy, I took you for a joint-stool.

LEAR. And here’s another, whose warp’d looks proclaim What store her heart is made on. Stop her there! Arms, arms! sword! fire! Corruption in the place! False justicer, why hast thou let her ’scape?

EDGAR. Bless thy five wits!

KENT. O pity! Sir, where is the patience now That you so oft have boasted to retain?

EDGAR. [Aside.] My tears begin to take his part so much They mar my counterfeiting.

LEAR. The little dogs and all, Trey, Blanch, and Sweetheart, see, they bark at me.

EDGAR. Tom will throw his head at them. Avaunt, you curs! Be thy mouth or black or white, Tooth that poisons if it bite; Mastiff, greyhound, mongrel grim, Hound or spaniel, brach or him, Or bobtail tike or trundle-tail, Tom will make them weep and wail; For, with throwing thus my head, Dogs leap the hatch, and all are fled. Do, de, de, de. Sessa! Come, march to wakes and fairs and market towns. Poor Tom, thy horn is dry.

LEAR. Then let them anatomize Regan; see what breeds about her heart. Is there any cause in nature that makes these hard hearts? [To Edgar.] You, sir, I entertain you for one of my hundred; only I do not like the fashion of your garments. You’ll say they are Persian; but let them be changed.

KENT. Now, good my lord, lie here and rest awhile.

LEAR. Make no noise, make no noise; draw the curtains. So, so. We’ll go to supper i’ the morning.

FOOL. And I’ll go to bed at noon.

GLOUCESTER. Come hither, friend; Where is the King my master?

KENT. Here, sir; but trouble him not, his wits are gone.

GLOUCESTER. Good friend, I prithee, take him in thy arms; I have o’erheard a plot of death upon him; There is a litter ready; lay him in’t And drive towards Dover, friend, where thou shalt meet Both welcome and protection. Take up thy master; If thou shouldst dally half an hour, his life, With thine, and all that offer to defend him, Stand in assured loss. Take up, take up; And follow me, that will to some provision Give thee quick conduct.

KENT. Oppressed nature sleeps. This rest might yet have balm’d thy broken sinews, Which, if convenience will not allow, Stand in hard cure. Come, help to bear thy master; [To the Fool.] Thou must not stay behind.

GLOUCESTER. Come, come, away!

[Exeunt Kent, Gloucester and the Fool bearing off Lear.]

EDGAR. When we our betters see bearing our woes, We scarcely think our miseries our foes. Who alone suffers, suffers most i’ the mind, Leaving free things and happy shows behind: But then the mind much sufferance doth o’erskip When grief hath mates, and bearing fellowship. How light and portable my pain seems now, When that which makes me bend makes the King bow; He childed as I fathered! Tom, away! Mark the high noises; and thyself bewray, When false opinion, whose wrong thoughts defile thee, In thy just proof repeals and reconciles thee. What will hap more tonight, safe ’scape the King! Lurk, lurk.

SCENE VII. A Room in Gloucester’s Castle

Enter Cornwall, Regan, Goneril, Edmund and Servants.

CORNWALL. Post speedily to my lord your husband, show him this letter: the army of France is landed. Seek out the traitor Gloucester.

[Exeunt some of the Servants.]

REGAN. Hang him instantly.

GONERIL. Pluck out his eyes.

CORNWALL. Leave him to my displeasure. Edmund, keep you our sister company: the revenges we are bound to take upon your traitorous father are not fit for your beholding. Advise the Duke where you are going, to a most festinate preparation: we are bound to the like. Our posts shall be swift and intelligent betwixt us. Farewell, dear sister, farewell, my lord of Gloucester.

How now! Where’s the King?

OSWALD. My lord of Gloucester hath convey’d him hence: Some five or six and thirty of his knights, Hot questrists after him, met him at gate; Who, with some other of the lord’s dependants, Are gone with him toward Dover: where they boast To have well-armed friends.

CORNWALL. Get horses for your mistress.

GONERIL. Farewell, sweet lord, and sister.

CORNWALL. Edmund, farewell.

[Exeunt Goneril, Edmund and Oswald.]

Go seek the traitor Gloucester, Pinion him like a thief, bring him before us.

[Exeunt other Servants.]

Though well we may not pass upon his life Without the form of justice, yet our power Shall do a courtesy to our wrath, which men May blame, but not control. Who’s there? The traitor?

Enter Gloucester and Servants.

REGAN. Ingrateful fox! ’tis he.

CORNWALL. Bind fast his corky arms.

GLOUCESTER. What mean your graces? Good my friends, consider you are my guests. Do me no foul play, friends.

CORNWALL. Bind him, I say.

[Servants bind him.]

REGAN. Hard, hard. O filthy traitor!

GLOUCESTER. Unmerciful lady as you are, I’m none.

CORNWALL. To this chair bind him. Villain, thou shalt find—

[Regan plucks his beard.]

GLOUCESTER. By the kind gods, ’tis most ignobly done To pluck me by the beard.

REGAN. So white, and such a traitor!

GLOUCESTER. Naughty lady, These hairs which thou dost ravish from my chin Will quicken, and accuse thee. I am your host: With robber’s hands my hospitable favours You should not ruffle thus. What will you do?

CORNWALL. Come, sir, what letters had you late from France?

REGAN. Be simple answer’d, for we know the truth.

CORNWALL. And what confederacy have you with the traitors, Late footed in the kingdom?

REGAN. To whose hands have you sent the lunatic King? Speak.

GLOUCESTER. I have a letter guessingly set down, Which came from one that’s of a neutral heart, And not from one oppos’d.

CORNWALL. Cunning.

REGAN. And false.

CORNWALL. Where hast thou sent the King?

GLOUCESTER. To Dover.

REGAN. Wherefore to Dover? Wast thou not charg’d at peril,—

CORNWALL. Wherefore to Dover? Let him first answer that.

GLOUCESTER. I am tied to the stake, and I must stand the course.

REGAN. Wherefore to Dover, sir?

GLOUCESTER. Because I would not see thy cruel nails Pluck out his poor old eyes; nor thy fierce sister In his anointed flesh stick boarish fangs. The sea, with such a storm as his bare head In hell-black night endur’d, would have buoy’d up, And quench’d the stelled fires; Yet, poor old heart, he holp the heavens to rain. If wolves had at thy gate howl’d that stern time, Thou shouldst have said, ‘Good porter, turn the key.’ All cruels else subscrib’d: but I shall see The winged vengeance overtake such children.

CORNWALL. See’t shalt thou never. Fellows, hold the chair. Upon these eyes of thine I’ll set my foot.

[Gloucester is held down in his chair, while Cornwall plucks out one of his eyes and sets his foot on it.]

GLOUCESTER. He that will think to live till he be old, Give me some help!—O cruel! O you gods!

REGAN. One side will mock another; the other too!

CORNWALL. If you see vengeance—

FIRST SERVANT. Hold your hand, my lord: I have serv’d you ever since I was a child; But better service have I never done you Than now to bid you hold.

REGAN. How now, you dog!

FIRST SERVANT. If you did wear a beard upon your chin, I’d shake it on this quarrel. What do you mean?

CORNWALL. My villain?

[Draws, and runs at him.]

FIRST SERVANT. Nay, then, come on, and take the chance of anger.

[Draws. They fight. Cornwall is wounded.]

REGAN. [To another servant.] Give me thy sword. A peasant stand up thus?

[Snatches a sword, comes behind, and stabs him.]

FIRST SERVANT. O, I am slain! My lord, you have one eye left To see some mischief on him. O!

CORNWALL. Lest it see more, prevent it. Out, vile jelly! Where is thy lustre now?

[Tears out Gloucester’s other eye and throws it on the ground.]

GLOUCESTER. All dark and comfortless. Where’s my son Edmund? Edmund, enkindle all the sparks of nature To quit this horrid act.

REGAN. Out, treacherous villain! Thou call’st on him that hates thee: it was he That made the overture of thy treasons to us; Who is too good to pity thee.

GLOUCESTER. O my follies! Then Edgar was abus’d. Kind gods, forgive me that, and prosper him!

REGAN. Go thrust him out at gates, and let him smell His way to Dover. How is’t, my lord? How look you?

CORNWALL. I have receiv’d a hurt: follow me, lady. Turn out that eyeless villain. Throw this slave Upon the dunghill. Regan, I bleed apace: Untimely comes this hurt: give me your arm.

[Exit Cornwall, led by Regan; Servants unbind Gloucester and lead him out.]

SECOND SERVANT. I’ll never care what wickedness I do, If this man come to good.

THIRD SERVANT. If she live long, And in the end meet the old course of death, Women will all turn monsters.

SECOND SERVANT. Let’s follow the old Earl, and get the bedlam To lead him where he would: his roguish madness Allows itself to anything.

THIRD SERVANT. Go thou: I’ll fetch some flax and whites of eggs To apply to his bleeding face. Now heaven help him!

SCENE I. The heath

EDGAR. Yet better thus, and known to be contemn’d, Than still contemn’d and flatter’d. To be worst, The lowest and most dejected thing of fortune, Stands still in esperance, lives not in fear: The lamentable change is from the best; The worst returns to laughter. Welcome then, Thou unsubstantial air that I embrace; The wretch that thou hast blown unto the worst Owes nothing to thy blasts.

Enter Gloucester, led by an Old Man.

But who comes here? My father, poorly led? World, world, O world! But that thy strange mutations make us hate thee, Life would not yield to age.

OLD MAN. O my good lord, I have been your tenant, and your father’s tenant these fourscore years.

GLOUCESTER. Away, get thee away; good friend, be gone. Thy comforts can do me no good at all; Thee they may hurt.

OLD MAN. You cannot see your way.

GLOUCESTER. I have no way, and therefore want no eyes; I stumbled when I saw. Full oft ’tis seen Our means secure us, and our mere defects Prove our commodities. O dear son Edgar, The food of thy abused father’s wrath! Might I but live to see thee in my touch, I’d say I had eyes again!

OLD MAN. How now! Who’s there?

EDGAR. [Aside.] O gods! Who is’t can say ‘I am at the worst’? I am worse than e’er I was.

OLD MAN. ’Tis poor mad Tom.

EDGAR. [Aside.] And worse I may be yet. The worst is not So long as we can say ‘This is the worst.’

OLD MAN. Fellow, where goest?

GLOUCESTER. Is it a beggar-man?

OLD MAN. Madman, and beggar too.

GLOUCESTER. He has some reason, else he could not beg. I’ the last night’s storm I such a fellow saw; Which made me think a man a worm. My son Came then into my mind, and yet my mind Was then scarce friends with him. I have heard more since. As flies to wanton boys are we to the gods, They kill us for their sport.

EDGAR. [Aside.] How should this be? Bad is the trade that must play fool to sorrow, Angering itself and others. Bless thee, master!

GLOUCESTER. Is that the naked fellow?

OLD MAN. Ay, my lord.

GLOUCESTER. Then prithee get thee away. If for my sake Thou wilt o’ertake us hence a mile or twain, I’ the way toward Dover, do it for ancient love, And bring some covering for this naked soul, Which I’ll entreat to lead me.

OLD MAN. Alack, sir, he is mad.

GLOUCESTER. ’Tis the time’s plague when madmen lead the blind. Do as I bid thee, or rather do thy pleasure; Above the rest, be gone.

OLD MAN. I’ll bring him the best ’parel that I have, Come on’t what will.

GLOUCESTER. Sirrah naked fellow.

EDGAR. Poor Tom’s a-cold. [Aside.] I cannot daub it further.

GLOUCESTER. Come hither, fellow.

EDGAR. [Aside.] And yet I must. Bless thy sweet eyes, they bleed.

GLOUCESTER. Know’st thou the way to Dover?

EDGAR. Both stile and gate, horseway and footpath. Poor Tom hath been scared out of his good wits. Bless thee, good man’s son, from the foul fiend! Five fiends have been in poor Tom at once; of lust, as Obidicut; Hobbididence, prince of darkness; Mahu, of stealing; Modo, of murder; Flibbertigibbet, of mopping and mowing, who since possesses chambermaids and waiting women. So, bless thee, master!

GLOUCESTER. Here, take this purse, thou whom the heaven’s plagues Have humbled to all strokes: that I am wretched Makes thee the happier. Heavens deal so still! Let the superfluous and lust-dieted man, That slaves your ordinance, that will not see Because he does not feel, feel your power quickly; So distribution should undo excess, And each man have enough. Dost thou know Dover?

EDGAR. Ay, master.

GLOUCESTER. There is a cliff, whose high and bending head Looks fearfully in the confined deep: Bring me but to the very brim of it, And I’ll repair the misery thou dost bear With something rich about me: from that place I shall no leading need.

EDGAR. Give me thy arm: Poor Tom shall lead thee.

SCENE II. Before the Duke of Albany’s Palace

Enter Goneril, Edmund; Oswald meeting them.

GONERIL. Welcome, my lord. I marvel our mild husband Not met us on the way. Now, where’s your master?

OSWALD. Madam, within; but never man so chang’d. I told him of the army that was landed; He smil’d at it: I told him you were coming; His answer was, ‘The worse.’ Of Gloucester’s treachery And of the loyal service of his son When I inform’d him, then he call’d me sot, And told me I had turn’d the wrong side out. What most he should dislike seems pleasant to him; What like, offensive.

GONERIL. [To Edmund.] Then shall you go no further. It is the cowish terror of his spirit, That dares not undertake. He’ll not feel wrongs Which tie him to an answer. Our wishes on the way May prove effects. Back, Edmund, to my brother; Hasten his musters and conduct his powers. I must change names at home, and give the distaff Into my husband’s hands. This trusty servant Shall pass between us. Ere long you are like to hear, If you dare venture in your own behalf, A mistress’s command. [Giving a favour.] Wear this; spare speech; Decline your head. This kiss, if it durst speak, Would stretch thy spirits up into the air. Conceive, and fare thee well.

EDMUND. Yours in the ranks of death.

[Exit Edmund.]

GONERIL. My most dear Gloucester. O, the difference of man and man! To thee a woman’s services are due; My fool usurps my body.

OSWALD. Madam, here comes my lord.

GONERIL. I have been worth the whistle.

ALBANY. O Goneril! You are not worth the dust which the rude wind Blows in your face! I fear your disposition; That nature which contemns its origin Cannot be bordered certain in itself. She that herself will sliver and disbranch From her material sap, perforce must wither And come to deadly use.

GONERIL. No more; the text is foolish.

ALBANY. Wisdom and goodness to the vile seem vile; Filths savour but themselves. What have you done? Tigers, not daughters, what have you perform’d? A father, and a gracious aged man, Whose reverence even the head-lugg’d bear would lick, Most barbarous, most degenerate, have you madded. Could my good brother suffer you to do it? A man, a prince, by him so benefitted! If that the heavens do not their visible spirits Send quickly down to tame these vile offences, It will come, Humanity must perforce prey on itself, Like monsters of the deep.

GONERIL. Milk-liver’d man! That bear’st a cheek for blows, a head for wrongs; Who hast not in thy brows an eye discerning Thine honour from thy suffering; that not know’st Fools do those villains pity who are punish’d Ere they have done their mischief. Where’s thy drum? France spreads his banners in our noiseless land; With plumed helm thy state begins to threat, Whilst thou, a moral fool, sitt’st still, and criest ‘Alack, why does he so?’

ALBANY. See thyself, devil! Proper deformity seems not in the fiend So horrid as in woman.

GONERIL. O vain fool!

ALBANY. Thou changed and self-cover’d thing, for shame! Be-monster not thy feature! Were’t my fitness To let these hands obey my blood, They are apt enough to dislocate and tear Thy flesh and bones. Howe’er thou art a fiend, A woman’s shape doth shield thee.

GONERIL. Marry, your manhood, mew!

ALBANY. What news?

MESSENGER. O, my good lord, the Duke of Cornwall’s dead; Slain by his servant, going to put out The other eye of Gloucester.

ALBANY. Gloucester’s eyes!

MESSENGER. A servant that he bred, thrill’d with remorse, Oppos’d against the act, bending his sword To his great master; who, thereat enrag’d, Flew on him, and amongst them fell’d him dead; But not without that harmful stroke which since Hath pluck’d him after.

ALBANY. This shows you are above, You justicers, that these our nether crimes So speedily can venge! But, O poor Gloucester! Lost he his other eye?

MESSENGER. Both, both, my lord. This letter, madam, craves a speedy answer; ’Tis from your sister.

GONERIL. [Aside.] One way I like this well; But being widow, and my Gloucester with her, May all the building in my fancy pluck Upon my hateful life. Another way The news is not so tart. I’ll read, and answer.

ALBANY. Where was his son when they did take his eyes?

MESSENGER. Come with my lady hither.

ALBANY. He is not here.

MESSENGER. No, my good lord; I met him back again.

ALBANY. Knows he the wickedness?

MESSENGER. Ay, my good lord. ’Twas he inform’d against him; And quit the house on purpose, that their punishment Might have the freer course.

ALBANY. Gloucester, I live To thank thee for the love thou show’dst the King, And to revenge thine eyes. Come hither, friend, Tell me what more thou know’st.

SCENE III. The French camp near Dover

Enter Kent and a Gentleman.

KENT. Why the King of France is so suddenly gone back, know you no reason?

GENTLEMAN. Something he left imperfect in the state, which since his coming forth is thought of, which imports to the kingdom so much fear and danger that his personal return was most required and necessary.

KENT. Who hath he left behind him general?

GENTLEMAN. The Mareschal of France, Monsieur La Far.

KENT. Did your letters pierce the queen to any demonstration of grief?

GENTLEMAN. Ay, sir; she took them, read them in my presence; And now and then an ample tear trill’d down Her delicate cheek. It seem’d she was a queen Over her passion; who, most rebel-like, Sought to be king o’er her.

KENT. O, then it mov’d her.

GENTLEMAN. Not to a rage: patience and sorrow strove Who should express her goodliest. You have seen Sunshine and rain at once: her smiles and tears Were like a better day. Those happy smilets That play’d on her ripe lip seem’d not to know What guests were in her eyes; which parted thence As pearls from diamonds dropp’d. In brief, Sorrow would be a rarity most belov’d, If all could so become it.

KENT. Made she no verbal question?

GENTLEMAN. Faith, once or twice she heav’d the name of ‘father’ Pantingly forth, as if it press’d her heart; Cried ‘Sisters, sisters! Shame of ladies! sisters! Kent! father! sisters! What, i’ the storm? i’ the night? Let pity not be believ’d!’ There she shook The holy water from her heavenly eyes, And clamour master’d her: then away she started To deal with grief alone.

KENT. It is the stars, The stars above us govern our conditions; Else one self mate and make could not beget Such different issues. You spoke not with her since?

GENTLEMAN. No.

KENT. Was this before the King return’d?

GENTLEMAN. No, since.

KENT. Well, sir, the poor distressed Lear’s i’ the town; Who sometime, in his better tune, remembers What we are come about, and by no means Will yield to see his daughter.

GENTLEMAN. Why, good sir?

KENT. A sovereign shame so elbows him. His own unkindness, That stripp’d her from his benediction, turn’d her To foreign casualties, gave her dear rights To his dog-hearted daughters, these things sting His mind so venomously that burning shame Detains him from Cordelia.

GENTLEMAN. Alack, poor gentleman!

KENT. Of Albany’s and Cornwall’s powers you heard not?

GENTLEMAN. ’Tis so; they are afoot.

KENT. Well, sir, I’ll bring you to our master Lear And leave you to attend him. Some dear cause Will in concealment wrap me up awhile; When I am known aright, you shall not grieve Lending me this acquaintance. I pray you, go along with me.

SCENE IV. The French camp. A Tent

Enter with drum and colours, Cordelia, Physician and Soldiers.

CORDELIA. Alack, ’tis he: why, he was met even now As mad as the vex’d sea; singing aloud; Crown’d with rank fumiter and furrow weeds, With harlocks, hemlock, nettles, cuckoo-flowers, Darnel, and all the idle weeds that grow In our sustaining corn. A century send forth; Search every acre in the high-grown field, And bring him to our eye.

[Exit an Officer.]

What can man’s wisdom In the restoring his bereaved sense, He that helps him take all my outward worth.

PHYSICIAN. There is means, madam: Our foster nurse of nature is repose, The which he lacks; that to provoke in him Are many simples operative, whose power Will close the eye of anguish.

CORDELIA. All bless’d secrets, All you unpublish’d virtues of the earth, Spring with my tears! Be aidant and remediate In the good man’s distress! Seek, seek for him; Lest his ungovern’d rage dissolve the life That wants the means to lead it.

MESSENGER. News, madam; The British powers are marching hitherward.

CORDELIA. ’Tis known before. Our preparation stands In expectation of them. O dear father, It is thy business that I go about; Therefore great France My mourning and important tears hath pitied. No blown ambition doth our arms incite, But love, dear love, and our ag’d father’s right: Soon may I hear and see him!

Enter Regan and Oswald.

REGAN. But are my brother’s powers set forth?

REGAN. Himself in person there?

OSWALD. Madam, with much ado. Your sister is the better soldier.

REGAN. Lord Edmund spake not with your lord at home?

OSWALD. No, madam.

REGAN. What might import my sister’s letter to him?

OSWALD. I know not, lady.

REGAN. Faith, he is posted hence on serious matter. It was great ignorance, Gloucester’s eyes being out, To let him live. Where he arrives he moves All hearts against us. Edmund, I think, is gone In pity of his misery, to dispatch His nighted life; moreover to descry The strength o’ th’enemy.

OSWALD. I must needs after him, madam, with my letter.

REGAN. Our troops set forth tomorrow; stay with us; The ways are dangerous.

OSWALD. I may not, madam: My lady charg’d my duty in this business.

REGAN. Why should she write to Edmund? Might not you Transport her purposes by word? Belike, Somethings, I know not what, I’ll love thee much. Let me unseal the letter.

OSWALD. Madam, I had rather—

REGAN. I know your lady does not love her husband; I am sure of that; and at her late being here She gave strange oeillades and most speaking looks To noble Edmund. I know you are of her bosom.

OSWALD. I, madam?

REGAN. I speak in understanding; y’are, I know’t: Therefore I do advise you take this note: My lord is dead; Edmund and I have talk’d, And more convenient is he for my hand Than for your lady’s. You may gather more. If you do find him, pray you give him this; And when your mistress hears thus much from you, I pray desire her call her wisdom to her. So, fare you well. If you do chance to hear of that blind traitor, Preferment falls on him that cuts him off.

OSWALD. Would I could meet him, madam! I should show What party I do follow.

REGAN. Fare thee well.

SCENE VI. The country near Dover

Enter Gloucester, and Edgar dressed like a peasant.

GLOUCESTER. When shall I come to the top of that same hill?

EDGAR. You do climb up it now. Look how we labour.

GLOUCESTER. Methinks the ground is even.

EDGAR. Horrible steep. Hark, do you hear the sea?

GLOUCESTER. No, truly.

EDGAR. Why, then, your other senses grow imperfect By your eyes’ anguish.

GLOUCESTER. So may it be indeed. Methinks thy voice is alter’d; and thou speak’st In better phrase and matter than thou didst.

EDGAR. Y’are much deceiv’d: in nothing am I chang’d But in my garments.

GLOUCESTER. Methinks you’re better spoken.

EDGAR. Come on, sir; here’s the place. Stand still. How fearful And dizzy ’tis to cast one’s eyes so low! The crows and choughs that wing the midway air Show scarce so gross as beetles. Half way down Hangs one that gathers samphire—dreadful trade! Methinks he seems no bigger than his head. The fishermen that walk upon the beach Appear like mice; and yond tall anchoring bark, Diminish’d to her cock; her cock a buoy Almost too small for sight: the murmuring surge That on th’unnumber’d idle pebble chafes Cannot be heard so high. I’ll look no more; Lest my brain turn, and the deficient sight Topple down headlong.

GLOUCESTER. Set me where you stand.

EDGAR. Give me your hand. You are now within a foot of th’extreme verge. For all beneath the moon would I not leap upright.

GLOUCESTER. Let go my hand. Here, friend, ’s another purse; in it a jewel Well worth a poor man’s taking. Fairies and gods Prosper it with thee! Go thou further off; Bid me farewell, and let me hear thee going.

EDGAR. Now fare ye well, good sir.

[Seems to go.]

GLOUCESTER. With all my heart.

EDGAR. [Aside.] Why I do trifle thus with his despair Is done to cure it.

GLOUCESTER. O you mighty gods! This world I do renounce, and in your sights, Shake patiently my great affliction off: If I could bear it longer, and not fall To quarrel with your great opposeless wills, My snuff and loathed part of nature should Burn itself out. If Edgar live, O, bless him! Now, fellow, fare thee well.

EDGAR. Gone, sir, farewell.

[Gloucester leaps, and falls along]

And yet I know not how conceit may rob The treasury of life when life itself Yields to the theft. Had he been where he thought, By this had thought been past. Alive or dead? Ho you, sir! friend! Hear you, sir? speak! Thus might he pass indeed: yet he revives. What are you, sir?

GLOUCESTER. Away, and let me die.

EDGAR. Hadst thou been aught but gossamer, feathers, air, So many fathom down precipitating, Thou’dst shiver’d like an egg: but thou dost breathe; Hast heavy substance; bleed’st not; speak’st; art sound. Ten masts at each make not the altitude Which thou hast perpendicularly fell. Thy life is a miracle. Speak yet again.

GLOUCESTER. But have I fall’n, or no?

EDGAR. From the dread summit of this chalky bourn. Look up a-height, the shrill-gorg’d lark so far Cannot be seen or heard. Do but look up.

GLOUCESTER. Alack, I have no eyes. Is wretchedness depriv’d that benefit To end itself by death? ’Twas yet some comfort When misery could beguile the tyrant’s rage And frustrate his proud will.

EDGAR. Give me your arm. Up, so. How is’t? Feel you your legs? You stand.

GLOUCESTER. Too well, too well.

EDGAR. This is above all strangeness. Upon the crown o’ the cliff what thing was that Which parted from you?

GLOUCESTER. A poor unfortunate beggar.

EDGAR. As I stood here below, methought his eyes Were two full moons; he had a thousand noses, Horns whelk’d and waved like the enraged sea. It was some fiend. Therefore, thou happy father, Think that the clearest gods, who make them honours Of men’s impossibilities, have preserv’d thee.

GLOUCESTER. I do remember now: henceforth I’ll bear Affliction till it do cry out itself ‘Enough, enough,’ and die. That thing you speak of, I took it for a man; often ’twould say, ‘The fiend, the fiend’; he led me to that place.

EDGAR. Bear free and patient thoughts. But who comes here?

Enter Lear, fantastically dressed up with flowers.

The safer sense will ne’er accommodate His master thus.

LEAR. No, they cannot touch me for coining. I am the King himself.

EDGAR. O thou side-piercing sight!

LEAR. Nature’s above art in that respect. There’s your press money. That fellow handles his bow like a crow-keeper: draw me a clothier’s yard. Look, look, a mouse! Peace, peace, this piece of toasted cheese will do’t. There’s my gauntlet; I’ll prove it on a giant. Bring up the brown bills. O, well flown, bird! i’ the clout, i’ the clout. Hewgh! Give the word.

EDGAR. Sweet marjoram.

LEAR. Pass.

GLOUCESTER. I know that voice.

LEAR. Ha! Goneril with a white beard! They flattered me like a dog; and told me I had white hairs in my beard ere the black ones were there. To say ‘ay’ and ‘no’ to everything I said ‘ay’ and ‘no’ to was no good divinity. When the rain came to wet me once, and the wind to make me chatter; when the thunder would not peace at my bidding; there I found ’em, there I smelt ’em out. Go to, they are not men o’ their words: they told me I was everything; ’tis a lie, I am not ague-proof.

GLOUCESTER. The trick of that voice I do well remember: Is’t not the King?

LEAR. Ay, every inch a king. When I do stare, see how the subject quakes. I pardon that man’s life. What was thy cause? Adultery? Thou shalt not die: die for adultery! No: The wren goes to’t, and the small gilded fly Does lecher in my sight. Let copulation thrive; For Gloucester’s bastard son was kinder to his father Than my daughters got ’tween the lawful sheets. To’t, luxury, pell-mell! for I lack soldiers. Behold yond simp’ring dame, Whose face between her forks presages snow; That minces virtue, and does shake the head To hear of pleasure’s name. The fitchew nor the soiled horse goes to’t with a more riotous appetite. Down from the waist they are centaurs, though women all above. But to the girdle do the gods inherit, beneath is all the fiend’s; there’s hell, there’s darkness, there is the sulphurous pit; burning, scalding, stench, consumption. Fie, fie, fie! pah, pah! Give me an ounce of civet, good apothecary, to sweeten my imagination. There’s money for thee.

GLOUCESTER. O, let me kiss that hand!

LEAR. Let me wipe it first; it smells of mortality.

GLOUCESTER. O ruin’d piece of nature, this great world Shall so wear out to naught. Dost thou know me?

LEAR. I remember thine eyes well enough. Dost thou squiny at me? No, do thy worst, blind Cupid; I’ll not love. Read thou this challenge; mark but the penning of it.

GLOUCESTER. Were all the letters suns, I could not see one.

EDGAR. I would not take this from report, It is, and my heart breaks at it.

LEAR. Read.

GLOUCESTER. What, with the case of eyes?

LEAR. O, ho, are you there with me? No eyes in your head, nor no money in your purse? Your eyes are in a heavy case, your purse in a light, yet you see how this world goes.

GLOUCESTER. I see it feelingly.

LEAR. What, art mad? A man may see how the world goes with no eyes. Look with thine ears. See how yon justice rails upon yon simple thief. Hark, in thine ear: change places; and, handy-dandy, which is the justice, which is the thief? Thou hast seen a farmer’s dog bark at a beggar?

GLOUCESTER. Ay, sir.

LEAR. And the creature run from the cur? There thou mightst behold the great image of authority: a dog’s obeyed in office. Thou rascal beadle, hold thy bloody hand! Why dost thou lash that whore? Strip thine own back; Thou hotly lusts to use her in that kind For which thou whipp’st her. The usurer hangs the cozener. Through tatter’d clothes great vices do appear; Robes and furr’d gowns hide all. Plate sin with gold, And the strong lance of justice hurtless breaks; Arm it in rags, a pygmy’s straw does pierce it. None does offend, none, I say none; I’ll able ’em; Take that of me, my friend, who have the power To seal the accuser’s lips. Get thee glass eyes, And like a scurvy politician, seem To see the things thou dost not. Now, now, now, now: Pull off my boots: harder, harder, so.

EDGAR. O, matter and impertinency mix’d! Reason in madness!

LEAR. If thou wilt weep my fortunes, take my eyes. I know thee well enough, thy name is Gloucester. Thou must be patient; we came crying hither: Thou know’st the first time that we smell the air We wawl and cry. I will preach to thee: mark.

GLOUCESTER. Alack, alack the day!

LEAR. When we are born, we cry that we are come To this great stage of fools. This a good block: It were a delicate stratagem to shoe A troop of horse with felt. I’ll put’t in proof And when I have stol’n upon these son-in-laws, Then kill, kill, kill, kill, kill, kill!

Enter a Gentleman with Attendants.

GENTLEMAN. O, here he is: lay hand upon him. Sir, Your most dear daughter—

LEAR. No rescue? What, a prisoner? I am even The natural fool of fortune. Use me well; You shall have ransom. Let me have surgeons; I am cut to the brains.

GENTLEMAN. You shall have anything.

LEAR. No seconds? All myself? Why, this would make a man a man of salt, To use his eyes for garden water-pots, Ay, and for laying autumn’s dust.

GENTLEMAN. Good sir.

LEAR. I will die bravely, like a smug bridegroom. What! I will be jovial. Come, come, I am a king, my masters, know you that.

GENTLEMAN. You are a royal one, and we obey you.

LEAR. Then there’s life in’t. Come, and you get it, You shall get it by running. Sa, sa, sa, sa!

[Exit running. Attendants follow.]

GENTLEMAN. A sight most pitiful in the meanest wretch, Past speaking of in a king! Thou hast one daughter Who redeems nature from the general curse Which twain have brought her to.

EDGAR. Hail, gentle sir.

GENTLEMAN. Sir, speed you. What’s your will?

EDGAR. Do you hear aught, sir, of a battle toward?

GENTLEMAN. Most sure and vulgar. Everyone hears that, which can distinguish sound.

EDGAR. But, by your favour, How near’s the other army?

GENTLEMAN. Near and on speedy foot; the main descry Stands on the hourly thought.

EDGAR. I thank you sir, that’s all.

GENTLEMAN. Though that the queen on special cause is here, Her army is mov’d on.

EDGAR. I thank you, sir.

GLOUCESTER. You ever-gentle gods, take my breath from me; Let not my worser spirit tempt me again To die before you please.

EDGAR. Well pray you, father.

GLOUCESTER. Now, good sir, what are you?

EDGAR. A most poor man, made tame to fortune’s blows; Who, by the art of known and feeling sorrows, Am pregnant to good pity. Give me your hand, I’ll lead you to some biding.

GLOUCESTER. Hearty thanks: The bounty and the benison of heaven To boot, and boot.

OSWALD. A proclaim’d prize! Most happy! That eyeless head of thine was first fram’d flesh To raise my fortunes. Thou old unhappy traitor, Briefly thyself remember. The sword is out That must destroy thee.

GLOUCESTER. Now let thy friendly hand Put strength enough to’t.

[Edgar interposes.]

OSWALD. Wherefore, bold peasant, Dar’st thou support a publish’d traitor? Hence; Lest that th’infection of his fortune take Like hold on thee. Let go his arm.

EDGAR. Chill not let go, zir, without vurther ’casion.

OSWALD. Let go, slave, or thou diest!

EDGAR. Good gentleman, go your gait, and let poor volke pass. An chud ha’ bin zwaggered out of my life, ’twould not ha’ bin zo long as ’tis by a vortnight. Nay, come not near th’old man; keep out, che vor ye, or ise try whether your costard or my ballow be the harder: chill be plain with you.

OSWALD. Out, dunghill!

EDGAR. Chill pick your teeth, zir. Come! No matter vor your foins.

[They fight, and Edgar knocks him down.]

OSWALD. Slave, thou hast slain me. Villain, take my purse. If ever thou wilt thrive, bury my body; And give the letters which thou find’st about me To Edmund, Earl of Gloucester. Seek him out Upon the British party. O, untimely death!

EDGAR. I know thee well. A serviceable villain, As duteous to the vices of thy mistress As badness would desire.

GLOUCESTER. What, is he dead?

EDGAR. Sit you down, father; rest you. Let’s see these pockets; the letters that he speaks of May be my friends. He’s dead; I am only sorry He had no other deathsman. Let us see: Leave, gentle wax; and, manners, blame us not. To know our enemies’ minds, we rip their hearts, Their papers is more lawful. [Reads.] ‘Let our reciprocal vows be remembered. You have many opportunities to cut him off: if your will want not, time and place will be fruitfully offered. There is nothing done if he return the conqueror: then am I the prisoner, and his bed my gaol; from the loathed warmth whereof deliver me, and supply the place for your labour. ‘Your (wife, so I would say) affectionate servant, ‘Goneril.’ O indistinguish’d space of woman’s will! A plot upon her virtuous husband’s life, And the exchange my brother! Here in the sands Thee I’ll rake up, the post unsanctified Of murderous lechers: and in the mature time, With this ungracious paper strike the sight Of the death-practis’d Duke: for him ’tis well That of thy death and business I can tell.

[Exit Edgar, dragging out the body.]

GLOUCESTER. The King is mad: how stiff is my vile sense, That I stand up, and have ingenious feeling Of my huge sorrows! Better I were distract: So should my thoughts be sever’d from my griefs, And woes by wrong imaginations lose The knowledge of themselves.

[A drum afar off.]

EDGAR. Give me your hand. Far off methinks I hear the beaten drum. Come, father, I’ll bestow you with a friend.

SCENE VII. A Tent in the French Camp

Lear on a bed, asleep, soft music playing; Physician, Gentleman and others attending.

Enter Cordelia and Kent.

CORDELIA. O thou good Kent, how shall I live and work To match thy goodness? My life will be too short, And every measure fail me.

KENT. To be acknowledg’d, madam, is o’erpaid. All my reports go with the modest truth; Nor more, nor clipp’d, but so.

CORDELIA. Be better suited, These weeds are memories of those worser hours: I prithee put them off.

KENT. Pardon, dear madam; Yet to be known shortens my made intent. My boon I make it that you know me not Till time and I think meet.

CORDELIA. Then be’t so, my good lord. [To the Physician.] How does the King?

PHYSICIAN. Madam, sleeps still.

CORDELIA. O you kind gods, Cure this great breach in his abused nature! The untun’d and jarring senses, O, wind up Of this child-changed father.

PHYSICIAN. So please your majesty That we may wake the King: he hath slept long.

CORDELIA. Be govern’d by your knowledge, and proceed I’ the sway of your own will. Is he array’d?

PHYSICIAN. Ay, madam. In the heaviness of sleep We put fresh garments on him. Be by, good madam, when we do awake him; I doubt not of his temperance.

CORDELIA. Very well.

PHYSICIAN. Please you draw near. Louder the music there!

CORDELIA. O my dear father! Restoration hang Thy medicine on my lips; and let this kiss Repair those violent harms that my two sisters Have in thy reverence made!

KENT. Kind and dear princess!

CORDELIA. Had you not been their father, these white flakes Did challenge pity of them. Was this a face To be oppos’d against the warring winds? To stand against the deep dread-bolted thunder? In the most terrible and nimble stroke Of quick cross lightning? to watch, poor perdu! With this thin helm? Mine enemy’s dog, Though he had bit me, should have stood that night Against my fire; and wast thou fain, poor father, To hovel thee with swine and rogues forlorn In short and musty straw? Alack, alack! ’Tis wonder that thy life and wits at once Had not concluded all. He wakes; speak to him.

PHYSICIAN. Madam, do you; ’tis fittest.

CORDELIA. How does my royal lord? How fares your majesty?

LEAR. You do me wrong to take me out o’ the grave. Thou art a soul in bliss; but I am bound Upon a wheel of fire, that mine own tears Do scald like molten lead.

CORDELIA. Sir, do you know me?

LEAR. You are a spirit, I know: when did you die?

CORDELIA. Still, still, far wide!

PHYSICIAN. He’s scarce awake: let him alone awhile.

LEAR. Where have I been? Where am I? Fair daylight? I am mightily abus’d. I should e’en die with pity, To see another thus. I know not what to say. I will not swear these are my hands: let’s see; I feel this pin prick. Would I were assur’d Of my condition!

CORDELIA. O, look upon me, sir, And hold your hands in benediction o’er me. No, sir, you must not kneel.

LEAR. Pray, do not mock me: I am a very foolish fond old man, Fourscore and upward, not an hour more nor less; And to deal plainly, I fear I am not in my perfect mind. Methinks I should know you, and know this man; Yet I am doubtful: for I am mainly ignorant What place this is; and all the skill I have Remembers not these garments; nor I know not Where I did lodge last night. Do not laugh at me; For, as I am a man, I think this lady To be my child Cordelia.

CORDELIA. And so I am. I am.

LEAR. Be your tears wet? Yes, faith. I pray weep not: If you have poison for me, I will drink it. I know you do not love me; for your sisters Have, as I do remember, done me wrong. You have some cause, they have not.

CORDELIA. No cause, no cause.

LEAR. Am I in France?

KENT. In your own kingdom, sir.

LEAR. Do not abuse me.

PHYSICIAN. Be comforted, good madam, the great rage, You see, is kill’d in him: and yet it is danger To make him even o’er the time he has lost. Desire him to go in; trouble him no more Till further settling.

CORDELIA. Will’t please your highness walk?

LEAR. You must bear with me: Pray you now, forget and forgive: I am old and foolish.

[Exeunt Lear, Cordelia, Physician and Attendants.]

GENTLEMAN. Holds it true, sir, that the Duke of Cornwall was so slain?

KENT. Most certain, sir.

GENTLEMAN. Who is conductor of his people?

KENT. As ’tis said, the bastard son of Gloucester.

GENTLEMAN. They say Edgar, his banished son, is with the Earl of Kent in Germany.

KENT. Report is changeable. ’Tis time to look about; the powers of the kingdom approach apace.

GENTLEMAN. The arbitrement is like to be bloody. Fare you well, sir.

KENT. My point and period will be throughly wrought, Or well or ill, as this day’s battle’s fought.

SCENE I. The Camp of the British Forces near Dover

Enter, with drum and colours Edmund, Regan, Officers, Soldiers and others.

EDMUND. Know of the Duke if his last purpose hold, Or whether since he is advis’d by aught To change the course, he’s full of alteration And self-reproving, bring his constant pleasure.

[To an Officer, who goes out.]

REGAN. Our sister’s man is certainly miscarried.

EDMUND. ’Tis to be doubted, madam.

REGAN. Now, sweet lord, You know the goodness I intend upon you: Tell me but truly, but then speak the truth, Do you not love my sister?

EDMUND. In honour’d love.

REGAN. But have you never found my brother’s way To the forfended place?

EDMUND. That thought abuses you.

REGAN. I am doubtful that you have been conjunct And bosom’d with her, as far as we call hers.

EDMUND. No, by mine honour, madam.

REGAN. I never shall endure her, dear my lord, Be not familiar with her.

EDMUND. Fear not, She and the Duke her husband!

Enter with drum and colours Albany, Goneril and Soldiers.

GONERIL. [Aside.] I had rather lose the battle than that sister Should loosen him and me.

ALBANY. Our very loving sister, well be-met. Sir, this I heard: the King is come to his daughter, With others whom the rigour of our state Forc’d to cry out. Where I could not be honest, I never yet was valiant. For this business, It toucheth us as France invades our land, Not bolds the King, with others whom I fear Most just and heavy causes make oppose.

EDMUND. Sir, you speak nobly.

REGAN. Why is this reason’d?

GONERIL. Combine together ’gainst the enemy; For these domestic and particular broils Are not the question here.

ALBANY. Let’s, then, determine with the ancient of war On our proceeding.

EDMUND. I shall attend you presently at your tent.

REGAN. Sister, you’ll go with us?

GONERIL. No.

REGAN. ’Tis most convenient; pray you, go with us.

GONERIL. [Aside.] O, ho, I know the riddle. I will go.

[Exeunt Edmund, Regan, Goneril, Officers, Soldiers and Attendants.]

As they are going out, enter Edgar disguised.

EDGAR. If e’er your grace had speech with man so poor, Hear me one word.

ALBANY. I’ll overtake you. Speak.

EDGAR. Before you fight the battle, ope this letter. If you have victory, let the trumpet sound For him that brought it: wretched though I seem, I can produce a champion that will prove What is avouched there. If you miscarry, Your business of the world hath so an end, And machination ceases. Fortune love you!

ALBANY. Stay till I have read the letter.

EDGAR. I was forbid it. When time shall serve, let but the herald cry, And I’ll appear again.

ALBANY. Why, fare thee well. I will o’erlook thy paper.

Enter Edmund.

EDMUND. The enemy’s in view; draw up your powers. Here is the guess of their true strength and forces By diligent discovery; but your haste Is now urg’d on you.

ALBANY. We will greet the time.

EDMUND. To both these sisters have I sworn my love; Each jealous of the other, as the stung Are of the adder. Which of them shall I take? Both? One? Or neither? Neither can be enjoy’d, If both remain alive. To take the widow Exasperates, makes mad her sister Goneril; And hardly shall I carry out my side, Her husband being alive. Now, then, we’ll use His countenance for the battle; which being done, Let her who would be rid of him devise His speedy taking off. As for the mercy Which he intends to Lear and to Cordelia, The battle done, and they within our power, Shall never see his pardon: for my state Stands on me to defend, not to debate.

SCENE II. A field between the two Camps

Alarum within. Enter with drum and colours, Lear, Cordelia and their Forces, and exeunt.

Enter Edgar and Gloucester.

EDGAR. Here, father, take the shadow of this tree For your good host; pray that the right may thrive: If ever I return to you again, I’ll bring you comfort.

GLOUCESTER. Grace go with you, sir!

Alarum and retreat within. Enter Edgar.

EDGAR. Away, old man, give me thy hand, away! King Lear hath lost, he and his daughter ta’en: Give me thy hand; come on!

GLOUCESTER. No further, sir; a man may rot even here.

EDGAR. What, in ill thoughts again? Men must endure Their going hence, even as their coming hither; Ripeness is all. Come on.

GLOUCESTER. And that’s true too.

SCENE III. The British Camp near Dover

Enter in conquest with drum and colours, Edmund, Lear and Cordelia as prisoners; Officers, Soldiers, &c.

EDMUND. Some officers take them away: good guard Until their greater pleasures first be known That are to censure them.

CORDELIA. We are not the first Who with best meaning have incurr’d the worst. For thee, oppressed King, I am cast down; Myself could else out-frown false fortune’s frown. Shall we not see these daughters and these sisters?

LEAR. No, no, no, no. Come, let’s away to prison: We two alone will sing like birds i’ the cage: When thou dost ask me blessing I’ll kneel down And ask of thee forgiveness. So we’ll live, And pray, and sing, and tell old tales, and laugh At gilded butterflies, and hear poor rogues Talk of court news; and we’ll talk with them too, Who loses and who wins; who’s in, who’s out; And take upon’s the mystery of things, As if we were God’s spies. And we’ll wear out, In a wall’d prison, packs and sects of great ones That ebb and flow by the moon.

EDMUND. Take them away.

LEAR. Upon such sacrifices, my Cordelia, The gods themselves throw incense. Have I caught thee? He that parts us shall bring a brand from heaven, And fire us hence like foxes. Wipe thine eyes; The good years shall devour them, flesh and fell, Ere they shall make us weep! We’ll see ’em starve first: come.

[Exeunt Lear and Cordelia, guarded.]

EDMUND. Come hither, captain, hark. Take thou this note [giving a paper]; go follow them to prison. One step I have advanc’d thee; if thou dost As this instructs thee, thou dost make thy way To noble fortunes: know thou this, that men Are as the time is; to be tender-minded Does not become a sword. Thy great employment Will not bear question; either say thou’lt do’t, Or thrive by other means.

CAPTAIN. I’ll do’t, my lord.

EDMUND. About it; and write happy when thou hast done. Mark, I say, instantly; and carry it so As I have set it down.

CAPTAIN. I cannot draw a cart, nor eat dried oats; If it be man’s work, I’ll do’t.

Flourish. Enter Albany, Goneril, Regan, Officers and Attendants.

ALBANY. Sir, you have show’d today your valiant strain, And fortune led you well: you have the captives Who were the opposites of this day’s strife: I do require them of you, so to use them As we shall find their merits and our safety May equally determine.

EDMUND. Sir, I thought it fit To send the old and miserable King To some retention and appointed guard; Whose age has charms in it, whose title more, To pluck the common bosom on his side, And turn our impress’d lances in our eyes Which do command them. With him I sent the queen; My reason all the same; and they are ready Tomorrow, or at further space, to appear Where you shall hold your session. At this time We sweat and bleed: the friend hath lost his friend; And the best quarrels in the heat are curs’d By those that feel their sharpness. The question of Cordelia and her father Requires a fitter place.

ALBANY. Sir, by your patience, I hold you but a subject of this war, Not as a brother.

REGAN. That’s as we list to grace him. Methinks our pleasure might have been demanded Ere you had spoke so far. He led our powers; Bore the commission of my place and person; The which immediacy may well stand up And call itself your brother.

GONERIL. Not so hot: In his own grace he doth exalt himself, More than in your addition.

REGAN. In my rights, By me invested, he compeers the best.

ALBANY. That were the most, if he should husband you.

REGAN. Jesters do oft prove prophets.

GONERIL. Holla, holla! That eye that told you so look’d but asquint.

REGAN. Lady, I am not well; else I should answer From a full-flowing stomach. General, Take thou my soldiers, prisoners, patrimony; Dispose of them, of me; the walls are thine: Witness the world that I create thee here My lord and master.

GONERIL. Mean you to enjoy him?

ALBANY. The let-alone lies not in your good will.

EDMUND. Nor in thine, lord.

ALBANY. Half-blooded fellow, yes.

REGAN. [To Edmund.] Let the drum strike, and prove my title thine.

ALBANY. Stay yet; hear reason: Edmund, I arrest thee On capital treason; and, in thine arrest, This gilded serpent. [pointing to Goneril.] For your claim, fair sister, I bar it in the interest of my wife; ’Tis she is sub-contracted to this lord, And I her husband contradict your bans. If you will marry, make your loves to me, My lady is bespoke.

GONERIL. An interlude!

ALBANY. Thou art arm’d, Gloucester. Let the trumpet sound: If none appear to prove upon thy person Thy heinous, manifest, and many treasons, There is my pledge. [Throwing down a glove.] I’ll make it on thy heart, Ere I taste bread, thou art in nothing less Than I have here proclaim’d thee.

REGAN. Sick, O, sick!

GONERIL. [Aside.] If not, I’ll ne’er trust medicine.

EDMUND. There’s my exchange. [Throwing down a glove.] What in the world he is That names me traitor, villain-like he lies. Call by thy trumpet: he that dares approach, On him, on you, who not? I will maintain My truth and honour firmly.

ALBANY. A herald, ho!

Trust to thy single virtue; for thy soldiers, All levied in my name, have in my name Took their discharge.

REGAN. My sickness grows upon me.

ALBANY. She is not well. Convey her to my tent.

[Exit Regan, led.]

Come hither, herald. Let the trumpet sound And read out this.

OFFICER. Sound, trumpet!

[A trumpet sounds.]

HERALD. [Reads.] ‘If any man of quality or degree within the lists of the army will maintain upon Edmund, supposed Earl of Gloucester, that he is a manifold traitor, let him appear by the third sound of the trumpet. He is bold in his defence.’

EDMUND. Sound!

[First trumpet.]

HERALD. Again!

[Second trumpet.]

Third trumpet. Trumpet answers within. Enter Edgar, armed, preceded by a trumpet.

ALBANY. Ask him his purposes, why he appears Upon this call o’ the trumpet.

HERALD. What are you? Your name, your quality? and why you answer This present summons?

EDGAR. Know my name is lost; By treason’s tooth bare-gnawn and canker-bit. Yet am I noble as the adversary I come to cope.

ALBANY. Which is that adversary?

EDGAR. What’s he that speaks for Edmund, Earl of Gloucester?

EDMUND. Himself, what say’st thou to him?

EDGAR. Draw thy sword, That if my speech offend a noble heart, Thy arm may do thee justice: here is mine. Behold, it is the privilege of mine honours, My oath, and my profession: I protest, Maugre thy strength, youth, place, and eminence, Despite thy victor sword and fire-new fortune, Thy valour and thy heart, thou art a traitor; False to thy gods, thy brother, and thy father; Conspirant ’gainst this high illustrious prince; And, from the extremest upward of thy head To the descent and dust beneath thy foot, A most toad-spotted traitor. Say thou ‘No,’ This sword, this arm, and my best spirits are bent To prove upon thy heart, whereto I speak, Thou liest.

EDMUND. In wisdom I should ask thy name; But since thy outside looks so fair and warlike, And that thy tongue some say of breeding breathes, What safe and nicely I might well delay By rule of knighthood, I disdain and spurn. Back do I toss those treasons to thy head, With the hell-hated lie o’erwhelm thy heart; Which for they yet glance by and scarcely bruise, This sword of mine shall give them instant way, Where they shall rest for ever. Trumpets, speak!

[Alarums. They fight. Edmund falls.]

ALBANY. Save him, save him!

GONERIL. This is mere practice, Gloucester: By the law of arms thou wast not bound to answer An unknown opposite; thou art not vanquish’d, But cozen’d and beguil’d.

ALBANY. Shut your mouth, dame, Or with this paper shall I stop it. Hold, sir; Thou worse than any name, read thine own evil. No tearing, lady; I perceive you know it.

[Gives the letter to Edmund.]

GONERIL. Say if I do, the laws are mine, not thine: Who can arraign me for’t?

ALBANY. Most monstrous! O! Know’st thou this paper?

EDMUND. Ask me not what I know.

ALBANY. [To an Officer, who goes out.] Go after her; she’s desperate; govern her.

EDMUND. What you have charg’d me with, that have I done; And more, much more; the time will bring it out. ’Tis past, and so am I. But what art thou That hast this fortune on me? If thou’rt noble, I do forgive thee.

EDGAR. Let’s exchange charity. I am no less in blood than thou art, Edmund; If more, the more thou hast wrong’d me. My name is Edgar and thy father’s son. The gods are just, and of our pleasant vices Make instruments to plague us: The dark and vicious place where thee he got Cost him his eyes.

EDMUND. Thou hast spoken right, ’tis true; The wheel is come full circle; I am here.

ALBANY. Methought thy very gait did prophesy A royal nobleness. I must embrace thee. Let sorrow split my heart if ever I Did hate thee or thy father.

EDGAR. Worthy prince, I know’t.

ALBANY. Where have you hid yourself? How have you known the miseries of your father?

EDGAR. By nursing them, my lord. List a brief tale; And when ’tis told, O that my heart would burst! The bloody proclamation to escape That follow’d me so near,—O, our lives’ sweetness! That with the pain of death we’d hourly die Rather than die at once!—taught me to shift Into a madman’s rags; t’assume a semblance That very dogs disdain’d; and in this habit Met I my father with his bleeding rings, Their precious stones new lost; became his guide, Led him, begg’d for him, sav’d him from despair; Never,—O fault!—reveal’d myself unto him Until some half hour past, when I was arm’d; Not sure, though hoping of this good success, I ask’d his blessing, and from first to last Told him my pilgrimage. But his flaw’d heart, Alack, too weak the conflict to support! ’Twixt two extremes of passion, joy and grief, Burst smilingly.

EDMUND. This speech of yours hath mov’d me, And shall perchance do good, but speak you on; You look as you had something more to say.

ALBANY. If there be more, more woeful, hold it in; For I am almost ready to dissolve, Hearing of this.

EDGAR. This would have seem’d a period To such as love not sorrow; but another, To amplify too much, would make much more, And top extremity. Whilst I was big in clamour, came there a man Who, having seen me in my worst estate, Shunn’d my abhorr’d society; but then finding Who ’twas that so endur’d, with his strong arms He fastened on my neck, and bellow’d out As he’d burst heaven; threw him on my father; Told the most piteous tale of Lear and him That ever ear receiv’d, which in recounting His grief grew puissant, and the strings of life Began to crack. Twice then the trumpets sounded, And there I left him tranc’d.

ALBANY. But who was this?

EDGAR. Kent, sir, the banish’d Kent; who in disguise Follow’d his enemy king and did him service Improper for a slave.

Enter a Gentleman hastily, with a bloody knife.

GENTLEMAN. Help, help! O, help!

EDGAR. What kind of help?

ALBANY. Speak, man.

EDGAR. What means this bloody knife?

GENTLEMAN. ’Tis hot, it smokes; It came even from the heart of—O! she’s dead!

ALBANY. Who dead? Speak, man.

GENTLEMAN. Your lady, sir, your lady; and her sister By her is poisoned; she hath confesses it.

EDMUND. I was contracted to them both, all three Now marry in an instant.

EDGAR. Here comes Kent.

ALBANY. Produce their bodies, be they alive or dead. This judgement of the heavens that makes us tremble Touches us not with pity. O, is this he? The time will not allow the compliment Which very manners urges.

KENT. I am come To bid my King and master aye good night: Is he not here?

ALBANY. Great thing of us forgot! Speak, Edmund, where’s the King? and where’s Cordelia?

The bodies of Goneril and Regan are brought in.

Seest thou this object, Kent?

KENT. Alack, why thus?

EDMUND. Yet Edmund was belov’d. The one the other poisoned for my sake, And after slew herself.

ALBANY. Even so. Cover their faces.

EDMUND. I pant for life. Some good I mean to do, Despite of mine own nature. Quickly send, Be brief in it, to the castle; for my writ Is on the life of Lear and on Cordelia; Nay, send in time.

ALBANY. Run, run, O, run!

EDGAR. To who, my lord? Who has the office? Send Thy token of reprieve.

EDMUND. Well thought on: take my sword, Give it the captain.

EDGAR. Haste thee for thy life.

EDMUND. He hath commission from thy wife and me To hang Cordelia in the prison, and To lay the blame upon her own despair, That she fordid herself.

ALBANY. The gods defend her! Bear him hence awhile.

[Edmund is borne off.]

Enter Lear with Cordelia dead in his arms; Edgar, Officer and others following.

LEAR. Howl, howl, howl, howl! O, you are men of stone. Had I your tongues and eyes, I’ld use them so That heaven’s vault should crack. She’s gone for ever! I know when one is dead, and when one lives; She’s dead as earth. Lend me a looking glass; If that her breath will mist or stain the stone, Why, then she lives.

KENT. Is this the promis’d end?

EDGAR. Or image of that horror?

ALBANY. Fall, and cease!

LEAR. This feather stirs; she lives! If it be so, It is a chance which does redeem all sorrows That ever I have felt.

KENT. O, my good master! [Kneeling.]

LEAR. Prithee, away!

EDGAR. ’Tis noble Kent, your friend.

LEAR. A plague upon you, murderers, traitors all! I might have sav’d her; now she’s gone for ever! Cordelia, Cordelia! stay a little. Ha! What is’t thou say’st? Her voice was ever soft, Gentle, and low, an excellent thing in woman. I kill’d the slave that was a-hanging thee.

OFFICER. ’Tis true, my lords, he did.

LEAR. Did I not, fellow? I have seen the day, with my good biting falchion I would have made them skip. I am old now, And these same crosses spoil me. Who are you? Mine eyes are not o’ the best, I’ll tell you straight.

KENT. If Fortune brag of two she lov’d and hated, One of them we behold.

LEAR. This is a dull sight. Are you not Kent?

KENT. The same, Your servant Kent. Where is your servant Caius?

LEAR. He’s a good fellow, I can tell you that; He’ll strike, and quickly too:. He’s dead and rotten.

KENT. No, my good lord; I am the very man.

LEAR. I’ll see that straight.

KENT. That from your first of difference and decay Have follow’d your sad steps.

LEAR. You are welcome hither.

KENT. Nor no man else. All’s cheerless, dark and deadly. Your eldest daughters have fordone themselves, And desperately are dead.

LEAR. Ay, so I think.

ALBANY. He knows not what he says; and vain is it That we present us to him.

EDGAR. Very bootless.

Enter an Officer.

OFFICER. Edmund is dead, my lord.

ALBANY. That’s but a trifle here. You lords and noble friends, know our intent. What comfort to this great decay may come Shall be applied. For us, we will resign, During the life of this old majesty, To him our absolute power; [to Edgar and Kent] you to your rights; With boot and such addition as your honours Have more than merited. All friends shall taste The wages of their virtue and all foes The cup of their deservings. O, see, see!

LEAR. And my poor fool is hang’d! No, no, no life! Why should a dog, a horse, a rat have life, And thou no breath at all? Thou’lt come no more, Never, never, never, never, never! Pray you undo this button. Thank you, sir. Do you see this? Look on her: look, her lips, Look there, look there!

EDGAR. He faints! My lord, my lord!

KENT. Break, heart; I prithee break!

EDGAR. Look up, my lord.

KENT. Vex not his ghost: O, let him pass! He hates him That would upon the rack of this rough world Stretch him out longer.

EDGAR. He is gone indeed.

KENT. The wonder is, he hath endur’d so long: He but usurp’d his life.

ALBANY. Bear them from hence. Our present business Is general woe. [To Edgar and Kent.] Friends of my soul, you twain, Rule in this realm and the gor’d state sustain.

KENT. I have a journey, sir, shortly to go; My master calls me, I must not say no.

EDGAR. The weight of this sad time we must obey; Speak what we feel, not what we ought to say. The oldest hath borne most; we that are young Shall never see so much, nor live so long.

[Exeunt with a dead march.]

LOVE’S LABOUR’S LOST

ACT I Scene I. The King of Navarre’s park Scene II. The park

ACT II Scene I. The King of Navarre’s park. A pavilion and tents at a distance

ACT III Scene I. The King of Navarre’s park

ACT IV Scene I. The King of Navarre’s park Scene II. The same Scene III. The same

ACT V Scene I. The King of Navarre’s park Scene II. The same. Before the Princess’s pavilion

KING of Navarre, also known as Ferdinand

BEROWNE, Lord attending on the King LONGAVILLE, Lord attending on the King DUMAINE, Lord attending on the King

The PRINCESS of France

ROSALINE, Lady attending on the Princess MARIA, Lady attending on the Princess KATHARINE, Lady attending on the Princess BOYET, Lord attending on the Princess

Don Adriano de ARMADO, a fantastical Spaniard MOTH, Page to Armado JAQUENETTA, a country wench COSTARD, a Clown DULL, a Constable HOLOFERNES, a Schoolmaster Sir NATHANIEL, a Curate A FORESTER MARCADÉ, a messenger from France

Lords, Blackamoors, Officers and Others, Attendants on the King and Princess.

SCENE: Navarre

SCENE I. The King of Navarre’s park

Enter Ferdinand, King of Navarre, Berowne, Longaville and Dumaine.

KING. Let fame, that all hunt after in their lives, Live registered upon our brazen tombs, And then grace us in the disgrace of death; When, spite of cormorant devouring time, Th’ endeavour of this present breath may buy That honour which shall bate his scythe’s keen edge, And make us heirs of all eternity. Therefore, brave conquerors, for so you are That war against your own affections And the huge army of the world’s desires, Our late edict shall strongly stand in force. Navarre shall be the wonder of the world; Our court shall be a little academe, Still and contemplative in living art. You three, Berowne, Dumaine and Longaville, Have sworn for three years’ term to live with me, My fellow-scholars, and to keep those statutes That are recorded in this schedule here. Your oaths are passed, and now subscribe your names, That his own hand may strike his honour down That violates the smallest branch herein. If you are armed to do as sworn to do, Subscribe to your deep oaths, and keep it too.

LONGAVILLE. I am resolved. ’Tis but a three years’ fast. The mind shall banquet, though the body pine. Fat paunches have lean pates, and dainty bits Make rich the ribs, but bankrupt quite the wits.

[He signs.]

DUMAINE. My loving lord, Dumaine is mortified. The grosser manner of these world’s delights He throws upon the gross world’s baser slaves. To love, to wealth, to pomp, I pine and die, With all these living in philosophy.

BEROWNE. I can but say their protestation over. So much, dear liege, I have already sworn, That is, to live and study here three years. But there are other strict observances: As not to see a woman in that term, Which I hope well is not enrolled there; And one day in a week to touch no food, And but one meal on every day beside, The which I hope is not enrolled there; And then to sleep but three hours in the night, And not be seen to wink of all the day, When I was wont to think no harm all night, And make a dark night too of half the day, Which I hope well is not enrolled there. O, these are barren tasks, too hard to keep, Not to see ladies, study, fast, not sleep.

KING. Your oath is passed to pass away from these.

BEROWNE. Let me say no, my liege, an if you please. I only swore to study with your Grace And stay here in your court for three years’ space.

LONGAVILLE. You swore to that, Berowne, and to the rest.

BEROWNE. By yea and nay, sir, then I swore in jest. What is the end of study, let me know?

KING. Why, that to know which else we should not know.

BEROWNE. Things hid and barred, you mean, from common sense?

KING. Ay, that is study’s god-like recompense.

BEROWNE. Come on, then, I will swear to study so, To know the thing I am forbid to know: As thus, to study where I well may dine, When I to feast expressly am forbid; Or study where to meet some mistress fine, When mistresses from common sense are hid; Or, having sworn too hard-a-keeping oath, Study to break it, and not break my troth. If study’s gain be thus, and this be so, Study knows that which yet it doth not know. Swear me to this, and I will ne’er say no.

KING. These be the stops that hinder study quite, And train our intellects to vain delight.

BEROWNE. Why, all delights are vain, but that most vain Which, with pain purchased, doth inherit pain: As painfully to pore upon a book To seek the light of truth, while truth the while Doth falsely blind the eyesight of his look. Light seeking light doth light of light beguile; So, ere you find where light in darkness lies, Your light grows dark by losing of your eyes. Study me how to please the eye indeed By fixing it upon a fairer eye, Who dazzling so, that eye shall be his heed, And give him light that it was blinded by. Study is like the heaven’s glorious sun, That will not be deep-searched with saucy looks; Small have continual plodders ever won, Save base authority from others’ books. These earthly godfathers of heaven’s lights, That give a name to every fixed star, Have no more profit of their shining nights Than those that walk and wot not what they are. Too much to know is to know naught but fame, And every godfather can give a name.

KING. How well he’s read, to reason against reading.

DUMAINE. Proceeded well, to stop all good proceeding.

LONGAVILLE. He weeds the corn, and still lets grow the weeding.

BEROWNE. The spring is near when green geese are a-breeding.

DUMAINE. How follows that?

BEROWNE. Fit in his place and time.

DUMAINE. In reason nothing.

BEROWNE. Something then in rhyme.

LONGAVILLE. Berowne is like an envious sneaping frost That bites the first-born infants of the spring.

BEROWNE. Well, say I am. Why should proud summer boast Before the birds have any cause to sing? Why should I joy in any abortive birth? At Christmas I no more desire a rose Than wish a snow in May’s new-fangled shows, But like of each thing that in season grows. So you, to study now it is too late, Climb o’er the house to unlock the little gate.

KING. Well, sit you out. Go home, Berowne. Adieu.

BEROWNE. No, my good lord, I have sworn to stay with you, And though I have for barbarism spoke more Than for that angel knowledge you can say, Yet confident I’ll keep what I have sworn And bide the penance of each three years’ day. Give me the paper, let me read the same, And to the strictest decrees I’ll write my name.

KING. How well this yielding rescues thee from shame.

BEROWNE. [Reads.] Item, That no woman shall come within a mile of my court. Hath this been proclaimed?

LONGAVILLE. Four days ago.

BEROWNE. Let’s see the penalty. [Reads.] On pain of losing her tongue. Who devised this penalty?

LONGAVILLE. Marry, that did I.

BEROWNE. Sweet lord, and why?

LONGAVILLE. To fright them hence with that dread penalty.

BEROWNE. A dangerous law against gentility. [Reads.] Item, If any man be seen to talk with a woman within the term of three years, he shall endure such public shame as the rest of the court can possibly devise. This article, my liege, yourself must break, For well you know here comes in embassy The French King’s daughter, with yourself to speak— A mild of grace and complete majesty— About surrender up of Aquitaine To her decrepit, sick, and bedrid father. Therefore this article is made in vain, Or vainly comes th’ admired Princess hither.

KING. What say you, lords? Why, this was quite forgot.

BEROWNE. So study evermore is overshot. While it doth study to have what it would, It doth forget to do the thing it should; And when it hath the thing it hunteth most, ’Tis won as towns with fire: so won, so lost.

KING. We must of force dispense with this decree. She must lie here on mere necessity.

BEROWNE. Necessity will make us all forsworn Three thousand times within this three years’ space; For every man with his affects is born, Not by might mastered, but by special grace. If I break faith, this word shall speak for me: I am forsworn on mere necessity. So to the laws at large I write my name, And he that breaks them in the least degree Stands in attainder of eternal shame. Suggestions are to other as to me; But I believe, although I seem so loath, I am the last that will last keep his oath.

But is there no quick recreation granted?

KING. Ay, that there is. Our court, you know, is haunted With a refined traveller of Spain, A man in all the world’s new fashion planted, That hath a mint of phrases in his brain; One who the music of his own vain tongue Doth ravish like enchanting harmony, A man of complements, whom right and wrong Have chose as umpire of their mutiny. This child of fancy, that Armado hight, For interim to our studies shall relate In high-born words the worth of many a knight From tawny Spain lost in the world’s debate. How you delight, my lords, I know not, I, But I protest I love to hear him lie, And I will use him for my minstrelsy.

BEROWNE. Armado is a most illustrious wight, A man of fire-new words, fashion’s own knight.

LONGAVILLE. Costard the swain and he shall be our sport, And so to study three years is but short.

Enter Dull, a Constable, with a letter, and Costard.

DULL. Which is the Duke’s own person?

BEROWNE. This, fellow. What wouldst?

DULL. I myself reprehend his own person, for I am his Grace’s farborough. But I would see his own person in flesh and blood.

BEROWNE. This is he.

DULL. Signior Arm… Arm… commends you. There’s villainy abroad. This letter will tell you more.

COSTARD. Sir, the contempts thereof are as touching me.

KING. A letter from the magnificent Armado.

BEROWNE. How long soever the matter, I hope in God for high words.

LONGAVILLE. A high hope for a low heaven. God grant us patience!

BEROWNE. To hear, or forbear laughing?

LONGAVILLE. To hear meekly, sir, and to laugh moderately, or to forbear both.

BEROWNE. Well, sir, be it as the style shall give us cause to climb in the merriness.

COSTARD. The matter is to me, sir, as concerning Jaquenetta. The manner of it is, I was taken with the manner.

BEROWNE. In what manner?

COSTARD. In manner and form following, sir, all those three. I was seen with her in the manor-house, sitting with her upon the form, and taken following her into the park, which, put together, is “in manner and form following”. Now, sir, for the manner. It is the manner of a man to speak to a woman. For the form—in some form.

BEROWNE. For the “following”, sir?

COSTARD. As it shall follow in my correction, and God defend the right!

KING. Will you hear this letter with attention?

BEROWNE. As we would hear an oracle.

COSTARD. Such is the simplicity of man to hearken after the flesh.

KING. [Reads.] Great deputy, the welkin’s vicegerent and sole dominator of Navarre, my soul’s earth’s god and body’s fostering patron—

COSTARD. Not a word of Costard yet.

KING. [Reads.] So it is—

COSTARD. It may be so; but if he say it is so, he is, in telling true, but so.

KING. Peace!

COSTARD. Be to me, and every man that dares not fight.

KING. No words!

COSTARD. Of other men’s secrets, I beseech you.

KING. [Reads.] So it is, besieged with sable-coloured melancholy, I did commend the black-oppressing humour to the most wholesome physic of thy health-giving air; and, as I am a gentleman, betook myself to walk. The time when? About the sixth hour, when beasts most graze, birds best peck, and men sit down to that nourishment which is called supper. So much for the time when. Now for the ground which? Which, I mean, I walked upon. It is ycleped thy park. Then for the place, where? Where, I mean, I did encounter that obscene and most preposterous event that draweth from my snow-white pen the ebon-coloured ink, which here thou viewest, beholdest, surveyest, or seest. But to the place where? It standeth north-north-east and by east from the west corner of thy curious-knotted garden. There did I see that low-spirited swain, that base minnow of thy mirth—

COSTARD. Me?

KING. [Reads.] That unlettered small-knowing soul—

KING. [Reads.] That shallow vassal—

COSTARD. Still me?

KING. [Reads.] Which, as I remember, hight Costard—

COSTARD. O me!

KING. [Reads.] Sorted and consorted, contrary to thy established proclaimed edict and continent canon, which with, O, with—but with this I passion to say wherewith—

COSTARD. With a wench.

KING. [Reads.] With a child of our grandmother Eve, a female; or, for thy more sweet understanding, a woman. Him, I, as my ever-esteemed duty pricks me on, have sent to thee, to receive the meed of punishment, by thy sweet Grace’s officer, Antony Dull, a man of good repute, carriage, bearing, and estimation.

DULL. Me, an’t shall please you; I am Antony Dull.

KING. [Reads.] For Jaquenetta, so is the weaker vessel called which I apprehended with the aforesaid swain, I keep her as a vessel of thy law’s fury, and shall, at the least of thy sweet notice, bring her to trial. Thine, in all compliments of devoted and heartburning heat of duty, Don Adriano de Armado.

BEROWNE. This is not so well as I looked for, but the best that ever I heard.

KING. Ay, the best for the worst. But, sirrah, what say you to this?

COSTARD. Sir, I confess the wench.

KING. Did you hear the proclamation?

COSTARD. I do confess much of the hearing it, but little of the marking of it.

KING. It was proclaimed a year’s imprisonment to be taken with a wench.

COSTARD. I was taken with none, sir. I was taken with a damsel.

KING. Well, it was proclaimed “damsel”.

COSTARD. This was no damsel neither, sir; she was a virgin.

KING. It is so varied too, for it was proclaimed “virgin”.

COSTARD. If it were, I deny her virginity. I was taken with a maid.

KING. This maid will not serve your turn, sir.

COSTARD. This maid will serve my turn, sir.

KING. Sir, I will pronounce your sentence: you shall fast a week with bran and water.

COSTARD. I had rather pray a month with mutton and porridge.

KING. And Don Armado shall be your keeper. My Lord Berowne, see him delivered o’er; And go we, lords, to put in practice that Which each to other hath so strongly sworn.

[Exeunt King, Longaville and Dumaine.]

BEROWNE. I’ll lay my head to any good man’s hat These oaths and laws will prove an idle scorn. Sirrah, come on.

COSTARD. I suffer for the truth, sir; for true it is I was taken with Jaquenetta, and Jaquenetta is a true girl. And therefore welcome the sour cup of prosperity! Affliction may one day smile again, and till then, sit thee down, sorrow.

SCENE II. The park

Enter Armado and Moth, his Page.

ARMADO. Boy, what sign is it when a man of great spirit grows melancholy?

MOTH. A great sign, sir, that he will look sad.

ARMADO. Why, sadness is one and the selfsame thing, dear imp.

MOTH. No, no, O Lord, sir, no.

ARMADO. How canst thou part sadness and melancholy, my tender juvenal?

MOTH. By a familiar demonstration of the working, my tough signior.

ARMADO. Why tough signior? Why tough signior?

MOTH. Why tender juvenal? Why tender juvenal?

ARMADO. I spoke it, tender juvenal, as a congruent epitheton appertaining to thy young days, which we may nominate tender.

MOTH. And I, tough signior, as an appertinent title to your old time, which we may name tough.

ARMADO. Pretty and apt.

MOTH. How mean you, sir? I pretty and my saying apt, or I apt, and my saying pretty?

ARMADO. Thou pretty, because little.

MOTH. Little pretty, because little. Wherefore apt?

ARMADO. And therefore apt, because quick.

MOTH. Speak you this in my praise, master?

ARMADO. In thy condign praise.

MOTH. I will praise an eel with the same praise.

ARMADO. What, that an eel is ingenious?

MOTH. That an eel is quick.

ARMADO. I do say thou art quick in answers. Thou heat’st my blood.

MOTH. I am answered, sir.

ARMADO. I love not to be crossed.

MOTH. [Aside.] He speaks the mere contrary; crosses love not him.

ARMADO. I have promised to study three years with the Duke.

MOTH. You may do it in an hour, sir.

ARMADO. Impossible.

MOTH. How many is one thrice told?

ARMADO. I am ill at reckoning. It fitteth the spirit of a tapster.

MOTH. You are a gentleman and a gamester, sir.

ARMADO. I confess both. They are both the varnish of a complete man.

MOTH. Then I am sure you know how much the gross sum of deuce-ace amounts to.

ARMADO. It doth amount to one more than two.

MOTH. Which the base vulgar do call three.

ARMADO. True.

MOTH. Why, sir, is this such a piece of study? Now here’s three studied ere ye’ll thrice wink. And how easy it is to put “years” to the word “three”, and study three years in two words, the dancing horse will tell you.

ARMADO. A most fine figure!

MOTH. [Aside.] To prove you a cipher.

ARMADO. I will hereupon confess I am in love; and as it is base for a soldier to love, so am I in love with a base wench. If drawing my sword against the humour of affection would deliver me from the reprobate thought of it, I would take desire prisoner, and ransom him to any French courtier for a new-devised curtsy. I think scorn to sigh; methinks I should outswear Cupid. Comfort me, boy. What great men have been in love?

MOTH. Hercules, master.

ARMADO. Most sweet Hercules! More authority, dear boy, name more; and, sweet my child, let them be men of good repute and carriage.

MOTH. Samson, master. He was a man of good carriage, great carriage, for he carried the town gates on his back like a porter, and he was in love.

ARMADO. O well-knit Samson, strong-jointed Samson! I do excel thee in my rapier as much as thou didst me in carrying gates. I am in love too. Who was Samson’s love, my dear Moth?

MOTH. A woman, master.

ARMADO. Of what complexion?

MOTH. Of all the four, or the three, or the two, or one of the four.

ARMADO. Tell me precisely of what complexion.

MOTH. Of the sea-water green, sir.

ARMADO. Is that one of the four complexions?

MOTH. As I have read, sir; and the best of them too.

ARMADO. Green indeed is the colour of lovers. But to have a love of that colour, methinks Samson had small reason for it. He surely affected her for her wit.

MOTH. It was so, sir, for she had a green wit.

ARMADO. My love is most immaculate white and red.

MOTH. Most maculate thoughts, master, are masked under such colours.

ARMADO. Define, define, well-educated infant.

MOTH. My father’s wit and my mother’s tongue assist me!

ARMADO. Sweet invocation of a child, most pretty, and pathetical!

MOTH. If she be made of white and red, Her faults will ne’er be known; For blushing cheeks by faults are bred, And fears by pale white shown. Then if she fear, or be to blame, By this you shall not know, For still her cheeks possess the same Which native she doth owe. A dangerous rhyme, master, against the reason of white and red.

ARMADO. Is there not a ballad, boy, of the King and the Beggar?

MOTH. The world was very guilty of such a ballad some three ages since, but I think now ’tis not to be found; or if it were, it would neither serve for the writing nor the tune.

ARMADO. I will have that subject newly writ o’er, that I may example my digression by some mighty precedent. Boy, I do love that country girl that I took in the park with the rational hind Costard. She deserves well.

MOTH. [Aside.] To be whipped: and yet a better love than my master.

ARMADO. Sing, boy. My spirit grows heavy in love.

MOTH. And that’s great marvel, loving a light wench.

ARMADO. I say, sing.

MOTH. Forbear till this company be past.

Enter Costard the Clown, Dull the Constable and Jaquenetta a Wench.

DULL. Sir, the Duke’s pleasure is that you keep Costard safe; and you must suffer him to take no delight, nor no penance, but he must fast three days a week. For this damsel, I must keep her at the park. She is allowed for the dey-woman. Fare you well.

ARMADO. I do betray myself with blushing.—Maid.

JAQUENETTA. Man.

ARMADO. I will visit thee at the lodge.

JAQUENETTA. That’s hereby.

ARMADO. I know where it is situate.

JAQUENETTA. Lord, how wise you are!

ARMADO. I will tell thee wonders.

JAQUENETTA. With that face?

ARMADO. I love thee.

JAQUENETTA. So I heard you say.

ARMADO. And so, farewell.

JAQUENETTA. Fair weather after you!

DULL. Come, Jaquenetta, away.

[Exeunt Dull and Jaquenetta.]

ARMADO. Villain, thou shalt fast for thy offences ere thou be pardoned.

COSTARD. Well, sir, I hope when I do it I shall do it on a full stomach.

ARMADO. Thou shalt be heavily punished.

COSTARD. I am more bound to you than your fellows, for they are but lightly rewarded.

ARMADO. Take away this villain. Shut him up.

MOTH. Come, you transgressing slave, away!

COSTARD. Let me not be pent up, sir. I will fast being loose.

MOTH. No, sir, that were fast and loose. Thou shalt to prison.

COSTARD. Well, if ever I do see the merry days of desolation that I have seen, some shall see.

MOTH. What shall some see?

COSTARD. Nay, nothing, Master Moth, but what they look upon. It is not for prisoners to be too silent in their words, and therefore I will say nothing. I thank God I have as little patience as another man, and therefore I can be quiet.

[Exeunt Moth and Costard.]

ARMADO. I do affect the very ground, which is base, where her shoe, which is baser, guided by her foot, which is basest, doth tread. I shall be forsworn, which is a great argument of falsehood, if I love. And how can that be true love which is falsely attempted? Love is a familiar; Love is a devil. There is no evil angel but Love. Yet was Samson so tempted, and he had an excellent strength; yet was Solomon so seduced, and he had a very good wit. Cupid’s butt-shaft is too hard for Hercules’ club, and therefore too much odds for a Spaniard’s rapier. The first and second cause will not serve my turn; the passado he respects not, the duello he regards not. His disgrace is to be called boy, but his glory is to subdue men. Adieu, valour; rust, rapier; be still, drum, for your manager is in love. Yea, he loveth. Assist me, some extemporal god of rhyme, for I am sure I shall turn sonnet. Devise, wit; write, pen; for I am for whole volumes in folio.

SCENE I. The King of Navarre’s park. A pavilion and tents at a distance

Enter the Princess of France, with three attending Ladies: Rosaline, Maria, Katharine and three Lords: Boyet, and two others.

BOYET. Now, madam, summon up your dearest spirits. Consider who the King your father sends, To whom he sends, and what’s his embassy. Yourself, held precious in the world’s esteem, To parley with the sole inheritor Of all perfections that a man may owe, Matchless Navarre; the plea of no less weight Than Aquitaine, a dowry for a queen. Be now as prodigal of all dear grace As Nature was in making graces dear When she did starve the general world beside And prodigally gave them all to you.

PRINCESS. Good Lord Boyet, my beauty, though but mean, Needs not the painted flourish of your praise. Beauty is bought by judgement of the eye, Not uttered by base sale of chapmen’s tongues. I am less proud to hear you tell my worth Than you much willing to be counted wise In spending your wit in the praise of mine. But now to task the tasker: good Boyet, You are not ignorant, all-telling fame Doth noise abroad Navarre hath made a vow, Till painful study shall outwear three years, No woman may approach his silent court. Therefore to’s seemeth it a needful course, Before we enter his forbidden gates, To know his pleasure; and in that behalf, Bold of your worthiness, we single you As our best-moving fair solicitor. Tell him the daughter of the King of France, On serious business craving quick dispatch, Importunes personal conference with his Grace. Haste, signify so much, while we attend, Like humble-visaged suitors, his high will.

BOYET. Proud of employment, willingly I go.

PRINCESS. All pride is willing pride, and yours is so.

[Exit Boyet.]

Who are the votaries, my loving lords, That are vow-fellows with this virtuous Duke?

LORD. Lord Longaville is one.

PRINCESS. Know you the man?

MARIA. I know him, madam. At a marriage feast Between Lord Perigort and the beauteous heir Of Jaques Falconbridge, solemnized In Normandy, saw I this Longaville. A man of sovereign parts, he is esteemed, Well fitted in arts, glorious in arms. Nothing becomes him ill that he would well. The only soil of his fair virtue’s gloss, If virtue’s gloss will stain with any soil, Is a sharp wit matched with too blunt a will, Whose edge hath power to cut, whose will still wills It should none spare that come within his power.

PRINCESS. Some merry mocking lord, belike. Is’t so?

MARIA. They say so most that most his humours know.

PRINCESS. Such short-lived wits do wither as they grow. Who are the rest?

KATHARINE. The young Dumaine, a well-accomplished youth, Of all that virtue love for virtue loved; Most power to do most harm, least knowing ill, For he hath wit to make an ill shape good, And shape to win grace though he had no wit. I saw him at the Duke Alençon’s once; And much too little of that good I saw Is my report to his great worthiness.

ROSALINE. Another of these students at that time Was there with him, if I have heard a truth. Berowne they call him, but a merrier man, Within the limit of becoming mirth, I never spent an hour’s talk withal. His eye begets occasion for his wit, For every object that the one doth catch The other turns to a mirth-moving jest, Which his fair tongue, conceit’s expositor, Delivers in such apt and gracious words That aged ears play truant at his tales, And younger hearings are quite ravished, So sweet and voluble is his discourse.

PRINCESS. God bless my ladies! Are they all in love, That every one her own hath garnished With such bedecking ornaments of praise?

LORD. Here comes Boyet.

Enter Boyet.

PRINCESS. Now, what admittance, lord?

BOYET. Navarre had notice of your fair approach, And he and his competitors in oath Were all addressed to meet you, gentle lady, Before I came. Marry, thus much I have learned: He rather means to lodge you in the field, Like one that comes here to besiege his court, Than seek a dispensation for his oath, To let you enter his unpeopled house.

Enter King of Navarre, Longaville, Dumaine, Berowne and Attendants.

Here comes Navarre.

KING. Fair Princess, welcome to the court of Navarre.

PRINCESS. “Fair” I give you back again, and “welcome” I have not yet. The roof of this court is too high to be yours, and welcome to the wide fields too base to be mine.

KING. You shall be welcome, madam, to my court.

PRINCESS. I will be welcome then. Conduct me thither.

KING. Hear me, dear lady. I have sworn an oath.

PRINCESS. Our Lady help my lord! He’ll be forsworn.

KING. Not for the world, fair madam, by my will.

PRINCESS. Why, will shall break it; will, and nothing else.

KING. Your ladyship is ignorant what it is.

PRINCESS. Were my lord so, his ignorance were wise, Where now his knowledge must prove ignorance. I hear your Grace hath sworn out housekeeping. ’Tis deadly sin to keep that oath, my lord, And sin to break it. But pardon me, I am too sudden bold. To teach a teacher ill beseemeth me. Vouchsafe to read the purpose of my coming, And suddenly resolve me in my suit.

[She gives him a paper.]

KING. Madam, I will, if suddenly I may.

PRINCESS. You will the sooner that I were away, For you’ll prove perjured if you make me stay.

[The King reads the paper.]

BEROWNE. [To Rosaline.] Did not I dance with you in Brabant once?

ROSALINE. Did not I dance with you in Brabant once?

BEROWNE. I know you did.

ROSALINE. How needless was it then To ask the question!

BEROWNE. You must not be so quick.

ROSALINE. ’Tis long of you that spur me with such questions.

BEROWNE. Your wit’s too hot, it speeds too fast, ’twill tire.

ROSALINE. Not till it leave the rider in the mire.

BEROWNE. What time o’ day?

ROSALINE. The hour that fools should ask.

BEROWNE. Now fair befall your mask.

ROSALINE. Fair fall the face it covers.

BEROWNE. And send you many lovers!

ROSALINE. Amen, so you be none.

BEROWNE. Nay, then will I be gone.

KING. Madam, your father here doth intimate The payment of a hundred thousand crowns, Being but the one half of an entire sum Disbursed by my father in his wars. But say that he or we, as neither have, Received that sum, yet there remains unpaid A hundred thousand more, in surety of the which One part of Aquitaine is bound to us, Although not valued to the money’s worth. If then the King your father will restore But that one half which is unsatisfied, We will give up our right in Aquitaine, And hold fair friendship with his majesty. But that, it seems, he little purposeth; For here he doth demand to have repaid A hundred thousand crowns, and not demands, On payment of a hundred thousand crowns, To have his title live in Aquitaine, Which we much rather had depart withal, And have the money by our father lent, Than Aquitaine, so gelded as it is. Dear Princess, were not his requests so far From reason’s yielding, your fair self should make A yielding ’gainst some reason in my breast, And go well satisfied to France again.

PRINCESS. You do the King my father too much wrong, And wrong the reputation of your name, In so unseeming to confess receipt Of that which hath so faithfully been paid.

KING. I do protest I never heard of it; And, if you prove it, I’ll repay it back Or yield up Aquitaine.

PRINCESS. We arrest your word. Boyet, you can produce acquittances For such a sum from special officers Of Charles his father.

KING. Satisfy me so.

BOYET. So please your Grace, the packet is not come Where that and other specialties are bound. Tomorrow you shall have a sight of them.

KING. It shall suffice me; at which interview All liberal reason I will yield unto. Meantime receive such welcome at my hand As honour, without breach of honour, may Make tender of to thy true worthiness. You may not come, fair Princess, in my gates, But here without you shall be so received As you shall deem yourself lodged in my heart, Though so denied fair harbour in my house. Your own good thoughts excuse me, and farewell. Tomorrow shall we visit you again.

PRINCESS. Sweet health and fair desires consort your Grace.

KING. Thy own wish wish I thee in every place.

[Exeunt the King, Longaville and Dumaine.]

BEROWNE. Lady, I will commend you to mine own heart.

ROSALINE. Pray you, do my commendations; I would be glad to see it.

BEROWNE. I would you heard it groan.

ROSALINE. Is the fool sick?

BEROWNE. Sick at the heart.

ROSALINE. Alack, let it blood.

BEROWNE. Would that do it good?

ROSALINE. My physic says “ay”.

BEROWNE. Will you prick’t with your eye?

ROSALINE. Non point, with my knife.

BEROWNE. Now, God save thy life.

ROSALINE. And yours from long living.

BEROWNE. I cannot stay thanksgiving.

Enter Dumaine.

DUMAINE. Sir, I pray you, a word. What lady is that same?

BOYET. The heir of Alençon, Katharine her name.

DUMAINE. A gallant lady. Monsieur, fare you well.

Enter Longaville.

LONGAVILLE. I beseech you a word. What is she in the white?

BOYET. A woman sometimes, an you saw her in the light.

LONGAVILLE. Perchance light in the light. I desire her name.

BOYET. She hath but one for herself; to desire that were a shame.

LONGAVILLE. Pray you, sir, whose daughter?

BOYET. Her mother’s, I have heard.

LONGAVILLE. God’s blessing on your beard!

BOYET. Good sir, be not offended. She is an heir of Falconbridge.

LONGAVILLE. Nay, my choler is ended. She is a most sweet lady.

BOYET. Not unlike, sir; that may be.

[Exit Longaville.]

Enter Berowne.

BEROWNE. What’s her name in the cap?

BOYET. Rosaline, by good hap.

BEROWNE. Is she wedded or no?

BOYET. To her will, sir, or so.

BEROWNE. You are welcome, sir. Adieu.

BOYET. Farewell to me, sir, and welcome to you.

[Exit Berowne.]

MARIA. That last is Berowne, the merry madcap lord. Not a word with him but a jest.

BOYET. And every jest but a word.

PRINCESS. It was well done of you to take him at his word.

BOYET. I was as willing to grapple as he was to board.

KATHARINE. Two hot sheeps, marry!

BOYET. And wherefore not ships? No sheep, sweet lamb, unless we feed on your lips.

KATHARINE. You sheep and I pasture. Shall that finish the jest?

BOYET. So you grant pasture for me.

[He tries to kiss her.]

KATHARINE. Not so, gentle beast. My lips are no common, though several they be.

BOYET. Belonging to whom?

KATHARINE. To my fortunes and me.

PRINCESS. Good wits will be jangling; but, gentles, agree. This civil war of wits were much better used On Navarre and his bookmen, for here ’tis abused.

BOYET. If my observation, which very seldom lies, By the heart’s still rhetoric disclosed with eyes, Deceive me not now, Navarre is infected.

PRINCESS. With what?

BOYET. With that which we lovers entitle “affected”.

PRINCESS. Your reason.

BOYET. Why, all his behaviours did make their retire To the court of his eye, peeping thorough desire. His heart, like an agate, with your print impressed, Proud with his form, in his eye pride expressed. His tongue, all impatient to speak and not see, Did stumble with haste in his eyesight to be; All senses to that sense did make their repair, To feel only looking on fairest of fair. Methought all his senses were locked in his eye, As jewels in crystal for some prince to buy; Who, tend’ring their own worth from where they were glassed, Did point you to buy them, along as you passed. His face’s own margent did quote such amazes That all eyes saw his eyes enchanted with gazes. I’ll give you Aquitaine, and all that is his, An you give him for my sake but one loving kiss.

PRINCESS. Come, to our pavilion. Boyet is disposed.

BOYET. But to speak that in words which his eye hath disclosed. I only have made a mouth of his eye By adding a tongue which I know will not lie.

ROSALINE. Thou art an old love-monger, and speakest skilfully.

MARIA. He is Cupid’s grandfather, and learns news of him.

ROSALINE. Then was Venus like her mother; for her father is but grim.

BOYET. Do you hear, my mad wenches?

MARIA. No.

BOYET. What, then, do you see?

ROSALINE. Ay, our way to be gone.

BOYET. You are too hard for me.

Enter Armado the Braggart and Moth his Boy.

ARMADO. Warble, child, make passionate my sense of hearing.

MOTH. [Singing.] Concolinel.

ARMADO. Sweet air! Go, tenderness of years, take this key, give enlargement to the swain, bring him festinately hither. I must employ him in a letter to my love.

MOTH. Master, will you win your love with a French brawl?

ARMADO. How meanest thou? Brawling in French?

MOTH. No, my complete master; but to jig off a tune at the tongue’s end, canary to it with your feet, humour it with turning up your eyelids, sigh a note and sing a note, sometime through the throat, as if you swallowed love with singing love, sometime through the nose, as if you snuffed up love by smelling love; with your hat penthouse-like o’er the shop of your eyes, with your arms crossed on your thin-belly doublet like a rabbit on a spit; or your hands in your pocket like a man after the old painting; and keep not too long in one tune, but a snip and away. These are compliments, these are humours; these betray nice wenches that would be betrayed without these; and make them men of note—do you note me?—that most are affected to these.

ARMADO. How hast thou purchased this experience?

MOTH. By my penny of observation.

ARMADO. But O—but O—

MOTH. “The hobby-horse is forgot.”

ARMADO. Call’st thou my love “hobby-horse”?

MOTH. No, master. The hobby-horse is but a colt, and your love perhaps a hackney. But have you forgot your love?

ARMADO. Almost I had.

MOTH. Negligent student! Learn her by heart.

ARMADO. By heart and in heart, boy.

MOTH. And out of heart, master. All those three I will prove.

ARMADO. What wilt thou prove?

MOTH. A man, if I live; and this, “by, in, and without,” upon the instant: “by” heart you love her, because your heart cannot come by her; “in” heart you love her, because your heart is in love with her; and “out” of heart you love her, being out of heart that you cannot enjoy her.

ARMADO. I am all these three.

MOTH. And three times as much more, and yet nothing at all.

ARMADO. Fetch hither the swain. He must carry me a letter.

MOTH. A message well sympathized: a horse to be ambassador for an ass.

ARMADO. Ha, ha, what sayest thou?

MOTH. Marry, sir, you must send the ass upon the horse, for he is very slow-gaited. But I go.

ARMADO. The way is but short. Away!

MOTH. As swift as lead, sir.

ARMADO. The meaning, pretty ingenious? Is not lead a metal heavy, dull, and slow?

MOTH. Minime, honest master; or rather, master, no.

ARMADO. I say lead is slow.

MOTH. You are too swift, sir, to say so. Is that lead slow which is fired from a gun?

ARMADO. Sweet smoke of rhetoric! He reputes me a cannon; and the bullet, that’s he. I shoot thee at the swain.

MOTH. Thump then, and I flee.

ARMADO. A most acute juvenal, voluble and free of grace! By thy favour, sweet welkin, I must sigh in thy face. Most rude melancholy, valour gives thee place. My herald is returned.

Enter Moth and Costard.

MOTH. A wonder, master! Here’s a costard broken in a shin.

ARMADO. Some enigma, some riddle. Come, thy l’envoi begin.

COSTARD. No egma, no riddle, no l’envoi, no salve in the mail, sir. O, sir, plantain, a plain plantain! No l’envoi, no l’envoi, no salve, sir, but a plantain.

ARMADO. By virtue, thou enforcest laughter; thy silly thought, my spleen; the heaving of my lungs provokes me to ridiculous smiling. O, pardon me, my stars! Doth the inconsiderate take salve for l’envoi, and the word l’envoi for a salve?

MOTH. Do the wise think them other? Is not l’envoi a salve?

ARMADO. No, page; it is an epilogue or discourse to make plain Some obscure precedence that hath tofore been sain. I will example it: The fox, the ape, and the humble-bee Were still at odds, being but three. There’s the moral. Now the l’envoi.

MOTH. I will add the l’envoi. Say the moral again.

ARMADO. The fox, the ape, and the humble-bee Were still at odds, being but three.

MOTH. Until the goose came out of door, And stayed the odds by adding four. Now will I begin your moral, and do you follow with my l’envoi. The fox, the ape, and the humble-bee Were still at odds, being but three.

ARMADO. Until the goose came out of door, Staying the odds by adding four.

MOTH. A good l’envoi, ending in the goose. Would you desire more?

COSTARD. The boy hath sold him a bargain, a goose, that’s flat. Sir, your pennyworth is good, an your goose be fat. To sell a bargain well is as cunning as fast and loose. Let me see: a fat l’envoi—ay, that’s a fat goose.

ARMADO. Come hither, come hither. How did this argument begin?

MOTH. By saying that a costard was broken in a shin. Then called you for the l’envoi.

COSTARD. True, and I for a plantain. Thus came your argument in. Then the boy’s fat l’envoi, the goose that you bought; and he ended the market.

ARMADO. But tell me, how was there a costard broken in a shin?

MOTH. I will tell you sensibly.

COSTARD. Thou hast no feeling of it, Moth. I will speak that l’envoi. I, Costard, running out, that was safely within, Fell over the threshold and broke my shin.

ARMADO. We will talk no more of this matter.

COSTARD. Till there be more matter in the shin.

ARMADO. Sirrah Costard, I will enfranchise thee.

COSTARD. O, marry me to one Frances! I smell some l’envoi, some goose, in this.

ARMADO. By my sweet soul, I mean setting thee at liberty, enfreedoming thy person. Thou wert immured, restrained, captivated, bound.

COSTARD. True, true; and now you will be my purgation, and let me loose.

ARMADO. I give thee thy liberty, set thee from durance, and, in lieu thereof, impose on thee nothing but this: [Giving him a letter.] bear this significant to the country maid Jaquenetta. [Giving money.] There is remuneration for the best ward of mine honour is rewarding my dependents. Moth, follow.

MOTH. Like the sequel, I. Signior Costard, adieu.

[Exit Moth.]

COSTARD. My sweet ounce of man’s flesh, my incony Jew! Now will I look to his remuneration. “Remuneration”! O, that’s the Latin word for three farthings. Three farthings—remuneration. “What’s the price of this inkle?” “One penny.” “No, I’ll give you a remuneration.” Why, it carries it! Remuneration. Why, it is a fairer name than French crown. I will never buy and sell out of this word.

BEROWNE. My good knave Costard, exceedingly well met.

COSTARD. Pray you, sir, how much carnation ribbon may a man buy for a remuneration?

BEROWNE. What is a remuneration?

COSTARD. Marry, sir, halfpenny farthing.

BEROWNE. Why, then, three-farthing worth of silk.

COSTARD. I thank your worship. God be wi’ you.

BEROWNE. Stay, slave. I must employ thee. As thou wilt win my favour, good my knave, Do one thing for me that I shall entreat.

COSTARD. When would you have it done, sir?

BEROWNE. This afternoon.

COSTARD. Well, I will do it, sir. Fare you well.

BEROWNE. Thou knowest not what it is.

COSTARD. I shall know, sir, when I have done it.

BEROWNE. Why, villain, thou must know first.

COSTARD. I will come to your worship tomorrow morning.

BEROWNE. It must be done this afternoon. Hark, slave, it is but this: The Princess comes to hunt here in the park, And in her train there is a gentle lady; When tongues speak sweetly, then they name her name, And Rosaline they call her. Ask for her And to her white hand see thou do commend This sealed-up counsel.

[Gives him money.]

COSTARD. Gardon, O sweet gardon! Better than remuneration, a ’levenpence farthing better. Most sweet gardon! I will do it, sir, in print. Gardon! Remuneration!

BEROWNE. And I, forsooth, in love! I, that have been love’s whip, A very beadle to a humorous sigh, A critic, nay, a night-watch constable, A domineering pedant o’er the boy, Than whom no mortal so magnificent! This wimpled, whining, purblind, wayward boy, This Signior Junior, giant-dwarf, Dan Cupid, Regent of love-rhymes, lord of folded arms, Th’ anointed sovereign of sighs and groans, Liege of all loiterers and malcontents, Dread prince of plackets, king of codpieces, Sole imperator, and great general Of trotting paritors—O my little heart! And I to be a corporal of his field And wear his colours like a tumbler’s hoop! What? I love, I sue, I seek a wife? A woman, that is like a German clock, Still a-repairing, ever out of frame, And never going aright, being a watch, But being watched that it may still go right! Nay, to be perjured, which is worst of all; And, among three, to love the worst of all, A whitely wanton with a velvet brow, With two pitch-balls stuck in her face for eyes; Ay, and, by heaven, one that will do the deed Though Argus were her eunuch and her guard. And I to sigh for her, to watch for her, To pray for her! Go to, it is a plague That Cupid will impose for my neglect Of his almighty dreadful little might. Well, I will love, write, sigh, pray, sue, and groan. Some men must love my lady, and some Joan.

There’s thy guerdon. Go.

Enter the Princess, a Forester, Rosaline, Maria, Katharine, Boyet and other Lords.

PRINCESS. Was that the King that spurred his horse so hard Against the steep uprising of the hill?

BOYET. I know not, but I think it was not he.

PRINCESS. Whoe’er he was, he showed a mounting mind. Well, lords, today we shall have our dispatch; On Saturday we will return to France. Then, forester, my friend, where is the bush That we must stand and play the murderer in?

FORESTER. Hereby, upon the edge of yonder coppice, A stand where you may make “the fairest shoot”.

PRINCESS. I thank my beauty, I am fair that shoot, And thereupon thou speak’st the fairest shoot.

FORESTER. Pardon me, madam, for I meant not so.

PRINCESS. What, what? First praise me, and again say no? O short-lived pride! Not fair? Alack for woe!

FORESTER. Yes, madam, fair.

PRINCESS. Nay, never paint me now. Where fair is not, praise cannot mend the brow. Here, good my glass, take this for telling true:

[She gives him money.]

Fair payment for foul words is more than due.

FORESTER. Nothing but fair is that which you inherit.

PRINCESS. See, see, my beauty will be saved by merit. O heresy in fair, fit for these days! A giving hand, though foul, shall have fair praise. But come, the bow. Now mercy goes to kill, And shooting well is then accounted ill. Thus will I save my credit in the shoot: Not wounding, pity would not let me do’t; If wounding, then it was to show my skill, That more for praise than purpose meant to kill. And out of question so it is sometimes, Glory grows guilty of detested crimes, When, for fame’s sake, for praise, an outward part, We bend to that the working of the heart; As I for praise alone now seek to spill The poor deer’s blood, that my heart means no ill.

BOYET. Do not curst wives hold that self-sovereignty Only for praise’ sake, when they strive to be Lords o’er their lords?

PRINCESS. Only for praise; and praise we may afford To any lady that subdues a lord.

Enter Costard.

BOYET. Here comes a member of the commonwealth.

COSTARD. God dig-you-den all! Pray you, which is the head lady?

PRINCESS. Thou shalt know her, fellow, by the rest that have no heads.

COSTARD. Which is the greatest lady, the highest?

PRINCESS. The thickest and the tallest.

COSTARD. The thickest and the tallest. It is so, truth is truth. An your waist, mistress, were as slender as my wit, One o’ these maids’ girdles for your waist should be fit. Are not you the chief woman? You are the thickest here.

PRINCESS. What’s your will, sir? What’s your will?

COSTARD. I have a letter from Monsieur Berowne to one Lady Rosaline.

PRINCESS. O, thy letter, thy letter! He’s a good friend of mine. Stand aside, good bearer. Boyet, you can carve. Break up this capon.

BOYET. I am bound to serve. This letter is mistook; it importeth none here. It is writ to Jaquenetta.

PRINCESS. We will read it, I swear. Break the neck of the wax, and everyone give ear.

BOYET. [Reads.] By heaven, that thou art fair is most infallible; true that thou art beauteous; truth itself that thou art lovely. More fairer than fair, beautiful than beauteous, truer than truth itself, have commiseration on thy heroical vassal. The magnanimous and most illustrate King Cophetua set eye upon the pernicious and indubitate beggar Zenelophon, and he it was that might rightly say, “Veni, vidi, vici,” which to annothanize in the vulgar—O base and obscure vulgar!—videlicet, He came, see, and overcame. He came, one; see, two; overcame, three. Who came? The King. Why did he come? To see. Why did he see? To overcome. To whom came he? To the beggar. What saw he? The beggar. Who overcame he? The beggar. The conclusion is victory. On whose side? The King’s. The captive is enriched. On whose side? The beggar’s. The catastrophe is a nuptial. On whose side? The King’s? No, on both in one, or one in both. I am the King, for so stands the comparison; thou the beggar, for so witnesseth thy lowliness. Shall I command thy love? I may. Shall I enforce thy love? I could. Shall I entreat thy love? I will. What shalt thou exchange for rags? Robes. For tittles? Titles. For thyself? Me. Thus expecting thy reply, I profane my lips on thy foot, my eyes on thy picture, and my heart on thy every part. Thine in the dearest design of industry, Don Adriano de Armado.

Thus dost thou hear the Nemean lion roar ’Gainst thee, thou lamb, that standest as his prey. Submissive fall his princely feet before, And he from forage will incline to play. But if thou strive, poor soul, what are thou then? Food for his rage, repasture for his den.

PRINCESS. What plume of feathers is he that indited this letter? What vane? What weathercock? Did you ever hear better?

BOYET. I am much deceived but I remember the style.

PRINCESS. Else your memory is bad, going o’er it erewhile.

BOYET. This Armado is a Spaniard that keeps here in court, A phantasime, a Monarcho, and one that makes sport To the Prince and his book-mates.

PRINCESS. Thou, fellow, a word. Who gave thee this letter?

COSTARD. I told you: my lord.

PRINCESS. To whom shouldst thou give it?

COSTARD. From my lord to my lady.

PRINCESS. From which lord to which lady?

COSTARD. From my Lord Berowne, a good master of mine, To a lady of France that he called Rosaline.

PRINCESS. Thou hast mistaken his letter. Come, lords, away. Here, sweet, put up this: ’twill be thine another day.

[Exeunt all but Boyet, Rosaline, Maria and Costard.]

BOYET. Who is the shooter? Who is the shooter?

ROSALINE. Shall I teach you to know?

BOYET. Ay, my continent of beauty.

ROSALINE. Why, she that bears the bow. Finely put off!

BOYET. My lady goes to kill horns, but if thou marry, Hang me by the neck if horns that year miscarry. Finely put on!

ROSALINE. Well, then, I am the shooter.

BOYET. And who is your deer?

ROSALINE. If we choose by the horns, yourself come not near. Finely put on indeed!

MARIA. You still wrangle with her, Boyet, and she strikes at the brow.

BOYET. But she herself is hit lower. Have I hit her now?

ROSALINE. Shall I come upon thee with an old saying, that was a man when King Pepin of France was a little boy, as touching the hit it?

BOYET. So I may answer thee with one as old, that was a woman when Queen Guinevere of Britain was a little wench, as touching the hit it.

ROSALINE. Thou canst not hit it, hit it, hit it, Thou canst not hit it, my good man.

BOYET. An I cannot, cannot, cannot, An I cannot, another can.

[Exeunt Rosaline.]

COSTARD. By my troth, most pleasant. How both did fit it!

MARIA. A mark marvellous well shot, for they both did hit it.

BOYET. A mark! O, mark but that mark! A mark, says my lady! Let the mark have a prick in’t, to mete at, if it may be.

MARIA. Wide o’ the bow hand! I’ faith, your hand is out.

COSTARD. Indeed, a’ must shoot nearer, or he’ll ne’er hit the clout.

BOYET. An if my hand be out, then belike your hand is in.

COSTARD. Then will she get the upshoot by cleaving the pin.

MARIA. Come, come, you talk greasily, your lips grow foul.

COSTARD. She’s too hard for you at pricks, sir. Challenge her to bowl.

BOYET. I fear too much rubbing. Good night, my good owl.

[Exeunt Boyet and Maria.]

COSTARD. By my soul, a swain, a most simple clown! Lord, Lord, how the ladies and I have put him down! O’ my troth, most sweet jests, most incony vulgar wit, When it comes so smoothly off, so obscenely, as it were, so fit. Armado, o’ the one side, O, a most dainty man! To see him walk before a lady and to bear her fan! To see him kiss his hand and how most sweetly he will swear! And his page o’ t’other side, that handful of wit! Ah, heavens, it is a most pathetical nit.

Sola, sola!

Enter Dull, Holofernes, the Pedant and Nathaniel.

NATHANIEL. Very reverend sport, truly, and done in the testimony of a good conscience.

HOLOFERNES. The deer was, as you know, sanguis, in blood, ripe as the pomewater, who now hangeth like a jewel in the ear of caelo, the sky, the welkin, the heaven, and anon falleth like a crab on the face of terra, the soil, the land, the earth.

NATHANIEL. Truly, Master Holofernes, the epithets are sweetly varied, like a scholar at the least. But, sir, I assure ye it was a buck of the first head.

HOLOFERNES. Sir Nathaniel, haud credo.

DULL. ’Twas not a “auld grey doe”, ’twas a pricket.

HOLOFERNES. Most barbarous intimation! Yet a kind of insinuation, as it were, in via, in way, of explication; facere, as it were, replication, or rather, ostentare, to show, as it were, his inclination, after his undressed, unpolished, uneducated, unpruned, untrained, or rather, unlettered, or ratherest, unconfirmed fashion, to insert again my haud credo for a deer.

DULL. I said the deer was not a “auld grey doe”, ’twas a pricket.

HOLOFERNES. Twice-sod simplicity, bis coctus! O, thou monster Ignorance, how deformed dost thou look!

NATHANIEL. Sir, he hath never fed of the dainties that are bred of a book. He hath not eat paper, as it were; he hath not drunk ink. His intellect is not replenished; he is only an animal, only sensible in the duller parts. And such barren plants are set before us that we thankful should be— Which we of taste and feeling are—for those parts that do fructify in us more than he. For as it would ill become me to be vain, indiscreet, or a fool, So, were there a patch set on learning, to see him in a school. But, omne bene, say I, being of an old father’s mind; Many can brook the weather that love not the wind.

DULL. You two are bookmen. Can you tell me by your wit What was a month old at Cain’s birth, that’s not five weeks old as yet?

HOLOFERNES. Dictynna, goodman Dull. Dictynna, goodman Dull.

DULL. What is Dictynna?

NATHANIEL. A title to Phoebe, to Luna, to the moon.

HOLOFERNES. The moon was a month old when Adam was no more, And raught not to five weeks when he came to five-score. Th’ allusion holds in the exchange.

DULL. ’Tis true, indeed. The collusion holds in the exchange.

HOLOFERNES. God comfort thy capacity! I say, th’ allusion holds in the exchange.

DULL. And I say the pollution holds in the exchange, for the moon is never but a month old; and I say beside that ’twas a pricket that the Princess killed.

HOLOFERNES. Sir Nathaniel, will you hear an extemporal epitaph on the death of the deer? And, to humour the ignorant, call I the deer the Princess killed a pricket.

NATHANIEL. Perge, good Master Holofernes, perge, so it shall please you to abrogate scurrility.

HOLOFERNES. I will something affect the letter; for it argues facility. The preyful Princess pierced and pricked a pretty pleasing pricket; Some say a sore; but not a sore till now made sore with shooting. The dogs did yell, put “l” to sore, then sorel jumps from thicket; Or pricket sore, or else sorel, the people fall a-hooting. If sore be sore, then “L” to “sore” makes fifty sores o’ sorel. Of one sore I an hundred make, by adding but one more “L”.

NATHANIEL. A rare talent!

DULL. [Aside.] If a talent be a claw, look how he claws him with a talent.

HOLOFERNES. This is a gift that I have, simple, simple; a foolish extravagant spirit, full of forms, figures, shapes, objects, ideas, apprehensions, motions, revolutions. These are begot in the ventricle of memory, nourished in the womb of pia mater, and delivered upon the mellowing of occasion. But the gift is good in those in whom it is acute, and I am thankful for it.

NATHANIEL. Sir, I praise the Lord for you, and so may my parishioners, for their sons are well tutored by you, and their daughters profit very greatly under you. You are a good member of the commonwealth.

HOLOFERNES. Mehercle! If their sons be ingenious, they shall want no instruction; if their daughters be capable, I will put it to them. But, vir sapit qui pauca loquitur. A soul feminine saluteth us.

Enter Jaquenetta and Costard.

JAQUENETTA. God give you good morrow, Master Person.

HOLOFERNES. Master Person, quasi pierce one. And if one should be pierced, which is the one?

COSTARD. Marry, Master schoolmaster, he that is likest to a hogshead.

HOLOFERNES. Of piercing a hogshead! A good lustre or conceit in a turf of earth; fire enough for a flint, pearl enough for a swine. ’Tis pretty; it is well.

JAQUENETTA. Good Master Parson, be so good as read me this letter. It was given me by Costard, and sent me from Don Armado. I beseech you read it.

[Giving a letter to Nathaniel.]

HOLOFERNES. Fauste precor, gelida quando pecus omne sub umbra Ruminat— and so forth. Ah, good old Mantuan, I may speak of thee as the traveller doth of Venice: Venetia, Venetia, Chi non ti vede, non ti pretia. Old Mantuan, old Mantuan! Who understandeth thee not, loves thee not. [He sings.] Ut, re, sol, la, mi, fa. Under pardon, sir, what are the contents? Or rather as Horace says in his—What, my soul, verses?

NATHANIEL. Ay, sir, and very learned.

HOLOFERNES. Let me hear a staff, a stanze, a verse, Lege, domine.

NATHANIEL. [Reads.] If love make me forsworn, how shall I swear to love? Ah, never faith could hold, if not to beauty vowed. Though to myself forsworn, to thee I’ll faithful prove. Those thoughts to me were oaks, to thee like osiers bowed. Study his bias leaves, and makes his book thine eyes, Where all those pleasures live that art would comprehend. If knowledge be the mark, to know thee shall suffice. Well learned is that tongue that well can thee commend, All ignorant that soul that sees thee without wonder; Which is to me some praise, that I thy parts admire. Thy eye Jove’s lightning bears, thy voice his dreadful thunder, Which, not to anger bent, is music and sweet fire. Celestial as thou art, O, pardon love this wrong, That sings heaven’s praise with such an earthly tongue.

HOLOFERNES. You find not the apostrophus, and so miss the accent. Let me supervise the canzonet. [He takes the letter.] Here are only numbers ratified, but, for the elegancy, facility, and golden cadence of poesy, caret. Ovidius Naso was the man. And why indeed “Naso,” but for smelling out the odoriferous flowers of fancy, the jerks of invention? Imitari is nothing: so doth the hound his master, the ape his keeper, the tired horse his rider. But, damosella virgin, was this directed to you?

JAQUENETTA. Ay, sir, from one Monsieur Berowne, one of the strange queen’s lords.

HOLOFERNES. I will overglance the superscript: To the snow-white hand of the most beauteous Lady Rosaline. I will look again on the intellect of the letter, for the nomination of the party writing to the person written unto: Your Ladyship’s in all desired employment, Berowne. Sir Nathaniel, this Berowne is one of the votaries with the King, and here he hath framed a letter to a sequent of the stranger queen’s, which accidentally, or by the way of progression, hath miscarried. Trip and go, my sweet, deliver this paper into the royal hand of the King. It may concern much. Stay not thy compliment. I forgive thy duty. Adieu.

JAQUENETTA. Good Costard, go with me. Sir, God save your life.

COSTARD. Have with thee, my girl.

[Exeunt Costard and Jaquenetta.]

NATHANIEL. Sir, you have done this in the fear of God, very religiously; and, as a certain Father saith—

HOLOFERNES. Sir, tell not me of the Father, I do fear colourable colours. But to return to the verses: did they please you, Sir Nathaniel?

NATHANIEL. Marvellous well for the pen.

HOLOFERNES. I do dine today at the father’s of a certain pupil of mine, where if, before repast, it shall please you to gratify the table with a grace, I will, on my privilege I have with the parents of the foresaid child or pupil, undertake your ben venuto; where I will prove those verses to be very unlearned, neither savouring of poetry, wit, nor invention. I beseech your society.

NATHANIEL. And thank you too; for society, saith the text, is the happiness of life.

HOLOFERNES. And certes, the text most infallibly concludes it. [To Dull.] Sir, I do invite you too. You shall not say me nay. Pauca verba. Away! The gentles are at their game, and we will to our recreation.

Enter Berowne with a paper in his hand, alone.

BEROWNE. The King, he is hunting the deer; I am coursing myself. They have pitched a toil; I am toiling in a pitch, pitch that defiles. Defile! A foul word! Well, set thee down, sorrow, for so they say the fool said, and so say I, and I the fool. Well proved, wit! By the Lord, this love is as mad as Ajax. It kills sheep, it kills me, I a sheep. Well proved again, o’ my side! I will not love; if I do, hang me! I’ faith, I will not. O, but her eye! By this light, but for her eye, I would not love her; yes, for her two eyes. Well, I do nothing in the world but lie, and lie in my throat. By heaven, I do love, and it hath taught me to rhyme, and to be melancholy. And here is part of my rhyme, and here my melancholy. Well, she hath one o’ my sonnets already. The clown bore it, the fool sent it, and the lady hath it. Sweet clown, sweeter fool, sweetest lady! By the world, I would not care a pin if the other three were in. Here comes one with a paper. God give him grace to groan!

[He stands aside.]

Enter the King with a paper.

KING. Ay me!

BEROWNE. [Aside.] Shot, by heaven! Proceed, sweet Cupid, thou hast thumped him with thy birdbolt under the left pap. In faith, secrets!

KING. [Reads.] [So sweet a kiss the golden sun gives not To those fresh morning drops upon the rose, As thy eye-beams, when their fresh rays have smote The night of dew that on my cheeks down flows. Nor shines the silver moon one half so bright Through the transparent bosom of the deep As doth thy face, through tears of mine give light. Thou shin’st in every tear that I do weep. No drop but as a coach doth carry thee; So ridest thou triumphing in my woe. Do but behold the tears that swell in me, And they thy glory through my grief will show. But do not love thyself; then thou wilt keep My tears for glasses, and still make me weep. O queen of queens, how far dost thou excel No thought can think, nor tongue of mortal tell. How shall she know my griefs? I’ll drop the paper. Sweet leaves, shade folly. Who is he comes here?

[Steps aside.]

What, Longaville, and reading! Listen, ear.

Enter Longaville with a paper.

BEROWNE. [Aside.] Now, in thy likeness, one more fool appear!

LONGAVILLE. Ay me! I am forsworn.

BEROWNE. Why, he comes in like a perjure, wearing papers.

KING. In love, I hope. Sweet fellowship in shame.

BEROWNE. One drunkard loves another of the name.

LONGAVILLE. Am I the first that have been perjured so?

BEROWNE. I could put thee in comfort: not by two that I know. Thou makest the triumviry, the corner-cap of society, The shape of love’s Tyburn, that hangs up simplicity.

LONGAVILLE. I fear these stubborn lines lack power to move. O sweet Maria, empress of my love, These numbers will I tear, and write in prose.

BEROWNE. O, rhymes are guards on wanton Cupid’s hose. Disfigure not his shop.

LONGAVILLE. This same shall go.

[He reads the sonnet.]

Did not the heavenly rhetoric of thine eye, ’Gainst whom the world cannot hold argument, Persuade my heart to this false perjury? Vows for thee broke deserve not punishment. A woman I forswore, but I will prove, Thou being a goddess, I forswore not thee. My vow was earthly, thou a heavenly love; Thy grace being gained, cures all disgrace in me. Vows are but breath, and breath a vapour is. Then thou, fair sun, which on my earth dost shine, Exhal’st this vapour-vow; in thee it is. If broken then, it is no fault of mine; If by me broke, what fool is not so wise To lose an oath to win a paradise?

BEROWNE. This is the liver vein, which makes flesh a deity, A green goose a goddess. Pure, pure idolatry. God amend us, God amend! We are much out o’ th’ way.

LONGAVILLE. By whom shall I send this?—Company! Stay.

[He steps aside.]

Enter Dumaine with a paper.

BEROWNE. All hid, all hid, an old infant play. Like a demigod here sit I in the sky, And wretched fools’ secrets heedfully o’er-eye. More sacks to the mill. O heavens, I have my wish. Dumaine transformed! Four woodcocks in a dish!

DUMAINE. O most divine Kate!

BEROWNE. O most profane coxcomb!

DUMAINE. By heaven, the wonder in a mortal eye!

BEROWNE. By earth, she is but corporal. There you lie.

DUMAINE. Her amber hairs for foul hath amber quoted.

BEROWNE. An amber-coloured raven was well noted.

DUMAINE. As upright as the cedar.

BEROWNE. Stoop, I say. Her shoulder is with child.

DUMAINE. As fair as day.

BEROWNE. Ay, as some days, but then no sun must shine.

DUMAINE. O, that I had my wish!

LONGAVILLE. And I had mine!

KING. And I mine too, good Lord!

BEROWNE. Amen, so I had mine. Is not that a good word?

DUMAINE. I would forget her; but a fever she Reigns in my blood, and will remembered be.

BEROWNE. A fever in your blood? Why, then incision Would let her out in saucers. Sweet misprision!

DUMAINE. Once more I’ll read the ode that I have writ.

BEROWNE. Once more I’ll mark how love can vary wit.

DUMAINE. [Dumaine reads his sonnet.] On a day—alack the day!— Love, whose month is ever May, Spied a blossom passing fair Playing in the wanton air. Through the velvet leaves the wind, All unseen, can passage find; That the lover, sick to death, Wished himself the heaven’s breath. “Air,” quoth he, “thy cheeks may blow; Air, would I might triumph so!” But, alack, my hand is sworn Ne’er to pluck thee from thy thorn. Vow, alack, for youth unmeet, Youth so apt to pluck a sweet. Do not call it sin in me, That I am forsworn for thee; Thou for whom Jove would swear Juno but an Ethiope were, And deny himself for Jove, Turning mortal for thy love. This will I send, and something else more plain, That shall express my true love’s fasting pain. O, would the King, Berowne and Longaville Were lovers too! Ill, to example ill, Would from my forehead wipe a perjured note, For none offend where all alike do dote.

LONGAVILLE. [Comes forward.] Dumaine, thy love is far from charity, That in love’s grief desir’st society. You may look pale, but I should blush, I know, To be o’erheard and taken napping so.

KING. [Comes forward.] Come, sir, you blush. As his, your case is such. You chide at him, offending twice as much. You do not love Maria? Longaville Did never sonnet for her sake compile, Nor never lay his wreathed arms athwart His loving bosom to keep down his heart. I have been closely shrouded in this bush, And marked you both, and for you both did blush. I heard your guilty rhymes, observed your fashion, Saw sighs reek from you, noted well your passion. “Ay, me!” says one. “O Jove!” the other cries. One, her hairs were gold; crystal the other’s eyes. [To Longaville.] You would for paradise break faith and troth; [To Dumaine.] And Jove, for your love would infringe an oath. What will Berowne say when that he shall hear Faith infringed which such zeal did swear? How will he scorn, how will he spend his wit! How will he triumph, leap, and laugh at it! For all the wealth that ever I did see, I would not have him know so much by me.

BEROWNE. [Comes forward.] Now step I forth to whip hypocrisy. Ah, good my liege, I pray thee pardon me. Good heart, what grace hast thou thus to reprove These worms for loving, that art most in love? Your eyes do make no coaches; in your tears There is no certain princess that appears. You’ll not be perjured, ’tis a hateful thing: Tush, none but minstrels like of sonneting! But are you not ashamed? Nay, are you not, All three of you, to be thus much o’ershot? You found his mote, the King your mote did see; But I a beam do find in each of three. O, what a scene of foolery have I seen, Of sighs, of groans, of sorrow, and of teen! O me, with what strict patience have I sat, To see a king transformed to a gnat! To see great Hercules whipping a gig, And profound Solomon to tune a jig, And Nestor play at push-pin with the boys, And critic Timon laugh at idle toys. Where lies thy grief, O, tell me, good Dumaine? And, gentle Longaville, where lies thy pain? And where my liege’s? All about the breast? A caudle, ho!

KING. Too bitter is thy jest. Are we betrayed thus to thy over-view?

BEROWNE. Not you to me, but I betrayed by you. I that am honest, I that hold it sin To break the vow I am engaged in. I am betrayed by keeping company With men like you, men of inconstancy. When shall you see me write a thing in rhyme? Or groan for Joan? Or spend a minute’s time In pruning me? When shall you hear that I Will praise a hand, a foot, a face, an eye, A gait, a state, a brow, a breast, a waist, A leg, a limb—

KING. Soft! Whither away so fast? A true man, or a thief, that gallops so?

BEROWNE. I post from love. Good lover, let me go.

Enter Jaquenetta, with a letter, and Costard.

JAQUENETTA. God bless the King!

KING. What present hast thou there?

COSTARD. Some certain treason.

KING. What makes treason here?

COSTARD. Nay, it makes nothing, sir.

KING. If it mar nothing neither, The treason and you go in peace away together.

JAQUENETTA. I beseech your Grace, let this letter be read. Our person misdoubts it; ’twas treason, he said.

KING. Berowne, read it over.

[Berowne reads the letter.]

Where hadst thou it?

JAQUENETTA. Of Costard.

KING. Where hadst thou it?

COSTARD. Of Dun Adramadio, Dun Adramadio.

[Berowne tears the letter.]

KING. How now, what is in you? Why dost thou tear it?

BEROWNE. A toy, my liege, a toy. Your Grace needs not fear it.

LONGAVILLE. It did move him to passion, and therefore let’s hear it.

DUMAINE. [Picking up the pieces.] It is Berowne’s writing, and here is his name.

BEROWNE. [To Costard.] Ah, you whoreson loggerhead, you were born to do me shame. Guilty, my lord, guilty. I confess, I confess.

KING. What?

BEROWNE. That you three fools lacked me fool to make up the mess. He, he, and you—and you, my liege—and I Are pick-purses in love, and we deserve to die. O, dismiss this audience, and I shall tell you more.

DUMAINE. Now the number is even.

BEROWNE. True, true, we are four. Will these turtles be gone?

KING. Hence, sirs, away!

COSTARD. Walk aside the true folk, and let the traitors stay.

BEROWNE. Sweet lords, sweet lovers, O, let us embrace! As true we are as flesh and blood can be. The sea will ebb and flow, heaven show his face; Young blood doth not obey an old decree. We cannot cross the cause why we were born; Therefore of all hands must we be forsworn.

KING. What, did these rent lines show some love of thine?

BEROWNE. “Did they?” quoth you? Who sees the heavenly Rosaline That, like a rude and savage man of Ind, At the first op’ning of the gorgeous east, Bows not his vassal head and, strucken blind, Kisses the base ground with obedient breast? What peremptory eagle-sighted eye Dares look upon the heaven of her brow That is not blinded by her majesty?

KING. What zeal, what fury hath inspired thee now? My love, her mistress, is a gracious moon; She, an attending star, scarce seen a light.

BEROWNE. My eyes are then no eyes, nor I Berowne. O, but for my love, day would turn to night! Of all complexions the culled sovereignty Do meet as at a fair in her fair cheek, Where several worthies make one dignity, Where nothing wants that want itself doth seek. Lend me the flourish of all gentle tongues— Fie, painted rhetoric! O, she needs it not. To things of sale a seller’s praise belongs. She passes praise; then praise too short doth blot. A withered hermit, five-score winters worn, Might shake off fifty, looking in her eye. Beauty doth varnish age, as if new born, And gives the crutch the cradle’s infancy. O, ’tis the sun that maketh all things shine!

KING. By heaven, thy love is black as ebony.

BEROWNE. Is ebony like her? O word divine! A wife of such wood were felicity. O, who can give an oath? Where is a book? That I may swear beauty doth beauty lack If that she learn not of her eye to look. No face is fair that is not full so black.

KING. O paradox! Black is the badge of hell, The hue of dungeons and the school of night; And beauty’s crest becomes the heavens well.

BEROWNE. Devils soonest tempt, resembling spirits of light. O, if in black my lady’s brows be decked, It mourns that painting and usurping hair Should ravish doters with a false aspect; And therefore is she born to make black fair. Her favour turns the fashion of the days, For native blood is counted painting now; And therefore red, that would avoid dispraise, Paints itself black, to imitate her brow.

DUMAINE. To look like her are chimney-sweepers black.

LONGAVILLE. And since her time are colliers counted bright.

KING. And Ethiopes of their sweet complexion crack.

DUMAINE. Dark needs no candles now, for dark is light.

BEROWNE. Your mistresses dare never come in rain, For fear their colours should be washed away.

KING. ’Twere good yours did; for, sir, to tell you plain, I’ll find a fairer face not washed today.

BEROWNE. I’ll prove her fair, or talk till doomsday here.

KING. No devil will fright thee then so much as she.

DUMAINE. I never knew man hold vile stuff so dear.

LONGAVILLE. [Showing his shoe.] Look, here’s thy love, my foot and her face see.

BEROWNE. O, if the streets were paved with thine eyes, Her feet were much too dainty for such tread.

DUMAINE. O vile! Then, as she goes, what upward lies The street should see as she walked over head.

KING. But what of this? Are we not all in love?

BEROWNE. Nothing so sure, and thereby all forsworn.

KING. Then leave this chat, and, good Berowne, now prove Our loving lawful, and our faith not torn.

DUMAINE. Ay, marry, there; some flattery for this evil.

LONGAVILLE. O, some authority how to proceed. Some tricks, some quillets, how to cheat the devil.

DUMAINE. Some salve for perjury.

BEROWNE. O, ’tis more than need. Have at you, then, affection’s men-at-arms. Consider what you first did swear unto: To fast, to study, and to see no woman— Flat treason ’gainst the kingly state of youth. Say, can you fast? Your stomachs are too young, And abstinence engenders maladies. O, we have made a vow to study, lords, And in that vow we have forsworn our books; For when would you, my liege, or you, or you, In leaden contemplation have found out Such fiery numbers as the prompting eyes Of beauty’s tutors have enriched you with? Other slow arts entirely keep the brain, And therefore, finding barren practisers, Scarce show a harvest of their heavy toil; But love, first learned in a lady’s eyes, Lives not alone immured in the brain, But with the motion of all elements Courses as swift as thought in every power, And gives to every power a double power, Above their functions and their offices. It adds a precious seeing to the eye. A lover’s eyes will gaze an eagle blind. A lover’s ear will hear the lowest sound, When the suspicious head of theft is stopped. Love’s feeling is more soft and sensible Than are the tender horns of cockled snails. Love’s tongue proves dainty Bacchus gross in taste. For valour, is not Love a Hercules, Still climbing trees in the Hesperides? Subtle as Sphinx, as sweet and musical As bright Apollo’s lute, strung with his hair. And when Love speaks, the voice of all the gods Make heaven drowsy with the harmony. Never durst poet touch a pen to write Until his ink were tempered with Love’s sighs. O, then his lines would ravish savage ears And plant in tyrants mild humility. From women’s eyes this doctrine I derive. They sparkle still the right Promethean fire; They are the books, the arts, the academes, That show, contain, and nourish, all the world; Else none at all in aught proves excellent. Then fools you were these women to forswear, Or, keeping what is sworn, you will prove fools. For wisdom’s sake, a word that all men love, Or for love’s sake, a word that loves all men, Or for men’s sake, the authors of these women, Or women’s sake, by whom we men are men, Let us once lose our oaths to find ourselves, Or else we lose ourselves to keep our oaths. It is religion to be thus forsworn, For charity itself fulfils the law, And who can sever love from charity?

KING. Saint Cupid, then, and, soldiers, to the field!

BEROWNE. Advance your standards, and upon them, lords! Pell-mell, down with them! But be first advised In conflict that you get the sun of them.

LONGAVILLE. Now to plain dealing. Lay these glozes by. Shall we resolve to woo these girls of France?

KING. And win them too. Therefore let us devise Some entertainment for them in their tents.

BEROWNE. First, from the park let us conduct them thither. Then homeward every man attach the hand Of his fair mistress. In the afternoon We will with some strange pastime solace them, Such as the shortness of the time can shape; For revels, dances, masques, and merry hours Forerun fair Love, strewing her way with flowers.

KING. Away, away! No time shall be omitted That will betime and may by us be fitted.

BEROWNE. Allons! allons! Sowed cockle reaped no corn, And justice always whirls in equal measure. Light wenches may prove plagues to men forsworn; If so, our copper buys no better treasure.

Enter Holofernes, Sir Nathaniel and Dull.

HOLOFERNES. Satis quod sufficit.

NATHANIEL. I praise God for you, sir. Your reasons at dinner have been sharp and sententious, pleasant without scurrility, witty without affection, audacious without impudency, learned without opinion, and strange without heresy. I did converse this quondam day with a companion of the King’s, who is intituled, nominated, or called, Don Adriano de Armado.

HOLOFERNES. Novi hominem tanquam te. His humour is lofty, his discourse peremptory, his tongue filed, his eye ambitious, his gait majestical and his general behaviour vain, ridiculous, and thrasonical. He is too picked, too spruce, too affected, too odd, as it were, too peregrinate, as I may call it.

NATHANIEL. A most singular and choice epithet.

[Draws out his table-book.]

HOLOFERNES. He draweth out the thread of his verbosity finer than the staple of his argument. I abhor such fanatical phantasimes, such insociable and point-devise companions, such rackers of orthography, as to speak “dout” sine “b”, when he should say “doubt”, “det” when he should pronounce “debt”—d, e, b, t, not d, e, t. He clepeth a calf “cauf”, half “hauf”; neighbour vocatur “nebour”, neigh abbreviated “ne”. This is abhominable, which he would call “abominable”. It insinuateth me of insanie. Ne intelligis, domine? To make frantic, lunatic.

NATHANIEL. Laus Deo, bone intelligo.

HOLOFERNES. Bone? Bone for bene? Priscian a little scratched; ’twill serve.

Enter Armado, Moth and Costard.

NATHANIEL. Videsne quis venit?

HOLOFERNES. Video, et gaudeo.

ARMADO. Chirrah!

HOLOFERNES. Quare “chirrah”, not “sirrah”?

ARMADO. Men of peace, well encountered.

HOLOFERNES. Most military sir, salutation.

MOTH. [Aside to Costard.] They have been at a great feast of languages and stolen the scraps.

COSTARD. O, they have lived long on the almsbasket of words. I marvel thy master hath not eaten thee for a word, for thou art not so long by the head as honorificabilitudinitatibus. Thou art easier swallowed than a flap-dragon.

MOTH. Peace! The peal begins.

ARMADO. [To Holofernes.] Monsieur, are you not lettered?

MOTH. Yes, yes, he teaches boys the hornbook. What is a, b, spelt backward with the horn on his head?

HOLOFERNES. Ba, pueritia, with a horn added.

MOTH. Ba, most silly sheep with a horn. You hear his learning.

HOLOFERNES. Quis, quis, thou consonant?

MOTH. The third of the five vowels, if you repeat them; or the fifth, if I.

HOLOFERNES. I will repeat them: a, e, i—

MOTH. The sheep. The other two concludes it: o, u.

ARMADO. Now, by the salt wave of the Mediterraneum, a sweet touch, a quick venue of wit! Snip, snap, quick and home! It rejoiceth my intellect. True wit!

MOTH. Offered by a child to an old man—which is wit-old.

HOLOFERNES. What is the figure? What is the figure?

MOTH. Horns.

HOLOFERNES. Thou disputes like an infant. Go whip thy gig.

MOTH. Lend me your horn to make one, and I will whip about your infamy unum cita. A gig of a cuckold’s horn.

COSTARD. An I had but one penny in the world, thou shouldst have it to buy gingerbread. Hold, there is the very remuneration I had of thy master, thou halfpenny purse of wit, thou pigeon-egg of discretion. O, an the heavens were so pleased that thou wert but my bastard, what a joyful father wouldst thou make me! Go to, thou hast it ad dunghill, at the fingers’ ends, as they say.

HOLOFERNES. O, I smell false Latin! Dunghill for unguem.

ARMADO. Arts-man, preambulate. We will be singuled from the barbarous. Do you not educate youth at the charge-house on the top of the mountain?

HOLOFERNES. Or mons, the hill.

ARMADO. At your sweet pleasure, for the mountain.

HOLOFERNES. I do, sans question.

ARMADO. Sir, it is the King’s most sweet pleasure and affection to congratulate the Princess at her pavilion in the posteriors of this day, which the rude multitude call the afternoon.

HOLOFERNES. The posterior of the day, most generous sir, is liable, congruent, and measurable for the afternoon. The word is well culled, chose, sweet, and apt, I do assure you, sir, I do assure.

ARMADO. Sir, the King is a noble gentleman, and my familiar, I do assure ye, very good friend. For what is inward between us, let it pass. I do beseech thee, remember thy courtesy; I beseech thee, apparel thy head. And among other importunate and most serious designs, and of great import indeed, too—but let that pass. For I must tell thee it will please his Grace, by the world, sometime to lean upon my poor shoulder and with his royal finger thus dally with my excrement, with my mustachio. But, sweet heart, let that pass. By the world, I recount no fable! Some certain special honours it pleaseth his greatness to impart to Armado, a soldier, a man of travel, that hath seen the world. But let that pass. The very all of all is—but, sweet heart, I do implore secrecy—that the King would have me present the Princess, sweet chuck, with some delightful ostentation, or show, or pageant, or antic, or firework. Now, understanding that the curate and your sweet self are good at such eruptions and sudden breaking-out of mirth, as it were, I have acquainted you withal, to the end to crave your assistance.

HOLOFERNES. Sir, you shall present before her the Nine Worthies. Sir Nathaniel, as concerning some entertainment of time, some show in the posterior of this day, to be rendered by our assistance, the King’s command, and this most gallant, illustrate, and learned gentleman, before the Princess, I say, none so fit as to present the Nine Worthies.

NATHANIEL. Where will you find men worthy enough to present them?

HOLOFERNES. Joshua, yourself; myself; and this gallant gentleman, Judas Maccabaeus. This swain, because of his great limb or joint, shall pass Pompey the Great; the page, Hercules.

ARMADO. Pardon, sir; error. He is not quantity enough for that Worthy’s thumb; he is not so big as the end of his club.

HOLOFERNES. Shall I have audience? He shall present Hercules in minority. His enter and exit shall be strangling a snake; and I will have an apology for that purpose.

MOTH. An excellent device! So, if any of the audience hiss, you may cry “Well done, Hercules, now thou crushest the snake!” That is the way to make an offence gracious, though few have the grace to do it.

ARMADO. For the rest of the Worthies?

HOLOFERNES. I will play three myself.

MOTH. Thrice-worthy gentleman!

ARMADO. Shall I tell you a thing?

HOLOFERNES. We attend.

ARMADO. We will have, if this fadge not, an antic. I beseech you, follow.

HOLOFERNES. Via, goodman Dull! Thou has spoken no word all this while.

DULL. Nor understood none neither, sir.

HOLOFERNES. Allons! we will employ thee.

DULL. I’ll make one in a dance, or so; or I will play on the tabor to the Worthies, and let them dance the hay.

HOLOFERNES. Most dull, honest Dull! To our sport, away.

SCENE II. The same. Before the Princess’s pavilion

Enter the Princess, Rosaline, Katharine and Maria.

PRINCESS. Sweet hearts, we shall be rich ere we depart, If fairings come thus plentifully in. A lady walled about with diamonds! Look you what I have from the loving King.

ROSALINE. Madam, came nothing else along with that?

PRINCESS. Nothing but this? Yes, as much love in rhyme As would be crammed up in a sheet of paper Writ o’ both sides the leaf, margent and all, That he was fain to seal on Cupid’s name.

ROSALINE. That was the way to make his godhead wax, For he hath been five thousand years a boy.

KATHARINE. Ay, and a shrewd unhappy gallows too.

ROSALINE. You’ll ne’er be friends with him. He killed your sister.

KATHARINE. He made her melancholy, sad, and heavy; And so she died. Had she been light, like you, Of such a merry, nimble, stirring spirit, She might ha’ been a grandam ere she died. And so may you, for a light heart lives long.

ROSALINE. What’s your dark meaning, mouse, of this light word?

KATHARINE. A light condition in a beauty dark.

ROSALINE. We need more light to find your meaning out.

KATHARINE. You’ll mar the light by taking it in snuff; Therefore I’ll darkly end the argument.

ROSALINE. Look what you do, you do it still i’ th’ dark.

KATHARINE. So do not you, for you are a light wench.

ROSALINE. Indeed, I weigh not you, and therefore light.

KATHARINE. You weigh me not? O, that’s you care not for me.

ROSALINE. Great reason, for past cure is still past care.

PRINCESS. Well bandied both; a set of wit well played. But, Rosaline, you have a favour too. Who sent it? And what is it?

ROSALINE. I would you knew. An if my face were but as fair as yours, My favour were as great. Be witness this. Nay, I have verses too, I thank Berowne; The numbers true, and, were the numbering too, I were the fairest goddess on the ground. I am compared to twenty thousand fairs. O, he hath drawn my picture in his letter.

PRINCESS. Anything like?

ROSALINE. Much in the letters, nothing in the praise.

PRINCESS. Beauteous as ink: a good conclusion.

KATHARINE. Fair as a text B in a copy-book.

ROSALINE. ’Ware pencils, how! Let me not die your debtor, My red dominical, my golden letter. O, that your face were not so full of O’s!

PRINCESS. A pox of that jest! And beshrew all shrews. But, Katharine, what was sent to you from fair Dumaine?

KATHARINE. Madam, this glove.

PRINCESS. Did he not send you twain?

KATHARINE. Yes, madam, and moreover, Some thousand verses of a faithful lover. A huge translation of hypocrisy, Vilely compiled, profound simplicity.

MARIA. This, and these pearls, to me sent Longaville. The letter is too long by half a mile.

PRINCESS. I think no less. Dost thou not wish in heart The chain were longer and the letter short?

MARIA. Ay, or I would these hands might never part.

PRINCESS. We are wise girls to mock our lovers so.

ROSALINE. They are worse fools to purchase mocking so. That same Berowne I’ll torture ere I go. O that I knew he were but in by th’ week! How I would make him fawn, and beg, and seek, And wait the season, and observe the times, And spend his prodigal wits in bootless rhymes, And shape his service wholly to my hests, And make him proud to make me proud that jests! So pair-taunt-like would I o’ersway his state, That he should be my fool, and I his fate.

PRINCESS. None are so surely caught, when they are catched, As wit turned fool. Folly, in wisdom hatched, Hath wisdom’s warrant and the help of school And wit’s own grace to grace a learned fool.

ROSALINE. The blood of youth burns not with such excess As gravity’s revolt to wantonness.

MARIA. Folly in fools bears not so strong a note As fool’ry in the wise when wit doth dote, Since all the power thereof it doth apply To prove, by wit, worth in simplicity.

PRINCESS. Here comes Boyet, and mirth is in his face.

BOYET. O, I am stabbed with laughter! Where’s her Grace?

PRINCESS. Thy news, Boyet?

BOYET. Prepare, madam, prepare! Arm, wenches, arm! Encounters mounted are Against your peace. Love doth approach disguised, Armed in arguments. You’ll be surprised. Muster your wits, stand in your own defence, Or hide your heads like cowards, and fly hence.

PRINCESS. Saint Denis to Saint Cupid! What are they That charge their breath against us? Say, scout, say.

BOYET. Under the cool shade of a sycamore I thought to close mine eyes some half an hour, When, lo, to interrupt my purposed rest, Toward that shade I might behold addressed The King and his companions. Warily I stole into a neighbour thicket by, And overheard what you shall overhear: That, by and by, disguised they will be here. Their herald is a pretty knavish page That well by heart hath conned his embassage. Action and accent did they teach him there: “Thus must thou speak,” and “thus thy body bear.” And ever and anon they made a doubt Presence majestical would put him out; “For,” quoth the King, “an angel shalt thou see; Yet fear not thou, but speak audaciously.” The boy replied “An angel is not evil; I should have feared her had she been a devil.” With that all laughed and clapped him on the shoulder, Making the bold wag by their praises bolder. One rubbed his elbow thus, and fleered, and swore A better speech was never spoke before. Another with his finger and his thumb Cried “Via, we will do ’t, come what will come.” The third he capered, and cried “All goes well!” The fourth turned on the toe, and down he fell. With that they all did tumble on the ground, With such a zealous laughter, so profound, That in this spleen ridiculous appears, To check their folly, passion’s solemn tears.

PRINCESS. But what, but what, come they to visit us?

BOYET. They do, they do, and are apparelled thus, Like Muscovites, or Russians, as I guess. Their purpose is to parley, court, and dance, And every one his love-feat will advance Unto his several mistress, which they’ll know By favours several which they did bestow.

PRINCESS. And will they so? The gallants shall be tasked; For, ladies, we will every one be masked, And not a man of them shall have the grace, Despite of suit, to see a lady’s face. Hold, Rosaline, this favour thou shalt wear, And then the King will court thee for his dear. Hold, take thou this, my sweet, and give me thine, So shall Berowne take me for Rosaline. And change you favours too; so shall your loves Woo contrary, deceived by these removes.

ROSALINE. Come on, then, wear the favours most in sight.

KATHARINE. But in this changing, what is your intent?

PRINCESS. The effect of my intent is to cross theirs. They do it but in mocking merriment, And mock for mock is only my intent. Their several counsels they unbosom shall To loves mistook, and so be mocked withal Upon the next occasion that we meet, With visages displayed to talk and greet.

ROSALINE. But shall we dance, if they desire us to’t?

PRINCESS. No, to the death we will not move a foot, Nor to their penned speech render we no grace, But while ’tis spoke each turn away her face.

BOYET. Why, that contempt will kill the speaker’s heart, And quite divorce his memory from his part.

PRINCESS. Therefore I do it, and I make no doubt The rest will ne’er come in, if he be out. There’s no such sport as sport by sport o’erthrown, To make theirs ours and ours none but our own. So shall we stay, mocking intended game, And they, well mocked, depart away with shame.

[Sound trumpet, within.]

BOYET. The trumpet sounds. Be masked; the maskers come.

[The Ladies mask.]

Enter Blackamoors with music, Moth, with a speech, the King, Berowne, Longaville and Dumaine disguised.

MOTH. All hail, the richest beauties on the earth!

BOYET. Beauties no richer than rich taffeta.

MOTH. A holy parcel of the fairest dames

[The Ladies turn their backs to him.]

That ever turned their—backs—to mortal views!

BEROWNE. Their eyes, villain, their eyes.

MOTH. That ever turned their eyes to mortal views. Out—

BOYET. True; out indeed.

MOTH. Out of your favours, heavenly spirits, vouchsafe Not to behold—

BEROWNE. Once to behold, rogue!

MOTH. Once to behold with your sun-beamed eyes— With your sun-beamed eyes—

BOYET. They will not answer to that epithet. You were best call it “daughter-beamed eyes”.

MOTH. They do not mark me, and that brings me out.

BEROWNE. Is this your perfectness? Be gone, you rogue!

ROSALINE. What would these strangers? Know their minds, Boyet. If they do speak our language, ’tis our will That some plain man recount their purposes. Know what they would.

BOYET. What would you with the Princess?

BEROWNE. Nothing but peace and gentle visitation.

ROSALINE. What would they, say they?

BOYET. Nothing but peace and gentle visitation.

ROSALINE. Why, that they have, and bid them so be gone.

BOYET. She says you have it, and you may be gone.

KING. Say to her we have measured many miles To tread a measure with her on this grass.

BOYET. They say that they have measured many a mile To tread a measure with you on this grass.

ROSALINE. It is not so. Ask them how many inches Is in one mile? If they have measured many, The measure then of one is easily told.

BOYET. If to come hither you have measured miles, And many miles, the Princess bids you tell How many inches doth fill up one mile.

BEROWNE. Tell her we measure them by weary steps.

BOYET. She hears herself.

ROSALINE. How many weary steps Of many weary miles you have o’ergone Are numbered in the travel of one mile?

BEROWNE. We number nothing that we spend for you. Our duty is so rich, so infinite, That we may do it still without account. Vouchsafe to show the sunshine of your face, That we, like savages, may worship it.

ROSALINE. My face is but a moon, and clouded too.

KING. Blessed are clouds, to do as such clouds do! Vouchsafe, bright moon, and these thy stars, to shine, Those clouds removed, upon our watery eyne.

ROSALINE. O vain petitioner! Beg a greater matter! Thou now requests but moonshine in the water.

KING. Then in our measure do but vouchsafe one change. Thou bidd’st me beg; this begging is not strange.

ROSALINE. Play, music, then! Nay, you must do it soon.

[Music plays.]

Not yet? No dance! Thus change I like the moon.

KING. Will you not dance? How come you thus estranged?

ROSALINE. You took the moon at full, but now she’s changed.

KING. Yet still she is the moon, and I the man. The music plays, vouchsafe some motion to it.

ROSALINE. Our ears vouchsafe it.

KING. But your legs should do it.

ROSALINE. Since you are strangers and come here by chance, We’ll not be nice. Take hands. We will not dance.

KING. Why take we hands then?

ROSALINE. Only to part friends. Curtsy, sweet hearts, and so the measure ends.

KING. More measure of this measure! Be not nice.

ROSALINE. We can afford no more at such a price.

KING. Price you yourselves? What buys your company?

ROSALINE. Your absence only.

KING. That can never be.

ROSALINE. Then cannot we be bought. And so adieu— Twice to your visor, and half once to you!

KING. If you deny to dance, let’s hold more chat.

ROSALINE. In private then.

KING. I am best pleased with that.

[They converse apart.]

BEROWNE. White-handed mistress, one sweet word with thee.

PRINCESS. Honey, and milk, and sugar: there is three.

BEROWNE. Nay, then, two treys, an if you grow so nice, Metheglin, wort, and malmsey. Well run, dice! There’s half a dozen sweets.

PRINCESS. Seventh sweet, adieu. Since you can cog, I’ll play no more with you.

BEROWNE. One word in secret.

PRINCESS. Let it not be sweet.

BEROWNE. Thou griev’st my gall.

PRINCESS. Gall! Bitter.

BEROWNE. Therefore meet.

DUMAINE. Will you vouchsafe with me to change a word?

MARIA. Name it.

DUMAINE. Fair lady—

MARIA. Say you so? Fair lord! Take that for your “fair lady”.

DUMAINE. Please it you, As much in private, and I’ll bid adieu.

KATHARINE. What, was your visor made without a tongue?

LONGAVILLE. I know the reason, lady, why you ask.

KATHARINE. O, for your reason! Quickly, sir, I long.

LONGAVILLE. You have a double tongue within your mask, And would afford my speechless visor half.

KATHARINE. “Veal”, quoth the Dutchman. Is not veal a calf?

LONGAVILLE. A calf, fair lady?

KATHARINE. No, a fair lord calf.

LONGAVILLE. Let’s part the word.

KATHARINE. No, I’ll not be your half. Take all and wean it; it may prove an ox.

LONGAVILLE. Look how you butt yourself in these sharp mocks. Will you give horns, chaste lady? Do not so.

KATHARINE. Then die a calf before your horns do grow.

LONGAVILLE. One word in private with you ere I die.

KATHARINE. Bleat softly, then; the butcher hears you cry.

BOYET. The tongues of mocking wenches are as keen As is the razor’s edge invisible, Cutting a smaller hair than may be seen; Above the sense of sense, so sensible Seemeth their conference. Their conceits have wings Fleeter than arrows, bullets, wind, thought, swifter things.

ROSALINE. Not one word more, my maids; break off, break off.

BEROWNE. By heaven, all dry-beaten with pure scoff!

KING. Farewell, mad wenches. You have simple wits.

[Exeunt King, Lords and Blackamoors.]

PRINCESS. Twenty adieus, my frozen Muscovites. Are these the breed of wits so wondered at?

BOYET. Tapers they are, with your sweet breaths puffed out.

ROSALINE. Well-liking wits they have; gross, gross; fat, fat.

PRINCESS. O poverty in wit, kingly-poor flout! Will they not, think you, hang themselves tonight? Or ever but in vizors show their faces? This pert Berowne was out of countenance quite.

ROSALINE. They were all in lamentable cases. The King was weeping-ripe for a good word.

PRINCESS. Berowne did swear himself out of all suit.

MARIA. Dumaine was at my service, and his sword. “Non point,” quoth I; my servant straight was mute.

KATHARINE. Lord Longaville said I came o’er his heart; And trow you what he called me?

PRINCESS. Qualm, perhaps.

KATHARINE. Yes, in good faith.

PRINCESS. Go, sickness as thou art!

ROSALINE. Well, better wits have worn plain statute-caps. But will you hear? The King is my love sworn.

PRINCESS. And quick Berowne hath plighted faith to me.

KATHARINE. And Longaville was for my service born.

MARIA. Dumaine is mine as sure as bark on tree.

BOYET. Madam, and pretty mistresses, give ear. Immediately they will again be here In their own shapes, for it can never be They will digest this harsh indignity.

PRINCESS. Will they return?

BOYET. They will, they will, God knows, And leap for joy, though they are lame with blows. Therefore, change favours and, when they repair, Blow like sweet roses in this summer air.

PRINCESS. How “blow”? How “blow”? Speak to be understood.

BOYET. Fair ladies masked are roses in their bud. Dismasked, their damask sweet commixture shown, Are angels vailing clouds, or roses blown.

PRINCESS. Avaunt, perplexity! What shall we do If they return in their own shapes to woo?

ROSALINE. Good madam, if by me you’ll be advised, Let’s mock them still, as well known as disguised. Let us complain to them what fools were here, Disguised like Muscovites in shapeless gear; And wonder what they were, and to what end Their shallow shows and prologue vilely penned, And their rough carriage so ridiculous, Should be presented at our tent to us.

BOYET. Ladies, withdraw. The gallants are at hand.

PRINCESS. Whip to our tents, as roes run o’er the land.

[Exeunt Princess, Rosaline, Katharine and Maria.]

Enter the King, Berowne, Longaville and Dumaine as themselves.

KING. Fair sir, God save you. Where’s the Princess?

BOYET. Gone to her tent. Please it your Majesty Command me any service to her thither?

KING. That she vouchsafe me audience for one word.

BOYET. I will; and so will she, I know, my lord.

BEROWNE. This fellow pecks up wit as pigeons peas And utters it again when God doth please. He is wit’s pedlar, and retails his wares At wakes and wassails, meetings, markets, fairs; And we that sell by gross, the Lord doth know, Have not the grace to grace it with such show. This gallant pins the wenches on his sleeve. Had he been Adam, he had tempted Eve. He can carve too, and lisp. Why, this is he That kissed his hand away in courtesy. This is the ape of form, Monsieur the Nice, That, when he plays at tables, chides the dice In honourable terms. Nay, he can sing A mean most meanly; and in ushering Mend him who can. The ladies call him sweet. The stairs, as he treads on them, kiss his feet. This is the flower that smiles on everyone, To show his teeth as white as whale’s bone; And consciences that will not die in debt Pay him the due of “honey-tongued Boyet”.

KING. A blister on his sweet tongue, with my heart, That put Armado’s page out of his part!

Enter the Princess, Rosaline, Maria, Katharine with Boyet.

BEROWNE. See where it comes! Behaviour, what wert thou Till this man showed thee, and what art thou now?

KING. All hail, sweet madam, and fair time of day.

PRINCESS. “Fair” in “all hail” is foul, as I conceive.

KING. Construe my speeches better, if you may.

PRINCESS. Then wish me better. I will give you leave.

KING. We came to visit you, and purpose now To lead you to our court. Vouchsafe it then.

PRINCESS. This field shall hold me, and so hold your vow. Nor God nor I delights in perjured men.

KING. Rebuke me not for that which you provoke. The virtue of your eye must break my oath.

PRINCESS. You nickname virtue: “vice” you should have spoke; For virtue’s office never breaks men’s troth. Now by my maiden honour, yet as pure As the unsullied lily, I protest, A world of torments though I should endure, I would not yield to be your house’s guest, So much I hate a breaking cause to be Of heavenly oaths, vowed with integrity.

KING. O, you have lived in desolation here, Unseen, unvisited, much to our shame.

PRINCESS. Not so, my lord. It is not so, I swear. We have had pastimes here and pleasant game. A mess of Russians left us but of late.

KING. How, madam? Russians?

PRINCESS. Ay, in truth, my lord. Trim gallants, full of courtship and of state.

ROSALINE. Madam, speak true. It is not so, my lord. My lady, to the manner of the days, In courtesy gives undeserving praise. We four indeed confronted were with four In Russian habit. Here they stayed an hour And talked apace; and in that hour, my lord, They did not bless us with one happy word. I dare not call them fools; but this I think, When they are thirsty, fools would fain have drink.

BEROWNE. This jest is dry to me. My gentle sweet, Your wit makes wise things foolish. When we greet, With eyes’ best seeing, heaven’s fiery eye, By light we lose light. Your capacity Is of that nature that to your huge store Wise things seem foolish and rich things but poor.

ROSALINE. This proves you wise and rich, for in my eye—

BEROWNE. I am a fool, and full of poverty.

ROSALINE. But that you take what doth to you belong, It were a fault to snatch words from my tongue.

BEROWNE. O, I am yours, and all that I possess.

ROSALINE. All the fool mine?

BEROWNE. I cannot give you less.

ROSALINE. Which of the visors was it that you wore?

BEROWNE. Where, when, what visor? Why demand you this?

ROSALINE. There, then, that visor; that superfluous case That hid the worse and showed the better face.

KING. We are descried. They’ll mock us now downright.

DUMAINE. Let us confess and turn it to a jest.

PRINCESS. Amazed, my lord? Why looks your Highness sad?

ROSALINE. Help! Hold his brows! He’ll swoon. Why look you pale? Seasick, I think, coming from Muscovy.

BEROWNE. Thus pour the stars down plagues for perjury. Can any face of brass hold longer out? Here stand I, lady; dart thy skill at me. Bruise me with scorn, confound me with a flout, Thrust thy sharp wit quite through my ignorance, Cut me to pieces with thy keen conceit, And I will wish thee never more to dance, Nor never more in Russian habit wait. O, never will I trust to speeches penned, Nor to the motion of a school-boy’s tongue, Nor never come in visor to my friend, Nor woo in rhyme like a blind harper’s song. Taffeta phrases, silken terms precise, Three-piled hyperboles, spruce affectation, Figures pedantical: these summer flies Have blown me full of maggot ostentation. I do forswear them, and I here protest, By this white glove—how white the hand, God knows!— Henceforth my wooing mind shall be expressed In russet yeas and honest kersey noes. And, to begin: wench, so God help me, law, My love to thee is sound, sans crack or flaw.

ROSALINE. Sans “sans,” I pray you.

BEROWNE. Yet I have a trick Of the old rage. Bear with me, I am sick; I’ll leave it by degrees. Soft, let us see: Write “Lord have mercy on us” on those three. They are infected; in their hearts it lies; They have the plague, and caught it of your eyes. These lords are visited. You are not free, For the Lord’s tokens on you do I see.

PRINCESS. No, they are free that gave these tokens to us.

BEROWNE. Our states are forfeit. Seek not to undo us.

ROSALINE. It is not so. For how can this be true, That you stand forfeit, being those that sue?

BEROWNE. Peace! for I will not have to do with you.

ROSALINE. Nor shall not, if I do as I intend.

BEROWNE. Speak for yourselves. My wit is at an end.

KING. Teach us, sweet madam, for our rude transgression Some fair excuse.

PRINCESS. The fairest is confession. Were not you here but even now, disguised?

KING. Madam, I was.

PRINCESS. And were you well advised?

KING. I was, fair madam.

PRINCESS. When you then were here, What did you whisper in your lady’s ear?

KING. That more than all the world I did respect her.

PRINCESS. When she shall challenge this, you will reject her.

KING. Upon mine honour, no.

PRINCESS. Peace, peace, forbear! Your oath once broke, you force not to forswear.

KING. Despise me when I break this oath of mine.

PRINCESS. I will; and therefore keep it. Rosaline, What did the Russian whisper in your ear?

ROSALINE. Madam, he swore that he did hold me dear As precious eyesight, and did value me Above this world; adding thereto, moreover, That he would wed me, or else die my lover.

PRINCESS. God give thee joy of him! The noble lord Most honourably doth uphold his word.

KING. What mean you, madam? By my life, my troth, I never swore this lady such an oath.

ROSALINE. By heaven, you did! And to confirm it plain, You gave me this. But take it, sir, again.

KING. My faith and this the Princess I did give. I knew her by this jewel on her sleeve.

PRINCESS. Pardon me, sir, this jewel did she wear, And Lord Berowne, I thank him, is my dear. What, will you have me, or your pearl again?

BEROWNE. Neither of either; I remit both twain. I see the trick on’t. Here was a consent, Knowing aforehand of our merriment, To dash it like a Christmas comedy. Some carry-tale, some please-man, some slight zany, Some mumble-news, some trencher-knight, some Dick, That smiles his cheek in years and knows the trick To make my lady laugh when she’s disposed, Told our intents before; which once disclosed, The ladies did change favours, and then we, Following the signs, wooed but the sign of she. Now, to our perjury to add more terror, We are again forsworn in will and error. Much upon this ’tis. [To Boyet.] And might not you Forestall our sport, to make us thus untrue? Do not you know my lady’s foot by th’ squier, And laugh upon the apple of her eye? And stand between her back, sir, and the fire, Holding a trencher, jesting merrily? You put our page out. Go, you are allowed; Die when you will, a smock shall be your shroud. You leer upon me, do you? There’s an eye Wounds like a leaden sword.

BOYET. Full merrily Hath this brave manage, this career, been run.

BEROWNE. Lo, he is tilting straight! Peace! I have done.

Welcome, pure wit! Thou part’st a fair fray.

COSTARD. O Lord, sir, they would know Whether the three Worthies shall come in or no.

BEROWNE. What, are there but three?

COSTARD. No, sir; but it is vara fine, For every one pursents three.

BEROWNE. And three times thrice is nine.

COSTARD. Not so, sir, under correction, sir, I hope it is not so. You cannot beg us, sir, I can assure you, sir; we know what we know. I hope, sir, three times thrice, sir—

BEROWNE. Is not nine?

COSTARD. Under correction, sir, we know whereuntil it doth amount.

BEROWNE. By Jove, I always took three threes for nine.

COSTARD. O Lord, sir, it were pity you should get your living by reckoning, sir.

BEROWNE. How much is it?

COSTARD. O Lord, sir, the parties themselves, the actors, sir, will show whereuntil it doth amount. For mine own part, I am, as they say, but to parfect one man in one poor man—Pompion the Great, sir.

BEROWNE. Art thou one of the Worthies?

COSTARD. It pleased them to think me worthy of Pompey the Great. For mine own part, I know not the degree of the Worthy, but I am to stand for him.

BEROWNE. Go bid them prepare.

COSTARD. We will turn it finely off, sir; we will take some care.

[Exit Costard.]

KING. Berowne, they will shame us. Let them not approach.

BEROWNE. We are shame-proof, my lord, and ’tis some policy To have one show worse than the King’s and his company.

KING. I say they shall not come.

PRINCESS. Nay, my good lord, let me o’errule you now. That sport best pleases that doth least know how, Where zeal strives to content, and the contents Die in the zeal of that which it presents; Their form confounded makes most form in mirth, When great things labouring perish in their birth.

BEROWNE. A right description of our sport, my lord.

Enter Armado, the Braggart.

ARMADO. Anointed, I implore so much expense of thy royal sweet breath as will utter a brace of words.

[Armado and King talk apart.]

PRINCESS. Doth this man serve God?

BEROWNE. Why ask you?

PRINCESS. He speaks not like a man of God his making.

ARMADO. That is all one, my fair, sweet, honey monarch; for, I protest, the schoolmaster is exceeding fantastical; too, too vain, too, too vain. But we will put it, as they say, to fortuna de la guerra. I wish you the peace of mind, most royal couplement!

KING. Here is like to be a good presence of Worthies. He presents Hector of Troy; the swain, Pompey the Great; the parish curate, Alexander; Armado’s page, Hercules; the pedant, Judas Maccabaeus. And if these four Worthies in their first show thrive, These four will change habits and present the other five.

BEROWNE. There is five in the first show.

KING. You are deceived. ’Tis not so.

BEROWNE. The pedant, the braggart, the hedge-priest, the fool, and the boy. Abate throw at novum, and the whole world again Cannot pick out five such, take each one in his vein.

KING. The ship is under sail, and here she comes amain.

Enter Costard as Pompey.

COSTARD. I Pompey am—

BEROWNE. You lie, you are not he.

BOYET. With leopard’s head on knee.

BEROWNE. Well said, old mocker. I must needs be friends with thee.

COSTARD. I Pompey am, Pompey surnamed the Big.

DUMAINE. The “Great”.

COSTARD. It is “Great”, sir; Pompey surnamed the Great, That oft in field, with targe and shield, did make my foe to sweat. And travelling along this coast, I here am come by chance, And lay my arms before the legs of this sweet lass of France. If your ladyship would say, “Thanks, Pompey”, I had done.

PRINCESS. Great thanks, great Pompey.

COSTARD. ’Tis not so much worth; but I hope I was perfect. I made a little fault in “Great”.

BEROWNE. My hat to a halfpenny, Pompey proves the best Worthy.

Enter Nathaniel, the Curate, for Alexander.

NATHANIEL. When in the world I lived, I was the world’s commander; By east, west, north, and south, I spread my conquering might. My scutcheon plain declares that I am Alisander.

BOYET. Your nose says, no, you are not; for it stands to right.

BEROWNE. Your nose smells “no” in this, most tender-smelling knight.

PRINCESS. The conqueror is dismayed. Proceed, good Alexander.

NATHANIEL. When in the world I lived, I was the world’s commander—

BOYET. Most true; ’tis right. You were so, Alisander.

BEROWNE. Pompey the Great—

COSTARD. Your servant, and Costard.

BEROWNE. Take away the conqueror, take away Alisander.

COSTARD. [To Sir Nathaniel.] O sir, you have overthrown Alisander the Conqueror. You will be scraped out of the painted cloth for this. Your lion, that holds his pole-axe sitting on a close-stool, will be given to Ajax. He will be the ninth Worthy. A conqueror, and afeard to speak? Run away for shame, Alisander. [Nathaniel retires.] There, an’t shall please you, a foolish mild man; an honest man, look you, and soon dashed. He is a marvellous good neighbour, faith, and a very good bowler; but for Alisander, alas you see how ’tis—a little o’erparted. But there are Worthies a-coming will speak their mind in some other sort.

PRINCESS. Stand aside, good Pompey.

Enter Holofernes, the Pedant, as Judas, and Moth, the Boy, as Hercules.

HOLOFERNES. Great Hercules is presented by this imp, Whose club killed Cerberus, that three-headed canus, And when he was a babe, a child, a shrimp, Thus did he strangle serpents in his manus. Quoniam he seemeth in minority, Ergo I come with this apology. Keep some state in thy exit, and vanish.

[Moth retires.]

Judas I am.—

DUMAINE. A Judas!

HOLOFERNES. Not Iscariot, sir. Judas I am, ycleped Maccabaeus.

DUMAINE. Judas Maccabaeus clipped is plain Judas.

BEROWNE. A kissing traitor. How art thou proved Judas?

HOLOFERNES. Judas I am—

DUMAINE. The more shame for you, Judas.

HOLOFERNES. What mean you, sir?

BOYET. To make Judas hang himself.

HOLOFERNES. Begin, sir; you are my elder.

BEROWNE. Well followed. Judas was hanged on an elder.

HOLOFERNES. I will not be put out of countenance.

BEROWNE. Because thou hast no face.

HOLOFERNES. What is this?

BOYET. A cittern-head.

DUMAINE. The head of a bodkin.

BEROWNE. A death’s face in a ring.

LONGAVILLE. The face of an old Roman coin, scarce seen.

BOYET. The pommel of Caesar’s falchion.

DUMAINE. The carved-bone face on a flask.

BEROWNE. Saint George’s half-cheek in a brooch.

DUMAINE. Ay, and in a brooch of lead.

BEROWNE. Ay, and worn in the cap of a tooth-drawer. And now forward, for we have put thee in countenance.

HOLOFERNES. You have put me out of countenance.

BEROWNE. False. We have given thee faces.

HOLOFERNES. But you have outfaced them all.

BEROWNE. An thou wert a lion, we would do so.

BOYET. Therefore, as he is an ass, let him go. And so adieu, sweet Jude. Nay, why dost thou stay?

DUMAINE. For the latter end of his name.

BEROWNE. For the ass to the Jude? Give it him. Jud-as, away!

HOLOFERNES. This is not generous, not gentle, not humble.

BOYET. A light for Monsieur Judas! It grows dark; he may stumble.

[Exit Holofernes.]

PRINCESS. Alas, poor Maccabaeus, how hath he been baited!

Enter Armado, the Braggart, as Hector.

BEROWNE. Hide thy head, Achilles. Here comes Hector in arms.

DUMAINE. Though my mocks come home by me, I will now be merry.

KING. Hector was but a Trojan in respect of this.

BOYET. But is this Hector?

DUMAINE. I think Hector was not so clean-timbered.

LONGAVILLE. His leg is too big for Hector’s.

DUMAINE. More calf, certain.

BOYET. No, he is best endued in the small.

BEROWNE. This cannot be Hector.

DUMAINE. He’s a god or a painter, for he makes faces.

ARMADO. The armipotent Mars, of lances the almighty, Gave Hector a gift—

DUMAINE. A gilt nutmeg.

BEROWNE. A lemon.

LONGAVILLE. Stuck with cloves.

DUMAINE. No, cloven.

ARMADO. Peace! The armipotent Mars, of lances the almighty, Gave Hector a gift, the heir of Ilion; A man so breathed that certain he would fight, yea, From morn till night, out of his pavilion. I am that flower—

DUMAINE. That mint.

LONGAVILLE. That columbine.

ARMADO. Sweet Lord Longaville, rein thy tongue.

LONGAVILLE. I must rather give it the rein, for it runs against Hector.

DUMAINE. Ay, and Hector’s a greyhound.

ARMADO. The sweet war-man is dead and rotten. Sweet chucks, beat not the bones of the buried. When he breathed, he was a man. But I will forward with my device. [To the Princess.] Sweet royalty, bestow on me the sense of hearing.

PRINCESS. Speak, brave Hector; we are much delighted.

ARMADO. I do adore thy sweet Grace’s slipper.

BOYET. Loves her by the foot.

DUMAINE. He may not by the yard.

ARMADO. This Hector far surmounted Hannibal. The party is gone—

COSTARD. Fellow Hector, she is gone; she is two months on her way.

ARMADO. What meanest thou?

COSTARD. Faith, unless you play the honest Trojan, the poor wench is cast away. She’s quick; the child brags in her belly already. ’Tis yours.

ARMADO. Dost thou infamonize me among potentates? Thou shalt die.

COSTARD. Then shall Hector be whipped for Jaquenetta that is quick by him, and hanged for Pompey that is dead by him.

DUMAINE. Most rare Pompey!

BOYET. Renowned Pompey!

BEROWNE. Greater than “Great”! Great, great, great Pompey! Pompey the Huge!

DUMAINE. Hector trembles.

BEROWNE. Pompey is moved. More Ates, more Ates! Stir them on, stir them on!

DUMAINE. Hector will challenge him.

BEROWNE. Ay, if he have no more man’s blood in his belly than will sup a flea.

ARMADO. By the north pole, I do challenge thee.

COSTARD. I will not fight with a pole, like a northern man. I’ll slash, I’ll do it by the sword. I bepray you, let me borrow my arms again.

DUMAINE. Room for the incensed Worthies!

COSTARD. I’ll do it in my shirt.

DUMAINE. Most resolute Pompey!

MOTH. Master, let me take you a buttonhole lower. Do you not see Pompey is uncasing for the combat? What mean you? You will lose your reputation.

ARMADO. Gentlemen and soldiers, pardon me. I will not combat in my shirt.

DUMAINE. You may not deny it. Pompey hath made the challenge.

ARMADO. Sweet bloods, I both may and will.

BEROWNE. What reason have you for ’t?

ARMADO. The naked truth of it is, I have no shirt. I go woolward for penance.

BOYET. True, and it was enjoined him in Rome for want of linen; since when, I’ll be sworn, he wore none but a dishclout of Jaquenetta’s, and that he wears next his heart for a favour.

Enter a Messenger, Monsieur Marcadé.

MARCADÉ. God save you, madam.

PRINCESS. Welcome, Marcadé, But that thou interruptest our merriment.

MARCADÉ. I am sorry, madam, for the news I bring Is heavy in my tongue. The King your father—

PRINCESS. Dead, for my life!

MARCADÉ. Even so. My tale is told.

BEROWNE. Worthies away! The scene begins to cloud.

ARMADO. For mine own part, I breathe free breath. I have seen the day of wrong through the little hole of discretion, and I will right myself like a soldier.

[Exeunt Worthies.]

KING. How fares your Majesty?

PRINCESS. Boyet, prepare. I will away tonight.

KING. Madam, not so. I do beseech you stay.

PRINCESS. Prepare, I say. I thank you, gracious lords, For all your fair endeavours, and entreat, Out of a new-sad soul, that you vouchsafe In your rich wisdom to excuse or hide The liberal opposition of our spirits, If over-boldly we have borne ourselves In the converse of breath; your gentleness Was guilty of it. Farewell, worthy lord! A heavy heart bears not a nimble tongue. Excuse me so, coming too short of thanks For my great suit so easily obtained.

KING. The extreme parts of time extremely forms All causes to the purpose of his speed, And often at his very loose decides That which long process could not arbitrate. And though the mourning brow of progeny Forbid the smiling courtesy of love The holy suit which fain it would convince, Yet, since love’s argument was first on foot, Let not the cloud of sorrow jostle it From what it purposed; since to wail friends lost Is not by much so wholesome-profitable As to rejoice at friends but newly found.

PRINCESS. I understand you not. My griefs are double.

BEROWNE. Honest plain words best pierce the ear of grief; And by these badges understand the King. For your fair sakes have we neglected time, Played foul play with our oaths. Your beauty, ladies, Hath much deformed us, fashioning our humours Even to the opposed end of our intents; And what in us hath seemed ridiculous— As love is full of unbefitting strains, All wanton as a child, skipping and vain, Formed by the eye and therefore, like the eye, Full of strange shapes, of habits and of forms, Varying in subjects as the eye doth roll To every varied object in his glance; Which parti-coated presence of loose love Put on by us, if, in your heavenly eyes, Have misbecomed our oaths and gravities, Those heavenly eyes that look into these faults Suggested us to make. Therefore, ladies, Our love being yours, the error that love makes Is likewise yours. We to ourselves prove false By being once false for ever to be true To those that make us both—fair ladies, you. And even that falsehood, in itself a sin, Thus purifies itself and turns to grace.

PRINCESS. We have received your letters, full of love; Your favours, the ambassadors of love; And in our maiden council rated them At courtship, pleasant jest, and courtesy, As bombast and as lining to the time. But more devout than this in our respects Have we not been; and therefore met your loves In their own fashion, like a merriment.

DUMAINE. Our letters, madam, showed much more than jest.

LONGAVILLE. So did our looks.

ROSALINE. We did not quote them so.

KING. Now, at the latest minute of the hour, Grant us your loves.

PRINCESS. A time, methinks, too short To make a world-without-end bargain in. No, no, my lord, your Grace is perjured much, Full of dear guiltiness; and therefore this: If for my love—as there is no such cause— You will do aught, this shall you do for me: Your oath I will not trust, but go with speed To some forlorn and naked hermitage, Remote from all the pleasures of the world, There stay until the twelve celestial signs Have brought about the annual reckoning. If this austere insociable life Change not your offer made in heat of blood; If frosts and fasts, hard lodging and thin weeds, Nip not the gaudy blossoms of your love, But that it bear this trial, and last love; Then, at the expiration of the year, Come challenge me, challenge me by these deserts, And, by this virgin palm now kissing thine, I will be thine. And, till that instance, shut My woeful self up in a mournful house, Raining the tears of lamentation For the remembrance of my father’s death. If this thou do deny, let our hands part, Neither entitled in the other’s heart.

KING. If this, or more than this, I would deny, To flatter up these powers of mine with rest, The sudden hand of death close up mine eye! Hence hermit, then. My heart is in thy breast.

[They converse apart]

DUMAINE. And what to me, my love? But what to me? A wife?

KATHARINE. A beard, fair health, and honesty; With threefold love I wish you all these three.

DUMAINE. O, shall I say, “I thank you, gentle wife”?

KATHARINE. No so, my lord. A twelvemonth and a day I’ll mark no words that smooth-faced wooers say. Come when the King doth to my lady come; Then, if I have much love, I’ll give you some.

DUMAINE. I’ll serve thee true and faithfully till then.

KATHARINE. Yet swear not, lest ye be forsworn again.

LONGAVILLE. What says Maria?

MARIA. At the twelvemonth’s end I’ll change my black gown for a faithful friend.

LONGAVILLE. I’ll stay with patience, but the time is long.

MARIA. The liker you; few taller are so young.

BEROWNE. Studies my lady? Mistress, look on me. Behold the window of my heart, mine eye, What humble suit attends thy answer there. Impose some service on me for thy love.

ROSALINE. Oft have I heard of you, my Lord Berowne, Before I saw you; and the world’s large tongue Proclaims you for a man replete with mocks, Full of comparisons and wounding flouts, Which you on all estates will execute That lie within the mercy of your wit. To weed this wormwood from your fruitful brain, And therewithal to win me, if you please, Without the which I am not to be won, You shall this twelvemonth term from day to day Visit the speechless sick, and still converse With groaning wretches; and your task shall be, With all the fierce endeavour of your wit To enforce the pained impotent to smile.

BEROWNE. To move wild laughter in the throat of death? It cannot be, it is impossible. Mirth cannot move a soul in agony.

ROSALINE. Why, that’s the way to choke a gibing spirit, Whose influence is begot of that loose grace Which shallow laughing hearers give to fools. A jest’s prosperity lies in the ear Of him that hears it, never in the tongue Of him that makes it. Then, if sickly ears, Deafed with the clamours of their own dear groans, Will hear your idle scorns, continue then, And I will have you and that fault withal; But if they will not, throw away that spirit, And I shall find you empty of that fault, Right joyful of your reformation.

BEROWNE. A twelvemonth? Well, befall what will befall, I’ll jest a twelvemonth in an hospital.

PRINCESS. [To the King.] Ay, sweet my lord, and so I take my leave.

KING. No, madam, we will bring you on your way.

BEROWNE. Our wooing doth not end like an old play. Jack hath not Jill. These ladies’ courtesy Might well have made our sport a comedy.

KING. Come, sir, it wants a twelvemonth and a day, And then ’twill end.

BEROWNE. That’s too long for a play.

ARMADO. Sweet Majesty, vouchsafe me—

PRINCESS. Was not that Hector?

DUMAINE. The worthy knight of Troy.

ARMADO. I will kiss thy royal finger, and take leave. I am a votary; I have vowed to Jaquenetta to hold the plough for her sweet love three year. But, most esteemed Greatness, will you hear the dialogue that the two learned men have compiled in praise of the owl and the cuckoo? It should have followed in the end of our show.

KING. Call them forth quickly; we will do so.

ARMADO. Holla! Approach.

Enter all.

This side is Hiems, Winter; this Ver, the Spring; the one maintained by the owl, th’ other by the cuckoo. Ver, begin.

The Song

SPRING. When daisies pied and violets blue And lady-smocks all silver-white And cuckoo-buds of yellow hue Do paint the meadows with delight, The cuckoo then on every tree Mocks married men; for thus sings he: “Cuckoo! Cuckoo, cuckoo!” O, word of fear, Unpleasing to a married ear.

When shepherds pipe on oaten straws, And merry larks are ploughmen’s clocks, When turtles tread, and rooks and daws, And maidens bleach their summer smocks, The cuckoo then, on every tree, Mocks married men, for thus sings he: “Cuckoo! Cuckoo, cuckoo!” O, word of fear, Unpleasing to a married ear.

WINTER. When icicles hang by the wall, And Dick the shepherd blows his nail, And Tom bears logs into the hall, And milk comes frozen home in pail, When blood is nipped, and ways be foul, Then nightly sings the staring owl: “Tu-whit, Tu-whoo!” A merry note, While greasy Joan doth keel the pot.

When all aloud the wind doth blow, And coughing drowns the parson’s saw, And birds sit brooding in the snow, And Marian’s nose looks red and raw, When roasted crabs hiss in the bowl, Then nightly sings the staring owl: “Tu-whit, Tu-whoo!” A merry note, While greasy Joan doth keel the pot.

ARMADO. The words of Mercury are harsh after the songs of Apollo. You that way, we this way.

THE TRAGEDY OF MACBETH

ACT I Scene I. An open Place. Scene II. A Camp near Forres. Scene III. A heath. Scene IV. Forres. A Room in the Palace. Scene V. Inverness. A Room in Macbeth’s Castle. Scene VI. The same. Before the Castle. Scene VII. The same. A Lobby in the Castle.

ACT II Scene I. Inverness. Court within the Castle. Scene II. The same. Scene III. The same. Scene IV. The same. Without the Castle.

ACT III Scene I. Forres. A Room in the Palace. Scene II. The same. Another Room in the Palace. Scene III. The same. A Park or Lawn, with a gate leading to the Palace. Scene IV. The same. A Room of state in the Palace. Scene V. The heath. Scene VI. Forres. A Room in the Palace.

ACT IV Scene I. A dark Cave. In the middle, a Cauldron Boiling. Scene II. Fife. A Room in Macduff’s Castle. Scene III. England. Before the King’s Palace.

ACT V Scene I. Dunsinane. A Room in the Castle. Scene II. The Country near Dunsinane. Scene III. Dunsinane. A Room in the Castle. Scene IV. Country near Dunsinane: a Wood in view. Scene V. Dunsinane. Within the castle. Scene VI. The same. A Plain before the Castle. Scene VII. The same. Another part of the Plain. Scene VIII. The same. Another part of the field.

DUNCAN, King of Scotland. MALCOLM, his Son. DONALBAIN, his Son. MACBETH, General in the King’s Army. BANQUO, General in the King’s Army. MACDUFF, Nobleman of Scotland. LENNOX, Nobleman of Scotland. ROSS, Nobleman of Scotland. MENTEITH, Nobleman of Scotland. ANGUS, Nobleman of Scotland. CAITHNESS, Nobleman of Scotland. FLEANCE, Son to Banquo. SIWARD, Earl of Northumberland, General of the English Forces. YOUNG SIWARD, his Son. SEYTON, an Officer attending on Macbeth. BOY, Son to Macduff. An English Doctor. A Scottish Doctor. A Soldier. A Porter. An Old Man.

LADY MACBETH. LADY MACDUFF. Gentlewoman attending on Lady Macbeth. HECATE, and three Witches.

Lords, Gentlemen, Officers, Soldiers, Murderers, Attendants and Messengers.

The Ghost of Banquo and several other Apparitions.

SCENE: In the end of the Fourth Act, in England; through the rest of the Play, in Scotland; and chiefly at Macbeth’s Castle.

SCENE I. An open Place.

Thunder and Lightning. Enter three Witches.

FIRST WITCH. When shall we three meet again? In thunder, lightning, or in rain?

SECOND WITCH. When the hurlyburly’s done, When the battle’s lost and won.

THIRD WITCH. That will be ere the set of sun.

FIRST WITCH. Where the place?

SECOND WITCH. Upon the heath.

THIRD WITCH. There to meet with Macbeth.

FIRST WITCH. I come, Graymalkin!

SECOND WITCH. Paddock calls.

THIRD WITCH. Anon.

ALL. Fair is foul, and foul is fair: Hover through the fog and filthy air.

SCENE II. A Camp near Forres.

Alarum within. Enter King Duncan, Malcolm, Donalbain, Lennox, with Attendants, meeting a bleeding Captain.

DUNCAN. What bloody man is that? He can report, As seemeth by his plight, of the revolt The newest state.

MALCOLM. This is the sergeant Who, like a good and hardy soldier, fought ’Gainst my captivity.—Hail, brave friend! Say to the King the knowledge of the broil As thou didst leave it.

SOLDIER. Doubtful it stood; As two spent swimmers that do cling together And choke their art. The merciless Macdonwald (Worthy to be a rebel, for to that The multiplying villainies of nature Do swarm upon him) from the Western Isles Of kerns and gallowglasses is supplied; And Fortune, on his damned quarrel smiling, Show’d like a rebel’s whore. But all’s too weak; For brave Macbeth (well he deserves that name), Disdaining Fortune, with his brandish’d steel, Which smok’d with bloody execution, Like Valour’s minion, carv’d out his passage, Till he fac’d the slave; Which ne’er shook hands, nor bade farewell to him, Till he unseam’d him from the nave to the chops, And fix’d his head upon our battlements.

DUNCAN. O valiant cousin! worthy gentleman!

SOLDIER. As whence the sun ’gins his reflection Shipwracking storms and direful thunders break, So from that spring, whence comfort seem’d to come Discomfort swells. Mark, King of Scotland, mark: No sooner justice had, with valour arm’d, Compell’d these skipping kerns to trust their heels, But the Norweyan lord, surveying vantage, With furbish’d arms and new supplies of men, Began a fresh assault.

DUNCAN. Dismay’d not this Our captains, Macbeth and Banquo?

SOLDIER. Yes; As sparrows eagles, or the hare the lion. If I say sooth, I must report they were As cannons overcharg’d with double cracks; So they Doubly redoubled strokes upon the foe: Except they meant to bathe in reeking wounds, Or memorize another Golgotha, I cannot tell— But I am faint, my gashes cry for help.

DUNCAN. So well thy words become thee as thy wounds: They smack of honour both.—Go, get him surgeons.

[Exit Captain, attended.]

Enter Ross and Angus.

Who comes here?

MALCOLM. The worthy Thane of Ross.

LENNOX. What a haste looks through his eyes! So should he look That seems to speak things strange.

ROSS. God save the King!

DUNCAN. Whence cam’st thou, worthy thane?

ROSS. From Fife, great King, Where the Norweyan banners flout the sky And fan our people cold. Norway himself, with terrible numbers, Assisted by that most disloyal traitor, The Thane of Cawdor, began a dismal conflict; Till that Bellona’s bridegroom, lapp’d in proof, Confronted him with self-comparisons, Point against point, rebellious arm ’gainst arm, Curbing his lavish spirit: and, to conclude, The victory fell on us.

DUNCAN. Great happiness!

ROSS. That now Sweno, the Norways’ king, craves composition; Nor would we deign him burial of his men Till he disbursed at Saint Colme’s Inch Ten thousand dollars to our general use.

DUNCAN. No more that Thane of Cawdor shall deceive Our bosom interest. Go pronounce his present death, And with his former title greet Macbeth.

ROSS. I’ll see it done.

DUNCAN. What he hath lost, noble Macbeth hath won.

SCENE III. A heath.

Thunder. Enter the three Witches.

FIRST WITCH. Where hast thou been, sister?

SECOND WITCH. Killing swine.

THIRD WITCH. Sister, where thou?

FIRST WITCH. A sailor’s wife had chestnuts in her lap, And mounch’d, and mounch’d, and mounch’d. “Give me,” quoth I. “Aroint thee, witch!” the rump-fed ronyon cries. Her husband’s to Aleppo gone, master o’ th’ Tiger: But in a sieve I’ll thither sail, And, like a rat without a tail, I’ll do, I’ll do, and I’ll do.

SECOND WITCH. I’ll give thee a wind.

FIRST WITCH. Th’art kind.

THIRD WITCH. And I another.

FIRST WITCH. I myself have all the other, And the very ports they blow, All the quarters that they know I’ the shipman’s card. I will drain him dry as hay: Sleep shall neither night nor day Hang upon his pent-house lid; He shall live a man forbid. Weary sev’n-nights nine times nine, Shall he dwindle, peak, and pine: Though his bark cannot be lost, Yet it shall be tempest-tost. Look what I have.

SECOND WITCH. Show me, show me.

FIRST WITCH. Here I have a pilot’s thumb, Wrack’d as homeward he did come.

[Drum within.]

THIRD WITCH. A drum, a drum! Macbeth doth come.

ALL. The Weird Sisters, hand in hand, Posters of the sea and land, Thus do go about, about: Thrice to thine, and thrice to mine, And thrice again, to make up nine. Peace!—the charm’s wound up.

Enter Macbeth and Banquo.

MACBETH. So foul and fair a day I have not seen.

BANQUO. How far is’t call’d to Forres?—What are these, So wither’d, and so wild in their attire, That look not like the inhabitants o’ th’ earth, And yet are on’t?—Live you? or are you aught That man may question? You seem to understand me, By each at once her choppy finger laying Upon her skinny lips. You should be women, And yet your beards forbid me to interpret That you are so.

MACBETH. Speak, if you can;—what are you?

FIRST WITCH. All hail, Macbeth! hail to thee, Thane of Glamis!

SECOND WITCH. All hail, Macbeth! hail to thee, Thane of Cawdor!

THIRD WITCH. All hail, Macbeth! that shalt be king hereafter!

BANQUO. Good sir, why do you start and seem to fear Things that do sound so fair?—I’ th’ name of truth, Are ye fantastical, or that indeed Which outwardly ye show? My noble partner You greet with present grace and great prediction Of noble having and of royal hope, That he seems rapt withal. To me you speak not. If you can look into the seeds of time, And say which grain will grow, and which will not, Speak then to me, who neither beg nor fear Your favours nor your hate.

FIRST WITCH. Hail!

SECOND WITCH. Hail!

THIRD WITCH. Hail!

FIRST WITCH. Lesser than Macbeth, and greater.

SECOND WITCH. Not so happy, yet much happier.

THIRD WITCH. Thou shalt get kings, though thou be none: So all hail, Macbeth and Banquo!

FIRST WITCH. Banquo and Macbeth, all hail!

MACBETH. Stay, you imperfect speakers, tell me more. By Sinel’s death I know I am Thane of Glamis; But how of Cawdor? The Thane of Cawdor lives, A prosperous gentleman; and to be king Stands not within the prospect of belief, No more than to be Cawdor. Say from whence You owe this strange intelligence? or why Upon this blasted heath you stop our way With such prophetic greeting?—Speak, I charge you.

[Witches vanish.]

BANQUO. The earth hath bubbles, as the water has, And these are of them. Whither are they vanish’d?

MACBETH. Into the air; and what seem’d corporal, Melted as breath into the wind. Would they had stay’d!

BANQUO. Were such things here as we do speak about? Or have we eaten on the insane root That takes the reason prisoner?

MACBETH. Your children shall be kings.

BANQUO. You shall be king.

MACBETH. And Thane of Cawdor too; went it not so?

BANQUO. To the selfsame tune and words. Who’s here?

ROSS. The King hath happily receiv’d, Macbeth, The news of thy success, and when he reads Thy personal venture in the rebels’ fight, His wonders and his praises do contend Which should be thine or his: silenc’d with that, In viewing o’er the rest o’ th’ selfsame day, He finds thee in the stout Norweyan ranks, Nothing afeard of what thyself didst make, Strange images of death. As thick as tale Came post with post; and everyone did bear Thy praises in his kingdom’s great defence, And pour’d them down before him.

ANGUS. We are sent To give thee from our royal master thanks; Only to herald thee into his sight, Not pay thee.

ROSS. And, for an earnest of a greater honour, He bade me, from him, call thee Thane of Cawdor: In which addition, hail, most worthy thane, For it is thine.

BANQUO. What, can the devil speak true?

MACBETH. The Thane of Cawdor lives: why do you dress me In borrow’d robes?

ANGUS. Who was the Thane lives yet, But under heavy judgement bears that life Which he deserves to lose. Whether he was combin’d With those of Norway, or did line the rebel With hidden help and vantage, or that with both He labour’d in his country’s wrack, I know not; But treasons capital, confess’d and prov’d, Have overthrown him.

MACBETH. [Aside.] Glamis, and Thane of Cawdor: The greatest is behind. [To Ross and Angus.] Thanks for your pains. [To Banquo.] Do you not hope your children shall be kings, When those that gave the Thane of Cawdor to me Promis’d no less to them?

BANQUO. That, trusted home, Might yet enkindle you unto the crown, Besides the Thane of Cawdor. But ’tis strange: And oftentimes to win us to our harm, The instruments of darkness tell us truths; Win us with honest trifles, to betray’s In deepest consequence.— Cousins, a word, I pray you.

MACBETH. [Aside.] Two truths are told, As happy prologues to the swelling act Of the imperial theme.—I thank you, gentlemen.— [Aside.] This supernatural soliciting Cannot be ill; cannot be good. If ill, Why hath it given me earnest of success, Commencing in a truth? I am Thane of Cawdor: If good, why do I yield to that suggestion Whose horrid image doth unfix my hair, And make my seated heart knock at my ribs, Against the use of nature? Present fears Are less than horrible imaginings. My thought, whose murder yet is but fantastical, Shakes so my single state of man That function is smother’d in surmise, And nothing is but what is not.

BANQUO. Look, how our partner’s rapt.

MACBETH. [Aside.] If chance will have me king, why, chance may crown me Without my stir.

BANQUO. New honours come upon him, Like our strange garments, cleave not to their mould But with the aid of use.

MACBETH. [Aside.] Come what come may, Time and the hour runs through the roughest day.

BANQUO. Worthy Macbeth, we stay upon your leisure.

MACBETH. Give me your favour. My dull brain was wrought With things forgotten. Kind gentlemen, your pains Are register’d where every day I turn The leaf to read them.—Let us toward the King.— Think upon what hath chanc’d; and at more time, The interim having weigh’d it, let us speak Our free hearts each to other.

BANQUO. Very gladly.

MACBETH. Till then, enough.—Come, friends.

SCENE IV. Forres. A Room in the Palace.

Flourish. Enter Duncan, Malcolm, Donalbain, Lennox and Attendants.

DUNCAN. Is execution done on Cawdor? Are not Those in commission yet return’d?

MALCOLM. My liege, They are not yet come back. But I have spoke With one that saw him die, who did report, That very frankly he confess’d his treasons, Implor’d your Highness’ pardon, and set forth A deep repentance. Nothing in his life Became him like the leaving it; he died As one that had been studied in his death, To throw away the dearest thing he ow’d As ’twere a careless trifle.

DUNCAN. There’s no art To find the mind’s construction in the face: He was a gentleman on whom I built An absolute trust.

Enter Macbeth, Banquo, Ross and Angus.

O worthiest cousin! The sin of my ingratitude even now Was heavy on me. Thou art so far before, That swiftest wing of recompense is slow To overtake thee. Would thou hadst less deserv’d; That the proportion both of thanks and payment Might have been mine! only I have left to say, More is thy due than more than all can pay.

MACBETH. The service and the loyalty I owe, In doing it, pays itself. Your Highness’ part Is to receive our duties: and our duties Are to your throne and state, children and servants; Which do but what they should, by doing everything Safe toward your love and honour.

DUNCAN. Welcome hither: I have begun to plant thee, and will labour To make thee full of growing.—Noble Banquo, That hast no less deserv’d, nor must be known No less to have done so, let me infold thee And hold thee to my heart.

BANQUO. There if I grow, The harvest is your own.

DUNCAN. My plenteous joys, Wanton in fulness, seek to hide themselves In drops of sorrow.—Sons, kinsmen, thanes, And you whose places are the nearest, know, We will establish our estate upon Our eldest, Malcolm; whom we name hereafter The Prince of Cumberland: which honour must Not unaccompanied invest him only, But signs of nobleness, like stars, shall shine On all deservers.—From hence to Inverness, And bind us further to you.

MACBETH. The rest is labour, which is not us’d for you: I’ll be myself the harbinger, and make joyful The hearing of my wife with your approach; So, humbly take my leave.

DUNCAN. My worthy Cawdor!

MACBETH. [Aside.] The Prince of Cumberland!—That is a step On which I must fall down, or else o’erleap, For in my way it lies. Stars, hide your fires! Let not light see my black and deep desires. The eye wink at the hand, yet let that be, Which the eye fears, when it is done, to see.

DUNCAN. True, worthy Banquo! He is full so valiant; And in his commendations I am fed. It is a banquet to me. Let’s after him, Whose care is gone before to bid us welcome: It is a peerless kinsman.

SCENE V. Inverness. A Room in Macbeth’s Castle.

Enter Lady Macbeth, reading a letter.

LADY MACBETH. “They met me in the day of success; and I have learned by the perfect’st report they have more in them than mortal knowledge. When I burned in desire to question them further, they made themselves air, into which they vanished. Whiles I stood rapt in the wonder of it, came missives from the King, who all-hailed me, ‘Thane of Cawdor’; by which title, before, these Weird Sisters saluted me, and referred me to the coming on of time, with ‘Hail, king that shalt be!’ This have I thought good to deliver thee (my dearest partner of greatness) that thou might’st not lose the dues of rejoicing, by being ignorant of what greatness is promis’d thee. Lay it to thy heart, and farewell.”

Glamis thou art, and Cawdor; and shalt be What thou art promis’d. Yet do I fear thy nature; It is too full o’ th’ milk of human kindness To catch the nearest way. Thou wouldst be great; Art not without ambition, but without The illness should attend it. What thou wouldst highly, That wouldst thou holily; wouldst not play false, And yet wouldst wrongly win. Thou’dst have, great Glamis, That which cries, “Thus thou must do,” if thou have it; And that which rather thou dost fear to do, Than wishest should be undone. Hie thee hither, That I may pour my spirits in thine ear, And chastise with the valour of my tongue All that impedes thee from the golden round, Which fate and metaphysical aid doth seem To have thee crown’d withal.

What is your tidings?

MESSENGER. The King comes here tonight.

LADY MACBETH. Thou’rt mad to say it. Is not thy master with him? who, were’t so, Would have inform’d for preparation.

MESSENGER. So please you, it is true. Our thane is coming. One of my fellows had the speed of him, Who, almost dead for breath, had scarcely more Than would make up his message.

LADY MACBETH. Give him tending. He brings great news.

The raven himself is hoarse That croaks the fatal entrance of Duncan Under my battlements. Come, you spirits That tend on mortal thoughts, unsex me here, And fill me, from the crown to the toe, top-full Of direst cruelty! make thick my blood, Stop up th’ access and passage to remorse, That no compunctious visitings of nature Shake my fell purpose, nor keep peace between Th’ effect and it! Come to my woman’s breasts, And take my milk for gall, your murd’ring ministers, Wherever in your sightless substances You wait on nature’s mischief! Come, thick night, And pall thee in the dunnest smoke of hell That my keen knife see not the wound it makes, Nor heaven peep through the blanket of the dark To cry, “Hold, hold!”

Enter Macbeth.

Great Glamis, worthy Cawdor! Greater than both, by the all-hail hereafter! Thy letters have transported me beyond This ignorant present, and I feel now The future in the instant.

MACBETH. My dearest love, Duncan comes here tonight.

LADY MACBETH. And when goes hence?

MACBETH. Tomorrow, as he purposes.

LADY MACBETH. O, never Shall sun that morrow see! Your face, my thane, is as a book where men May read strange matters. To beguile the time, Look like the time; bear welcome in your eye, Your hand, your tongue: look like the innocent flower, But be the serpent under’t. He that’s coming Must be provided for; and you shall put This night’s great business into my dispatch; Which shall to all our nights and days to come Give solely sovereign sway and masterdom.

MACBETH. We will speak further.

LADY MACBETH. Only look up clear; To alter favour ever is to fear. Leave all the rest to me.

SCENE VI. The same. Before the Castle.

Hautboys. Servants of Macbeth attending.

Enter Duncan, Malcolm, Donalbain, Banquo, Lennox, Macduff, Ross, Angus and Attendants.

DUNCAN. This castle hath a pleasant seat. The air Nimbly and sweetly recommends itself Unto our gentle senses.

BANQUO. This guest of summer, The temple-haunting martlet, does approve, By his loved mansionry, that the heaven’s breath Smells wooingly here: no jutty, frieze, Buttress, nor coign of vantage, but this bird hath made his pendant bed and procreant cradle. Where they most breed and haunt, I have observ’d The air is delicate.

Enter Lady Macbeth.

DUNCAN. See, see, our honour’d hostess!— The love that follows us sometime is our trouble, Which still we thank as love. Herein I teach you How you shall bid God ’ild us for your pains, And thank us for your trouble.

LADY MACBETH. All our service, In every point twice done, and then done double, Were poor and single business to contend Against those honours deep and broad wherewith Your Majesty loads our house: for those of old, And the late dignities heap’d up to them, We rest your hermits.

DUNCAN. Where’s the Thane of Cawdor? We cours’d him at the heels, and had a purpose To be his purveyor: but he rides well; And his great love, sharp as his spur, hath holp him To his home before us. Fair and noble hostess, We are your guest tonight.

LADY MACBETH. Your servants ever Have theirs, themselves, and what is theirs, in compt, To make their audit at your Highness’ pleasure, Still to return your own.

DUNCAN. Give me your hand; Conduct me to mine host: we love him highly, And shall continue our graces towards him. By your leave, hostess.

SCENE VII. The same. A Lobby in the Castle.

Hautboys and torches. Enter, and pass over, a Sewer and divers Servants with dishes and service. Then enter Macbeth.

MACBETH. If it were done when ’tis done, then ’twere well It were done quickly. If th’ assassination Could trammel up the consequence, and catch With his surcease success; that but this blow Might be the be-all and the end-all—here, But here, upon this bank and shoal of time, We’d jump the life to come. But in these cases We still have judgement here; that we but teach Bloody instructions, which being taught, return To plague th’ inventor. This even-handed justice Commends th’ ingredience of our poison’d chalice To our own lips. He’s here in double trust: First, as I am his kinsman and his subject, Strong both against the deed; then, as his host, Who should against his murderer shut the door, Not bear the knife myself. Besides, this Duncan Hath borne his faculties so meek, hath been So clear in his great office, that his virtues Will plead like angels, trumpet-tongued, against The deep damnation of his taking-off; And pity, like a naked new-born babe, Striding the blast, or heaven’s cherubin, hors’d Upon the sightless couriers of the air, Shall blow the horrid deed in every eye, That tears shall drown the wind.—I have no spur To prick the sides of my intent, but only Vaulting ambition, which o’erleaps itself And falls on th’ other—

How now! what news?

LADY MACBETH. He has almost supp’d. Why have you left the chamber?

MACBETH. Hath he ask’d for me?

LADY MACBETH. Know you not he has?

MACBETH. We will proceed no further in this business: He hath honour’d me of late; and I have bought Golden opinions from all sorts of people, Which would be worn now in their newest gloss, Not cast aside so soon.

LADY MACBETH. Was the hope drunk Wherein you dress’d yourself? Hath it slept since? And wakes it now, to look so green and pale At what it did so freely? From this time Such I account thy love. Art thou afeard To be the same in thine own act and valour As thou art in desire? Wouldst thou have that Which thou esteem’st the ornament of life, And live a coward in thine own esteem, Letting “I dare not” wait upon “I would,” Like the poor cat i’ th’ adage?

MACBETH. Pr’ythee, peace! I dare do all that may become a man; Who dares do more is none.

LADY MACBETH. What beast was’t, then, That made you break this enterprise to me? When you durst do it, then you were a man; And, to be more than what you were, you would Be so much more the man. Nor time nor place Did then adhere, and yet you would make both: They have made themselves, and that their fitness now Does unmake you. I have given suck, and know How tender ’tis to love the babe that milks me: I would, while it was smiling in my face, Have pluck’d my nipple from his boneless gums And dash’d the brains out, had I so sworn as you Have done to this.

MACBETH. If we should fail?

LADY MACBETH. We fail? But screw your courage to the sticking-place, And we’ll not fail. When Duncan is asleep (Whereto the rather shall his day’s hard journey Soundly invite him), his two chamberlains Will I with wine and wassail so convince That memory, the warder of the brain, Shall be a fume, and the receipt of reason A limbeck only: when in swinish sleep Their drenched natures lie as in a death, What cannot you and I perform upon Th’ unguarded Duncan? what not put upon His spongy officers; who shall bear the guilt Of our great quell?

MACBETH. Bring forth men-children only; For thy undaunted mettle should compose Nothing but males. Will it not be receiv’d, When we have mark’d with blood those sleepy two Of his own chamber, and us’d their very daggers, That they have done’t?

LADY MACBETH. Who dares receive it other, As we shall make our griefs and clamour roar Upon his death?

MACBETH. I am settled, and bend up Each corporal agent to this terrible feat. Away, and mock the time with fairest show: False face must hide what the false heart doth know.

SCENE I. Inverness. Court within the Castle.

Enter Banquo and Fleance with a torch before him.

BANQUO. How goes the night, boy?

FLEANCE. The moon is down; I have not heard the clock.

BANQUO. And she goes down at twelve.

FLEANCE. I take’t, ’tis later, sir.

BANQUO. Hold, take my sword.—There’s husbandry in heaven; Their candles are all out. Take thee that too. A heavy summons lies like lead upon me, And yet I would not sleep. Merciful powers, Restrain in me the cursed thoughts that nature Gives way to in repose!

Enter Macbeth and a Servant with a torch.

Give me my sword.—Who’s there?

MACBETH. A friend.

BANQUO. What, sir, not yet at rest? The King’s abed: He hath been in unusual pleasure and Sent forth great largess to your offices. This diamond he greets your wife withal, By the name of most kind hostess, and shut up In measureless content.

MACBETH. Being unprepar’d, Our will became the servant to defect, Which else should free have wrought.

BANQUO. All’s well. I dreamt last night of the three Weird Sisters: To you they have show’d some truth.

MACBETH. I think not of them: Yet, when we can entreat an hour to serve, We would spend it in some words upon that business, If you would grant the time.

BANQUO. At your kind’st leisure.

MACBETH. If you shall cleave to my consent, when ’tis, It shall make honour for you.

BANQUO. So I lose none In seeking to augment it, but still keep My bosom franchis’d, and allegiance clear, I shall be counsell’d.

MACBETH. Good repose the while!

BANQUO. Thanks, sir: the like to you.

[Exeunt Banquo and Fleance.]

MACBETH. Go bid thy mistress, when my drink is ready, She strike upon the bell. Get thee to bed.

Is this a dagger which I see before me, The handle toward my hand? Come, let me clutch thee:— I have thee not, and yet I see thee still. Art thou not, fatal vision, sensible To feeling as to sight? or art thou but A dagger of the mind, a false creation, Proceeding from the heat-oppressed brain? I see thee yet, in form as palpable As this which now I draw. Thou marshall’st me the way that I was going; And such an instrument I was to use. Mine eyes are made the fools o’ the other senses, Or else worth all the rest: I see thee still; And on thy blade and dudgeon, gouts of blood, Which was not so before.—There’s no such thing. It is the bloody business which informs Thus to mine eyes.—Now o’er the one half-world Nature seems dead, and wicked dreams abuse The curtain’d sleep. Witchcraft celebrates Pale Hecate’s off’rings; and wither’d murder, Alarum’d by his sentinel, the wolf, Whose howl’s his watch, thus with his stealthy pace, With Tarquin’s ravishing strides, towards his design Moves like a ghost.—Thou sure and firm-set earth, Hear not my steps, which way they walk, for fear Thy very stones prate of my whereabout, And take the present horror from the time, Which now suits with it.—Whiles I threat, he lives. Words to the heat of deeds too cold breath gives.

[A bell rings.]

I go, and it is done. The bell invites me. Hear it not, Duncan, for it is a knell That summons thee to heaven or to hell.

LADY MACBETH. That which hath made them drunk hath made me bold: What hath quench’d them hath given me fire.—Hark!—Peace! It was the owl that shriek’d, the fatal bellman, Which gives the stern’st good night. He is about it. The doors are open; and the surfeited grooms Do mock their charge with snores: I have drugg’d their possets, That death and nature do contend about them, Whether they live or die.

MACBETH. [Within.] Who’s there?—what, ho!

LADY MACBETH. Alack! I am afraid they have awak’d, And ’tis not done. Th’ attempt and not the deed Confounds us.—Hark!—I laid their daggers ready; He could not miss ’em.—Had he not resembled My father as he slept, I had done’t.—My husband!

MACBETH. I have done the deed.—Didst thou not hear a noise?

LADY MACBETH. I heard the owl scream and the crickets cry. Did not you speak?

MACBETH. When?

LADY MACBETH. Now.

MACBETH. As I descended?

LADY MACBETH. Ay.

MACBETH. Hark!—Who lies i’ th’ second chamber?

LADY MACBETH. Donalbain.

MACBETH. This is a sorry sight.

[Looking on his hands.]

LADY MACBETH. A foolish thought, to say a sorry sight.

MACBETH. There’s one did laugh in’s sleep, and one cried, “Murder!” That they did wake each other: I stood and heard them. But they did say their prayers, and address’d them Again to sleep.

LADY MACBETH. There are two lodg’d together.

MACBETH. One cried, “God bless us!” and, “Amen,” the other, As they had seen me with these hangman’s hands. List’ning their fear, I could not say “Amen,” When they did say, “God bless us.”

LADY MACBETH. Consider it not so deeply.

MACBETH. But wherefore could not I pronounce “Amen”? I had most need of blessing, and “Amen” Stuck in my throat.

LADY MACBETH. These deeds must not be thought After these ways; so, it will make us mad.

MACBETH. Methought I heard a voice cry, “Sleep no more! Macbeth does murder sleep,”—the innocent sleep; Sleep that knits up the ravell’d sleave of care, The death of each day’s life, sore labour’s bath, Balm of hurt minds, great nature’s second course, Chief nourisher in life’s feast.

LADY MACBETH. What do you mean?

MACBETH. Still it cried, “Sleep no more!” to all the house: “Glamis hath murder’d sleep, and therefore Cawdor Shall sleep no more. Macbeth shall sleep no more!”

LADY MACBETH. Who was it that thus cried? Why, worthy thane, You do unbend your noble strength to think So brainsickly of things. Go get some water, And wash this filthy witness from your hand.— Why did you bring these daggers from the place? They must lie there: go carry them, and smear The sleepy grooms with blood.

MACBETH. I’ll go no more: I am afraid to think what I have done; Look on’t again I dare not.

LADY MACBETH. Infirm of purpose! Give me the daggers. The sleeping and the dead Are but as pictures. ’Tis the eye of childhood That fears a painted devil. If he do bleed, I’ll gild the faces of the grooms withal, For it must seem their guilt.

[Exit. Knocking within.]

MACBETH. Whence is that knocking? How is’t with me, when every noise appals me? What hands are here? Ha, they pluck out mine eyes! Will all great Neptune’s ocean wash this blood Clean from my hand? No, this my hand will rather The multitudinous seas incarnadine, Making the green one red.

LADY MACBETH. My hands are of your color, but I shame To wear a heart so white. [Knocking within.] I hear knocking At the south entry:—retire we to our chamber. A little water clears us of this deed: How easy is it then! Your constancy Hath left you unattended.—[Knocking within.] Hark, more knocking. Get on your nightgown, lest occasion call us And show us to be watchers. Be not lost So poorly in your thoughts.

MACBETH. To know my deed, ’twere best not know myself. [Knocking within.] Wake Duncan with thy knocking! I would thou couldst!

Enter a Porter. Knocking within.

PORTER. Here’s a knocking indeed! If a man were porter of hell gate, he should have old turning the key. [Knocking.] Knock, knock, knock. Who’s there, i’ th’ name of Belzebub? Here’s a farmer that hanged himself on the expectation of plenty: come in time; have napkins enow about you; here you’ll sweat for’t. [Knocking.] Knock, knock! Who’s there, i’ th’ other devil’s name? Faith, here’s an equivocator, that could swear in both the scales against either scale, who committed treason enough for God’s sake, yet could not equivocate to heaven: O, come in, equivocator. [Knocking.] Knock, knock, knock! Who’s there? Faith, here’s an English tailor come hither, for stealing out of a French hose: come in, tailor; here you may roast your goose. [Knocking.] Knock, knock. Never at quiet! What are you?—But this place is too cold for hell. I’ll devil-porter it no further: I had thought to have let in some of all professions, that go the primrose way to th’ everlasting bonfire. [Knocking.] Anon, anon! I pray you, remember the porter.

[Opens the gate.]

Enter Macduff and Lennox.

MACDUFF. Was it so late, friend, ere you went to bed, That you do lie so late?

PORTER. Faith, sir, we were carousing till the second cock; and drink, sir, is a great provoker of three things.

MACDUFF. What three things does drink especially provoke?

PORTER. Marry, sir, nose-painting, sleep, and urine. Lechery, sir, it provokes and unprovokes; it provokes the desire, but it takes away the performance. Therefore much drink may be said to be an equivocator with lechery: it makes him, and it mars him; it sets him on, and it takes him off; it persuades him, and disheartens him; makes him stand to, and not stand to; in conclusion, equivocates him in a sleep, and giving him the lie, leaves him.

MACDUFF. I believe drink gave thee the lie last night.

PORTER. That it did, sir, i’ the very throat on me; but I requited him for his lie; and (I think) being too strong for him, though he took up my legs sometime, yet I made a shift to cast him.

MACDUFF. Is thy master stirring?

Our knocking has awak’d him; here he comes.

LENNOX. Good morrow, noble sir!

MACBETH. Good morrow, both!

MACDUFF. Is the King stirring, worthy thane?

MACBETH. Not yet.

MACDUFF. He did command me to call timely on him. I have almost slipp’d the hour.

MACBETH. I’ll bring you to him.

MACDUFF. I know this is a joyful trouble to you; But yet ’tis one.

MACBETH. The labour we delight in physics pain. This is the door.

MACDUFF. I’ll make so bold to call. For ’tis my limited service.

[Exit Macduff.]

LENNOX. Goes the King hence today?

MACBETH. He does. He did appoint so.

LENNOX. The night has been unruly: where we lay, Our chimneys were blown down and, as they say, Lamentings heard i’ th’ air, strange screams of death, And prophesying, with accents terrible, Of dire combustion and confus’d events, New hatch’d to the woeful time. The obscure bird Clamour’d the live-long night. Some say the earth Was feverous, and did shake.

MACBETH. ’Twas a rough night.

LENNOX. My young remembrance cannot parallel A fellow to it.

Enter Macduff.

MACDUFF. O horror, horror, horror! Tongue nor heart cannot conceive nor name thee!

MACBETH, LENNOX. What’s the matter?

MACDUFF. Confusion now hath made his masterpiece! Most sacrilegious murder hath broke ope The Lord’s anointed temple, and stole thence The life o’ th’ building.

MACBETH. What is’t you say? the life?

LENNOX. Mean you his majesty?

MACDUFF. Approach the chamber, and destroy your sight With a new Gorgon. Do not bid me speak. See, and then speak yourselves.

[Exeunt Macbeth and Lennox.]

Awake, awake!— Ring the alarum bell.—Murder and treason! Banquo and Donalbain! Malcolm! awake! Shake off this downy sleep, death’s counterfeit, And look on death itself! Up, up, and see The great doom’s image. Malcolm! Banquo! As from your graves rise up, and walk like sprites To countenance this horror!

[Alarum-bell rings.]

LADY MACBETH. What’s the business, That such a hideous trumpet calls to parley The sleepers of the house? Speak, speak!

MACDUFF. O gentle lady, ’Tis not for you to hear what I can speak: The repetition, in a woman’s ear, Would murder as it fell.

Enter Banquo.

O Banquo, Banquo! Our royal master’s murder’d!

LADY MACBETH. Woe, alas! What, in our house?

BANQUO. Too cruel anywhere.— Dear Duff, I pr’ythee, contradict thyself, And say it is not so.

Enter Macbeth and Lennox with Ross.

MACBETH. Had I but died an hour before this chance, I had liv’d a blessed time; for, from this instant There’s nothing serious in mortality. All is but toys: renown and grace is dead; The wine of life is drawn, and the mere lees Is left this vault to brag of.

Enter Malcolm and Donalbain.

DONALBAIN. What is amiss?

MACBETH. You are, and do not know’t: The spring, the head, the fountain of your blood Is stopp’d; the very source of it is stopp’d.

MACDUFF. Your royal father’s murder’d.

MALCOLM. O, by whom?

LENNOX. Those of his chamber, as it seem’d, had done’t: Their hands and faces were all badg’d with blood; So were their daggers, which, unwip’d, we found Upon their pillows. They star’d, and were distracted; No man’s life was to be trusted with them.

MACBETH. O, yet I do repent me of my fury, That I did kill them.

MACDUFF. Wherefore did you so?

MACBETH. Who can be wise, amaz’d, temperate, and furious, Loyal and neutral, in a moment? No man: Th’ expedition of my violent love Outrun the pauser, reason. Here lay Duncan, His silver skin lac’d with his golden blood; And his gash’d stabs look’d like a breach in nature For ruin’s wasteful entrance: there, the murderers, Steep’d in the colours of their trade, their daggers Unmannerly breech’d with gore. Who could refrain, That had a heart to love, and in that heart Courage to make’s love known?

LADY MACBETH. Help me hence, ho!

MACDUFF. Look to the lady.

MALCOLM. Why do we hold our tongues, That most may claim this argument for ours?

DONALBAIN. What should be spoken here, where our fate, Hid in an auger hole, may rush, and seize us? Let’s away. Our tears are not yet brew’d.

MALCOLM. Nor our strong sorrow Upon the foot of motion.

BANQUO. Look to the lady:—

[Lady Macbeth is carried out.]

And when we have our naked frailties hid, That suffer in exposure, let us meet, And question this most bloody piece of work To know it further. Fears and scruples shake us: In the great hand of God I stand; and thence Against the undivulg’d pretence I fight Of treasonous malice.

MACDUFF. And so do I.

ALL. So all.

MACBETH. Let’s briefly put on manly readiness, And meet i’ th’ hall together.

ALL. Well contented.

[Exeunt all but Malcolm and Donalbain.]

MALCOLM. What will you do? Let’s not consort with them: To show an unfelt sorrow is an office Which the false man does easy. I’ll to England.

DONALBAIN. To Ireland, I. Our separated fortune Shall keep us both the safer. Where we are, There’s daggers in men’s smiles: the near in blood, The nearer bloody.

MALCOLM. This murderous shaft that’s shot Hath not yet lighted; and our safest way Is to avoid the aim. Therefore to horse; And let us not be dainty of leave-taking, But shift away. There’s warrant in that theft Which steals itself, when there’s no mercy left.

SCENE IV. The same. Without the Castle.

Enter Ross and an Old Man.

OLD MAN. Threescore and ten I can remember well, Within the volume of which time I have seen Hours dreadful and things strange, but this sore night Hath trifled former knowings.

ROSS. Ha, good father, Thou seest the heavens, as troubled with man’s act, Threatens his bloody stage: by the clock ’tis day, And yet dark night strangles the travelling lamp. Is’t night’s predominance, or the day’s shame, That darkness does the face of earth entomb, When living light should kiss it?

OLD MAN. ’Tis unnatural, Even like the deed that’s done. On Tuesday last, A falcon, towering in her pride of place, Was by a mousing owl hawk’d at and kill’d.

ROSS. And Duncan’s horses (a thing most strange and certain) Beauteous and swift, the minions of their race, Turn’d wild in nature, broke their stalls, flung out, Contending ’gainst obedience, as they would make War with mankind.

OLD MAN. ’Tis said they eat each other.

ROSS. They did so; to the amazement of mine eyes, That look’d upon’t. Here comes the good Macduff.

How goes the world, sir, now?

MACDUFF. Why, see you not?

ROSS. Is’t known who did this more than bloody deed?

MACDUFF. Those that Macbeth hath slain.

ROSS. Alas, the day! What good could they pretend?

MACDUFF. They were suborn’d. Malcolm and Donalbain, the King’s two sons, Are stol’n away and fled; which puts upon them Suspicion of the deed.

ROSS. ’Gainst nature still: Thriftless ambition, that will ravin up Thine own life’s means!—Then ’tis most like The sovereignty will fall upon Macbeth.

MACDUFF. He is already nam’d; and gone to Scone To be invested.

ROSS. Where is Duncan’s body?

MACDUFF. Carried to Colmekill, The sacred storehouse of his predecessors, And guardian of their bones.

ROSS. Will you to Scone?

MACDUFF. No, cousin, I’ll to Fife.

ROSS. Well, I will thither.

MACDUFF. Well, may you see things well done there. Adieu! Lest our old robes sit easier than our new!

ROSS. Farewell, father.

OLD MAN. God’s benison go with you; and with those That would make good of bad, and friends of foes!

SCENE I. Forres. A Room in the Palace.

BANQUO. Thou hast it now, King, Cawdor, Glamis, all, As the Weird Women promis’d; and, I fear, Thou play’dst most foully for’t; yet it was said It should not stand in thy posterity; But that myself should be the root and father Of many kings. If there come truth from them (As upon thee, Macbeth, their speeches shine) Why, by the verities on thee made good, May they not be my oracles as well, And set me up in hope? But hush; no more.

Sennet sounded. Enter Macbeth as King, Lady Macbeth as Queen; Lennox, Ross, Lords, and Attendants.

MACBETH. Here’s our chief guest.

LADY MACBETH. If he had been forgotten, It had been as a gap in our great feast, And all-thing unbecoming.

MACBETH. Tonight we hold a solemn supper, sir, And I’ll request your presence.

BANQUO. Let your Highness Command upon me, to the which my duties Are with a most indissoluble tie For ever knit.

MACBETH. Ride you this afternoon?

BANQUO. Ay, my good lord.

MACBETH. We should have else desir’d your good advice (Which still hath been both grave and prosperous) In this day’s council; but we’ll take tomorrow. Is’t far you ride?

BANQUO. As far, my lord, as will fill up the time ’Twixt this and supper: go not my horse the better, I must become a borrower of the night, For a dark hour or twain.

MACBETH. Fail not our feast.

BANQUO. My lord, I will not.

MACBETH. We hear our bloody cousins are bestow’d In England and in Ireland; not confessing Their cruel parricide, filling their hearers With strange invention. But of that tomorrow, When therewithal we shall have cause of state Craving us jointly. Hie you to horse: adieu, Till you return at night. Goes Fleance with you?

BANQUO. Ay, my good lord: our time does call upon’s.

MACBETH. I wish your horses swift and sure of foot; And so I do commend you to their backs. Farewell.—

[Exit Banquo.]

Let every man be master of his time Till seven at night; to make society The sweeter welcome, we will keep ourself Till supper time alone: while then, God be with you.

[Exeunt Lady Macbeth, Lords, &c.]

Sirrah, a word with you. Attend those men Our pleasure?

SERVANT. They are, my lord, without the palace gate.

MACBETH. Bring them before us.

To be thus is nothing, But to be safely thus. Our fears in Banquo Stick deep, and in his royalty of nature Reigns that which would be fear’d: ’tis much he dares; And, to that dauntless temper of his mind, He hath a wisdom that doth guide his valour To act in safety. There is none but he Whose being I do fear: and under him My genius is rebuk’d; as, it is said, Mark Antony’s was by Caesar. He chid the sisters When first they put the name of king upon me, And bade them speak to him; then, prophet-like, They hail’d him father to a line of kings: Upon my head they plac’d a fruitless crown, And put a barren sceptre in my gripe, Thence to be wrench’d with an unlineal hand, No son of mine succeeding. If’t be so, For Banquo’s issue have I fil’d my mind; For them the gracious Duncan have I murder’d; Put rancours in the vessel of my peace Only for them; and mine eternal jewel Given to the common enemy of man, To make them kings, the seed of Banquo kings! Rather than so, come, fate, into the list, And champion me to th’ utterance!—Who’s there?—

Enter Servant with two Murderers.

Now go to the door, and stay there till we call.

Was it not yesterday we spoke together?

FIRST MURDERER. It was, so please your Highness.

MACBETH. Well then, now Have you consider’d of my speeches? Know That it was he, in the times past, which held you So under fortune, which you thought had been Our innocent self? This I made good to you In our last conference, pass’d in probation with you How you were borne in hand, how cross’d, the instruments, Who wrought with them, and all things else that might To half a soul and to a notion craz’d Say, “Thus did Banquo.”

FIRST MURDERER. You made it known to us.

MACBETH. I did so; and went further, which is now Our point of second meeting. Do you find Your patience so predominant in your nature, That you can let this go? Are you so gospell’d, To pray for this good man and for his issue, Whose heavy hand hath bow’d you to the grave, And beggar’d yours forever?

FIRST MURDERER. We are men, my liege.

MACBETH. Ay, in the catalogue ye go for men; As hounds, and greyhounds, mongrels, spaniels, curs, Shoughs, water-rugs, and demi-wolves are clept All by the name of dogs: the valu’d file Distinguishes the swift, the slow, the subtle, The housekeeper, the hunter, every one According to the gift which bounteous nature Hath in him clos’d; whereby he does receive Particular addition, from the bill That writes them all alike: and so of men. Now, if you have a station in the file, Not i’ th’ worst rank of manhood, say’t; And I will put that business in your bosoms, Whose execution takes your enemy off, Grapples you to the heart and love of us, Who wear our health but sickly in his life, Which in his death were perfect.

SECOND MURDERER. I am one, my liege, Whom the vile blows and buffets of the world Hath so incens’d that I am reckless what I do to spite the world.

FIRST MURDERER. And I another, So weary with disasters, tugg’d with fortune, That I would set my life on any chance, To mend it or be rid on’t.

MACBETH. Both of you Know Banquo was your enemy.

BOTH MURDERERS. True, my lord.

MACBETH. So is he mine; and in such bloody distance, That every minute of his being thrusts Against my near’st of life; and though I could With barefac’d power sweep him from my sight, And bid my will avouch it, yet I must not, For certain friends that are both his and mine, Whose loves I may not drop, but wail his fall Who I myself struck down: and thence it is That I to your assistance do make love, Masking the business from the common eye For sundry weighty reasons.

SECOND MURDERER. We shall, my lord, Perform what you command us.

FIRST MURDERER. Though our lives—

MACBETH. Your spirits shine through you. Within this hour at most, I will advise you where to plant yourselves, Acquaint you with the perfect spy o’ th’ time, The moment on’t; for’t must be done tonight And something from the palace; always thought That I require a clearness. And with him (To leave no rubs nor botches in the work) Fleance his son, that keeps him company, Whose absence is no less material to me Than is his father’s, must embrace the fate Of that dark hour. Resolve yourselves apart. I’ll come to you anon.

BOTH MURDERERS. We are resolv’d, my lord.

MACBETH. I’ll call upon you straight: abide within.

It is concluded. Banquo, thy soul’s flight, If it find heaven, must find it out tonight.

SCENE II. The same. Another Room in the Palace.

Enter Lady Macbeth and a Servant.

LADY MACBETH. Is Banquo gone from court?

SERVANT. Ay, madam, but returns again tonight.

LADY MACBETH. Say to the King, I would attend his leisure For a few words.

SERVANT. Madam, I will.

LADY MACBETH. Naught’s had, all’s spent, Where our desire is got without content: ’Tis safer to be that which we destroy, Than by destruction dwell in doubtful joy.

How now, my lord, why do you keep alone, Of sorriest fancies your companions making, Using those thoughts which should indeed have died With them they think on? Things without all remedy Should be without regard: what’s done is done.

MACBETH. We have scorch’d the snake, not kill’d it. She’ll close, and be herself; whilst our poor malice Remains in danger of her former tooth. But let the frame of things disjoint, Both the worlds suffer, Ere we will eat our meal in fear, and sleep In the affliction of these terrible dreams That shake us nightly. Better be with the dead, Whom we, to gain our peace, have sent to peace, Than on the torture of the mind to lie In restless ecstasy. Duncan is in his grave; After life’s fitful fever he sleeps well; Treason has done his worst: nor steel, nor poison, Malice domestic, foreign levy, nothing Can touch him further.

LADY MACBETH. Come on, Gently my lord, sleek o’er your rugged looks; Be bright and jovial among your guests tonight.

MACBETH. So shall I, love; and so, I pray, be you. Let your remembrance apply to Banquo; Present him eminence, both with eye and tongue: Unsafe the while, that we Must lave our honours in these flattering streams, And make our faces vizards to our hearts, Disguising what they are.

LADY MACBETH. You must leave this.

MACBETH. O, full of scorpions is my mind, dear wife! Thou know’st that Banquo, and his Fleance, lives.

LADY MACBETH. But in them nature’s copy’s not eterne.

MACBETH. There’s comfort yet; they are assailable. Then be thou jocund. Ere the bat hath flown His cloister’d flight, ere to black Hecate’s summons The shard-born beetle, with his drowsy hums, Hath rung night’s yawning peal, there shall be done A deed of dreadful note.

LADY MACBETH. What’s to be done?

MACBETH. Be innocent of the knowledge, dearest chuck, Till thou applaud the deed. Come, seeling night, Scarf up the tender eye of pitiful day, And with thy bloody and invisible hand Cancel and tear to pieces that great bond Which keeps me pale!—Light thickens; and the crow Makes wing to th’ rooky wood. Good things of day begin to droop and drowse, Whiles night’s black agents to their preys do rouse. Thou marvell’st at my words: but hold thee still; Things bad begun make strong themselves by ill. So, pr’ythee, go with me.

SCENE III. The same. A Park or Lawn, with a gate leading to the Palace.

Enter three Murderers.

FIRST MURDERER. But who did bid thee join with us?

THIRD MURDERER. Macbeth.

SECOND MURDERER. He needs not our mistrust; since he delivers Our offices and what we have to do To the direction just.

FIRST MURDERER. Then stand with us. The west yet glimmers with some streaks of day. Now spurs the lated traveller apace, To gain the timely inn; and near approaches The subject of our watch.

THIRD MURDERER. Hark! I hear horses.

BANQUO. [Within.] Give us a light there, ho!

SECOND MURDERER. Then ’tis he; the rest That are within the note of expectation Already are i’ th’ court.

FIRST MURDERER. His horses go about.

THIRD MURDERER. Almost a mile; but he does usually, So all men do, from hence to the palace gate Make it their walk.

Enter Banquo and Fleance with a torch.

SECOND MURDERER. A light, a light!

THIRD MURDERER. ’Tis he.

FIRST MURDERER. Stand to’t.

BANQUO. It will be rain tonight.

FIRST MURDERER. Let it come down.

[Assaults Banquo.]

BANQUO. O, treachery! Fly, good Fleance, fly, fly, fly! Thou mayst revenge—O slave!

[Dies. Fleance escapes.]

THIRD MURDERER. Who did strike out the light?

FIRST MURDERER. Was’t not the way?

THIRD MURDERER. There’s but one down: the son is fled.

SECOND MURDERER. We have lost best half of our affair.

FIRST MURDERER. Well, let’s away, and say how much is done.

SCENE IV. The same. A Room of state in the Palace.

A banquet prepared. Enter Macbeth, Lady Macbeth, Ross, Lennox, Lords and Attendants.

MACBETH. You know your own degrees, sit down. At first And last the hearty welcome.

LORDS. Thanks to your Majesty.

MACBETH. Ourself will mingle with society, And play the humble host. Our hostess keeps her state; but, in best time, We will require her welcome.

LADY MACBETH. Pronounce it for me, sir, to all our friends; For my heart speaks they are welcome.

Enter first Murderer to the door.

MACBETH. See, they encounter thee with their hearts’ thanks. Both sides are even: here I’ll sit i’ th’ midst.

Be large in mirth; anon we’ll drink a measure The table round. There’s blood upon thy face.

MURDERER. ’Tis Banquo’s then.

MACBETH. ’Tis better thee without than he within. Is he dispatch’d?

MURDERER. My lord, his throat is cut. That I did for him.

MACBETH. Thou art the best o’ th’ cut-throats; Yet he’s good that did the like for Fleance: If thou didst it, thou art the nonpareil.

MURDERER. Most royal sir, Fleance is ’scap’d.

MACBETH. Then comes my fit again: I had else been perfect; Whole as the marble, founded as the rock, As broad and general as the casing air: But now I am cabin’d, cribb’d, confin’d, bound in To saucy doubts and fears. But Banquo’s safe?

MURDERER. Ay, my good lord. Safe in a ditch he bides, With twenty trenched gashes on his head; The least a death to nature.

MACBETH. Thanks for that. There the grown serpent lies; the worm that’s fled Hath nature that in time will venom breed, No teeth for th’ present.—Get thee gone; tomorrow We’ll hear, ourselves, again.

[Exit Murderer.]

LADY MACBETH. My royal lord, You do not give the cheer: the feast is sold That is not often vouch’d, while ’tis a-making, ’Tis given with welcome. To feed were best at home; From thence the sauce to meat is ceremony; Meeting were bare without it.

The Ghost of Banquo rises, and sits in Macbeth’s place.

MACBETH. Sweet remembrancer!— Now, good digestion wait on appetite, And health on both!

LENNOX. May’t please your Highness sit.

MACBETH. Here had we now our country’s honour roof’d, Were the grac’d person of our Banquo present; Who may I rather challenge for unkindness Than pity for mischance!

ROSS. His absence, sir, Lays blame upon his promise. Please’t your Highness To grace us with your royal company?

MACBETH. The table’s full.

LENNOX. Here is a place reserv’d, sir.

MACBETH. Where?

LENNOX. Here, my good lord. What is’t that moves your Highness?

MACBETH. Which of you have done this?

LORDS. What, my good lord?

MACBETH. Thou canst not say I did it. Never shake Thy gory locks at me.

ROSS. Gentlemen, rise; his Highness is not well.

LADY MACBETH. Sit, worthy friends. My lord is often thus, And hath been from his youth: pray you, keep seat; The fit is momentary; upon a thought He will again be well. If much you note him, You shall offend him, and extend his passion. Feed, and regard him not.—Are you a man?

MACBETH. Ay, and a bold one, that dare look on that Which might appal the devil.

LADY MACBETH. O proper stuff! This is the very painting of your fear: This is the air-drawn dagger which you said, Led you to Duncan. O, these flaws, and starts (Impostors to true fear), would well become A woman’s story at a winter’s fire, Authoris’d by her grandam. Shame itself! Why do you make such faces? When all’s done, You look but on a stool.

MACBETH. Pr’ythee, see there! Behold! look! lo! how say you? Why, what care I? If thou canst nod, speak too.— If charnel houses and our graves must send Those that we bury back, our monuments Shall be the maws of kites.

[Ghost disappears.]

LADY MACBETH. What, quite unmann’d in folly?

MACBETH. If I stand here, I saw him.

LADY MACBETH. Fie, for shame!

MACBETH. Blood hath been shed ere now, i’ th’ olden time, Ere humane statute purg’d the gentle weal; Ay, and since too, murders have been perform’d Too terrible for the ear: the time has been, That, when the brains were out, the man would die, And there an end; but now they rise again, With twenty mortal murders on their crowns, And push us from our stools. This is more strange Than such a murder is.

LADY MACBETH. My worthy lord, Your noble friends do lack you.

MACBETH. I do forget.— Do not muse at me, my most worthy friends. I have a strange infirmity, which is nothing To those that know me. Come, love and health to all; Then I’ll sit down.—Give me some wine, fill full.— I drink to the general joy o’ th’ whole table, And to our dear friend Banquo, whom we miss: Would he were here.

Ghost rises again.

To all, and him, we thirst, And all to all.

LORDS. Our duties, and the pledge.

MACBETH. Avaunt! and quit my sight! let the earth hide thee! Thy bones are marrowless, thy blood is cold; Thou hast no speculation in those eyes Which thou dost glare with!

LADY MACBETH. Think of this, good peers, But as a thing of custom: ’tis no other, Only it spoils the pleasure of the time.

MACBETH. What man dare, I dare: Approach thou like the rugged Russian bear, The arm’d rhinoceros, or th’ Hyrcan tiger; Take any shape but that, and my firm nerves Shall never tremble: or be alive again, And dare me to the desert with thy sword; If trembling I inhabit then, protest me The baby of a girl. Hence, horrible shadow! Unreal mock’ry, hence!

Why, so;—being gone, I am a man again.—Pray you, sit still.

LADY MACBETH. You have displaced the mirth, broke the good meeting With most admir’d disorder.

MACBETH. Can such things be, And overcome us like a summer’s cloud, Without our special wonder? You make me strange Even to the disposition that I owe, When now I think you can behold such sights, And keep the natural ruby of your cheeks, When mine are blanch’d with fear.

ROSS. What sights, my lord?

LADY MACBETH. I pray you, speak not; he grows worse and worse; Question enrages him. At once, good night:— Stand not upon the order of your going, But go at once.

LENNOX. Good night; and better health Attend his Majesty!

LADY MACBETH. A kind good night to all!

[Exeunt all Lords and Attendants.]

MACBETH. It will have blood, they say, blood will have blood. Stones have been known to move, and trees to speak; Augurs, and understood relations, have By magot-pies, and choughs, and rooks, brought forth The secret’st man of blood.—What is the night?

LADY MACBETH. Almost at odds with morning, which is which.

MACBETH. How say’st thou, that Macduff denies his person At our great bidding?

LADY MACBETH. Did you send to him, sir?

MACBETH. I hear it by the way; but I will send. There’s not a one of them but in his house I keep a servant fee’d. I will tomorrow (And betimes I will) to the Weird Sisters: More shall they speak; for now I am bent to know, By the worst means, the worst. For mine own good, All causes shall give way: I am in blood Stepp’d in so far that, should I wade no more, Returning were as tedious as go o’er. Strange things I have in head, that will to hand, Which must be acted ere they may be scann’d.

LADY MACBETH. You lack the season of all natures, sleep.

MACBETH. Come, we’ll to sleep. My strange and self-abuse Is the initiate fear that wants hard use. We are yet but young in deed.

SCENE V. The heath.

Thunder. Enter the three Witches meeting Hecate.

FIRST WITCH. Why, how now, Hecate? you look angerly.

HECATE. Have I not reason, beldams as you are, Saucy and overbold? How did you dare To trade and traffic with Macbeth In riddles and affairs of death; And I, the mistress of your charms, The close contriver of all harms, Was never call’d to bear my part, Or show the glory of our art? And, which is worse, all you have done Hath been but for a wayward son, Spiteful and wrathful; who, as others do, Loves for his own ends, not for you. But make amends now: get you gone, And at the pit of Acheron Meet me i’ th’ morning: thither he Will come to know his destiny. Your vessels and your spells provide, Your charms, and everything beside. I am for th’ air; this night I’ll spend Unto a dismal and a fatal end. Great business must be wrought ere noon. Upon the corner of the moon There hangs a vap’rous drop profound; I’ll catch it ere it come to ground: And that, distill’d by magic sleights, Shall raise such artificial sprites, As, by the strength of their illusion, Shall draw him on to his confusion. He shall spurn fate, scorn death, and bear His hopes ’bove wisdom, grace, and fear. And you all know, security Is mortals’ chiefest enemy.

[Music and song within, “Come away, come away” &c.]

Hark! I am call’d; my little spirit, see, Sits in a foggy cloud and stays for me.

FIRST WITCH. Come, let’s make haste; she’ll soon be back again.

SCENE VI. Forres. A Room in the Palace.

Enter Lennox and another Lord.

LENNOX. My former speeches have but hit your thoughts, Which can interpret farther: only, I say, Thing’s have been strangely borne. The gracious Duncan Was pitied of Macbeth:—marry, he was dead:— And the right valiant Banquo walk’d too late; Whom, you may say, if’t please you, Fleance kill’d, For Fleance fled. Men must not walk too late. Who cannot want the thought, how monstrous It was for Malcolm and for Donalbain To kill their gracious father? damned fact! How it did grieve Macbeth! did he not straight, In pious rage, the two delinquents tear That were the slaves of drink and thralls of sleep? Was not that nobly done? Ay, and wisely too; For ’twould have anger’d any heart alive, To hear the men deny’t. So that, I say, He has borne all things well: and I do think, That had he Duncan’s sons under his key (As, and’t please heaven, he shall not) they should find What ’twere to kill a father; so should Fleance. But, peace!—for from broad words, and ’cause he fail’d His presence at the tyrant’s feast, I hear, Macduff lives in disgrace. Sir, can you tell Where he bestows himself?

LORD. The son of Duncan, From whom this tyrant holds the due of birth, Lives in the English court and is receiv’d Of the most pious Edward with such grace That the malevolence of fortune nothing Takes from his high respect. Thither Macduff Is gone to pray the holy king, upon his aid To wake Northumberland, and warlike Siward That, by the help of these (with Him above To ratify the work), we may again Give to our tables meat, sleep to our nights; Free from our feasts and banquets bloody knives, Do faithful homage, and receive free honours, All which we pine for now. And this report Hath so exasperate the King that he Prepares for some attempt of war.

LENNOX. Sent he to Macduff?

LORD. He did: and with an absolute “Sir, not I,” The cloudy messenger turns me his back, And hums, as who should say, “You’ll rue the time That clogs me with this answer.”

LENNOX. And that well might Advise him to a caution, t’ hold what distance His wisdom can provide. Some holy angel Fly to the court of England, and unfold His message ere he come, that a swift blessing May soon return to this our suffering country Under a hand accurs’d!

LORD. I’ll send my prayers with him.

SCENE I. A dark Cave. In the middle, a Cauldron Boiling.

FIRST WITCH. Thrice the brinded cat hath mew’d.

SECOND WITCH. Thrice, and once the hedge-pig whin’d.

THIRD WITCH. Harpier cries:—’Tis time, ’tis time.

FIRST WITCH. Round about the cauldron go; In the poison’d entrails throw.— Toad, that under cold stone Days and nights has thirty-one Swelter’d venom sleeping got, Boil thou first i’ th’ charmed pot!

ALL. Double, double, toil and trouble; Fire, burn; and cauldron, bubble.

SECOND WITCH. Fillet of a fenny snake, In the cauldron boil and bake; Eye of newt, and toe of frog, Wool of bat, and tongue of dog, Adder’s fork, and blind-worm’s sting, Lizard’s leg, and howlet’s wing, For a charm of powerful trouble, Like a hell-broth boil and bubble.

THIRD WITCH. Scale of dragon, tooth of wolf, Witch’s mummy, maw and gulf Of the ravin’d salt-sea shark, Root of hemlock digg’d i’ th’ dark, Liver of blaspheming Jew, Gall of goat, and slips of yew Sliver’d in the moon’s eclipse, Nose of Turk, and Tartar’s lips, Finger of birth-strangled babe Ditch-deliver’d by a drab, Make the gruel thick and slab: Add thereto a tiger’s chaudron, For th’ ingredients of our cauldron.

SECOND WITCH. Cool it with a baboon’s blood. Then the charm is firm and good.

Enter Hecate.

HECATE. O, well done! I commend your pains, And everyone shall share i’ th’ gains. And now about the cauldron sing, Like elves and fairies in a ring, Enchanting all that you put in.

[Music and a song: “Black Spirits,” &c.]

[Exit Hecate.]

SECOND WITCH. By the pricking of my thumbs, Something wicked this way comes. Open, locks, Whoever knocks!

MACBETH. How now, you secret, black, and midnight hags! What is’t you do?

ALL. A deed without a name.

MACBETH. I conjure you, by that which you profess, (Howe’er you come to know it) answer me: Though you untie the winds, and let them fight Against the churches; though the yesty waves Confound and swallow navigation up; Though bladed corn be lodg’d, and trees blown down; Though castles topple on their warders’ heads; Though palaces and pyramids do slope Their heads to their foundations; though the treasure Of nature’s germens tumble all together, Even till destruction sicken, answer me To what I ask you.

FIRST WITCH. Speak.

SECOND WITCH. Demand.

THIRD WITCH. We’ll answer.

FIRST WITCH. Say, if thou’dst rather hear it from our mouths, Or from our masters?

MACBETH. Call ’em, let me see ’em.

FIRST WITCH. Pour in sow’s blood, that hath eaten Her nine farrow; grease that’s sweaten From the murderer’s gibbet throw Into the flame.

ALL. Come, high or low; Thyself and office deftly show!

[Thunder. An Apparition of an armed Head rises.]

MACBETH. Tell me, thou unknown power,—

FIRST WITCH. He knows thy thought: Hear his speech, but say thou naught.

APPARITION. Macbeth! Macbeth! Macbeth! Beware Macduff; Beware the Thane of Fife.—Dismiss me.—Enough.

[Descends.]

MACBETH. Whate’er thou art, for thy good caution, thanks; Thou hast harp’d my fear aright.—But one word more.

FIRST WITCH. He will not be commanded. Here’s another, More potent than the first.

[Thunder. An Apparition of a bloody Child rises.]

APPARITION. Macbeth! Macbeth! Macbeth!

MACBETH. Had I three ears, I’d hear thee.

APPARITION. Be bloody, bold, and resolute. Laugh to scorn The power of man, for none of woman born Shall harm Macbeth.

MACBETH. Then live, Macduff: what need I fear of thee? But yet I’ll make assurance double sure, And take a bond of fate. Thou shalt not live; That I may tell pale-hearted fear it lies, And sleep in spite of thunder.

[Thunder. An Apparition of a Child crowned, with a tree in his hand, rises.]

What is this, That rises like the issue of a king, And wears upon his baby brow the round And top of sovereignty?

ALL. Listen, but speak not to’t.

APPARITION. Be lion-mettled, proud, and take no care Who chafes, who frets, or where conspirers are: Macbeth shall never vanquish’d be, until Great Birnam wood to high Dunsinane hill Shall come against him.

MACBETH. That will never be: Who can impress the forest; bid the tree Unfix his earth-bound root? Sweet bodements, good! Rebellious head, rise never till the wood Of Birnam rise, and our high-plac’d Macbeth Shall live the lease of nature, pay his breath To time and mortal custom.—Yet my heart Throbs to know one thing: tell me, if your art Can tell so much, shall Banquo’s issue ever Reign in this kingdom?

ALL. Seek to know no more.

MACBETH. I will be satisfied: deny me this, And an eternal curse fall on you! Let me know. Why sinks that cauldron? and what noise is this?

[Hautboys.]

FIRST WITCH. Show!

SECOND WITCH. Show!

THIRD WITCH. Show!

ALL. Show his eyes, and grieve his heart; Come like shadows, so depart!

[A show of eight kings appear, and pass over in order, the last with a glass in his hand; Banquo following.]

MACBETH. Thou are too like the spirit of Banquo. Down! Thy crown does sear mine eyeballs:—and thy hair, Thou other gold-bound brow, is like the first. A third is like the former.—Filthy hags! Why do you show me this?—A fourth!—Start, eyes! What, will the line stretch out to th’ crack of doom? Another yet!—A seventh!—I’ll see no more:— And yet the eighth appears, who bears a glass Which shows me many more; and some I see That twofold balls and treble sceptres carry. Horrible sight!—Now I see ’tis true; For the blood-bolter’d Banquo smiles upon me, And points at them for his.—What! is this so?

FIRST WITCH. Ay, sir, all this is so:—but why Stands Macbeth thus amazedly?— Come, sisters, cheer we up his sprites, And show the best of our delights. I’ll charm the air to give a sound, While you perform your antic round; That this great king may kindly say, Our duties did his welcome pay.

[Music. The Witches dance, and vanish.]

MACBETH. Where are they? Gone?—Let this pernicious hour Stand aye accursed in the calendar!— Come in, without there!

Enter Lennox.

LENNOX. What’s your Grace’s will?

MACBETH. Saw you the Weird Sisters?

LENNOX. No, my lord.

MACBETH. Came they not by you?

LENNOX. No, indeed, my lord.

MACBETH. Infected be the air whereon they ride; And damn’d all those that trust them!—I did hear The galloping of horse: who was’t came by?

LENNOX. ’Tis two or three, my lord, that bring you word Macduff is fled to England.

MACBETH. Fled to England!

LENNOX. Ay, my good lord.

MACBETH. Time, thou anticipat’st my dread exploits: The flighty purpose never is o’ertook Unless the deed go with it. From this moment The very firstlings of my heart shall be The firstlings of my hand. And even now, To crown my thoughts with acts, be it thought and done: The castle of Macduff I will surprise; Seize upon Fife; give to th’ edge o’ th’ sword His wife, his babes, and all unfortunate souls That trace him in his line. No boasting like a fool; This deed I’ll do before this purpose cool: But no more sights!—Where are these gentlemen? Come, bring me where they are.

SCENE II. Fife. A Room in Macduff’s Castle.

Enter Lady Macduff her Son and Ross.

LADY MACDUFF. What had he done, to make him fly the land?

ROSS. You must have patience, madam.

LADY MACDUFF. He had none: His flight was madness: when our actions do not, Our fears do make us traitors.

ROSS. You know not Whether it was his wisdom or his fear.

LADY MACDUFF. Wisdom! to leave his wife, to leave his babes, His mansion, and his titles, in a place From whence himself does fly? He loves us not: He wants the natural touch; for the poor wren, The most diminutive of birds, will fight, Her young ones in her nest, against the owl. All is the fear, and nothing is the love; As little is the wisdom, where the flight So runs against all reason.

ROSS. My dearest coz, I pray you, school yourself: but, for your husband, He is noble, wise, judicious, and best knows The fits o’ th’ season. I dare not speak much further: But cruel are the times, when we are traitors, And do not know ourselves; when we hold rumour From what we fear, yet know not what we fear, But float upon a wild and violent sea Each way and move—I take my leave of you: Shall not be long but I’ll be here again. Things at the worst will cease, or else climb upward To what they were before.—My pretty cousin, Blessing upon you!

LADY MACDUFF. Father’d he is, and yet he’s fatherless.

ROSS. I am so much a fool, should I stay longer, It would be my disgrace and your discomfort: I take my leave at once.

LADY MACDUFF. Sirrah, your father’s dead. And what will you do now? How will you live?

SON. As birds do, mother.

LADY MACDUFF. What, with worms and flies?

SON. With what I get, I mean; and so do they.

LADY MACDUFF. Poor bird! thou’dst never fear the net nor lime, The pit-fall nor the gin.

SON. Why should I, mother? Poor birds they are not set for. My father is not dead, for all your saying.

LADY MACDUFF. Yes, he is dead: how wilt thou do for a father?

SON. Nay, how will you do for a husband?

LADY MACDUFF. Why, I can buy me twenty at any market.

SON. Then you’ll buy ’em to sell again.

LADY MACDUFF. Thou speak’st with all thy wit; And yet, i’ faith, with wit enough for thee.

SON. Was my father a traitor, mother?

LADY MACDUFF. Ay, that he was.

SON. What is a traitor?

LADY MACDUFF. Why, one that swears and lies.

SON. And be all traitors that do so?

LADY MACDUFF. Every one that does so is a traitor, and must be hanged.

SON. And must they all be hanged that swear and lie?

LADY MACDUFF. Every one.

SON. Who must hang them?

LADY MACDUFF. Why, the honest men.

SON. Then the liars and swearers are fools: for there are liars and swearers enow to beat the honest men and hang up them.

LADY MACDUFF. Now, God help thee, poor monkey! But how wilt thou do for a father?

SON. If he were dead, you’ld weep for him: if you would not, it were a good sign that I should quickly have a new father.

LADY MACDUFF. Poor prattler, how thou talk’st!

MESSENGER. Bless you, fair dame! I am not to you known, Though in your state of honour I am perfect. I doubt some danger does approach you nearly: If you will take a homely man’s advice, Be not found here; hence, with your little ones. To fright you thus, methinks, I am too savage; To do worse to you were fell cruelty, Which is too nigh your person. Heaven preserve you! I dare abide no longer.

LADY MACDUFF. Whither should I fly? I have done no harm. But I remember now I am in this earthly world, where to do harm Is often laudable; to do good sometime Accounted dangerous folly: why then, alas, Do I put up that womanly defence, To say I have done no harm? What are these faces?

Enter Murderers.

FIRST MURDERER. Where is your husband?

LADY MACDUFF. I hope, in no place so unsanctified Where such as thou mayst find him.

FIRST MURDERER. He’s a traitor.

SON. Thou liest, thou shag-ear’d villain!

FIRST MURDERER. What, you egg!

Young fry of treachery!

SON. He has kill’d me, mother: Run away, I pray you!

[Dies. Exit Lady Macduff, crying “Murder!” and pursued by the Murderers.]

SCENE III. England. Before the King’s Palace.

Enter Malcolm and Macduff.

MALCOLM. Let us seek out some desolate shade and there Weep our sad bosoms empty.

MACDUFF. Let us rather Hold fast the mortal sword, and, like good men, Bestride our down-fall’n birthdom. Each new morn New widows howl, new orphans cry; new sorrows Strike heaven on the face, that it resounds As if it felt with Scotland, and yell’d out Like syllable of dolour.

MALCOLM. What I believe, I’ll wail; What know, believe; and what I can redress, As I shall find the time to friend, I will. What you have spoke, it may be so, perchance. This tyrant, whose sole name blisters our tongues, Was once thought honest: you have loved him well; He hath not touch’d you yet. I am young; but something You may deserve of him through me; and wisdom To offer up a weak, poor, innocent lamb To appease an angry god.

MACDUFF. I am not treacherous.

MALCOLM. But Macbeth is. A good and virtuous nature may recoil In an imperial charge. But I shall crave your pardon. That which you are, my thoughts cannot transpose. Angels are bright still, though the brightest fell: Though all things foul would wear the brows of grace, Yet grace must still look so.

MACDUFF. I have lost my hopes.

MALCOLM. Perchance even there where I did find my doubts. Why in that rawness left you wife and child, Those precious motives, those strong knots of love, Without leave-taking?—I pray you, Let not my jealousies be your dishonours, But mine own safeties. You may be rightly just, Whatever I shall think.

MACDUFF. Bleed, bleed, poor country! Great tyranny, lay thou thy basis sure, For goodness dare not check thee! wear thou thy wrongs; The title is affeer’d.—Fare thee well, lord: I would not be the villain that thou think’st For the whole space that’s in the tyrant’s grasp And the rich East to boot.

MALCOLM. Be not offended: I speak not as in absolute fear of you. I think our country sinks beneath the yoke; It weeps, it bleeds; and each new day a gash Is added to her wounds. I think, withal, There would be hands uplifted in my right; And here, from gracious England, have I offer Of goodly thousands: but, for all this, When I shall tread upon the tyrant’s head, Or wear it on my sword, yet my poor country Shall have more vices than it had before, More suffer, and more sundry ways than ever, By him that shall succeed.

MACDUFF. What should he be?

MALCOLM. It is myself I mean; in whom I know All the particulars of vice so grafted That, when they shall be open’d, black Macbeth Will seem as pure as snow; and the poor state Esteem him as a lamb, being compar’d With my confineless harms.

MACDUFF. Not in the legions Of horrid hell can come a devil more damn’d In evils to top Macbeth.

MALCOLM. I grant him bloody, Luxurious, avaricious, false, deceitful, Sudden, malicious, smacking of every sin That has a name: but there’s no bottom, none, In my voluptuousness: your wives, your daughters, Your matrons, and your maids, could not fill up The cistern of my lust; and my desire All continent impediments would o’erbear, That did oppose my will: better Macbeth Than such an one to reign.

MACDUFF. Boundless intemperance In nature is a tyranny; it hath been Th’ untimely emptying of the happy throne, And fall of many kings. But fear not yet To take upon you what is yours: you may Convey your pleasures in a spacious plenty, And yet seem cold—the time you may so hoodwink. We have willing dames enough; there cannot be That vulture in you, to devour so many As will to greatness dedicate themselves, Finding it so inclin’d.

MALCOLM. With this there grows In my most ill-compos’d affection such A staunchless avarice, that, were I king, I should cut off the nobles for their lands; Desire his jewels, and this other’s house: And my more-having would be as a sauce To make me hunger more; that I should forge Quarrels unjust against the good and loyal, Destroying them for wealth.

MACDUFF. This avarice Sticks deeper; grows with more pernicious root Than summer-seeming lust; and it hath been The sword of our slain kings: yet do not fear; Scotland hath foisons to fill up your will, Of your mere own. All these are portable, With other graces weigh’d.

MALCOLM. But I have none: the king-becoming graces, As justice, verity, temp’rance, stableness, Bounty, perseverance, mercy, lowliness, Devotion, patience, courage, fortitude, I have no relish of them; but abound In the division of each several crime, Acting it many ways. Nay, had I power, I should Pour the sweet milk of concord into hell, Uproar the universal peace, confound All unity on earth.

MACDUFF. O Scotland, Scotland!

MALCOLM. If such a one be fit to govern, speak: I am as I have spoken.

MACDUFF. Fit to govern? No, not to live.—O nation miserable, With an untitled tyrant bloody-scepter’d, When shalt thou see thy wholesome days again, Since that the truest issue of thy throne By his own interdiction stands accus’d, And does blaspheme his breed? Thy royal father Was a most sainted king. The queen that bore thee, Oft’ner upon her knees than on her feet, Died every day she lived. Fare thee well! These evils thou repeat’st upon thyself Have banish’d me from Scotland.—O my breast, Thy hope ends here!

MALCOLM. Macduff, this noble passion, Child of integrity, hath from my soul Wiped the black scruples, reconcil’d my thoughts To thy good truth and honour. Devilish Macbeth By many of these trains hath sought to win me Into his power, and modest wisdom plucks me From over-credulous haste: but God above Deal between thee and me! for even now I put myself to thy direction, and Unspeak mine own detraction; here abjure The taints and blames I laid upon myself, For strangers to my nature. I am yet Unknown to woman; never was forsworn; Scarcely have coveted what was mine own; At no time broke my faith; would not betray The devil to his fellow; and delight No less in truth than life: my first false speaking Was this upon myself. What I am truly, Is thine and my poor country’s to command: Whither, indeed, before thy here-approach, Old Siward, with ten thousand warlike men, Already at a point, was setting forth. Now we’ll together, and the chance of goodness Be like our warranted quarrel. Why are you silent?

MACDUFF. Such welcome and unwelcome things at once ’Tis hard to reconcile.

Enter a Doctor.

MALCOLM. Well; more anon.—Comes the King forth, I pray you?

DOCTOR. Ay, sir. There are a crew of wretched souls That stay his cure: their malady convinces The great assay of art; but at his touch, Such sanctity hath heaven given his hand, They presently amend.

MALCOLM. I thank you, doctor.

[Exit Doctor.]

MACDUFF. What’s the disease he means?

MALCOLM. ’Tis call’d the evil: A most miraculous work in this good king; Which often, since my here-remain in England, I have seen him do. How he solicits heaven, Himself best knows, but strangely-visited people, All swoln and ulcerous, pitiful to the eye, The mere despair of surgery, he cures; Hanging a golden stamp about their necks, Put on with holy prayers: and ’tis spoken, To the succeeding royalty he leaves The healing benediction. With this strange virtue, He hath a heavenly gift of prophecy; And sundry blessings hang about his throne, That speak him full of grace.

Enter Ross.

MACDUFF. See, who comes here?

MALCOLM. My countryman; but yet I know him not.

MACDUFF. My ever-gentle cousin, welcome hither.

MALCOLM. I know him now. Good God, betimes remove The means that makes us strangers!

ROSS. Sir, amen.

MACDUFF. Stands Scotland where it did?

ROSS. Alas, poor country, Almost afraid to know itself! It cannot Be call’d our mother, but our grave, where nothing, But who knows nothing, is once seen to smile; Where sighs, and groans, and shrieks, that rent the air, Are made, not mark’d; where violent sorrow seems A modern ecstasy. The dead man’s knell Is there scarce ask’d for who; and good men’s lives Expire before the flowers in their caps, Dying or ere they sicken.

MACDUFF. O, relation Too nice, and yet too true!

MALCOLM. What’s the newest grief?

ROSS. That of an hour’s age doth hiss the speaker; Each minute teems a new one.

MACDUFF. How does my wife?

ROSS. Why, well.

MACDUFF. And all my children?

ROSS. Well too.

MACDUFF. The tyrant has not batter’d at their peace?

ROSS. No; they were well at peace when I did leave ’em.

MACDUFF. Be not a niggard of your speech: how goes’t?

ROSS. When I came hither to transport the tidings, Which I have heavily borne, there ran a rumour Of many worthy fellows that were out; Which was to my belief witness’d the rather, For that I saw the tyrant’s power afoot. Now is the time of help. Your eye in Scotland Would create soldiers, make our women fight, To doff their dire distresses.

MALCOLM. Be’t their comfort We are coming thither. Gracious England hath Lent us good Siward and ten thousand men; An older and a better soldier none That Christendom gives out.

ROSS. Would I could answer This comfort with the like! But I have words That would be howl’d out in the desert air, Where hearing should not latch them.

MACDUFF. What concern they? The general cause? or is it a fee-grief Due to some single breast?

ROSS. No mind that’s honest But in it shares some woe, though the main part Pertains to you alone.

MACDUFF. If it be mine, Keep it not from me, quickly let me have it.

ROSS. Let not your ears despise my tongue for ever, Which shall possess them with the heaviest sound That ever yet they heard.

MACDUFF. Humh! I guess at it.

ROSS. Your castle is surpris’d; your wife and babes Savagely slaughter’d. To relate the manner Were, on the quarry of these murder’d deer, To add the death of you.

MALCOLM. Merciful heaven!— What, man! ne’er pull your hat upon your brows. Give sorrow words. The grief that does not speak Whispers the o’er-fraught heart, and bids it break.

MACDUFF. My children too?

ROSS. Wife, children, servants, all That could be found.

MACDUFF. And I must be from thence! My wife kill’d too?

ROSS. I have said.

MALCOLM. Be comforted: Let’s make us med’cines of our great revenge, To cure this deadly grief.

MACDUFF. He has no children.—All my pretty ones? Did you say all?—O hell-kite!—All? What, all my pretty chickens and their dam At one fell swoop?

MALCOLM. Dispute it like a man.

MACDUFF. I shall do so; But I must also feel it as a man: I cannot but remember such things were, That were most precious to me.—Did heaven look on, And would not take their part? Sinful Macduff, They were all struck for thee! Naught that I am, Not for their own demerits, but for mine, Fell slaughter on their souls: heaven rest them now!

MALCOLM. Be this the whetstone of your sword. Let grief Convert to anger; blunt not the heart, enrage it.

MACDUFF. O, I could play the woman with mine eyes, And braggart with my tongue!—But, gentle heavens, Cut short all intermission; front to front, Bring thou this fiend of Scotland and myself; Within my sword’s length set him; if he ’scape, Heaven forgive him too!

MALCOLM. This tune goes manly. Come, go we to the King. Our power is ready; Our lack is nothing but our leave. Macbeth Is ripe for shaking, and the powers above Put on their instruments. Receive what cheer you may; The night is long that never finds the day.

SCENE I. Dunsinane. A Room in the Castle.

Enter a Doctor of Physic and a Waiting-Gentlewoman.

DOCTOR. I have two nights watched with you, but can perceive no truth in your report. When was it she last walked?

GENTLEWOMAN. Since his Majesty went into the field, I have seen her rise from her bed, throw her nightgown upon her, unlock her closet, take forth paper, fold it, write upon’t, read it, afterwards seal it, and again return to bed; yet all this while in a most fast sleep.

DOCTOR. A great perturbation in nature, to receive at once the benefit of sleep, and do the effects of watching. In this slumbery agitation, besides her walking and other actual performances, what, at any time, have you heard her say?

GENTLEWOMAN. That, sir, which I will not report after her.

DOCTOR. You may to me; and ’tis most meet you should.

GENTLEWOMAN. Neither to you nor anyone; having no witness to confirm my speech.

Enter Lady Macbeth with a taper.

Lo you, here she comes! This is her very guise; and, upon my life, fast asleep. Observe her; stand close.

DOCTOR. How came she by that light?

GENTLEWOMAN. Why, it stood by her: she has light by her continually; ’tis her command.

DOCTOR. You see, her eyes are open.

GENTLEWOMAN. Ay, but their sense are shut.

DOCTOR. What is it she does now? Look how she rubs her hands.

GENTLEWOMAN. It is an accustomed action with her, to seem thus washing her hands. I have known her continue in this a quarter of an hour.

LADY MACBETH. Yet here’s a spot.

DOCTOR. Hark, she speaks. I will set down what comes from her, to satisfy my remembrance the more strongly.

LADY MACBETH. Out, damned spot! out, I say! One; two. Why, then ’tis time to do’t. Hell is murky! Fie, my lord, fie! a soldier, and afeard? What need we fear who knows it, when none can call our power to account? Yet who would have thought the old man to have had so much blood in him?

DOCTOR. Do you mark that?

LADY MACBETH. The Thane of Fife had a wife. Where is she now?—What, will these hands ne’er be clean? No more o’ that, my lord, no more o’ that: you mar all with this starting.

DOCTOR. Go to, go to. You have known what you should not.

GENTLEWOMAN. She has spoke what she should not, I am sure of that: heaven knows what she has known.

LADY MACBETH. Here’s the smell of the blood still: all the perfumes of Arabia will not sweeten this little hand. Oh, oh, oh!

DOCTOR. What a sigh is there! The heart is sorely charged.

GENTLEWOMAN. I would not have such a heart in my bosom for the dignity of the whole body.

DOCTOR. Well, well, well.

GENTLEWOMAN. Pray God it be, sir.

DOCTOR. This disease is beyond my practice: yet I have known those which have walked in their sleep, who have died holily in their beds.

LADY MACBETH. Wash your hands, put on your nightgown; look not so pale. I tell you yet again, Banquo’s buried; he cannot come out on’s grave.

DOCTOR. Even so?

LADY MACBETH. To bed, to bed. There’s knocking at the gate. Come, come, come, come, give me your hand. What’s done cannot be undone. To bed, to bed, to bed.

DOCTOR. Will she go now to bed?

GENTLEWOMAN. Directly.

DOCTOR. Foul whisp’rings are abroad. Unnatural deeds Do breed unnatural troubles: infected minds To their deaf pillows will discharge their secrets. More needs she the divine than the physician.— God, God, forgive us all! Look after her; Remove from her the means of all annoyance, And still keep eyes upon her. So, good night: My mind she has mated, and amaz’d my sight. I think, but dare not speak.

GENTLEWOMAN. Good night, good doctor.

SCENE II. The Country near Dunsinane.

Enter, with drum and colours Menteith, Caithness, Angus, Lennox and Soldiers.

MENTEITH. The English power is near, led on by Malcolm, His uncle Siward, and the good Macduff. Revenges burn in them; for their dear causes Would to the bleeding and the grim alarm Excite the mortified man.

ANGUS. Near Birnam wood Shall we well meet them. That way are they coming.

CAITHNESS. Who knows if Donalbain be with his brother?

LENNOX. For certain, sir, he is not. I have a file Of all the gentry: there is Siward’s son And many unrough youths, that even now Protest their first of manhood.

MENTEITH. What does the tyrant?

CAITHNESS. Great Dunsinane he strongly fortifies. Some say he’s mad; others, that lesser hate him, Do call it valiant fury: but, for certain, He cannot buckle his distemper’d cause Within the belt of rule.

ANGUS. Now does he feel His secret murders sticking on his hands; Now minutely revolts upbraid his faith-breach; Those he commands move only in command, Nothing in love: now does he feel his title Hang loose about him, like a giant’s robe Upon a dwarfish thief.

MENTEITH. Who, then, shall blame His pester’d senses to recoil and start, When all that is within him does condemn Itself for being there?

CAITHNESS. Well, march we on, To give obedience where ’tis truly ow’d: Meet we the med’cine of the sickly weal; And with him pour we, in our country’s purge, Each drop of us.

LENNOX. Or so much as it needs To dew the sovereign flower, and drown the weeds. Make we our march towards Birnam.

[Exeunt, marching.]

SCENE III. Dunsinane. A Room in the Castle.

Enter Macbeth, Doctor and Attendants.

MACBETH. Bring me no more reports; let them fly all: Till Birnam wood remove to Dunsinane I cannot taint with fear. What’s the boy Malcolm? Was he not born of woman? The spirits that know All mortal consequences have pronounc’d me thus: “Fear not, Macbeth; no man that’s born of woman Shall e’er have power upon thee.”—Then fly, false thanes, And mingle with the English epicures: The mind I sway by, and the heart I bear, Shall never sag with doubt nor shake with fear.

The devil damn thee black, thou cream-fac’d loon! Where gott’st thou that goose look?

SERVANT. There is ten thousand—

MACBETH. Geese, villain?

SERVANT. Soldiers, sir.

MACBETH. Go prick thy face and over-red thy fear, Thou lily-liver’d boy. What soldiers, patch? Death of thy soul! those linen cheeks of thine Are counsellors to fear. What soldiers, whey-face?

SERVANT. The English force, so please you.

MACBETH. Take thy face hence.

Seyton!—I am sick at heart, When I behold—Seyton, I say!—This push Will cheer me ever or disseat me now. I have liv’d long enough: my way of life Is fall’n into the sere, the yellow leaf; And that which should accompany old age, As honour, love, obedience, troops of friends, I must not look to have; but, in their stead, Curses, not loud but deep, mouth-honour, breath, Which the poor heart would fain deny, and dare not. Seyton!—

Enter Seyton.

SEYTON. What’s your gracious pleasure?

MACBETH. What news more?

SEYTON. All is confirm’d, my lord, which was reported.

MACBETH. I’ll fight till from my bones my flesh be hack’d. Give me my armour.

SEYTON. ’Tis not needed yet.

MACBETH. I’ll put it on. Send out more horses, skirr the country round; Hang those that talk of fear. Give me mine armour.— How does your patient, doctor?

DOCTOR. Not so sick, my lord, As she is troubled with thick-coming fancies, That keep her from her rest.

MACBETH. Cure her of that: Canst thou not minister to a mind diseas’d, Pluck from the memory a rooted sorrow, Raze out the written troubles of the brain, And with some sweet oblivious antidote Cleanse the stuff’d bosom of that perilous stuff Which weighs upon the heart?

DOCTOR. Therein the patient Must minister to himself.

MACBETH. Throw physic to the dogs, I’ll none of it. Come, put mine armour on; give me my staff: Seyton, send out.—Doctor, the Thanes fly from me.— Come, sir, despatch.—If thou couldst, doctor, cast The water of my land, find her disease, And purge it to a sound and pristine health, I would applaud thee to the very echo, That should applaud again.—Pull’t off, I say.— What rhubarb, senna, or what purgative drug, Would scour these English hence? Hear’st thou of them?

DOCTOR. Ay, my good lord. Your royal preparation Makes us hear something.

MACBETH. Bring it after me.— I will not be afraid of death and bane, Till Birnam forest come to Dunsinane.

[Exeunt all except Doctor.]

DOCTOR. Were I from Dunsinane away and clear, Profit again should hardly draw me here.

SCENE IV. Country near Dunsinane: a Wood in view.

Enter, with drum and colours Malcolm, old Siward and his Son, Macduff, Menteith, Caithness, Angus, Lennox, Ross and Soldiers, marching.

MALCOLM. Cousins, I hope the days are near at hand That chambers will be safe.

MENTEITH. We doubt it nothing.

SIWARD. What wood is this before us?

MENTEITH. The wood of Birnam.

MALCOLM. Let every soldier hew him down a bough, And bear’t before him. Thereby shall we shadow The numbers of our host, and make discovery Err in report of us.

SOLDIERS. It shall be done.

SIWARD. We learn no other but the confident tyrant Keeps still in Dunsinane, and will endure Our setting down before’t.

MALCOLM. ’Tis his main hope; For where there is advantage to be given, Both more and less have given him the revolt, And none serve with him but constrained things, Whose hearts are absent too.

MACDUFF. Let our just censures Attend the true event, and put we on Industrious soldiership.

SIWARD. The time approaches, That will with due decision make us know What we shall say we have, and what we owe. Thoughts speculative their unsure hopes relate, But certain issue strokes must arbitrate; Towards which advance the war.

SCENE V. Dunsinane. Within the castle.

Enter with drum and colours, Macbeth, Seyton and Soldiers.

MACBETH. Hang out our banners on the outward walls; The cry is still, “They come!” Our castle’s strength Will laugh a siege to scorn: here let them lie Till famine and the ague eat them up. Were they not forc’d with those that should be ours, We might have met them dareful, beard to beard, And beat them backward home.

[A cry of women within.]

What is that noise?

SEYTON. It is the cry of women, my good lord.

MACBETH. I have almost forgot the taste of fears. The time has been, my senses would have cool’d To hear a night-shriek; and my fell of hair Would at a dismal treatise rouse and stir As life were in’t. I have supp’d full with horrors; Direness, familiar to my slaughterous thoughts, Cannot once start me.

Wherefore was that cry?

SEYTON. The Queen, my lord, is dead.

MACBETH. She should have died hereafter. There would have been a time for such a word. Tomorrow, and tomorrow, and tomorrow, Creeps in this petty pace from day to day, To the last syllable of recorded time; And all our yesterdays have lighted fools The way to dusty death. Out, out, brief candle! Life’s but a walking shadow; a poor player, That struts and frets his hour upon the stage, And then is heard no more: it is a tale Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, Signifying nothing.

Thou com’st to use thy tongue; thy story quickly.

MESSENGER. Gracious my lord, I should report that which I say I saw, But know not how to do’t.

MACBETH. Well, say, sir.

MESSENGER. As I did stand my watch upon the hill, I look’d toward Birnam, and anon, methought, The wood began to move.

MACBETH. Liar, and slave!

MESSENGER. Let me endure your wrath, if’t be not so. Within this three mile may you see it coming; I say, a moving grove.

MACBETH. If thou speak’st false, Upon the next tree shalt thou hang alive, Till famine cling thee: if thy speech be sooth, I care not if thou dost for me as much.— I pull in resolution; and begin To doubt th’ equivocation of the fiend, That lies like truth. “Fear not, till Birnam wood Do come to Dunsinane;” and now a wood Comes toward Dunsinane.—Arm, arm, and out!— If this which he avouches does appear, There is nor flying hence nor tarrying here. I ’gin to be aweary of the sun, And wish th’ estate o’ th’ world were now undone.— Ring the alarum bell!—Blow, wind! come, wrack! At least we’ll die with harness on our back.

SCENE VI. The same. A Plain before the Castle.

Enter, with drum and colours, Malcolm, old Siward, Macduff and their Army, with boughs.

MALCOLM. Now near enough. Your leafy screens throw down, And show like those you are.—You, worthy uncle, Shall with my cousin, your right noble son, Lead our first battle: worthy Macduff and we Shall take upon’s what else remains to do, According to our order.

SIWARD. Fare you well.— Do we but find the tyrant’s power tonight, Let us be beaten, if we cannot fight.

MACDUFF. Make all our trumpets speak; give them all breath, Those clamorous harbingers of blood and death.

SCENE VII. The same. Another part of the Plain.

Alarums. Enter Macbeth.

MACBETH. They have tied me to a stake. I cannot fly, But, bear-like I must fight the course.—What’s he That was not born of woman? Such a one Am I to fear, or none.

Enter young Siward.

YOUNG SIWARD. What is thy name?

MACBETH. Thou’lt be afraid to hear it.

YOUNG SIWARD. No; though thou call’st thyself a hotter name Than any is in hell.

MACBETH. My name’s Macbeth.

YOUNG SIWARD. The devil himself could not pronounce a title More hateful to mine ear.

MACBETH. No, nor more fearful.

YOUNG SIWARD. Thou liest, abhorred tyrant. With my sword I’ll prove the lie thou speak’st.

[They fight, and young Siward is slain.]

MACBETH. Thou wast born of woman. But swords I smile at, weapons laugh to scorn, Brandish’d by man that’s of a woman born.

Alarums. Enter Macduff.

MACDUFF. That way the noise is.—Tyrant, show thy face! If thou be’st slain and with no stroke of mine, My wife and children’s ghosts will haunt me still. I cannot strike at wretched kerns, whose arms Are hired to bear their staves. Either thou, Macbeth, Or else my sword, with an unbatter’d edge, I sheathe again undeeded. There thou shouldst be; By this great clatter, one of greatest note Seems bruited. Let me find him, Fortune! And more I beg not.

[Exit. Alarums.]

Enter Malcolm and old Siward.

SIWARD. This way, my lord;—the castle’s gently render’d: The tyrant’s people on both sides do fight; The noble thanes do bravely in the war, The day almost itself professes yours, And little is to do.

MALCOLM. We have met with foes That strike beside us.

SIWARD. Enter, sir, the castle.

[Exeunt. Alarums.]

SCENE VIII. The same. Another part of the field.

MACBETH. Why should I play the Roman fool, and die On mine own sword? whiles I see lives, the gashes Do better upon them.

MACDUFF. Turn, hell-hound, turn!

MACBETH. Of all men else I have avoided thee: But get thee back; my soul is too much charg’d With blood of thine already.

MACDUFF. I have no words; My voice is in my sword: thou bloodier villain Than terms can give thee out!

MACBETH. Thou losest labour: As easy mayst thou the intrenchant air With thy keen sword impress, as make me bleed: Let fall thy blade on vulnerable crests; I bear a charmed life, which must not yield To one of woman born.

MACDUFF. Despair thy charm; And let the angel whom thou still hast serv’d Tell thee, Macduff was from his mother’s womb Untimely ripp’d.

MACBETH. Accursed be that tongue that tells me so, For it hath cow’d my better part of man! And be these juggling fiends no more believ’d, That palter with us in a double sense; That keep the word of promise to our ear, And break it to our hope!—I’ll not fight with thee.

MACDUFF. Then yield thee, coward, And live to be the show and gaze o’ th’ time. We’ll have thee, as our rarer monsters are, Painted upon a pole, and underwrit, “Here may you see the tyrant.”

MACBETH. I will not yield, To kiss the ground before young Malcolm’s feet, And to be baited with the rabble’s curse. Though Birnam wood be come to Dunsinane, And thou oppos’d, being of no woman born, Yet I will try the last. Before my body I throw my warlike shield: lay on, Macduff; And damn’d be him that first cries, “Hold, enough!”

[Exeunt fighting. Alarums.]

Retreat. Flourish. Enter, with drum and colours, Malcolm, old Siward, Ross, Thanes and Soldiers.

MALCOLM. I would the friends we miss were safe arriv’d.

SIWARD. Some must go off; and yet, by these I see, So great a day as this is cheaply bought.

MALCOLM. Macduff is missing, and your noble son.

ROSS. Your son, my lord, has paid a soldier’s debt: He only liv’d but till he was a man; The which no sooner had his prowess confirm’d In the unshrinking station where he fought, But like a man he died.

SIWARD. Then he is dead?

ROSS. Ay, and brought off the field. Your cause of sorrow Must not be measur’d by his worth, for then It hath no end.

SIWARD. Had he his hurts before?

ROSS. Ay, on the front.

SIWARD. Why then, God’s soldier be he! Had I as many sons as I have hairs, I would not wish them to a fairer death: And so his knell is knoll’d.

MALCOLM. He’s worth more sorrow, And that I’ll spend for him.

SIWARD. He’s worth no more. They say he parted well and paid his score: And so, God be with him!—Here comes newer comfort.

Enter Macduff with Macbeth’s head.

MACDUFF. Hail, King, for so thou art. Behold, where stands Th’ usurper’s cursed head: the time is free. I see thee compass’d with thy kingdom’s pearl, That speak my salutation in their minds; Whose voices I desire aloud with mine,— Hail, King of Scotland!

ALL. Hail, King of Scotland!

MALCOLM. We shall not spend a large expense of time Before we reckon with your several loves, And make us even with you. My thanes and kinsmen, Henceforth be earls, the first that ever Scotland In such an honour nam’d. What’s more to do, Which would be planted newly with the time,— As calling home our exil’d friends abroad, That fled the snares of watchful tyranny; Producing forth the cruel ministers Of this dead butcher, and his fiend-like queen, Who, as ’tis thought, by self and violent hands Took off her life;—this, and what needful else That calls upon us, by the grace of Grace, We will perform in measure, time, and place. So thanks to all at once, and to each one, Whom we invite to see us crown’d at Scone.

MEASURE FOR MEASURE

ACT I Scene I. An apartment in the Duke’s palace Scene II. A street Scene III. A monastery Scene IV. A nunnery

ACT II Scene I. A hall in Angelo’s house Scene II. Another room in the same Scene III. A room in a prison Scene IV. A room in Angelo’s house

ACT III Scene I. A room in the prison Scene II. The street before the prisons

ACT IV Scene I. A room in Mariana’s house Scene II. A room in the prison Scene III. Another room in the same Scene IV. A room in Angelo’s house Scene V. Fields without the town Scene VI. Street near the city gate

ACT V Scene I. A public place near the city gate

Vincentio, DUKE of Vienna ESCALUS, an ancient Lord PROVOST ELBOW, a simple constable ABHORSON, an executioner A JUSTICE VARRIUS, a Gentleman, Servant to the Duke

ANGELO, Deputy to the Duke MARIANA, betrothed to Angelo BOY, singer SERVANT, to Angelo MESSENGER, from Angelo

ISABELLA, Sister to Claudio FRANCISCA, a nun

CLAUDIO, a young Gentleman JULIET, betrothed to Claudio LUCIO, a fantastic Two GENTLEMEN

FRIAR THOMAS FRIAR PETER

Mistress Overdone, a BAWD POMPEY, Servant to Mistress Overdone FROTH, a foolish gentleman BARNARDINE, a dissolute prisoner

Lords, Officers, Servants, Citizens and Attendants

SCENE: Vienna

SCENE I. An apartment in the Duke’s palace.

Enter Duke, Escalus, Lords and Attendants.

DUKE. Escalus.

ESCALUS. My lord.

DUKE. Of government the properties to unfold Would seem in me t’ affect speech and discourse, Since I am put to know that your own science Exceeds, in that, the lists of all advice My strength can give you. Then no more remains But that, to your sufficiency, as your worth is able, And let them work. The nature of our people, Our city’s institutions, and the terms For common justice, you’re as pregnant in As art and practice hath enriched any That we remember. There is our commission, From which we would not have you warp.—Call hither, I say, bid come before us, Angelo.

What figure of us think you he will bear? For you must know we have with special soul Elected him our absence to supply; Lent him our terror, drest him with our love, And given his deputation all the organs Of our own power. What think you of it?

ESCALUS. If any in Vienna be of worth To undergo such ample grace and honour, It is Lord Angelo.

Enter Angelo.

DUKE. Look where he comes.

ANGELO. Always obedient to your Grace’s will, I come to know your pleasure.

DUKE. Angelo, There is a kind of character in thy life That to th’ observer doth thy history Fully unfold. Thyself and thy belongings Are not thine own so proper as to waste Thyself upon thy virtues, they on thee. Heaven doth with us as we with torches do, Not light them for themselves; for if our virtues Did not go forth of us, ’twere all alike As if we had them not. Spirits are not finely touched But to fine issues; nor nature never lends The smallest scruple of her excellence But, like a thrifty goddess, she determines Herself the glory of a creditor, Both thanks and use. But I do bend my speech To one that can my part in him advertise. Hold, therefore, Angelo. In our remove be thou at full ourself. Mortality and mercy in Vienna Live in thy tongue and heart. Old Escalus, Though first in question, is thy secondary. Take thy commission.

ANGELO. Now, good my lord, Let there be some more test made of my metal, Before so noble and so great a figure Be stamped upon it.

DUKE. No more evasion. We have with a leavened and prepared choice Proceeded to you; therefore take your honours. Our haste from hence is of so quick condition That it prefers itself, and leaves unquestioned Matters of needful value. We shall write to you, As time and our concernings shall importune, How it goes with us; and do look to know What doth befall you here. So, fare you well. To th’ hopeful execution do I leave you Of your commissions.

ANGELO. Yet give leave, my lord, That we may bring you something on the way.

DUKE. My haste may not admit it; Nor need you, on mine honour, have to do With any scruple. Your scope is as mine own, So to enforce or qualify the laws As to your soul seems good. Give me your hand; I’ll privily away. I love the people, But do not like to stage me to their eyes. Though it do well, I do not relish well Their loud applause and Aves vehement; Nor do I think the man of safe discretion That does affect it. Once more, fare you well.

ANGELO. The heavens give safety to your purposes!

ESCALUS. Lead forth and bring you back in happiness.

DUKE. I thank you. Fare you well.

ESCALUS. I shall desire you, sir, to give me leave To have free speech with you; and it concerns me To look into the bottom of my place. A power I have, but of what strength and nature I am not yet instructed.

ANGELO. ’Tis so with me. Let us withdraw together, And we may soon our satisfaction have Touching that point.

ESCALUS. I’ll wait upon your honour.

SCENE II. A street.

Enter Lucio and two other Gentlemen.

LUCIO. If the Duke, with the other dukes, come not to composition with the King of Hungary, why then all the dukes fall upon the King.

FIRST GENTLEMAN. Heaven grant us its peace, but not the King of Hungary’s!

SECOND GENTLEMAN. Amen.

LUCIO. Thou conclud’st like the sanctimonious pirate that went to sea with the ten commandments, but scraped one out of the table.

SECOND GENTLEMAN. “Thou shalt not steal”?

LUCIO. Ay, that he razed.

FIRST GENTLEMAN. Why, ’twas a commandment to command the captain and all the rest from their functions! They put forth to steal. There’s not a soldier of us all that, in the thanksgiving before meat, do relish the petition well that prays for peace.

SECOND GENTLEMAN. I never heard any soldier dislike it.

LUCIO. I believe thee; for I think thou never wast where grace was said.

SECOND GENTLEMAN. No? A dozen times at least.

FIRST GENTLEMAN. What? In metre?

LUCIO. In any proportion or in any language.

FIRST GENTLEMAN. I think, or in any religion.

LUCIO. Ay, why not? Grace is grace, despite of all controversy; as, for example, thou thyself art a wicked villain, despite of all grace.

FIRST GENTLEMAN. Well, there went but a pair of shears between us.

LUCIO. I grant, as there may between the lists and the velvet. Thou art the list.

FIRST GENTLEMAN. And thou the velvet. Thou art good velvet; thou’rt a three-piled piece, I warrant thee. I had as lief be a list of an English kersey as be piled, as thou art piled, for a French velvet. Do I speak feelingly now?

LUCIO. I think thou dost, and indeed, with most painful feeling of thy speech. I will, out of thine own confession, learn to begin thy health; but, whilst I live, forget to drink after thee.

FIRST GENTLEMAN. I think I have done myself wrong, have I not?

SECOND GENTLEMAN. Yes, that thou hast, whether thou art tainted or free.

Enter Mistress Overdone, a Bawd.

LUCIO. Behold, behold, where Madam Mitigation comes! I have purchased as many diseases under her roof as come to—

SECOND GENTLEMAN. To what, I pray?

FIRST GENTLEMAN. Judge.

SECOND GENTLEMAN. To three thousand dolours a year.

FIRST GENTLEMAN. Ay, and more.

LUCIO. A French crown more.

FIRST GENTLEMAN. Thou art always figuring diseases in me, but thou art full of error; I am sound.

LUCIO. Nay, not, as one would say, healthy, but so sound as things that are hollow. Thy bones are hollow. Impiety has made a feast of thee.

FIRST GENTLEMAN. How now, which of your hips has the most profound sciatica?

BAWD. Well, well! There’s one yonder arrested and carried to prison was worth five thousand of you all.

FIRST GENTLEMAN. Who’s that, I pray thee?

BAWD. Marry, sir, that’s Claudio, Signior Claudio.

FIRST GENTLEMAN. Claudio to prison? ’Tis not so.

BAWD. Nay, but I know ’tis so. I saw him arrested, saw him carried away; and, which is more, within these three days his head to be chopped off.

LUCIO. But, after all this fooling, I would not have it so. Art thou sure of this?

BAWD. I am too sure of it. And it is for getting Madam Julietta with child.

LUCIO. Believe me, this may be. He promised to meet me two hours since, and he was ever precise in promise-keeping.

SECOND GENTLEMAN. Besides, you know, it draws something near to the speech we had to such a purpose.

FIRST GENTLEMAN. But most of all agreeing with the proclamation.

LUCIO. Away! Let’s go learn the truth of it.

[Exeunt Lucio and Gentlemen.]

BAWD. Thus, what with the war, what with the sweat, what with the gallows, and what with poverty, I am custom-shrunk.

Enter Pompey.

How now? What’s the news with you?

POMPEY. Yonder man is carried to prison.

BAWD. Well, what has he done?

POMPEY. A woman.

BAWD. But what’s his offence?

POMPEY. Groping for trouts in a peculiar river.

BAWD. What? Is there a maid with child by him?

POMPEY. No, but there’s a woman with maid by him. You have not heard of the proclamation, have you?

BAWD. What proclamation, man?

POMPEY. All houses in the suburbs of Vienna must be plucked down.

BAWD. And what shall become of those in the city?

POMPEY. They shall stand for seed. They had gone down too, but that a wise burgher put in for them.

BAWD. But shall all our houses of resort in the suburbs be pulled down?

POMPEY. To the ground, mistress.

BAWD. Why, here’s a change indeed in the commonwealth! What shall become of me?

POMPEY. Come, fear not you. Good counsellors lack no clients. Though you change your place, you need not change your trade. I’ll be your tapster still. Courage, there will be pity taken on you. You that have worn your eyes almost out in the service, you will be considered.

Enter Provost, Claudio, Juliet and Officers.

BAWD. What’s to do here, Thomas Tapster? Let’s withdraw.

POMPEY. Here comes Signior Claudio, led by the Provost to prison. And there’s Madam Juliet.

[Exeunt Bawd and Pompey.]

CLAUDIO. Fellow, why dost thou show me thus to the world? Bear me to prison, where I am committed.

PROVOST. I do it not in evil disposition, But from Lord Angelo by special charge.

CLAUDIO. Thus can the demi-god Authority Make us pay down for our offence by weight. The words of heaven; on whom it will, it will; On whom it will not, so; yet still ’tis just.

Enter Lucio and two Gentlemen.

LUCIO. Why, how now, Claudio? Whence comes this restraint?

CLAUDIO. From too much liberty, my Lucio, liberty. As surfeit is the father of much fast, So every scope by the immoderate use Turns to restraint. Our natures do pursue, Like rats that ravin down their proper bane, A thirsty evil; and when we drink, we die.

LUCIO. If I could speak so wisely under an arrest, I would send for certain of my creditors; and yet, to say the truth, I had as lief have the foppery of freedom as the morality of imprisonment. What’s thy offence, Claudio?

CLAUDIO. What but to speak of would offend again.

LUCIO. What, is’t murder?

CLAUDIO. No.

LUCIO. Lechery?

CLAUDIO. Call it so.

PROVOST. Away, sir; you must go.

CLAUDIO. One word, good friend.—Lucio, a word with you.

LUCIO. A hundred, if they’ll do you any good. Is lechery so looked after?

CLAUDIO. Thus stands it with me: upon a true contract I got possession of Julietta’s bed. You know the lady; she is fast my wife, Save that we do the denunciation lack Of outward order. This we came not to Only for propagation of a dower Remaining in the coffer of her friends, From whom we thought it meet to hide our love Till time had made them for us. But it chances The stealth of our most mutual entertainment With character too gross is writ on Juliet.

LUCIO. With child, perhaps?

CLAUDIO. Unhappily, even so. And the new deputy now for the Duke— Whether it be the fault and glimpse of newness, Or whether that the body public be A horse whereon the governor doth ride, Who, newly in the seat, that it may know He can command, lets it straight feel the spur; Whether the tyranny be in his place, Or in his eminence that fills it up, I stagger in—but this new governor Awakes me all the enrolled penalties Which have, like unscoured armour, hung by th’ wall So long that nineteen zodiacs have gone round, And none of them been worn; and for a name Now puts the drowsy and neglected act Freshly on me. ’Tis surely for a name.

LUCIO. I warrant it is. And thy head stands so tickle on thy shoulders that a milkmaid, if she be in love, may sigh it off. Send after the Duke, and appeal to him.

CLAUDIO. I have done so, but he’s not to be found. I prithee, Lucio, do me this kind service: This day my sister should the cloister enter, And there receive her approbation. Acquaint her with the danger of my state; Implore her, in my voice, that she make friends To the strict deputy; bid herself assay him. I have great hope in that. For in her youth There is a prone and speechless dialect Such as moves men; beside, she hath prosperous art When she will play with reason and discourse, And well she can persuade.

LUCIO. I pray she may, as well for the encouragement of the like, which else would stand under grievous imposition, as for the enjoying of thy life, who I would be sorry should be thus foolishly lost at a game of tick-tack. I’ll to her.

CLAUDIO. I thank you, good friend Lucio.

LUCIO. Within two hours.

CLAUDIO. Come, officer, away.

SCENE III. A monastery.

Enter Duke and Friar Thomas.

DUKE. No, holy father, throw away that thought; Believe not that the dribbling dart of love Can pierce a complete bosom. Why I desire thee To give me secret harbour hath a purpose More grave and wrinkled than the aims and ends Of burning youth.

FRIAR THOMAS. May your Grace speak of it?

DUKE. My holy sir, none better knows than you How I have ever loved the life removed, And held in idle price to haunt assemblies Where youth, and cost, a witless bravery keeps. I have delivered to Lord Angelo, A man of stricture and firm abstinence, My absolute power and place here in Vienna, And he supposes me travelled to Poland; For so I have strewed it in the common ear, And so it is received. Now, pious sir, You will demand of me why I do this?

FRIAR THOMAS. Gladly, my lord.

DUKE. We have strict statutes and most biting laws, The needful bits and curbs to headstrong weeds, Which for this fourteen years we have let slip, Even like an o’ergrown lion in a cave That goes not out to prey. Now, as fond fathers, Having bound up the threat’ning twigs of birch, Only to stick it in their children’s sight For terror, not to use, in time the rod Becomes more mocked than feared: so our decrees, Dead to infliction, to themselves are dead, And liberty plucks justice by the nose, The baby beats the nurse, and quite athwart Goes all decorum.

FRIAR THOMAS. It rested in your Grace To unloose this tied-up justice when you pleased; And it in you more dreadful would have seemed Than in Lord Angelo.

DUKE. I do fear, too dreadful. Sith ’twas my fault to give the people scope, ’Twould be my tyranny to strike and gall them For what I bid them do; for we bid this be done When evil deeds have their permissive pass And not the punishment. Therefore, indeed, my father, I have on Angelo imposed the office; Who may in th’ ambush of my name strike home, And yet my nature never in the fight To do in slander. And to behold his sway, I will, as ’twere a brother of your order, Visit both prince and people. Therefore, I prithee, Supply me with the habit, and instruct me How I may formally in person bear Like a true friar. Moe reasons for this action At our more leisure shall I render you; Only, this one: Lord Angelo is precise; Stands at a guard with envy; scarce confesses That his blood flows or that his appetite Is more to bread than stone. Hence shall we see, If power change purpose, what our seemers be.

SCENE IV. A nunnery.

Enter Isabella and Francisca, a Nun.

ISABELLA. And have you nuns no farther privileges?

FRANCISCA. Are not these large enough?

ISABELLA. Yes, truly; I speak not as desiring more, But rather wishing a more strict restraint Upon the sisterhood, the votarists of Saint Clare.

LUCIO. [Within.] Ho! Peace be in this place!

ISABELLA. Who’s that which calls?

FRANCISCA. It is a man’s voice. Gentle Isabella, Turn you the key, and know his business of him; You may, I may not; you are yet unsworn. When you have vowed, you must not speak with men But in the presence of the prioress; Then, if you speak, you must not show your face; Or if you show your face, you must not speak. He calls again. I pray you answer him.

[Exit Francisca.]

ISABELLA. Peace and prosperity! Who is’t that calls?

Enter Lucio.

LUCIO. Hail, virgin, if you be, as those cheek-roses Proclaim you are no less. Can you so stead me As bring me to the sight of Isabella, A novice of this place, and the fair sister To her unhappy brother Claudio?

ISABELLA. Why “her unhappy brother”? let me ask, The rather for I now must make you know I am that Isabella, and his sister.

LUCIO. Gentle and fair, your brother kindly greets you. Not to be weary with you, he’s in prison.

ISABELLA. Woe me! For what?

LUCIO. For that which, if myself might be his judge, He should receive his punishment in thanks: He hath got his friend with child.

ISABELLA. Sir, make me not your story.

LUCIO. ’Tis true. I would not, though ’tis my familiar sin With maids to seem the lapwing, and to jest, Tongue far from heart, play with all virgins so. I hold you as a thing enskied and sainted By your renouncement an immortal spirit, And to be talked with in sincerity, As with a saint.

ISABELLA. You do blaspheme the good in mocking me.

LUCIO. Do not believe it. Fewness and truth, ’tis thus: Your brother and his lover have embraced; As those that feed grow full, as blossoming time That from the seedness the bare fallow brings To teeming foison, even so her plenteous womb Expresseth his full tilth and husbandry.

ISABELLA. Someone with child by him? My cousin Juliet?

LUCIO. Is she your cousin?

ISABELLA. Adoptedly, as school-maids change their names By vain though apt affection.

LUCIO. She it is.

ISABELLA. O, let him marry her!

LUCIO. This is the point. The Duke is very strangely gone from hence; Bore many gentlemen, myself being one, In hand, and hope of action; but we do learn, By those that know the very nerves of state, His givings-out were of an infinite distance From his true-meant design. Upon his place, And with full line of his authority, Governs Lord Angelo; a man whose blood Is very snow-broth; one who never feels The wanton stings and motions of the sense; But doth rebate and blunt his natural edge With profits of the mind, study and fast. He, to give fear to use and liberty, Which have for long run by the hideous law As mice by lions, hath picked out an act, Under whose heavy sense your brother’s life Falls into forfeit. He arrests him on it, And follows close the rigour of the statute To make him an example. All hope is gone, Unless you have the grace by your fair prayer To soften Angelo. And that’s my pith of business ’Twixt you and your poor brother.

ISABELLA. Doth he so Seek his life?

LUCIO. Has censured him already; And, as I hear, the Provost hath a warrant For’s execution.

ISABELLA. Alas, what poor ability’s in me To do him good?

LUCIO. Assay the power you have.

ISABELLA. My power? Alas, I doubt.

LUCIO. Our doubts are traitors, And make us lose the good we oft might win By fearing to attempt. Go to Lord Angelo, And let him learn to know, when maidens sue, Men give like gods; but when they weep and kneel, All their petitions are as freely theirs As they themselves would owe them.

ISABELLA. I’ll see what I can do.

LUCIO. But speedily.

ISABELLA. I will about it straight; No longer staying but to give the Mother Notice of my affair. I humbly thank you. Commend me to my brother. Soon at night I’ll send him certain word of my success.

LUCIO. I take my leave of you.

ISABELLA. Good sir, adieu.

SCENE I. A hall in Angelo’s house.

Enter Angelo, Escalus, Servants, and a Justice.

ANGELO. We must not make a scarecrow of the law, Setting it up to fear the birds of prey, And let it keep one shape till custom make it Their perch, and not their terror.

ESCALUS. Ay, but yet Let us be keen, and rather cut a little Than fall and bruise to death. Alas, this gentleman, Whom I would save, had a most noble father. Let but your honour know, Whom I believe to be most strait in virtue, That, in the working of your own affections, Had time cohered with place, or place with wishing, Or that the resolute acting of your blood Could have attained th’ effect of your own purpose, Whether you had not sometime in your life Erred in this point which now you censure him, And pulled the law upon you.

ANGELO. ’Tis one thing to be tempted, Escalus, Another thing to fall. I not deny The jury passing on the prisoner’s life May in the sworn twelve have a thief or two Guiltier than him they try. What’s open made to justice, That justice seizes. What knows the laws That thieves do pass on thieves? ’Tis very pregnant, The jewel that we find, we stoop and take ’t, Because we see it; but what we do not see, We tread upon, and never think of it. You may not so extenuate his offence For I have had such faults; but rather tell me, When I that censure him do so offend, Let mine own judgement pattern out my death, And nothing come in partial. Sir, he must die.

Enter Provost.

ESCALUS. Be it as your wisdom will.

ANGELO. Where is the Provost?

PROVOST. Here, if it like your honour.

ANGELO. See that Claudio Be executed by nine tomorrow morning. Bring him his confessor, let him be prepared, For that’s the utmost of his pilgrimage.

[Exit Provost.]

ESCALUS. Well, heaven forgive him; and forgive us all. Some rise by sin, and some by virtue fall. Some run from brakes of vice, and answer none, And some condemned for a fault alone.

Enter Elbow and Officers with Froth and Pompey.

ELBOW. Come, bring them away. If these be good people in a commonweal that do nothing but use their abuses in common houses, I know no law. Bring them away.

ANGELO. How now, sir, what’s your name? And what’s the matter?

ELBOW. If it please your honour, I am the poor Duke’s constable, and my name is Elbow. I do lean upon justice, sir, and do bring in here before your good honour two notorious benefactors.

ANGELO. Benefactors? Well, what benefactors are they? Are they not malefactors?

ELBOW. If it please your honour, I know not well what they are, but precise villains they are, that I am sure of, and void of all profanation in the world that good Christians ought to have.

ESCALUS. This comes off well. Here’s a wise officer.

ANGELO. Go to. What quality are they of? Elbow is your name? Why dost thou not speak, Elbow?

POMPEY. He cannot, sir. He’s out at elbow.

ANGELO. What are you, sir?

ELBOW. He, sir? A tapster, sir; parcel bawd; one that serves a bad woman; whose house, sir, was, as they say, plucked down in the suburbs; and now she professes a hot-house, which, I think is a very ill house too.

ESCALUS. How know you that?

ELBOW. My wife, sir, whom I detest before heaven and your honour—

ESCALUS. How? Thy wife?

ELBOW. Ay, sir, whom I thank heaven is an honest woman—

ESCALUS. Dost thou detest her therefore?

ELBOW. I say, sir, I will detest myself also, as well as she, that this house, if it be not a bawd’s house, it is pity of her life, for it is a naughty house.

ESCALUS. How dost thou know that, constable?

ELBOW. Marry, sir, by my wife, who, if she had been a woman cardinally given, might have been accused in fornication, adultery, and all uncleanliness there.

ESCALUS. By the woman’s means?

ELBOW. Ay, sir, by Mistress Overdone’s means; but as she spit in his face, so she defied him.

POMPEY. Sir, if it please your honour, this is not so.

ELBOW. Prove it before these varlets here, thou honourable man, prove it.

ESCALUS. [To Angelo.] Do you hear how he misplaces?

POMPEY. Sir, she came in great with child; and longing, saving your honour’s reverence, for stewed prunes; sir, we had but two in the house, which at that very distant time stood, as it were, in a fruit dish, a dish of some threepence; your honours have seen such dishes; they are not china dishes, but very good dishes—

ESCALUS. Go to, go to. No matter for the dish, sir.

POMPEY. No, indeed, sir, not of a pin; you are therein in the right. But to the point. As I say, this Mistress Elbow, being, as I say, with child, and being great-bellied, and longing, as I said, for prunes; and having but two in the dish, as I said, Master Froth here, this very man, having eaten the rest, as I said, and, as I say, paying for them very honestly; for, as you know, Master Froth, I could not give you threepence again—

FROTH. No, indeed.

POMPEY. Very well. You being then, if you be remembered, cracking the stones of the foresaid prunes—

FROTH. Ay, so I did indeed.

POMPEY. Why, very well. I telling you then, if you be remembered, that such a one and such a one were past cure of the thing you wot of, unless they kept very good diet, as I told you—

FROTH. All this is true.

POMPEY. Why, very well then—

ESCALUS. Come, you are a tedious fool. To the purpose. What was done to Elbow’s wife that he hath cause to complain of? Come me to what was done to her.

POMPEY. Sir, your honour cannot come to that yet.

ESCALUS. No, sir, nor I mean it not.

POMPEY. Sir, but you shall come to it, by your honour’s leave. And I beseech you, look into Master Froth here, sir, a man of fourscore pound a year; whose father died at Hallowmas—was’t not at Hallowmas, Master Froth?

FROTH. All-hallond Eve.

POMPEY. Why, very well. I hope here be truths. He, sir, sitting, as I say, in a lower chair, sir—’twas in the Bunch of Grapes, where, indeed, you have a delight to sit, have you not?

FROTH. I have so, because it is an open room, and good for winter.

POMPEY. Why, very well then. I hope here be truths.

ANGELO. This will last out a night in Russia When nights are longest there. I’ll take my leave, And leave you to the hearing of the cause; Hoping you’ll find good cause to whip them all.

ESCALUS. I think no less. Good morrow to your lordship.

[Exit Angelo.]

Now, sir, come on. What was done to Elbow’s wife, once more?

POMPEY. Once, sir? There was nothing done to her once.

ELBOW. I beseech you, sir, ask him what this man did to my wife.

POMPEY. I beseech your honour, ask me.

ESCALUS. Well, sir, what did this gentleman to her?

POMPEY. I beseech you, sir, look in this gentleman’s face. Good Master Froth, look upon his honour; ’tis for a good purpose.—Doth your honour mark his face?

ESCALUS. Ay, sir, very well.

POMPEY. Nay, I beseech you, mark it well.

ESCALUS. Well, I do so.

POMPEY. Doth your honour see any harm in his face?

ESCALUS. Why, no.

POMPEY. I’ll be supposed upon a book, his face is the worst thing about him. Good, then, if his face be the worst thing about him, how could Master Froth do the constable’s wife any harm? I would know that of your honour.

ESCALUS. He’s in the right. Constable. What say you to it?

ELBOW. First, an it like you, the house is a respected house; next, this is a respected fellow; and his mistress is a respected woman.

POMPEY. By this hand, sir, his wife is a more respected person than any of us all.

ELBOW. Varlet, thou liest; thou liest, wicked varlet! The time is yet to come that she was ever respected with man, woman, or child.

POMPEY. Sir, she was respected with him before he married with her.

ESCALUS. Which is the wiser here, Justice or Iniquity? Is this true?

ELBOW. O thou caitiff! O thou varlet! O thou wicked Hannibal! I respected with her before I was married to her? If ever I was respected with her, or she with me, let not your worship think me the poor Duke’s officer. Prove this, thou wicked Hannibal, or I’ll have mine action of battery on thee.

ESCALUS. If he took you a box o’ th’ ear, you might have your action of slander too.

ELBOW. Marry, I thank your good worship for it. What is’t your worship’s pleasure I shall do with this wicked caitiff?

ESCALUS. Truly, officer, because he hath some offences in him that thou wouldst discover if thou couldst, let him continue in his courses till thou know’st what they are.

ELBOW. Marry, I thank your worship for it.—Thou seest, thou wicked varlet, now, what’s come upon thee. Thou art to continue now, thou varlet, thou art to continue.

ESCALUS. [To Froth.] Where were you born, friend?

FROTH. Here in Vienna, sir.

ESCALUS. Are you of fourscore pounds a year?

FROTH. Yes, an’t please you, sir.

ESCALUS. So. [To Pompey.] What trade are you of, sir?

POMPEY. A tapster, a poor widow’s tapster.

ESCALUS. Your mistress’ name?

POMPEY. Mistress Overdone.

ESCALUS. Hath she had any more than one husband?

POMPEY. Nine, sir; Overdone by the last.

ESCALUS. Nine?—Come hither to me, Master Froth. Master Froth, I would not have you acquainted with tapsters; they will draw you, Master Froth, and you will hang them. Get you gone, and let me hear no more of you.

FROTH. I thank your worship. For mine own part, I never come into any room in a taphouse but I am drawn in.

ESCALUS. Well, no more of it, Master Froth. Farewell.

[Exit Froth.]

Come you hither to me, Master tapster. What’s your name, Master tapster?

POMPEY. Pompey.

ESCALUS. What else?

POMPEY. Bum, sir.

ESCALUS. Troth, and your bum is the greatest thing about you; so that, in the beastliest sense, you are Pompey the great. Pompey, you are partly a bawd, Pompey, howsoever you colour it in being a tapster, are you not? Come, tell me true, it shall be the better for you.

POMPEY. Truly, sir, I am a poor fellow that would live.

ESCALUS. How would you live, Pompey? By being a bawd? What do you think of the trade, Pompey? Is it a lawful trade?

POMPEY. If the law would allow it, sir.

ESCALUS. But the law will not allow it, Pompey; nor it shall not be allowed in Vienna.

POMPEY. Does your worship mean to geld and splay all the youth of the city?

ESCALUS. No, Pompey.

POMPEY. Truly, sir, in my poor opinion, they will to’t then. If your worship will take order for the drabs and the knaves, you need not to fear the bawds.

ESCALUS. There is pretty orders beginning, I can tell you. It is but heading and hanging.

POMPEY. If you head and hang all that offend that way but for ten year together, you’ll be glad to give out a commission for more heads. If this law hold in Vienna ten year, I’ll rent the fairest house in it after threepence a bay. If you live to see this come to pass, say Pompey told you so.

ESCALUS. Thank you, good Pompey; and, in requital of your prophecy, hark you: I advise you, let me not find you before me again upon any complaint whatsoever; no, not for dwelling where you do. If I do, Pompey, I shall beat you to your tent, and prove a shrewd Caesar to you. In plain dealing, Pompey, I shall have you whipped. So for this time, Pompey, fare you well.

POMPEY. I thank your worship for your good counsel. [Aside.] But I shall follow it as the flesh and fortune shall better determine. Whip me? No, no; let carman whip his jade; The valiant heart’s not whipped out of his trade.

ESCALUS. Come hither to me, Master Elbow. Come hither, Master Constable. How long have you been in this place of constable?

ELBOW. Seven year and a half, sir.

ESCALUS. I thought, by the readiness in the office, you had continued in it sometime. You say seven years together?

ELBOW. And a half, sir.

ESCALUS. Alas, it hath been great pains to you. They do you wrong to put you so oft upon’t. Are there not men in your ward sufficient to serve it?

ELBOW. Faith, sir, few of any wit in such matters. As they are chosen, they are glad to choose me for them; I do it for some piece of money, and go through with all.

ESCALUS. Look you bring me in the names of some six or seven, the most sufficient of your parish.

ELBOW. To your worship’s house, sir?

ESCALUS. To my house. Fare you well.

[Exit Elbow.]

What’s o’clock, think you?

JUSTICE. Eleven, sir.

ESCALUS. I pray you home to dinner with me.

JUSTICE. I humbly thank you.

ESCALUS. It grieves me for the death of Claudio, But there’s no remedy.

JUSTICE. Lord Angelo is severe.

ESCALUS. It is but needful. Mercy is not itself that oft looks so; Pardon is still the nurse of second woe. But yet, Poor Claudio! There’s no remedy. Come, sir.

SCENE II. Another room in the same.

Enter Provost and a Servant.

SERVANT. He’s hearing of a cause. He will come straight. I’ll tell him of you.

PROVOST. Pray you do.

I’ll know His pleasure, may be he will relent. Alas, He hath but as offended in a dream; All sects, all ages, smack of this vice, and he To die for ’t!

ANGELO. Now, what’s the matter, Provost?

PROVOST. Is it your will Claudio shall die tomorrow?

ANGELO. Did not I tell thee yea? Hadst thou not order? Why dost thou ask again?

PROVOST. Lest I might be too rash. Under your good correction, I have seen When, after execution, judgement hath Repented o’er his doom.

ANGELO. Go to; let that be mine. Do you your office, or give up your place, And you shall well be spared.

PROVOST. I crave your honour’s pardon. What shall be done, sir, with the groaning Juliet? She’s very near her hour.

ANGELO. Dispose of her To some more fitter place; and that with speed.

SERVANT. Here is the sister of the man condemned Desires access to you.

ANGELO. Hath he a sister?

PROVOST. Ay, my good lord, a very virtuous maid, And to be shortly of a sisterhood, If not already.

ANGELO. Well, let her be admitted.

See you the fornicatress be removed; Let her have needful but not lavish means; There shall be order for it.

Enter Lucio and Isabella.

PROVOST. [Offering to retire.] Save your honour!

ANGELO. Stay a little while. [To Isabella.] You are welcome. What’s your will?

ISABELLA. I am a woeful suitor to your honour, Please but your honour hear me.

ANGELO. Well, what’s your suit?

ISABELLA. There is a vice that most I do abhor, And most desire should meet the blow of justice; For which I would not plead, but that I must; For which I must not plead, but that I am At war ’twixt will and will not.

ANGELO. Well, the matter?

ISABELLA. I have a brother is condemned to die; I do beseech you, let it be his fault, And not my brother.

PROVOST. Heaven give thee moving graces.

ANGELO. Condemn the fault, and not the actor of it? Why, every fault’s condemned ere it be done. Mine were the very cipher of a function To find the faults whose fine stands in record, And let go by the actor.

ISABELLA. O just but severe law! I had a brother, then. Heaven keep your honour!

LUCIO. [To Isabella.] Give’t not o’er so. To him again, entreat him, Kneel down before him, hang upon his gown; You are too cold. If you should need a pin, You could not with more tame a tongue desire it. To him, I say.

ISABELLA. Must he needs die?

ANGELO. Maiden, no remedy.

ISABELLA. Yes, I do think that you might pardon him, And neither heaven nor man grieve at the mercy.

ANGELO. I will not do’t.

ISABELLA. But can you if you would?

ANGELO. Look, what I will not, that I cannot do.

ISABELLA. But might you do’t, and do the world no wrong, If so your heart were touched with that remorse As mine is to him?

ANGELO. He’s sentenced, ’tis too late.

LUCIO. [To Isabella.] You are too cold.

ISABELLA. Too late? Why, no. I that do speak a word May call it back again. Well, believe this: No ceremony that to great ones longs, Not the king’s crown, nor the deputed sword, The marshal’s truncheon, nor the judge’s robe, Become them with one half so good a grace As mercy does. If he had been as you, and you as he, You would have slipped like him, but he like you Would not have been so stern.

ANGELO. Pray you be gone.

ISABELLA. I would to heaven I had your potency, And you were Isabel! Should it then be thus? No; I would tell what ’twere to be a judge And what a prisoner.

LUCIO. [Aside.] Ay, touch him; there’s the vein.

ANGELO. Your brother is a forfeit of the law, And you but waste your words.

ISABELLA. Alas, alas! Why, all the souls that were were forfeit once, And He that might the vantage best have took Found out the remedy. How would you be If He, which is the top of judgement, should But judge you as you are? O, think on that, And mercy then will breathe within your lips, Like man new made.

ANGELO. Be you content, fair maid. It is the law, not I, condemns your brother. Were he my kinsman, brother, or my son, It should be thus with him. He must die tomorrow.

ISABELLA. Tomorrow? O, that’s sudden! Spare him, spare him! He’s not prepared for death. Even for our kitchens We kill the fowl of season. Shall we serve heaven With less respect than we do minister To our gross selves? Good, good my lord, bethink you. Who is it that hath died for this offence? There’s many have committed it.

LUCIO. Ay, well said.

ANGELO. The law hath not been dead, though it hath slept. Those many had not dared to do that evil If the first that did th’ edict infringe Had answered for his deed. Now ’tis awake, Takes note of what is done, and, like a prophet, Looks in a glass that shows what future evils, Either now, or by remissness new conceived, And so in progress to be hatched and born, Are now to have no successive degrees, But, where they live, to end.

ISABELLA. Yet show some pity.

ANGELO. I show it most of all when I show justice; For then I pity those I do not know, Which a dismissed offence would after gall, And do him right that, answering one foul wrong, Lives not to act another. Be satisfied; Your brother dies tomorrow; be content.

ISABELLA. So you must be the first that gives this sentence, And he that suffers. O, it is excellent To have a giant’s strength; but it is tyrannous To use it like a giant.

LUCIO. That’s well said.

ISABELLA. Could great men thunder As Jove himself does, Jove would ne’er be quiet, For every pelting petty officer Would use his heaven for thunder. Nothing but thunder. Merciful Heaven, Thou rather with thy sharp and sulphurous bolt Splits the unwedgeable and gnarled oak, Than the soft myrtle. But man, proud man, Dressed in a little brief authority, Most ignorant of what he’s most assured, His glassy essence, like an angry ape Plays such fantastic tricks before high heaven As makes the angels weep; who, with our spleens, Would all themselves laugh mortal.

LUCIO. O, to him, to him, wench! He will relent; He’s coming. I perceive ’t.

PROVOST. Pray heaven she win him.

ISABELLA. We cannot weigh our brother with ourself. Great men may jest with saints; ’tis wit in them, But in the less, foul profanation.

LUCIO. Thou’rt i’ th’ right, girl; more o’ that.

ISABELLA. That in the captain’s but a choleric word Which in the soldier is flat blasphemy.

LUCIO. Art advised o’ that? More on’t.

ANGELO. Why do you put these sayings upon me?

ISABELLA. Because authority, though it err like others, Hath yet a kind of medicine in itself That skins the vice o’ th’ top. Go to your bosom, Knock there, and ask your heart what it doth know That’s like my brother’s fault. If it confess A natural guiltiness such as is his, Let it not sound a thought upon your tongue Against my brother’s life.

ANGELO. She speaks, and ’tis such sense That my sense breeds with it. [Going.] Fare you well.

ISABELLA. Gentle my lord, turn back.

ANGELO. I will bethink me. Come again tomorrow.

ISABELLA. Hark how I’ll bribe you. Good my lord, turn back.

ANGELO. How? Bribe me?

ISABELLA. Ay, with such gifts that heaven shall share with you.

LUCIO. You had marred all else.

ISABELLA. Not with fond shekels of the tested gold, Or stones, whose rates are either rich or poor As fancy values them, but with true prayers, That shall be up at heaven and enter there Ere sunrise, prayers from preserved souls, From fasting maids, whose minds are dedicate To nothing temporal.

ANGELO. Well; come to me tomorrow.

LUCIO. [Aside to Isabella.] Go to, ’tis well; away.

ISABELLA. Heaven keep your honour safe.

ANGELO. [Aside.] Amen. For I am that way going to temptation, Where prayers cross.

ISABELLA. At what hour tomorrow Shall I attend your lordship?

ANGELO. At any time ’fore noon.

ISABELLA. Save your honour.

[Exeunt Isabella, Lucio and Provost.]

ANGELO. From thee, even from thy virtue! What’s this? What’s this? Is this her fault or mine? The tempter or the tempted, who sins most, ha? Not she; nor doth she tempt; but it is I That, lying by the violet in the sun, Do as the carrion does, not as the flower, Corrupt with virtuous season. Can it be That modesty may more betray our sense Than woman’s lightness? Having waste ground enough, Shall we desire to raze the sanctuary And pitch our evils there? O, fie, fie, fie! What dost thou, or what art thou, Angelo? Dost thou desire her foully for those things That make her good? O, let her brother live. Thieves for their robbery have authority When judges steal themselves. What, do I love her, That I desire to hear her speak again And feast upon her eyes? What is’t I dream on? O cunning enemy, that, to catch a saint, With saints dost bait thy hook! Most dangerous Is that temptation that doth goad us on To sin in loving virtue. Never could the strumpet With all her double vigour, art, and nature, Once stir my temper, but this virtuous maid Subdues me quite. Ever till now When men were fond, I smiled and wondered how.

SCENE III. A room in a prison.

Enter Duke disguised as a Friar, and Provost.

DUKE. Hail to you, Provost, so I think you are.

PROVOST. I am the Provost. What’s your will, good friar?

DUKE. Bound by my charity and my blessed order, I come to visit the afflicted spirits Here in the prison. Do me the common right To let me see them, and to make me know The nature of their crimes, that I may minister To them accordingly.

PROVOST. I would do more than that, if more were needful.

Enter Juliet.

Look, here comes one, a gentlewoman of mine, Who, falling in the flaws of her own youth, Hath blistered her report. She is with child, And he that got it, sentenced: a young man More fit to do another such offence Than die for this.

DUKE. When must he die?

PROVOST. As I do think, tomorrow. [To Juliet.] I have provided for you; stay a while And you shall be conducted.

DUKE. Repent you, fair one, of the sin you carry?

JULIET. I do; and bear the shame most patiently.

DUKE. I’ll teach you how you shall arraign your conscience, And try your penitence, if it be sound Or hollowly put on.

JULIET. I’ll gladly learn.

DUKE. Love you the man that wronged you?

JULIET. Yes, as I love the woman that wronged him.

DUKE. So then it seems your most offenceful act Was mutually committed?

JULIET. Mutually.

DUKE. Then was your sin of heavier kind than his.

JULIET. I do confess it, and repent it, father.

DUKE. ’Tis meet so, daughter; but lest you do repent As that the sin hath brought you to this shame, Which sorrow is always toward ourselves, not heaven, Showing we would not spare heaven as we love it, But as we stand in fear—

JULIET. I do repent me as it is an evil, And take the shame with joy.

DUKE. There rest. Your partner, as I hear, must die tomorrow, And I am going with instruction to him. Grace go with you! Benedicite!

JULIET. Must die tomorrow? O, injurious love That respites me a life, whose very comfort Is still a dying horror!

PROVOST. ’Tis pity of him.

SCENE IV. A room in Angelo’s house.

ANGELO. When I would pray and think, I think and pray To several subjects. Heaven hath my empty words, Whilst my invention, hearing not my tongue, Anchors on Isabel. Heaven in my mouth, As if I did but only chew his name, And in my heart the strong and swelling evil Of my conception. The state whereon I studied Is, like a good thing being often read, Grown sere and tedious; yea, my gravity, Wherein—let no man hear me—I take pride, Could I with boot change for an idle plume Which the air beats for vain. O place, O form, How often dost thou with thy case, thy habit, Wrench awe from fools, and tie the wiser souls To thy false seeming! Blood, thou art blood. Let’s write good angel on the devil’s horn. ’Tis not the devil’s crest.

How now, who’s there?

SERVANT. One Isabel, a sister, desires access to you.

ANGELO. Teach her the way.

O heavens, Why does my blood thus muster to my heart, Making both it unable for itself And dispossessing all my other parts Of necessary fitness? So play the foolish throngs with one that swoons, Come all to help him, and so stop the air By which he should revive. And even so The general subject to a well-wished king Quit their own part, and in obsequious fondness Crowd to his presence, where their untaught love Must needs appear offence.

Enter Isabella.

How now, fair maid?

ISABELLA. I am come to know your pleasure.

ANGELO. That you might know it, would much better please me Than to demand what ’tis. Your brother cannot live.

ISABELLA. Even so. Heaven keep your honour.

ANGELO. Yet may he live a while. And, it may be, As long as you or I. Yet he must die.

ISABELLA. Under your sentence?

ANGELO. Yea.

ISABELLA. When, I beseech you? That in his reprieve, Longer or shorter, he may be so fitted That his soul sicken not.

ANGELO. Ha! Fie, these filthy vices! It were as good To pardon him that hath from nature stolen A man already made, as to remit Their saucy sweetness that do coin heaven’s image In stamps that are forbid. ’Tis all as easy Falsely to take away a life true made As to put metal in restrained means To make a false one.

ISABELLA. ’Tis set down so in heaven, but not in earth.

ANGELO. Say you so? Then I shall pose you quickly. Which had you rather, that the most just law Now took your brother’s life; or, to redeem him, Give up your body to such sweet uncleanness As she that he hath stained?

ISABELLA. Sir, believe this: I had rather give my body than my soul.

ANGELO. I talk not of your soul. Our compelled sins Stand more for number than for accompt.

ISABELLA. How say you?

ANGELO. Nay, I’ll not warrant that, for I can speak Against the thing I say. Answer to this: I, now the voice of the recorded law, Pronounce a sentence on your brother’s life. Might there not be a charity in sin To save this brother’s life?

ISABELLA. Please you to do’t, I’ll take it as a peril to my soul; It is no sin at all, but charity.

ANGELO. Pleased you to do’t at peril of your soul, Were equal poise of sin and charity.

ISABELLA. That I do beg his life, if it be sin, Heaven let me bear it. You granting of my suit, If that be sin, I’ll make it my morn prayer To have it added to the faults of mine, And nothing of your answer.

ANGELO. Nay, but hear me. Your sense pursues not mine. Either you are ignorant, Or seem so, crafty; and that’s not good.

ISABELLA. Let me be ignorant, and in nothing good, But graciously to know I am no better.

ANGELO. Thus wisdom wishes to appear most bright When it doth tax itself, as these black masks Proclaim an enshield beauty ten times louder Than beauty could, displayed. But mark me; To be received plain, I’ll speak more gross. Your brother is to die.

ISABELLA. So.

ANGELO. And his offence is so, as it appears, Accountant to the law upon that pain.

ISABELLA. True.

ANGELO. Admit no other way to save his life— As I subscribe not that, nor any other, But, in the loss of question, that you, his sister, Finding yourself desired of such a person Whose credit with the judge, or own great place, Could fetch your brother from the manacles Of the all-binding law; and that there were No earthly mean to save him but that either You must lay down the treasures of your body To this supposed, or else to let him suffer, What would you do?

ISABELLA. As much for my poor brother as myself. That is, were I under the terms of death, Th’ impression of keen whips I’d wear as rubies, And strip myself to death as to a bed That longing have been sick for, ere I’d yield My body up to shame.

ANGELO. Then must your brother die.

ISABELLA. And ’twere the cheaper way. Better it were a brother died at once Than that a sister, by redeeming him, Should die for ever.

ANGELO. Were not you then as cruel as the sentence That you have slandered so?

ISABELLA. Ignominy in ransom and free pardon Are of two houses. Lawful mercy Is nothing kin to foul redemption.

ANGELO. You seemed of late to make the law a tyrant, And rather proved the sliding of your brother A merriment than a vice.

ISABELLA. O, pardon me, my lord. It oft falls out, To have what we would have, we speak not what we mean. I something do excuse the thing I hate For his advantage that I dearly love.

ANGELO. We are all frail.

ISABELLA. Else let my brother die, If not a feodary but only he Owe and succeed by weakness.

ANGELO. Nay, women are frail too.

ISABELLA. Ay, as the glasses where they view themselves, Which are as easy broke as they make forms. Women?—Help, heaven! Men their creation mar In profiting by them. Nay, call us ten times frail; For we are soft as our complexions are, And credulous to false prints.

ANGELO. I think it well. And from this testimony of your own sex, Since I suppose we are made to be no stronger Than faults may shake our frames, let me be bold. I do arrest your words. Be that you are, That is, a woman. If you be more, you’re none. If you be one, as you are well expressed By all external warrants, show it now By putting on the destined livery.

ISABELLA. I have no tongue but one. Gentle my lord, Let me intreat you speak the former language.

ANGELO. Plainly conceive, I love you.

ISABELLA. My brother did love Juliet, And you tell me that he shall die for ’t.

ANGELO. He shall not, Isabel, if you give me love.

ISABELLA. I know your virtue hath a license in’t, Which seems a little fouler than it is, To pluck on others.

ANGELO. Believe me, on mine honour, My words express my purpose.

ISABELLA. Ha! Little honour to be much believed, And most pernicious purpose! Seeming, seeming! I will proclaim thee, Angelo, look for’t. Sign me a present pardon for my brother Or with an outstretched throat I’ll tell the world aloud What man thou art.

ANGELO. Who will believe thee, Isabel? My unsoiled name, th’ austereness of my life, My vouch against you, and my place i’ th’ state Will so your accusation overweigh That you shall stifle in your own report, And smell of calumny. I have begun, And now I give my sensual race the rein. Fit thy consent to my sharp appetite; Lay by all nicety and prolixious blushes That banish what they sue for. Redeem thy brother By yielding up thy body to my will; Or else he must not only die the death, But thy unkindness shall his death draw out To ling’ring sufferance. Answer me tomorrow, Or, by the affection that now guides me most, I’ll prove a tyrant to him. As for you, Say what you can, my false o’erweighs your true.

ISABELLA. To whom should I complain? Did I tell this, Who would believe me? O perilous mouths, That bear in them one and the self-same tongue Either of condemnation or approof, Bidding the law make curtsy to their will, Hooking both right and wrong to th’ appetite, To follow as it draws! I’ll to my brother. Though he hath fall’n by prompture of the blood, Yet hath he in him such a mind of honour That, had he twenty heads to tender down On twenty bloody blocks, he’d yield them up Before his sister should her body stoop To such abhorred pollution. Then, Isabel, live chaste, and, brother, die. More than our brother is our chastity. I’ll tell him yet of Angelo’s request, And fit his mind to death, for his soul’s rest.

SCENE I. A room in the prison.

Enter Duke, Claudio and Provost.

DUKE. So then you hope of pardon from Lord Angelo?

CLAUDIO. The miserable have no other medicine But only hope. I have hope to live, and am prepared to die.

DUKE. Be absolute for death. Either death or life Shall thereby be the sweeter. Reason thus with life: If I do lose thee, I do lose a thing That none but fools would keep. A breath thou art, Servile to all the skyey influences That dost this habitation where thou keep’st Hourly afflict. Merely, thou art death’s fool; For him thou labour’st by thy flight to shun, And yet runn’st toward him still. Thou art not noble; For all th’ accommodations that thou bear’st Are nursed by baseness. Thou’rt by no means valiant; For thou dost fear the soft and tender fork Of a poor worm. Thy best of rest is sleep, And that thou oft provok’st, yet grossly fear’st Thy death, which is no more. Thou art not thyself; For thou exists on many a thousand grains That issue out of dust. Happy thou art not; For what thou hast not, still thou striv’st to get, And what thou hast, forget’st. Thou art not certain; For thy complexion shifts to strange effects After the moon. If thou art rich, thou’rt poor; For, like an ass whose back with ingots bows, Thou bear’st thy heavy riches but a journey, And death unloads thee. Friend hast thou none; For thine own bowels which do call thee sire, The mere effusion of thy proper loins, Do curse the gout, serpigo, and the rheum For ending thee no sooner. Thou hast nor youth nor age, But as it were an after-dinner’s sleep Dreaming on both; for all thy blessed youth Becomes as aged, and doth beg the alms Of palsied eld; and when thou art old and rich, Thou hast neither heat, affection, limb, nor beauty To make thy riches pleasant. What’s yet in this That bears the name of life? Yet in this life Lie hid more thousand deaths; yet death we fear, That makes these odds all even.

CLAUDIO. I humbly thank you. To sue to live, I find I seek to die, And seeking death, find life. Let it come on.

ISABELLA. [Within.] What ho! Peace here; grace and good company!

PROVOST. Who’s there? Come in. The wish deserves a welcome.

DUKE. Dear sir, ere long I’ll visit you again.

CLAUDIO. Most holy sir, I thank you.

ISABELLA. My business is a word or two with Claudio.

PROVOST. And very welcome. Look, signior, here’s your sister.

DUKE. Provost, a word with you.

PROVOST. As many as you please.

DUKE. Bring me to hear them speak, where I may be concealed.

[Exeunt Duke and Provost.]

CLAUDIO. Now, sister, what’s the comfort?

ISABELLA. Why, As all comforts are, most good, most good indeed. Lord Angelo, having affairs to heaven, Intends you for his swift ambassador, Where you shall be an everlasting leiger. Therefore your best appointment make with speed; Tomorrow you set on.

CLAUDIO. Is there no remedy?

ISABELLA. None, but such remedy as, to save a head, To cleave a heart in twain.

CLAUDIO. But is there any?

ISABELLA. Yes, brother, you may live. There is a devilish mercy in the judge, If you’ll implore it, that will free your life, But fetter you till death.

CLAUDIO. Perpetual durance?

ISABELLA. Ay, just; perpetual durance; a restraint, Though all the world’s vastidity you had, To a determined scope.

CLAUDIO. But in what nature?

ISABELLA. In such a one as, you consenting to’t, Would bark your honour from that trunk you bear, And leave you naked.

CLAUDIO. Let me know the point.

ISABELLA. O, I do fear thee, Claudio, and I quake, Lest thou a feverous life shouldst entertain, And six or seven winters more respect Than a perpetual honour. Dar’st thou die? The sense of death is most in apprehension; And the poor beetle that we tread upon In corporal sufferance finds a pang as great As when a giant dies.

CLAUDIO. Why give you me this shame? Think you I can a resolution fetch From flowery tenderness? If I must die, I will encounter darkness as a bride And hug it in mine arms.

ISABELLA. There spake my brother! There my father’s grave Did utter forth a voice. Yes, thou must die. Thou art too noble to conserve a life In base appliances. This outward-sainted deputy, Whose settled visage and deliberate word Nips youth i’ th’ head, and follies doth enew As falcon doth the fowl, is yet a devil. His filth within being cast, he would appear A pond as deep as hell.

CLAUDIO. The precise Angelo?

ISABELLA. O, ’tis the cunning livery of hell The damned’st body to invest and cover In precise guards! Dost thou think, Claudio, If I would yield him my virginity Thou mightst be freed?

CLAUDIO. O heavens, it cannot be.

ISABELLA. Yes, he would give it thee, from this rank offence, So to offend him still. This night’s the time That I should do what I abhor to name, Or else thou diest tomorrow.

CLAUDIO. Thou shalt not do’t.

ISABELLA. O, were it but my life, I’d throw it down for your deliverance As frankly as a pin.

CLAUDIO. Thanks, dear Isabel.

ISABELLA. Be ready, Claudio, for your death tomorrow.

CLAUDIO. Yes. Has he affections in him That thus can make him bite the law by th’ nose When he would force it? Sure it is no sin; Or of the deadly seven it is the least.

ISABELLA. Which is the least?

CLAUDIO. If it were damnable, he being so wise, Why would he for the momentary trick Be perdurably fined? O Isabel!

ISABELLA. What says my brother?

CLAUDIO. Death is a fearful thing.

ISABELLA. And shamed life a hateful.

CLAUDIO. Ay, but to die, and go we know not where; To lie in cold obstruction, and to rot; This sensible warm motion to become A kneaded clod; and the delighted spirit To bathe in fiery floods, or to reside In thrilling regions of thick-ribbed ice; To be imprisoned in the viewless winds And blown with restless violence round about The pendent world; or to be worse than worst Of those that lawless and incertain thought Imagine howling—’tis too horrible. The weariest and most loathed worldly life That age, ache, penury, and imprisonment Can lay on nature is a paradise To what we fear of death.

ISABELLA. Alas, alas!

CLAUDIO. Sweet sister, let me live. What sin you do to save a brother’s life, Nature dispenses with the deed so far That it becomes a virtue.

ISABELLA. O, you beast! O faithless coward! O dishonest wretch! Wilt thou be made a man out of my vice? Is’t not a kind of incest to take life From thine own sister’s shame? What should I think? Heaven shield my mother played my father fair, For such a warped slip of wilderness Ne’er issued from his blood. Take my defiance, Die, perish! Might but my bending down Reprieve thee from thy fate, it should proceed. I’ll pray a thousand prayers for thy death, No word to save thee.

CLAUDIO. Nay, hear me, Isabel.

ISABELLA. O fie, fie, fie! Thy sin’s not accidental, but a trade. Mercy to thee would prove itself a bawd. ’Tis best that thou diest quickly.

CLAUDIO. O, hear me, Isabella.

Enter Duke as a Friar.

DUKE. Vouchsafe a word, young sister, but one word.

ISABELLA. What is your will?

DUKE. Might you dispense with your leisure, I would by and by have some speech with you. The satisfaction I would require is likewise your own benefit.

ISABELLA. I have no superfluous leisure, my stay must be stolen out of other affairs, but I will attend you a while.

DUKE. [To Claudio aside.] Son, I have overheard what hath passed between you and your sister. Angelo had never the purpose to corrupt her; only he hath made an assay of her virtue, to practise his judgement with the disposition of natures. She, having the truth of honour in her, hath made him that gracious denial which he is most glad to receive. I am confessor to Angelo, and I know this to be true; therefore prepare yourself to death. Do not satisfy your resolution with hopes that are fallible. Tomorrow you must die; go to your knees and make ready.

CLAUDIO. Let me ask my sister pardon. I am so out of love with life that I will sue to be rid of it.

DUKE. Hold you there. Farewell.

[Exit Claudio.]

Provost, a word with you.

PROVOST. What’s your will, father?

DUKE. That, now you are come, you will be gone. Leave me a while with the maid; my mind promises with my habit no loss shall touch her by my company.

PROVOST. In good time.

DUKE. The hand that hath made you fair hath made you good. The goodness that is cheap in beauty makes beauty brief in goodness; but grace, being the soul of your complexion, shall keep the body of it ever fair. The assault that Angelo hath made to you, fortune hath conveyed to my understanding; and, but that frailty hath examples for his falling, I should wonder at Angelo. How will you do to content this substitute, and to save your brother?

ISABELLA. I am now going to resolve him. I had rather my brother die by the law than my son should be unlawfully born. But, O, how much is the good Duke deceived in Angelo! If ever he return, and I can speak to him, I will open my lips in vain, or discover his government.

DUKE. That shall not be much amiss. Yet, as the matter now stands, he will avoid your accusation: he made trial of you only. Therefore fasten your ear on my advisings, to the love I have in doing good, a remedy presents itself. I do make myself believe that you may most uprighteously do a poor wronged lady a merited benefit; redeem your brother from the angry law; do no stain to your own gracious person; and much please the absent Duke, if peradventure he shall ever return to have hearing of this business.

ISABELLA. Let me hear you speak farther. I have spirit to do anything that appears not foul in the truth of my spirit.

DUKE. Virtue is bold, and goodness never fearful. Have you not heard speak of Mariana, the sister of Frederick, the great soldier who miscarried at sea?

ISABELLA. I have heard of the lady, and good words went with her name.

DUKE. She should this Angelo have married, was affianced to her oath, and the nuptial appointed. Between which time of the contract and limit of the solemnity, her brother Frederick was wrecked at sea, having in that perished vessel the dowry of his sister. But mark how heavily this befell to the poor gentlewoman. There she lost a noble and renowned brother, in his love toward her ever most kind and natural; with him, the portion and sinew of her fortune, her marriage dowry; with both, her combinate husband, this well-seeming Angelo.

ISABELLA. Can this be so? Did Angelo so leave her?

DUKE. Left her in her tears, and dried not one of them with his comfort, swallowed his vows whole, pretending in her discoveries of dishonour; in few, bestowed her on her own lamentation, which she yet wears for his sake; and he, a marble to her tears, is washed with them, but relents not.

ISABELLA. What a merit were it in death to take this poor maid from the world! What corruption in this life, that it will let this man live! But how out of this can she avail?

DUKE. It is a rupture that you may easily heal, and the cure of it not only saves your brother, but keeps you from dishonour in doing it.

ISABELLA. Show me how, good father.

DUKE. This forenamed maid hath yet in her the continuance of her first affection. His unjust unkindness, that in all reason should have quenched her love, hath, like an impediment in the current, made it more violent and unruly. Go you to Angelo; answer his requiring with a plausible obedience; agree with his demands to the point. Only refer yourself to this advantage: first, that your stay with him may not be long; that the time may have all shadow and silence in it; and the place answer to convenience. This being granted in course, and now follows all. We shall advise this wronged maid to stead up your appointment, go in your place. If the encounter acknowledge itself hereafter, it may compel him to her recompense; and here, by this, is your brother saved, your honour untainted, the poor Mariana advantaged, and the corrupt deputy scaled. The maid will I frame and make fit for his attempt. If you think well to carry this as you may, the doubleness of the benefit defends the deceit from reproof. What think you of it?

ISABELLA. The image of it gives me content already, and I trust it will grow to a most prosperous perfection.

DUKE. It lies much in your holding up. Haste you speedily to Angelo; if for this night he entreat you to his bed, give him promise of satisfaction. I will presently to Saint Luke’s; there at the moated grange resides this dejected Mariana. At that place call upon me; and dispatch with Angelo, that it may be quickly.

ISABELLA. I thank you for this comfort. Fare you well, good father.

[Exit Isabella.]

SCENE II. The street before the prison.

Enter Elbow, Pompey and Officers.

ELBOW. Nay, if there be no remedy for it, but that you will needs buy and sell men and women like beasts, we shall have all the world drink brown and white bastard.

DUKE. O heavens, what stuff is here?

POMPEY. ’Twas never merry world since, of two usuries, the merriest was put down, and the worser allowed by order of law a furred gown to keep him warm; and furred with fox on lambskins too, to signify that craft, being richer than innocency, stands for the facing.

ELBOW. Come your way, sir.—Bless you, good father friar.

DUKE. And you, good brother father. What offence hath this man made you, sir?

ELBOW. Marry, sir, he hath offended the law; and, sir, we take him to be a thief too, sir; for we have found upon him, sir, a strange picklock, which we have sent to the deputy.

DUKE. Fie, sirrah, a bawd, a wicked bawd; The evil that thou causest to be done, That is thy means to live. Do thou but think What ’tis to cram a maw or clothe a back From such a filthy vice. Say to thyself, From their abominable and beastly touches I drink, I eat, array myself, and live. Canst thou believe thy living is a life, So stinkingly depending? Go mend, go mend.

POMPEY. Indeed, it does stink in some sort, sir. But yet, sir, I would prove—

DUKE. Nay, if the devil have given thee proofs for sin, Thou wilt prove his. Take him to prison, officer. Correction and instruction must both work Ere this rude beast will profit.

ELBOW. He must before the deputy, sir; he has given him warning. The deputy cannot abide a whoremaster. If he be a whoremonger and comes before him, he were as good go a mile on his errand.

DUKE. That we were all, as some would seem to be, Free from our faults, as faults from seeming, free!

ELBOW. His neck will come to your waist—a cord, sir.

POMPEY. I spy comfort, I cry bail! Here’s a gentleman, and a friend of mine.

LUCIO. How now, noble Pompey? What, at the wheels of Caesar? Art thou led in triumph? What, is there none of Pygmalion’s images, newly made woman, to be had now, for putting the hand in the pocket and extracting it clutched? What reply, ha? What say’st thou to this tune, matter, and method? Is’t not drowned i’ th’ last rain, ha? What say’st thou, trot? Is the world as it was, man? Which is the way? Is it sad and few words? Or how? The trick of it?

DUKE. Still thus, and thus; still worse!

LUCIO. How doth my dear morsel, thy mistress? Procures she still, ha?

POMPEY. Troth, sir, she hath eaten up all her beef, and she is herself in the tub.

LUCIO. Why, ’tis good. It is the right of it. It must be so. Ever your fresh whore and your powdered bawd; an unshunned consequence; it must be so. Art going to prison, Pompey?

POMPEY. Yes, faith, sir.

LUCIO. Why, ’tis not amiss, Pompey. Farewell. Go, say I sent thee thither. For debt, Pompey? Or how?

ELBOW. For being a bawd, for being a bawd.

LUCIO. Well, then, imprison him. If imprisonment be the due of a bawd, why, ’tis his right. Bawd is he doubtless, and of antiquity, too. Bawd born. Farewell, good Pompey. Commend me to the prison, Pompey. You will turn good husband now, Pompey; you will keep the house.

POMPEY. I hope, sir, your good worship will be my bail.

LUCIO. No, indeed, will I not, Pompey; it is not the wear. I will pray, Pompey, to increase your bondage. If you take it not patiently, why, your mettle is the more. Adieu, trusty Pompey.—Bless you, friar.

DUKE. And you.

LUCIO. Does Bridget paint still, Pompey, ha?

ELBOW. Come your ways, sir, come.

POMPEY. You will not bail me then, sir?

LUCIO. Then, Pompey, nor now.—What news abroad, friar? What news?

LUCIO. Go to kennel, Pompey, go.

[Exeunt Elbow, Pompey and Officers.]

What news, friar, of the Duke?

DUKE. I know none. Can you tell me of any?

LUCIO. Some say he is with the Emperor of Russia; other some, he is in Rome. But where is he, think you?

DUKE. I know not where, but wheresoever, I wish him well.

LUCIO. It was a mad fantastical trick of him to steal from the state and usurp the beggary he was never born to. Lord Angelo dukes it well in his absence. He puts transgression to’t.

DUKE. He does well in’t.

LUCIO. A little more lenity to lechery would do no harm in him. Something too crabbed that way, friar.

DUKE. It is too general a vice, and severity must cure it.

LUCIO. Yes, in good sooth, the vice is of a great kindred; it is well allied; but it is impossible to extirp it quite, friar, till eating and drinking be put down. They say this Angelo was not made by man and woman after this downright way of creation. Is it true, think you?

DUKE. How should he be made, then?

LUCIO. Some report a sea-maid spawned him; some, that he was begot between two stockfishes. But it is certain that when he makes water, his urine is congealed ice; that I know to be true. And he is a motion ungenerative; that’s infallible.

DUKE. You are pleasant, sir, and speak apace.

LUCIO. Why, what a ruthless thing is this in him, for the rebellion of a codpiece to take away the life of a man! Would the Duke that is absent have done this? Ere he would have hanged a man for the getting a hundred bastards, he would have paid for the nursing a thousand. He had some feeling of the sport; he knew the service, and that instructed him to mercy.

DUKE. I never heard the absent Duke much detected for women; he was not inclined that way.

LUCIO. O, sir, you are deceived.

DUKE. ’Tis not possible.

LUCIO. Who, not the Duke? Yes, your beggar of fifty; and his use was to put a ducat in her clack-dish. The Duke had crotchets in him. He would be drunk too, that let me inform you.

DUKE. You do him wrong, surely.

LUCIO. Sir, I was an inward of his. A shy fellow was the Duke; and I believe I know the cause of his withdrawing.

DUKE. What, I prithee, might be the cause?

LUCIO. No, pardon. ’Tis a secret must be locked within the teeth and the lips. But this I can let you understand: the greater file of the subject held the Duke to be wise.

DUKE. Wise? Why, no question but he was.

LUCIO. A very superficial, ignorant, unweighing fellow.

DUKE. Either this is envy in you, folly, or mistaking. The very stream of his life, and the business he hath helmed, must upon a warranted need give him a better proclamation. Let him be but testimonied in his own bringings-forth, and he shall appear to the envious a scholar, a statesman, and a soldier. Therefore you speak unskilfully. Or, if your knowledge be more, it is much darkened in your malice.

LUCIO. Sir, I know him, and I love him.

DUKE. Love talks with better knowledge, and knowledge with dearer love.

LUCIO. Come, sir, I know what I know.

DUKE. I can hardly believe that, since you know not what you speak. But, if ever the Duke return, as our prayers are he may, let me desire you to make your answer before him. If it be honest you have spoke, you have courage to maintain it. I am bound to call upon you, and I pray you your name?

LUCIO. Sir, my name is Lucio, well known to the Duke.

DUKE. He shall know you better, sir, if I may live to report you.

LUCIO. I fear you not.

DUKE. O, you hope the Duke will return no more; or you imagine me too unhurtful an opposite. But indeed, I can do you little harm. You’ll forswear this again.

LUCIO. I’ll be hanged first! Thou art deceived in me, friar. But no more of this. Canst thou tell if Claudio die tomorrow or no?

DUKE. Why should he die, sir?

LUCIO. Why? For filling a bottle with a tun-dish. I would the Duke we talk of were returned again. This ungenitured agent will unpeople the province with continency. Sparrows must not build in his house-eaves because they are lecherous. The Duke yet would have dark deeds darkly answered. He would never bring them to light. Would he were returned! Marry, this Claudio is condemned for untrussing. Farewell, good friar, I prithee pray for me. The Duke, I say to thee again, would eat mutton on Fridays. He’s now past it; yet, and, I say to thee, he would mouth with a beggar though she smelt brown bread and garlic. Say that I said so. Farewell.

DUKE. No might nor greatness in mortality Can censure ’scape. Back-wounding calumny The whitest virtue strikes. What king so strong Can tie the gall up in the slanderous tongue? But who comes here?

Enter Escalus, Provost and Officers with Mistress Overdone, a Bawd.

ESCALUS. Go, away with her to prison.

BAWD. Good my lord, be good to me. Your honour is accounted a merciful man, good my lord.

ESCALUS. Double and treble admonition, and still forfeit in the same kind? This would make mercy swear and play the tyrant.

PROVOST. A bawd of eleven years’ continuance, may it please your honour.

BAWD. My lord, this is one Lucio’s information against me. Mistress Kate Keepdown was with child by him in the Duke’s time; he promised her marriage. His child is a year and a quarter old come Philip and Jacob. I have kept it myself; and see how he goes about to abuse me.

ESCALUS. That fellow is a fellow of much license. Let him be called before us. Away with her to prison. Go to, no more words.

[Exeunt Officers with Bawd.]

Provost, my brother Angelo will not be altered; Claudio must die tomorrow. Let him be furnished with divines, and have all charitable preparation. If my brother wrought by my pity, it should not be so with him.

PROVOST. So please you, this friar hath been with him, and advised him for th’ entertainment of death.

ESCALUS. Good even, good father.

DUKE. Bliss and goodness on you!

ESCALUS. Of whence are you?

DUKE. Not of this country, though my chance is now To use it for my time. I am a brother Of gracious order, late come from the See In special business from his Holiness.

ESCALUS. What news abroad i’ th’ world?

DUKE. None, but that there is so great a fever on goodness that the dissolution of it must cure it. Novelty is only in request, and as it is as dangerous to be aged in any kind of course as it is virtuous to be constant in any undertaking. There is scarce truth enough alive to make societies secure; but security enough to make fellowships accursed. Much upon this riddle runs the wisdom of the world. This news is old enough, yet it is every day’s news. I pray you, sir, of what disposition was the Duke?

ESCALUS. One that, above all other strifes, contended especially to know himself.

DUKE. What pleasure was he given to?

ESCALUS. Rather rejoicing to see another merry, than merry at anything which professed to make him rejoice. A gentleman of all temperance. But leave we him to his events, with a prayer they may prove prosperous, and let me desire to know how you find Claudio prepared. I am made to understand that you have lent him visitation.

DUKE. He professes to have received no sinister measure from his judge, but most willingly humbles himself to the determination of justice. Yet had he framed to himself, by the instruction of his frailty, many deceiving promises of life, which I, by my good leisure, have discredited to him, and now he is resolved to die.

ESCALUS. You have paid the heavens your function, and the prisoner the very debt of your calling. I have laboured for the poor gentleman to the extremest shore of my modesty, but my brother justice have I found so severe that he hath forced me to tell him he is indeed Justice.

DUKE. If his own life answer the straitness of his proceeding, it shall become him well; wherein if he chance to fail, he hath sentenced himself.

ESCALUS. I am going to visit the prisoner. Fare you well.

DUKE. Peace be with you.

[Exeunt Escalus and Provost.]

He who the sword of heaven will bear Should be as holy as severe, Pattern in himself to know, Grace to stand, and virtue go; More nor less to others paying Than by self-offences weighing. Shame to him whose cruel striking Kills for faults of his own liking! Twice treble shame on Angelo, To weed my vice, and let his grow! O, what may man within him hide, Though angel on the outward side! How may likeness, made in crimes, Make practice on the times, To draw with idle spiders’ strings Most ponderous and substantial things! Craft against vice I must apply. With Angelo tonight shall lie His old betrothed but despised. So disguise shall, by th’ disguised, Pay with falsehood false exacting, And perform an old contracting.

SCENE I. A room in Mariana’s house.

Enter Mariana and a Boy singing.

SONG Take, O take those lips away, That so sweetly were forsworn, And those eyes, the break of day, Lights that do mislead the morn. But my kisses bring again, Bring again; Seals of love, but sealed in vain, Sealed in vain.

MARIANA. Break off thy song, and haste thee quick away; Here comes a man of comfort, whose advice Hath often stilled my brawling discontent.

[Exit Boy.]

I cry you mercy, sir, and well could wish You had not found me here so musical. Let me excuse me, and believe me so, My mirth it much displeased, but pleased my woe.

DUKE. ’Tis good; though music oft hath such a charm To make bad good and good provoke to harm. I pray you tell me, hath anybody inquired for me here today? Much upon this time have I promised here to meet.

MARIANA. You have not been inquired after. I have sat here all day.

DUKE. I do constantly believe you. The time is come even now. I shall crave your forbearance a little. Maybe I will call upon you anon for some advantage to yourself.

MARIANA. I am always bound to you.

DUKE. Very well met, and welcome. What is the news from this good deputy?

ISABELLA. He hath a garden circummured with brick, Whose western side is with a vineyard backed; And to that vineyard is a planched gate That makes his opening with this bigger key. This other doth command a little door Which from the vineyard to the garden leads; There have I made my promise, upon the Heavy middle of the night to call on him.

DUKE. But shall you on your knowledge find this way?

ISABELLA. I have ta’en a due and wary note upon’t; With whispering and most guilty diligence, In action all of precept, he did show me The way twice o’er.

DUKE. Are there no other tokens Between you ’greed concerning her observance?

ISABELLA. No, none, but only a repair i’ th’ dark, And that I have possessed him my most stay Can be but brief, for I have made him know I have a servant comes with me along, That stays upon me; whose persuasion is I come about my brother.

DUKE. ’Tis well borne up. I have not yet made known to Mariana A word of this.—What ho, within! Come forth.

Enter Mariana.

I pray you be acquainted with this maid; She comes to do you good.

ISABELLA. I do desire the like.

DUKE. Do you persuade yourself that I respect you?

MARIANA. Good friar, I know you do, and have found it.

DUKE. Take, then, this your companion by the hand, Who hath a story ready for your ear. I shall attend your leisure; but make haste. The vaporous night approaches.

MARIANA. Will’t please you walk aside?

[Exeunt Mariana and Isabella.]

DUKE. O place and greatness, millions of false eyes Are stuck upon thee; volumes of report Run with these false, and most contrarious quest Upon thy doings; thousand escapes of wit Make thee the father of their idle dream And rack thee in their fancies.

Enter Mariana and Isabella.

Welcome; how agreed?

ISABELLA. She’ll take the enterprise upon her, father, If you advise it.

DUKE. It is not my consent, But my entreaty too.

ISABELLA. Little have you to say When you depart from him, but, soft and low, “Remember now my brother.”

MARIANA. Fear me not.

DUKE. Nor, gentle daughter, fear you not at all. He is your husband on a pre-contract. To bring you thus together ’tis no sin, Sith that the justice of your title to him Doth flourish the deceit. Come, let us go; Our corn’s to reap, for yet our tithe’s to sow.

SCENE II. A room in the prison.

Enter Provost and Pompey.

PROVOST. Come hither, sirrah. Can you cut off a man’s head?

POMPEY. If the man be a bachelor, sir, I can; but if he be a married man, he’s his wife’s head, and I can never cut off a woman’s head.

PROVOST. Come, sir, leave me your snatches, and yield me a direct answer. Tomorrow morning are to die Claudio and Barnardine. Here is in our prison a common executioner, who in his office lacks a helper; if you will take it on you to assist him, it shall redeem you from your gyves; if not, you shall have your full time of imprisonment, and your deliverance with an unpitied whipping; for you have been a notorious bawd.

POMPEY. Sir, I have been an unlawful bawd time out of mind, but yet I will be content to be a lawful hangman. I would be glad to receive some instruction from my fellow-partner.

PROVOST. What ho, Abhorson! Where’s Abhorson, there?

Enter Abhorson.

ABHORSON. Do you call, sir?

PROVOST. Sirrah, here’s a fellow will help you tomorrow in your execution. If you think it meet, compound with him by the year, and let him abide here with you; if not, use him for the present, and dismiss him. He cannot plead his estimation with you; he hath been a bawd.

ABHORSON. A bawd, sir? Fie upon him, he will discredit our mystery.

PROVOST. Go to, sir; you weigh equally. A feather will turn the scale.

POMPEY. Pray, sir, by your good favour—for surely, sir, a good favour you have, but that you have a hanging look—do you call, sir, your occupation a mystery?

ABHORSON. Ay, sir, a mystery.

POMPEY. Painting, sir, I have heard say, is a mystery; and your whores, sir, being members of my occupation, using painting, do prove my occupation a mystery. But what mystery there should be in hanging, if I should be hanged, I cannot imagine.

ABHORSON. Sir, it is a mystery.

POMPEY. Proof.

ABHORSON. Every true man’s apparel fits your thief. If it be too little for your thief, your true man thinks it big enough; if it be too big for your thief, your thief thinks it little enough. So every true man’s apparel fits your thief.

PROVOST. Are you agreed?

POMPEY. Sir, I will serve him; for I do find your hangman is a more penitent trade than your bawd. He doth oftener ask forgiveness.

PROVOST. You, sirrah, provide your block and your axe tomorrow four o’clock.

ABHORSON. Come on, bawd. I will instruct thee in my trade. Follow.

POMPEY. I do desire to learn, sir; and I hope, if you have occasion to use me for your own turn, you shall find me yare. For truly, sir, for your kindness I owe you a good turn.

PROVOST. Call hither Barnardine and Claudio.

[Exeunt Abhorson and Pompey.]

Th’ one has my pity; not a jot the other, Being a murderer, though he were my brother.

Enter Claudio.

Look, here’s the warrant, Claudio, for thy death. ’Tis now dead midnight, and by eight tomorrow Thou must be made immortal. Where’s Barnardine?

CLAUDIO. As fast locked up in sleep as guiltless labour When it lies starkly in the traveller’s bones. He will not wake.

PROVOST. Who can do good on him? Well, go, prepare yourself. [Knocking within.] But hark, what noise? Heaven give your spirits comfort!

[Exit Claudio. Knock within.]

By and by!— I hope it is some pardon or reprieve For the most gentle Claudio.

Enter Duke.

Welcome, father.

DUKE. The best and wholesom’st spirits of the night Envelop you, good Provost! Who called here of late?

PROVOST. None, since the curfew rung.

DUKE. Not Isabel?

PROVOST. No.

DUKE. They will then, ere’t be long.

PROVOST. What comfort is for Claudio?

DUKE. There’s some in hope.

PROVOST. It is a bitter deputy.

DUKE. Not so, not so. His life is paralleled Even with the stroke and line of his great justice. He doth with holy abstinence subdue That in himself which he spurs on his power To qualify in others. Were he mealed with that Which he corrects, then were he tyrannous; But this being so, he’s just.

[Knocking within. Provost goes to the door.]

Now are they come. This is a gentle provost. Seldom when The steeled gaoler is the friend of men.

How now? What noise? That spirit’s possessed with haste That wounds th’ unsisting postern with these strokes.

Provost returns.

PROVOST. There he must stay until the officer Arise to let him in. He is called up.

DUKE. Have you no countermand for Claudio yet, But he must die tomorrow?

PROVOST. None, sir, none.

DUKE. As near the dawning, Provost, as it is, You shall hear more ere morning.

PROVOST. Happily You something know, yet I believe there comes No countermand. No such example have we. Besides, upon the very siege of justice Lord Angelo hath to the public ear Professed the contrary.

This is his Lordship’s man.

DUKE. And here comes Claudio’s pardon.

MESSENGER. My lord hath sent you this note, and by me this further charge: that you swerve not from the smallest article of it, neither in time, matter, or other circumstance. Good morrow; for, as I take it, it is almost day.

PROVOST. I shall obey him.

DUKE. [Aside.] This is his pardon, purchased by such sin For which the pardoner himself is in. Hence hath offence his quick celerity, When it is borne in high authority. When vice makes mercy, mercy’s so extended That for the fault’s love is th’ offender friended. Now, sir, what news?

PROVOST. I told you: Lord Angelo, belike thinking me remiss in mine office, awakens me with this unwonted putting-on; methinks strangely, for he hath not used it before.

DUKE. Pray you, let’s hear.

PROVOST. [Reads.] Whatsoever you may hear to the contrary, let Claudio be executed by four of the clock, and in the afternoon, Barnardine. For my better satisfaction, let me have Claudio’s head sent me by five. Let this be duly performed, with a thought that more depends on it than we must yet deliver. Thus fail not to do your office, as you will answer it at your peril. What say you to this, sir?

DUKE. What is that Barnardine who is to be executed in th’ afternoon?

PROVOST. A Bohemian born, but here nursed up and bred; one that is a prisoner nine years old.

DUKE. How came it that the absent Duke had not either delivered him to his liberty, or executed him? I have heard it was ever his manner to do so.

PROVOST. His friends still wrought reprieves for him; and indeed, his fact till now in the government of Lord Angelo, came not to an undoubtful proof.

DUKE. It is now apparent?

PROVOST. Most manifest, and not denied by himself.

DUKE. Hath he borne himself penitently in prison? How seems he to be touched?

PROVOST. A man that apprehends death no more dreadfully but as a drunken sleep; careless, reckless, and fearless of what’s past, present, or to come; insensible of mortality and desperately mortal.

DUKE. He wants advice.

PROVOST. He will hear none. He hath evermore had the liberty of the prison; give him leave to escape hence, he would not. Drunk many times a day, if not many days entirely drunk. We have very oft awaked him, as if to carry him to execution, and showed him a seeming warrant for it. It hath not moved him at all.

DUKE. More of him anon. There is written in your brow, Provost, honesty and constancy; if I read it not truly, my ancient skill beguiles me. But in the boldness of my cunning I will lay myself in hazard. Claudio, whom here you have warrant to execute, is no greater forfeit to the law than Angelo who hath sentenced him. To make you understand this in a manifested effect, I crave but four days’ respite, for the which you are to do me both a present and a dangerous courtesy.

PROVOST. Pray, sir, in what?

DUKE. In the delaying death.

PROVOST. Alack, how may I do it? Having the hour limited, and an express command, under penalty, to deliver his head in the view of Angelo? I may make my case as Claudio’s, to cross this in the smallest.

DUKE. By the vow of mine order, I warrant you, if my instructions may be your guide. Let this Barnardine be this morning executed, and his head borne to Angelo.

PROVOST. Angelo hath seen them both, and will discover the favour.

DUKE. O, death’s a great disguiser, and you may add to it. Shave the head and tie the beard, and say it was the desire of the penitent to be so bared before his death. You know the course is common. If anything fall to you upon this, more than thanks and good fortune, by the saint whom I profess, I will plead against it with my life.

PROVOST. Pardon me, good father; it is against my oath.

DUKE. Were you sworn to the Duke, or to the Deputy?

PROVOST. To him and to his substitutes.

DUKE. You will think you have made no offence if the Duke avouch the justice of your dealing?

PROVOST. But what likelihood is in that?

DUKE. Not a resemblance, but a certainty. Yet since I see you fearful, that neither my coat, integrity, nor persuasion, can with ease attempt you, I will go further than I meant, to pluck all fears out of you. Look you, sir, here is the hand and seal of the Duke. You know the character, I doubt not, and the signet is not strange to you.

PROVOST. I know them both.

DUKE. The contents of this is the return of the Duke; you shall anon over-read it at your pleasure, where you shall find within these two days he will be here. This is a thing that Angelo knows not; for he this very day receives letters of strange tenour, perchance of the Duke’s death, perchance entering into some monastery; but, by chance, nothing of what is writ. Look, th’ unfolding star calls up the shepherd. Put not yourself into amazement how these things should be. All difficulties are but easy when they are known. Call your executioner, and off with Barnardine’s head. I will give him a present shrift, and advise him for a better place. Yet you are amazed; but this shall absolutely resolve you. Come away; it is almost clear dawn.

SCENE III. Another room in the same.

POMPEY. I am as well acquainted here as I was in our house of profession. One would think it were Mistress Overdone’s own house, for here be many of her old customers. First, here’s young Master Rash; he’s in for a commodity of brown paper and old ginger, nine score and seventeen pounds; of which he made five marks ready money. Marry, then ginger was not much in request, for the old women were all dead. Then is there here one Master Caper, at the suit of Master Three-pile the mercer, for some four suits of peach-coloured satin, which now peaches him a beggar. Then have we here young Dizie, and young Master Deep-vow, and Master Copperspur, and Master Starve-lackey, the rapier and dagger man, and young Drop-heir that killed lusty Pudding, and Master Forthright the tilter, and brave Master Shoe-tie the great traveller, and wild Half-can that stabbed Pots, and I think forty more, all great doers in our trade, and are now “for the Lord’s sake.”

ABHORSON. Sirrah, bring Barnardine hither.

POMPEY. Master Barnardine! You must rise and be hanged, Master Barnardine.

ABHORSON. What ho, Barnardine!

BARNARDINE. [Within.] A pox o’ your throats! Who makes that noise there? What are you?

POMPEY. Your friends, sir; the hangman. You must be so good, sir, to rise and be put to death.

BARNARDINE. [Within.] Away, you rogue, away; I am sleepy.

ABHORSON. Tell him he must awake, and that quickly too.

POMPEY. Pray, Master Barnardine, awake till you are executed, and sleep afterwards.

ABHORSON. Go in to him, and fetch him out.

POMPEY. He is coming, sir, he is coming. I hear his straw rustle.

Enter Barnardine.

ABHORSON. Is the axe upon the block, sirrah?

POMPEY. Very ready, sir.

BARNARDINE. How now, Abhorson? What’s the news with you?

ABHORSON. Truly, sir, I would desire you to clap into your prayers; for, look you, the warrant’s come.

BARNARDINE. You rogue, I have been drinking all night; I am not fitted for’t.

POMPEY. O, the better, sir; for he that drinks all night and is hanged betimes in the morning may sleep the sounder all the next day.

ABHORSON. Look you, sir, here comes your ghostly father. Do we jest now, think you?

DUKE. Sir, induced by my charity, and hearing how hastily you are to depart, I am come to advise you, comfort you, and pray with you.

BARNARDINE. Friar, not I. I have been drinking hard all night, and I will have more time to prepare me, or they shall beat out my brains with billets. I will not consent to die this day, that’s certain.

DUKE. O, sir, you must; and therefore I beseech you Look forward on the journey you shall go.

BARNARDINE. I swear I will not die today for any man’s persuasion.

DUKE. But hear you—

BARNARDINE. Not a word. If you have anything to say to me, come to my ward, for thence will not I today.

DUKE. Unfit to live or die. O gravel heart! After him, fellows; bring him to the block.

PROVOST. Now, sir, how do you find the prisoner?

DUKE. A creature unprepared, unmeet for death; And to transport him in the mind he is Were damnable.

PROVOST. Here in the prison, father, There died this morning of a cruel fever One Ragozine, a most notorious pirate, A man of Claudio’s years; his beard and head Just of his colour. What if we do omit This reprobate till he were well inclined, And satisfy the Deputy with the visage Of Ragozine, more like to Claudio?

DUKE. O, ’tis an accident that heaven provides! Dispatch it presently; the hour draws on Prefixed by Angelo. See this be done, And sent according to command, whiles I Persuade this rude wretch willingly to die.

PROVOST. This shall be done, good father, presently. But Barnardine must die this afternoon; And how shall we continue Claudio, To save me from the danger that might come If he were known alive?

DUKE. Let this be done: Put them in secret holds, both Barnardine and Claudio. Ere twice the sun hath made his journal greeting To yonder generation, you shall find Your safety manifested.

PROVOST. I am your free dependant.

DUKE. Quick, dispatch, and send the head to Angelo.

Now will I write letters to Angelo, The Provost, he shall bear them, whose contents Shall witness to him I am near at home; And that by great injunctions I am bound To enter publicly. Him I’ll desire To meet me at the consecrated fount, A league below the city; and from thence, By cold gradation and well-balanced form. We shall proceed with Angelo.

PROVOST. Here is the head; I’ll carry it myself.

DUKE. Convenient is it. Make a swift return; For I would commune with you of such things That want no ear but yours.

PROVOST. I’ll make all speed.

ISABELLA. [Within.] Peace, ho, be here!

DUKE. The tongue of Isabel. She’s come to know If yet her brother’s pardon be come hither. But I will keep her ignorant of her good, To make her heavenly comforts of despair When it is least expected.

ISABELLA. Ho, by your leave!

DUKE. Good morning to you, fair and gracious daughter.

ISABELLA. The better, given me by so holy a man. Hath yet the Deputy sent my brother’s pardon?

DUKE. He hath released him, Isabel, from the world. His head is off, and sent to Angelo.

ISABELLA. Nay, but it is not so.

DUKE. It is no other. Show your wisdom, daughter, in your close patience.

ISABELLA. O, I will to him and pluck out his eyes!

DUKE. You shall not be admitted to his sight.

ISABELLA. Unhappy Claudio! Wretched Isabel! Injurious world! Most damned Angelo!

DUKE. This nor hurts him nor profits you a jot. Forbear it, therefore; give your cause to heaven. Mark what I say, which you shall find By every syllable a faithful verity. The Duke comes home tomorrow;—nay, dry your eyes. One of our convent, and his confessor, Gives me this instance. Already he hath carried Notice to Escalus and Angelo, Who do prepare to meet him at the gates, There to give up their power. If you can, pace your wisdom In that good path that I would wish it go, And you shall have your bosom on this wretch, Grace of the Duke, revenges to your heart, And general honour.

ISABELLA. I am directed by you.

DUKE. This letter, then, to Friar Peter give; ’Tis that he sent me of the Duke’s return. Say, by this token, I desire his company At Mariana’s house tonight. Her cause and yours I’ll perfect him withal, and he shall bring you Before the Duke; and to the head of Angelo Accuse him home and home. For my poor self, I am combined by a sacred vow, And shall be absent. Wend you with this letter. Command these fretting waters from your eyes With a light heart; trust not my holy order, If I pervert your course.—Who’s here?

LUCIO. Good even. Friar, where is the Provost?

DUKE. Not within, sir.

LUCIO. O pretty Isabella, I am pale at mine heart to see thine eyes so red. Thou must be patient. I am fain to dine and sup with water and bran. I dare not for my head fill my belly. One fruitful meal would set me to’t. But they say the Duke will be here tomorrow. By my troth, Isabel, I loved thy brother. If the old fantastical duke of dark corners had been at home, he had lived.

DUKE. Sir, the Duke is marvellous little beholding to your reports; but the best is, he lives not in them.

LUCIO. Friar, thou knowest not the Duke so well as I do. He’s a better woodman than thou tak’st him for.

DUKE. Well, you’ll answer this one day. Fare ye well.

LUCIO. Nay, tarry, I’ll go along with thee. I can tell thee pretty tales of the Duke.

DUKE. You have told me too many of him already, sir, if they be true; if not true, none were enough.

LUCIO. I was once before him for getting a wench with child.

DUKE. Did you such a thing?

LUCIO. Yes, marry, did I; but I was fain to forswear it. They would else have married me to the rotten medlar.

DUKE. Sir, your company is fairer than honest. Rest you well.

LUCIO. By my troth, I’ll go with thee to the lane’s end. If bawdy talk offend you, we’ll have very little of it. Nay, friar, I am a kind of burr; I shall stick.

Enter Angelo and Escalus.

ESCALUS. Every letter he hath writ hath disvouched other.

ANGELO. In most uneven and distracted manner. His actions show much like to madness; pray heaven his wisdom be not tainted. And why meet him at the gates and redeliver our authorities there?

ESCALUS. I guess not.

ANGELO. And why should we proclaim it in an hour before his entering, that if any crave redress of injustice, they should exhibit their petitions in the street?

ESCALUS. He shows his reason for that: to have a dispatch of complaints, and to deliver us from devices hereafter, which shall then have no power to stand against us.

ANGELO. Well, I beseech you, let it be proclaimed. Betimes i’ th’ morn I’ll call you at your house. Give notice to such men of sort and suit As are to meet him.

ESCALUS. I shall, sir. Fare you well.

ANGELO. Good night. This deed unshapes me quite, makes me unpregnant And dull to all proceedings. A deflowered maid; And by an eminent body that enforced The law against it! But that her tender shame Will not proclaim against her maiden loss, How might she tongue me! Yet reason dares her no, For my authority bears so credent bulk That no particular scandal once can touch But it confounds the breather. He should have lived, Save that his riotous youth, with dangerous sense, Might in the times to come have ta’en revenge By so receiving a dishonoured life With ransom of such shame. Would yet he had lived. Alack, when once our grace we have forgot, Nothing goes right; we would, and we would not.

SCENE V. Fields without the town.

Enter Duke, in his own habit, and Friar Peter.

DUKE. These letters at fit time deliver me. The Provost knows our purpose and our plot. The matter being afoot, keep your instruction And hold you ever to our special drift, Though sometimes you do blench from this to that As cause doth minister. Go call at Flavius’ house, And tell him where I stay. Give the like notice To Valencius, Rowland, and to Crassus, And bid them bring the trumpets to the gate. But send me Flavius first.

FRIAR PETER. It shall be speeded well.

[Exit Friar Peter.]

DUKE. I thank thee, Varrius, thou hast made good haste. Come, we will walk. There’s other of our friends Will greet us here anon. My gentle Varrius.

SCENE VI. Street near the city gate.

Enter Isabella and Mariana.

ISABELLA. To speak so indirectly I am loath; I would say the truth, but to accuse him so That is your part; yet I am advised to do it, He says, to veil full purpose.

MARIANA. Be ruled by him.

ISABELLA. Besides, he tells me that, if peradventure He speak against me on the adverse side, I should not think it strange, for ’tis a physic That’s bitter to sweet end.

MARIANA. I would Friar Peter—

Enter Friar Peter.

ISABELLA. O, peace, the friar is come.

FRIAR PETER. Come, I have found you out a stand most fit, Where you may have such vantage on the Duke He shall not pass you. Twice have the trumpets sounded. The generous and gravest citizens Have hent the gates, and very near upon The Duke is entering. Therefore hence, away.

SCENE I. A public place near the city gate.

Enter at several doors Duke, Varrius, Lords; Angelo, Escalus, Lucio, Provost, Officers and Citizens.

DUKE. My very worthy cousin, fairly met. Our old and faithful friend, we are glad to see you.

ANGELO and ESCALUS. Happy return be to your royal grace!

DUKE. Many and hearty thankings to you both. We have made inquiry of you, and we hear Such goodness of your justice that our soul Cannot but yield you forth to public thanks, Forerunning more requital.

ANGELO. You make my bonds still greater.

DUKE. O, your desert speaks loud, and I should wrong it To lock it in the wards of covert bosom, When it deserves with characters of brass A forted residence ’gainst the tooth of time And rasure of oblivion. Give me your hand And let the subject see, to make them know That outward courtesies would fain proclaim Favours that keep within.—Come, Escalus, You must walk by us on our other hand. And good supporters are you.

Enter Friar Peter and Isabella.

FRIAR PETER. Now is your time. Speak loud, and kneel before him.

ISABELLA. Justice, O royal Duke! Vail your regard Upon a wronged—I would fain have said, a maid. O worthy prince, dishonour not your eye By throwing it on any other object Till you have heard me in my true complaint, And given me justice, justice, justice, justice!

DUKE. Relate your wrongs. In what? By whom? Be brief. Here is Lord Angelo shall give you justice. Reveal yourself to him.

ISABELLA. O worthy Duke, You bid me seek redemption of the devil. Hear me yourself, for that which I must speak Must either punish me, not being believed, Or wring redress from you. Hear me, O hear me, here!

ANGELO. My lord, her wits, I fear me, are not firm. She hath been a suitor to me for her brother, Cut off by course of justice.

ISABELLA. By course of justice!

ANGELO. And she will speak most bitterly and strange.

ISABELLA. Most strange, but yet most truly will I speak. That Angelo’s forsworn, is it not strange? That Angelo’s a murderer, is’t not strange? That Angelo is an adulterous thief, An hypocrite, a virgin-violator, Is it not strange and strange?

DUKE. Nay, it is ten times strange.

ISABELLA. It is not truer he is Angelo Than this is all as true as it is strange. Nay, it is ten times true, for truth is truth To th’ end of reckoning.

DUKE. Away with her. Poor soul, She speaks this in th’ infirmity of sense.

ISABELLA. O Prince, I conjure thee, as thou believ’st There is another comfort than this world, That thou neglect me not with that opinion That I am touched with madness. Make not impossible That which but seems unlike. ’Tis not impossible But one, the wicked’st caitiff on the ground, May seem as shy, as grave, as just, as absolute, As Angelo; even so may Angelo, In all his dressings, characts, titles, forms, Be an arch-villain. Believe it, royal Prince, If he be less, he’s nothing; but he’s more, Had I more name for badness.

DUKE. By mine honesty, If she be mad, as I believe no other, Her madness hath the oddest frame of sense, Such a dependency of thing on thing, As e’er I heard in madness.

ISABELLA. O gracious Duke, Harp not on that; nor do not banish reason For inequality; but let your reason serve To make the truth appear where it seems hid, And hide the false seems true.

DUKE. Many that are not mad Have, sure, more lack of reason. What would you say?

ISABELLA. I am the sister of one Claudio, Condemned upon the act of fornication To lose his head; condemned by Angelo. I, in probation of a sisterhood, Was sent to by my brother; one Lucio As then the messenger.

LUCIO. That’s I, an’t like your Grace. I came to her from Claudio and desired her To try her gracious fortune with Lord Angelo For her poor brother’s pardon.

ISABELLA. That’s he, indeed.

DUKE. You were not bid to speak.

LUCIO. No, my good lord, Nor wished to hold my peace.

DUKE. I wish you now, then; Pray you take note of it; and when you have A business for yourself, pray heaven you then Be perfect.

LUCIO. I warrant your honour.

DUKE. The warrant’s for yourself. Take heed to it.

ISABELLA. This gentleman told somewhat of my tale.

LUCIO. Right.

DUKE. It may be right, but you are i’ the wrong To speak before your time.—Proceed.

ISABELLA. I went To this pernicious caitiff deputy.

DUKE. That’s somewhat madly spoken.

ISABELLA. Pardon it; The phrase is to the matter.

DUKE. Mended again. The matter; proceed.

ISABELLA. In brief, to set the needless process by: How I persuaded, how I prayed and kneeled, How he refelled me, and how I replied— For this was of much length—the vile conclusion I now begin with grief and shame to utter. He would not, but by gift of my chaste body To his concupiscible intemperate lust, Release my brother; and after much debatement, My sisterly remorse confutes mine honour, And I did yield to him. But the next morn betimes, His purpose surfeiting, he sends a warrant For my poor brother’s head.

DUKE. This is most likely!

ISABELLA. O, that it were as like as it is true!

DUKE. By heaven, fond wretch, thou know’st not what thou speak’st, Or else thou art suborned against his honour In hateful practice. First, his integrity Stands without blemish; next, it imports no reason That with such vehemency he should pursue Faults proper to himself. If he had so offended, He would have weighed thy brother by himself, And not have cut him off. Someone hath set you on. Confess the truth, and say by whose advice Thou cam’st here to complain.

ISABELLA. And is this all? Then, O you blessed ministers above, Keep me in patience, and with ripened time Unfold the evil which is here wrapt up In countenance! Heaven shield your Grace from woe, As I, thus wronged, hence unbelieved go.

DUKE. I know you’d fain be gone. An officer! To prison with her! Shall we thus permit A blasting and a scandalous breath to fall On him so near us? This needs must be a practice. Who knew of your intent and coming hither?

ISABELLA. One that I would were here, Friar Lodowick.

[Exeunt Officer with Isabella.]

DUKE. A ghostly father, belike. Who knows that Lodowick?

LUCIO. My lord, I know him. ’Tis a meddling friar. I do not like the man. Had he been lay, my lord, For certain words he spake against your Grace In your retirement, I had swinged him soundly.

DUKE. Words against me? This’s a good friar, belike. And to set on this wretched woman here Against our substitute! Let this friar be found.

LUCIO. But yesternight, my lord, she and that friar, I saw them at the prison. A saucy friar, A very scurvy fellow.

FRIAR PETER. Blessed be your royal Grace! I have stood by, my lord, and I have heard Your royal ear abused. First hath this woman Most wrongfully accused your substitute, Who is as free from touch or soil with her As she from one ungot.

DUKE. We did believe no less. Know you that Friar Lodowick that she speaks of?

FRIAR PETER. I know him for a man divine and holy, Not scurvy, nor a temporary meddler, As he’s reported by this gentleman; And, on my trust, a man that never yet Did, as he vouches, misreport your Grace.

LUCIO. My lord, most villainously; believe it.

FRIAR PETER. Well, he in time may come to clear himself; But at this instant he is sick, my lord, Of a strange fever. Upon his mere request, Being come to knowledge that there was complaint Intended ’gainst Lord Angelo, came I hither To speak, as from his mouth, what he doth know Is true and false; and what he with his oath And all probation will make up full clear Whensoever he’s convented. First, for this woman, To justify this worthy nobleman, So vulgarly and personally accused, Her shall you hear disproved to her eyes, Till she herself confess it.

DUKE. Good friar, let’s hear it. Do you not smile at this, Lord Angelo? O heaven, the vanity of wretched fools! Give us some seats.—Come, cousin Angelo, In this I’ll be impartial. Be you judge Of your own cause.

Enter Mariana, veiled.

Is this the witness, friar? First let her show her face, and after speak.

MARIANA. Pardon, my lord; I will not show my face Until my husband bid me.

DUKE. What, are you married?

MARIANA. No, my lord.

DUKE. Are you a maid?

DUKE. A widow, then?

MARIANA. Neither, my lord.

DUKE. Why, you are nothing then, neither maid, widow, nor wife?

LUCIO. My lord, she may be a punk; for many of them are neither maid, widow, nor wife.

DUKE. Silence that fellow. I would he had some cause to prattle for himself.

LUCIO. Well, my lord.

MARIANA. My lord, I do confess I ne’er was married, And I confess besides, I am no maid. I have known my husband; yet my husband Knows not that ever he knew me.

LUCIO. He was drunk, then, my lord; it can be no better.

DUKE. For the benefit of silence, would thou wert so too.

DUKE. This is no witness for Lord Angelo.

MARIANA. Now I come to’t, my lord. She that accuses him of fornication In self-same manner doth accuse my husband, And charges him, my lord, with such a time When I’ll depose I had him in mine arms With all th’ effect of love.

ANGELO. Charges she more than me?

MARIANA. Not that I know.

DUKE. No? You say your husband.

MARIANA. Why, just, my lord, and that is Angelo, Who thinks he knows that he ne’er knew my body, But knows, he thinks, that he knows Isabel’s.

ANGELO. This is a strange abuse. Let’s see thy face.

MARIANA. My husband bids me; now I will unmask. [Unveiling.] This is that face, thou cruel Angelo, Which once thou swor’st was worth the looking on. This is the hand which, with a vowed contract, Was fast belocked in thine. This is the body That took away the match from Isabel And did supply thee at thy garden-house In her imagined person.

DUKE. Know you this woman?

LUCIO. Carnally, she says.

DUKE. Sirrah, no more.

LUCIO. Enough, my lord.

ANGELO. My lord, I must confess I know this woman; And five years since there was some speech of marriage Betwixt myself and her; which was broke off, Partly for that her promised proportions Came short of composition; but in chief For that her reputation was disvalued In levity. Since which time of five years I never spake with her, saw her, nor heard from her, Upon my faith and honour.

MARIANA. Noble Prince, As there comes light from heaven and words from breath, As there is sense in truth and truth in virtue, I am affianced this man’s wife as strongly As words could make up vows. And, my good lord, But Tuesday night last gone, in’s garden-house, He knew me as a wife. As this is true, Let me in safety raise me from my knees, Or else for ever be confixed here, A marble monument!

ANGELO. I did but smile till now. Now, good my lord, give me the scope of justice. My patience here is touched. I do perceive These poor informal women are no more But instruments of some more mightier member That sets them on. Let me have way, my lord, To find this practice out.

DUKE. Ay, with my heart; And punish them to your height of pleasure. Thou foolish friar, and thou pernicious woman, Compact with her that’s gone, think’st thou thy oaths, Though they would swear down each particular saint, Were testimonies against his worth and credit, That’s sealed in approbation? You, Lord Escalus, Sit with my cousin; lend him your kind pains To find out this abuse, whence ’tis derived. There is another friar that set them on; Let him be sent for.

FRIAR PETER. Would he were here, my lord; for he indeed Hath set the women on to this complaint. Your Provost knows the place where he abides, And he may fetch him.

DUKE. Go, do it instantly.

And you, my noble and well-warranted cousin, Whom it concerns to hear this matter forth, Do with your injuries as seems you best In any chastisement. I for a while Will leave you; but stir not you till you have Well determined upon these slanderers.

ESCALUS. My lord, we’ll do it throughly.

[Exit Duke.]

Signior Lucio, did not you say you knew that Friar Lodowick to be a dishonest person?

LUCIO. Cucullus non facit monachum, honest in nothing but in his clothes, and one that hath spoke most villainous speeches of the Duke.

ESCALUS. We shall entreat you to abide here till he come, and enforce them against him. We shall find this friar a notable fellow.

LUCIO. As any in Vienna, on my word.

ESCALUS. Call that same Isabel here once again. I would speak with her.

Pray you, my lord, give me leave to question; you shall see how I’ll handle her.

LUCIO. Not better than he, by her own report.

ESCALUS. Say you?

LUCIO. Marry, sir, I think, if you handled her privately, she would sooner confess; perchance, publicly, she’ll be ashamed.

Enter at several doors Duke as a friar, Provost and Isabella with Officers.

ESCALUS. I will go darkly to work with her.

LUCIO. That’s the way; for women are light at midnight.

ESCALUS. [To Isabella.] Come on, mistress, here’s a gentlewoman denies all that you have said.

LUCIO. My lord, here comes the rascal I spoke of, here with the Provost.

ESCALUS. In very good time. Speak not you to him till we call upon you.

LUCIO. Mum.

ESCALUS. Come, sir, did you set these women on to slander Lord Angelo? They have confessed you did.

DUKE. ’Tis false.

ESCALUS. How! Know you where you are?

DUKE. Respect to your great place; and let the devil Be sometime honoured for his burning throne. Where is the Duke? ’Tis he should hear me speak.

ESCALUS. The Duke’s in us; and we will hear you speak. Look you speak justly.

DUKE. Boldly, at least. But, O, poor souls, Come you to seek the lamb here of the fox, Good night to your redress! Is the Duke gone? Then is your cause gone too. The Duke’s unjust Thus to retort your manifest appeal, And put your trial in the villain’s mouth Which here you come to accuse.

LUCIO. This is the rascal; this is he I spoke of.

ESCALUS. Why, thou unreverend and unhallowed friar, Is’t not enough thou hast suborned these women To accuse this worthy man, but, in foul mouth, And in the witness of his proper ear, To call him villain? And then to glance from him To th’ Duke himself, to tax him with injustice? Take him hence! To th’ rack with him! We’ll touse you Joint by joint, but we will know his purpose. What! Unjust?

DUKE. Be not so hot. The Duke Dare no more stretch this finger of mine than he Dare rack his own. His subject am I not, Nor here provincial. My business in this state Made me a looker-on here in Vienna, Where I have seen corruption boil and bubble Till it o’errun the stew. Laws for all faults, But faults so countenanced that the strong statutes Stand like the forfeits in a barber’s shop, As much in mock as mark.

ESCALUS. Slander to the state! Away with him to prison!

ANGELO. What can you vouch against him, Signior Lucio? Is this the man that you did tell us of?

LUCIO. ’Tis he, my lord. Come hither, goodman Baldpate. Do you know me?

DUKE. I remember you, sir, by the sound of your voice. I met you at the prison, in the absence of the Duke.

LUCIO. O did you so? And do you remember what you said of the Duke?

DUKE. Most notedly, sir.

LUCIO. Do you so, sir? And was the Duke a fleshmonger, a fool, and a coward, as you then reported him to be?

DUKE. You must, sir, change persons with me ere you make that my report. You indeed spoke so of him, and much more, much worse.

LUCIO. O thou damnable fellow! Did not I pluck thee by the nose for thy speeches?

DUKE. I protest I love the Duke as I love myself.

ANGELO. Hark how the villain would close now, after his treasonable abuses!

ESCALUS. Such a fellow is not to be talked withal. Away with him to prison! Where is the provost? Away with him to prison! Lay bolts enough upon him. Let him speak no more. Away with those giglets too, and with the other confederate companion!

[The Provost lays hands on the Duke.]

DUKE. Stay, sir, stay a while.

ANGELO. What, resists he? Help him, Lucio.

LUCIO. Come, sir, come, sir, come, sir. Foh, sir! Why, you bald-pated lying rascal! You must be hooded, must you? Show your knave’s visage, with a pox to you! Show your sheep-biting face, and be hanged an hour! Will’t not off?

[Pulls off the friar’s hood and discovers the Duke.]

DUKE. Thou art the first knave that e’er mad’st a duke. First, Provost, let me bail these gentle three. [To Lucio.] Sneak not away, sir, for the friar and you Must have a word anon.—Lay hold on him.

LUCIO. This may prove worse than hanging.

DUKE. [To Escalus.] What you have spoke I pardon. Sit you down. We’ll borrow place of him. [To Angelo.] Sir, by your leave. Hast thou or word, or wit, or impudence, That yet can do thee office? If thou hast, Rely upon it till my tale be heard, And hold no longer out.

ANGELO. O my dread lord, I should be guiltier than my guiltiness To think I can be undiscernible, When I perceive your Grace, like power divine, Hath looked upon my passes. Then, good Prince, No longer session hold upon my shame, But let my trial be mine own confession. Immediate sentence then, and sequent death Is all the grace I beg.

DUKE. Come hither, Mariana. Say, wast thou e’er contracted to this woman?

ANGELO. I was, my lord.

DUKE. Go, take her hence and marry her instantly. Do you the office, friar; which consummate, Return him here again.—Go with him, Provost.

[Exeunt Angelo, Mariana, Friar Peter and Provost.]

ESCALUS. My lord, I am more amazed at his dishonour Than at the strangeness of it.

DUKE. Come hither, Isabel. Your friar is now your prince. As I was then Advertising and holy to your business, Not changing heart with habit, I am still Attorneyed at your service.

ISABELLA. O, give me pardon, That I, your vassal, have employed and pained Your unknown sovereignty.

DUKE. You are pardoned, Isabel. And now, dear maid, be you as free to us. Your brother’s death, I know, sits at your heart, And you may marvel why I obscured myself, Labouring to save his life, and would not rather Make rash remonstrance of my hidden power Than let him so be lost. O most kind maid, It was the swift celerity of his death, Which I did think with slower foot came on, That brained my purpose. But peace be with him. That life is better life, past fearing death, Than that which lives to fear. Make it your comfort, So happy is your brother.

ISABELLA. I do, my lord.

Enter Angelo, Mariana, Friar Peter and Provost.

DUKE. For this new-married man approaching here, Whose salt imagination yet hath wronged Your well-defended honour, you must pardon For Mariana’s sake. But as he adjudged your brother, Being criminal in double violation Of sacred chastity and of promise-breach Thereon dependent, for your brother’s life, The very mercy of the law cries out Most audible, even from his proper tongue, “An Angelo for Claudio, death for death.” Haste still pays haste, and leisure answers leisure; Like doth quit like, and measure still for measure. Then, Angelo, thy fault’s thus manifested, Which, though thou wouldst deny, denies thee vantage. We do condemn thee to the very block Where Claudio stooped to death, and with like haste. Away with him.

MARIANA. O my most gracious lord, I hope you will not mock me with a husband.

DUKE. It is your husband mocked you with a husband. Consenting to the safeguard of your honour, I thought your marriage fit. Else imputation, For that he knew you, might reproach your life, And choke your good to come. For his possessions, Although by confiscation they are ours, We do instate and widow you with all To buy you a better husband.

MARIANA. O my dear lord, I crave no other, nor no better man.

DUKE. Never crave him; we are definitive.

MARIANA. [Kneeling.] Gentle my liege—

DUKE. You do but lose your labour. Away with him to death. [To Lucio.] Now, sir, to you.

MARIANA. O my good lord.—Sweet Isabel, take my part; Lend me your knees, and all my life to come I’ll lend you all my life to do you service.

DUKE. Against all sense you do importune her. Should she kneel down in mercy of this fact, Her brother’s ghost his paved bed would break, And take her hence in horror.

MARIANA. Isabel, Sweet Isabel, do yet but kneel by me; Hold up your hands, say nothing. I’ll speak all. They say best men are moulded out of faults, And, for the most, become much more the better For being a little bad. So may my husband. O Isabel, will you not lend a knee?

DUKE. He dies for Claudio’s death.

ISABELLA. [Kneeling.] Most bounteous sir, Look, if it please you, on this man condemned As if my brother lived. I partly think A due sincerity governed his deeds Till he did look on me. Since it is so, Let him not die. My brother had but justice, In that he did the thing for which he died. For Angelo, His act did not o’ertake his bad intent, And must be buried but as an intent That perished by the way. Thoughts are no subjects; Intents but merely thoughts.

MARIANA. Merely, my lord.

DUKE. Your suit’s unprofitable. Stand up, I say. I have bethought me of another fault. Provost, how came it Claudio was beheaded At an unusual hour?

PROVOST. It was commanded so.

DUKE. Had you a special warrant for the deed?

PROVOST. No, my good lord, it was by private message.

DUKE. For which I do discharge you of your office. Give up your keys.

PROVOST. Pardon me, noble lord. I thought it was a fault, but knew it not; Yet did repent me after more advice. For testimony whereof, one in the prison That should by private order else have died, I have reserved alive.

DUKE. What’s he?

PROVOST. His name is Barnardine.

DUKE. I would thou hadst done so by Claudio. Go fetch him hither, let me look upon him.

ESCALUS. I am sorry one so learned and so wise As you, Lord Angelo, have still appeared, Should slip so grossly, both in the heat of blood And lack of tempered judgement afterward.

ANGELO. I am sorry that such sorrow I procure, And so deep sticks it in my penitent heart That I crave death more willingly than mercy; ’Tis my deserving, and I do entreat it.

Enter Provost with Barnardine, Claudio (muffled) and Juliet.

DUKE. Which is that Barnardine?

PROVOST. This, my lord.

DUKE. There was a friar told me of this man. Sirrah, thou art said to have a stubborn soul That apprehends no further than this world, And squar’st thy life according. Thou’rt condemned; But, for those earthly faults, I quit them all, And pray thee take this mercy to provide For better times to come. Friar, advise him; I leave him to your hand.—What muffled fellow’s that?

PROVOST. This is another prisoner that I saved, Who should have died when Claudio lost his head; As like almost to Claudio as himself.

[Unmuffles Claudio.]

DUKE. [To Isabella.] If he be like your brother, for his sake Is he pardoned; and for your lovely sake, Give me your hand and say you will be mine. He is my brother too. But fitter time for that. By this Lord Angelo perceives he’s safe; Methinks I see a quick’ning in his eye. Well, Angelo, your evil quits you well. Look that you love your wife, her worth worth yours. I find an apt remission in myself. And yet here’s one in place I cannot pardon. [To Lucio.] You, sirrah, that knew me for a fool, a coward, One all of luxury, an ass, a madman. Wherein have I so deserved of you That you extol me thus?

LUCIO. Faith, my lord, I spoke it but according to the trick. If you will hang me for it, you may, but I had rather it would please you I might be whipped.

DUKE. Whipped first, sir, and hanged after. Proclaim it, Provost, round about the city, If any woman wronged by this lewd fellow, As I have heard him swear himself there’s one Whom he begot with child—let her appear, And he shall marry her. The nuptial finished, Let him be whipped and hanged.

LUCIO. I beseech your Highness, do not marry me to a whore. Your highness said even now I made you a duke; good my lord, do not recompense me in making me a cuckold.

DUKE. Upon mine honour, thou shalt marry her. Thy slanders I forgive, and therewithal Remit thy other forfeits.—Take him to prison, And see our pleasure herein executed.

LUCIO. Marrying a punk, my lord, is pressing to death, whipping, and hanging.

DUKE. Slandering a prince deserves it.

[Exeunt Officers with Lucio.]

She, Claudio, that you wronged, look you restore. Joy to you, Mariana! Love her, Angelo. I have confessed her, and I know her virtue. Thanks, good friend Escalus, for thy much goodness; There’s more behind that is more gratulate. Thanks, Provost, for thy care and secrecy; We shall employ thee in a worthier place. Forgive him, Angelo, that brought you home The head of Ragozine for Claudio’s. Th’ offence pardons itself. Dear Isabel, I have a motion much imports your good; Whereto if you’ll a willing ear incline, What’s mine is yours, and what is yours is mine. So, bring us to our palace, where we’ll show What’s yet behind that’s meet you all should know.

THE MERCHANT OF VENICE

ACT I Scene I. Venice. A street. Scene II. Belmont. A room in Portia’s house. Scene III. Venice. A public place.

ACT II Scene I. Belmont. A room in Portia’s house. Scene II. Venice. A street. Scene III. The same. A room in Shylock’s house. Scene IV. The same. A street. Scene V. The same. Before Shylock’s house. Scene VI. The same. Scene VII. Belmont. A room in Portia’s house. Scene VIII. Venice. A street. Scene IX. Belmont. A room in Portia’s house.

ACT III Scene I. Venice. A street. Scene II. Belmont. A room in Portia’s house. Scene III. Venice. A street. Scene IV. Belmont. A room in Portia’s house. Scene V. The same. A garden.

ACT IV Scene I. Venice. A court of justice. Scene II. The same. A street.

ACT V Scene I. Belmont. The avenue to Portia’s house.

THE DUKE OF VENICE THE PRINCE OF MOROCCO, suitor to Portia THE PRINCE OF ARRAGON, suitor to Portia ANTONIO, a merchant of Venice BASSANIO, his friend, suitor to Portia GRATIANO, friend to Antonio and Bassanio SOLANIO, friend to Antonio and Bassanio SALARINO, friend to Antonio and Bassanio LORENZO, in love with Jessica SHYLOCK, a rich Jew TUBAL, a Jew, his friend LAUNCELET GOBBO, a clown, servant to Shylock OLD GOBBO, father to Launcelet LEONARDO, servant to Bassanio BALTHAZAR, servant to Portia STEPHANO, servant to Portia SALERIO, a messenger from Venice

PORTIA, a rich heiress NERISSA, her waiting-woman JESSICA, daughter to Shylock

Magnificoes of Venice, Officers of the Court of Justice, a Gaoler, Servants and other Attendants

SCENE: Partly at Venice, and partly at Belmont, the seat of Portia on the Continent

SCENE I. Venice. A street.

Enter Antonio, Salarino and Solanio.

ANTONIO. In sooth I know not why I am so sad, It wearies me, you say it wearies you; But how I caught it, found it, or came by it, What stuff ’tis made of, whereof it is born, I am to learn. And such a want-wit sadness makes of me, That I have much ado to know myself.

SALARINO. Your mind is tossing on the ocean, There where your argosies, with portly sail Like signiors and rich burghers on the flood, Or as it were the pageants of the sea, Do overpeer the petty traffickers That curtsy to them, do them reverence, As they fly by them with their woven wings.

SOLANIO. 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.

SALARINO. My wind cooling my broth Would blow me to an ague when I thought What harm a wind too great might do at sea. 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 bechanc’d would make me sad? But tell not me, I know Antonio Is sad to think upon his merchandise.

ANTONIO. 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.

SALARINO. Why then you are in love.

ANTONIO. Fie, fie!

SALARINO. 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 fram’d strange fellows in her time: Some that will evermore peep through their eyes, And laugh like parrots at a bagpiper. And other of such vinegar aspect That they’ll not show their teeth in way of smile Though Nestor swear the jest be laughable.

Enter Bassanio, Lorenzo and Gratiano.

SOLANIO. Here comes Bassanio, your most noble kinsman, Gratiano, and Lorenzo. Fare ye well. We leave you now with better company.

SALARINO. I would have stay’d till I had made you merry, If worthier friends had not prevented me.

ANTONIO. Your worth is very dear in my regard. I take it your own business calls on you, And you embrace th’ occasion to depart.

SALARINO. Good morrow, my good lords.

BASSANIO. Good signiors both, when shall we laugh? Say, when? You grow exceeding strange. Must it be so?

SALARINO. We’ll make our leisures to attend on yours.

[Exeunt Salarino and Solanio.]

LORENZO. My Lord Bassanio, since you have found Antonio, We two will leave you, but at dinner-time I pray you have in mind where we must meet.

BASSANIO. I will not fail you.

GRATIANO. You look not well, Signior Antonio, You have too much respect upon the world. They lose it that do buy it with much care. Believe me, you are marvellously chang’d.

ANTONIO. I hold the world but as the world, Gratiano, A stage, where every man must play a part, And mine a sad one.

GRATIANO. Let me play the fool, With mirth and laughter let old wrinkles come, And let my liver rather heat with wine Than my heart cool with mortifying groans. Why should a man whose blood is warm within Sit like his grandsire cut in alabaster? Sleep when he wakes? And creep into the jaundice By being peevish? I tell thee what, Antonio, (I love thee, and ’tis my love that speaks): There are a sort of men whose visages Do cream and mantle like a standing pond, And do a wilful stillness entertain, With purpose to be dress’d in an opinion Of wisdom, gravity, profound conceit, As who should say, “I am Sir Oracle, And when I ope my lips, let no dog bark.” O my Antonio, I do know of these That therefore only are reputed wise For saying nothing; when, I am very sure, If they should speak, would almost damn those ears Which, hearing them, would call their brothers fools. I’ll tell thee more of this another time. But fish not with this melancholy bait For this fool gudgeon, this opinion. Come, good Lorenzo. Fare ye well a while. I’ll end my exhortation after dinner.

LORENZO. Well, we will leave you then till dinner-time. I must be one of these same dumb wise men, For Gratiano never lets me speak.

GRATIANO. Well, keep me company but two years moe, Thou shalt not know the sound of thine own tongue.

ANTONIO. Fare you well. I’ll grow a talker for this gear.

GRATIANO. Thanks, i’ faith, for silence is only commendable In a neat’s tongue dried, and a maid not vendible.

[Exeunt Gratiano and Lorenzo.]

ANTONIO. Is that anything now?

BASSANIO. Gratiano speaks an infinite deal of nothing, more than any man in all Venice. His reasons are as two grains of wheat hid in two bushels of chaff: you shall seek all day ere you find them, and when you have them they are not worth the search.

ANTONIO. Well, tell me now what lady is the same To whom you swore a secret pilgrimage, That you today promis’d to tell me of?

BASSANIO. ’Tis not unknown to you, Antonio, How much I have disabled mine estate By something showing a more swelling port Than my faint means would grant continuance. Nor do I now make moan to be abridg’d From such a noble rate, but my chief care Is to come fairly off from the great debts Wherein my time, something too prodigal, Hath left me gag’d. To you, Antonio, I owe the most in money and in love, And from your love I have a warranty To unburden all my plots and purposes How to get clear of all the debts I owe.

ANTONIO. I pray you, good Bassanio, let me know it; And if it stand, as you yourself still do, Within the eye of honour, be assur’d My purse, my person, my extremest means Lie all unlock’d to your occasions.

BASSANIO. In my school-days, when I had lost one shaft, I shot his fellow of the self-same flight The self-same way, with more advised watch To find the other forth; and by adventuring both I oft found both. I urge this childhood proof Because what follows is pure innocence. I owe you much, and, like a wilful youth, That which I owe is lost. But if you please To shoot another arrow that self way Which you did shoot the first, I do not doubt, As I will watch the aim, or to find both, Or bring your latter hazard back again, And thankfully rest debtor for the first.

ANTONIO. You know me well, and herein spend but time To wind about my love with circumstance; And out of doubt you do me now more wrong In making question of my uttermost Than if you had made waste of all I have. Then do but say to me what I should do That in your knowledge may by me be done, And I am prest unto it. Therefore, speak.

BASSANIO. In Belmont is a lady richly left, And she is fair, and, fairer than that word, Of wondrous virtues. Sometimes from her eyes I did receive fair speechless messages: Her name is Portia, nothing undervalu’d To Cato’s daughter, Brutus’ Portia. Nor is the wide world ignorant of her worth, For the four winds blow in from every coast Renowned suitors, and her sunny locks Hang on her temples like a golden fleece, Which makes her seat of Belmont Colchos’ strond, And many Jasons come in quest of her. O my Antonio, had I but the means To hold a rival place with one of them, I have a mind presages me such thrift That I should questionless be fortunate.

ANTONIO. Thou know’st that all my fortunes are at sea; Neither have I money nor commodity To raise a present sum, therefore go forth Try what my credit can in Venice do; That shall be rack’d even to the uttermost, To furnish thee to Belmont to fair Portia. Go presently inquire, and so will I, Where money is, and I no question make To have it of my trust or for my sake.

SCENE II. Belmont. A room in Portia’s house.

Enter Portia with her waiting-woman Nerissa.

PORTIA. By my troth, Nerissa, my little body is aweary of this great world.

NERISSA. You would be, sweet madam, if your miseries were in the same abundance as your good fortunes are. And yet, for aught I see, they are as sick that surfeit with too much as they that starve with nothing. It is no mean happiness, therefore, to be seated in the mean. Superfluity come sooner by white hairs, but competency lives longer.

PORTIA. Good sentences, and well pronounc’d.

NERISSA. They would be better if well followed.

PORTIA. If to do were as easy as to know what were good to do, chapels had been churches, and poor men’s cottages princes’ palaces. It is a good divine that follows his own instructions; I can easier teach twenty what were good to be done than to be one of the twenty to follow mine own teaching. The brain may devise laws for the blood, but a hot temper leaps o’er a cold decree; such a hare is madness the youth, to skip o’er the meshes of good counsel the cripple. But this reasoning is not in the fashion to choose me a husband. O me, the word “choose”! I may neither choose who I would nor refuse who I dislike, so is the will of a living daughter curb’d by the will of a dead father. Is it not hard, Nerissa, that I cannot choose one, nor refuse none?

NERISSA. Your father was ever virtuous, and holy men at their death have good inspirations. Therefore the lott’ry that he hath devised in these three chests of gold, silver, and lead, whereof who chooses his meaning chooses you, will no doubt never be chosen by any rightly but one who you shall rightly love. But what warmth is there in your affection towards any of these princely suitors that are already come?

PORTIA. I pray thee over-name them, and as thou namest them, I will describe them, and according to my description level at my affection.

NERISSA. First, there is the Neapolitan prince.

PORTIA. Ay, that’s a colt indeed, for he doth nothing but talk of his horse, and he makes it a great appropriation to his own good parts that he can shoe him himself. I am much afeard my lady his mother play’d false with a smith.

NERISSA. Then is there the County Palatine.

PORTIA. He doth nothing but frown, as who should say “And you will not have me, choose.” He hears merry tales and smiles not. I fear he will prove the weeping philosopher when he grows old, being so full of unmannerly sadness in his youth. I had rather be married to a death’s-head with a bone in his mouth than to either of these. God defend me from these two!

NERISSA. How say you by the French lord, Monsieur Le Bon?

PORTIA. God made him, and therefore let him pass for a man. In truth, I know it is a sin to be a mocker, but he! why, he hath a horse better than the Neapolitan’s, a better bad habit of frowning than the Count Palatine. He is every man in no man. If a throstle sing, he falls straight a-cap’ring. He will fence with his own shadow. If I should marry him, I should marry twenty husbands. If he would despise me, I would forgive him, for if he love me to madness, I shall never requite him.

NERISSA. What say you then to Falconbridge, the young baron of England?

PORTIA. You know I say nothing to him, for he understands not me, nor I him: he hath neither Latin, French, nor Italian, and you will come into the court and swear that I have a poor pennyworth in the English. He is a proper man’s picture; but alas, who can converse with a dumb-show? How oddly he is suited! I think he bought his doublet in Italy, his round hose in France, his bonnet in Germany, and his behaviour everywhere.

NERISSA. What think you of the Scottish lord, his neighbour?

PORTIA. That he hath a neighbourly charity in him, for he borrowed a box of the ear of the Englishman, and swore he would pay him again when he was able. I think the Frenchman became his surety, and seal’d under for another.

NERISSA. How like you the young German, the Duke of Saxony’s nephew?

PORTIA. Very vilely in the morning when he is sober, and most vilely in the afternoon when he is drunk: when he is best, he is a little worse than a man, and when he is worst, he is little better than a beast. And the worst fall that ever fell, I hope I shall make shift to go without him.

NERISSA. If he should offer to choose, and choose the right casket, you should refuse to perform your father’s will, if you should refuse to accept him.

PORTIA. Therefore, for fear of the worst, I pray thee set a deep glass of Rhenish wine on the contrary casket, for if the devil be within and that temptation without, I know he will choose it. I will do anything, Nerissa, ere I will be married to a sponge.

NERISSA. You need not fear, lady, the having any of these lords. They have acquainted me with their determinations, which is indeed to return to their home, and to trouble you with no more suit, unless you may be won by some other sort than your father’s imposition, depending on the caskets.

PORTIA. If I live to be as old as Sibylla, I will die as chaste as Diana, unless I be obtained by the manner of my father’s will. I am glad this parcel of wooers are so reasonable, for there is not one among them but I dote on his very absence. And I pray God grant them a fair departure.

NERISSA. Do you not remember, lady, in your father’s time, a Venetian, a scholar and a soldier, that came hither in company of the Marquis of Montferrat?

PORTIA. Yes, yes, it was Bassanio, as I think, so was he call’d.

NERISSA. True, madam. He, of all the men that ever my foolish eyes look’d upon, was the best deserving a fair lady.

PORTIA. I remember him well, and I remember him worthy of thy praise.

SERVINGMAN. The four strangers seek for you, madam, to take their leave. And there is a forerunner come from a fifth, the Prince of Morocco, who brings word the Prince his master will be here tonight.

PORTIA. If I could bid the fifth welcome with so good heart as I can bid the other four farewell, I should be glad of his approach. If he have the condition of a saint and the complexion of a devil, I had rather he should shrive me than wive me. Come, Nerissa. Sirrah, go before. Whiles we shut the gate upon one wooer, another knocks at the door.

SCENE III. Venice. A public place.

Enter Bassanio with Shylock the Jew.

SHYLOCK. Three thousand ducats, well.

BASSANIO. Ay, sir, for three months.

SHYLOCK. For three months, well.

BASSANIO. For the which, as I told you, Antonio shall be bound.

SHYLOCK. Antonio shall become bound, well.

BASSANIO. May you stead me? Will you pleasure me? Shall I know your answer?

SHYLOCK. Three thousand ducats for three months, and Antonio bound.

BASSANIO. Your answer to that.

SHYLOCK. Antonio is a good man.

BASSANIO. Have you heard any imputation to the contrary?

SHYLOCK. Ho, no, no, no, no: my meaning in saying he is a good man is to have you understand me that he is sufficient. Yet his means are in supposition: he hath an argosy bound to Tripolis, another to the Indies. I understand, moreover, upon the Rialto, he hath a third at Mexico, a fourth for England, and other ventures he hath squandered abroad. But ships are but boards, sailors but men; there be land-rats and water-rats, water-thieves and land-thieves—I mean pirates—and then there is the peril of waters, winds, and rocks. The man is, notwithstanding, sufficient. Three thousand ducats. I think I may take his bond.

BASSANIO. Be assured you may.

SHYLOCK. I will be assured I may. And that I may be assured, I will bethink me. May I speak with Antonio?

BASSANIO. If it please you to dine with us.

SHYLOCK. Yes, to smell pork, to eat of the habitation which your prophet, the Nazarite, conjured the devil into. I will buy with you, sell with you, talk with you, walk with you, and so following; but I will not eat with you, drink with you, nor pray with you. What news on the Rialto? Who is he comes here?

Enter Antonio.

BASSANIO. This is Signior Antonio.

SHYLOCK. [Aside.] How like a fawning publican he looks! I hate him for he is a Christian, But more for that in low simplicity He lends out money gratis, and brings down The rate of usance here with us in Venice. If I can catch him once upon the hip, I will feed fat the ancient grudge I bear him. He hates our sacred nation, and he rails, Even there where merchants most do congregate, On me, my bargains, and my well-won thrift, Which he calls interest. Cursed be my tribe If I forgive him!

BASSANIO. Shylock, do you hear?

SHYLOCK. I am debating of my present store, And by the near guess of my memory I cannot instantly raise up the gross Of full three thousand ducats. What of that? Tubal, a wealthy Hebrew of my tribe, Will furnish me. But soft! how many months Do you desire? [To Antonio.] Rest you fair, good signior, Your worship was the last man in our mouths.

ANTONIO. Shylock, albeit I neither lend nor borrow By taking nor by giving of excess, Yet to supply the ripe wants of my friend, I’ll break a custom. [To Bassanio.] Is he yet possess’d How much ye would?

SHYLOCK. Ay, ay, three thousand ducats.

ANTONIO. And for three months.

SHYLOCK. I had forgot, three months, you told me so. Well then, your bond. And let me see, but hear you, Methought you said you neither lend nor borrow Upon advantage.

ANTONIO. I do never use it.

SHYLOCK. When Jacob graz’d his uncle Laban’s sheep,— This Jacob from our holy Abram was As his wise mother wrought in his behalf, The third possessor; ay, he was the third.

ANTONIO. And what of him? Did he take interest?

SHYLOCK. No, not take interest, not, as you would say, Directly interest; mark what Jacob did. When Laban and himself were compromis’d That all the eanlings which were streak’d and pied Should fall as Jacob’s hire, the ewes being rank In end of autumn turned to the rams, And when the work of generation was Between these woolly breeders in the act, The skilful shepherd pill’d me certain wands, And in the doing of the deed of kind, He stuck them up before the fulsome ewes, Who then conceiving did in eaning time Fall parti-colour’d lambs, and those were Jacob’s. This was a way to thrive, and he was blest; And thrift is blessing if men steal it not.

ANTONIO. This was a venture, sir, that Jacob serv’d for, A thing not in his power to bring to pass, But sway’d and fashion’d by the hand of heaven. Was this inserted to make interest good? Or is your gold and silver ewes and rams?

SHYLOCK. I cannot tell; I make it breed as fast. But note me, signior.

ANTONIO. Mark you this, Bassanio, The devil can cite Scripture for his purpose. An evil soul producing holy witness Is like a villain with a smiling cheek, A goodly apple rotten at the heart. O, what a goodly outside falsehood hath!

SHYLOCK. Three thousand ducats, ’tis a good round sum. Three months from twelve, then let me see the rate.

ANTONIO. Well, Shylock, shall we be beholding to you?

SHYLOCK. Signior Antonio, many a time and oft In the Rialto you have rated me About my moneys and my usances. Still have I borne it with a patient shrug, (For suff’rance is the badge of all our tribe.) You call me misbeliever, cut-throat dog, And spet upon my Jewish gaberdine, And all for use of that which is mine own. Well then, it now appears you need my help. Go to, then, you come to me, and you say “Shylock, we would have moneys.” You say so: You that did void your rheum upon my beard, And foot me as you spurn a stranger cur Over your threshold, moneys is your suit. What should I say to you? Should I not say “Hath a dog money? Is it possible A cur can lend three thousand ducats?” Or Shall I bend low and, in a bondman’s key, With bated breath and whisp’ring humbleness, Say this: “Fair sir, you spet on me on Wednesday last; You spurn’d me such a day; another time You call’d me dog; and for these courtesies I’ll lend you thus much moneys”?

ANTONIO. I am as like to call thee so again, To spet on thee again, to spurn thee too. If thou wilt lend this money, lend it not As to thy friends, for when did friendship take A breed for barren metal of his friend? But lend it rather to thine enemy, Who if he break, thou mayst with better face Exact the penalty.

SHYLOCK. Why, look you how you storm! I would be friends with you, and have your love, Forget the shames that you have stain’d me with, Supply your present wants, and take no doit Of usance for my moneys, and you’ll not hear me, This is kind I offer.

BASSANIO. This were kindness.

SHYLOCK. This kindness will I show. Go with me to a notary, seal me there Your single bond; and in a merry sport, If you repay me not on such a day, In such a place, such sum or sums as are Express’d in the condition, let the forfeit Be nominated for an equal pound Of your fair flesh, to be cut off and taken In what part of your body pleaseth me.

ANTONIO. Content, in faith, I’ll seal to such a bond, And say there is much kindness in the Jew.

BASSANIO. You shall not seal to such a bond for me, I’ll rather dwell in my necessity.

ANTONIO. Why, fear not, man, I will not forfeit it, Within these two months, that’s a month before This bond expires, I do expect return Of thrice three times the value of this bond.

SHYLOCK. O father Abram, what these Christians are, Whose own hard dealings teaches them suspect The thoughts of others. Pray you, tell me this, If he should break his day, what should I gain By the exaction of the forfeiture? A pound of man’s flesh, taken from a man, Is not so estimable, profitable neither, As flesh of muttons, beefs, or goats. I say, To buy his favour, I extend this friendship. If he will take it, so. If not, adieu, And for my love I pray you wrong me not.

ANTONIO. Yes, Shylock, I will seal unto this bond.

SHYLOCK. Then meet me forthwith at the notary’s, Give him direction for this merry bond, And I will go and purse the ducats straight, See to my house left in the fearful guard Of an unthrifty knave, and presently I’ll be with you.

ANTONIO. Hie thee, gentle Jew.

[Exit Shylock.]

This Hebrew will turn Christian; he grows kind.

BASSANIO. I like not fair terms and a villain’s mind.

ANTONIO. Come on; in this there can be no dismay; My ships come home a month before the day.

SCENE I. Belmont. A room in Portia’s house.

Flourish of cornets. Enter the Prince of Morocco, a tawny Moor all in white, and three or four followers accordingly, with Portia, Nerissa and their train.

PRINCE OF MOROCCO. Mislike me not for my complexion, The shadowed livery of the burnish’d sun, To whom I am a neighbour, and near bred. Bring me the fairest creature northward born, Where Phœbus’ fire scarce thaws the icicles, And let us make incision for your love To prove whose blood is reddest, his or mine. I tell thee, lady, this aspect of mine Hath fear’d the valiant; by my love I swear The best-regarded virgins of our clime Have lov’d it too. I would not change this hue, Except to steal your thoughts, my gentle queen.

PORTIA. In terms of choice I am not solely led By nice direction of a maiden’s eyes; Besides, the lott’ry of my destiny Bars me the right of voluntary choosing. But if my father had not scanted me And hedg’d me by his wit to yield myself His wife who wins me by that means I told you, Yourself, renowned Prince, then stood as fair As any comer I have look’d on yet For my affection.

PRINCE OF MOROCCO. Even for that I thank you. Therefore I pray you lead me to the caskets To try my fortune. By this scimitar That slew the Sophy and a Persian prince, That won three fields of Sultan Solyman, I would o’erstare the sternest eyes that look, Outbrave the heart most daring on the earth, Pluck the young sucking cubs from the she-bear, Yea, mock the lion when he roars for prey, To win thee, lady. But, alas the while! If Hercules and Lichas play at dice Which is the better man, the greater throw May turn by fortune from the weaker hand: So is Alcides beaten by his rage, And so may I, blind Fortune leading me, Miss that which one unworthier may attain, And die with grieving.

PORTIA. You must take your chance, And either not attempt to choose at all, Or swear before you choose, if you choose wrong Never to speak to lady afterward In way of marriage. Therefore be advis’d.

PRINCE OF MOROCCO. Nor will not. Come, bring me unto my chance.

PORTIA. First, forward to the temple. After dinner Your hazard shall be made.

PRINCE OF MOROCCO. Good fortune then, To make me blest or cursed’st among men!

[Cornets. Exeunt.]

SCENE II. Venice. A street.

Enter Launcelet Gobbo, the clown, alone.

LAUNCELET. Certainly my conscience will serve me to run from this Jew my master. The fiend is at mine elbow and tempts me, saying to me “Gobbo, Launcelet Gobbo, good Launcelet” or “good Gobbo,” or “good Launcelet Gobbo, use your legs, take the start, run away.” My conscience says “No; take heed, honest Launcelet, take heed, honest Gobbo” or, as aforesaid, “honest Launcelet Gobbo, do not run, scorn running with thy heels.” Well, the most courageous fiend bids me pack. “Fia!” says the fiend, “away!” says the fiend. “For the heavens, rouse up a brave mind,” says the fiend, “and run.” Well, my conscience, hanging about the neck of my heart, says very wisely to me “My honest friend Launcelet, being an honest man’s son”—or rather an honest woman’s son, for indeed my father did something smack, something grow to, he had a kind of taste;—well, my conscience says “Launcelet, budge not.” “Budge,” says the fiend. “Budge not,” says my conscience. “Conscience,” say I, “you counsel well.” “Fiend,” say I, “you counsel well.” To be ruled by my conscience, I should stay with the Jew my master, who, (God bless the mark) is a kind of devil; and, to run away from the Jew, I should be ruled by the fiend, who (saving your reverence) is the devil himself. Certainly the Jew is the very devil incarnation, and, in my conscience, my conscience is but a kind of hard conscience, to offer to counsel me to stay with the Jew. The fiend gives the more friendly counsel. I will run, fiend, my heels are at your commandment, I will run.

Enter Old Gobbo with a basket.

GOBBO. Master young man, you, I pray you; which is the way to Master Jew’s?

LAUNCELET. [Aside.] O heavens, this is my true-begotten father, who being more than sand-blind, high-gravel blind, knows me not. I will try confusions with him.

GOBBO. Master young gentleman, I pray you, which is the way to Master Jew’s?

LAUNCELET. Turn up on your right hand at the next turning, but at the next turning of all on your left; marry, at the very next turning, turn of no hand, but turn down indirectly to the Jew’s house.

GOBBO. Be God’s sonties, ’twill be a hard way to hit. Can you tell me whether one Launcelet, that dwells with him, dwell with him or no?

LAUNCELET. Talk you of young Master Launcelet? [Aside.] Mark me now, now will I raise the waters. Talk you of young Master Launcelet?

GOBBO. No master, sir, but a poor man’s son, his father, though I say’t, is an honest exceeding poor man, and, God be thanked, well to live.

LAUNCELET. Well, let his father be what he will, we talk of young Master Launcelet.

GOBBO. Your worship’s friend, and Launcelet, sir.

LAUNCELET. But I pray you, ergo, old man, ergo, I beseech you, talk you of young Master Launcelet?

GOBBO. Of Launcelet, an’t please your mastership.

LAUNCELET. Ergo, Master Launcelet. Talk not of Master Launcelet, father, for the young gentleman, according to Fates and Destinies, and such odd sayings, the Sisters Three and such branches of learning, is indeed deceased, or, as you would say in plain terms, gone to heaven.

GOBBO. Marry, God forbid! The boy was the very staff of my age, my very prop.

LAUNCELET. [Aside.] Do I look like a cudgel or a hovel-post, a staff or a prop? Do you know me, father?

GOBBO. Alack the day! I know you not, young gentleman, but I pray you tell me, is my boy, God rest his soul, alive or dead?

LAUNCELET. Do you not know me, father?

GOBBO. Alack, sir, I am sand-blind, I know you not.

LAUNCELET. Nay, indeed, if you had your eyes, you might fail of the knowing me: it is a wise father that knows his own child. Well, old man, I will tell you news of your son. Give me your blessing, truth will come to light, murder cannot be hid long, a man’s son may, but in the end truth will out.

GOBBO. Pray you, sir, stand up, I am sure you are not Launcelet my boy.

LAUNCELET. Pray you, let’s have no more fooling about it, but give me your blessing. I am Launcelet, your boy that was, your son that is, your child that shall be.

GOBBO. I cannot think you are my son.

LAUNCELET. I know not what I shall think of that; but I am Launcelet, the Jew’s man, and I am sure Margery your wife is my mother.

GOBBO. Her name is Margery, indeed. I’ll be sworn if thou be Launcelet, thou art mine own flesh and blood. Lord worshipped might he be, what a beard hast thou got! Thou hast got more hair on thy chin than Dobbin my fill-horse has on his tail.

LAUNCELET. It should seem, then, that Dobbin’s tail grows backward. I am sure he had more hair on his tail than I have on my face when I last saw him.

GOBBO. Lord, how art thou changed! How dost thou and thy master agree? I have brought him a present. How ’gree you now?

LAUNCELET. Well, well. But for mine own part, as I have set up my rest to run away, so I will not rest till I have run some ground. My master’s a very Jew. Give him a present! Give him a halter. I am famished in his service. You may tell every finger I have with my ribs. Father, I am glad you are come, give me your present to one Master Bassanio, who indeed gives rare new liveries. If I serve not him, I will run as far as God has any ground. O rare fortune, here comes the man! To him, father; for I am a Jew, if I serve the Jew any longer.

Enter Bassanio with Leonardo and a follower or two.

BASSANIO. You may do so, but let it be so hasted that supper be ready at the farthest by five of the clock. See these letters delivered, put the liveries to making, and desire Gratiano to come anon to my lodging.

[Exit a Servant.]

LAUNCELET. To him, father.

GOBBO. God bless your worship!

BASSANIO. Gramercy, wouldst thou aught with me?

GOBBO. Here’s my son, sir, a poor boy.

LAUNCELET. Not a poor boy, sir, but the rich Jew’s man, that would, sir, as my father shall specify.

GOBBO. He hath a great infection, sir, as one would say, to serve.

LAUNCELET. Indeed the short and the long is, I serve the Jew, and have a desire, as my father shall specify.

GOBBO. His master and he (saving your worship’s reverence) are scarce cater-cousins.

LAUNCELET. To be brief, the very truth is that the Jew, having done me wrong, doth cause me, as my father, being I hope an old man, shall frutify unto you.

GOBBO. I have here a dish of doves that I would bestow upon your worship, and my suit is—

LAUNCELET. In very brief, the suit is impertinent to myself, as your worship shall know by this honest old man, and though I say it, though old man, yet poor man, my father.

BASSANIO. One speak for both. What would you?

LAUNCELET. Serve you, sir.

GOBBO. That is the very defect of the matter, sir.

BASSANIO. I know thee well; thou hast obtain’d thy suit. Shylock thy master spoke with me this day, And hath preferr’d thee, if it be preferment To leave a rich Jew’s service to become The follower of so poor a gentleman.

LAUNCELET. The old proverb is very well parted between my master Shylock and you, sir: you have “the grace of God”, sir, and he hath “enough”.

BASSANIO. Thou speak’st it well. Go, father, with thy son. Take leave of thy old master, and inquire My lodging out. [To a Servant.] Give him a livery More guarded than his fellows’; see it done.

LAUNCELET. Father, in. I cannot get a service, no! I have ne’er a tongue in my head! [Looking on his palm.] Well, if any man in Italy have a fairer table which doth offer to swear upon a book, I shall have good fortune; go to, here’s a simple line of life. Here’s a small trifle of wives, alas, fifteen wives is nothing; eleven widows and nine maids is a simple coming-in for one man. And then to scape drowning thrice, and to be in peril of my life with the edge of a feather-bed; here are simple ’scapes. Well, if Fortune be a woman, she’s a good wench for this gear. Father, come; I’ll take my leave of the Jew in the twinkling.

[Exeunt Launcelet and Old Gobbo.]

BASSANIO. I pray thee, good Leonardo, think on this. These things being bought and orderly bestow’d, Return in haste, for I do feast tonight My best esteem’d acquaintance; hie thee, go.

LEONARDO. My best endeavours shall be done herein.

Enter Gratiano.

GRATIANO. Where’s your master?

LEONARDO. Yonder, sir, he walks.

GRATIANO. Signior Bassanio!

BASSANIO. Gratiano!

GRATIANO. I have suit to you.

BASSANIO. You have obtain’d it.

GRATIANO. You must not deny me, I must go with you to Belmont.

BASSANIO. Why, then you must. But hear thee, Gratiano, Thou art too wild, too rude, and bold of voice, Parts that become thee happily enough, And in such eyes as ours appear not faults; But where thou art not known, why there they show Something too liberal. Pray thee, take pain To allay with some cold drops of modesty Thy skipping spirit, lest through thy wild behaviour I be misconst’red in the place I go to, And lose my hopes.

GRATIANO. Signior Bassanio, hear me. If I do not put on a sober habit, Talk with respect, and swear but now and then, Wear prayer-books in my pocket, look demurely, Nay more, while grace is saying, hood mine eyes Thus with my hat, and sigh, and say “amen”; Use all the observance of civility Like one well studied in a sad ostent To please his grandam, never trust me more.

BASSANIO. Well, we shall see your bearing.

GRATIANO. Nay, but I bar tonight, you shall not gauge me By what we do tonight.

BASSANIO. No, that were pity. I would entreat you rather to put on Your boldest suit of mirth, for we have friends That purpose merriment. But fare you well, I have some business.

GRATIANO. And I must to Lorenzo and the rest, But we will visit you at supper-time.

SCENE III. The same. A room in Shylock’s house.

Enter Jessica and Launcelet.

JESSICA. I am sorry thou wilt leave my father so. Our house is hell, and thou, a merry devil, Didst rob it of some taste of tediousness. But fare thee well, there is a ducat for thee, And, Launcelet, soon at supper shalt thou see Lorenzo, who is thy new master’s guest. Give him this letter, do it secretly. And so farewell. I would not have my father See me in talk with thee.

LAUNCELET. Adieu! tears exhibit my tongue, most beautiful pagan, most sweet Jew! If a Christian do not play the knave and get thee, I am much deceived. But, adieu! These foolish drops do something drown my manly spirit. Adieu!

JESSICA. Farewell, good Launcelet.

[Exit Launcelet.]

Alack, what heinous sin is it in me To be ashamed to be my father’s child! But though I am a daughter to his blood, I am not to his manners. O Lorenzo, If thou keep promise, I shall end this strife, Become a Christian and thy loving wife.

SCENE IV. The same. A street.

Enter Gratiano, Lorenzo, Salarino and Solanio.

LORENZO. Nay, we will slink away in supper-time, Disguise us at my lodging, and return All in an hour.

GRATIANO. We have not made good preparation.

SALARINO. We have not spoke us yet of torch-bearers.

SOLANIO. ’Tis vile, unless it may be quaintly order’d, And better in my mind not undertook.

LORENZO. ’Tis now but four o’clock, we have two hours To furnish us.

Enter Launcelet with a letter.

Friend Launcelet, what’s the news?

LAUNCELET. And it shall please you to break up this, it shall seem to signify.

LORENZO. I know the hand, in faith ’tis a fair hand, And whiter than the paper it writ on Is the fair hand that writ.

GRATIANO. Love news, in faith.

LAUNCELET. By your leave, sir.

LORENZO. Whither goest thou?

LAUNCELET. Marry, sir, to bid my old master the Jew to sup tonight with my new master the Christian.

LORENZO. Hold here, take this. Tell gentle Jessica I will not fail her, speak it privately. Go, gentlemen,

Will you prepare you for this masque tonight? I am provided of a torch-bearer.

SALARINO. Ay, marry, I’ll be gone about it straight.

SOLANIO. And so will I.

LORENZO. Meet me and Gratiano At Gratiano’s lodging some hour hence.

SALARINO. ’Tis good we do so.

GRATIANO. Was not that letter from fair Jessica?

LORENZO. I must needs tell thee all. She hath directed How I shall take her from her father’s house, What gold and jewels she is furnish’d with, What page’s suit she hath in readiness. If e’er the Jew her father come to heaven, It will be for his gentle daughter’s sake; And never dare misfortune cross her foot, Unless she do it under this excuse, That she is issue to a faithless Jew. Come, go with me, peruse this as thou goest; Fair Jessica shall be my torch-bearer.

SCENE V. The same. Before Shylock’s house.

Enter Shylock the Jew and Launcelet his man that was the clown.

SHYLOCK. Well, thou shalt see, thy eyes shall be thy judge, The difference of old Shylock and Bassanio.— What, Jessica!—Thou shalt not gormandize As thou hast done with me;—What, Jessica!— And sleep, and snore, and rend apparel out. Why, Jessica, I say!

LAUNCELET. Why, Jessica!

SHYLOCK. Who bids thee call? I do not bid thee call.

LAUNCELET. Your worship was wont to tell me I could do nothing without bidding.

Enter Jessica.

JESSICA. Call you? What is your will?

SHYLOCK. I am bid forth to supper, Jessica. There are my keys. But wherefore should I go? I am not bid for love, they flatter me. But yet I’ll go in hate, to feed upon The prodigal Christian. Jessica, my girl, Look to my house. I am right loath to go; There is some ill a-brewing towards my rest, For I did dream of money-bags tonight.

LAUNCELET. I beseech you, sir, go. My young master doth expect your reproach.

SHYLOCK. So do I his.

LAUNCELET. And they have conspired together. I will not say you shall see a masque, but if you do, then it was not for nothing that my nose fell a-bleeding on Black Monday last at six o’clock i’ th’ morning, falling out that year on Ash-Wednesday was four year in th’ afternoon.

SHYLOCK. What, are there masques? Hear you me, Jessica, Lock up my doors, and when you hear the drum And the vile squealing of the wry-neck’d fife, Clamber not you up to the casements then, Nor thrust your head into the public street To gaze on Christian fools with varnish’d faces, But stop my house’s ears, I mean my casements. Let not the sound of shallow fopp’ry enter My sober house. By Jacob’s staff I swear I have no mind of feasting forth tonight. But I will go. Go you before me, sirrah. Say I will come.

LAUNCELET. I will go before, sir. Mistress, look out at window for all this. There will come a Christian by Will be worth a Jewess’ eye.

SHYLOCK. What says that fool of Hagar’s offspring, ha?

JESSICA. His words were “Farewell, mistress,” nothing else.

SHYLOCK. The patch is kind enough, but a huge feeder, Snail-slow in profit, and he sleeps by day More than the wild-cat. Drones hive not with me, Therefore I part with him, and part with him To one that I would have him help to waste His borrowed purse. Well, Jessica, go in. Perhaps I will return immediately: Do as I bid you, shut doors after you, “Fast bind, fast find.” A proverb never stale in thrifty mind.

JESSICA. Farewell, and if my fortune be not crost, I have a father, you a daughter, lost.

SCENE VI. The same.

Enter the masquers, Gratiano and Salarino.

GRATIANO. This is the penthouse under which Lorenzo Desired us to make stand.

SALARINO. His hour is almost past.

GRATIANO. And it is marvel he out-dwells his hour, For lovers ever run before the clock.

SALARINO. O ten times faster Venus’ pigeons fly To seal love’s bonds new-made than they are wont To keep obliged faith unforfeited!

GRATIANO. That ever holds: who riseth from a feast With that keen appetite that he sits down? Where is the horse that doth untread again His tedious measures with the unbated fire That he did pace them first? All things that are, Are with more spirit chased than enjoy’d. How like a younger or a prodigal The scarfed bark puts from her native bay, Hugg’d and embraced by the strumpet wind! How like the prodigal doth she return With over-weather’d ribs and ragged sails, Lean, rent, and beggar’d by the strumpet wind!

Enter Lorenzo.

SALARINO. Here comes Lorenzo, more of this hereafter.

LORENZO. Sweet friends, your patience for my long abode. Not I but my affairs have made you wait. When you shall please to play the thieves for wives, I’ll watch as long for you then. Approach. Here dwells my father Jew. Ho! who’s within?

Enter Jessica above, in boy’s clothes.

JESSICA. Who are you? Tell me, for more certainty, Albeit I’ll swear that I do know your tongue.

LORENZO. Lorenzo, and thy love.

JESSICA. Lorenzo certain, and my love indeed, For who love I so much? And now who knows But you, Lorenzo, whether I am yours?

LORENZO. Heaven and thy thoughts are witness that thou art.

JESSICA. Here, catch this casket; it is worth the pains. I am glad ’tis night, you do not look on me, For I am much asham’d of my exchange. But love is blind, and lovers cannot see The pretty follies that themselves commit, For if they could, Cupid himself would blush To see me thus transformed to a boy.

LORENZO. Descend, for you must be my torch-bearer.

JESSICA. What! must I hold a candle to my shames? They in themselves, good sooth, are too too light. Why, ’tis an office of discovery, love, And I should be obscur’d.

LORENZO. So are you, sweet, Even in the lovely garnish of a boy. But come at once, For the close night doth play the runaway, And we are stay’d for at Bassanio’s feast.

JESSICA. I will make fast the doors, and gild myself With some moe ducats, and be with you straight.

[Exit above.]

GRATIANO. Now, by my hood, a gentle, and no Jew.

LORENZO. Beshrew me but I love her heartily, For she is wise, if I can judge of her, And fair she is, if that mine eyes be true, And true she is, as she hath prov’d herself. And therefore, like herself, wise, fair, and true, Shall she be placed in my constant soul.

What, art thou come? On, gentlemen, away! Our masquing mates by this time for us stay.

[Exit with Jessica and Salarino.]

ANTONIO. Who’s there?

GRATIANO. Signior Antonio!

ANTONIO. Fie, fie, Gratiano! where are all the rest? ’Tis nine o’clock, our friends all stay for you. No masque tonight, the wind is come about; Bassanio presently will go aboard. I have sent twenty out to seek for you.

GRATIANO. I am glad on’t. I desire no more delight Than to be under sail and gone tonight.

SCENE VII. Belmont. A room in Portia’s house.

Flourish of cornets. Enter Portia with the Prince of Morocco and both their trains.

PORTIA. Go, draw aside the curtains and discover The several caskets to this noble prince. Now make your choice.

PRINCE OF MOROCCO. The first, of gold, who this inscription bears, “Who chooseth me shall gain what many men desire.” The second, silver, which this promise carries, “Who chooseth me shall get as much as he deserves.” This third, dull lead, with warning all as blunt, “Who chooseth me must give and hazard all he hath.” How shall I know if I do choose the right?

PORTIA. The one of them contains my picture, prince. If you choose that, then I am yours withal.

PRINCE OF MOROCCO. Some god direct my judgment! Let me see. I will survey the inscriptions back again. What says this leaden casket? “Who chooseth me must give and hazard all he hath.” Must give, for what? For lead? Hazard for lead! This casket threatens; men that hazard all Do it in hope of fair advantages: A golden mind stoops not to shows of dross, I’ll then nor give nor hazard aught for lead. What says the silver with her virgin hue? “Who chooseth me shall get as much as he deserves.” As much as he deserves! Pause there, Morocco, And weigh thy value with an even hand. If thou be’st rated by thy estimation Thou dost deserve enough, and yet enough May not extend so far as to the lady. And yet to be afeard of my deserving Were but a weak disabling of myself. As much as I deserve! Why, that’s the lady: I do in birth deserve her, and in fortunes, In graces, and in qualities of breeding; But more than these, in love I do deserve. What if I stray’d no farther, but chose here? Let’s see once more this saying grav’d in gold: “Who chooseth me shall gain what many men desire.” Why, that’s the lady, all the world desires her. From the four corners of the earth they come To kiss this shrine, this mortal breathing saint. The Hyrcanian deserts and the vasty wilds Of wide Arabia are as throughfares now For princes to come view fair Portia. The watery kingdom, whose ambitious head Spets in the face of heaven, is no bar To stop the foreign spirits, but they come As o’er a brook to see fair Portia. One of these three contains her heavenly picture. Is’t like that lead contains her? ’Twere damnation To think so base a thought. It were too gross To rib her cerecloth in the obscure grave. Or shall I think in silver she’s immur’d Being ten times undervalued to tried gold? O sinful thought! Never so rich a gem Was set in worse than gold. They have in England A coin that bears the figure of an angel Stamped in gold; but that’s insculp’d upon; But here an angel in a golden bed Lies all within. Deliver me the key. Here do I choose, and thrive I as I may.

PORTIA. There, take it, prince, and if my form lie there, Then I am yours.

[He unlocks the golden casket.]

PRINCE OF MOROCCO. O hell! what have we here? A carrion Death, within whose empty eye There is a written scroll. I’ll read the writing.

All that glisters is not gold, Often have you heard that told. Many a man his life hath sold But my outside to behold. Gilded tombs do worms infold. Had you been as wise as bold, Young in limbs, in judgment old, Your answer had not been inscroll’d, Fare you well, your suit is cold.

Cold indeed and labour lost, Then farewell heat, and welcome frost. Portia, adieu! I have too griev’d a heart To take a tedious leave. Thus losers part.

[Exit with his train. Flourish of cornets.]

PORTIA. A gentle riddance. Draw the curtains, go. Let all of his complexion choose me so.

SCENE VIII. Venice. A street.

Enter Salarino and Solanio.

SALARINO. Why, man, I saw Bassanio under sail; With him is Gratiano gone along; And in their ship I am sure Lorenzo is not.

SOLANIO. The villain Jew with outcries rais’d the Duke, Who went with him to search Bassanio’s ship.

SALARINO. He came too late, the ship was under sail; But there the Duke was given to understand That in a gondola were seen together Lorenzo and his amorous Jessica. Besides, Antonio certified the Duke They were not with Bassanio in his ship.

SOLANIO. I never heard a passion so confus’d, So strange, outrageous, and so variable As the dog Jew did utter in the streets. “My daughter! O my ducats! O my daughter! Fled with a Christian! O my Christian ducats! Justice! the law! my ducats and my daughter! A sealed bag, two sealed bags of ducats, Of double ducats, stol’n from me by my daughter! And jewels, two stones, two rich and precious stones, Stol’n by my daughter! Justice! find the girl, She hath the stones upon her and the ducats.”

SALARINO. Why, all the boys in Venice follow him, Crying, his stones, his daughter, and his ducats.

SOLANIO. Let good Antonio look he keep his day Or he shall pay for this.

SALARINO. Marry, well rememb’red. I reason’d with a Frenchman yesterday, Who told me, in the narrow seas that part The French and English, there miscarried A vessel of our country richly fraught. I thought upon Antonio when he told me, And wish’d in silence that it were not his.

SOLANIO. You were best to tell Antonio what you hear, Yet do not suddenly, for it may grieve him.

SALARINO. A kinder gentleman treads not the earth. I saw Bassanio and Antonio part, Bassanio told him he would make some speed Of his return. He answered “Do not so, Slubber not business for my sake, Bassanio, But stay the very riping of the time, And for the Jew’s bond which he hath of me, Let it not enter in your mind of love: Be merry, and employ your chiefest thoughts To courtship, and such fair ostents of love As shall conveniently become you there.” And even there, his eye being big with tears, Turning his face, he put his hand behind him, And with affection wondrous sensible He wrung Bassanio’s hand, and so they parted.

SOLANIO. I think he only loves the world for him. I pray thee, let us go and find him out And quicken his embraced heaviness With some delight or other.

SALARINO. Do we so.

SCENE IX. Belmont. A room in Portia’s house.

Enter Nerissa and a Servitor.

NERISSA. Quick, quick, I pray thee, draw the curtain straight. The Prince of Arragon hath ta’en his oath, And comes to his election presently.

Flourish of cornets. Enter the Prince of Arragon, his train, and Portia.

PORTIA. Behold, there stand the caskets, noble Prince, If you choose that wherein I am contain’d, Straight shall our nuptial rites be solemniz’d. But if you fail, without more speech, my lord, You must be gone from hence immediately.

ARRAGON. I am enjoin’d by oath to observe three things: First, never to unfold to anyone Which casket ’twas I chose; next, if I fail Of the right casket, never in my life To woo a maid in way of marriage; Lastly, If I do fail in fortune of my choice, Immediately to leave you and be gone.

PORTIA. To these injunctions everyone doth swear That comes to hazard for my worthless self.

ARRAGON. And so have I address’d me. Fortune now To my heart’s hope! Gold, silver, and base lead. “Who chooseth me must give and hazard all he hath.” You shall look fairer ere I give or hazard. What says the golden chest? Ha! let me see: “Who chooseth me shall gain what many men desire.” What many men desire! that “many” may be meant By the fool multitude, that choose by show, Not learning more than the fond eye doth teach, Which pries not to th’ interior, but like the martlet Builds in the weather on the outward wall, Even in the force and road of casualty. I will not choose what many men desire, Because I will not jump with common spirits And rank me with the barbarous multitudes. Why, then to thee, thou silver treasure-house, Tell me once more what title thou dost bear. “Who chooseth me shall get as much as he deserves.” And well said too; for who shall go about To cozen fortune, and be honourable Without the stamp of merit? Let none presume To wear an undeserved dignity. O that estates, degrees, and offices Were not deriv’d corruptly, and that clear honour Were purchas’d by the merit of the wearer! How many then should cover that stand bare? How many be commanded that command? How much low peasantry would then be gleaned From the true seed of honour? And how much honour Pick’d from the chaff and ruin of the times, To be new varnish’d? Well, but to my choice. “Who chooseth me shall get as much as he deserves.” I will assume desert. Give me a key for this, And instantly unlock my fortunes here.

[He opens the silver casket.]

PORTIA. Too long a pause for that which you find there.

ARRAGON. What’s here? The portrait of a blinking idiot Presenting me a schedule! I will read it. How much unlike art thou to Portia! How much unlike my hopes and my deservings! “Who chooseth me shall have as much as he deserves.” Did I deserve no more than a fool’s head? Is that my prize? Are my deserts no better?

PORTIA. To offend and judge are distinct offices, And of opposed natures.

ARRAGON. What is here?

The fire seven times tried this; Seven times tried that judgment is That did never choose amiss. Some there be that shadows kiss; Such have but a shadow’s bliss. There be fools alive, I wis, Silver’d o’er, and so was this. Take what wife you will to bed, I will ever be your head: So be gone; you are sped.

Still more fool I shall appear By the time I linger here. With one fool’s head I came to woo, But I go away with two. Sweet, adieu! I’ll keep my oath, Patiently to bear my wroth.

[Exit Arragon with his train.]

PORTIA. Thus hath the candle sing’d the moth. O, these deliberate fools! When they do choose, They have the wisdom by their wit to lose.

NERISSA. The ancient saying is no heresy: Hanging and wiving goes by destiny.

PORTIA. Come, draw the curtain, Nerissa.

MESSENGER. Where is my lady?

PORTIA. Here. What would my lord?

MESSENGER. Madam, there is alighted at your gate A young Venetian, one that comes before To signify th’ approaching of his lord, From whom he bringeth sensible regreets; To wit (besides commends and courteous breath) Gifts of rich value; yet I have not seen So likely an ambassador of love. A day in April never came so sweet, To show how costly summer was at hand, As this fore-spurrer comes before his lord.

PORTIA. No more, I pray thee. I am half afeard Thou wilt say anon he is some kin to thee, Thou spend’st such high-day wit in praising him. Come, come, Nerissa, for I long to see Quick Cupid’s post that comes so mannerly.

NERISSA. Bassanio, Lord Love, if thy will it be!

Enter Solanio and Salarino.

SOLANIO. Now, what news on the Rialto?

SALARINO. Why, yet it lives there unchecked that Antonio hath a ship of rich lading wrack’d on the narrow seas; the Goodwins, I think they call the place, a very dangerous flat and fatal, where the carcasses of many a tall ship lie buried, as they say, if my gossip Report be an honest woman of her word.

SOLANIO. I would she were as lying a gossip in that as ever knapped ginger or made her neighbours believe she wept for the death of a third husband. But it is true, without any slips of prolixity or crossing the plain highway of talk, that the good Antonio, the honest Antonio,—O that I had a title good enough to keep his name company!—

SALARINO. Come, the full stop.

SOLANIO. Ha, what sayest thou? Why, the end is, he hath lost a ship.

SALARINO. I would it might prove the end of his losses.

SOLANIO. Let me say “amen” betimes, lest the devil cross my prayer, for here he comes in the likeness of a Jew.

Enter Shylock.

How now, Shylock, what news among the merchants?

SHYLOCK. You knew, none so well, none so well as you, of my daughter’s flight.

SALARINO. That’s certain, I, for my part, knew the tailor that made the wings she flew withal.

SOLANIO. And Shylock, for his own part, knew the bird was fledged; and then it is the complexion of them all to leave the dam.

SHYLOCK. She is damn’d for it.

SALARINO. That’s certain, if the devil may be her judge.

SHYLOCK. My own flesh and blood to rebel!

SOLANIO. Out upon it, old carrion! Rebels it at these years?

SHYLOCK. I say my daughter is my flesh and my blood.

SALARINO. There is more difference between thy flesh and hers than between jet and ivory, more between your bloods than there is between red wine and Rhenish. But tell us, do you hear whether Antonio have had any loss at sea or no?

SHYLOCK. There I have another bad match, a bankrupt, a prodigal, who dare scarce show his head on the Rialto, a beggar that used to come so smug upon the mart; let him look to his bond. He was wont to call me usurer; let him look to his bond: he was wont to lend money for a Christian cur’sy; let him look to his bond.

SALARINO. Why, I am sure if he forfeit, thou wilt not take his flesh! What’s that good for?

SHYLOCK. To bait fish withal; if it will feed nothing else, it will feed my revenge. He hath disgrac’d me and hind’red me half a million, laugh’d at my losses, mock’d at my gains, scorned my nation, thwarted my bargains, cooled my friends, heated mine enemies. And what’s his reason? I am a Jew. Hath not a Jew eyes? Hath not a Jew hands, organs, dimensions, senses, affections, passions? Fed with the same food, hurt with the same weapons, subject to the same diseases, healed by the same means, warmed and cooled by the same winter and summer as a Christian is? If you prick us, do we not bleed? If you tickle us, do we not laugh? If you poison us, do we not die? And if you wrong us, shall we not revenge? If we are like you in the rest, we will resemble you in that. If a Jew wrong a Christian, what is his humility? Revenge. If a Christian wrong a Jew, what should his sufferance be by Christian example? Why, revenge! The villainy you teach me I will execute, and it shall go hard but I will better the instruction.

Enter a man from Antonio.

SERVANT. Gentlemen, my master Antonio is at his house, and desires to speak with you both.

SALARINO. We have been up and down to seek him.

Enter Tubal.

SOLANIO. Here comes another of the tribe; a third cannot be match’d, unless the devil himself turn Jew.

[Exeunt Solanio, Salarino and the Servant.]

SHYLOCK. How now, Tubal, what news from Genoa? Hast thou found my daughter?

TUBAL. I often came where I did hear of her, but cannot find her.

SHYLOCK. Why there, there, there, there! A diamond gone cost me two thousand ducats in Frankfort! The curse never fell upon our nation till now, I never felt it till now. Two thousand ducats in that, and other precious, precious jewels. I would my daughter were dead at my foot, and the jewels in her ear; would she were hearsed at my foot, and the ducats in her coffin. No news of them? Why so? And I know not what’s spent in the search. Why, thou—loss upon loss! The thief gone with so much, and so much to find the thief, and no satisfaction, no revenge, nor no ill luck stirring but what lights o’ my shoulders, no sighs but o’ my breathing, no tears but o’ my shedding.

TUBAL. Yes, other men have ill luck too. Antonio, as I heard in Genoa—

SHYLOCK. What, what, what? Ill luck, ill luck?

TUBAL. —hath an argosy cast away coming from Tripolis.

SHYLOCK. I thank God! I thank God! Is it true, is it true?

TUBAL. I spoke with some of the sailors that escaped the wrack.

SHYLOCK. I thank thee, good Tubal. Good news, good news! Ha, ha, heard in Genoa?

TUBAL. Your daughter spent in Genoa, as I heard, one night, fourscore ducats.

SHYLOCK. Thou stick’st a dagger in me. I shall never see my gold again. Fourscore ducats at a sitting! Fourscore ducats!

TUBAL. There came divers of Antonio’s creditors in my company to Venice that swear he cannot choose but break.

SHYLOCK. I am very glad of it. I’ll plague him, I’ll torture him. I am glad of it.

TUBAL. One of them showed me a ring that he had of your daughter for a monkey.

SHYLOCK. Out upon her! Thou torturest me, Tubal. It was my turquoise, I had it of Leah when I was a bachelor. I would not have given it for a wilderness of monkeys.

TUBAL. But Antonio is certainly undone.

SHYLOCK. Nay, that’s true, that’s very true. Go, Tubal, fee me an officer; bespeak him a fortnight before. I will have the heart of him if he forfeit, for were he out of Venice I can make what merchandise I will. Go, Tubal, and meet me at our synagogue. Go, good Tubal, at our synagogue, Tubal.

Enter Bassanio, Portia, Gratiano, Nerissa and all their trains.

PORTIA. I pray you tarry, pause a day or two Before you hazard, for in choosing wrong I lose your company; therefore forbear a while. There’s something tells me (but it is not love) I would not lose you, and you know yourself Hate counsels not in such a quality. But lest you should not understand me well,— And yet a maiden hath no tongue but thought,— I would detain you here some month or two Before you venture for me. I could teach you How to choose right, but then I am forsworn. So will I never be. So may you miss me. But if you do, you’ll make me wish a sin, That I had been forsworn. Beshrew your eyes, They have o’erlook’d me and divided me. One half of me is yours, the other half yours, Mine own, I would say; but if mine, then yours, And so all yours. O these naughty times Puts bars between the owners and their rights! And so though yours, not yours. Prove it so, Let Fortune go to hell for it, not I. I speak too long, but ’tis to peise the time, To eche it, and to draw it out in length, To stay you from election.

BASSANIO. Let me choose, For as I am, I live upon the rack.

PORTIA. Upon the rack, Bassanio! Then confess What treason there is mingled with your love.

BASSANIO. None but that ugly treason of mistrust, Which makes me fear th’ enjoying of my love. There may as well be amity and life ’Tween snow and fire as treason and my love.

PORTIA. Ay, but I fear you speak upon the rack Where men enforced do speak anything.

BASSANIO. Promise me life, and I’ll confess the truth.

PORTIA. Well then, confess and live.

BASSANIO. “Confess and love” Had been the very sum of my confession: O happy torment, when my torturer Doth teach me answers for deliverance! But let me to my fortune and the caskets.

PORTIA. Away, then! I am lock’d in one of them. If you do love me, you will find me out. Nerissa and the rest, stand all aloof. Let music sound while he doth make his choice. Then if he lose he makes a swan-like end, Fading in music. That the comparison May stand more proper, my eye shall be the stream And wat’ry death-bed for him. He may win, And what is music then? Then music is Even as the flourish when true subjects bow To a new-crowned monarch. Such it is As are those dulcet sounds in break of day That creep into the dreaming bridegroom’s ear And summon him to marriage. Now he goes, With no less presence, but with much more love Than young Alcides when he did redeem The virgin tribute paid by howling Troy To the sea-monster: I stand for sacrifice; The rest aloof are the Dardanian wives, With bleared visages come forth to view The issue of th’ exploit. Go, Hercules! Live thou, I live. With much much more dismay I view the fight than thou that mak’st the fray.

A song, whilst Bassanio comments on the caskets to himself.

Tell me where is fancy bred, Or in the heart or in the head? How begot, how nourished? Reply, reply. It is engend’red in the eyes, With gazing fed, and fancy dies In the cradle where it lies. Let us all ring fancy’s knell: I’ll begin it.—Ding, dong, bell.

ALL. Ding, dong, bell.

BASSANIO. So may the outward shows be least themselves. The world is still deceiv’d with ornament. In law, what plea so tainted and corrupt But, being season’d with a gracious voice, Obscures the show of evil? In religion, What damned error but some sober brow Will bless it, and approve it with a text, Hiding the grossness with fair ornament? There is no vice so simple but assumes Some mark of virtue on his outward parts. How many cowards, whose hearts are all as false As stairs of sand, wear yet upon their chins The beards of Hercules and frowning Mars, Who inward search’d, have livers white as milk, And these assume but valour’s excrement To render them redoubted. Look on beauty, And you shall see ’tis purchas’d by the weight, Which therein works a miracle in nature, Making them lightest that wear most of it: So are those crisped snaky golden locks Which make such wanton gambols with the wind Upon supposed fairness, often known To be the dowry of a second head, The skull that bred them in the sepulchre. Thus ornament is but the guiled shore To a most dangerous sea; the beauteous scarf Veiling an Indian beauty; in a word, The seeming truth which cunning times put on To entrap the wisest. Therefore thou gaudy gold, Hard food for Midas, I will none of thee, Nor none of thee, thou pale and common drudge ’Tween man and man: but thou, thou meagre lead, Which rather threaten’st than dost promise aught, Thy palenness moves me more than eloquence, And here choose I, joy be the consequence!

PORTIA. [Aside.] How all the other passions fleet to air, As doubtful thoughts, and rash-embrac’d despair, And shudd’ring fear, and green-ey’d jealousy. O love, be moderate; allay thy ecstasy, In measure rain thy joy; scant this excess! I feel too much thy blessing, make it less, For fear I surfeit.

BASSANIO. What find I here? [Opening the leaden casket.] Fair Portia’s counterfeit! What demi-god Hath come so near creation? Move these eyes? Or whether, riding on the balls of mine, Seem they in motion? Here are sever’d lips, Parted with sugar breath, so sweet a bar Should sunder such sweet friends. Here in her hairs The painter plays the spider, and hath woven A golden mesh t’entrap the hearts of men Faster than gnats in cobwebs. But her eyes!— How could he see to do them? Having made one, Methinks it should have power to steal both his And leave itself unfurnish’d. Yet look how far The substance of my praise doth wrong this shadow In underprizing it, so far this shadow Doth limp behind the substance. Here’s the scroll, The continent and summary of my fortune.

You that choose not by the view Chance as fair and choose as true! Since this fortune falls to you, Be content and seek no new. If you be well pleas’d with this, And hold your fortune for your bliss, Turn to where your lady is, And claim her with a loving kiss.

A gentle scroll. Fair lady, by your leave, [Kissing her.] I come by note to give and to receive. Like one of two contending in a prize That thinks he hath done well in people’s eyes, Hearing applause and universal shout, Giddy in spirit, still gazing in a doubt Whether those peals of praise be his or no, So, thrice-fair lady, stand I even so, As doubtful whether what I see be true, Until confirm’d, sign’d, ratified by you.

PORTIA. You see me, Lord Bassanio, where I stand, Such as I am; though for myself alone I would not be ambitious in my wish To wish myself much better, yet for you I would be trebled twenty times myself, A thousand times more fair, ten thousand times More rich, That only to stand high in your account, I might in virtues, beauties, livings, friends, Exceed account. But the full sum of me Is sum of something, which, to term in gross, Is an unlesson’d girl, unschool’d, unpractis’d; Happy in this, she is not yet so old But she may learn; happier than this, She is not bred so dull but she can learn; Happiest of all, is that her gentle spirit Commits itself to yours to be directed, As from her lord, her governor, her king. Myself, and what is mine, to you and yours Is now converted. But now I was the lord Of this fair mansion, master of my servants, Queen o’er myself; and even now, but now, This house, these servants, and this same myself Are yours,—my lord’s. I give them with this ring, Which when you part from, lose, or give away, Let it presage the ruin of your love, And be my vantage to exclaim on you.

BASSANIO. Madam, you have bereft me of all words, Only my blood speaks to you in my veins, And there is such confusion in my powers As after some oration fairly spoke By a beloved prince, there doth appear Among the buzzing pleased multitude, Where every something being blent together, Turns to a wild of nothing, save of joy Express’d and not express’d. But when this ring Parts from this finger, then parts life from hence. O then be bold to say Bassanio’s dead!

NERISSA. My lord and lady, it is now our time, That have stood by and seen our wishes prosper, To cry, good joy. Good joy, my lord and lady!

GRATIANO. My Lord Bassanio, and my gentle lady, I wish you all the joy that you can wish; For I am sure you can wish none from me. And when your honours mean to solemnize The bargain of your faith, I do beseech you Even at that time I may be married too.

BASSANIO. With all my heart, so thou canst get a wife.

GRATIANO. I thank your lordship, you have got me one. My eyes, my lord, can look as swift as yours: You saw the mistress, I beheld the maid. You lov’d, I lov’d; for intermission No more pertains to me, my lord, than you. Your fortune stood upon the caskets there, And so did mine too, as the matter falls. For wooing here until I sweat again, And swearing till my very roof was dry With oaths of love, at last, (if promise last) I got a promise of this fair one here To have her love, provided that your fortune Achiev’d her mistress.

PORTIA. Is this true, Nerissa?

NERISSA. Madam, it is, so you stand pleas’d withal.

BASSANIO. And do you, Gratiano, mean good faith?

GRATIANO. Yes, faith, my lord.

BASSANIO. Our feast shall be much honoured in your marriage.

GRATIANO. We’ll play with them the first boy for a thousand ducats.

NERISSA. What! and stake down?

GRATIANO. No, we shall ne’er win at that sport and stake down. But who comes here? Lorenzo and his infidel? What, and my old Venetian friend, Salerio!

Enter Lorenzo, Jessica and Salerio.

BASSANIO. Lorenzo and Salerio, welcome hither, If that the youth of my new int’rest here Have power to bid you welcome. By your leave, I bid my very friends and countrymen, Sweet Portia, welcome.

PORTIA. So do I, my lord, They are entirely welcome.

LORENZO. I thank your honour. For my part, my lord, My purpose was not to have seen you here, But meeting with Salerio by the way, He did entreat me, past all saying nay, To come with him along.

SALERIO. I did, my lord, And I have reason for it. Signior Antonio Commends him to you.

[Gives Bassanio a letter.]

BASSANIO. Ere I ope his letter, I pray you tell me how my good friend doth.

SALERIO. Not sick, my lord, unless it be in mind, Nor well, unless in mind. His letter there Will show you his estate.

[Bassanio opens the letter.]

GRATIANO. Nerissa, cheer yond stranger, bid her welcome. Your hand, Salerio. What’s the news from Venice? How doth that royal merchant, good Antonio? I know he will be glad of our success. We are the Jasons, we have won the fleece.

SALERIO. I would you had won the fleece that he hath lost.

PORTIA. There are some shrewd contents in yond same paper That steals the colour from Bassanio’s cheek. Some dear friend dead, else nothing in the world Could turn so much the constitution Of any constant man. What, worse and worse? With leave, Bassanio, I am half yourself, And I must freely have the half of anything That this same paper brings you.

BASSANIO. O sweet Portia, Here are a few of the unpleasant’st words That ever blotted paper. Gentle lady, When I did first impart my love to you, I freely told you all the wealth I had Ran in my veins, I was a gentleman. And then I told you true. And yet, dear lady, Rating myself at nothing, you shall see How much I was a braggart. When I told you My state was nothing, I should then have told you That I was worse than nothing; for indeed I have engag’d myself to a dear friend, Engag’d my friend to his mere enemy, To feed my means. Here is a letter, lady, The paper as the body of my friend, And every word in it a gaping wound Issuing life-blood. But is it true, Salerio? Hath all his ventures fail’d? What, not one hit? From Tripolis, from Mexico, and England, From Lisbon, Barbary, and India, And not one vessel scape the dreadful touch Of merchant-marring rocks?

SALERIO. Not one, my lord. Besides, it should appear, that if he had The present money to discharge the Jew, He would not take it. Never did I know A creature that did bear the shape of man So keen and greedy to confound a man. He plies the Duke at morning and at night, And doth impeach the freedom of the state If they deny him justice. Twenty merchants, The Duke himself, and the magnificoes Of greatest port have all persuaded with him, But none can drive him from the envious plea Of forfeiture, of justice, and his bond.

JESSICA. When I was with him, I have heard him swear To Tubal and to Chus, his countrymen, That he would rather have Antonio’s flesh Than twenty times the value of the sum That he did owe him. And I know, my lord, If law, authority, and power deny not, It will go hard with poor Antonio.

PORTIA. Is it your dear friend that is thus in trouble?

BASSANIO. The dearest friend to me, the kindest man, The best condition’d and unwearied spirit In doing courtesies, and one in whom The ancient Roman honour more appears Than any that draws breath in Italy.

PORTIA. What sum owes he the Jew?

BASSANIO. For me three thousand ducats.

PORTIA. What, no more? Pay him six thousand, and deface the bond. Double six thousand, and then treble that, Before a friend of this description Shall lose a hair through Bassanio’s fault. First go with me to church and call me wife, And then away to Venice to your friend. For never shall you lie by Portia’s side With an unquiet soul. You shall have gold To pay the petty debt twenty times over. When it is paid, bring your true friend along. My maid Nerissa and myself meantime, Will live as maids and widows. Come, away! For you shall hence upon your wedding day. Bid your friends welcome, show a merry cheer; Since you are dear bought, I will love you dear. But let me hear the letter of your friend.

BASSANIO. Sweet Bassanio, my ships have all miscarried, my creditors grow cruel, my estate is very low, my bond to the Jew is forfeit, and since in paying it, it is impossible I should live, all debts are clear’d between you and I, if I might but see you at my death. Notwithstanding, use your pleasure. If your love do not persuade you to come, let not my letter.

PORTIA. O love, dispatch all business and be gone!

BASSANIO. Since I have your good leave to go away, I will make haste; but, till I come again, No bed shall e’er be guilty of my stay, Nor rest be interposer ’twixt us twain.

SCENE III. Venice. A street.

Enter Shylock, Salarino, Antonio and Gaoler.

SHYLOCK. Gaoler, look to him. Tell not me of mercy. This is the fool that lent out money gratis. Gaoler, look to him.

ANTONIO. Hear me yet, good Shylock.

SHYLOCK. I’ll have my bond, speak not against my bond. I have sworn an oath that I will have my bond. Thou call’dst me dog before thou hadst a cause, But since I am a dog, beware my fangs; The Duke shall grant me justice. I do wonder, Thou naughty gaoler, that thou art so fond To come abroad with him at his request.

ANTONIO. I pray thee hear me speak.

SHYLOCK. I’ll have my bond. I will not hear thee speak. I’ll have my bond, and therefore speak no more. I’ll not be made a soft and dull-eyed fool, To shake the head, relent, and sigh, and yield To Christian intercessors. Follow not, I’ll have no speaking, I will have my bond.

SALARINO. It is the most impenetrable cur That ever kept with men.

ANTONIO. Let him alone. I’ll follow him no more with bootless prayers. He seeks my life, his reason well I know: I oft deliver’d from his forfeitures Many that have at times made moan to me. Therefore he hates me.

SALARINO. I am sure the Duke Will never grant this forfeiture to hold.

ANTONIO. The Duke cannot deny the course of law, For the commodity that strangers have With us in Venice, if it be denied, ’Twill much impeach the justice of the state, Since that the trade and profit of the city Consisteth of all nations. Therefore, go. These griefs and losses have so bated me That I shall hardly spare a pound of flesh Tomorrow to my bloody creditor. Well, gaoler, on, pray God Bassanio come To see me pay his debt, and then I care not.

SCENE IV. Belmont. A room in Portia’s house.

Enter Portia, Nerissa, Lorenzo, Jessica and Balthazar.

LORENZO. Madam, although I speak it in your presence, You have a noble and a true conceit Of godlike amity, which appears most strongly In bearing thus the absence of your lord. But if you knew to whom you show this honour, How true a gentleman you send relief, How dear a lover of my lord your husband, I know you would be prouder of the work Than customary bounty can enforce you.

PORTIA. I never did repent for doing good, Nor shall not now; for in companions That do converse and waste the time together, Whose souls do bear an equal yoke of love, There must be needs a like proportion Of lineaments, of manners, and of spirit; Which makes me think that this Antonio, Being the bosom lover of my lord, Must needs be like my lord. If it be so, How little is the cost I have bestowed In purchasing the semblance of my soul From out the state of hellish cruelty! This comes too near the praising of myself; Therefore no more of it. Hear other things. Lorenzo, I commit into your hands The husbandry and manage of my house Until my lord’s return. For mine own part, I have toward heaven breath’d a secret vow To live in prayer and contemplation, Only attended by Nerissa here, Until her husband and my lord’s return. There is a monastery two miles off, And there we will abide. I do desire you Not to deny this imposition, The which my love and some necessity Now lays upon you.

LORENZO. Madam, with all my heart I shall obey you in all fair commands.

PORTIA. My people do already know my mind, And will acknowledge you and Jessica In place of Lord Bassanio and myself. So fare you well till we shall meet again.

LORENZO. Fair thoughts and happy hours attend on you!

JESSICA. I wish your ladyship all heart’s content.

PORTIA. I thank you for your wish, and am well pleas’d To wish it back on you. Fare you well, Jessica.

[Exeunt Jessica and Lorenzo.]

Now, Balthazar, As I have ever found thee honest-true, So let me find thee still. Take this same letter, And use thou all th’ endeavour of a man In speed to Padua, see thou render this Into my cousin’s hands, Doctor Bellario; And look what notes and garments he doth give thee, Bring them, I pray thee, with imagin’d speed Unto the traject, to the common ferry Which trades to Venice. Waste no time in words, But get thee gone. I shall be there before thee.

BALTHAZAR. Madam, I go with all convenient speed.

PORTIA. Come on, Nerissa, I have work in hand That you yet know not of; we’ll see our husbands Before they think of us.

NERISSA. Shall they see us?

PORTIA. They shall, Nerissa, but in such a habit That they shall think we are accomplished With that we lack. I’ll hold thee any wager, When we are both accoutered like young men, I’ll prove the prettier fellow of the two, And wear my dagger with the braver grace, And speak between the change of man and boy With a reed voice; and turn two mincing steps Into a manly stride; and speak of frays Like a fine bragging youth; and tell quaint lies How honourable ladies sought my love, Which I denying, they fell sick and died; I could not do withal. Then I’ll repent, And wish for all that, that I had not kill’d them. And twenty of these puny lies I’ll tell, That men shall swear I have discontinued school About a twelvemonth. I have within my mind A thousand raw tricks of these bragging Jacks, Which I will practise.

NERISSA. Why, shall we turn to men?

PORTIA. Fie, what a question’s that, If thou wert near a lewd interpreter! But come, I’ll tell thee all my whole device When I am in my coach, which stays for us At the park gate; and therefore haste away, For we must measure twenty miles today.

SCENE V. The same. A garden.

Enter Launcelet and Jessica.

LAUNCELET. Yes, truly, for look you, the sins of the father are to be laid upon the children, therefore, I promise you, I fear you. I was always plain with you, and so now I speak my agitation of the matter. Therefore be of good cheer, for truly I think you are damn’d. There is but one hope in it that can do you any good, and that is but a kind of bastard hope neither.

JESSICA. And what hope is that, I pray thee?

LAUNCELET. Marry, you may partly hope that your father got you not, that you are not the Jew’s daughter.

JESSICA. That were a kind of bastard hope indeed; so the sins of my mother should be visited upon me.

LAUNCELET. Truly then I fear you are damn’d both by father and mother; thus when I shun Scylla your father, I fall into Charybdis your mother. Well, you are gone both ways.

JESSICA. I shall be saved by my husband. He hath made me a Christian.

LAUNCELET. Truly the more to blame he, we were Christians enow before, e’en as many as could well live one by another. This making of Christians will raise the price of hogs; if we grow all to be pork-eaters, we shall not shortly have a rasher on the coals for money.

JESSICA. I’ll tell my husband, Launcelet, what you say. Here he comes.

LORENZO. I shall grow jealous of you shortly, Launcelet, if you thus get my wife into corners!

JESSICA. Nay, you need not fear us, Lorenzo. Launcelet and I are out. He tells me flatly there’s no mercy for me in heaven, because I am a Jew’s daughter; and he says you are no good member of the commonwealth, for in converting Jews to Christians you raise the price of pork.

LORENZO. I shall answer that better to the commonwealth than you can the getting up of the negro’s belly! The Moor is with child by you, Launcelet.

LAUNCELET. It is much that the Moor should be more than reason; but if she be less than an honest woman, she is indeed more than I took her for.

LORENZO. How every fool can play upon the word! I think the best grace of wit will shortly turn into silence, and discourse grow commendable in none only but parrots. Go in, sirrah; bid them prepare for dinner.

LAUNCELET. That is done, sir, they have all stomachs.

LORENZO. Goodly Lord, what a wit-snapper are you! Then bid them prepare dinner.

LAUNCELET. That is done too, sir, only “cover” is the word.

LORENZO. Will you cover, then, sir?

LAUNCELET. Not so, sir, neither. I know my duty.

LORENZO. Yet more quarrelling with occasion! Wilt thou show the whole wealth of thy wit in an instant? I pray thee understand a plain man in his plain meaning: go to thy fellows, bid them cover the table, serve in the meat, and we will come in to dinner.

LAUNCELET. For the table, sir, it shall be served in; for the meat, sir, it shall be covered; for your coming in to dinner, sir, why, let it be as humours and conceits shall govern.

LORENZO. O dear discretion, how his words are suited! The fool hath planted in his memory An army of good words, and I do know A many fools that stand in better place, Garnish’d like him, that for a tricksy word Defy the matter. How cheer’st thou, Jessica? And now, good sweet, say thy opinion, How dost thou like the Lord Bassanio’s wife?

JESSICA. Past all expressing. It is very meet The Lord Bassanio live an upright life, For having such a blessing in his lady, He finds the joys of heaven here on earth, And if on earth he do not merit it, In reason he should never come to heaven. Why, if two gods should play some heavenly match, And on the wager lay two earthly women, And Portia one, there must be something else Pawn’d with the other, for the poor rude world Hath not her fellow.

LORENZO. Even such a husband Hast thou of me as she is for a wife.

JESSICA. Nay, but ask my opinion too of that.

LORENZO. I will anon. First let us go to dinner.

JESSICA. Nay, let me praise you while I have a stomach.

LORENZO. No pray thee, let it serve for table-talk. Then howsome’er thou speak’st, ’mong other things I shall digest it.

JESSICA. Well, I’ll set you forth.

SCENE I. Venice. A court of justice.

Enter the Duke, the Magnificoes, Antonio, Bassanio, Gratiano, Salerio and others.

DUKE. What, is Antonio here?

ANTONIO. Ready, so please your Grace.

DUKE. I am sorry for thee, thou art come to answer A stony adversary, an inhuman wretch, Uncapable of pity, void and empty From any dram of mercy.

ANTONIO. I have heard Your Grace hath ta’en great pains to qualify His rigorous course; but since he stands obdurate, And that no lawful means can carry me Out of his envy’s reach, I do oppose My patience to his fury, and am arm’d To suffer with a quietness of spirit The very tyranny and rage of his.

DUKE. Go one and call the Jew into the court.

SALARINO. He is ready at the door. He comes, my lord.

DUKE. Make room, and let him stand before our face. Shylock, the world thinks, and I think so too, That thou but leadest this fashion of thy malice To the last hour of act, and then, ’tis thought, Thou’lt show thy mercy and remorse more strange Than is thy strange apparent cruelty; And where thou now exacts the penalty, Which is a pound of this poor merchant’s flesh, Thou wilt not only loose the forfeiture, But, touch’d with human gentleness and love, Forgive a moiety of the principal, Glancing an eye of pity on his losses That have of late so huddled on his back, Enow to press a royal merchant down, And pluck commiseration of his state From brassy bosoms and rough hearts of flint, From stubborn Turks and Tartars never train’d To offices of tender courtesy. We all expect a gentle answer, Jew.

SHYLOCK. I have possess’d your Grace of what I purpose, And by our holy Sabbath have I sworn To have the due and forfeit of my bond. If you deny it, let the danger light Upon your charter and your city’s freedom! You’ll ask me why I rather choose to have A weight of carrion flesh than to receive Three thousand ducats. I’ll not answer that, But say it is my humour. Is it answer’d? What if my house be troubled with a rat, And I be pleas’d to give ten thousand ducats To have it ban’d? What, are you answer’d yet? Some men there are love not a gaping pig; Some that are mad if they behold a cat; And others, when the bagpipe sings i’ the nose, Cannot contain their urine; for affection Mistress of passion, sways it to the mood Of what it likes or loathes. Now, for your answer: As there is no firm reason to be render’d Why he cannot abide a gaping pig, Why he a harmless necessary cat, Why he a woollen bagpipe, but of force Must yield to such inevitable shame As to offend, himself being offended, So can I give no reason, nor I will not, More than a lodg’d hate and a certain loathing I bear Antonio, that I follow thus A losing suit against him. Are you answered?

BASSANIO. This is no answer, thou unfeeling man, To excuse the current of thy cruelty.

SHYLOCK. I am not bound to please thee with my answer.

BASSANIO. Do all men kill the things they do not love?

SHYLOCK. Hates any man the thing he would not kill?

BASSANIO. Every offence is not a hate at first.

SHYLOCK. What, wouldst thou have a serpent sting thee twice?

ANTONIO. I pray you, think you question with the Jew. You may as well go stand upon the beach And bid the main flood bate his usual height; You may as well use question with the wolf, Why he hath made the ewe bleat for the lamb; You may as well forbid the mountain pines To wag their high tops and to make no noise When they are fretten with the gusts of heaven; You may as well do anything most hard As seek to soften that—than which what’s harder?— His Jewish heart. Therefore, I do beseech you, Make no moe offers, use no farther means, But with all brief and plain conveniency. Let me have judgment, and the Jew his will.

BASSANIO. For thy three thousand ducats here is six.

SHYLOCK. If every ducat in six thousand ducats Were in six parts, and every part a ducat, I would not draw them, I would have my bond.

DUKE. How shalt thou hope for mercy, rend’ring none?

SHYLOCK. What judgment shall I dread, doing no wrong? You have among you many a purchas’d slave, Which, like your asses and your dogs and mules, You use in abject and in slavish parts, Because you bought them. Shall I say to you “Let them be free, marry them to your heirs? Why sweat they under burdens? Let their beds Be made as soft as yours, and let their palates Be season’d with such viands”? You will answer “The slaves are ours.” So do I answer you: The pound of flesh which I demand of him Is dearly bought; ’tis mine and I will have it. If you deny me, fie upon your law! There is no force in the decrees of Venice. I stand for judgment. Answer; shall I have it?

DUKE. Upon my power I may dismiss this court, Unless Bellario, a learned doctor, Whom I have sent for to determine this, Come here today.

SALARINO. My lord, here stays without A messenger with letters from the doctor, New come from Padua.

DUKE. Bring us the letters. Call the messenger.

BASSANIO. Good cheer, Antonio! What, man, courage yet! The Jew shall have my flesh, blood, bones, and all, Ere thou shalt lose for me one drop of blood.

ANTONIO. I am a tainted wether of the flock, Meetest for death, the weakest kind of fruit Drops earliest to the ground, and so let me. You cannot better be employ’d, Bassanio, Than to live still, and write mine epitaph.

Enter Nerissa dressed like a lawyer’s clerk.

DUKE. Came you from Padua, from Bellario?

NERISSA. From both, my lord. Bellario greets your Grace.

BASSANIO. Why dost thou whet thy knife so earnestly?

SHYLOCK. To cut the forfeiture from that bankrupt there.

GRATIANO. Not on thy sole but on thy soul, harsh Jew, Thou mak’st thy knife keen. But no metal can, No, not the hangman’s axe, bear half the keenness Of thy sharp envy. Can no prayers pierce thee?

SHYLOCK. No, none that thou hast wit enough to make.

GRATIANO. O, be thou damn’d, inexecrable dog! And for thy life let justice be accus’d; Thou almost mak’st me waver in my faith, To hold opinion with Pythagoras That souls of animals infuse themselves Into the trunks of men. Thy currish spirit Govern’d a wolf who, hang’d for human slaughter, Even from the gallows did his fell soul fleet, And whilst thou layest in thy unhallowed dam, Infus’d itself in thee; for thy desires Are wolfish, bloody, starv’d and ravenous.

SHYLOCK. Till thou canst rail the seal from off my bond, Thou but offend’st thy lungs to speak so loud. Repair thy wit, good youth, or it will fall To cureless ruin. I stand here for law.

DUKE. This letter from Bellario doth commend A young and learned doctor to our court. Where is he?

NERISSA. He attendeth here hard by, To know your answer, whether you’ll admit him.

DUKE OF VENICE. With all my heart: some three or four of you Go give him courteous conduct to this place. Meantime, the court shall hear Bellario’s letter.

[Reads.] Your Grace shall understand that at the receipt of your letter I am very sick, but in the instant that your messenger came, in loving visitation was with me a young doctor of Rome. His name is Balthazar. I acquainted him with the cause in controversy between the Jew and Antonio the merchant. We turn’d o’er many books together. He is furnished with my opinion, which, bettered with his own learning (the greatness whereof I cannot enough commend), comes with him at my importunity to fill up your Grace’s request in my stead. I beseech you let his lack of years be no impediment to let him lack a reverend estimation, for I never knew so young a body with so old a head. I leave him to your gracious acceptance, whose trial shall better publish his commendation.

You hear the learn’d Bellario what he writes, And here, I take it, is the doctor come.

Enter Portia dressed like a doctor of laws.

Give me your hand. Come you from old Bellario?

PORTIA. I did, my lord.

DUKE. You are welcome. Take your place. Are you acquainted with the difference That holds this present question in the court?

PORTIA. I am informed throughly of the cause. Which is the merchant here? And which the Jew?

DUKE. Antonio and old Shylock, both stand forth.

PORTIA. Is your name Shylock?

SHYLOCK. Shylock is my name.

PORTIA. Of a strange nature is the suit you follow, Yet in such rule that the Venetian law Cannot impugn you as you do proceed. [To Antonio.] You stand within his danger, do you not?

ANTONIO. Ay, so he says.

PORTIA. Do you confess the bond?

ANTONIO. I do.

PORTIA. Then must the Jew be merciful.

SHYLOCK. On what compulsion must I? Tell me that.

PORTIA. The quality of mercy is not strain’d, It droppeth as the gentle rain from heaven Upon the place beneath. It is twice blest, It blesseth him that gives and him that takes. ’Tis mightiest in the mightiest; it becomes The throned monarch better than his crown. His sceptre shows the force of temporal power, The attribute to awe and majesty, Wherein doth sit the dread and fear of kings; But mercy is above this sceptred sway, It is enthroned in the hearts of kings, It is an attribute to God himself; And earthly power doth then show likest God’s When mercy seasons justice. Therefore, Jew, Though justice be thy plea, consider this, That in the course of justice none of us Should see salvation. We do pray for mercy, And that same prayer doth teach us all to render The deeds of mercy. I have spoke thus much To mitigate the justice of thy plea, Which if thou follow, this strict court of Venice Must needs give sentence ’gainst the merchant there.

SHYLOCK. My deeds upon my head! I crave the law, The penalty and forfeit of my bond.

PORTIA. Is he not able to discharge the money?

BASSANIO. Yes, here I tender it for him in the court, Yea, twice the sum, if that will not suffice, I will be bound to pay it ten times o’er On forfeit of my hands, my head, my heart. If this will not suffice, it must appear That malice bears down truth. And I beseech you, Wrest once the law to your authority. To do a great right, do a little wrong, And curb this cruel devil of his will.

PORTIA. It must not be, there is no power in Venice Can alter a decree established; ’Twill be recorded for a precedent, And many an error by the same example Will rush into the state. It cannot be.

SHYLOCK. A Daniel come to judgment! Yea, a Daniel! O wise young judge, how I do honour thee!

PORTIA. I pray you let me look upon the bond.

SHYLOCK. Here ’tis, most reverend doctor, here it is.

PORTIA. Shylock, there’s thrice thy money offered thee.

SHYLOCK. An oath, an oath! I have an oath in heaven. Shall I lay perjury upon my soul? No, not for Venice.

PORTIA. Why, this bond is forfeit, And lawfully by this the Jew may claim A pound of flesh, to be by him cut off Nearest the merchant’s heart. Be merciful, Take thrice thy money; bid me tear the bond.

SHYLOCK. When it is paid according to the tenour. It doth appear you are a worthy judge; You know the law; your exposition Hath been most sound. I charge you by the law, Whereof you are a well-deserving pillar, Proceed to judgment. By my soul I swear There is no power in the tongue of man To alter me. I stay here on my bond.

ANTONIO. Most heartily I do beseech the court To give the judgment.

PORTIA. Why then, thus it is: You must prepare your bosom for his knife.

SHYLOCK. O noble judge! O excellent young man!

PORTIA. For the intent and purpose of the law Hath full relation to the penalty, Which here appeareth due upon the bond.

SHYLOCK. ’Tis very true. O wise and upright judge, How much more elder art thou than thy looks!

PORTIA. Therefore lay bare your bosom.

SHYLOCK. Ay, his breast So says the bond, doth it not, noble judge? “Nearest his heart”: those are the very words.

PORTIA. It is so. Are there balance here to weigh The flesh?

SHYLOCK. I have them ready.

PORTIA. Have by some surgeon, Shylock, on your charge, To stop his wounds, lest he do bleed to death.

SHYLOCK. Is it so nominated in the bond?

PORTIA. It is not so express’d, but what of that? ’Twere good you do so much for charity.

SHYLOCK. I cannot find it; ’tis not in the bond.

PORTIA. You, merchant, have you anything to say?

ANTONIO. But little. I am arm’d and well prepar’d. Give me your hand, Bassanio. Fare you well, Grieve not that I am fallen to this for you, For herein Fortune shows herself more kind Than is her custom: it is still her use To let the wretched man outlive his wealth, To view with hollow eye and wrinkled brow An age of poverty, from which ling’ring penance Of such misery doth she cut me off. Commend me to your honourable wife, Tell her the process of Antonio’s end, Say how I lov’d you, speak me fair in death. And when the tale is told, bid her be judge Whether Bassanio had not once a love. Repent but you that you shall lose your friend And he repents not that he pays your debt. For if the Jew do cut but deep enough, I’ll pay it instantly with all my heart.

BASSANIO. Antonio, I am married to a wife Which is as dear to me as life itself, But life itself, my wife, and all the world, Are not with me esteem’d above thy life. I would lose all, ay, sacrifice them all Here to this devil, to deliver you.

PORTIA. Your wife would give you little thanks for that If she were by to hear you make the offer.

GRATIANO. I have a wife who I protest I love. I would she were in heaven, so she could Entreat some power to change this currish Jew.

NERISSA. ’Tis well you offer it behind her back, The wish would make else an unquiet house.

SHYLOCK. These be the Christian husbands! I have a daughter— Would any of the stock of Barabbas Had been her husband, rather than a Christian! We trifle time, I pray thee, pursue sentence.

PORTIA. A pound of that same merchant’s flesh is thine, The court awards it and the law doth give it.

SHYLOCK. Most rightful judge!

PORTIA. And you must cut this flesh from off his breast. The law allows it and the court awards it.

SHYLOCK. Most learned judge! A sentence! Come, prepare.

PORTIA. Tarry a little, there is something else. This bond doth give thee here no jot of blood. The words expressly are “a pound of flesh”: Take then thy bond, take thou thy pound of flesh, But in the cutting it, if thou dost shed One drop of Christian blood, thy lands and goods Are, by the laws of Venice, confiscate Unto the state of Venice.

GRATIANO. O upright judge! Mark, Jew. O learned judge!

SHYLOCK. Is that the law?

PORTIA. Thyself shalt see the act. For, as thou urgest justice, be assur’d Thou shalt have justice more than thou desir’st.

GRATIANO. O learned judge! Mark, Jew, a learned judge!

SHYLOCK. I take this offer then. Pay the bond thrice And let the Christian go.

BASSANIO. Here is the money.

PORTIA. Soft! The Jew shall have all justice. Soft! no haste! He shall have nothing but the penalty.

GRATIANO. O Jew, an upright judge, a learned judge!

PORTIA. Therefore prepare thee to cut off the flesh. Shed thou no blood, nor cut thou less nor more, But just a pound of flesh: if thou tak’st more Or less than a just pound, be it but so much As makes it light or heavy in the substance, Or the division of the twentieth part Of one poor scruple, nay, if the scale do turn But in the estimation of a hair, Thou diest, and all thy goods are confiscate.

GRATIANO. A second Daniel, a Daniel, Jew! Now, infidel, I have you on the hip.

PORTIA. Why doth the Jew pause? Take thy forfeiture.

SHYLOCK. Give me my principal, and let me go.

BASSANIO. I have it ready for thee. Here it is.

PORTIA. He hath refus’d it in the open court, He shall have merely justice and his bond.

GRATIANO. A Daniel still say I, a second Daniel! I thank thee, Jew, for teaching me that word.

SHYLOCK. Shall I not have barely my principal?

PORTIA. Thou shalt have nothing but the forfeiture To be so taken at thy peril, Jew.

SHYLOCK. Why, then the devil give him good of it! I’ll stay no longer question.

PORTIA. Tarry, Jew. The law hath yet another hold on you. It is enacted in the laws of Venice, If it be proved against an alien That by direct or indirect attempts He seek the life of any citizen, The party ’gainst the which he doth contrive Shall seize one half his goods; the other half Comes to the privy coffer of the state, And the offender’s life lies in the mercy Of the Duke only, ’gainst all other voice. In which predicament I say thou stand’st; For it appears by manifest proceeding That indirectly, and directly too, Thou hast contrived against the very life Of the defendant; and thou hast incurr’d The danger formerly by me rehears’d. Down, therefore, and beg mercy of the Duke.

GRATIANO. Beg that thou mayst have leave to hang thyself, And yet, thy wealth being forfeit to the state, Thou hast not left the value of a cord; Therefore thou must be hang’d at the state’s charge.

DUKE. That thou shalt see the difference of our spirit, I pardon thee thy life before thou ask it. For half thy wealth, it is Antonio’s; The other half comes to the general state, Which humbleness may drive unto a fine.

PORTIA. Ay, for the state, not for Antonio.

SHYLOCK. Nay, take my life and all, pardon not that. You take my house when you do take the prop That doth sustain my house; you take my life When you do take the means whereby I live.

PORTIA. What mercy can you render him, Antonio?

GRATIANO. A halter gratis, nothing else, for God’s sake!

ANTONIO. So please my lord the Duke and all the court To quit the fine for one half of his goods, I am content, so he will let me have The other half in use, to render it Upon his death unto the gentleman That lately stole his daughter. Two things provided more, that for this favour, He presently become a Christian; The other, that he do record a gift, Here in the court, of all he dies possess’d Unto his son Lorenzo and his daughter.

DUKE. He shall do this, or else I do recant The pardon that I late pronounced here.

PORTIA. Art thou contented, Jew? What dost thou say?

SHYLOCK. I am content.

PORTIA. Clerk, draw a deed of gift.

SHYLOCK. I pray you give me leave to go from hence; I am not well; send the deed after me And I will sign it.

DUKE. Get thee gone, but do it.

GRATIANO. In christ’ning shalt thou have two god-fathers. Had I been judge, thou shouldst have had ten more, To bring thee to the gallows, not to the font.

DUKE. Sir, I entreat you home with me to dinner.

PORTIA. I humbly do desire your Grace of pardon, I must away this night toward Padua, And it is meet I presently set forth.

DUKE. I am sorry that your leisure serves you not. Antonio, gratify this gentleman, For in my mind you are much bound to him.

[Exeunt Duke and his train.]

BASSANIO. Most worthy gentleman, I and my friend Have by your wisdom been this day acquitted Of grievous penalties, in lieu whereof, Three thousand ducats due unto the Jew We freely cope your courteous pains withal.

ANTONIO. And stand indebted, over and above In love and service to you evermore.

PORTIA. He is well paid that is well satisfied, And I delivering you, am satisfied, And therein do account myself well paid, My mind was never yet more mercenary. I pray you know me when we meet again, I wish you well, and so I take my leave.

BASSANIO. Dear sir, of force I must attempt you further. Take some remembrance of us as a tribute, Not as fee. Grant me two things, I pray you, Not to deny me, and to pardon me.

PORTIA. You press me far, and therefore I will yield. [To Antonio.] Give me your gloves, I’ll wear them for your sake. [To Bassanio.] And, for your love, I’ll take this ring from you. Do not draw back your hand; I’ll take no more, And you in love shall not deny me this.

BASSANIO. This ring, good sir? Alas, it is a trifle, I will not shame myself to give you this.

PORTIA. I will have nothing else but only this, And now methinks I have a mind to it.

BASSANIO. There’s more depends on this than on the value. The dearest ring in Venice will I give you, And find it out by proclamation, Only for this I pray you pardon me.

PORTIA. I see, sir, you are liberal in offers. You taught me first to beg, and now methinks You teach me how a beggar should be answer’d.

BASSANIO. Good sir, this ring was given me by my wife, And when she put it on, she made me vow That I should neither sell, nor give, nor lose it.

PORTIA. That ’scuse serves many men to save their gifts. And if your wife be not a mad-woman, And know how well I have deserv’d this ring, She would not hold out enemy for ever For giving it to me. Well, peace be with you!

[Exeunt Portia and Nerissa.]

ANTONIO. My Lord Bassanio, let him have the ring. Let his deservings and my love withal Be valued ’gainst your wife’s commandment.

BASSANIO. Go, Gratiano, run and overtake him; Give him the ring, and bring him if thou canst Unto Antonio’s house. Away, make haste.

[Exit Gratiano.]

Come, you and I will thither presently, And in the morning early will we both Fly toward Belmont. Come, Antonio.

SCENE II. The same. A street.

Enter Portia and Nerissa.

PORTIA. Inquire the Jew’s house out, give him this deed, And let him sign it, we’ll away tonight, And be a day before our husbands home. This deed will be well welcome to Lorenzo.

GRATIANO. Fair sir, you are well o’erta’en. My Lord Bassanio upon more advice, Hath sent you here this ring, and doth entreat Your company at dinner.

PORTIA. That cannot be; His ring I do accept most thankfully, And so I pray you tell him. Furthermore, I pray you show my youth old Shylock’s house.

GRATIANO. That will I do.

NERISSA. Sir, I would speak with you. [Aside to Portia.] I’ll see if I can get my husband’s ring, Which I did make him swear to keep for ever.

PORTIA. [To Nerissa.] Thou mayst, I warrant. We shall have old swearing That they did give the rings away to men; But we’ll outface them, and outswear them too. Away! make haste! Thou know’st where I will tarry.

NERISSA. Come, good sir, will you show me to this house?

SCENE I. Belmont. The avenue to Portia’s house.

Enter Lorenzo and Jessica.

LORENZO. The moon shines bright. In such a night as this, When the sweet wind did gently kiss the trees, And they did make no noise, in such a night, Troilus methinks mounted the Trojan walls, And sigh’d his soul toward the Grecian tents Where Cressid lay that night.

JESSICA. In such a night Did Thisbe fearfully o’ertrip the dew, And saw the lion’s shadow ere himself, And ran dismay’d away.

LORENZO. In such a night Stood Dido with a willow in her hand Upon the wild sea-banks, and waft her love To come again to Carthage.

JESSICA. In such a night Medea gathered the enchanted herbs That did renew old Æson.

LORENZO. In such a night Did Jessica steal from the wealthy Jew, And with an unthrift love did run from Venice As far as Belmont.

JESSICA. In such a night Did young Lorenzo swear he loved her well, Stealing her soul with many vows of faith, And ne’er a true one.

LORENZO. In such a night Did pretty Jessica, like a little shrew, Slander her love, and he forgave it her.

JESSICA. I would out-night you did no body come; But hark, I hear the footing of a man.

Enter Stephano.

LORENZO. Who comes so fast in silence of the night?

STEPHANO. A friend.

LORENZO. A friend! What friend? Your name, I pray you, friend?

STEPHANO. Stephano is my name, and I bring word My mistress will before the break of day Be here at Belmont. She doth stray about By holy crosses where she kneels and prays For happy wedlock hours.

LORENZO. Who comes with her?

STEPHANO. None but a holy hermit and her maid. I pray you is my master yet return’d?

LORENZO. He is not, nor we have not heard from him. But go we in, I pray thee, Jessica, And ceremoniously let us prepare Some welcome for the mistress of the house.

Enter Launcelet.

LAUNCELET. Sola, sola! wo ha, ho! sola, sola!

LORENZO. Who calls?

LAUNCELET. Sola! Did you see Master Lorenzo? Master Lorenzo! Sola, sola!

LORENZO. Leave holloaing, man. Here!

LAUNCELET. Sola! Where, where?

LORENZO. Here!

LAUNCELET. Tell him there’s a post come from my master with his horn full of good news. My master will be here ere morning.

LORENZO. Sweet soul, let’s in, and there expect their coming. And yet no matter; why should we go in? My friend Stephano, signify, I pray you, Within the house, your mistress is at hand, And bring your music forth into the air.

[Exit Stephano.]

How sweet the moonlight sleeps upon this bank! Here will we sit and let the sounds of music Creep in our ears; soft stillness and the night Become the touches of sweet harmony. Sit, Jessica. Look how the floor of heaven Is thick inlaid with patens of bright gold. There’s not the smallest orb which thou behold’st But in his motion like an angel sings, Still quiring to the young-eyed cherubins; Such harmony is in immortal souls, But whilst this muddy vesture of decay Doth grossly close it in, we cannot hear it.

Come, ho! and wake Diana with a hymn. With sweetest touches pierce your mistress’ ear, And draw her home with music.

JESSICA. I am never merry when I hear sweet music.

LORENZO. The reason is, your spirits are attentive. For do but note a wild and wanton herd Or race of youthful and unhandled colts, Fetching mad bounds, bellowing and neighing loud, Which is the hot condition of their blood, If they but hear perchance a trumpet sound, Or any air of music touch their ears, You shall perceive them make a mutual stand, Their savage eyes turn’d to a modest gaze By the sweet power of music: therefore the poet Did feign that Orpheus drew trees, stones, and floods, Since naught so stockish, hard, and full of rage, But music for the time doth change his nature. The man that hath no music in himself, Nor is not mov’d with concord of sweet sounds, Is fit for treasons, stratagems, and spoils; The motions of his spirit are dull as night, And his affections dark as Erebus. Let no such man be trusted. Mark the music.

PORTIA. That light we see is burning in my hall. How far that little candle throws his beams! So shines a good deed in a naughty world.

NERISSA. When the moon shone we did not see the candle.

PORTIA. So doth the greater glory dim the less. A substitute shines brightly as a king Until a king be by, and then his state Empties itself, as doth an inland brook Into the main of waters. Music! hark!

NERISSA. It is your music, madam, of the house.

PORTIA. Nothing is good, I see, without respect. Methinks it sounds much sweeter than by day.

NERISSA. Silence bestows that virtue on it, madam.

PORTIA. The crow doth sing as sweetly as the lark When neither is attended; and I think The nightingale, if she should sing by day When every goose is cackling, would be thought No better a musician than the wren. How many things by season season’d are To their right praise and true perfection! Peace! How the moon sleeps with Endymion, And would not be awak’d!

LORENZO. That is the voice, Or I am much deceiv’d, of Portia.

PORTIA. He knows me as the blind man knows the cuckoo, By the bad voice.

LORENZO. Dear lady, welcome home.

PORTIA. We have been praying for our husbands’ welfare, Which speed, we hope, the better for our words. Are they return’d?

LORENZO. Madam, they are not yet; But there is come a messenger before To signify their coming.

PORTIA. Go in, Nerissa. Give order to my servants, that they take No note at all of our being absent hence, Nor you, Lorenzo; Jessica, nor you.

[A tucket sounds.]

LORENZO. Your husband is at hand, I hear his trumpet. We are no tell-tales, madam, fear you not.

PORTIA. This night methinks is but the daylight sick, It looks a little paler. ’Tis a day Such as the day is when the sun is hid.

Enter Bassanio, Antonio, Gratiano and their Followers.

BASSANIO. We should hold day with the Antipodes, If you would walk in absence of the sun.

PORTIA. Let me give light, but let me not be light, For a light wife doth make a heavy husband, And never be Bassanio so for me. But God sort all! You are welcome home, my lord.

BASSANIO. I thank you, madam. Give welcome to my friend. This is the man, this is Antonio, To whom I am so infinitely bound.

PORTIA. You should in all sense be much bound to him, For, as I hear, he was much bound for you.

ANTONIO. No more than I am well acquitted of.

PORTIA. Sir, you are very welcome to our house. It must appear in other ways than words, Therefore I scant this breathing courtesy.

GRATIANO. [To Nerissa.] By yonder moon I swear you do me wrong, In faith, I gave it to the judge’s clerk. Would he were gelt that had it, for my part, Since you do take it, love, so much at heart.

PORTIA. A quarrel, ho, already! What’s the matter?

GRATIANO. About a hoop of gold, a paltry ring That she did give me, whose posy was For all the world like cutlers’ poetry Upon a knife, “Love me, and leave me not.”

NERISSA. What talk you of the posy, or the value? You swore to me when I did give it you, That you would wear it till your hour of death, And that it should lie with you in your grave. Though not for me, yet for your vehement oaths, You should have been respective and have kept it. Gave it a judge’s clerk! No, God’s my judge, The clerk will ne’er wear hair on’s face that had it.

GRATIANO. He will, and if he live to be a man.

NERISSA. Ay, if a woman live to be a man.

GRATIANO. Now, by this hand, I gave it to a youth, A kind of boy, a little scrubbed boy, No higher than thyself, the judge’s clerk, A prating boy that begg’d it as a fee, I could not for my heart deny it him.

PORTIA. You were to blame,—I must be plain with you,— To part so slightly with your wife’s first gift, A thing stuck on with oaths upon your finger, And so riveted with faith unto your flesh. I gave my love a ring, and made him swear Never to part with it, and here he stands. I dare be sworn for him he would not leave it Nor pluck it from his finger for the wealth That the world masters. Now, in faith, Gratiano, You give your wife too unkind a cause of grief, An ’twere to me I should be mad at it.

BASSANIO. [Aside.] Why, I were best to cut my left hand off, And swear I lost the ring defending it.

GRATIANO. My Lord Bassanio gave his ring away Unto the judge that begg’d it, and indeed Deserv’d it too. And then the boy, his clerk, That took some pains in writing, he begg’d mine, And neither man nor master would take aught But the two rings.

PORTIA. What ring gave you, my lord? Not that, I hope, which you receiv’d of me.

BASSANIO. If I could add a lie unto a fault, I would deny it, but you see my finger Hath not the ring upon it, it is gone.

PORTIA. Even so void is your false heart of truth. By heaven, I will ne’er come in your bed Until I see the ring.

NERISSA. Nor I in yours Till I again see mine!

BASSANIO. Sweet Portia, If you did know to whom I gave the ring, If you did know for whom I gave the ring, And would conceive for what I gave the ring, And how unwillingly I left the ring, When nought would be accepted but the ring, You would abate the strength of your displeasure.

PORTIA. If you had known the virtue of the ring, Or half her worthiness that gave the ring, Or your own honour to contain the ring, You would not then have parted with the ring. What man is there so much unreasonable, If you had pleas’d to have defended it With any terms of zeal, wanted the modesty To urge the thing held as a ceremony? Nerissa teaches me what to believe: I’ll die for’t but some woman had the ring.

BASSANIO. No, by my honour, madam, by my soul, No woman had it, but a civil doctor, Which did refuse three thousand ducats of me, And begg’d the ring, the which I did deny him, And suffer’d him to go displeas’d away, Even he that had held up the very life Of my dear friend. What should I say, sweet lady? I was enforc’d to send it after him. I was beset with shame and courtesy. My honour would not let ingratitude So much besmear it. Pardon me, good lady; For by these blessed candles of the night, Had you been there, I think you would have begg’d The ring of me to give the worthy doctor.

PORTIA. Let not that doctor e’er come near my house, Since he hath got the jewel that I loved, And that which you did swear to keep for me, I will become as liberal as you, I’ll not deny him anything I have, No, not my body, nor my husband’s bed. Know him I shall, I am well sure of it. Lie not a night from home. Watch me like Argus, If you do not, if I be left alone, Now by mine honour which is yet mine own, I’ll have that doctor for mine bedfellow.

NERISSA. And I his clerk. Therefore be well advis’d How you do leave me to mine own protection.

GRATIANO. Well, do you so. Let not me take him then, For if I do, I’ll mar the young clerk’s pen.

ANTONIO. I am th’ unhappy subject of these quarrels.

PORTIA. Sir, grieve not you. You are welcome notwithstanding.

BASSANIO. Portia, forgive me this enforced wrong, And in the hearing of these many friends I swear to thee, even by thine own fair eyes, Wherein I see myself—

PORTIA. Mark you but that! In both my eyes he doubly sees himself, In each eye one. Swear by your double self, And there’s an oath of credit.

BASSANIO. Nay, but hear me. Pardon this fault, and by my soul I swear I never more will break an oath with thee.

ANTONIO. I once did lend my body for his wealth, Which but for him that had your husband’s ring Had quite miscarried. I dare be bound again, My soul upon the forfeit, that your lord Will never more break faith advisedly.

PORTIA. Then you shall be his surety. Give him this, And bid him keep it better than the other.

ANTONIO. Here, Lord Bassanio, swear to keep this ring.

BASSANIO. By heaven, it is the same I gave the doctor!

PORTIA. I had it of him: pardon me, Bassanio, For by this ring, the doctor lay with me.

NERISSA. And pardon me, my gentle Gratiano, For that same scrubbed boy, the doctor’s clerk, In lieu of this, last night did lie with me.

GRATIANO. Why, this is like the mending of highways In summer, where the ways are fair enough. What, are we cuckolds ere we have deserv’d it?

PORTIA. Speak not so grossly. You are all amaz’d. Here is a letter; read it at your leisure. It comes from Padua from Bellario. There you shall find that Portia was the doctor, Nerissa there, her clerk. Lorenzo here Shall witness I set forth as soon as you, And even but now return’d. I have not yet Enter’d my house. Antonio, you are welcome, And I have better news in store for you Than you expect: unseal this letter soon. There you shall find three of your argosies Are richly come to harbour suddenly. You shall not know by what strange accident I chanced on this letter.

ANTONIO. I am dumb.

BASSANIO. Were you the doctor, and I knew you not?

GRATIANO. Were you the clerk that is to make me cuckold?

NERISSA. Ay, but the clerk that never means to do it, Unless he live until he be a man.

BASSANIO. Sweet doctor, you shall be my bedfellow. When I am absent, then lie with my wife.

ANTONIO. Sweet lady, you have given me life and living; For here I read for certain that my ships Are safely come to road.

PORTIA. How now, Lorenzo! My clerk hath some good comforts too for you.

NERISSA. Ay, and I’ll give them him without a fee. There do I give to you and Jessica, From the rich Jew, a special deed of gift, After his death, of all he dies possess’d of.

LORENZO. Fair ladies, you drop manna in the way Of starved people.

PORTIA. It is almost morning, And yet I am sure you are not satisfied Of these events at full. Let us go in, And charge us there upon inter’gatories, And we will answer all things faithfully.

GRATIANO. Let it be so. The first inter’gatory That my Nerissa shall be sworn on is, Whether till the next night she had rather stay, Or go to bed now, being two hours to day. But were the day come, I should wish it dark Till I were couching with the doctor’s clerk. Well, while I live, I’ll fear no other thing So sore as keeping safe Nerissa’s ring.

THE MERRY WIVES OF WINDSOR

ACT I Scene I. Windsor. Before Page’s house Scene II. The same Scene III. A room in the Garter Inn Scene IV. A room in Doctor Caius’s house

ACT II Scene I. Before Page’s house Scene II. A room in the Garter Inn Scene III. A field near Windsor

ACT III Scene I. A field near Frogmore Scene II. A street in Windsor Scene III. A room in Ford’s house Scene IV. A room in Page’s house Scene V. A room in the Garter Inn

ACT IV Scene I. The street Scene II. A room in Ford’s house Scene III. A room in the Garter Inn Scene IV. A room in Ford’s house Scene V. A room in the Garter Inn Scene VI. Another room in the Garter Inn

ACT V Scene I. A room in the Garter Inn Scene II. Windsor Park Scene III. The street in Windsor Scene IV. Windsor Park Scene V. Another part of the Park

HOST of the Garter Inn SIR JOHN FALSTAFF ROBIN, page to Falstaff BARDOLPH, follower of Falstaff PISTOL, follower of Falstaff NYM, follower of Falstaff

Robert SHALLOW, a country justice Abraham SLENDER, cousin to Shallow Peter SIMPLE, servant to Slender FENTON, a young gentleman

George PAGE, a Gentleman dwelling at Windsor MISTRESS PAGE, his wife MISTRESS ANNE PAGE, her daughter, in love with Fenton WILLIAM PAGE, a boy, son to Page

Frank FORD, a Gentleman dwelling at Windsor MISTRESS FORD, his wife JOHN, Servant to Ford ROBERT, Servant to Ford

SIR HUGH EVANS, a Welsh parson DOCTOR CAIUS, a French physician MISTRESS QUICKLY, servant to Doctor Caius John RUGBY, servant to Doctor Caius

SERVANTS to Page, &c.

SCENE: Windsor and the neighbourhood

SCENE I. Windsor. Before Page’s house

Enter Justice Shallow, Slender and Sir Hugh Evans.

SHALLOW. Sir Hugh, persuade me not. I will make a Star Chamber matter of it. If he were twenty Sir John Falstaffs, he shall not abuse Robert Shallow, esquire.

SLENDER. In the county of Gloucester, Justice of Peace and Coram.

SHALLOW. Ay, cousin Slender, and Custalorum.

SLENDER. Ay, and Ratolorum too; and a gentleman born, Master Parson, who writes himself “Armigero” in any bill, warrant, quittance, or obligation—“Armigero.”

SHALLOW. Ay, that I do, and have done any time these three hundred years.

SLENDER. All his successors, gone before him hath done’t; and all his ancestors that come after him may. They may give the dozen white luces in their coat.

SHALLOW. It is an old coat.

EVANS. The dozen white louses do become an old coat well. It agrees well, passant. It is a familiar beast to man, and signifies love.

SHALLOW. The luce is the fresh fish. The salt fish is an old coat.

SLENDER. I may quarter, coz.

SHALLOW. You may, by marrying.

EVANS. It is marring indeed, if he quarter it.

SHALLOW. Not a whit.

EVANS. Yes, py’r Lady. If he has a quarter of your coat, there is but three skirts for yourself, in my simple conjectures. But that is all one. If Sir John Falstaff have committed disparagements unto you, I am of the Church, and will be glad to do my benevolence to make atonements and compremises between you.

SHALLOW. The Council shall hear it; it is a riot.

EVANS. It is not meet the Council hear a riot. There is no fear of Got in a riot. The Council, look you, shall desire to hear the fear of Got, and not to hear a riot. Take your vizaments in that.

SHALLOW. Ha! O’ my life, if I were young again, the sword should end it.

EVANS. It is petter that friends is the sword, and end it; and there is also another device in my prain, which peradventure prings goot discretions with it. There is Anne Page, which is daughter to Master George Page, which is pretty virginity.

SLENDER. Mistress Anne Page? She has brown hair, and speaks small like a woman?

EVANS. It is that fery person for all the ’orld, as just as you will desire, and seven hundred pounds of moneys, and gold, and silver, is her grandsire upon his death’s-bed—Got deliver to a joyful resurrections!—give, when she is able to overtake seventeen years old. It were a goot motion if we leave our pribbles and prabbles, and desire a marriage between Master Abraham and Mistress Anne Page.

SHALLOW. Did her grandsire leave her seven hundred pound?

EVANS. Ay, and her father is make her a petter penny.

SHALLOW. I know the young gentlewoman; she has good gifts.

EVANS. Seven hundred pounds, and possibilities, is goot gifts.

SHALLOW. Well, let us see honest Master Page. Is Falstaff there?

EVANS. Shall I tell you a lie? I do despise a liar as I do despise one that is false, or as I despise one that is not true. The knight Sir John is there, and I beseech you be ruled by your well-willers. I will peat the door for Master Page.

What, ho! Got pless your house here!

PAGE. [Within.] Who’s there?

EVANS. Here is Got’s plessing, and your friend, and Justice Shallow, and here young Master Slender, that peradventures shall tell you another tale, if matters grow to your likings.

Enter Page.

PAGE. I am glad to see your worships well. I thank you for my venison, Master Shallow.

SHALLOW. Master Page, I am glad to see you, much good do it your good heart! I wished your venison better; it was ill killed. How doth good Mistress Page? And I thank you always with my heart, la, with my heart.

PAGE. Sir, I thank you.

SHALLOW. Sir, I thank you; by yea and no, I do.

PAGE. I am glad to see you, good Master Slender.

SLENDER. How does your fallow greyhound, sir? I heard say he was outrun on Cotsall.

PAGE. It could not be judged, sir.

SLENDER. You’ll not confess, you’ll not confess.

SHALLOW. That he will not. ’Tis your fault; ’tis your fault. ’Tis a good dog.

PAGE. A cur, sir.

SHALLOW. Sir, he’s a good dog, and a fair dog, can there be more said? He is good, and fair. Is Sir John Falstaff here?

PAGE. Sir, he is within; and I would I could do a good office between you.

EVANS. It is spoke as a Christians ought to speak.

SHALLOW. He hath wronged me, Master Page.

PAGE. Sir, he doth in some sort confess it.

SHALLOW. If it be confessed, it is not redressed. Is not that so, Master Page? He hath wronged me, indeed he hath, at a word, he hath. Believe me. Robert Shallow, esquire, saith he is wronged.

PAGE. Here comes Sir John.

Enter Sir John Falstaff, Bardolph, Nym and Pistol.

FALSTAFF. Now, Master Shallow, you’ll complain of me to the King?

SHALLOW. Knight, you have beaten my men, killed my deer, and broke open my lodge.

FALSTAFF. But not kissed your keeper’s daughter!

SHALLOW. Tut, a pin! This shall be answered.

FALSTAFF. I will answer it straight: I have done all this. That is now answered.

SHALLOW. The Council shall know this.

FALSTAFF. ’Twere better for you if it were known in counsel: you’ll be laughed at.

EVANS. Pauca verba, Sir John; goot worts.

FALSTAFF. Good worts? Good cabbage!—Slender, I broke your head. What matter have you against me?

SLENDER. Marry, sir, I have matter in my head against you, and against your cony-catching rascals, Bardolph, Nym, and Pistol. They carried me to the tavern and made me drunk, and afterwards picked my pocket.

BARDOLPH. You Banbury cheese!

SLENDER. Ay, it is no matter.

PISTOL. How now, Mephostophilus?

NYM. Slice, I say! Pauca, pauca, slice, that’s my humour.

SLENDER. Where’s Simple, my man? Can you tell, cousin?

EVANS. Peace, I pray you. Now let us understand; there is three umpires in this matter, as I understand: that is, Master Page, fidelicet Master Page; and there is myself, fidelicet myself; and the three party is, lastly and finally, mine host of the Garter.

PAGE. We three to hear it and end it between them.

EVANS. Fery goot. I will make a prief of it in my notebook, and we will afterwards ’ork upon the cause with as great discreetly as we can.

FALSTAFF. Pistol!

PISTOL. He hears with ears.

EVANS. The tevil and his tam! What phrase is this, “He hears with ear”? Why, it is affectations.

FALSTAFF. Pistol, did you pick Master Slender’s purse?

SLENDER. Ay, by these gloves, did he, or I would I might never come in mine own great chamber again else! Of seven groats in mill-sixpences, and two Edward shovel-boards that cost me two shilling and two pence a-piece of Yed Miller, by these gloves.

FALSTAFF. Is this true, Pistol?

EVANS. No, it is false, if it is a pick-purse.

PISTOL. Ha, thou mountain-foreigner!—Sir John and master mine, I combat challenge of this latten bilbo.— Word of denial in thy labras here! Word of denial! Froth and scum, thou liest.

SLENDER. [Points at Nym.] By these gloves, then, ’twas he.

NYM. Be avised, sir, and pass good humours. I will say “marry trap with you”, if you run the nuthook’s humour on me. That is the very note of it.

SLENDER. By this hat, then, he in the red face had it. For though I cannot remember what I did when you made me drunk, yet I am not altogether an ass.

FALSTAFF. What say you, Scarlet and John?

BARDOLPH. Why, sir, for my part, I say the gentleman had drunk himself out of his five sentences.

EVANS. It is his “five senses”. Fie, what the ignorance is!

BARDOLPH. And being fap, sir, was, as they say, cashiered; and so conclusions passed the careers.

SLENDER. Ay, you spake in Latin then too; but ’tis no matter. I’ll ne’er be drunk whilst I live again, but in honest, civil, godly company, for this trick. If I be drunk, I’ll be drunk with those that have the fear of God, and not with drunken knaves.

EVANS. So Got ’udge me, that is a virtuous mind.

FALSTAFF. You hear all these matters denied, gentlemen; you hear it.

Enter Mistress Ford, Mistress Page and her daughter Anne Page with wine.

PAGE Nay, daughter, carry the wine in, we’ll drink within.

[Exit Anne Page.]

SLENDER O heaven, this is Mistress Anne Page.

PAGE. How now, Mistress Ford?

FALSTAFF. Mistress Ford, by my troth, you are very well met. By your leave, good mistress.

PAGE. Wife, bid these gentlemen welcome. Come, we have a hot venison pasty to dinner. Come, gentlemen, I hope we shall drink down all unkindness.

[Exeunt all but Slender.]

SLENDER. I had rather than forty shillings I had my book of Songs and Sonnets here.

Enter Simple.

How now, Simple, where have you been? I must wait on myself, must I? You have not the Book of Riddles about you, have you?

SIMPLE. Book of Riddles? Why, did you not lend it to Alice Shortcake upon Allhallowmas last, a fortnight afore Michaelmas?

Enter Shallow and Sir Hugh Evans.

SHALLOW. Come, coz; come, coz, we stay for you. A word with you, coz. Marry, this, coz: there is, as ’twere, a tender, a kind of tender, made afar off by Sir Hugh here. Do you understand me?

SLENDER. Ay, sir, you shall find me reasonable. If it be so, I shall do that that is reason.

SHALLOW. Nay, but understand me.

SLENDER. So I do, sir.

EVANS. Give ear to his motions, Master Slender. I will description the matter to you, if you be capacity of it.

SLENDER. Nay, I will do as my cousin Shallow says. I pray you pardon me, he’s a Justice of Peace in his country, simple though I stand here.

EVANS. But that is not the question. The question is concerning your marriage.

SHALLOW. Ay, there’s the point, sir.

EVANS. Marry, is it; the very point of it—to Mistress Anne Page.

SLENDER. Why, if it be so, I will marry her upon any reasonable demands.

EVANS. But can you affection the ’oman? Let us command to know that of your mouth, or of your lips; for divers philosophers hold that the lips is parcel of the mouth. Therefore, precisely, can you carry your good will to the maid?

SHALLOW. Cousin Abraham Slender, can you love her?

SLENDER. I hope, sir, I will do as it shall become one that would do reason.

EVANS. Nay, Got’s lords and his ladies! You must speak possitable, if you can carry her your desires towards her.

SHALLOW. That you must. Will you, upon good dowry, marry her?

SLENDER. I will do a greater thing than that, upon your request, cousin, in any reason.

SHALLOW. Nay, conceive me, conceive me, sweet coz. What I do is to pleasure you, coz. Can you love the maid?

SLENDER. I will marry her, sir, at your request. But if there be no great love in the beginning, yet heaven may decrease it upon better acquaintance, when we are married and have more occasion to know one another. I hope upon familiarity will grow more contempt. But if you say “Marry her,” I will marry her. That I am freely dissolved, and dissolutely.

EVANS. It is a fery discretion answer, save the fall is in the ’ord “dissolutely.” The ’ort is, according to our meaning, “resolutely.” His meaning is good.

SHALLOW. Ay, I think my cousin meant well.

SLENDER. Ay, or else I would I might be hanged, la!

SHALLOW. Here comes fair Mistress Anne.

Enter Anne Page.

SHALLOW. Here comes fair Mistress Anne.—Would I were young for your sake, Mistress Anne.

ANNE. The dinner is on the table, my father desires your worships’ company.

SHALLOW. I will wait on him, fair Mistress Anne.

EVANS. ’Od’s plessed will! I will not be absence at the grace.

[Exeunt Shallow and Sir Hugh Evans.]

ANNE Will’t please your worship to come in, sir?

SLENDER. No, I thank you, forsooth, heartily; I am very well.

ANNE. The dinner attends you, sir.

SLENDER. I am not a-hungry, I thank you, forsooth. [To Simple.] Go, sirrah, for all you are my man, go wait upon my cousin Shallow.

[Exit Simple.]

A Justice of Peace sometime may be beholding to his friend for a man. I keep but three men and a boy yet, till my mother be dead. But what though? Yet I live like a poor gentleman born.

ANNE. I may not go in without your worship. They will not sit till you come.

SLENDER. I’ faith, I’ll eat nothing. I thank you as much as though I did.

ANNE. I pray you, sir, walk in.

SLENDER. I had rather walk here, I thank you. I bruised my shin th’ other day with playing at sword and dagger with a master of fence—three veneys for a dish of stewed prunes—and, by my troth, I cannot abide the smell of hot meat since. Why do your dogs bark so? Be there bears i’ the town?

ANNE. I think there are, sir; I heard them talked of.

SLENDER. I love the sport well, but I shall as soon quarrel at it as any man in England. You are afraid, if you see the bear loose, are you not?

ANNE. Ay, indeed, sir.

SLENDER. That’s meat and drink to me now. I have seen Sackerson loose twenty times, and have taken him by the chain. But, I warrant you, the women have so cried and shrieked at it that it passed. But women, indeed, cannot abide ’em; they are very ill-favoured rough things.

PAGE Come, gentle Master Slender, come. We stay for you.

SLENDER. I’ll eat nothing, I thank you, sir.

PAGE. By cock and pie, you shall not choose, sir! Come, come.

SLENDER. Nay, pray you lead the way.

PAGE. Come on, sir.

SLENDER. Mistress Anne, yourself shall go first.

ANNE. Not I, sir; pray you keep on.

SLENDER. Truly, I will not go first; truly, la! I will not do you that wrong.

ANNE. I pray you, sir.

SLENDER. I’ll rather be unmannerly than troublesome. You do yourself wrong, indeed, la!

Enter Sir Hugh Evans and Simple.

EVANS. Go your ways, and ask of Doctor Caius’ house which is the way. And there dwells one Mistress Quickly, which is in the manner of his nurse, or his dry nurse, or his cook, or his laundry, his washer and his wringer.

SIMPLE. Well, sir.

EVANS. Nay, it is petter yet. Give her this letter. For it is a ’oman that altogether’s acquaintance with Mistress Anne Page; and the letter is to desire and require her to solicit your master’s desires to Mistress Anne Page. I pray you be gone. I will make an end of my dinner; there’s pippins and cheese to come.

SCENE III. A room in the Garter Inn

Enter Falstaff, Host, Bardolph, Nym, Pistol and Robin.

FALSTAFF. Mine host of the Garter!

HOST. What says my bully rook? Speak scholarly and wisely.

FALSTAFF. Truly, mine host, I must turn away some of my followers.

HOST. Discard, bully Hercules; cashier. Let them wag; trot, trot.

FALSTAFF. I sit at ten pounds a week.

HOST. Thou’rt an emperor—Caesar, Keiser, and Pheazar. I will entertain Bardolph. He shall draw, he shall tap. Said I well, bully Hector?

FALSTAFF. Do so, good mine host.

HOST. I have spoke, let him follow.—Let me see thee froth and lime. I am at a word, follow.

[Exit Host.]

FALSTAFF. Bardolph, follow him. A tapster is a good trade. An old cloak makes a new jerkin; a withered servingman a fresh tapster. Go, adieu.

BARDOLPH. It is a life that I have desired. I will thrive.

PISTOL. O base Hungarian wight, wilt thou the spigot wield?

NYM He was gotten in drink. Is not the humour conceited?

FALSTAFF. I am glad I am so acquit of this tinderbox. His thefts were too open. His filching was like an unskilful singer, he kept not time.

NYM. The good humour is to steal at a minute’s rest.

PISTOL. “Convey,” the wise it call. “Steal?” Foh! A fico for the phrase!

FALSTAFF. Well, sirs, I am almost out at heels.

PISTOL. Why, then, let kibes ensue.

FALSTAFF. There is no remedy, I must cony-catch, I must shift.

PISTOL. Young ravens must have food.

FALSTAFF. Which of you know Ford of this town?

PISTOL. I ken the wight, he is of substance good.

FALSTAFF. My honest lads, I will tell you what I am about.

PISTOL. Two yards, and more.

FALSTAFF. No quips now, Pistol. Indeed, I am in the waist two yards about, but I am now about no waste; I am about thrift. Briefly, I do mean to make love to Ford’s wife. I spy entertainment in her. She discourses, she carves, she gives the leer of invitation. I can construe the action of her familiar style; and the hardest voice of her behaviour, to be Englished rightly, is “I am Sir John Falstaff’s.”

PISTOL. He hath studied her will and translated her will—out of honesty into English.

NYM. The anchor is deep. Will that humour pass?

FALSTAFF. Now, the report goes she has all the rule of her husband’s purse. He hath a legion of angels.

PISTOL. As many devils entertain, and “To her, boy,” say I.

NYM. The humour rises; it is good. Humour me the angels.

FALSTAFF. I have writ me here a letter to her; and here another to Page’s wife, who even now gave me good eyes too, examined my parts with most judicious oeillades. Sometimes the beam of her view gilded my foot, sometimes my portly belly.

PISTOL. Then did the sun on dunghill shine.

NYM. I thank thee for that humour.

FALSTAFF. O, she did so course o’er my exteriors with such a greedy intention that the appetite of her eye did seem to scorch me up like a burning-glass. Here’s another letter to her. She bears the purse too; she is a region in Guiana, all gold and bounty. I will be cheaters to them both, and they shall be exchequers to me; they shall be my East and West Indies, and I will trade to them both. Go, bear thou this letter to Mistress Page;—and thou this to Mistress Ford. We will thrive, lads, we will thrive.

PISTOL. Shall I Sir Pandarus of Troy become, And by my side wear steel? Then Lucifer take all!

NYM. I will run no base humour. Here, take the humour-letter. I will keep the ’haviour of reputation.

FALSTAFF. [To Robin.] Hold, sirrah, bear you these letters tightly; Sail like my pinnace to these golden shores.— Rogues, hence, avaunt! Vanish like hailstones, go! Trudge, plod away o’ th’ hoof, seek shelter, pack! Falstaff will learn the humour of this age: French thrift, you rogues—myself and skirted page.

[Exeunt Falstaff and Robin.]

PISTOL Let vultures gripe thy guts! For gourd and fullam holds, And high and low beguile the rich and poor. Tester I’ll have in pouch when thou shalt lack, Base Phrygian Turk!

NYM. I have operations in my head which be humours of revenge.

PISTOL. Wilt thou revenge?

NYM. By welkin and her star!

PISTOL. With wit or steel?

NYM. With both the humours, I. I will discuss the humour of this love to Ford.

PISTOL. And I to Page shall eke unfold How Falstaff, varlet vile, His dove will prove, his gold will hold, And his soft couch defile.

NYM. My humour shall not cool. I will incense Ford to deal with poison, I will possess him with yellowness, for the revolt of mine is dangerous. That is my true humour.

PISTOL. Thou art the Mars of malcontents. I second thee. Troop on.

SCENE IV. A room in Doctor Caius’s house

Enter Mistress Quickly and Simple.

MISTRESS QUICKLY. What, John Rugby!

Enter Rugby.

I pray thee go to the casement, and see if you can see my master, Master Doctor Caius, coming. If he do, i’ faith, and find anybody in the house, here will be an old abusing of God’s patience and the King’s English.

RUGBY. I’ll go watch.

MISTRESS QUICKLY. Go; and we’ll have a posset for’t soon at night, in faith, at the latter end of a sea-coal fire.

[Exit Rugby.]

An honest, willing, kind fellow, as ever servant shall come in house withal; and, I warrant you, no tell-tale nor no breed-bate. His worst fault is that he is given to prayer; he is something peevish that way, but nobody but has his fault. But let that pass. Peter Simple you say your name is?

SIMPLE. Ay, for fault of a better.

MISTRESS QUICKLY. And Master Slender’s your master?

SIMPLE. Ay, forsooth.

MISTRESS QUICKLY. Does he not wear a great round beard, like a glover’s paring-knife?

SIMPLE. No, forsooth, he hath but a little wee face, with a little yellow beard, a Cain-coloured beard.

MISTRESS QUICKLY. A softly-sprighted man, is he not?

SIMPLE. Ay, forsooth. But he is as tall a man of his hands as any is between this and his head. He hath fought with a warrener.

MISTRESS QUICKLY. How say you? O, I should remember him. Does he not hold up his head, as it were, and strut in his gait?

SIMPLE. Yes, indeed, does he.

MISTRESS QUICKLY. Well, heaven send Anne Page no worse fortune! Tell Master Parson Evans I will do what I can for your master. Anne is a good girl, and I wish—

RUGBY Out, alas! Here comes my master.

MISTRESS QUICKLY. We shall all be shent. Run in here, good young man, go into this closet. He will not stay long.

[Simple steps into the closet.]

What, John Rugby! John! What, John, I say! Go, John, go inquire for my master. I doubt he be not well, that he comes not home.

[Sings.] And down, down, adown-a, etc.

Enter Doctor Caius.

CAIUS Vat is you sing? I do not like dese toys. Pray you, go and vetch me in my closet une boîtine verte, a box, a green-a box. Do intend vat I speak? A green-a box.

MISTRESS QUICKLY. Ay, forsooth, I’ll fetch it you. [Aside.] I am glad he went not in himself. If he had found the young man, he would have been horn-mad.

CAIUS. Fe, fe, fe fe! Ma foi, il fait fort chaud. Je m’en vais à la cour—la grande affaire.

MISTRESS QUICKLY. Is it this, sir?

CAIUS. Oui, mette-le au mon pocket. Dépêche, quickly—Vere is dat knave Rugby?

MISTRESS QUICKLY. What, John Rugby, John!

RUGBY Here, sir.

CAIUS. You are John Rugby, and you are Jack Rugby. Come, take-a your rapier, and come after my heel to the court.

RUGBY. ’Tis ready, sir, here in the porch.

CAIUS. By my trot, I tarry too long. ’Od’s me! Qu’ay j’oublié? Dere is some simples in my closet dat I vill not for the varld I shall leave behind.

MISTRESS QUICKLY. Ay me, he’ll find the young man there, and be mad!

CAIUS. O diable, diable! Vat is in my closet? Villainy! Larron! [Pulling Simple out.] Rugby, my rapier!

MISTRESS QUICKLY. Good master, be content.

CAIUS. Wherefore shall I be content-a?

MISTRESS QUICKLY. The young man is an honest man.

CAIUS. What shall de honest man do in my closet? Dere is no honest man dat shall come in my closet.

MISTRESS QUICKLY. I beseech you, be not so phlegmatic. Hear the truth of it. He came of an errand to me from Parson Hugh.

CAIUS. Vell?

SIMPLE. Ay, forsooth, to desire her to—

MISTRESS QUICKLY. Peace, I pray you.

CAIUS. Peace-a your tongue!—Speak-a your tale.

SIMPLE. To desire this honest gentlewoman, your maid, to speak a good word to Mistress Anne Page for my master in the way of marriage.

MISTRESS QUICKLY. This is all, indeed, la! But I’ll ne’er put my finger in the fire, and need not.

CAIUS. Sir Hugh send-a you?—Rugby, baille me some paper.—Tarry you a little-a while.

[Writes.]

MISTRESS QUICKLY. [Aside to Simple.] I am glad he is so quiet. If he had been throughly moved, you should have heard him so loud and so melancholy. But notwithstanding, man, I’ll do you your master what good I can; and the very yea and the no is, the French doctor, my master—I may call him my master, look you, for I keep his house, and I wash, wring, brew, bake, scour, dress meat and drink, make the beds, and do all myself—

SIMPLE. [Aside to Mistress Quickly.] ’Tis a great charge to come under one body’s hand.

MISTRESS QUICKLY. [Aside to Simple.] Are you avised o’ that? You shall find it a great charge, and to be up early and down late; but notwithstanding—to tell you in your ear, I would have no words of it—my master himself is in love with Mistress Anne Page; but notwithstanding that, I know Anne’s mind. That’s neither here nor there.

CAIUS. You jack’nape, give-a dis letter to Sir Hugh. By gar, it is a shallenge. I will cut his troat in de park, and I will teach a scurvy jackanape priest to meddle or make. You may be gone, it is not good you tarry here.—By gar, I will cut all his two stones. By gar, he shall not have a stone to throw at his dog.

MISTRESS QUICKLY. Alas, he speaks but for his friend.

CAIUS. It is no matter-a ver dat. Do not you tell-a me dat I shall have Anne Page for myself? By gar, I vill kill de Jack priest; and I have appointed mine host of de Jarteer to measure our weapon. By gar, I will myself have Anne Page.

MISTRESS QUICKLY. Sir, the maid loves you, and all shall be well. We must give folks leave to prate. What, the good-year!

CAIUS. Rugby, come to the court with me. [To Mistress Quickly.] By gar, if I have not Anne Page, I shall turn your head out of my door.—Follow my heels, Rugby.

[Exeunt Caius and Rugby.]

MISTRESS QUICKLY. You shall have An—fool’s head of your own. No, I know Anne’s mind for that. Never a woman in Windsor knows more of Anne’s mind than I do, nor can do more than I do with her, I thank heaven.

FENTON. [Within.] Who’s within there, ho?

MISTRESS QUICKLY. Who’s there, I trow? Come near the house, I pray you.

Enter Fenton.

FENTON How now, good woman? How dost thou?

MISTRESS QUICKLY. The better, that it pleases your good worship to ask.

FENTON. What news? How does pretty Mistress Anne?

MISTRESS QUICKLY. In truth, sir, and she is pretty, and honest, and gentle; and one that is your friend, I can tell you that by the way, I praise heaven for it.

FENTON. Shall I do any good, think’st thou? Shall I not lose my suit?

MISTRESS QUICKLY. Troth, sir, all is in His hands above. But notwithstanding, Master Fenton, I’ll be sworn on a book she loves you. Have not your worship a wart above your eye?

FENTON. Yes, marry, have I; what of that?

MISTRESS QUICKLY. Well, thereby hangs a tale. Good faith, it is such another Nan! But, I detest, an honest maid as ever broke bread. We had an hour’s talk of that wart. I shall never laugh but in that maid’s company. But, indeed, she is given too much to allicholy and musing. But for you—well, go to.

FENTON. Well, I shall see her today. Hold, there’s money for thee. Let me have thy voice in my behalf. If thou seest her before me, commend me.

MISTRESS QUICKLY. Will I? I’ faith, that we will! And I will tell your worship more of the wart the next time we have confidence, and of other wooers.

FENTON. Well, farewell, I am in great haste now.

MISTRESS QUICKLY. Farewell to your worship.

[Exit Fenton.]

Truly, an honest gentleman—but Anne loves him not, for I know Anne’s mind as well as another does. Out upon ’t, what have I forgot?

SCENE I. Before Page’s house

Enter Mistress Page reading a letter.

MISTRESS PAGE. What, have I scaped love-letters in the holiday-time of my beauty, and am I now a subject for them? Let me see. [Reads.] Ask me no reason why I love you, for though Love use Reason for his precisian, he admits him not for his counsellor. You are not young, no more am I. Go to, then, there’s sympathy. You are merry, so am I. Ha, ha, then there’s more sympathy. You love sack, and so do I. Would you desire better sympathy? Let it suffice thee, Mistress Page, at the least, if the love of soldier can suffice, that I love thee. I will not say, pity me—’tis not a soldier-like phrase—but I say love me. By me, Thine own true knight, By day or night, Or any kind of light, With all his might, For thee to fight, John Falstaff. What a Herod of Jewry is this! O wicked, wicked world! One that is well-nigh worn to pieces with age, to show himself a young gallant! What an unweighed behaviour hath this Flemish drunkard picked—with the devil’s name!—out of my conversation, that he dares in this manner assay me? Why, he hath not been thrice in my company! What should I say to him? I was then frugal of my mirth. Heaven forgive me! Why, I’ll exhibit a bill in the parliament for the putting down of men. How shall I be revenged on him? For revenged I will be, as sure as his guts are made of puddings.

Enter Mistress Ford.

MISTRESS FORD. Mistress Page! Trust me, I was going to your house.

MISTRESS PAGE. And, trust me, I was coming to you. You look very ill.

MISTRESS FORD. Nay, I’ll ne’er believe that. I have to show to the contrary.

MISTRESS PAGE. Faith, but you do, in my mind.

MISTRESS FORD. Well, I do, then. Yet I say I could show you to the contrary. O, Mistress Page, give me some counsel.

MISTRESS PAGE. What’s the matter, woman?

MISTRESS FORD. O woman, if it were not for one trifling respect, I could come to such honour!

MISTRESS PAGE. Hang the trifle, woman; take the honour. What is it? Dispense with trifles. What is it?

MISTRESS FORD. If I would but go to hell for an eternal moment or so, I could be knighted.

MISTRESS PAGE. What? Thou liest! Sir Alice Ford! These knights will hack, and so thou shouldst not alter the article of thy gentry.

MISTRESS FORD. We burn daylight. Here, read, read. Perceive how I might be knighted. I shall think the worse of fat men as long as I have an eye to make difference of men’s liking. And yet he would not swear; praised women’s modesty; and gave such orderly and well-behaved reproof to all uncomeliness that I would have sworn his disposition would have gone to the truth of his words. But they do no more adhere and keep place together than the Hundredth Psalm to the tune of “Greensleeves.” What tempest, I trow, threw this whale, with so many tuns of oil in his belly, ashore at Windsor? How shall I be revenged on him? I think the best way were to entertain him with hope, till the wicked fire of lust have melted him in his own grease. Did you ever hear the like?

MISTRESS PAGE. Letter for letter, but that the name of Page and Ford differs! To thy great comfort in this mystery of ill opinions, here’s the twin brother of thy letter. But let thine inherit first, for I protest mine never shall. I warrant he hath a thousand of these letters, writ with blank space for different names—sure, more, and these are of the second edition. He will print them, out of doubt; for he cares not what he puts into the press, when he would put us two. I had rather be a giantess and lie under Mount Pelion. Well, I will find you twenty lascivious turtles ere one chaste man.

MISTRESS FORD. Why, this is the very same—the very hand, the very words. What doth he think of us?

MISTRESS PAGE. Nay, I know not. It makes me almost ready to wrangle with mine own honesty. I’ll entertain myself like one that I am not acquainted withal; for, sure, unless he know some strain in me that I know not myself, he would never have boarded me in this fury.

MISTRESS FORD. “Boarding” call you it? I’ll be sure to keep him above deck.

MISTRESS PAGE. So will I. If he come under my hatches, I’ll never to sea again. Let’s be revenged on him. Let’s appoint him a meeting, give him a show of comfort in his suit, and lead him on with a fine-baited delay, till he hath pawned his horses to mine host of the Garter.

MISTRESS FORD. Nay, I will consent to act any villainy against him that may not sully the chariness of our honesty. O, that my husband saw this letter! It would give eternal food to his jealousy.

MISTRESS PAGE. Why, look where he comes; and my good man too. He’s as far from jealousy as I am from giving him cause, and that, I hope, is an unmeasurable distance.

MISTRESS FORD. You are the happier woman.

MISTRESS PAGE. Let’s consult together against this greasy knight. Come hither.

Enter Ford with Pistol, and Page with Nym.

FORD Well, I hope it be not so.

PISTOL. Hope is a curtal dog in some affairs. Sir John affects thy wife.

FORD. Why, sir, my wife is not young.

PISTOL. He woos both high and low, both rich and poor, Both young and old, one with another, Ford. He loves the gallimaufry. Ford, perpend.

FORD. Love my wife?

PISTOL. With liver burning hot. Prevent, or go thou like Sir Actaeon he, With Ringwood at thy heels. O, odious is the name!

FORD. What name, sir?

PISTOL. The horn, I say. Farewell. Take heed, have open eye, for thieves do foot by night. Take heed, ere summer comes, or cuckoo birds do sing.— Away, Sir Corporal Nym.—Believe it, Page, he speaks sense.

[Exit Pistol.]

FORD [Aside.] I will be patient. I will find out this.

NYM. [To Page.] And this is true, I like not the humour of lying. He hath wronged me in some humours. I should have borne the humoured letter to her; but I have a sword, and it shall bite upon my necessity. He loves your wife; there’s the short and the long. My name is Corporal Nym. I speak, and I avouch ’tis true. My name is Nym, and Falstaff loves your wife. Adieu. I love not the humour of bread and cheese. Adieu.

[Exit Nym.]

PAGE [Aside.] “The humour of it,” quoth ’a! Here’s a fellow frights English out of his wits.

FORD. [Aside.] I will seek out Falstaff.

PAGE. [Aside.] I never heard such a drawling, affecting rogue.

FORD. [Aside.] If I do find it—well.

PAGE. [Aside.] I will not believe such a Cataian, though the priest o’ the town commended him for a true man.

FORD. [Aside.] ’Twas a good sensible fellow—well.

Mistress Page and Mistress Ford come forward.

PAGE. How now, Meg?

MISTRESS PAGE. Whither go you, George? Hark you.

MISTRESS FORD. How now, sweet Frank, why art thou melancholy?

FORD. I melancholy? I am not melancholy. Get you home, go.

MISTRESS FORD. Faith, thou hast some crotchets in thy head now.—Will you go, Mistress Page?

MISTRESS PAGE. Have with you. You’ll come to dinner, George? [Aside to Mistress Ford.] Look who comes yonder. She shall be our messenger to this paltry knight.

MISTRESS FORD. [Aside to Mistress Page.] Trust me, I thought on her. She’ll fit it.

Enter Mistress Quickly.

MISTRESS PAGE. You are come to see my daughter Anne?

MISTRESS QUICKLY. Ay, forsooth. And, I pray, how does good Mistress Anne?

MISTRESS PAGE. Go in with us and see. We’d have an hour’s talk with you.

[Exeunt Mistress Page, Mistress Ford and Mistress Quickly.]

PAGE How now, Master Ford?

FORD. You heard what this knave told me, did you not?

PAGE. Yes, and you heard what the other told me?

FORD. Do you think there is truth in them?

PAGE. Hang ’em, slaves! I do not think the knight would offer it, but these that accuse him in his intent towards our wives are a yoke of his discarded men, very rogues, now they be out of service.

FORD. Were they his men?

PAGE. Marry, were they.

FORD. I like it never the better for that. Does he lie at the Garter?

PAGE. Ay, marry, does he. If he should intend this voyage toward my wife, I would turn her loose to him; and what he gets more of her than sharp words, let it lie on my head.

FORD. I do not misdoubt my wife, but I would be loath to turn them together. A man may be too confident. I would have nothing lie on my head. I cannot be thus satisfied.

Enter Host.

PAGE. Look where my ranting host of the Garter comes. There is either liquor in his pate or money in his purse when he looks so merrily.—How now, mine host?

HOST. How now, bully rook? Thou’rt a gentleman.—Cavaliero Justice, I say!

Enter Shallow.

SHALLOW. I follow, mine host, I follow.—Good even and twenty, good Master Page. Master Page, will you go with us? We have sport in hand.

HOST. Tell him, Cavaliero Justice; tell him, bully rook.

SHALLOW. Sir, there is a fray to be fought between Sir Hugh the Welsh priest and Caius the French doctor.

FORD. Good mine host o’ the Garter, a word with you.

HOST. What say’st thou, my bully rook?

[Ford and the Host talk apart.]

SHALLOW [To Page.] Will you go with us to behold it? My merry host hath had the measuring of their weapons, and, I think, hath appointed them contrary places; for, believe me, I hear the parson is no jester. Hark, I will tell you what our sport shall be.

[Shallow and Page talk apart. Ford and the Host come forward.]

HOST Hast thou no suit against my knight, my guest cavaliero?

FORD. None, I protest. But I’ll give you a pottle of burnt sack to give me recourse to him, and tell him my name is Brook, only for a jest.

HOST. My hand, bully. Thou shalt have egress and regress—said I well?—and thy name shall be Brook. It is a merry knight. Will you go, myn-heers?

SHALLOW. Have with you, mine host.

PAGE. I have heard the Frenchman hath good skill in his rapier.

SHALLOW. Tut, sir, I could have told you more. In these times you stand on distance—your passes, stoccadoes, and I know not what. ’Tis the heart, Master Page; ’tis here, ’tis here. I have seen the time, with my long sword I would have made you four tall fellows skip like rats.

HOST. Here, boys, here, here! Shall we wag?

PAGE. Have with you. I had rather hear them scold than fight.

[Exeunt Host, Shallow and Page.]

FORD Though Page be a secure fool, and stands so firmly on his wife’s frailty, yet I cannot put off my opinion so easily. She was in his company at Page’s house, and what they made there I know not. Well, I will look further into ’t, and I have a disguise to sound Falstaff. If I find her honest, I lose not my labour. If she be otherwise, ’tis labour well bestowed.

SCENE II. A room in the Garter Inn

Enter Falstaff and Pistol.

FALSTAFF. I will not lend thee a penny.

PISTOL. Why then, the world’s mine oyster, Which I with sword will open.

FALSTAFF. Not a penny. I have been content, sir, you should lay my countenance to pawn; I have grated upon my good friends for three reprieves for you and your coach-fellow Nym, or else you had looked through the grate like a gemini of baboons. I am damned in hell for swearing to gentlemen my friends you were good soldiers and tall fellows. And when Mistress Bridget lost the handle of her fan, I took ’t upon mine honour thou hadst it not.

PISTOL. Didst not thou share? Hadst thou not fifteen pence?

FALSTAFF. Reason, you rogue, reason. Think’st thou I’ll endanger my soul gratis? At a word, hang no more about me, I am no gibbet for you. Go—a short knife and a throng—to your manor of Pickt-hatch, go. You’ll not bear a letter for me, you rogue? You stand upon your honour! Why, thou unconfinable baseness, it is as much as I can do to keep the terms of my honour precise. Ay, ay, I myself sometimes, leaving the fear of God on the left hand, and hiding mine honour in my necessity, am fain to shuffle, to hedge, and to lurch; and yet you, rogue, will ensconce your rags, your cat-a-mountain looks, your red-lattice phrases, and your bold beating oaths, under the shelter of your honour! You will not do it! You!

PISTOL. I do relent. What wouldst thou more of man?

Enter Robin.

ROBIN Sir, here’s a woman would speak with you.

FALSTAFF. Let her approach.

MISTRESS QUICKLY. Give your worship good morrow.

FALSTAFF. Good morrow, goodwife.

MISTRESS QUICKLY. Not so, an’t please your worship.

FALSTAFF. Good maid, then.

MISTRESS QUICKLY. I’ll be sworn, as my mother was, the first hour I was born.

FALSTAFF. I do believe the swearer. What with me?

MISTRESS QUICKLY. Shall I vouchsafe your worship a word or two?

FALSTAFF. Two thousand, fair woman; and I’ll vouchsafe thee the hearing.

MISTRESS QUICKLY. There is one Mistress Ford, sir—I pray, come a little nearer this ways. I myself dwell with Master Doctor Caius.

FALSTAFF. Well, on; Mistress Ford, you say—

MISTRESS QUICKLY. Your worship says very true. I pray your worship come a little nearer this ways.

FALSTAFF. I warrant thee, nobody hears. Mine own people, mine own people.

MISTRESS QUICKLY. Are they so? God bless them, and make them His servants!

FALSTAFF. Well, Mistress Ford, what of her?

MISTRESS QUICKLY. Why, sir, she’s a good creature. Lord, Lord, your worship’s a wanton! Well, heaven forgive you, and all of us, I pray!

FALSTAFF. Mistress Ford, come, Mistress Ford.

MISTRESS QUICKLY. Marry, this is the short and the long of it: you have brought her into such a canaries as ’tis wonderful. The best courtier of them all, when the court lay at Windsor, could never have brought her to such a canary. Yet there has been knights, and lords, and gentlemen, with their coaches, I warrant you, coach after coach, letter after letter, gift after gift, smelling so sweetly, all musk, and so rushling, I warrant you, in silk and gold, and in such alligant terms, and in such wine and sugar of the best and the fairest, that would have won any woman’s heart; and I warrant you, they could never get an eye-wink of her. I had myself twenty angels given me this morning, but I defy all angels in any such sort, as they say, but in the way of honesty. And, I warrant you, they could never get her so much as sip on a cup with the proudest of them all. And yet there has been earls—nay, which is more, pensioners—but, I warrant you, all is one with her.

FALSTAFF. But what says she to me? Be brief, my good she-Mercury.

MISTRESS QUICKLY. Marry, she hath received your letter, for the which she thanks you a thousand times; and she gives you to notify that her husband will be absence from his house between ten and eleven.

FALSTAFF. Ten and eleven?

MISTRESS QUICKLY. Ay, forsooth; and then you may come and see the picture, she says, that you wot of. Master Ford, her husband, will be from home. Alas, the sweet woman leads an ill life with him. He’s a very jealousy man; she leads a very frampold life with him, good heart.

FALSTAFF. Ten and eleven. Woman, commend me to her; I will not fail her.

MISTRESS QUICKLY. Why, you say well. But I have another messenger to your worship. Mistress Page hath her hearty commendations to you too; and let me tell you in your ear, she’s as fartuous a civil modest wife, and one, I tell you, that will not miss you morning nor evening prayer, as any is in Windsor, whoe’er be the other; and she bade me tell your worship that her husband is seldom from home, but she hopes there will come a time. I never knew a woman so dote upon a man. Surely I think you have charms, la! Yes, in truth.

FALSTAFF. Not I, I assure thee. Setting the attraction of my good parts aside, I have no other charms.

MISTRESS QUICKLY. Blessing on your heart for ’t!

FALSTAFF. But, I pray thee, tell me this: has Ford’s wife and Page’s wife acquainted each other how they love me?

MISTRESS QUICKLY. That were a jest indeed! They have not so little grace, I hope. That were a trick indeed! But Mistress Page would desire you to send her your little page, of all loves. Her husband has a marvellous infection to the little page; and, truly, Master Page is an honest man. Never a wife in Windsor leads a better life than she does. Do what she will, say what she will, take all, pay all, go to bed when she list, rise when she list, all is as she will, and truly she deserves it, for if there be a kind woman in Windsor, she is one. You must send her your page, no remedy.

FALSTAFF. Why, I will.

MISTRESS QUICKLY. Nay, but do so then, and, look you, he may come and go between you both; and in any case have a nay-word, that you may know one another’s mind, and the boy never need to understand anything; for ’tis not good that children should know any wickedness. Old folks, you know, have discretion, as they say, and know the world.

FALSTAFF. Fare thee well, commend me to them both. There’s my purse; I am yet thy debtor. Boy, go along with this woman.—This news distracts me.

[Exeunt Mistress Quickly and Robin.]

PISTOL. This punk is one of Cupid’s carriers; Clap on more sails, pursue; up with your fights; Give fire! She is my prize, or ocean whelm them all!

FALSTAFF. Sayst thou so, old Jack? Go thy ways, I’ll make more of thy old body than I have done. Will they yet look after thee? Wilt thou, after the expense of so much money, be now a gainer? Good body, I thank thee. Let them say ’tis grossly done; so it be fairly done, no matter.

Enter Bardolph with a cup of sack.

BARDOLPH Sir John, there’s one Master Brook below would fain speak with you and be acquainted with you, and hath sent your worship a morning’s draught of sack.

FALSTAFF. Brook is his name?

BARDOLPH. Ay, sir.

FALSTAFF. Call him in.

Such Brooks are welcome to me, that o’erflow such liquor. Ah, ha, Mistress Ford and Mistress Page, have I encompassed you? Go to, via!

Enter Bardolph with Ford disguised as Brook.

FORD God bless you, sir.

FALSTAFF. And you, sir. Would you speak with me?

FORD. I make bold to press with so little preparation upon you.

FALSTAFF. You’re welcome. What’s your will?—Give us leave, drawer.

FORD Sir, I am a gentleman that have spent much. My name is Brook.

FALSTAFF. Good Master Brook, I desire more acquaintance of you.

FORD. Good Sir John, I sue for yours; not to charge you, for I must let you understand I think myself in better plight for a lender than you are, the which hath something emboldened me to this unseasoned intrusion; for they say, if money go before, all ways do lie open.

FALSTAFF. Money is a good soldier, sir, and will on.

FORD. Troth, and I have a bag of money here troubles me. If you will help to bear it, Sir John, take all, or half, for easing me of the carriage.

FALSTAFF. Sir, I know not how I may deserve to be your porter.

FORD. I will tell you, sir, if you will give me the hearing.

FALSTAFF. Speak, good Master Brook. I shall be glad to be your servant.

FORD. Sir, I hear you are a scholar—I will be brief with you—and you have been a man long known to me, though I had never so good means as desire to make myself acquainted with you. I shall discover a thing to you, wherein I must very much lay open mine own imperfection. But, good Sir John, as you have one eye upon my follies, as you hear them unfolded, turn another into the register of your own, that I may pass with a reproof the easier, sith you yourself know how easy it is to be such an offender.

FALSTAFF. Very well, sir, proceed.

FORD. There is a gentlewoman in this town, her husband’s name is Ford.

FALSTAFF. Well, sir.

FORD. I have long loved her, and, I protest to you, bestowed much on her, followed her with a doting observance, engrossed opportunities to meet her, fee’d every slight occasion that could but niggardly give me sight of her, not only bought many presents to give her, but have given largely to many to know what she would have given. Briefly, I have pursued her as love hath pursued me, which hath been on the wing of all occasions. But whatsoever I have merited, either in my mind or in my means, meed, I am sure, I have received none, unless experience be a jewel. That I have purchased at an infinite rate, and that hath taught me to say this: Love like a shadow flies when substance love pursues, Pursuing that that flies, and flying what pursues.

FALSTAFF. Have you received no promise of satisfaction at her hands?

FORD. Never.

FALSTAFF. Have you importuned her to such a purpose?

FALSTAFF. Of what quality was your love, then?

FORD. Like a fair house built on another man’s ground, so that I have lost my edifice by mistaking the place where I erected it.

FALSTAFF. To what purpose have you unfolded this to me?

FORD. When I have told you that, I have told you all. Some say that though she appear honest to me, yet in other places she enlargeth her mirth so far that there is shrewd construction made of her. Now, Sir John, here is the heart of my purpose: you are a gentleman of excellent breeding, admirable discourse, of great admittance, authentic in your place and person, generally allowed for your many warlike, courtlike, and learned preparations.

FALSTAFF. O, sir!

FORD. Believe it, for you know it. There is money. Spend it, spend it; spend more; spend all I have; only give me so much of your time in exchange of it as to lay an amiable siege to the honesty of this Ford’s wife. Use your art of wooing, win her to consent to you. If any man may, you may as soon as any.

FALSTAFF. Would it apply well to the vehemency of your affection that I should win what you would enjoy? Methinks you prescribe to yourself very preposterously.

FORD. O, understand my drift. She dwells so securely on the excellency of her honour that the folly of my soul dares not present itself; she is too bright to be looked against. Now, could I come to her with any detection in my hand, my desires had instance and argument to commend themselves. I could drive her then from the ward of her purity, her reputation, her marriage vow, and a thousand other her defences, which now are too too strongly embattled against me. What say you to’t, Sir John?

FALSTAFF. Master Brook, I will first make bold with your money; next, give me your hand; and last, as I am a gentleman, you shall, if you will, enjoy Ford’s wife.

FORD. O good sir!

FALSTAFF. I say you shall.

FORD. Want no money, Sir John; you shall want none.

FALSTAFF. Want no Mistress Ford, Master Brook; you shall want none. I shall be with her, I may tell you, by her own appointment; even as you came in to me, her assistant or go-between parted from me. I say I shall be with her between ten and eleven, for at that time the jealous rascally knave her husband will be forth. Come you to me at night. You shall know how I speed.

FORD. I am blessed in your acquaintance. Do you know Ford, sir?

FALSTAFF. Hang him, poor cuckoldly knave! I know him not. Yet I wrong him to call him poor. They say the jealous wittolly knave hath masses of money, for the which his wife seems to me well-favoured. I will use her as the key of the cuckoldly rogue’s coffer, and there’s my harvest-home.

FORD. I would you knew Ford, sir, that you might avoid him if you saw him.

FALSTAFF. Hang him, mechanical salt-butter rogue! I will stare him out of his wits, I will awe him with my cudgel; it shall hang like a meteor o’er the cuckold’s horns. Master Brook, thou shalt know I will predominate over the peasant, and thou shalt lie with his wife. Come to me soon at night. Ford’s a knave, and I will aggravate his style. Thou, Master Brook, shalt know him for knave and cuckold. Come to me soon at night.

FORD. What a damned epicurean rascal is this! My heart is ready to crack with impatience. Who says this is improvident jealousy? My wife hath sent to him, the hour is fixed, the match is made. Would any man have thought this? See the hell of having a false woman: my bed shall be abused, my coffers ransacked, my reputation gnawn at; and I shall not only receive this villanous wrong, but stand under the adoption of abominable terms, and by him that does me this wrong. Terms, names! Amaimon sounds well; Lucifer, well; Barbason, well; yet they are devils’ additions, the names of fiends. But cuckold? Wittol? Cuckold? The devil himself hath not such a name. Page is an ass, a secure ass; he will trust his wife, he will not be jealous. I will rather trust a Fleming with my butter, Parson Hugh the Welshman with my cheese, an Irishman with my aqua-vitae bottle, or a thief to walk my ambling gelding, than my wife with herself. Then she plots, then she ruminates, then she devises; and what they think in their hearts they may effect, they will break their hearts but they will effect. God be praised for my jealousy! Eleven o’clock the hour. I will prevent this, detect my wife, be revenged on Falstaff, and laugh at Page. I will about it. Better three hours too soon than a minute too late. Fie, fie, fie! Cuckold, cuckold, cuckold!

SCENE III. A field near Windsor

Enter Doctor Caius and Rugby.

CAIUS. Jack Rugby!

RUGBY. Sir?

CAIUS. Vat is de clock, Jack?

RUGBY. ’Tis past the hour, sir, that Sir Hugh promised to meet.

CAIUS. By gar, he has save his soul, dat he is no come. He has pray his Pible well dat he is no come. By gar, Jack Rugby, he is dead already, if he be come.

RUGBY. He is wise, sir; he knew your worship would kill him if he came.

CAIUS. By gar, de herring is no dead so as I vill kill him. Take your rapier, Jack; I vill tell you how I vill kill him.

RUGBY. Alas, sir, I cannot fence.

CAIUS. Villainy, take your rapier.

RUGBY. Forbear; here’s company.

Enter Page, Shallow, Slender and Host.

HOST God bless thee, bully doctor!

SHALLOW. God save you, Master Doctor Caius!

PAGE. Now, good Master Doctor!

SLENDER. Give you good morrow, sir.

CAIUS. Vat be all you, one, two, tree, four, come for?

HOST. To see thee fight, to see thee foin, to see thee traverse; to see thee here, to see thee there; to see thee pass thy punto, thy stock, thy reverse, thy distance, thy montant. Is he dead, my Ethiopian? Is he dead, my Francisco? Ha, bully? What says my Aesculapius, my Galen, my heart of elder, ha? Is he dead, bully stale? Is he dead?

CAIUS. By gar, he is de coward Jack-priest of de vorld. He is not show his face.

HOST. Thou art a Castalion King Urinal Hector of Greece, my boy!

CAIUS. I pray you, bear witness that me have stay six or seven, two, tree hours for him, and he is no come.

SHALLOW. He is the wiser man, Master doctor. He is a curer of souls, and you a curer of bodies. If you should fight, you go against the hair of your professions. Is it not true, Master Page?

PAGE. Master Shallow, you have yourself been a great fighter, though now a man of peace.

SHALLOW. Bodykins, Master Page, though I now be old, and of the peace, if I see a sword out, my finger itches to make one. Though we are justices and doctors and churchmen, Master Page, we have some salt of our youth in us. We are the sons of women, Master Page.

PAGE. ’Tis true, Master Shallow.

SHALLOW. It will be found so, Master Page.—Master Doctor Caius, I come to fetch you home. I am sworn of the peace. You have showed yourself a wise physician, and Sir Hugh hath shown himself a wise and patient churchman. You must go with me, Master Doctor.

HOST. Pardon, guest justice.—A word, Monsieur Mockwater.

CAIUS. Mockvater? Vat is dat?

HOST. Mockwater, in our English tongue, is valour, bully.

CAIUS. By gar, then I have as much mockvater as de Englishman. Scurvy jack-dog priest! By gar, me vill cut his ears.

HOST. He will clapper-claw thee tightly, bully.

CAIUS. Clapper-de-claw? Vat is dat?

HOST. That is, he will make thee amends.

CAIUS. By gar, me do look he shall clapper-de-claw me, for, by gar, me vill have it.

HOST. And I will provoke him to’t, or let him wag.

CAIUS. Me tank you for dat.

HOST. And, moreover, bully—but first, Master guest, and Master Page, and eke Cavaliero Slender, go you through the town to Frogmore.

PAGE [Aside to Host.] Sir Hugh is there, is he?

HOST. [Aside to Page.] He is there. See what humour he is in; and I will bring the doctor about by the fields. Will it do well?

SHALLOW. [Aside to Host.] We will do it.

PAGE, SHALLOW and SLENDER Adieu, good Master Doctor.

[Exeunt Page, Shallow and Slender.]

CAIUS By gar, me vill kill de priest, for he speak for a jackanape to Anne Page.

HOST. Let him die. Sheathe thy impatience; throw cold water on thy choler. Go about the fields with me through Frogmore. I will bring thee where Mistress Anne Page is, at a farm-house a-feasting, and thou shalt woo her. Cried game! Said I well?

CAIUS. By gar, me tank you for dat. By gar, I love you; and I shall procure-a you de good guest: de earl, de knight, de lords, de gentlemen, my patients.

HOST. For the which I will be thy adversary toward Anne Page. Said I well?

CAIUS. By gar, ’tis good; vell said.

HOST. Let us wag, then.

CAIUS. Come at my heels, Jack Rugby.

SCENE I. A field near Frogmore

EVANS. I pray you now, good Master Slender’s servingman, and friend Simple by your name, which way have you looked for Master Caius, that calls himself doctor of physic?

SIMPLE. Marry, sir, the Petty-ward, the Park-ward, every way; old Windsor way, and every way but the town way.

EVANS. I most fehemently desire you, you will also look that way.

SIMPLE. I will, Sir.

EVANS Pless my soul, how full of cholers I am, and trempling of mind! I shall be glad if he have deceived me. How melancholies I am! I will knog his urinals about his knave’s costard when I have good opportunities for the ’ork. Pless my soul!

[Sings.]

To shallow rivers, to whose falls Melodious birds sings madrigals. There will we make our peds of roses And a thousand fragrant posies. To shallow—

Mercy on me, I have a great dispositions to cry.

Melodious birds sing madrigals— Whenas I sat in Pabylon— And a thousand vagram posies. To shallow rivers, to whose falls Melodious birds sing madrigals.

SIMPLE Yonder he is, coming this way, Sir Hugh.

EVANS. He’s welcome.

[Sings.] To shallow rivers, to whose falls— Heaven prosper the right! What weapons is he?

SIMPLE. No weapons, sir. There comes my master, Master Shallow, and another gentleman, from Frogmore, over the stile, this way.

EVANS. Pray you, give me my gown—or else keep it in your arms.

Enter Page, Shallow and Slender.

SHALLOW How now, Master Parson? Good morrow, good Sir Hugh. Keep a gamester from the dice, and a good student from his book, and it is wonderful.

SLENDER. [Aside.] Ah, sweet Anne Page!

PAGE. God save you, good Sir Hugh!

EVANS. God pless you from his mercy sake, all of you!

SHALLOW. What, the sword and the word? Do you study them both, Master Parson?

PAGE. And youthful still—in your doublet and hose, this raw rheumatic day?

EVANS. There is reasons and causes for it.

PAGE. We are come to you to do a good office, Master Parson.

EVANS. Fery well; what is it?

PAGE. Yonder is a most reverend gentleman who, belike having received wrong by some person, is at most odds with his own gravity and patience that ever you saw.

SHALLOW. I have lived fourscore years and upward; I never heard a man of his place, gravity, and learning, so wide of his own respect.

EVANS. What is he?

PAGE. I think you know him: Master Doctor Caius, the renowned French physician.

EVANS. Got’s will and His passion of my heart! I had as lief you would tell me of a mess of porridge.

PAGE. Why?

EVANS. He has no more knowledge in Hibbocrates and Galen, and he is a knave besides, a cowardly knave as you would desires to be acquainted withal.

PAGE. I warrant you, he’s the man should fight with him.

SLENDER. [Aside.] O, sweet Anne Page!

SHALLOW. It appears so by his weapons. Keep them asunder. Here comes Doctor Caius.

Enter Host, Caius and Rugby.

PAGE Nay, good Master Parson, keep in your weapon.

SHALLOW. So do you, good Master Doctor.

HOST. Disarm them, and let them question. Let them keep their limbs whole and hack our English.

CAIUS. I pray you, let-a me speak a word with your ear. Verefore will you not meet-a me?

EVANS. [Aside to Caius.] Pray you, use your patience. In good time.

CAIUS. By gar, you are de coward, de Jack dog, John ape.

EVANS. [Aside to Caius.] Pray you, let us not be laughing stocks to other men’s humours. I desire you in friendship, and I will one way or other make you amends. [Aloud.] By Jeshu, I will knog your urinal about your knave’s cogscomb.

CAIUS. Diable! Jack Rugby, mine Host de Jarteer, have I not stay for him to kill him? Have I not, at de place I did appoint?

EVANS. As I am a Christians soul, now look you, this is the place appointed. I’ll be judgment by mine host of the Garter.

HOST. Peace, I say, Gallia and Gaul, French and Welsh, soul-curer and body-curer!

CAIUS. Ay, dat is very good; excellent.

HOST. Peace, I say! Hear mine host of the Garter. Am I politic? Am I subtle? Am I a Machiavel? Shall I lose my doctor? No, he gives me the potions and the motions. Shall I lose my parson, my priest, my Sir Hugh? No, he gives me the proverbs and the no-verbs. [To Caius.] Give me thy hand, terrestrial; so. [To Evans.] Give me thy hand, celestial; so. Boys of art, I have deceived you both. I have directed you to wrong places. Your hearts are mighty, your skins are whole, and let burnt sack be the issue. Come, lay their swords to pawn. Follow me, lads of peace, follow, follow, follow.

SHALLOW. Afore God, a mad host! Follow, gentlemen, follow.

[Exeunt Shallow, Slender and Page.]

CAIUS Ha, do I perceive dat? Have you make-a de sot of us, ha, ha?

EVANS. This is well, he has made us his vlouting-stog. I desire you that we may be friends, and let us knog our prains together to be revenge on this same scall, scurvy, cogging companion, the host of the Garter.

CAIUS. By gar, with all my heart. He promise to bring me where is Anne Page; by gar, he deceive me too.

EVANS. Well, I will smite his noddles. Pray you follow.

SCENE II. A street in Windsor

Enter Mistress Page following Robin.

MISTRESS PAGE. Nay, keep your way, little gallant. You were wont to be a follower, but now you are a leader. Whether had you rather, lead mine eyes, or eye your master’s heels?

ROBIN. I had rather, forsooth, go before you like a man than follow him like a dwarf.

MISTRESS PAGE. O, you are a flattering boy! Now I see you’ll be a courtier.

Enter Ford.

FORD Well met, Mistress Page. Whither go you?

MISTRESS PAGE. Truly, sir, to see your wife. Is she at home?

FORD. Ay, and as idle as she may hang together, for want of company. I think if your husbands were dead you two would marry.

MISTRESS PAGE. Be sure of that—two other husbands.

FORD. Where had you this pretty weathercock?

MISTRESS PAGE. I cannot tell what the dickens his name is my husband had him of. What do you call your knight’s name, sirrah?

ROBIN. Sir John Falstaff.

FORD. Sir John Falstaff!

MISTRESS PAGE. He, he; I can never hit on’s name. There is such a league between my good man and he! Is your wife at home indeed?

FORD. Indeed she is.

MISTRESS PAGE. By your leave, sir, I am sick till I see her.

[Exeunt Mistress Page and Robin.]

FORD Has Page any brains? Hath he any eyes? Hath he any thinking? Sure, they sleep; he hath no use of them. Why, this boy will carry a letter twenty mile as easy as a cannon will shoot point-blank twelve score. He pieces out his wife’s inclination, he gives her folly motion and advantage. And now she’s going to my wife, and Falstaff’s boy with her. A man may hear this shower sing in the wind. And Falstaff’s boy with her! Good plots they are laid, and our revolted wives share damnation together. Well, I will take him, then torture my wife, pluck the borrowed veil of modesty from the so-seeming Mistress Page, divulge Page himself for a secure and wilful Actaeon, and to these violent proceedings all my neighbours shall cry aim. [Clock strikes.] The clock gives me my cue, and my assurance bids me search. There I shall find Falstaff. I shall be rather praised for this than mocked, for it is as positive as the earth is firm that Falstaff is there. I will go.

Enter Page, Shallow, Slender, Host, Sir Hugh Evans, Caius and Rugby.

SHALLOW, PAGE, etc. Well met, Master Ford.

FORD. Trust me, a good knot. I have good cheer at home, and I pray you all go with me.

SHALLOW. I must excuse myself, Master Ford.

SLENDER. And so must I, sir; we have appointed to dine with Mistress Anne, and I would not break with her for more money than I’ll speak of.

SHALLOW. We have lingered about a match between Anne Page and my cousin Slender, and this day we shall have our answer.

SLENDER. I hope I have your good will, father Page.

PAGE. You have, Master Slender, I stand wholly for you.—But my wife, Master doctor, is for you altogether.

CAIUS. Ay, be-gar; and de maid is love-a me! My nursh-a Quickly tell me so mush.

HOST. What say you to young Master Fenton? He capers, he dances, he has eyes of youth, he writes verses, he speaks holiday, he smells April and May. He will carry ’t, he will carry ’t. ’Tis in his buttons he will carry ’t.

PAGE. Not by my consent, I promise you. The gentleman is of no having. He kept company with the wild Prince and Poins. He is of too high a region, he knows too much. No, he shall not knit a knot in his fortunes with the finger of my substance. If he take her, let him take her simply. The wealth I have waits on my consent, and my consent goes not that way.

FORD. I beseech you, heartily, some of you go home with me to dinner. Besides your cheer, you shall have sport: I will show you a monster. Master Doctor, you shall go; so shall you, Master Page, and you, Sir Hugh.

SHALLOW. Well, fare you well. We shall have the freer wooing at Master Page’s.

[Exeunt Shallow and Slender.]

CAIUS Go home, John Rugby; I come anon.

HOST Farewell, my hearts. I will to my honest knight Falstaff, and drink canary with him.

FORD [Aside.] I think I shall drink in pipe-wine first with him; I’ll make him dance.—Will you go, gentles?

ALL. Have with you to see this monster.

SCENE III. A room in Ford’s house

Enter Mistress Ford and Mistress Page.

MISTRESS FORD. What, John! What, Robert!

MISTRESS PAGE. Quickly, quickly! Is the buck-basket—

MISTRESS FORD. I warrant.—What, Robin, I say!

Enter John and Robert with a great buck-basket.

MISTRESS PAGE. Come, come, come.

MISTRESS FORD. Here, set it down.

MISTRESS PAGE. Give your men the charge; we must be brief.

MISTRESS FORD. Marry, as I told you before, John and Robert, be ready here hard by in the brew-house; and when I suddenly call you, come forth, and, without any pause or staggering, take this basket on your shoulders. That done, trudge with it in all haste, and carry it among the whitsters in Datchet Mead, and there empty it in the muddy ditch close by the Thames side.

MISTRESS PAGE. You will do it?

MISTRESS FORD. I ha’ told them over and over, they lack no direction.—Be gone, and come when you are called.

[Exeunt John and Robert.]

MISTRESS PAGE. Here comes little Robin.

MISTRESS FORD. How now, my eyas-musket, what news with you?

ROBIN. My Master, Sir John, is come in at your back door, Mistress Ford, and requests your company.

MISTRESS PAGE. You little Jack-a-Lent, have you been true to us?

ROBIN. Ay, I’ll be sworn. My master knows not of your being here, and hath threatened to put me into everlasting liberty if I tell you of it; for he swears he’ll turn me away.

MISTRESS PAGE. Thou’rt a good boy, this secrecy of thine shall be a tailor to thee, and shall make thee a new doublet and hose. I’ll go hide me.

MISTRESS FORD. Do so.—Go tell thy master I am alone.

[Exit Robin.]

Mistress Page, remember you your cue.

MISTRESS PAGE. I warrant thee. If I do not act it, hiss me.

[Exit Mistress Page.]

MISTRESS FORD. Go to, then. We’ll use this unwholesome humidity, this gross watery pumpion; we’ll teach him to know turtles from jays.

FALSTAFF. “Have I caught thee, my heavenly jewel?” Why, now let me die, for I have lived long enough. This is the period of my ambition. O this blessed hour!

MISTRESS FORD. O, sweet Sir John!

FALSTAFF. Mistress Ford, I cannot cog, I cannot prate, Mistress Ford. Now shall I sin in my wish: I would thy husband were dead. I’ll speak it before the best lord: I would make thee my lady.

MISTRESS FORD. I your lady, Sir John? Alas, I should be a pitiful lady.

FALSTAFF. Let the court of France show me such another. I see how thine eye would emulate the diamond. Thou hast the right arched beauty of the brow that becomes the ship-tire, the tire-valiant, or any tire of Venetian admittance.

MISTRESS FORD. A plain kerchief, Sir John. My brows become nothing else, nor that well neither.

FALSTAFF. By the Lord, thou art a traitor to say so. Thou wouldst make an absolute courtier, and the firm fixture of thy foot would give an excellent motion to thy gait in a semi-circled farthingale. I see what thou wert, if Fortune thy foe were not, Nature thy friend. Come, thou canst not hide it.

MISTRESS FORD. Believe me, there’s no such thing in me.

FALSTAFF. What made me love thee? Let that persuade thee there’s something extraordinary in thee. Come, I cannot cog and say thou art this and that, like a many of these lisping hawthorn buds that come like women in men’s apparel, and smell like Bucklersbury in simple-time. I cannot. But I love thee, none but thee; and thou deservest it.

MISTRESS FORD. Do not betray me, sir; I fear you love Mistress Page.

FALSTAFF. Thou mightst as well say I love to walk by the Counter gate, which is as hateful to me as the reek of a lime-kiln.

MISTRESS FORD. Well, heaven knows how I love you, and you shall one day find it.

FALSTAFF. Keep in that mind, I’ll deserve it.

MISTRESS FORD. Nay, I must tell you, so you do; or else I could not be in that mind.

ROBIN. Mistress Ford, Mistress Ford, here’s Mistress Page at the door, sweating and blowing and looking wildly, and would needs speak with you presently.

FALSTAFF. She shall not see me; I will ensconce me behind the arras.

MISTRESS FORD. Pray you, do so; she’s a very tattling woman.

[Falstaff hides himself behind the arras.]

Enter Mistress Page.

What’s the matter? How now?

MISTRESS PAGE. O Mistress Ford, what have you done? You’re shamed, you’re overthrown, you’re undone for ever!

MISTRESS FORD. What’s the matter, good Mistress Page?

MISTRESS PAGE. O well-a-day, Mistress Ford, having an honest man to your husband, to give him such cause of suspicion!

MISTRESS FORD. What cause of suspicion?

MISTRESS PAGE. What cause of suspicion? Out upon you! How am I mistook in you!

MISTRESS FORD. Why, alas, what’s the matter?

MISTRESS PAGE. Your husband’s coming hither, woman, with all the officers in Windsor, to search for a gentleman that he says is here now in the house, by your consent, to take an ill advantage of his absence. You are undone.

MISTRESS FORD. ’Tis not so, I hope.

MISTRESS PAGE. Pray heaven it be not so, that you have such a man here! But ’tis most certain your husband’s coming, with half Windsor at his heels, to search for such a one. I come before to tell you. If you know yourself clear, why, I am glad of it; but if you have a friend here, convey, convey him out. Be not amazed, call all your senses to you; defend your reputation, or bid farewell to your good life for ever.

MISTRESS FORD. What shall I do? There is a gentleman, my dear friend; and I fear not mine own shame as much as his peril. I had rather than a thousand pound he were out of the house.

MISTRESS PAGE. For shame! Never stand “you had rather” and “you had rather”. Your husband’s here at hand. Bethink you of some conveyance. In the house you cannot hide him. O, how have you deceived me! Look, here is a basket. If he be of any reasonable stature, he may creep in here; and throw foul linen upon him, as if it were going to bucking. Or—it is whiting-time—send him by your two men to Datchet Mead.

MISTRESS FORD. He’s too big to go in there. What shall I do?

FALSTAFF. [Comes out of hiding.] Let me see ’t, let me see ’t! O, let me see ’t! I’ll in, I’ll in. Follow your friend’s counsel. I’ll in.

MISTRESS PAGE. What, Sir John Falstaff? Are these your letters, knight?

FALSTAFF. I love thee, and none but thee. Help me away. Let me creep in here. I’ll never—

[He goes into the basket; they cover him with dirty clothes.]

MISTRESS PAGE. Help to cover your master, boy.—Call your men, Mistress Ford.—You dissembling knight!

MISTRESS FORD. What, John! Robert! John!

Enter John and Robert.

Go, take up these clothes here, quickly. Where’s the cowl-staff? Look how you drumble! Carry them to the laundress in Datchet Mead; quickly, come.

Enter Ford, Page, Caius and Sir Hugh Evans.

FORD. Pray you come near. If I suspect without cause, why then make sport at me, then let me be your jest; I deserve it.—How now? Whither bear you this?

JOHN and ROBERT. To the laundress, forsooth.

MISTRESS FORD. Why, what have you to do whither they bear it? You were best meddle with buck-washing!

FORD. Buck? I would I could wash myself of the buck! Buck, buck, buck! Ay, buck! I warrant you, buck, and of the season too, it shall appear.

[Exeunt John and Robert with the basket.]

Gentlemen, I have dreamed tonight; I’ll tell you my dream. Here, here, here be my keys. Ascend my chambers, search, seek, find out. I’ll warrant we’ll unkennel the fox. Let me stop this way first. [Locks the door.] So, now uncape.

PAGE. Good Master Ford, be contented: you wrong yourself too much.

FORD. True, Master Page.—Up, gentlemen, you shall see sport anon. Follow me, gentlemen.

[Exit Ford.]

EVANS This is fery fantastical humours and jealousies.

CAIUS. By gar, ’tis no the fashion of France; it is not jealous in France.

PAGE. Nay, follow him, gentlemen; see the issue of his search.

[Exeunt Page, Evans and Caius.]

MISTRESS PAGE. Is there not a double excellency in this?

MISTRESS FORD. I know not which pleases me better, that my husband is deceived, or Sir John.

MISTRESS PAGE. What a taking was he in when your husband asked who was in the basket!

MISTRESS FORD. I am half afraid he will have need of washing, so throwing him into the water will do him a benefit.

MISTRESS PAGE. Hang him, dishonest rascal! I would all of the same strain were in the same distress.

MISTRESS FORD. I think my husband hath some special suspicion of Falstaff’s being here, for I never saw him so gross in his jealousy till now.

MISTRESS PAGE. I will lay a plot to try that, and we will yet have more tricks with Falstaff. His dissolute disease will scarce obey this medicine.

MISTRESS FORD. Shall we send that foolish carrion Mistress Quickly to him, and excuse his throwing into the water, and give him another hope, to betray him to another punishment?

MISTRESS PAGE. We will do it. Let him be sent for tomorrow eight o’clock to have amends.

FORD I cannot find him. Maybe the knave bragged of that he could not compass.

MISTRESS PAGE. [Aside to Mistress Ford.] Heard you that?

MISTRESS FORD. You use me well, Master Ford, do you?

FORD. Ay, I do so.

MISTRESS FORD. Heaven make you better than your thoughts!

FORD. Amen!

MISTRESS PAGE. You do yourself mighty wrong, Master Ford.

FORD. Ay, ay; I must bear it.

EVANS. If there be anypody in the house, and in the chambers, and in the coffers, and in the presses, heaven forgive my sins at the day of judgment!

CAIUS. Be gar, nor I too; there is nobodies.

PAGE. Fie, fie, Master Ford, are you not ashamed? What spirit, what devil suggests this imagination? I would not ha’ your distemper in this kind for the wealth of Windsor Castle.

FORD. ’Tis my fault, Master Page. I suffer for it.

EVANS. You suffer for a pad conscience. Your wife is as honest a ’omans as I will desires among five thousand, and five hundred too.

CAIUS. By gar, I see ’tis an honest woman.

FORD. Well, I promised you a dinner. Come, come, walk in the park. I pray you pardon me; I will hereafter make known to you why I have done this. Come, wife, come, Mistress Page, I pray you pardon me. Pray heartily, pardon me.

PAGE. Let’s go in, gentlemen; but, trust me, we’ll mock him. I do invite you tomorrow morning to my house to breakfast; after, we’ll a-birding together; I have a fine hawk for the bush. Shall it be so?

FORD. Anything.

EVANS. If there is one, I shall make two in the company.

CAIUS. If there be one or two, I shall make-a the turd.

FORD. Pray you go, Master Page.

[Exeunt all but Evans and Caius.]

EVANS. I pray you now, remembrance tomorrow on the lousy knave, mine host.

CAIUS. Dat is good, by gar, with all my heart.

EVANS. A lousy knave, to have his gibes and his mockeries!

SCENE IV. A room in Page’s house

Enter Fenton and Anne Page.

FENTON. I see I cannot get thy father’s love; Therefore no more turn me to him, sweet Nan.

ANNE. Alas, how then?

FENTON. Why, thou must be thyself. He doth object I am too great of birth, And that my state being galled with my expense, I seek to heal it only by his wealth. Besides these, other bars he lays before me: My riots past, my wild societies— And tells me ’tis a thing impossible I should love thee but as a property.

ANNE. Maybe he tells you true.

FENTON. No, heaven so speed me in my time to come! Albeit I will confess thy father’s wealth Was the first motive that I wooed thee, Anne, Yet, wooing thee, I found thee of more value Than stamps in gold or sums in sealed bags. And ’tis the very riches of thyself That now I aim at.

ANNE. Gentle Master Fenton, Yet seek my father’s love, still seek it, sir. If opportunity and humblest suit Cannot attain it, why then—hark you hither.

[They talk apart.]

Enter Shallow, Slender and Mistress Quickly.

SHALLOW. Break their talk, Mistress Quickly. My kinsman shall speak for himself.

SLENDER. I’ll make a shaft or a bolt on ’t. ’Slid, ’tis but venturing.

SHALLOW. Be not dismayed.

SLENDER. No, she shall not dismay me. I care not for that, but that I am afeard.

MISTRESS QUICKLY. Hark ye, Master Slender would speak a word with you.

ANNE. I come to him. [Aside.] This is my father’s choice. O, what a world of vile ill-favoured faults Looks handsome in three hundred pounds a year!

MISTRESS QUICKLY. And how does good Master Fenton? Pray you, a word with you.

[They talk aside.]

SHALLOW. [To Slender.] She’s coming; to her, coz. O boy, thou hadst a father!

SLENDER. I had a father, Mistress Anne; my uncle can tell you good jests of him.—Pray you, uncle, tell Mistress Anne the jest how my father stole two geese out of a pen, good uncle.

SHALLOW. Mistress Anne, my cousin loves you.

SLENDER. Ay, that I do, as well as I love any woman in Gloucestershire.

SHALLOW. He will maintain you like a gentlewoman.

SLENDER. Ay, that I will, come cut and long-tail, under the degree of a squire.

SHALLOW. He will make you a hundred and fifty pounds jointure.

ANNE. Good Master Shallow, let him woo for himself.

SHALLOW. Marry, I thank you for it, I thank you for that good comfort.—She calls you, coz; I’ll leave you.

ANNE. Now, Master Slender.

SLENDER. Now, good Mistress Anne.

ANNE. What is your will?

SLENDER. My will? ’Od’s heartlings, that’s a pretty jest indeed! I ne’er made my will yet, I thank heaven. I am not such a sickly creature, I give heaven praise.

ANNE. I mean, Master Slender, what would you with me?

SLENDER. Truly, for mine own part I would little or nothing with you. Your father and my uncle hath made motions. If it be my luck, so; if not, happy man be his dole. They can tell you how things go better than I can. You may ask your father. Here he comes.

Enter Page and Mistress Page.

PAGE Now, Master Slender.—Love him, daughter Anne.— Why, how now? What does Master Fenton here? You wrong me, sir, thus still to haunt my house. I told you, sir, my daughter is disposed of.

FENTON. Nay, Master Page, be not impatient.

MISTRESS PAGE. Good Master Fenton, come not to my child.

PAGE. She is no match for you.

FENTON. Sir, will you hear me?

PAGE. No, good Master Fenton.— Come, Master Shallow; come, son Slender, in.— Knowing my mind, you wrong me, Master Fenton.

MISTRESS QUICKLY. Speak to Mistress Page.

FENTON. Good Mistress Page, for that I love your daughter In such a righteous fashion as I do, Perforce, against all checks, rebukes, and manners, I must advance the colours of my love And not retire. Let me have your good will.

ANNE. Good mother, do not marry me to yond fool.

MISTRESS PAGE. I mean it not; I seek you a better husband.

MISTRESS QUICKLY. That’s my master, Master Doctor.

ANNE. Alas, I had rather be set quick i’ th’ earth, And bowled to death with turnips.

MISTRESS PAGE. Come, trouble not yourself, good Master Fenton, I will not be your friend, nor enemy. My daughter will I question how she loves you, And as I find her, so am I affected. Till then, farewell, sir. She must needs go in; Her father will be angry.

FENTON. Farewell, gentle mistress. Farewell, Nan.

[Exeunt Mistress Page and Anne.]

MISTRESS QUICKLY. This is my doing now. “Nay,” said I, “will you cast away your child on a fool, and a physician? Look on Master Fenton.” This is my doing.

FENTON. I thank thee; and I pray thee, once tonight Give my sweet Nan this ring. There’s for thy pains.

MISTRESS QUICKLY. Now Heaven send thee good fortune!

A kind heart he hath. A woman would run through fire and water for such a kind heart. But yet I would my master had Mistress Anne, or I would Master Slender had her; or, in sooth, I would Master Fenton had her. I will do what I can for them all three, for so I have promised and I’ll be as good as my word—but speciously for Master Fenton. Well, I must of another errand to Sir John Falstaff from my two mistresses. What a beast am I to slack it!

SCENE V. A room in the Garter Inn

FALSTAFF. Bardolph, I say!

BARDOLPH. Here, sir.

FALSTAFF. Go fetch me a quart of sack; put a toast in ’t.

Have I lived to be carried in a basket like a barrow of butcher’s offal, and to be thrown in the Thames? Well, if I be served such another trick, I’ll have my brains ta’en out and buttered, and give them to a dog for a New Year’s gift. ’Sblood, the rogues slighted me into the river with as little remorse as they would have drowned a blind bitch’s puppies, fifteen i’ the litter; and you may know by my size that I have a kind of alacrity in sinking; if the bottom were as deep as hell, I should down. I had been drowned, but that the shore was shelvy and shallow—a death that I abhor, for the water swells a man, and what a thing should I have been when I had been swelled! I should have been a mountain of mummy.

Enter Bardolph with sack.

BARDOLPH Here’s Mistress Quickly, sir, to speak with you.

FALSTAFF. Come, let me pour in some sack to the Thames water, for my belly’s as cold as if I had swallowed snowballs for pills to cool the reins. Call her in.

BARDOLPH. Come in, woman.

MISTRESS QUICKLY. By your leave, I cry you mercy. Give your worship good morrow.

FALSTAFF. Take away these chalices. Go, brew me a pottle of sack finely.

BARDOLPH. With eggs, sir?

FALSTAFF. Simple of itself. I’ll no pullet sperm in my brewage.

How now?

MISTRESS QUICKLY. Marry, sir, I come to your worship from Mistress Ford.

FALSTAFF. Mistress Ford? I have had ford enough. I was thrown into the ford, I have my belly full of ford.

MISTRESS QUICKLY. Alas the day, good heart, that was not her fault. She does so take on with her men; they mistook their erection.

FALSTAFF. So did I mine, to build upon a foolish woman’s promise.

MISTRESS QUICKLY. Well, she laments, sir, for it, that it would yearn your heart to see it. Her husband goes this morning a-birding; she desires you once more to come to her, between eight and nine. I must carry her word quickly. She’ll make you amends, I warrant you.

FALSTAFF. Well, I will visit her. Tell her so, and bid her think what a man is. Let her consider his frailty, and then judge of my merit.

MISTRESS QUICKLY. I will tell her.

FALSTAFF. Do so. Between nine and ten, sayst thou?

MISTRESS QUICKLY. Eight and nine, sir.

FALSTAFF. Well, be gone. I will not miss her.

MISTRESS QUICKLY. Peace be with you, sir.

[Exit Mistress Quickly.]

FALSTAFF. I marvel I hear not of Master Brook; he sent me word to stay within. I like his money well. O, here he comes.

Enter Ford disguised.

FALSTAFF. Now, Master Brook, you come to know what hath passed between me and Ford’s wife?

FORD. That indeed, Sir John, is my business.

FALSTAFF. Master Brook, I will not lie to you. I was at her house the hour she appointed me.

FORD. And how sped you, sir?

FALSTAFF. Very ill-favouredly, Master Brook.

FORD. How so, sir? Did she change her determination?

FALSTAFF. No. Master Brook, but the peaking cornuto her husband, Master Brook, dwelling in a continual ’larum of jealousy, comes me in the instant of our encounter, after we had embraced, kissed, protested, and, as it were, spoke the prologue of our comedy; and at his heels a rabble of his companions, thither provoked and instigated by his distemper, and, forsooth, to search his house for his wife’s love.

FORD. What, while you were there?

FALSTAFF. While I was there.

FORD. And did he search for you, and could not find you?

FALSTAFF. You shall hear. As good luck would have it, comes in one Mistress Page, gives intelligence of Ford’s approach; and, in her invention and Ford’s wife’s distraction, they conveyed me into a buck-basket.

FORD. A buck-basket!

FALSTAFF. By the Lord, a buck-basket! Rammed me in with foul shirts and smocks, socks, foul stockings, greasy napkins, that, Master Brook, there was the rankest compound of villainous smell that ever offended nostril.

FORD. And how long lay you there?

FALSTAFF. Nay, you shall hear, Master Brook, what I have suffered to bring this woman to evil for your good. Being thus crammed in the basket, a couple of Ford’s knaves, his hinds, were called forth by their mistress to carry me in the name of foul clothes to Datchet Lane. They took me on their shoulders, met the jealous knave their master in the door, who asked them once or twice what they had in their basket. I quaked for fear lest the lunatic knave would have searched it; but Fate, ordaining he should be a cuckold, held his hand. Well, on went he for a search, and away went I for foul clothes. But mark the sequel, Master Brook. I suffered the pangs of three several deaths: first, an intolerable fright to be detected with a jealous rotten bell-wether; next, to be compassed like a good bilbo in the circumference of a peck, hilt to point, heel to head; and then, to be stopped in, like a strong distillation, with stinking clothes that fretted in their own grease. Think of that, a man of my kidney, think of that—that am as subject to heat as butter; a man of continual dissolution and thaw. It was a miracle to ’scape suffocation. And in the height of this bath, when I was more than half stewed in grease, like a Dutch dish, to be thrown into the Thames and cooled, glowing hot, in that surge, like a horseshoe! Think of that—hissing hot—think of that, Master Brook.

FORD. In good sadness, sir, I am sorry that for my sake you have suffered all this. My suit, then, is desperate. You’ll undertake her no more?

FALSTAFF. Master Brook, I will be thrown into Etna, as I have been into Thames, ere I will leave her thus. Her husband is this morning gone a-birding; I have received from her another embassy of meeting. ’Twixt eight and nine is the hour, Master Brook.

FORD. ’Tis past eight already, sir.

FALSTAFF. Is it? I will then address me to my appointment. Come to me at your convenient leisure, and you shall know how I speed; and the conclusion shall be crowned with your enjoying her. Adieu. You shall have her, Master Brook. Master Brook, you shall cuckold Ford.

FORD Hum! Ha! Is this a vision? Is this a dream? Do I sleep? Master Ford, awake; awake, Master Ford! There’s a hole made in your best coat, Master Ford. This ’tis to be married; this ’tis to have linen and buck-baskets! Well, I will proclaim myself what I am. I will now take the lecher. He is at my house. He cannot scape me. ’Tis impossible he should. He cannot creep into a half-penny purse, nor into a pepperbox. But, lest the devil that guides him should aid him, I will search impossible places. Though what I am I cannot avoid, yet to be what I would not shall not make me tame. If I have horns to make one mad, let the proverb go with me: I’ll be horn-mad.

SCENE I. The street

Enter Mistress Page, Mistress Quickly and William.

MISTRESS PAGE. Is he at Master Ford’s already, think’st thou?

MISTRESS QUICKLY. Sure he is by this; or will be presently. But truly he is very courageous mad about his throwing into the water. Mistress Ford desires you to come suddenly.

MISTRESS PAGE. I’ll be with her by and by. I’ll but bring my young man here to school. Look where his master comes; ’tis a playing day, I see.

Enter Sir Hugh Evans.

How now, Sir Hugh, no school today?

EVANS. No, Master Slender is let the boys leave to play.

MISTRESS QUICKLY. Blessing of his heart!

MISTRESS PAGE. Sir Hugh, my husband says my son profits nothing in the world at his book. I pray you ask him some questions in his accidence.

EVANS. Come hither, William. Hold up your head, come.

MISTRESS PAGE. Come on, sirrah. Hold up your head. Answer your master, be not afraid.

EVANS. William, how many numbers is in nouns?

WILLIAM. Two.

MISTRESS QUICKLY. Truly, I thought there had been one number more, because they say “’Od’s nouns.”

EVANS. Peace your tattlings! What is “fair,” William?

WILLIAM. Pulcher.

MISTRESS QUICKLY. Polecats? There are fairer things than polecats, sure.

EVANS. You are a very simplicity ’oman; I pray you, peace.—What is lapis, William?

WILLIAM. A stone.

EVANS. And what is “a stone,” William?

WILLIAM. A pebble.

EVANS. No, it is lapis. I pray you remember in your prain.

WILLIAM. Lapis.

EVANS. That is a good William. What is he, William, that does lend articles?

WILLIAM. Articles are borrowed of the pronoun, and be thus declined: singulariter, nominativo, hic, haec, hoc.

EVANS. Nominativo, hig, haeg, hog, pray you, mark: genitivo, huius. Well, what is your accusative case?

WILLIAM. Accusativo, hinc.

EVANS. I pray you, have your remembrance, child. Accusativo, hung, hang, hog.

MISTRESS QUICKLY. “Hang-hog” is Latin for bacon, I warrant you.

EVANS. Leave your prabbles, ’oman.—What is the focative case, William?

WILLIAM. O—vocativo—O—

EVANS. Remember, William; focative is caret.

MISTRESS QUICKLY. And that’s a good root.

EVANS. ’Oman, forbear.

MISTRESS PAGE. Peace.

EVANS. What is your genitive case plural, William?

WILLIAM. Genitive case?

EVANS. Ay.

WILLIAM. Genitive: horum, harum, horum.

MISTRESS QUICKLY. Vengeance of Jenny’s case, fie on her! Never name her, child, if she be a whore.

EVANS. For shame, ’oman.

MISTRESS QUICKLY. You do ill to teach the child such words.—He teaches him to hick and to hack, which they’ll do fast enough of themselves; and to call “whore ’m”!—Fie upon you!

EVANS. ’Oman, art thou lunatics? Hast thou no understandings for thy cases, and the numbers of the genders? Thou art as foolish Christian creatures as I would desires.

MISTRESS PAGE. [To Quickly.] Prithee, hold thy peace.

EVANS. Show me now, William, some declensions of your pronouns.

WILLIAM. Forsooth, I have forgot.

EVANS. It is qui, quae, quod. If you forget your quis, your quaes, and your quods, you must be preeches. Go your ways and play, go.

MISTRESS PAGE. He is a better scholar than I thought he was.

EVANS. He is a good sprag memory. Farewell, Mistress Page.

MISTRESS PAGE. Adieu, good Sir Hugh.

[Exit Sir Hugh Evans.]

Get you home, boy. Come, we stay too long.

SCENE II. A room in Ford’s house

Enter Falstaff and Mistress Ford.

FALSTAFF. Mistress Ford, your sorrow hath eaten up my sufferance. I see you are obsequious in your love, and I profess requital to a hair’s breadth, not only, Mistress Ford, in the simple office of love, but in all the accoutrement, compliment, and ceremony of it. But are you sure of your husband now?

MISTRESS FORD. He’s a-birding, sweet Sir John.

MISTRESS PAGE. [Within.] What ho, gossip Ford, what ho!

MISTRESS FORD. Step into the chamber, Sir John.

MISTRESS PAGE. How now, sweetheart, who’s at home besides yourself?

MISTRESS FORD. Why, none but mine own people.

MISTRESS PAGE. Indeed?

MISTRESS FORD. No, certainly. [Aside to her.] Speak louder.

MISTRESS PAGE. Truly, I am so glad you have nobody here.

MISTRESS FORD. Why?

MISTRESS PAGE. Why, woman, your husband is in his old lunes again. He so takes on yonder with my husband, so rails against all married mankind, so curses all Eve’s daughters, of what complexion soever, and so buffets himself on the forehead, crying “Peer out, peer out!” that any madness I ever yet beheld seemed but tameness, civility, and patience, to this his distemper he is in now. I am glad the fat knight is not here.

MISTRESS FORD. Why, does he talk of him?

MISTRESS PAGE. Of none but him, and swears he was carried out, the last time he searched for him, in a basket; protests to my husband he is now here; and hath drawn him and the rest of their company from their sport, to make another experiment of his suspicion. But I am glad the knight is not here. Now he shall see his own foolery.

MISTRESS FORD. How near is he, Mistress Page?

MISTRESS PAGE. Hard by, at street end. He will be here anon.

MISTRESS FORD. I am undone! The knight is here.

MISTRESS PAGE. Why, then, you are utterly shamed, and he’s but a dead man. What a woman are you! Away with him, away with him! Better shame than murder.

MISTRESS FORD. Which way should he go? How should I bestow him? Shall I put him into the basket again?

FALSTAFF. No, I’ll come no more i’ the basket. May I not go out ere he come?

MISTRESS PAGE. Alas, three of Master Ford’s brothers watch the door with pistols, that none shall issue out, otherwise you might slip away ere he came. But what make you here?

FALSTAFF. What shall I do? I’ll creep up into the chimney.

MISTRESS FORD. There they always use to discharge their birding-pieces.

MISTRESS PAGE. Creep into the kiln-hole.

FALSTAFF. Where is it?

MISTRESS FORD. He will seek there, on my word. Neither press, coffer, chest, trunk, well, vault, but he hath an abstract for the remembrance of such places, and goes to them by his note. There is no hiding you in the house.

FALSTAFF. I’ll go out then.

MISTRESS PAGE. If you go out in your own semblance, you die, Sir John—unless you go out disguised.

MISTRESS FORD. How might we disguise him?

MISTRESS PAGE. Alas the day, I know not. There is no woman’s gown big enough for him; otherwise he might put on a hat, a muffler, and a kerchief, and so escape.

FALSTAFF. Good hearts, devise something. Any extremity rather than a mischief.

MISTRESS FORD. My maid’s aunt, the fat woman of Brentford, has a gown above.

MISTRESS PAGE. On my word, it will serve him. She’s as big as he is. And there’s her thrummed hat, and her muffler too.—Run up, Sir John.

MISTRESS FORD. Go, go, sweet Sir John. Mistress Page and I will look some linen for your head.

MISTRESS PAGE. Quick, quick! We’ll come dress you straight; put on the gown the while.

MISTRESS FORD. I would my husband would meet him in this shape. He cannot abide the old woman of Brentford; he swears she’s a witch, forbade her my house, and hath threatened to beat her.

MISTRESS PAGE. Heaven guide him to thy husband’s cudgel and the devil guide his cudgel afterwards!

MISTRESS FORD. But is my husband coming?

MISTRESS PAGE. Ay, in good sadness is he, and talks of the basket too, howsoever he hath had intelligence.

MISTRESS FORD. We’ll try that; for I’ll appoint my men to carry the basket again, to meet him at the door with it as they did last time.

MISTRESS PAGE. Nay, but he’ll be here presently. Let’s go dress him like the witch of Brentford.

MISTRESS FORD. I’ll first direct my men what they shall do with the basket. Go up, I’ll bring linen for him straight.

[Exit Mistress Ford.]

MISTRESS PAGE. Hang him, dishonest varlet! We cannot misuse him enough. We’ll leave a proof, by that which we will do, Wives may be merry and yet honest too. We do not act that often jest and laugh; ’Tis old but true: “Still swine eats all the draff.”

Enter Mistress Ford with John and Robert.

MISTRESS FORD. Go, sirs, take the basket again on your shoulders. Your master is hard at door; if he bid you set it down, obey him. Quickly, dispatch.

JOHN. Come, come, take it up.

ROBERT. Pray heaven it be not full of knight again.

JOHN. I hope not, I had lief as bear so much lead.

Enter Ford, Page, Shallow, Caius and Sir Hugh Evans.

FORD Ay, but if it prove true, Master Page, have you any way then to unfool me again?—Set down the basket, villain! Somebody call my wife. Youth in a basket! O you panderly rascals! There’s a knot, a gin, a pack, a conspiracy against me. Now shall the devil be shamed.—What, wife, I say! Come, come forth! Behold what honest clothes you send forth to bleaching!

PAGE. Why, this passes, Master Ford! You are not to go loose any longer; you must be pinioned.

EVANS. Why, this is lunatics, this is mad as a mad dog.

SHALLOW. Indeed, Master Ford, this is not well, indeed.

FORD. So say I too, sir.

Come hither, Mistress Ford—Mistress Ford, the honest woman, the modest wife, the virtuous creature, that hath the jealous fool to her husband! I suspect without cause, mistress, do I?

MISTRESS FORD. Heaven be my witness you do, if you suspect me in any dishonesty.

FORD. Well said, brazen-face, hold it out.—Come forth, sirrah.

[Pulls clothes out of the basket.]

PAGE. This passes.

MISTRESS FORD. Are you not ashamed? Let the clothes alone.

FORD. I shall find you anon.

EVANS. ’Tis unreasonable. Will you take up your wife’s clothes? Come, away.

FORD. Empty the basket, I say.

MISTRESS FORD. Why, man, why?

FORD. Master Page, as I am a man, there was one conveyed out of my house yesterday in this basket. Why may not he be there again? In my house I am sure he is. My intelligence is true, my jealousy is reasonable.—Pluck me out all the linen.

MISTRESS FORD. If you find a man there, he shall die a flea’s death.

PAGE. Here’s no man.

SHALLOW. By my fidelity, this is not well, Master Ford, this wrongs you.

EVANS. Master Ford, you must pray, and not follow the imaginations of your own heart. This is jealousies.

FORD. Well, he’s not here I seek for.

PAGE. No, nor nowhere else but in your brain.

FORD Help to search my house this one time. If I find not what I seek, show no colour for my extremity, let me for ever be your table-sport. Let them say of me “As jealous as Ford, that searched a hollow walnut for his wife’s leman.” Satisfy me once more, once more search with me.

MISTRESS FORD. What, ho, Mistress Page! Come you and the old woman down; my husband will come into the chamber.

FORD. Old woman? What old woman’s that?

MISTRESS FORD. Why, it is my maid’s aunt of Brentford.

FORD. A witch, a quean, an old cozening quean! Have I not forbid her my house? She comes of errands, does she? We are simple men; we do not know what’s brought to pass under the profession of fortune-telling. She works by charms, by spells, by the figure, and such daubery as this is, beyond our element. We know nothing.—Come down, you witch, you hag, you! Come down, I say!

MISTRESS FORD. Nay, good sweet husband!—Good gentlemen, let him not strike the old woman.

Enter Falstaff disguised as an old woman, led by Mistress Page.

MISTRESS PAGE. Come, Mother Prat; come, give me your hand.

FORD. I’ll prat her. [Beats him.] Out of my door, you witch, you rag, you baggage, you polecat, you runnion! Out, out! I’ll conjure you, I’ll fortune-tell you.

MISTRESS PAGE. Are you not ashamed? I think you have killed the poor woman.

MISTRESS FORD. Nay, he will do it. ’Tis a goodly credit for you.

FORD. Hang her, witch!

EVANS. By yea and no, I think the ’oman is a witch indeed. I like not when a ’oman has a great peard. I spy a great peard under her muffler.

FORD. Will you follow, gentlemen? I beseech you follow, see but the issue of my jealousy. If I cry out thus upon no trail, never trust me when I open again.

PAGE. Let’s obey his humour a little further. Come, gentlemen.

[Exeunt Ford, Page, Caius, Evans and Shallow.]

MISTRESS PAGE. Trust me, he beat him most pitifully.

MISTRESS FORD. Nay, by th’ mass, that he did not; he beat him most unpitifully, methought.

MISTRESS PAGE. I’ll have the cudgel hallowed and hung o’er the altar. It hath done meritorious service.

MISTRESS FORD. What think you? May we, with the warrant of womanhood and the witness of a good conscience, pursue him with any further revenge?

MISTRESS PAGE. The spirit of wantonness is sure scared out of him. If the devil have him not in fee-simple, with fine and recovery, he will never, I think, in the way of waste, attempt us again.

MISTRESS FORD. Shall we tell our husbands how we have served him?

MISTRESS PAGE. Yes, by all means, if it be but to scrape the figures out of your husband’s brains. If they can find in their hearts the poor unvirtuous fat knight shall be any further afflicted, we two will still be the ministers.

MISTRESS FORD. I’ll warrant they’ll have him publicly shamed, and methinks there would be no period to the jest should he not be publicly shamed.

MISTRESS PAGE. Come, to the forge with it, then shape it. I would not have things cool.

Enter Host and Bardolph.

BARDOLPH. Sir, the Germans desire to have three of your horses. The Duke himself will be tomorrow at court, and they are going to meet him.

HOST. What duke should that be comes so secretly? I hear not of him in the court. Let me speak with the gentlemen. They speak English?

BARDOLPH. Ay, sir. I’ll call them to you.

HOST. They shall have my horses, but I’ll make them pay, I’ll sauce them. They have had my house a week at command; I have turned away my other guests. They must come off, I’ll sauce them. Come.

SCENE IV. A room in Ford’s house

Enter Page, Ford, Mistress Page, Mistress Ford and Sir Hugh Evans.

EVANS. ’Tis one of the best discretions of a ’oman as ever I did look upon.

PAGE. And did he send you both these letters at an instant?

MISTRESS PAGE. Within a quarter of an hour.

FORD. Pardon me, wife. Henceforth, do what thou wilt. I rather will suspect the sun with cold Than thee with wantonness. Now doth thy honour stand, In him that was of late an heretic, As firm as faith.

PAGE. ’Tis well, ’tis well, no more. Be not as extreme in submission as in offence. But let our plot go forward. Let our wives Yet once again, to make us public sport, Appoint a meeting with this old fat fellow, Where we may take him and disgrace him for it.

FORD. There is no better way than that they spoke of.

PAGE. How? To send him word they’ll meet him in the park at midnight? Fie, fie, he’ll never come.

EVANS. You say he has been thrown in the rivers, and has been grievously peaten as an old ’oman. Methinks there should be terrors in him, that he should not come. Methinks his flesh is punished; he shall have no desires.

PAGE. So think I too.

MISTRESS FORD. Devise but how you’ll use him when he comes, And let us two devise to bring him thither.

MISTRESS PAGE. There is an old tale goes that Herne the hunter, Sometime a keeper here in Windsor Forest, Doth all the winter time, at still midnight, Walk round about an oak, with great ragged horns, And there he blasts the tree, and takes the cattle, And makes milch-kine yield blood, and shakes a chain In a most hideous and dreadful manner. You have heard of such a spirit, and well you know The superstitious idle-headed eld Received and did deliver to our age, This tale of Herne the hunter for a truth.

PAGE. Why, yet there want not many that do fear In deep of night to walk by this Herne’s oak. But what of this?

MISTRESS FORD. Marry, this is our device, That Falstaff at that oak shall meet with us, Disguised like Herne, with huge horns on his head.

PAGE. Well, let it not be doubted but he’ll come, And in this shape; when you have brought him thither, What shall be done with him? What is your plot?

MISTRESS PAGE. That likewise have we thought upon, and thus: Nan Page my daughter, and my little son, And three or four more of their growth, we’ll dress Like urchins, oafs and fairies, green and white, With rounds of waxen tapers on their heads And rattles in their hands. Upon a sudden, As Falstaff, she, and I are newly met, Let them from forth a sawpit rush at once With some diffused song; upon their sight We two in great amazedness will fly. Then let them all encircle him about, And fairy-like, to pinch the unclean knight, And ask him why, that hour of fairy revel, In their so sacred paths he dares to tread In shape profane.

MISTRESS FORD. And till he tell the truth, Let the supposed fairies pinch him sound And burn him with their tapers.

MISTRESS PAGE. The truth being known, We’ll all present ourselves, dis-horn the spirit, And mock him home to Windsor.

FORD. The children must Be practised well to this, or they’ll ne’er do ’t.

EVANS. I will teach the children their behaviours, and I will be like a jackanapes also, to burn the knight with my taber.

FORD. That will be excellent. I’ll go buy them vizards.

MISTRESS PAGE. My Nan shall be the queen of all the fairies, Finely attired in a robe of white.

PAGE. That silk will I go buy. [Aside.] And in that time Shall Master Slender steal my Nan away, And marry her at Eton.—Go, send to Falstaff straight.

FORD. Nay, I’ll to him again in name of Brook. He’ll tell me all his purpose. Sure, he’ll come.

MISTRESS PAGE. Fear not you that. Go, get us properties And tricking for our fairies.

EVANS. Let us about it. It is admirable pleasures and fery honest knaveries.

[Exeunt Page, Ford and Evans.]

MISTRESS PAGE. Go, Mistress Ford. Send quickly to Sir John to know his mind.

I’ll to the Doctor. He hath my good will, And none but he, to marry with Nan Page. That Slender, though well landed, is an idiot, And he my husband best of all affects. The Doctor is well moneyed, and his friends Potent at court. He, none but he, shall have her, Though twenty thousand worthier come to crave her.

Enter Host and Simple.

HOST. What wouldst thou have, boor? What, thick-skin? Speak, breathe, discuss; brief, short, quick, snap.

SIMPLE. Marry, sir, I come to speak with Sir John Falstaff from Master Slender.

HOST. There’s his chamber, his house, his castle, his standing-bed and truckle-bed. ’Tis painted about with the story of the Prodigal, fresh and new. Go, knock and call. He’ll speak like an Anthropophaginian unto thee. Knock, I say.

SIMPLE. There’s an old woman, a fat woman, gone up into his chamber. I’ll be so bold as stay, sir, till she come down. I come to speak with her, indeed.

HOST. Ha? A fat woman? The knight may be robbed. I’ll call.—Bully knight! Bully Sir John! Speak from thy lungs military. Art thou there? It is thine host, thine Ephesian, calls.

FALSTAFF. [Above.] How now, mine host?

HOST. Here’s a Bohemian-Tartar tarries the coming down of thy fat woman. Let her descend, bully, let her descend. My chambers are honourable. Fie! Privacy? Fie!

FALSTAFF. There was, mine host, an old fat woman even now with me, but she’s gone.

SIMPLE. Pray you, sir, was’t not the wise woman of Brentford?

FALSTAFF. Ay, marry was it, mussel-shell. What would you with her?

SIMPLE. My master, sir, my Master Slender, sent to her, seeing her go through the streets, to know, sir, whether one Nym, sir, that beguiled him of a chain, had the chain or no.

FALSTAFF. I spake with the old woman about it.

SIMPLE. And what says she, I pray, sir?

FALSTAFF. Marry, she says that the very same man that beguiled Master Slender of his chain cozened him of it.

SIMPLE. I would I could have spoken with the woman herself. I had other things to have spoken with her too, from him.

FALSTAFF. What are they? Let us know.

HOST. Ay, come. Quick.

SIMPLE. I may not conceal them, sir.

FALSTAFF. Conceal them, or thou diest.

SIMPLE. Why, sir, they were nothing but about Mistress Anne Page, to know if it were my master’s fortune to have her or no.

FALSTAFF. ’Tis, ’tis his fortune.

SIMPLE. What sir?

FALSTAFF. To have her, or no. Go, say the woman told me so.

SIMPLE. May I be bold to say so, sir?

FALSTAFF. Ay, sir; like who more bold?

SIMPLE. I thank your worship; I shall make my master glad with these tidings.

HOST Thou art clerkly, thou art clerkly, Sir John. Was there a wise woman with thee?

FALSTAFF. Ay, that there was, mine host; one that hath taught me more wit than ever I learned before in my life; and I paid nothing for it neither, but was paid for my learning.

BARDOLPH Out, alas, sir, cozenage, mere cozenage!

HOST. Where be my horses? Speak well of them, varletto.

BARDOLPH. Run away, with the cozeners. For so soon as I came beyond Eton, they threw me off from behind one of them, in a slough of mire, and set spurs and away, like three German devils, three Doctor Faustuses.

HOST. They are gone but to meet the Duke, villain, do not say they be fled. Germans are honest men.

EVANS Where is mine host?

HOST. What is the matter, sir?

EVANS. Have a care of your entertainments. There is a friend of mine come to town tells me there is three cozen-Germans that has cozened all the hosts of Readings, of Maidenhead, of Colebrook, of horses and money. I tell you for good will, look you. You are wise, and full of gibes and vlouting-stocks, and ’tis not convenient you should be cozened. Fare you well.

[Exit Evans.]

CAIUS. Vere is mine host de Jarteer?

HOST. Here, Master Doctor, in perplexity and doubtful dilemma.

CAIUS. I cannot tell vat is dat, but it is tell-a me dat you make grand preparation for a Duke de Jamany. By my trot, dere is no duke that the court is know to come. I tell you for good will. Adieu.

[Exit Doctor Caius.]

HOST Hue and cry, villain, go!—Assist me, knight, I am undone.—Fly, run, hue and cry, villain, I am undone!

[Exeunt Host and Bardolph.]

FALSTAFF. I would all the world might be cozened, for I have been cozened and beaten too. If it should come to the ear of the court how I have been transformed, and how my transformation hath been washed and cudgelled, they would melt me out of my fat drop by drop, and liquor fishermen’s boots with me. I warrant they would whip me with their fine wits till I were as crestfallen as a dried pear. I never prospered since I forswore myself at primero. Well, if my wind were but long enough, I would repent.

Now, whence come you?

MISTRESS QUICKLY. From the two parties, forsooth.

FALSTAFF. The devil take one party and his dam the other, and so they shall be both bestowed. I have suffered more for their sakes, more than the villainous inconstancy of man’s disposition is able to bear.

MISTRESS QUICKLY. And have not they suffered? Yes, I warrant, speciously one of them. Mistress Ford, good heart, is beaten black and blue, that you cannot see a white spot about her.

FALSTAFF. What tellst thou me of black and blue? I was beaten myself into all the colours of the rainbow, and was like to be apprehended for the witch of Brentford. But that my admirable dexterity of wit, my counterfeiting the action of an old woman, delivered me, the knave constable had set me i’ the stocks, i’ the common stocks, for a witch.

MISTRESS QUICKLY. Sir, let me speak with you in your chamber, you shall hear how things go, and, I warrant, to your content. Here is a letter will say somewhat. Good hearts, what ado here is to bring you together! Sure, one of you does not serve heaven well, that you are so crossed.

FALSTAFF. Come up into my chamber.

SCENE VI. Another room in the Garter Inn

Enter Fenton and Host.

HOST. Master Fenton, talk not to me. My mind is heavy. I will give over all.

FENTON. Yet hear me speak. Assist me in my purpose, And, as I am a gentleman, I’ll give thee A hundred pound in gold more than your loss.

HOST. I will hear you, Master Fenton, and I will, at the least, keep your counsel.

FENTON. From time to time I have acquainted you With the dear love I bear to fair Anne Page, Who mutually hath answered my affection, So far forth as herself might be her chooser, Even to my wish. I have a letter from her Of such contents as you will wonder at, The mirth whereof so larded with my matter That neither singly can be manifested Without the show of both, wherein fat Falstaff Hath a great scene; the image of the jest I’ll show you here at large. Hark, good mine host: Tonight at Herne’s oak, just ’twixt twelve and one, Must my sweet Nan present the Fairy Queen— The purpose why is here—in which disguise, While other jests are something rank on foot, Her father hath commanded her to slip Away with Slender, and with him at Eton Immediately to marry. She hath consented. Now, sir, Her mother, even strong against that match And firm for Doctor Caius, hath appointed That he shall likewise shuffle her away, While other sports are tasking of their minds, And at the dean’ry, where a priest attends, Straight marry her. To this her mother’s plot She, seemingly obedient, likewise hath Made promise to the doctor. Now thus it rests: Her father means she shall be all in white And in that habit, when Slender sees his time To take her by the hand and bid her go, She shall go with him. Her mother hath intended The better to denote her to the doctor, For they must all be masked and vizarded— That quaint in green she shall be loose enrobed, With ribbons pendant flaring ’bout her head; And when the doctor spies his vantage ripe, To pinch her by the hand, and on that token The maid hath given consent to go with him.

HOST. Which means she to deceive, father or mother?

FENTON. Both, my good host, to go along with me. And here it rests, that you’ll procure the vicar To stay for me at church, ’twixt twelve and one, And, in the lawful name of marrying, To give our hearts united ceremony.

HOST. Well, husband your device; I’ll to the vicar. Bring you the maid, you shall not lack a priest.

FENTON. So shall I evermore be bound to thee; Besides, I’ll make a present recompense.

SCENE I. A room in the Garter Inn

Enter Falstaff and Mistress Quickly.

FALSTAFF. Prithee, no more prattling. Go. I’ll hold. This is the third time; I hope good luck lies in odd numbers. Away, go! They say there is divinity in odd numbers, either in nativity, chance, or death. Away!

MISTRESS QUICKLY. I’ll provide you a chain, and I’ll do what I can to get you a pair of horns.

FALSTAFF. Away, I say; time wears. Hold up your head, and mince.

How now, Master Brook! Master Brook, the matter will be known tonight or never. Be you in the park about midnight, at Herne’s oak, and you shall see wonders.

FORD. Went you not to her yesterday, sir, as you told me you had appointed?

FALSTAFF. I went to her, Master Brook, as you see, like a poor old man, but I came from her, Master Brook, like a poor old woman. That same knave Ford, her husband, hath the finest mad devil of jealousy in him, Master Brook, that ever governed frenzy. I will tell you he beat me grievously, in the shape of a woman; for in the shape of man, Master Brook, I fear not Goliath with a weaver’s beam, because I know also life is a shuttle. I am in haste. Go along with me; I’ll tell you all, Master Brook. Since I plucked geese, played truant, and whipped top, I knew not what ’twas to be beaten till lately. Follow me, I’ll tell you strange things of this knave Ford, on whom tonight I will be revenged, and I will deliver his wife into your hand. Follow. Strange things in hand, Master Brook! Follow.

SCENE II. Windsor Park

PAGE. Come, come. We’ll couch i’ the castle ditch till we see the light of our fairies. Remember, son Slender, my daughter—

SLENDER. Ay, forsooth. I have spoke with her, and we have a nay-word how to know one another. I come to her in white and cry “mum”; she cries “budget”; and by that we know one another.

SHALLOW. That’s good too. But what needs either your “mum” or her “budget”? The white will decipher her well enough. It hath struck ten o’clock.

PAGE. The night is dark. Light and spirits will become it well. Heaven prosper our sport! No man means evil but the devil, and we shall know him by his horns. Let’s away; follow me.

SCENE III. The street in Windsor

Enter Mistress Page, Mistress Ford and Doctor Caius.

MISTRESS PAGE. Master Doctor, my daughter is in green. When you see your time, take her by the hand, away with her to the deanery, and dispatch it quickly. Go before into the park. We two must go together.

CAIUS. I know vat I have to do. Adieu.

MISTRESS PAGE. Fare you well, sir.

[Exit Caius.]

My husband will not rejoice so much at the abuse of Falstaff as he will chafe at the doctor’s marrying my daughter. But ’tis no matter. Better a little chiding than a great deal of heartbreak.

MISTRESS FORD. Where is Nan now, and her troop of fairies, and the Welsh devil Hugh?

MISTRESS PAGE. They are all couched in a pit hard by Herne’s oak, with obscured lights, which, at the very instant of Falstaff’s and our meeting, they will at once display to the night.

MISTRESS FORD. That cannot choose but amaze him.

MISTRESS PAGE. If he be not amazed, he will be mocked; if he be amazed, he will every way be mocked.

MISTRESS FORD. We’ll betray him finely.

MISTRESS PAGE. Against such lewdsters and their lechery, Those that betray them do no treachery.

MISTRESS FORD. The hour draws on. To the oak, to the oak!

SCENE IV. Windsor Park

Enter Sir Hugh Evans disguised, and children as Fairies.

EVANS. Trib, trib, fairies. Come, and remember your parts. Be pold, I pray you, follow me into the pit, and when I give the watch-’ords, do as I pid you. Come, come; trib, trib.

SCENE V. Another part of the Park

Enter Falstaff wearing a buck’s head.

FALSTAFF. The Windsor bell hath struck twelve, the minute draws on. Now the hot-blooded gods assist me! Remember, Jove, thou wast a bull for thy Europa; love set on thy horns. O powerful love, that in some respects, makes a beast a man, in some other a man a beast! You were also, Jupiter, a swan for the love of Leda. O omnipotent love, how near the god drew to the complexion of a goose! A fault done first in the form of a beast; O Jove, a beastly fault! And then another fault in the semblance of a fowl; think on’t, Jove, a foul fault! When gods have hot backs, what shall poor men do? For me, I am here a Windsor stag, and the fattest, I think, i’ the forest. Send me a cool rut-time, Jove, or who can blame me to piss my tallow? Who comes here? My doe?

MISTRESS FORD. Sir John? Art thou there, my deer, my male deer?

FALSTAFF. My doe with the black scut! Let the sky rain potatoes, let it thunder to the tune of “Greensleeves”, hail kissing-comfits and snow eringoes; let there come a tempest of provocation, I will shelter me here.

[He embraces her.]

MISTRESS FORD. Mistress Page is come with me, sweetheart.

FALSTAFF. Divide me like a bribed buck, each a haunch. I will keep my sides to myself, my shoulders for the fellow of this walk, and my horns I bequeath your husbands. Am I a woodman, ha? Speak I like Herne the hunter? Why, now is Cupid a child of conscience; he makes restitution. As I am a true spirit, welcome!

[A noise of horns within.]

MISTRESS PAGE. Alas, what noise?

MISTRESS FORD. Heaven forgive our sins!

FALSTAFF. What should this be?

MISTRESS FORD and MISTRESS PAGE. Away, away!

[They run off.]

FALSTAFF. I think the devil will not have me damned, lest the oil that’s in me should set hell on fire; he would never else cross me thus.

Enter Mistress Quickly as the Queen of Fairies, Sir Hugh Evans as a Satyr, Pistol as Hobgoblin, Anne Page and children as Fairies, carrying tapers.

MISTRESS QUICKLY. Fairies, black, grey, green, and white, You moonshine revellers and shades of night, You orphan heirs of fixed destiny, Attend your office and your quality. Crier Hobgoblin, make the fairy oyes.

PISTOL. Elves, list your names; silence, you airy toys! Cricket, to Windsor chimneys shalt thou leap, Where fires thou find’st unraked and hearths unswept, There pinch the maids as blue as bilberry. Our radiant queen hates sluts and sluttery.

FALSTAFF. They are fairies, he that speaks to them shall die. I’ll wink and couch. No man their works must eye.

[Lies down upon his face.]

EVANS Where’s Bead? Go you, and where you find a maid That ere she sleep has thrice her prayers said, Rein up the organs of her fantasy; Sleep she as sound as careless infancy. But those as sleep and think not on their sins, Pinch them, arms, legs, backs, shoulders, sides, and shins.

MISTRESS QUICKLY. About, about! Search Windsor castle, elves, within and out. Strew good luck, oafs, on every sacred room, That it may stand till the perpetual doom In state as wholesome as in state ’tis fit, Worthy the owner and the owner it. The several chairs of order look you scour With juice of balm and every precious flower. Each fair instalment, coat, and several crest, With loyal blazon, evermore be blest! And nightly, meadow-fairies, look you sing, Like to the Garter’s compass, in a ring. Th’ expressure that it bears, green let it be, More fertile-fresh than all the field to see; And Honi soit qui mal y pense write In em’rald tufts, flowers purple, blue and white, Like sapphire, pearl, and rich embroidery, Buckled below fair knighthood’s bending knee. Fairies use flowers for their charactery. Away, disperse! But till ’tis one o’clock, Our dance of custom round about the oak Of Herne the hunter let us not forget.

EVANS. Pray you, lock hand in hand, yourselves in order set; And twenty glow-worms shall our lanterns be, To guide our measure round about the tree. But stay, I smell a man of middle earth.

FALSTAFF. Heavens defend me from that Welsh fairy, lest he transform me to a piece of cheese!

PISTOL. Vile worm, thou wast o’erlooked even in thy birth.

MISTRESS QUICKLY. With trial-fire touch me his finger-end. If he be chaste, the flame will back descend And turn him to no pain; but if he start, It is the flesh of a corrupted heart.

PISTOL. A trial, come.

EVANS. Come, will this wood take fire?

[They put the tapers to his fingers, and he starts.]

FALSTAFF. O, o, o!

MISTRESS QUICKLY. Corrupt, corrupt, and tainted in desire! About him, fairies, sing a scornful rhyme, And, as you trip, still pinch him to your time.

SONG. Fie on sinful fantasy! Fie on lust and luxury! Lust is but a bloody fire, Kindled with unchaste desire, Fed in heart, whose flames aspire, As thoughts do blow them, higher and higher. Pinch him, fairies, mutually; Pinch him for his villainy. Pinch him and burn him and turn him about, Till candles and starlight and moonshine be out.

[During the song they pinch him, and Doctor Caius comes one way and steals away a boy in green; and Slender another way takes a boy in white; Fenton comes in and steals away Anne Page. A noise of hunting is heard within and all the fairies run away. Falstaff pulls off his buck’s head, and rises up.]

Enter Page, Ford, Mistress Page and Mistress Ford.

PAGE. Nay, do not fly. I think we have watched you now. Will none but Herne the hunter serve your turn?

MISTRESS PAGE. I pray you, come, hold up the jest no higher.— Now, good Sir John, how like you Windsor wives? See you these, husband?

[She points to the horns.]

Do not these fair yokes Become the forest better than the town?

FORD. Now, sir, who’s a cuckold now? Master Brook, Falstaff’s a knave, a cuckoldly knave. Here are his horns, Master Brook. And, Master Brook, he hath enjoyed nothing of Ford’s but his buck-basket, his cudgel, and twenty pounds of money, which must be paid to Master Brook. His horses are arrested for it, Master Brook.

MISTRESS FORD. Sir John, we have had ill luck, we could never meet. I will never take you for my love again, but I will always count you my deer.

FALSTAFF. I do begin to perceive that I am made an ass.

FORD. Ay, and an ox too. Both the proofs are extant.

FALSTAFF. And these are not fairies? I was three or four times in the thought they were not fairies; and yet the guiltiness of my mind, the sudden surprise of my powers, drove the grossness of the foppery into a received belief, in despite of the teeth of all rhyme and reason, that they were fairies. See now how wit may be made a Jack-a-Lent when ’tis upon ill employment!

EVANS. Sir John Falstaff, serve Got, and leave your desires, and fairies will not pinse you.

FORD. Well said, fairy Hugh.

EVANS. And leave you your jealousies too, I pray you.

FORD. I will never mistrust my wife again, till thou art able to woo her in good English.

FALSTAFF. Have I laid my brain in the sun, and dried it, that it wants matter to prevent so gross o’erreaching as this? Am I ridden with a Welsh goat too? Shall I have a cox-comb of frieze? ’Tis time I were choked with a piece of toasted cheese.

EVANS. Seese is not good to give putter. Your belly is all putter.

FALSTAFF. “Seese” and “putter”? Have I lived to stand at the taunt of one that makes fritters of English? This is enough to be the decay of lust and late-walking through the realm.

MISTRESS PAGE. Why, Sir John, do you think, though we would have thrust virtue out of our hearts by the head and shoulders, and have given ourselves without scruple to hell, that ever the devil could have made you our delight?

FORD. What, a hodge-pudding? A bag of flax?

MISTRESS PAGE. A puffed man?

PAGE. Old, cold, withered, and of intolerable entrails?

FORD. And one that is as slanderous as Satan?

PAGE. And as poor as Job?

FORD. And as wicked as his wife?

EVANS. And given to fornications, and to taverns, and sack, and wine, and metheglins, and to drinkings and swearings and starings, pribbles and prabbles?

FALSTAFF. Well, I am your theme. You have the start of me. I am dejected, I am not able to answer the Welsh flannel. Ignorance itself is a plummet o’er me. Use me as you will.

FORD. Marry, sir, we’ll bring you to Windsor to one Master Brook, that you have cozened of money, to whom you should have been a pander. Over and above that you have suffered, I think to repay that money will be a biting affliction.

PAGE. Yet be cheerful, knight. Thou shalt eat a posset tonight at my house, where I will desire thee to laugh at my wife, that now laughs at thee. Tell her Master Slender hath married her daughter.

MISTRESS PAGE. [Aside.] Doctors doubt that. If Anne Page be my daughter, she is, by this, Doctor Caius’ wife.

Enter Slender.

SLENDER Whoa, ho, ho, father Page!

PAGE. Son, how now! How now, son, have you dispatched?

SLENDER. Dispatched? I’ll make the best in Gloucestershire know on’t. Would I were hanged, la, else!

PAGE. Of what, son?

SLENDER. I came yonder at Eton to marry Mistress Anne Page, and she’s a great lubberly boy. If it had not been i’ the church, I would have swinged him, or he should have swinged me. If I did not think it had been Anne Page, would I might never stir! And ’tis a postmaster’s boy.

PAGE. Upon my life, then, you took the wrong.

SLENDER. What need you tell me that? I think so, when I took a boy for a girl. If I had been married to him, for all he was in woman’s apparel, I would not have had him.

PAGE. Why, this is your own folly. Did not I tell you how you should know my daughter by her garments?

SLENDER. I went to her in white and cried “mum”, and she cried “budget”, as Anne and I had appointed, and yet it was not Anne, but a postmaster’s boy.

MISTRESS PAGE. Good George, be not angry. I knew of your purpose, turned my daughter into green, and indeed she is now with the doctor at the deanery, and there married.

CAIUS Vere is Mistress Page? By gar, I am cozened, I ha’ married un garçon, a boy; un paysan, by gar, a boy. It is not Anne Page. By gar, I am cozened.

MISTRESS PAGE. Why, did you take her in green?

CAIUS. Ay, by gar, and ’tis a boy. By gar, I’ll raise all Windsor.

FORD This is strange. Who hath got the right Anne?

PAGE. My heart misgives me. Here comes Master Fenton.—How now, Master Fenton!

ANNE. Pardon, good father. Good my mother, pardon.

PAGE. Now, mistress, how chance you went not with Master Slender?

MISTRESS PAGE. Why went you not with Master Doctor, maid?

FENTON. You do amaze her. Hear the truth of it. You would have married her most shamefully, Where there was no proportion held in love. The truth is, she and I, long since contracted, Are now so sure that nothing can dissolve us. Th’ offence is holy that she hath committed, And this deceit loses the name of craft, Of disobedience, or unduteous title, Since therein she doth evitate and shun A thousand irreligious cursed hours, Which forced marriage would have brought upon her.

FORD. Stand not amazed, here is no remedy. In love, the heavens themselves do guide the state. Money buys lands, and wives are sold by fate.

FALSTAFF. I am glad, though you have ta’en a special stand to strike at me, that your arrow hath glanced.

PAGE. Well, what remedy? Fenton, heaven give thee joy! What cannot be eschewed must be embraced.

FALSTAFF. When night-dogs run, all sorts of deer are chased.

MISTRESS PAGE. Well, I will muse no further.—Master Fenton, Heaven give you many, many merry days! Good husband, let us every one go home, And laugh this sport o’er by a country fire, Sir John and all.

FORD. Let it be so, Sir John, To Master Brook you yet shall hold your word, For he tonight shall lie with Mistress Ford.

A MIDSUMMER NIGHT’S DREAM

ACT I Scene I. Athens. A room in the Palace of Theseus Scene II. The Same. A Room in a Cottage

ACT II Scene I. A wood near Athens Scene II. Another part of the wood

ACT III Scene I. The Wood. Scene II. Another part of the wood

ACT IV Scene I. The Wood Scene II. Athens. A Room in Quince’s House

ACT V Scene I. Athens. An Apartment in the Palace of Theseus

THESEUS, Duke of Athens HIPPOLYTA, Queen of the Amazons, bethrothed to Theseus EGEUS, Father to Hermia HERMIA, daughter to Egeus, in love with Lysander HELENA, in love with Demetrius LYSANDER, in love with Hermia DEMETRIUS, in love with Hermia PHILOSTRATE, Master of the Revels to Theseus

QUINCE, the Carpenter SNUG, the Joiner BOTTOM, the Weaver FLUTE, the Bellows-mender SNOUT, the Tinker STARVELING, the Tailor

OBERON, King of the Fairies TITANIA, Queen of the Fairies PUCK, or ROBIN GOODFELLOW, a Fairy PEASEBLOSSOM, Fairy COBWEB, Fairy MOTH, Fairy MUSTARDSEED, Fairy

PYRAMUS, THISBE, WALL, MOONSHINE, LION; Characters in the Interlude performed by the Clowns

Other Fairies attending their King and Queen Attendants on Theseus and Hippolyta

SCENE: Athens, and a wood not far from it

SCENE I. Athens. A room in the Palace of Theseus

Enter Theseus, Hippolyta, Philostrate and Attendants.

THESEUS. Now, fair Hippolyta, our nuptial hour Draws on apace; four happy days bring in Another moon; but oh, methinks, how slow This old moon wanes! She lingers my desires, Like to a step-dame or a dowager, Long withering out a young man’s revenue.

HIPPOLYTA. Four days will quickly steep themselves in night; Four nights will quickly dream away the time; And then the moon, like to a silver bow New bent in heaven, shall behold the night Of our solemnities.

THESEUS. Go, Philostrate, Stir up the Athenian youth to merriments; Awake the pert and nimble spirit of mirth; Turn melancholy forth to funerals; The pale companion is not for our pomp.

[Exit Philostrate.]

Hippolyta, I woo’d thee with my sword, And won thy love doing thee injuries; But I will wed thee in another key, With pomp, with triumph, and with revelling.

Enter Egeus, Hermia, Lysander and Demetrius.

EGEUS. Happy be Theseus, our renownèd Duke!

THESEUS. Thanks, good Egeus. What’s the news with thee?

EGEUS. Full of vexation come I, with complaint Against my child, my daughter Hermia. Stand forth, Demetrius. My noble lord, This man hath my consent to marry her. Stand forth, Lysander. And, my gracious Duke, This man hath bewitch’d the bosom of my child. Thou, thou, Lysander, thou hast given her rhymes, And interchang’d love-tokens with my child. Thou hast by moonlight at her window sung, With feigning voice, verses of feigning love; And stol’n the impression of her fantasy With bracelets of thy hair, rings, gauds, conceits, Knacks, trifles, nosegays, sweetmeats (messengers Of strong prevailment in unharden’d youth) With cunning hast thou filch’d my daughter’s heart, Turn’d her obedience (which is due to me) To stubborn harshness. And, my gracious Duke, Be it so she will not here before your grace Consent to marry with Demetrius, I beg the ancient privilege of Athens: As she is mine I may dispose of her; Which shall be either to this gentleman Or to her death, according to our law Immediately provided in that case.

THESEUS. What say you, Hermia? Be advis’d, fair maid. To you your father should be as a god; One that compos’d your beauties, yea, and one To whom you are but as a form in wax By him imprinted, and within his power To leave the figure, or disfigure it. Demetrius is a worthy gentleman.

HERMIA. So is Lysander.

THESEUS. In himself he is. But in this kind, wanting your father’s voice, The other must be held the worthier.

HERMIA. I would my father look’d but with my eyes.

THESEUS. Rather your eyes must with his judgment look.

HERMIA. I do entreat your Grace to pardon me. I know not by what power I am made bold, Nor how it may concern my modesty In such a presence here to plead my thoughts: But I beseech your Grace that I may know The worst that may befall me in this case, If I refuse to wed Demetrius.

THESEUS. Either to die the death, or to abjure For ever the society of men. Therefore, fair Hermia, question your desires, Know of your youth, examine well your blood, Whether, if you yield not to your father’s choice, You can endure the livery of a nun, For aye to be in shady cloister mew’d, To live a barren sister all your life, Chanting faint hymns to the cold fruitless moon. Thrice-blessèd they that master so their blood To undergo such maiden pilgrimage, But earthlier happy is the rose distill’d Than that which, withering on the virgin thorn, Grows, lives, and dies, in single blessedness.

HERMIA. So will I grow, so live, so die, my lord, Ere I will yield my virgin patent up Unto his lordship, whose unwishèd yoke My soul consents not to give sovereignty.

THESEUS. Take time to pause; and by the next new moon The sealing-day betwixt my love and me For everlasting bond of fellowship, Upon that day either prepare to die For disobedience to your father’s will, Or else to wed Demetrius, as he would, Or on Diana’s altar to protest For aye austerity and single life.

DEMETRIUS. Relent, sweet Hermia; and, Lysander, yield Thy crazèd title to my certain right.

LYSANDER. You have her father’s love, Demetrius. Let me have Hermia’s. Do you marry him.

EGEUS. Scornful Lysander, true, he hath my love; And what is mine my love shall render him; And she is mine, and all my right of her I do estate unto Demetrius.

LYSANDER. I am, my lord, as well deriv’d as he, As well possess’d; my love is more than his; My fortunes every way as fairly rank’d, If not with vantage, as Demetrius’; And, which is more than all these boasts can be, I am belov’d of beauteous Hermia. Why should not I then prosecute my right? Demetrius, I’ll avouch it to his head, Made love to Nedar’s daughter, Helena, And won her soul; and she, sweet lady, dotes, Devoutly dotes, dotes in idolatry, Upon this spotted and inconstant man.

THESEUS. I must confess that I have heard so much, And with Demetrius thought to have spoke thereof; But, being over-full of self-affairs, My mind did lose it.—But, Demetrius, come, And come, Egeus; you shall go with me. I have some private schooling for you both.— For you, fair Hermia, look you arm yourself To fit your fancies to your father’s will, Or else the law of Athens yields you up (Which by no means we may extenuate) To death, or to a vow of single life. Come, my Hippolyta. What cheer, my love? Demetrius and Egeus, go along; I must employ you in some business Against our nuptial, and confer with you Of something nearly that concerns yourselves.

EGEUS. With duty and desire we follow you.

[Exeunt all but Lysander and Hermia.]

LYSANDER. How now, my love? Why is your cheek so pale? How chance the roses there do fade so fast?

HERMIA. Belike for want of rain, which I could well Beteem them from the tempest of my eyes.

LYSANDER. Ay me! For aught that I could ever read, Could ever hear by tale or history, The course of true love never did run smooth. But either it was different in blood—

HERMIA. O cross! Too high to be enthrall’d to low.

LYSANDER. Or else misgraffèd in respect of years—

HERMIA. O spite! Too old to be engag’d to young.

LYSANDER. Or else it stood upon the choice of friends—

HERMIA. O hell! to choose love by another’s eyes!

LYSANDER. Or, if there were a sympathy in choice, War, death, or sickness did lay siege to it, Making it momentany as a sound, Swift as a shadow, short as any dream, Brief as the lightning in the collied night That, in a spleen, unfolds both heaven and earth, And, ere a man hath power to say, ‘Behold!’ The jaws of darkness do devour it up: So quick bright things come to confusion.

HERMIA. If then true lovers have ever cross’d, It stands as an edict in destiny. Then let us teach our trial patience, Because it is a customary cross, As due to love as thoughts and dreams and sighs, Wishes and tears, poor fancy’s followers.

LYSANDER. A good persuasion; therefore, hear me, Hermia. I have a widow aunt, a dowager Of great revenue, and she hath no child. From Athens is her house remote seven leagues, And she respects me as her only son. There, gentle Hermia, may I marry thee, And to that place the sharp Athenian law Cannot pursue us. If thou lovest me then, Steal forth thy father’s house tomorrow night; And in the wood, a league without the town (Where I did meet thee once with Helena To do observance to a morn of May), There will I stay for thee.

HERMIA. My good Lysander! I swear to thee by Cupid’s strongest bow, By his best arrow with the golden head, By the simplicity of Venus’ doves, By that which knitteth souls and prospers loves, And by that fire which burn’d the Carthage queen When the false Trojan under sail was seen, By all the vows that ever men have broke (In number more than ever women spoke), In that same place thou hast appointed me, Tomorrow truly will I meet with thee.

LYSANDER. Keep promise, love. Look, here comes Helena.

HERMIA. God speed fair Helena! Whither away?

HELENA. Call you me fair? That fair again unsay. Demetrius loves your fair. O happy fair! Your eyes are lode-stars and your tongue’s sweet air More tuneable than lark to shepherd’s ear, When wheat is green, when hawthorn buds appear. Sickness is catching. O were favour so, Yours would I catch, fair Hermia, ere I go. My ear should catch your voice, my eye your eye, My tongue should catch your tongue’s sweet melody. Were the world mine, Demetrius being bated, The rest I’d give to be to you translated. O, teach me how you look, and with what art You sway the motion of Demetrius’ heart!

HERMIA. I frown upon him, yet he loves me still.

HELENA. O that your frowns would teach my smiles such skill!

HERMIA. I give him curses, yet he gives me love.

HELENA. O that my prayers could such affection move!

HERMIA. The more I hate, the more he follows me.

HELENA. The more I love, the more he hateth me.

HERMIA. His folly, Helena, is no fault of mine.

HELENA. None but your beauty; would that fault were mine!

HERMIA. Take comfort: he no more shall see my face; Lysander and myself will fly this place. Before the time I did Lysander see, Seem’d Athens as a paradise to me. O, then, what graces in my love do dwell, That he hath turn’d a heaven into hell!

LYSANDER. Helen, to you our minds we will unfold: Tomorrow night, when Phoebe doth behold Her silver visage in the watery glass, Decking with liquid pearl the bladed grass (A time that lovers’ flights doth still conceal), Through Athens’ gates have we devis’d to steal.

HERMIA. And in the wood where often you and I Upon faint primrose beds were wont to lie, Emptying our bosoms of their counsel sweet, There my Lysander and myself shall meet, And thence from Athens turn away our eyes, To seek new friends and stranger companies. Farewell, sweet playfellow. Pray thou for us, And good luck grant thee thy Demetrius! Keep word, Lysander. We must starve our sight From lovers’ food, till morrow deep midnight.

LYSANDER. I will, my Hermia.

[Exit Hermia.]

Helena, adieu. As you on him, Demetrius dote on you!

[Exit Lysander.]

HELENA. How happy some o’er other some can be! Through Athens I am thought as fair as she. But what of that? Demetrius thinks not so; He will not know what all but he do know. And as he errs, doting on Hermia’s eyes, So I, admiring of his qualities. Things base and vile, holding no quantity, Love can transpose to form and dignity. Love looks not with the eyes, but with the mind; And therefore is wing’d Cupid painted blind. Nor hath love’s mind of any judgment taste. Wings, and no eyes, figure unheedy haste. And therefore is love said to be a child, Because in choice he is so oft beguil’d. As waggish boys in game themselves forswear, So the boy Love is perjur’d everywhere. For, ere Demetrius look’d on Hermia’s eyne, He hail’d down oaths that he was only mine; And when this hail some heat from Hermia felt, So he dissolv’d, and showers of oaths did melt. I will go tell him of fair Hermia’s flight. Then to the wood will he tomorrow night Pursue her; and for this intelligence If I have thanks, it is a dear expense. But herein mean I to enrich my pain, To have his sight thither and back again.

SCENE II. The Same. A Room in a Cottage

Enter Quince, Snug, Bottom, Flute, Snout and Starveling.

QUINCE. Is all our company here?

BOTTOM. You were best to call them generally, man by man, according to the scrip.

QUINCE. Here is the scroll of every man’s name, which is thought fit through all Athens, to play in our interlude before the Duke and Duchess, on his wedding-day at night.

BOTTOM. First, good Peter Quince, say what the play treats on; then read the names of the actors; and so grow to a point.

QUINCE. Marry, our play is The most lamentable comedy and most cruel death of Pyramus and Thisbe.

BOTTOM. A very good piece of work, I assure you, and a merry. Now, good Peter Quince, call forth your actors by the scroll. Masters, spread yourselves.

QUINCE. Answer, as I call you. Nick Bottom, the weaver.

BOTTOM. Ready. Name what part I am for, and proceed.

QUINCE. You, Nick Bottom, are set down for Pyramus.

BOTTOM. What is Pyramus—a lover, or a tyrant?

QUINCE. A lover, that kills himself most gallantly for love.

BOTTOM. That will ask some tears in the true performing of it. If I do it, let the audience look to their eyes. I will move storms; I will condole in some measure. To the rest—yet my chief humour is for a tyrant. I could play Ercles rarely, or a part to tear a cat in, to make all split.

The raging rocks And shivering shocks Shall break the locks Of prison gates, And Phibbus’ car Shall shine from far, And make and mar The foolish Fates.

This was lofty. Now name the rest of the players. This is Ercles’ vein, a tyrant’s vein; a lover is more condoling.

QUINCE. Francis Flute, the bellows-mender.

FLUTE. Here, Peter Quince.

QUINCE. Flute, you must take Thisbe on you.

FLUTE. What is Thisbe? A wandering knight?

QUINCE. It is the lady that Pyramus must love.

FLUTE. Nay, faith, let not me play a woman. I have a beard coming.

QUINCE. That’s all one. You shall play it in a mask, and you may speak as small as you will.

BOTTOM. And I may hide my face, let me play Thisbe too. I’ll speak in a monstrous little voice; ‘Thisne, Thisne!’—‘Ah, Pyramus, my lover dear! thy Thisbe dear! and lady dear!’

QUINCE. No, no, you must play Pyramus; and, Flute, you Thisbe.

BOTTOM. Well, proceed.

QUINCE. Robin Starveling, the tailor.

STARVELING. Here, Peter Quince.

QUINCE. Robin Starveling, you must play Thisbe’s mother. Tom Snout, the tinker.

SNOUT Here, Peter Quince.

QUINCE. You, Pyramus’ father; myself, Thisbe’s father; Snug, the joiner, you, the lion’s part. And, I hope here is a play fitted.

SNUG Have you the lion’s part written? Pray you, if it be, give it me, for I am slow of study.

QUINCE. You may do it extempore, for it is nothing but roaring.

BOTTOM. Let me play the lion too. I will roar that I will do any man’s heart good to hear me. I will roar that I will make the Duke say ‘Let him roar again, let him roar again.’

QUINCE. If you should do it too terribly, you would fright the Duchess and the ladies, that they would shriek; and that were enough to hang us all.

ALL That would hang us every mother’s son.

BOTTOM. I grant you, friends, if you should fright the ladies out of their wits, they would have no more discretion but to hang us. But I will aggravate my voice so, that I will roar you as gently as any sucking dove; I will roar you an ’twere any nightingale.

QUINCE. You can play no part but Pyramus, for Pyramus is a sweet-faced man; a proper man as one shall see in a summer’s day; a most lovely gentleman-like man. Therefore you must needs play Pyramus.

BOTTOM. Well, I will undertake it. What beard were I best to play it in?

QUINCE. Why, what you will.

BOTTOM. I will discharge it in either your straw-colour beard, your orange-tawny beard, your purple-in-grain beard, or your French-crown-colour beard, your perfect yellow.

QUINCE. Some of your French crowns have no hair at all, and then you will play bare-faced. But, masters, here are your parts, and I am to entreat you, request you, and desire you, to con them by tomorrow night; and meet me in the palace wood, a mile without the town, by moonlight; there will we rehearse, for if we meet in the city, we shall be dogg’d with company, and our devices known. In the meantime I will draw a bill of properties, such as our play wants. I pray you fail me not.

BOTTOM. We will meet, and there we may rehearse most obscenely and courageously. Take pains, be perfect; adieu.

QUINCE. At the Duke’s oak we meet.

BOTTOM. Enough. Hold, or cut bow-strings.

SCENE I. A wood near Athens

Enter a Fairy at one door, and Puck at another.

PUCK. How now, spirit! Whither wander you?

FAIRY Over hill, over dale, Thorough bush, thorough brier, Over park, over pale, Thorough flood, thorough fire, I do wander everywhere, Swifter than the moon’s sphere; And I serve the Fairy Queen, To dew her orbs upon the green. The cowslips tall her pensioners be, In their gold coats spots you see; Those be rubies, fairy favours, In those freckles live their savours. I must go seek some dew-drops here, And hang a pearl in every cowslip’s ear. Farewell, thou lob of spirits; I’ll be gone. Our Queen and all her elves come here anon.

PUCK. The King doth keep his revels here tonight; Take heed the Queen come not within his sight, For Oberon is passing fell and wrath, Because that she, as her attendant, hath A lovely boy, stol’n from an Indian king; She never had so sweet a changeling. And jealous Oberon would have the child Knight of his train, to trace the forests wild: But she perforce withholds the lovèd boy, Crowns him with flowers, and makes him all her joy. And now they never meet in grove or green, By fountain clear, or spangled starlight sheen, But they do square; that all their elves for fear Creep into acorn cups, and hide them there.

FAIRY Either I mistake your shape and making quite, Or else you are that shrewd and knavish sprite Call’d Robin Goodfellow. Are not you he That frights the maidens of the villagery, Skim milk, and sometimes labour in the quern, And bootless make the breathless housewife churn, And sometime make the drink to bear no barm, Mislead night-wanderers, laughing at their harm? Those that Hobgoblin call you, and sweet Puck, You do their work, and they shall have good luck. Are not you he?

PUCK. Thou speak’st aright; I am that merry wanderer of the night. I jest to Oberon, and make him smile, When I a fat and bean-fed horse beguile, Neighing in likeness of a filly foal; And sometime lurk I in a gossip’s bowl In very likeness of a roasted crab, And, when she drinks, against her lips I bob, And on her withered dewlap pour the ale. The wisest aunt, telling the saddest tale, Sometime for three-foot stool mistaketh me; Then slip I from her bum, down topples she, And ‘tailor’ cries, and falls into a cough; And then the whole quire hold their hips and loffe And waxen in their mirth, and neeze, and swear A merrier hour was never wasted there. But room, fairy. Here comes Oberon.

FAIRY And here my mistress. Would that he were gone!

Enter Oberon at one door, with his Train, and Titania at another, with hers.

OBERON. Ill met by moonlight, proud Titania.

TITANIA. What, jealous Oberon! Fairies, skip hence; I have forsworn his bed and company.

OBERON. Tarry, rash wanton; am not I thy lord?

TITANIA. Then I must be thy lady; but I know When thou hast stol’n away from fairyland, And in the shape of Corin sat all day Playing on pipes of corn, and versing love To amorous Phillida. Why art thou here, Come from the farthest steep of India, But that, forsooth, the bouncing Amazon, Your buskin’d mistress and your warrior love, To Theseus must be wedded; and you come To give their bed joy and prosperity?

OBERON. How canst thou thus, for shame, Titania, Glance at my credit with Hippolyta, Knowing I know thy love to Theseus? Didst not thou lead him through the glimmering night From Perigenia, whom he ravished? And make him with fair Aegles break his faith, With Ariadne and Antiopa?

TITANIA. These are the forgeries of jealousy: And never, since the middle summer’s spring, Met we on hill, in dale, forest, or mead, By pavèd fountain, or by rushy brook, Or on the beachèd margent of the sea, To dance our ringlets to the whistling wind, But with thy brawls thou hast disturb’d our sport. Therefore the winds, piping to us in vain, As in revenge, have suck’d up from the sea Contagious fogs; which, falling in the land, Hath every pelting river made so proud That they have overborne their continents. The ox hath therefore stretch’d his yoke in vain, The ploughman lost his sweat, and the green corn Hath rotted ere his youth attain’d a beard. The fold stands empty in the drownèd field, And crows are fatted with the murrion flock; The nine-men’s-morris is fill’d up with mud, And the quaint mazes in the wanton green, For lack of tread, are undistinguishable. The human mortals want their winter here. No night is now with hymn or carol blest. Therefore the moon, the governess of floods, Pale in her anger, washes all the air, That rheumatic diseases do abound. And thorough this distemperature we see The seasons alter: hoary-headed frosts Fall in the fresh lap of the crimson rose; And on old Hiems’ thin and icy crown An odorous chaplet of sweet summer buds Is, as in mockery, set. The spring, the summer, The childing autumn, angry winter, change Their wonted liveries; and the mazed world, By their increase, now knows not which is which. And this same progeny of evils comes From our debate, from our dissension; We are their parents and original.

OBERON. Do you amend it, then. It lies in you. Why should Titania cross her Oberon? I do but beg a little changeling boy To be my henchman.

TITANIA. Set your heart at rest; The fairyland buys not the child of me. His mother was a vot’ress of my order, And in the spicèd Indian air, by night, Full often hath she gossip’d by my side; And sat with me on Neptune’s yellow sands, Marking th’ embarkèd traders on the flood, When we have laugh’d to see the sails conceive, And grow big-bellied with the wanton wind; Which she, with pretty and with swimming gait Following (her womb then rich with my young squire), Would imitate, and sail upon the land, To fetch me trifles, and return again, As from a voyage, rich with merchandise. But she, being mortal, of that boy did die; And for her sake do I rear up her boy, And for her sake I will not part with him.

OBERON. How long within this wood intend you stay?

TITANIA. Perchance till after Theseus’ wedding-day. If you will patiently dance in our round, And see our moonlight revels, go with us; If not, shun me, and I will spare your haunts.

OBERON. Give me that boy and I will go with thee.

TITANIA. Not for thy fairy kingdom. Fairies, away. We shall chide downright if I longer stay.

[Exit Titania with her Train.]

OBERON. Well, go thy way. Thou shalt not from this grove Till I torment thee for this injury.— My gentle Puck, come hither. Thou rememb’rest Since once I sat upon a promontory, And heard a mermaid on a dolphin’s back Uttering such dulcet and harmonious breath That the rude sea grew civil at her song And certain stars shot madly from their spheres To hear the sea-maid’s music.

PUCK. I remember.

OBERON. That very time I saw, (but thou couldst not), Flying between the cold moon and the earth, Cupid all arm’d: a certain aim he took At a fair vestal, thronèd by the west, And loos’d his love-shaft smartly from his bow As it should pierce a hundred thousand hearts. But I might see young Cupid’s fiery shaft Quench’d in the chaste beams of the watery moon; And the imperial votress passed on, In maiden meditation, fancy-free. Yet mark’d I where the bolt of Cupid fell: It fell upon a little western flower, Before milk-white, now purple with love’s wound, And maidens call it love-in-idleness. Fetch me that flower, the herb I showed thee once: The juice of it on sleeping eyelids laid Will make or man or woman madly dote Upon the next live creature that it sees. Fetch me this herb, and be thou here again Ere the leviathan can swim a league.

PUCK. I’ll put a girdle round about the earth In forty minutes.

[Exit Puck.]

OBERON. Having once this juice, I’ll watch Titania when she is asleep, And drop the liquor of it in her eyes: The next thing then she waking looks upon (Be it on lion, bear, or wolf, or bull, On meddling monkey, or on busy ape) She shall pursue it with the soul of love. And ere I take this charm from off her sight (As I can take it with another herb) I’ll make her render up her page to me. But who comes here? I am invisible; And I will overhear their conference.

Enter Demetrius, Helena following him.

DEMETRIUS. I love thee not, therefore pursue me not. Where is Lysander and fair Hermia? The one I’ll slay, the other slayeth me. Thou told’st me they were stol’n into this wood, And here am I, and wode within this wood Because I cannot meet with Hermia. Hence, get thee gone, and follow me no more.

HELENA. You draw me, you hard-hearted adamant, But yet you draw not iron, for my heart Is true as steel. Leave you your power to draw, And I shall have no power to follow you.

DEMETRIUS. Do I entice you? Do I speak you fair? Or rather do I not in plainest truth Tell you I do not, nor I cannot love you?

HELENA. And even for that do I love you the more. I am your spaniel; and, Demetrius, The more you beat me, I will fawn on you. Use me but as your spaniel, spurn me, strike me, Neglect me, lose me; only give me leave, Unworthy as I am, to follow you. What worser place can I beg in your love, (And yet a place of high respect with me) Than to be usèd as you use your dog?

DEMETRIUS. Tempt not too much the hatred of my spirit; For I am sick when I do look on thee.

HELENA. And I am sick when I look not on you.

DEMETRIUS. You do impeach your modesty too much To leave the city and commit yourself Into the hands of one that loves you not, To trust the opportunity of night And the ill counsel of a desert place, With the rich worth of your virginity.

HELENA. Your virtue is my privilege: for that It is not night when I do see your face, Therefore I think I am not in the night; Nor doth this wood lack worlds of company, For you, in my respect, are all the world. Then how can it be said I am alone When all the world is here to look on me?

DEMETRIUS. I’ll run from thee and hide me in the brakes, And leave thee to the mercy of wild beasts.

HELENA. The wildest hath not such a heart as you. Run when you will, the story shall be chang’d; Apollo flies, and Daphne holds the chase; The dove pursues the griffin, the mild hind Makes speed to catch the tiger. Bootless speed, When cowardice pursues and valour flies!

DEMETRIUS. I will not stay thy questions. Let me go, Or if thou follow me, do not believe But I shall do thee mischief in the wood.

HELENA. Ay, in the temple, in the town, the field, You do me mischief. Fie, Demetrius! Your wrongs do set a scandal on my sex. We cannot fight for love as men may do. We should be woo’d, and were not made to woo.

[Exit Demetrius.]

I’ll follow thee, and make a heaven of hell, To die upon the hand I love so well.

OBERON. Fare thee well, nymph. Ere he do leave this grove, Thou shalt fly him, and he shall seek thy love.

Enter Puck.

Hast thou the flower there? Welcome, wanderer.

PUCK. Ay, there it is.

OBERON. I pray thee give it me. I know a bank where the wild thyme blows, Where oxlips and the nodding violet grows, Quite over-canopied with luscious woodbine, With sweet musk-roses, and with eglantine. There sleeps Titania sometime of the night, Lull’d in these flowers with dances and delight; And there the snake throws her enamell’d skin, Weed wide enough to wrap a fairy in. And with the juice of this I’ll streak her eyes, And make her full of hateful fantasies. Take thou some of it, and seek through this grove: A sweet Athenian lady is in love With a disdainful youth. Anoint his eyes; But do it when the next thing he espies May be the lady. Thou shalt know the man By the Athenian garments he hath on. Effect it with some care, that he may prove More fond on her than she upon her love: And look thou meet me ere the first cock crow.

PUCK. Fear not, my lord, your servant shall do so.

SCENE II. Another part of the wood

Enter Titania with her Train.

TITANIA. Come, now a roundel and a fairy song; Then for the third part of a minute, hence; Some to kill cankers in the musk-rose buds; Some war with reremice for their leathern wings, To make my small elves coats; and some keep back The clamorous owl, that nightly hoots and wonders At our quaint spirits. Sing me now asleep; Then to your offices, and let me rest.

Fairies sing.

FIRST FAIRY. You spotted snakes with double tongue, Thorny hedgehogs, be not seen; Newts and blind-worms do no wrong, Come not near our Fairy Queen:

CHORUS. Philomel, with melody, Sing in our sweet lullaby: Lulla, lulla, lullaby; lulla, lulla, lullaby. Never harm, nor spell, nor charm, Come our lovely lady nigh; So good night, with lullaby.

FIRST FAIRY. Weaving spiders, come not here; Hence, you long-legg’d spinners, hence. Beetles black, approach not near; Worm nor snail do no offence.

CHORUS. Philomel with melody, &c.

SECOND FAIRY. Hence away! Now all is well. One aloof stand sentinel.

[Exeunt Fairies. Titania sleeps.]

Enter Oberon.

OBERON. What thou seest when thou dost wake,

[Squeezes the flower on Titania’s eyelids.]

Do it for thy true love take; Love and languish for his sake. Be it ounce, or cat, or bear, Pard, or boar with bristled hair, In thy eye that shall appear When thou wak’st, it is thy dear. Wake when some vile thing is near.

Enter Lysander and Hermia.

LYSANDER. Fair love, you faint with wand’ring in the wood. And, to speak troth, I have forgot our way. We’ll rest us, Hermia, if you think it good, And tarry for the comfort of the day.

HERMIA. Be it so, Lysander: find you out a bed, For I upon this bank will rest my head.

LYSANDER. One turf shall serve as pillow for us both; One heart, one bed, two bosoms, and one troth.

HERMIA. Nay, good Lysander; for my sake, my dear, Lie further off yet, do not lie so near.

LYSANDER. O take the sense, sweet, of my innocence! Love takes the meaning in love’s conference. I mean that my heart unto yours is knit, So that but one heart we can make of it: Two bosoms interchainèd with an oath, So then two bosoms and a single troth. Then by your side no bed-room me deny; For lying so, Hermia, I do not lie.

HERMIA. Lysander riddles very prettily. Now much beshrew my manners and my pride, If Hermia meant to say Lysander lied! But, gentle friend, for love and courtesy Lie further off, in human modesty, Such separation as may well be said Becomes a virtuous bachelor and a maid, So far be distant; and good night, sweet friend: Thy love ne’er alter till thy sweet life end!

LYSANDER. Amen, amen, to that fair prayer say I; And then end life when I end loyalty! Here is my bed. Sleep give thee all his rest!

HERMIA. With half that wish the wisher’s eyes be pressed!

[They sleep.]

PUCK. Through the forest have I gone, But Athenian found I none, On whose eyes I might approve This flower’s force in stirring love. Night and silence! Who is here? Weeds of Athens he doth wear: This is he, my master said, Despisèd the Athenian maid; And here the maiden, sleeping sound, On the dank and dirty ground. Pretty soul, she durst not lie Near this lack-love, this kill-courtesy. Churl, upon thy eyes I throw All the power this charm doth owe; When thou wak’st let love forbid Sleep his seat on thy eyelid. So awake when I am gone; For I must now to Oberon.

Enter Demetrius and Helena, running.

HELENA. Stay, though thou kill me, sweet Demetrius.

DEMETRIUS. I charge thee, hence, and do not haunt me thus.

HELENA. O, wilt thou darkling leave me? Do not so.

DEMETRIUS. Stay, on thy peril; I alone will go.

HELENA. O, I am out of breath in this fond chase! The more my prayer, the lesser is my grace. Happy is Hermia, wheresoe’er she lies, For she hath blessèd and attractive eyes. How came her eyes so bright? Not with salt tears. If so, my eyes are oftener wash’d than hers. No, no, I am as ugly as a bear, For beasts that meet me run away for fear: Therefore no marvel though Demetrius Do, as a monster, fly my presence thus. What wicked and dissembling glass of mine Made me compare with Hermia’s sphery eyne? But who is here? Lysander, on the ground! Dead or asleep? I see no blood, no wound. Lysander, if you live, good sir, awake.

LYSANDER. [Waking.] And run through fire I will for thy sweet sake. Transparent Helena! Nature shows art, That through thy bosom makes me see thy heart. Where is Demetrius? O, how fit a word Is that vile name to perish on my sword!

HELENA. Do not say so, Lysander, say not so. What though he love your Hermia? Lord, what though? Yet Hermia still loves you. Then be content.

LYSANDER. Content with Hermia? No, I do repent The tedious minutes I with her have spent. Not Hermia, but Helena I love. Who will not change a raven for a dove? The will of man is by his reason sway’d, And reason says you are the worthier maid. Things growing are not ripe until their season; So I, being young, till now ripe not to reason; And touching now the point of human skill, Reason becomes the marshal to my will, And leads me to your eyes, where I o’erlook Love’s stories, written in love’s richest book.

HELENA. Wherefore was I to this keen mockery born? When at your hands did I deserve this scorn? Is’t not enough, is’t not enough, young man, That I did never, no, nor never can Deserve a sweet look from Demetrius’ eye, But you must flout my insufficiency? Good troth, you do me wrong, good sooth, you do, In such disdainful manner me to woo. But fare you well; perforce I must confess, I thought you lord of more true gentleness. O, that a lady of one man refus’d, Should of another therefore be abus’d!

LYSANDER. She sees not Hermia. Hermia, sleep thou there, And never mayst thou come Lysander near! For, as a surfeit of the sweetest things The deepest loathing to the stomach brings; Or as the heresies that men do leave Are hated most of those they did deceive; So thou, my surfeit and my heresy, Of all be hated, but the most of me! And, all my powers, address your love and might To honour Helen, and to be her knight!

HERMIA. [Starting.] Help me, Lysander, help me! Do thy best To pluck this crawling serpent from my breast! Ay me, for pity! What a dream was here! Lysander, look how I do quake with fear. Methought a serpent eat my heart away, And you sat smiling at his cruel prey. Lysander! What, removed? Lysander! lord! What, out of hearing? Gone? No sound, no word? Alack, where are you? Speak, and if you hear; Speak, of all loves! I swoon almost with fear. No? Then I well perceive you are not nigh. Either death or you I’ll find immediately.

SCENE I. The Wood.

The Queen of Fairies still lying asleep.

Enter Bottom, Quince, Snout, Starveling, Snug and Flute.

BOTTOM. Are we all met?

QUINCE. Pat, pat; and here’s a marvellous convenient place for our rehearsal. This green plot shall be our stage, this hawthorn brake our tiring-house; and we will do it in action, as we will do it before the Duke.

BOTTOM. Peter Quince?

QUINCE. What sayest thou, bully Bottom?

BOTTOM. There are things in this comedy of Pyramus and Thisbe that will never please. First, Pyramus must draw a sword to kill himself; which the ladies cannot abide. How answer you that?

SNOUT By’r lakin, a parlous fear.

STARVELING. I believe we must leave the killing out, when all is done.

BOTTOM. Not a whit; I have a device to make all well. Write me a prologue, and let the prologue seem to say we will do no harm with our swords, and that Pyramus is not killed indeed; and for the more better assurance, tell them that I Pyramus am not Pyramus but Bottom the weaver. This will put them out of fear.

QUINCE. Well, we will have such a prologue; and it shall be written in eight and six.

BOTTOM. No, make it two more; let it be written in eight and eight.

SNOUT Will not the ladies be afeard of the lion?

STARVELING. I fear it, I promise you.

BOTTOM. Masters, you ought to consider with yourselves, to bring in (God shield us!) a lion among ladies is a most dreadful thing. For there is not a more fearful wild-fowl than your lion living; and we ought to look to it.

SNOUT Therefore another prologue must tell he is not a lion.

BOTTOM. Nay, you must name his name, and half his face must be seen through the lion’s neck; and he himself must speak through, saying thus, or to the same defect: ‘Ladies,’ or, ‘Fair ladies, I would wish you,’ or, ‘I would request you,’ or, ’I would entreat you, not to fear, not to tremble: my life for yours. If you think I come hither as a lion, it were pity of my life. No, I am no such thing; I am a man as other men are’: and there, indeed, let him name his name, and tell them plainly he is Snug the joiner.

QUINCE. Well, it shall be so. But there is two hard things: that is, to bring the moonlight into a chamber, for you know, Pyramus and Thisbe meet by moonlight.

SNOUT Doth the moon shine that night we play our play?

BOTTOM. A calendar, a calendar! Look in the almanack; find out moonshine, find out moonshine.

QUINCE. Yes, it doth shine that night.

BOTTOM. Why, then may you leave a casement of the great chamber window, where we play, open; and the moon may shine in at the casement.

QUINCE. Ay; or else one must come in with a bush of thorns and a lantern, and say he comes to disfigure or to present the person of Moonshine. Then there is another thing: we must have a wall in the great chamber; for Pyramus and Thisbe, says the story, did talk through the chink of a wall.

SNOUT You can never bring in a wall. What say you, Bottom?

BOTTOM. Some man or other must present Wall. And let him have some plaster, or some loam, or some rough-cast about him, to signify wall; and let him hold his fingers thus, and through that cranny shall Pyramus and Thisbe whisper.

QUINCE. If that may be, then all is well. Come, sit down, every mother’s son, and rehearse your parts. Pyramus, you begin: when you have spoken your speech, enter into that brake; and so everyone according to his cue.

Enter Puck behind.

PUCK. What hempen homespuns have we swaggering here, So near the cradle of the Fairy Queen? What, a play toward? I’ll be an auditor; An actor too perhaps, if I see cause.

QUINCE. Speak, Pyramus.—Thisbe, stand forth.

PYRAMUS. Thisbe, the flowers of odious savours sweet

QUINCE. Odours, odours.

PYRAMUS. . . . odours savours sweet. So hath thy breath, my dearest Thisbe dear. But hark, a voice! Stay thou but here awhile, And by and by I will to thee appear.

PUCK. A stranger Pyramus than e’er played here!

THISBE. Must I speak now?

QUINCE. Ay, marry, must you, For you must understand he goes but to see a noise that he heard, and is to come again.

THISBE. Most radiant Pyramus, most lily-white of hue, Of colour like the red rose on triumphant brier, Most brisky juvenal, and eke most lovely Jew, As true as truest horse, that yet would never tire, I’ll meet thee, Pyramus, at Ninny’s tomb.

QUINCE. Ninus’ tomb, man! Why, you must not speak that yet. That you answer to Pyramus. You speak all your part at once, cues, and all.—Pyramus enter! Your cue is past; it is ‘never tire.’

THISBE. O, As true as truest horse, that yet would never tire.

Enter Puck and Bottom with an ass’s head.

PYRAMUS. If I were fair, Thisbe, I were only thine.

QUINCE. O monstrous! O strange! We are haunted. Pray, masters, fly, masters! Help!

[Exeunt Clowns.]

PUCK. I’ll follow you. I’ll lead you about a round, Through bog, through bush, through brake, through brier; Sometime a horse I’ll be, sometime a hound, A hog, a headless bear, sometime a fire; And neigh, and bark, and grunt, and roar, and burn, Like horse, hound, hog, bear, fire, at every turn.

BOTTOM. Why do they run away? This is a knavery of them to make me afeard.

Enter Snout.

SNOUT O Bottom, thou art changed! What do I see on thee?

BOTTOM. What do you see? You see an ass-head of your own, do you?

[Exit Snout.]

Enter Quince.

QUINCE. Bless thee, Bottom! bless thee! Thou art translated.

BOTTOM. I see their knavery. This is to make an ass of me, to fright me, if they could. But I will not stir from this place, do what they can. I will walk up and down here, and I will sing, that they shall hear I am not afraid. [Sings.] The ousel cock, so black of hue, With orange-tawny bill, The throstle with his note so true, The wren with little quill.

TITANIA. [Waking.] What angel wakes me from my flowery bed?

BOTTOM. [Sings.] The finch, the sparrow, and the lark, The plain-song cuckoo gray, Whose note full many a man doth mark, And dares not answer nay. for, indeed, who would set his wit to so foolish a bird? Who would give a bird the lie, though he cry ‘cuckoo’ never so?

TITANIA. I pray thee, gentle mortal, sing again. Mine ear is much enamour’d of thy note. So is mine eye enthrallèd to thy shape; And thy fair virtue’s force perforce doth move me, On the first view, to say, to swear, I love thee.

BOTTOM. Methinks, mistress, you should have little reason for that. And yet, to say the truth, reason and love keep little company together nowadays. The more the pity that some honest neighbours will not make them friends. Nay, I can gleek upon occasion.

TITANIA. Thou art as wise as thou art beautiful.

BOTTOM. Not so, neither; but if I had wit enough to get out of this wood, I have enough to serve mine own turn.

TITANIA. Out of this wood do not desire to go. Thou shalt remain here whether thou wilt or no. I am a spirit of no common rate. The summer still doth tend upon my state; And I do love thee: therefore, go with me. I’ll give thee fairies to attend on thee; And they shall fetch thee jewels from the deep, And sing, while thou on pressèd flowers dost sleep. And I will purge thy mortal grossness so That thou shalt like an airy spirit go.— Peaseblossom! Cobweb! Moth! and Mustardseed!

Enter four Fairies.

PEASEBLOSSOM. Ready.

COBWEB. And I.

MOTH. And I.

MUSTARDSEED. And I.

ALL. Where shall we go?

TITANIA. Be kind and courteous to this gentleman; Hop in his walks and gambol in his eyes; Feed him with apricocks and dewberries, With purple grapes, green figs, and mulberries; The honey-bags steal from the humble-bees, And for night-tapers, crop their waxen thighs, And light them at the fiery glow-worm’s eyes, To have my love to bed and to arise; And pluck the wings from painted butterflies, To fan the moonbeams from his sleeping eyes. Nod to him, elves, and do him courtesies.

PEASEBLOSSOM. Hail, mortal!

COBWEB. Hail!

MOTH. Hail!

MUSTARDSEED. Hail!

BOTTOM. I cry your worships mercy, heartily.—I beseech your worship’s name.

COBWEB. Cobweb.

BOTTOM. I shall desire you of more acquaintance, good Master Cobweb. If I cut my finger, I shall make bold with you.—Your name, honest gentleman?

PEASEBLOSSOM. Peaseblossom.

BOTTOM. I pray you, commend me to Mistress Squash, your mother, and to Master Peascod, your father. Good Master Peaseblossom, I shall desire you of more acquaintance too.—Your name, I beseech you, sir?

MUSTARDSEED. Mustardseed.

BOTTOM. Good Master Mustardseed, I know your patience well. That same cowardly giant-like ox-beef hath devoured many a gentleman of your house. I promise you, your kindred hath made my eyes water ere now. I desire you of more acquaintance, good Master Mustardseed.

TITANIA. Come, wait upon him; lead him to my bower. The moon, methinks, looks with a watery eye, And when she weeps, weeps every little flower, Lamenting some enforced chastity. Tie up my love’s tongue, bring him silently.

OBERON. I wonder if Titania be awak’d; Then, what it was that next came in her eye, Which she must dote on in extremity.

Here comes my messenger. How now, mad spirit? What night-rule now about this haunted grove?

PUCK. My mistress with a monster is in love. Near to her close and consecrated bower, While she was in her dull and sleeping hour, A crew of patches, rude mechanicals, That work for bread upon Athenian stalls, Were met together to rehearse a play Intended for great Theseus’ nuptial day. The shallowest thick-skin of that barren sort Who Pyramus presented in their sport, Forsook his scene and enter’d in a brake. When I did him at this advantage take, An ass’s nole I fixed on his head. Anon, his Thisbe must be answerèd, And forth my mimic comes. When they him spy, As wild geese that the creeping fowler eye, Or russet-pated choughs, many in sort, Rising and cawing at the gun’s report, Sever themselves and madly sweep the sky, So at his sight away his fellows fly, And at our stamp, here o’er and o’er one falls; He murder cries, and help from Athens calls. Their sense thus weak, lost with their fears, thus strong, Made senseless things begin to do them wrong; For briers and thorns at their apparel snatch; Some sleeves, some hats, from yielders all things catch. I led them on in this distracted fear, And left sweet Pyramus translated there. When in that moment, so it came to pass, Titania wak’d, and straightway lov’d an ass.

OBERON. This falls out better than I could devise. But hast thou yet latch’d the Athenian’s eyes With the love-juice, as I did bid thee do?

PUCK. I took him sleeping—that is finish’d too— And the Athenian woman by his side, That, when he wak’d, of force she must be ey’d.

Enter Demetrius and Hermia.

OBERON. Stand close. This is the same Athenian.

PUCK. This is the woman, but not this the man.

DEMETRIUS. O why rebuke you him that loves you so? Lay breath so bitter on your bitter foe.

HERMIA. Now I but chide, but I should use thee worse, For thou, I fear, hast given me cause to curse. If thou hast slain Lysander in his sleep, Being o’er shoes in blood, plunge in the deep, And kill me too. The sun was not so true unto the day As he to me. Would he have stol’n away From sleeping Hermia? I’ll believe as soon This whole earth may be bor’d, and that the moon May through the centre creep and so displease Her brother’s noontide with th’ Antipodes. It cannot be but thou hast murder’d him. So should a murderer look, so dead, so grim.

DEMETRIUS. So should the murder’d look, and so should I, Pierc’d through the heart with your stern cruelty. Yet you, the murderer, look as bright, as clear, As yonder Venus in her glimmering sphere.

HERMIA. What’s this to my Lysander? Where is he? Ah, good Demetrius, wilt thou give him me?

DEMETRIUS. I had rather give his carcass to my hounds.

HERMIA. Out, dog! Out, cur! Thou driv’st me past the bounds Of maiden’s patience. Hast thou slain him, then? Henceforth be never number’d among men! O once tell true; tell true, even for my sake! Durst thou have look’d upon him, being awake, And hast thou kill’d him sleeping? O brave touch! Could not a worm, an adder, do so much? An adder did it; for with doubler tongue Than thine, thou serpent, never adder stung.

DEMETRIUS. You spend your passion on a mispris’d mood: I am not guilty of Lysander’s blood; Nor is he dead, for aught that I can tell.

HERMIA. I pray thee, tell me then that he is well.

DEMETRIUS. And if I could, what should I get therefore?

HERMIA. A privilege never to see me more. And from thy hated presence part I so: See me no more, whether he be dead or no.

DEMETRIUS. There is no following her in this fierce vein. Here, therefore, for a while I will remain. So sorrow’s heaviness doth heavier grow For debt that bankrupt sleep doth sorrow owe; Which now in some slight measure it will pay, If for his tender here I make some stay.

[Lies down.]

OBERON. What hast thou done? Thou hast mistaken quite, And laid the love-juice on some true-love’s sight. Of thy misprision must perforce ensue Some true love turn’d, and not a false turn’d true.

PUCK. Then fate o’er-rules, that, one man holding troth, A million fail, confounding oath on oath.

OBERON. About the wood go swifter than the wind, And Helena of Athens look thou find. All fancy-sick she is, and pale of cheer With sighs of love, that costs the fresh blood dear. By some illusion see thou bring her here; I’ll charm his eyes against she do appear.

PUCK. I go, I go; look how I go, Swifter than arrow from the Tartar’s bow.

OBERON. Flower of this purple dye, Hit with Cupid’s archery, Sink in apple of his eye. When his love he doth espy, Let her shine as gloriously As the Venus of the sky.— When thou wak’st, if she be by, Beg of her for remedy.

PUCK. Captain of our fairy band, Helena is here at hand, And the youth mistook by me, Pleading for a lover’s fee. Shall we their fond pageant see? Lord, what fools these mortals be!

OBERON. Stand aside. The noise they make Will cause Demetrius to awake.

PUCK. Then will two at once woo one. That must needs be sport alone; And those things do best please me That befall prepost’rously.

Enter Lysander and Helena.

LYSANDER. Why should you think that I should woo in scorn? Scorn and derision never come in tears. Look when I vow, I weep; and vows so born, In their nativity all truth appears. How can these things in me seem scorn to you, Bearing the badge of faith, to prove them true?

HELENA. You do advance your cunning more and more. When truth kills truth, O devilish-holy fray! These vows are Hermia’s: will you give her o’er? Weigh oath with oath, and you will nothing weigh: Your vows to her and me, put in two scales, Will even weigh; and both as light as tales.

LYSANDER. I had no judgment when to her I swore.

HELENA. Nor none, in my mind, now you give her o’er.

LYSANDER. Demetrius loves her, and he loves not you.

DEMETRIUS. [Waking.] O Helen, goddess, nymph, perfect, divine! To what, my love, shall I compare thine eyne? Crystal is muddy. O how ripe in show Thy lips, those kissing cherries, tempting grow! That pure congealèd white, high Taurus’ snow, Fann’d with the eastern wind, turns to a crow When thou hold’st up thy hand. O, let me kiss This princess of pure white, this seal of bliss!

HELENA. O spite! O hell! I see you all are bent To set against me for your merriment. If you were civil, and knew courtesy, You would not do me thus much injury. Can you not hate me, as I know you do, But you must join in souls to mock me too? If you were men, as men you are in show, You would not use a gentle lady so; To vow, and swear, and superpraise my parts, When I am sure you hate me with your hearts. You both are rivals, and love Hermia; And now both rivals, to mock Helena. A trim exploit, a manly enterprise, To conjure tears up in a poor maid’s eyes With your derision! None of noble sort Would so offend a virgin, and extort A poor soul’s patience, all to make you sport.

LYSANDER. You are unkind, Demetrius; be not so, For you love Hermia; this you know I know. And here, with all good will, with all my heart, In Hermia’s love I yield you up my part; And yours of Helena to me bequeath, Whom I do love and will do till my death.

HELENA. Never did mockers waste more idle breath.

DEMETRIUS. Lysander, keep thy Hermia; I will none. If e’er I lov’d her, all that love is gone. My heart to her but as guest-wise sojourn’d; And now to Helen is it home return’d, There to remain.

LYSANDER. Helen, it is not so.

DEMETRIUS. Disparage not the faith thou dost not know, Lest to thy peril thou aby it dear. Look where thy love comes; yonder is thy dear.

Enter Hermia.

HERMIA. Dark night, that from the eye his function takes, The ear more quick of apprehension makes; Wherein it doth impair the seeing sense, It pays the hearing double recompense. Thou art not by mine eye, Lysander, found; Mine ear, I thank it, brought me to thy sound. But why unkindly didst thou leave me so?

LYSANDER. Why should he stay whom love doth press to go?

HERMIA. What love could press Lysander from my side?

LYSANDER. Lysander’s love, that would not let him bide, Fair Helena, who more engilds the night Than all yon fiery oes and eyes of light. Why seek’st thou me? Could not this make thee know The hate I bare thee made me leave thee so?

HERMIA. You speak not as you think; it cannot be.

HELENA. Lo, she is one of this confederacy! Now I perceive they have conjoin’d all three To fashion this false sport in spite of me. Injurious Hermia, most ungrateful maid! Have you conspir’d, have you with these contriv’d, To bait me with this foul derision? Is all the counsel that we two have shar’d, The sisters’ vows, the hours that we have spent, When we have chid the hasty-footed time For parting us—O, is all forgot? All school-days’ friendship, childhood innocence? We, Hermia, like two artificial gods, Have with our needles created both one flower, Both on one sampler, sitting on one cushion, Both warbling of one song, both in one key, As if our hands, our sides, voices, and minds, Had been incorporate. So we grew together, Like to a double cherry, seeming parted, But yet a union in partition, Two lovely berries moulded on one stem; So, with two seeming bodies, but one heart; Two of the first, like coats in heraldry, Due but to one, and crownèd with one crest. And will you rent our ancient love asunder, To join with men in scorning your poor friend? It is not friendly, ’tis not maidenly. Our sex, as well as I, may chide you for it, Though I alone do feel the injury.

HERMIA. I am amazèd at your passionate words: I scorn you not; it seems that you scorn me.

HELENA. Have you not set Lysander, as in scorn, To follow me, and praise my eyes and face? And made your other love, Demetrius, Who even but now did spurn me with his foot, To call me goddess, nymph, divine and rare, Precious, celestial? Wherefore speaks he this To her he hates? And wherefore doth Lysander Deny your love, so rich within his soul, And tender me, forsooth, affection, But by your setting on, by your consent? What though I be not so in grace as you, So hung upon with love, so fortunate, But miserable most, to love unlov’d? This you should pity rather than despise.

HERMIA. I understand not what you mean by this.

HELENA. Ay, do. Persever, counterfeit sad looks, Make mouths upon me when I turn my back, Wink each at other; hold the sweet jest up. This sport, well carried, shall be chronicled. If you have any pity, grace, or manners, You would not make me such an argument. But fare ye well. ’Tis partly my own fault, Which death, or absence, soon shall remedy.

LYSANDER. Stay, gentle Helena; hear my excuse; My love, my life, my soul, fair Helena!

HELENA. O excellent!

HERMIA. Sweet, do not scorn her so.

DEMETRIUS. If she cannot entreat, I can compel.

LYSANDER. Thou canst compel no more than she entreat; Thy threats have no more strength than her weak prayers. Helen, I love thee, by my life I do; I swear by that which I will lose for thee To prove him false that says I love thee not.

DEMETRIUS. I say I love thee more than he can do.

LYSANDER. If thou say so, withdraw, and prove it too.

DEMETRIUS. Quick, come.

HERMIA. Lysander, whereto tends all this?

LYSANDER. Away, you Ethiope!

DEMETRIUS. No, no. He will Seem to break loose. Take on as you would follow, But yet come not. You are a tame man, go!

LYSANDER. Hang off, thou cat, thou burr! Vile thing, let loose, Or I will shake thee from me like a serpent.

HERMIA. Why are you grown so rude? What change is this, Sweet love?

LYSANDER. Thy love? Out, tawny Tartar, out! Out, loathèd medicine! O hated potion, hence!

HERMIA. Do you not jest?

HELENA. Yes, sooth, and so do you.

LYSANDER. Demetrius, I will keep my word with thee.

DEMETRIUS. I would I had your bond; for I perceive A weak bond holds you; I’ll not trust your word.

LYSANDER. What, should I hurt her, strike her, kill her dead? Although I hate her, I’ll not harm her so.

HERMIA. What, can you do me greater harm than hate? Hate me? Wherefore? O me! what news, my love? Am not I Hermia? Are not you Lysander? I am as fair now as I was erewhile. Since night you lov’d me; yet since night you left me. Why then, you left me—O, the gods forbid!— In earnest, shall I say?

LYSANDER. Ay, by my life; And never did desire to see thee more. Therefore be out of hope, of question, of doubt; Be certain, nothing truer; ’tis no jest That I do hate thee and love Helena.

HERMIA. O me! You juggler! You cankerblossom! You thief of love! What! have you come by night And stol’n my love’s heart from him?

HELENA. Fine, i’ faith! Have you no modesty, no maiden shame, No touch of bashfulness? What, will you tear Impatient answers from my gentle tongue? Fie, fie, you counterfeit, you puppet, you!

HERMIA. Puppet! Why so? Ay, that way goes the game. Now I perceive that she hath made compare Between our statures; she hath urg’d her height; And with her personage, her tall personage, Her height, forsooth, she hath prevail’d with him. And are you grown so high in his esteem Because I am so dwarfish and so low? How low am I, thou painted maypole? Speak, How low am I? I am not yet so low But that my nails can reach unto thine eyes.

HELENA. I pray you, though you mock me, gentlemen, Let her not hurt me. I was never curst; I have no gift at all in shrewishness; I am a right maid for my cowardice; Let her not strike me. You perhaps may think, Because she is something lower than myself, That I can match her.

HERMIA. Lower! Hark, again.

HELENA. Good Hermia, do not be so bitter with me. I evermore did love you, Hermia, Did ever keep your counsels, never wrong’d you, Save that, in love unto Demetrius, I told him of your stealth unto this wood. He follow’d you; for love I follow’d him; But he hath chid me hence, and threaten’d me To strike me, spurn me, nay, to kill me too: And now, so you will let me quiet go, To Athens will I bear my folly back, And follow you no further. Let me go: You see how simple and how fond I am.

HERMIA. Why, get you gone. Who is’t that hinders you?

HELENA. A foolish heart that I leave here behind.

HERMIA. What! with Lysander?

HELENA. With Demetrius.

LYSANDER. Be not afraid; she shall not harm thee, Helena.

DEMETRIUS. No, sir, she shall not, though you take her part.

HELENA. O, when she’s angry, she is keen and shrewd. She was a vixen when she went to school, And though she be but little, she is fierce.

HERMIA. Little again! Nothing but low and little? Why will you suffer her to flout me thus? Let me come to her.

LYSANDER. Get you gone, you dwarf; You minimus, of hind’ring knot-grass made; You bead, you acorn.

DEMETRIUS. You are too officious In her behalf that scorns your services. Let her alone. Speak not of Helena; Take not her part; for if thou dost intend Never so little show of love to her, Thou shalt aby it.

LYSANDER. Now she holds me not. Now follow, if thou dar’st, to try whose right, Of thine or mine, is most in Helena.

DEMETRIUS. Follow! Nay, I’ll go with thee, cheek by jole.

[Exeunt Lysander and Demetrius.]

HERMIA. You, mistress, all this coil is long of you. Nay, go not back.

HELENA. I will not trust you, I, Nor longer stay in your curst company. Your hands than mine are quicker for a fray. My legs are longer though, to run away.

HERMIA. I am amaz’d, and know not what to say.

[Exit, pursuing Helena.]

OBERON. This is thy negligence: still thou mistak’st, Or else commit’st thy knaveries willfully.

PUCK. Believe me, king of shadows, I mistook. Did not you tell me I should know the man By the Athenian garments he had on? And so far blameless proves my enterprise That I have ’nointed an Athenian’s eyes: And so far am I glad it so did sort, As this their jangling I esteem a sport.

OBERON. Thou seest these lovers seek a place to fight. Hie therefore, Robin, overcast the night; The starry welkin cover thou anon With drooping fog, as black as Acheron, And lead these testy rivals so astray As one come not within another’s way. Like to Lysander sometime frame thy tongue, Then stir Demetrius up with bitter wrong; And sometime rail thou like Demetrius. And from each other look thou lead them thus, Till o’er their brows death-counterfeiting sleep With leaden legs and batty wings doth creep. Then crush this herb into Lysander’s eye, Whose liquor hath this virtuous property, To take from thence all error with his might And make his eyeballs roll with wonted sight. When they next wake, all this derision Shall seem a dream and fruitless vision; And back to Athens shall the lovers wend, With league whose date till death shall never end. Whiles I in this affair do thee employ, I’ll to my queen, and beg her Indian boy; And then I will her charmèd eye release From monster’s view, and all things shall be peace.

PUCK. My fairy lord, this must be done with haste, For night’s swift dragons cut the clouds full fast; And yonder shines Aurora’s harbinger, At whose approach, ghosts wandering here and there Troop home to churchyards. Damnèd spirits all, That in cross-ways and floods have burial, Already to their wormy beds are gone; For fear lest day should look their shames upon, They wilfully themselves exile from light, And must for aye consort with black-brow’d night.

OBERON. But we are spirits of another sort: I with the morning’s love have oft made sport; And, like a forester, the groves may tread Even till the eastern gate, all fiery-red, Opening on Neptune with fair blessèd beams, Turns into yellow gold his salt-green streams. But, notwithstanding, haste, make no delay. We may effect this business yet ere day.

[Exit Oberon.]

PUCK. Up and down, up and down, I will lead them up and down. I am fear’d in field and town. Goblin, lead them up and down. Here comes one.

Enter Lysander.

LYSANDER. Where art thou, proud Demetrius? Speak thou now.

PUCK. Here, villain, drawn and ready. Where art thou?

LYSANDER. I will be with thee straight.

PUCK. Follow me then to plainer ground.

[Exit Lysander as following the voice.]

Enter Demetrius.

DEMETRIUS. Lysander, speak again. Thou runaway, thou coward, art thou fled? Speak. In some bush? Where dost thou hide thy head?

PUCK. Thou coward, art thou bragging to the stars, Telling the bushes that thou look’st for wars, And wilt not come? Come, recreant, come, thou child! I’ll whip thee with a rod. He is defil’d That draws a sword on thee.

DEMETRIUS. Yea, art thou there?

PUCK. Follow my voice; we’ll try no manhood here.

LYSANDER. He goes before me, and still dares me on; When I come where he calls, then he is gone. The villain is much lighter-heel’d than I: I follow’d fast, but faster he did fly, That fallen am I in dark uneven way, And here will rest me. Come, thou gentle day! [Lies down.] For if but once thou show me thy grey light, I’ll find Demetrius, and revenge this spite.

Enter Puck and Demetrius.

PUCK. Ho, ho, ho! Coward, why com’st thou not?

DEMETRIUS. Abide me, if thou dar’st; for well I wot Thou runn’st before me, shifting every place, And dar’st not stand, nor look me in the face. Where art thou?

PUCK. Come hither; I am here.

DEMETRIUS. Nay, then, thou mock’st me. Thou shalt buy this dear If ever I thy face by daylight see: Now go thy way. Faintness constraineth me To measure out my length on this cold bed. By day’s approach look to be visited.

[Lies down and sleeps.]

HELENA. O weary night, O long and tedious night, Abate thy hours! Shine, comforts, from the east, That I may back to Athens by daylight, From these that my poor company detest. And sleep, that sometimes shuts up sorrow’s eye, Steal me awhile from mine own company.

PUCK. Yet but three? Come one more. Two of both kinds makes up four. Here she comes, curst and sad. Cupid is a knavish lad Thus to make poor females mad.

HERMIA. Never so weary, never so in woe, Bedabbled with the dew, and torn with briers, I can no further crawl, no further go; My legs can keep no pace with my desires. Here will I rest me till the break of day. Heavens shield Lysander, if they mean a fray!

PUCK. On the ground Sleep sound. I’ll apply To your eye, Gentle lover, remedy.

[Squeezing the juice on Lysander’s eye.]

When thou wak’st, Thou tak’st True delight In the sight Of thy former lady’s eye. And the country proverb known, That every man should take his own, In your waking shall be shown: Jack shall have Jill; Nought shall go ill; The man shall have his mare again, and all shall be well.

SCENE I. The Wood

Lysander, Demetrius, Helena and Hermia still asleep.

Enter Titania and Bottom; Peaseblossom, Cobweb, Moth, Mustardseed and other Fairies attending; Oberon behind, unseen.

TITANIA. Come, sit thee down upon this flowery bed, While I thy amiable cheeks do coy, And stick musk-roses in thy sleek smooth head, And kiss thy fair large ears, my gentle joy.

BOTTOM. Where’s Peaseblossom?

BOTTOM. Scratch my head, Peaseblossom. Where’s Monsieur Cobweb?

COBWEB. Ready.

BOTTOM. Monsieur Cobweb; good monsieur, get you your weapons in your hand and kill me a red-hipped humble-bee on the top of a thistle; and, good monsieur, bring me the honey-bag. Do not fret yourself too much in the action, monsieur; and, good monsieur, have a care the honey-bag break not; I would be loath to have you overflown with a honey-bag, signior. Where’s Monsieur Mustardseed?

MUSTARDSEED. Ready.

BOTTOM. Give me your neaf, Monsieur Mustardseed. Pray you, leave your courtesy, good monsieur.

MUSTARDSEED. What’s your will?

BOTTOM. Nothing, good monsieur, but to help Cavalery Cobweb to scratch. I must to the barber’s, monsieur, for methinks I am marvellous hairy about the face; and I am such a tender ass, if my hair do but tickle me, I must scratch.

TITANIA. What, wilt thou hear some music, my sweet love?

BOTTOM. I have a reasonable good ear in music. Let us have the tongs and the bones.

TITANIA. Or say, sweet love, what thou desirest to eat.

BOTTOM. Truly, a peck of provender; I could munch your good dry oats. Methinks I have a great desire to a bottle of hay: good hay, sweet hay, hath no fellow.

TITANIA. I have a venturous fairy that shall seek The squirrel’s hoard, and fetch thee new nuts.

BOTTOM. I had rather have a handful or two of dried peas. But, I pray you, let none of your people stir me; I have an exposition of sleep come upon me.

TITANIA. Sleep thou, and I will wind thee in my arms. Fairies, be gone, and be all ways away. So doth the woodbine the sweet honeysuckle Gently entwist, the female ivy so Enrings the barky fingers of the elm. O, how I love thee! How I dote on thee!

Oberon advances. Enter Puck.

OBERON. Welcome, good Robin. Seest thou this sweet sight? Her dotage now I do begin to pity. For, meeting her of late behind the wood, Seeking sweet favours for this hateful fool, I did upbraid her and fall out with her: For she his hairy temples then had rounded With coronet of fresh and fragrant flowers; And that same dew, which sometime on the buds Was wont to swell like round and orient pearls, Stood now within the pretty flouriets’ eyes, Like tears that did their own disgrace bewail. When I had at my pleasure taunted her, And she in mild terms begg’d my patience, I then did ask of her her changeling child; Which straight she gave me, and her fairy sent To bear him to my bower in fairyland. And now I have the boy, I will undo This hateful imperfection of her eyes. And, gentle Puck, take this transformèd scalp From off the head of this Athenian swain, That he awaking when the other do, May all to Athens back again repair, And think no more of this night’s accidents But as the fierce vexation of a dream. But first I will release the Fairy Queen.

[Touching her eyes with an herb.]

Be as thou wast wont to be; See as thou was wont to see. Dian’s bud o’er Cupid’s flower Hath such force and blessed power. Now, my Titania, wake you, my sweet queen.

TITANIA. My Oberon, what visions have I seen! Methought I was enamour’d of an ass.

OBERON. There lies your love.

TITANIA. How came these things to pass? O, how mine eyes do loathe his visage now!

OBERON. Silence awhile.—Robin, take off this head. Titania, music call; and strike more dead Than common sleep, of all these five the sense.

TITANIA. Music, ho, music, such as charmeth sleep.

PUCK. Now when thou wak’st, with thine own fool’s eyes peep.

OBERON. Sound, music.

[Still music.]

Come, my queen, take hands with me, And rock the ground whereon these sleepers be. Now thou and I are new in amity, And will tomorrow midnight solemnly Dance in Duke Theseus’ house triumphantly, And bless it to all fair prosperity: There shall the pairs of faithful lovers be Wedded, with Theseus, all in jollity.

PUCK. Fairy king, attend and mark. I do hear the morning lark.

OBERON. Then, my queen, in silence sad, Trip we after night’s shade. We the globe can compass soon, Swifter than the wand’ring moon.

TITANIA. Come, my lord, and in our flight, Tell me how it came this night That I sleeping here was found With these mortals on the ground.

[Exeunt. Horns sound within.]

Enter Theseus, Hippolyta, Egeus and Train.

THESEUS. Go, one of you, find out the forester; For now our observation is perform’d; And since we have the vaward of the day, My love shall hear the music of my hounds. Uncouple in the western valley; let them go. Dispatch I say, and find the forester.

We will, fair queen, up to the mountain’s top, And mark the musical confusion Of hounds and echo in conjunction.

HIPPOLYTA. I was with Hercules and Cadmus once, When in a wood of Crete they bay’d the bear With hounds of Sparta. Never did I hear Such gallant chiding; for, besides the groves, The skies, the fountains, every region near Seem’d all one mutual cry. I never heard So musical a discord, such sweet thunder.

THESEUS. My hounds are bred out of the Spartan kind, So flew’d, so sanded; and their heads are hung With ears that sweep away the morning dew; Crook-knee’d and dewlap’d like Thessalian bulls; Slow in pursuit, but match’d in mouth like bells, Each under each. A cry more tuneable Was never holla’d to, nor cheer’d with horn, In Crete, in Sparta, nor in Thessaly. Judge when you hear.—But, soft, what nymphs are these?

EGEUS. My lord, this is my daughter here asleep, And this Lysander; this Demetrius is; This Helena, old Nedar’s Helena: I wonder of their being here together.

THESEUS. No doubt they rose up early to observe The rite of May; and, hearing our intent, Came here in grace of our solemnity. But speak, Egeus; is not this the day That Hermia should give answer of her choice?

EGEUS. It is, my lord.

THESEUS. Go, bid the huntsmen wake them with their horns.

Horns, and shout within. Demetrius, Lysander, Hermia and Helena wake and start up.

Good morrow, friends. Saint Valentine is past. Begin these wood-birds but to couple now?

LYSANDER. Pardon, my lord.

He and the rest kneel to Theseus.

THESEUS. I pray you all, stand up. I know you two are rival enemies. How comes this gentle concord in the world, That hatred is so far from jealousy To sleep by hate, and fear no enmity?

LYSANDER. My lord, I shall reply amazedly, Half sleep, half waking; but as yet, I swear, I cannot truly say how I came here. But, as I think (for truly would I speak) And now I do bethink me, so it is: I came with Hermia hither. Our intent Was to be gone from Athens, where we might be Without the peril of the Athenian law.

EGEUS. Enough, enough, my lord; you have enough. I beg the law, the law upon his head. They would have stol’n away, they would, Demetrius, Thereby to have defeated you and me: You of your wife, and me of my consent, Of my consent that she should be your wife.

DEMETRIUS. My lord, fair Helen told me of their stealth, Of this their purpose hither to this wood; And I in fury hither follow’d them, Fair Helena in fancy following me. But, my good lord, I wot not by what power, (But by some power it is) my love to Hermia, Melted as the snow, seems to me now As the remembrance of an idle gaud Which in my childhood I did dote upon; And all the faith, the virtue of my heart, The object and the pleasure of mine eye, Is only Helena. To her, my lord, Was I betroth’d ere I saw Hermia. But like a sickness did I loathe this food. But, as in health, come to my natural taste, Now I do wish it, love it, long for it, And will for evermore be true to it.

THESEUS. Fair lovers, you are fortunately met. Of this discourse we more will hear anon. Egeus, I will overbear your will; For in the temple, by and by with us, These couples shall eternally be knit. And, for the morning now is something worn, Our purpos’d hunting shall be set aside. Away with us to Athens. Three and three, We’ll hold a feast in great solemnity. Come, Hippolyta.

[Exeunt Theseus, Hippolyta, Egeus and Train.]

DEMETRIUS. These things seem small and undistinguishable, Like far-off mountains turnèd into clouds.

HERMIA. Methinks I see these things with parted eye, When everything seems double.

HELENA. So methinks. And I have found Demetrius like a jewel, Mine own, and not mine own.

DEMETRIUS. Are you sure That we are awake? It seems to me That yet we sleep, we dream. Do not you think The Duke was here, and bid us follow him?

HERMIA. Yea, and my father.

HELENA. And Hippolyta.

LYSANDER. And he did bid us follow to the temple.

DEMETRIUS. Why, then, we are awake: let’s follow him, And by the way let us recount our dreams.

BOTTOM. [Waking.] When my cue comes, call me, and I will answer. My next is ‘Most fair Pyramus.’ Heigh-ho! Peter Quince! Flute, the bellows-mender! Snout, the tinker! Starveling! God’s my life! Stol’n hence, and left me asleep! I have had a most rare vision. I have had a dream, past the wit of man to say what dream it was. Man is but an ass if he go about to expound this dream. Methought I was—there is no man can tell what. Methought I was, and methought I had—but man is but a patched fool if he will offer to say what methought I had. The eye of man hath not heard, the ear of man hath not seen, man’s hand is not able to taste, his tongue to conceive, nor his heart to report, what my dream was. I will get Peter Quince to write a ballad of this dream: it shall be called ‘Bottom’s Dream’, because it hath no bottom; and I will sing it in the latter end of a play, before the Duke. Peradventure, to make it the more gracious, I shall sing it at her death.

SCENE II. Athens. A Room in Quince’s House

Enter Quince, Flute, Snout and Starveling.

QUINCE. Have you sent to Bottom’s house? Is he come home yet?

STARVELING. He cannot be heard of. Out of doubt he is transported.

FLUTE. If he come not, then the play is marred. It goes not forward, doth it?

QUINCE. It is not possible. You have not a man in all Athens able to discharge Pyramus but he.

FLUTE. No, he hath simply the best wit of any handicraft man in Athens.

QUINCE. Yea, and the best person too, and he is a very paramour for a sweet voice.

FLUTE. You must say paragon. A paramour is, God bless us, a thing of naught.

Enter Snug.

SNUG Masters, the Duke is coming from the temple, and there is two or three lords and ladies more married. If our sport had gone forward, we had all been made men.

FLUTE. O sweet bully Bottom! Thus hath he lost sixpence a day during his life; he could not have ’scaped sixpence a day. An the Duke had not given him sixpence a day for playing Pyramus, I’ll be hanged. He would have deserved it: sixpence a day in Pyramus, or nothing.

Enter Bottom.

BOTTOM. Where are these lads? Where are these hearts?

QUINCE. Bottom! O most courageous day! O most happy hour!

BOTTOM. Masters, I am to discourse wonders: but ask me not what; for if I tell you, I am not true Athenian. I will tell you everything, right as it fell out.

QUINCE. Let us hear, sweet Bottom.

BOTTOM. Not a word of me. All that I will tell you is, that the Duke hath dined. Get your apparel together, good strings to your beards, new ribbons to your pumps; meet presently at the palace; every man look o’er his part. For the short and the long is, our play is preferred. In any case, let Thisbe have clean linen; and let not him that plays the lion pare his nails, for they shall hang out for the lion’s claws. And most dear actors, eat no onions nor garlick, for we are to utter sweet breath; and I do not doubt but to hear them say it is a sweet comedy. No more words. Away! Go, away!

SCENE I. Athens. An Apartment in the Palace of Theseus

Enter Theseus, Hippolyta, Philostrate, Lords and Attendants.

HIPPOLYTA. ’Tis strange, my Theseus, that these lovers speak of.

THESEUS. More strange than true. I never may believe These antique fables, nor these fairy toys. Lovers and madmen have such seething brains, Such shaping fantasies, that apprehend More than cool reason ever comprehends. The lunatic, the lover, and the poet Are of imagination all compact: One sees more devils than vast hell can hold; That is the madman: the lover, all as frantic, Sees Helen’s beauty in a brow of Egypt: The poet’s eye, in a fine frenzy rolling, Doth glance from heaven to earth, from earth to heaven; And as imagination bodies forth The forms of things unknown, the poet’s pen Turns them to shapes, and gives to airy nothing A local habitation and a name. Such tricks hath strong imagination, That if it would but apprehend some joy, It comprehends some bringer of that joy. Or in the night, imagining some fear, How easy is a bush supposed a bear?

HIPPOLYTA. But all the story of the night told over, And all their minds transfigur’d so together, More witnesseth than fancy’s images, And grows to something of great constancy; But, howsoever, strange and admirable.

Enter lovers: Lysander, Demetrius, Hermia and Helena.

THESEUS. Here come the lovers, full of joy and mirth. Joy, gentle friends, joy and fresh days of love Accompany your hearts!

LYSANDER. More than to us Wait in your royal walks, your board, your bed!

THESEUS. Come now; what masques, what dances shall we have, To wear away this long age of three hours Between our after-supper and bed-time? Where is our usual manager of mirth? What revels are in hand? Is there no play To ease the anguish of a torturing hour? Call Philostrate.

PHILOSTRATE. Here, mighty Theseus.

THESEUS. Say, what abridgment have you for this evening? What masque? What music? How shall we beguile The lazy time, if not with some delight?

PHILOSTRATE. There is a brief how many sports are ripe. Make choice of which your Highness will see first.

[Giving a paper.]

THESEUS. [Reads] ‘The battle with the Centaurs, to be sung By an Athenian eunuch to the harp.’ We’ll none of that. That have I told my love In glory of my kinsman Hercules. ‘The riot of the tipsy Bacchanals, Tearing the Thracian singer in their rage?’ That is an old device, and it was play’d When I from Thebes came last a conqueror. ‘The thrice three Muses mourning for the death Of learning, late deceas’d in beggary.’ That is some satire, keen and critical, Not sorting with a nuptial ceremony. ‘A tedious brief scene of young Pyramus And his love Thisbe; very tragical mirth.’ Merry and tragical? Tedious and brief? That is hot ice and wondrous strange snow. How shall we find the concord of this discord?

PHILOSTRATE. A play there is, my lord, some ten words long, Which is as brief as I have known a play; But by ten words, my lord, it is too long, Which makes it tedious. For in all the play There is not one word apt, one player fitted. And tragical, my noble lord, it is. For Pyramus therein doth kill himself, Which, when I saw rehears’d, I must confess, Made mine eyes water; but more merry tears The passion of loud laughter never shed.

THESEUS. What are they that do play it?

PHILOSTRATE. Hard-handed men that work in Athens here, Which never labour’d in their minds till now; And now have toil’d their unbreath’d memories With this same play against your nuptial.

THESEUS. And we will hear it.

PHILOSTRATE. No, my noble lord, It is not for you: I have heard it over, And it is nothing, nothing in the world; Unless you can find sport in their intents, Extremely stretch’d and conn’d with cruel pain To do you service.

THESEUS. I will hear that play; For never anything can be amiss When simpleness and duty tender it. Go, bring them in: and take your places, ladies.

HIPPOLYTA. I love not to see wretchedness o’ercharged, And duty in his service perishing.

THESEUS. Why, gentle sweet, you shall see no such thing.

HIPPOLYTA. He says they can do nothing in this kind.

THESEUS. The kinder we, to give them thanks for nothing. Our sport shall be to take what they mistake: And what poor duty cannot do, noble respect Takes it in might, not merit. Where I have come, great clerks have purposed To greet me with premeditated welcomes; Where I have seen them shiver and look pale, Make periods in the midst of sentences, Throttle their practis’d accent in their fears, And, in conclusion, dumbly have broke off, Not paying me a welcome. Trust me, sweet, Out of this silence yet I pick’d a welcome; And in the modesty of fearful duty I read as much as from the rattling tongue Of saucy and audacious eloquence. Love, therefore, and tongue-tied simplicity In least speak most to my capacity.

Enter Philostrate.

PHILOSTRATE. So please your grace, the Prologue is address’d.

THESEUS. Let him approach.

Flourish of trumpets. Enter the Prologue.

PROLOGUE If we offend, it is with our good will. That you should think, we come not to offend, But with good will. To show our simple skill, That is the true beginning of our end. Consider then, we come but in despite. We do not come, as minding to content you, Our true intent is. All for your delight We are not here. That you should here repent you, The actors are at hand, and, by their show, You shall know all that you are like to know.

THESEUS. This fellow doth not stand upon points.

LYSANDER. He hath rid his prologue like a rough colt; he knows not the stop. A good moral, my lord: it is not enough to speak, but to speak true.

HIPPOLYTA. Indeed he hath played on this prologue like a child on a recorder; a sound, but not in government.

THESEUS. His speech was like a tangled chain; nothing impaired, but all disordered. Who is next?

Enter Pyramus and Thisbe, Wall, Moonshine and Lion as in dumb show.

PROLOGUE Gentles, perchance you wonder at this show; But wonder on, till truth make all things plain. This man is Pyramus, if you would know; This beauteous lady Thisbe is certain. This man, with lime and rough-cast, doth present Wall, that vile wall which did these lovers sunder; And through Wall’s chink, poor souls, they are content To whisper, at the which let no man wonder. This man, with lantern, dog, and bush of thorn, Presenteth Moonshine, for, if you will know, By moonshine did these lovers think no scorn To meet at Ninus’ tomb, there, there to woo. This grisly beast (which Lion hight by name) The trusty Thisbe, coming first by night, Did scare away, or rather did affright; And as she fled, her mantle she did fall; Which Lion vile with bloody mouth did stain. Anon comes Pyramus, sweet youth, and tall, And finds his trusty Thisbe’s mantle slain; Whereat with blade, with bloody blameful blade, He bravely broach’d his boiling bloody breast; And Thisbe, tarrying in mulberry shade, His dagger drew, and died. For all the rest, Let Lion, Moonshine, Wall, and lovers twain, At large discourse while here they do remain.

[Exeunt Prologue, Pyramus, Thisbe, Lion and Moonshine.]

THESEUS. I wonder if the lion be to speak.

DEMETRIUS. No wonder, my lord. One lion may, when many asses do.

WALL. In this same interlude it doth befall That I, one Snout by name, present a wall: And such a wall as I would have you think That had in it a crannied hole or chink, Through which the lovers, Pyramus and Thisbe, Did whisper often very secretly. This loam, this rough-cast, and this stone, doth show That I am that same wall; the truth is so: And this the cranny is, right and sinister, Through which the fearful lovers are to whisper.

THESEUS. Would you desire lime and hair to speak better?

DEMETRIUS. It is the wittiest partition that ever I heard discourse, my lord.

THESEUS. Pyramus draws near the wall; silence.

Enter Pyramus.

PYRAMUS. O grim-look’d night! O night with hue so black! O night, which ever art when day is not! O night, O night, alack, alack, alack, I fear my Thisbe’s promise is forgot! And thou, O wall, O sweet, O lovely wall, That stand’st between her father’s ground and mine; Thou wall, O wall, O sweet and lovely wall, Show me thy chink, to blink through with mine eyne.

[Wall holds up his fingers.]

Thanks, courteous wall: Jove shield thee well for this! But what see I? No Thisbe do I see. O wicked wall, through whom I see no bliss, Curs’d be thy stones for thus deceiving me!

THESEUS. The wall, methinks, being sensible, should curse again.

PYRAMUS. No, in truth, sir, he should not. ‘Deceiving me’ is Thisbe’s cue: she is to enter now, and I am to spy her through the wall. You shall see it will fall pat as I told you. Yonder she comes.

Enter Thisbe.

THISBE. O wall, full often hast thou heard my moans, For parting my fair Pyramus and me. My cherry lips have often kiss’d thy stones, Thy stones with lime and hair knit up in thee.

PYRAMUS. I see a voice; now will I to the chink, To spy an I can hear my Thisbe’s face. Thisbe?

THISBE. My love thou art, my love I think.

PYRAMUS. Think what thou wilt, I am thy lover’s grace; And like Limander am I trusty still.

THISBE. And I like Helen, till the fates me kill.

PYRAMUS. Not Shafalus to Procrus was so true.

THISBE. As Shafalus to Procrus, I to you.

PYRAMUS. O kiss me through the hole of this vile wall.

THISBE. I kiss the wall’s hole, not your lips at all.

PYRAMUS. Wilt thou at Ninny’s tomb meet me straightway?

THISBE. ’Tide life, ’tide death, I come without delay.

WALL. Thus have I, Wall, my part discharged so; And, being done, thus Wall away doth go.

[Exeunt Wall, Pyramus and Thisbe.]

THESEUS. Now is the mural down between the two neighbours.

DEMETRIUS. No remedy, my lord, when walls are so wilful to hear without warning.

HIPPOLYTA. This is the silliest stuff that ever I heard.

THESEUS. The best in this kind are but shadows; and the worst are no worse, if imagination amend them.

HIPPOLYTA. It must be your imagination then, and not theirs.

THESEUS. If we imagine no worse of them than they of themselves, they may pass for excellent men. Here come two noble beasts in, a man and a lion.

Enter Lion and Moonshine.

LION. You, ladies, you, whose gentle hearts do fear The smallest monstrous mouse that creeps on floor, May now, perchance, both quake and tremble here, When lion rough in wildest rage doth roar. Then know that I, one Snug the joiner, am A lion fell, nor else no lion’s dam; For if I should as lion come in strife Into this place, ’twere pity on my life.

THESEUS. A very gentle beast, and of a good conscience.

DEMETRIUS. The very best at a beast, my lord, that e’er I saw.

LYSANDER. This lion is a very fox for his valour.

THESEUS. True; and a goose for his discretion.

DEMETRIUS. Not so, my lord, for his valour cannot carry his discretion, and the fox carries the goose.

THESEUS. His discretion, I am sure, cannot carry his valour; for the goose carries not the fox. It is well; leave it to his discretion, and let us listen to the moon.

MOONSHINE. This lanthorn doth the hornèd moon present.

DEMETRIUS. He should have worn the horns on his head.

THESEUS. He is no crescent, and his horns are invisible within the circumference.

MOONSHINE. This lanthorn doth the hornèd moon present; Myself the man i’ the moon do seem to be.

THESEUS. This is the greatest error of all the rest; the man should be put into the lantern. How is it else the man i’ the moon?

DEMETRIUS. He dares not come there for the candle, for you see, it is already in snuff.

HIPPOLYTA. I am aweary of this moon. Would he would change!

THESEUS. It appears by his small light of discretion that he is in the wane; but yet, in courtesy, in all reason, we must stay the time.

LYSANDER. Proceed, Moon.

MOON. All that I have to say, is to tell you that the lantern is the moon; I the man i’ the moon; this thorn-bush my thorn-bush; and this dog my dog.

DEMETRIUS. Why, all these should be in the lantern, for all these are in the moon. But silence; here comes Thisbe.

THISBE. This is old Ninny’s tomb. Where is my love?

LION. Oh!

[The Lion roars, Thisbe runs off.]

DEMETRIUS. Well roared, Lion.

THESEUS. Well run, Thisbe.

HIPPOLYTA. Well shone, Moon. Truly, the moon shines with a good grace.

[The Lion tears Thisbe’s mantle, and exit.]

THESEUS. Well moused, Lion.

DEMETRIUS. And then came Pyramus.

LYSANDER. And so the lion vanished.

PYRAMUS. Sweet Moon, I thank thee for thy sunny beams; I thank thee, Moon, for shining now so bright; For, by thy gracious golden, glittering gleams, I trust to take of truest Thisbe sight. But stay! O spite! But mark, poor knight, What dreadful dole is here! Eyes, do you see? How can it be? O dainty duck! O dear! Thy mantle good, What, stained with blood? Approach, ye Furies fell! O Fates, come, come; Cut thread and thrum; Quail, rush, conclude, and quell!

THESEUS. This passion, and the death of a dear friend, would go near to make a man look sad.

HIPPOLYTA. Beshrew my heart, but I pity the man.

PYRAMUS. O wherefore, Nature, didst thou lions frame, Since lion vile hath here deflower’d my dear? Which is—no, no—which was the fairest dame That liv’d, that lov’d, that lik’d, that look’d with cheer. Come, tears, confound! Out, sword, and wound The pap of Pyramus; Ay, that left pap, Where heart doth hop: Thus die I, thus, thus, thus. Now am I dead, Now am I fled; My soul is in the sky. Tongue, lose thy light! Moon, take thy flight! Now die, die, die, die, die.

[Dies. Exit Moonshine.]

DEMETRIUS. No die, but an ace, for him; for he is but one.

LYSANDER. Less than an ace, man; for he is dead, he is nothing.

THESEUS. With the help of a surgeon he might yet recover and prove an ass.

HIPPOLYTA. How chance Moonshine is gone before Thisbe comes back and finds her lover?

THESEUS. She will find him by starlight.

Here she comes, and her passion ends the play.

HIPPOLYTA. Methinks she should not use a long one for such a Pyramus. I hope she will be brief.

DEMETRIUS. A mote will turn the balance, which Pyramus, which Thisbe, is the better: he for a man, God warrant us; she for a woman, God bless us!

LYSANDER. She hath spied him already with those sweet eyes.

DEMETRIUS. And thus she means, videlicet—

THISBE. Asleep, my love? What, dead, my dove? O Pyramus, arise, Speak, speak. Quite dumb? Dead, dead? A tomb Must cover thy sweet eyes. These lily lips, This cherry nose, These yellow cowslip cheeks, Are gone, are gone! Lovers, make moan; His eyes were green as leeks. O Sisters Three, Come, come to me, With hands as pale as milk; Lay them in gore, Since you have shore With shears his thread of silk. Tongue, not a word: Come, trusty sword, Come, blade, my breast imbrue; And farewell, friends. Thus Thisbe ends. Adieu, adieu, adieu.

THESEUS. Moonshine and Lion are left to bury the dead.

DEMETRIUS. Ay, and Wall too.

BOTTOM. No, I assure you; the wall is down that parted their fathers. Will it please you to see the epilogue, or to hear a Bergomask dance between two of our company?

THESEUS. No epilogue, I pray you; for your play needs no excuse. Never excuse; for when the players are all dead there need none to be blamed. Marry, if he that writ it had played Pyramus, and hanged himself in Thisbe’s garter, it would have been a fine tragedy; and so it is, truly; and very notably discharged. But come, your Bergomask; let your epilogue alone.

[Here a dance of Clowns.]

The iron tongue of midnight hath told twelve. Lovers, to bed; ’tis almost fairy time. I fear we shall outsleep the coming morn As much as we this night have overwatch’d. This palpable-gross play hath well beguil’d The heavy gait of night. Sweet friends, to bed. A fortnight hold we this solemnity In nightly revels and new jollity.

PUCK. Now the hungry lion roars, And the wolf behowls the moon; Whilst the heavy ploughman snores, All with weary task fordone. Now the wasted brands do glow, Whilst the screech-owl, screeching loud, Puts the wretch that lies in woe In remembrance of a shroud. Now it is the time of night That the graves, all gaping wide, Every one lets forth his sprite, In the church-way paths to glide. And we fairies, that do run By the triple Hecate’s team From the presence of the sun, Following darkness like a dream, Now are frolic; not a mouse Shall disturb this hallow’d house. I am sent with broom before, To sweep the dust behind the door.

Enter Oberon and Titania with their Train.

OBERON. Through the house give glimmering light, By the dead and drowsy fire. Every elf and fairy sprite Hop as light as bird from brier, And this ditty after me, Sing and dance it trippingly.

TITANIA. First rehearse your song by rote, To each word a warbling note; Hand in hand, with fairy grace, Will we sing, and bless this place.

[Song and Dance.]

OBERON. Now, until the break of day, Through this house each fairy stray. To the best bride-bed will we, Which by us shall blessèd be; And the issue there create Ever shall be fortunate. So shall all the couples three Ever true in loving be; And the blots of Nature’s hand Shall not in their issue stand: Never mole, hare-lip, nor scar, Nor mark prodigious, such as are Despised in nativity, Shall upon their children be. With this field-dew consecrate, Every fairy take his gait, And each several chamber bless, Through this palace, with sweet peace; And the owner of it blest. Ever shall it in safety rest, Trip away. Make no stay; Meet me all by break of day.

[Exeunt Oberon, Titania and Train.]

PUCK. If we shadows have offended, Think but this, and all is mended, That you have but slumber’d here While these visions did appear. And this weak and idle theme, No more yielding but a dream, Gentles, do not reprehend. If you pardon, we will mend. And, as I am an honest Puck, If we have unearnèd luck Now to ’scape the serpent’s tongue, We will make amends ere long; Else the Puck a liar call. So, good night unto you all. Give me your hands, if we be friends, And Robin shall restore amends.

MUCH ADO ABOUT NOTHING

Scene I. Before Leonato’s House.

Scene II. A room in Leonato’s house.

Scene III. Another room in Leonato’s house.

Scene I. A hall in Leonato’s house.

Scene II. Another room in Leonato’s house.

Scene III. Leonato’s Garden.

Scene I. Leonato’s Garden.

Scene II. A Room in Leonato’s House.

Scene III. A Street.

Scene IV. A Room in Leonato’s House.

Scene V. Another Room in Leonato’s House.

Scene I. The Inside of a Church.

Scene II. A Prison.

Scene II. Leonato’s Garden.

Scene III. The Inside of a Church.

DON PEDRO, Prince of Arragon. DON JOHN, his bastard Brother. CLAUDIO, a young Lord of Florence. BENEDICK, a young Lord of Padua. LEONATO, Governor of Messina. ANTONIO, his Brother. BALTHASAR, Servant to Don Pedro. BORACHIO, follower of Don John. CONRADE, follower of Don John. DOGBERRY, a Constable. VERGES, a Headborough. FRIAR FRANCIS. A Sexton. A Boy.

HERO, Daughter to Leonato. BEATRICE, Niece to Leonato. MARGARET, Waiting gentlewoman attending on Hero. URSULA, Waiting gentlewoman attending on Hero.

Messengers, Watch, Attendants, &c.

SCENE. Messina.

SCENE I. Before Leonato’s House.

Enter Leonato, Hero, Beatrice and others, with a Messenger.

LEONATO. I learn in this letter that Don Pedro of Arragon comes this night to Messina.

MESSENGER. He is very near by this: he was not three leagues off when I left him.

LEONATO. How many gentlemen have you lost in this action?

MESSENGER. But few of any sort, and none of name.

LEONATO. A victory is twice itself when the achiever brings home full numbers. I find here that Don Pedro hath bestowed much honour on a young Florentine called Claudio.

MESSENGER. Much deserved on his part, and equally remembered by Don Pedro. He hath borne himself beyond the promise of his age, doing in the figure of a lamb the feats of a lion: he hath indeed better bettered expectation than you must expect of me to tell you how.

LEONATO. He hath an uncle here in Messina will be very much glad of it.

MESSENGER. I have already delivered him letters, and there appears much joy in him; even so much that joy could not show itself modest enough without a badge of bitterness.

LEONATO. Did he break out into tears?

MESSENGER. In great measure.

LEONATO. A kind overflow of kindness. There are no faces truer than those that are so washed; how much better is it to weep at joy than to joy at weeping!

BEATRICE. I pray you, is Signior Mountanto returned from the wars or no?

MESSENGER. I know none of that name, lady: there was none such in the army of any sort.

LEONATO. What is he that you ask for, niece?

HERO. My cousin means Signior Benedick of Padua.

MESSENGER. O! he is returned, and as pleasant as ever he was.

BEATRICE. He set up his bills here in Messina and challenged Cupid at the flight; and my uncle’s fool, reading the challenge, subscribed for Cupid, and challenged him at the bird-bolt. I pray you, how many hath he killed and eaten in these wars? But how many hath he killed? for, indeed, I promised to eat all of his killing.

LEONATO. Faith, niece, you tax Signior Benedick too much; but he’ll be meet with you, I doubt it not.

MESSENGER. He hath done good service, lady, in these wars.

BEATRICE. You had musty victual, and he hath holp to eat it; he is a very valiant trencher-man; he hath an excellent stomach.

MESSENGER. And a good soldier too, lady.

BEATRICE. And a good soldier to a lady; but what is he to a lord?

MESSENGER. A lord to a lord, a man to a man; stuffed with all honourable virtues.

BEATRICE. It is so indeed; he is no less than a stuffed man; but for the stuffing,—well, we are all mortal.

LEONATO. You must not, sir, mistake my niece. There is a kind of merry war betwixt Signior Benedick and her; they never meet but there’s a skirmish of wit between them.

BEATRICE. Alas! he gets nothing by that. In our last conflict four of his five wits went halting off, and now is the whole man governed with one! so that if he have wit enough to keep himself warm, let him bear it for a difference between himself and his horse; for it is all the wealth that he hath left to be known a reasonable creature. Who is his companion now? He hath every month a new sworn brother.

MESSENGER. Is’t possible?

BEATRICE. Very easily possible: he wears his faith but as the fashion of his hat; it ever changes with the next block.

MESSENGER. I see, lady, the gentleman is not in your books.

BEATRICE. No; and he were, I would burn my study. But I pray you, who is his companion? Is there no young squarer now that will make a voyage with him to the devil?

MESSENGER. He is most in the company of the right noble Claudio.

BEATRICE. O Lord, he will hang upon him like a disease: he is sooner caught than the pestilence, and the taker runs presently mad. God help the noble Claudio! If he have caught the Benedick, it will cost him a thousand pound ere he be cured.

MESSENGER. I will hold friends with you, lady.

BEATRICE. Do, good friend.

LEONATO. You will never run mad, niece.

BEATRICE. No, not till a hot January.

MESSENGER. Don Pedro is approached.

Enter Don Pedro, Don John, Claudio, Benedick, Balthasar and Others.

DON PEDRO. Good Signior Leonato, you are come to meet your trouble: the fashion of the world is to avoid cost, and you encounter it.

LEONATO. Never came trouble to my house in the likeness of your Grace, for trouble being gone, comfort should remain; but when you depart from me, sorrow abides and happiness takes his leave.

DON PEDRO. You embrace your charge too willingly. I think this is your daughter.

LEONATO. Her mother hath many times told me so.

BENEDICK. Were you in doubt, sir, that you asked her?

LEONATO. Signior Benedick, no; for then were you a child.

DON PEDRO. You have it full, Benedick: we may guess by this what you are, being a man. Truly the lady fathers herself. Be happy, lady, for you are like an honourable father.

BENEDICK. If Signior Leonato be her father, she would not have his head on her shoulders for all Messina, as like him as she is.

BEATRICE. I wonder that you will still be talking, Signior Benedick: nobody marks you.

BENEDICK. What! my dear Lady Disdain, are you yet living?

BEATRICE. Is it possible Disdain should die while she hath such meet food to feed it as Signior Benedick? Courtesy itself must convert to disdain if you come in her presence.

BENEDICK. Then is courtesy a turncoat. But it is certain I am loved of all ladies, only you excepted; and I would I could find in my heart that I had not a hard heart; for, truly, I love none.

BEATRICE. A dear happiness to women: they would else have been troubled with a pernicious suitor. I thank God and my cold blood, I am of your humour for that. I had rather hear my dog bark at a crow than a man swear he loves me.

BENEDICK. God keep your Ladyship still in that mind; so some gentleman or other shall scape a predestinate scratched face.

BEATRICE. Scratching could not make it worse, and ’twere such a face as yours were.

BENEDICK. Well, you are a rare parrot-teacher.

BEATRICE. A bird of my tongue is better than a beast of yours.

BENEDICK. I would my horse had the speed of your tongue, and so good a continuer. But keep your way, i’ God’s name; I have done.

BEATRICE. You always end with a jade’s trick: I know you of old.

DON PEDRO. That is the sum of all, Leonato: Signior Claudio, and Signior Benedick, my dear friend Leonato hath invited you all. I tell him we shall stay here at the least a month, and he heartly prays some occasion may detain us longer: I dare swear he is no hypocrite, but prays from his heart.

LEONATO. If you swear, my lord, you shall not be forsworn. [To Don John] Let me bid you welcome, my lord: being reconciled to the Prince your brother, I owe you all duty.

DON JOHN. I thank you: I am not of many words, but I thank you.

LEONATO. Please it your Grace lead on?

DON PEDRO. Your hand, Leonato; we will go together.

[Exeunt all but Benedick and Claudio.]

CLAUDIO. Benedick, didst thou note the daughter of Signior Leonato?

BENEDICK. I noted her not; but I looked on her.

CLAUDIO. Is she not a modest young lady?

BENEDICK. Do you question me, as an honest man should do, for my simple true judgment; or would you have me speak after my custom, as being a professed tyrant to their sex?

CLAUDIO. No; I pray thee speak in sober judgment.

BENEDICK. Why, i’ faith, methinks she’s too low for a high praise, too brown for a fair praise, and too little for a great praise; only this commendation I can afford her, that were she other than she is, she were unhandsome, and being no other but as she is, I do not like her.

CLAUDIO. Thou thinkest I am in sport: I pray thee tell me truly how thou likest her.

BENEDICK. Would you buy her, that you enquire after her?

CLAUDIO. Can the world buy such a jewel?

BENEDICK. Yea, and a case to put it into. But speak you this with a sad brow, or do you play the flouting Jack, to tell us Cupid is a good hare-finder, and Vulcan a rare carpenter? Come, in what key shall a man take you, to go in the song?

CLAUDIO. In mine eye she is the sweetest lady that ever I looked on.

BENEDICK. I can see yet without spectacles and I see no such matter: there’s her cousin and she were not possessed with a fury, exceeds her as much in beauty as the first of May doth the last of December. But I hope you have no intent to turn husband, have you?

CLAUDIO. I would scarce trust myself, though I had sworn to the contrary, if Hero would be my wife.

BENEDICK. Is’t come to this, in faith? Hath not the world one man but he will wear his cap with suspicion? Shall I never see a bachelor of threescore again? Go to, i’ faith; and thou wilt needs thrust thy neck into a yoke, wear the print of it and sigh away Sundays.

Re-enter Don Pedro.

Look! Don Pedro is returned to seek you.

DON PEDRO. What secret hath held you here, that you followed not to Leonato’s?

BENEDICK. I would your Grace would constrain me to tell.

DON PEDRO. I charge thee on thy allegiance.

BENEDICK. You hear, Count Claudio: I can be secret as a dumb man; I would have you think so; but on my allegiance mark you this, on my allegiance: he is in love. With who? now that is your Grace’s part. Mark how short his answer is: with Hero, Leonato’s short daughter.

CLAUDIO. If this were so, so were it uttered.

BENEDICK. Like the old tale, my lord: ‘it is not so, nor ’twas not so; but indeed, God forbid it should be so.’

CLAUDIO. If my passion change not shortly, God forbid it should be otherwise.

DON PEDRO. Amen, if you love her; for the lady is very well worthy.

CLAUDIO. You speak this to fetch me in, my lord.

DON PEDRO. By my troth, I speak my thought.

CLAUDIO. And in faith, my lord, I spoke mine.

BENEDICK. And by my two faiths and troths, my lord, I spoke mine.

CLAUDIO. That I love her, I feel.

DON PEDRO. That she is worthy, I know.

BENEDICK. That I neither feel how she should be loved, nor know how she should be worthy, is the opinion that fire cannot melt out of me: I will die in it at the stake.

DON PEDRO. Thou wast ever an obstinate heretic in the despite of beauty.

CLAUDIO. And never could maintain his part but in the force of his will.

BENEDICK. That a woman conceived me, I thank her; that she brought me up, I likewise give her most humble thanks; but that I will have a recheat winded in my forehead, or hang my bugle in an invisible baldrick, all women shall pardon me. Because I will not do them the wrong to mistrust any, I will do myself the right to trust none; and the fine is,—for the which I may go the finer,—I will live a bachelor.

DON PEDRO. I shall see thee, ere I die, look pale with love.

BENEDICK. With anger, with sickness, or with hunger, my lord; not with love: prove that ever I lose more blood with love than I will get again with drinking, pick out mine eyes with a ballad-maker’s pen and hang me up at the door of a brothel-house for the sign of blind Cupid.

DON PEDRO. Well, if ever thou dost fall from this faith, thou wilt prove a notable argument.

BENEDICK. If I do, hang me in a bottle like a cat and shoot at me; and he that hits me, let him be clapped on the shoulder and called Adam.

DON PEDRO. Well, as time shall try: ‘In time the savage bull doth bear the yoke.’

BENEDICK. The savage bull may; but if ever the sensible Benedick bear it, pluck off the bull’s horns and set them in my forehead; and let me be vilely painted, and in such great letters as they write, ‘Here is good horse to hire,’ let them signify under my sign ‘Here you may see Benedick the married man.’

CLAUDIO. If this should ever happen, thou wouldst be horn-mad.

DON PEDRO. Nay, if Cupid have not spent all his quiver in Venice, thou wilt quake for this shortly.

BENEDICK. I look for an earthquake too then.

DON PEDRO. Well, you will temporize with the hours. In the meantime, good Signior Benedick, repair to Leonato’s: commend me to him and tell him I will not fail him at supper; for indeed he hath made great preparation.

BENEDICK. I have almost matter enough in me for such an embassage; and so I commit you—

CLAUDIO. To the tuition of God: from my house, if I had it,—

DON PEDRO. The sixth of July: your loving friend, Benedick.

BENEDICK. Nay, mock not, mock not. The body of your discourse is sometime guarded with fragments, and the guards are but slightly basted on neither: ere you flout old ends any further, examine your conscience: and so I leave you.

CLAUDIO. My liege, your Highness now may do me good.

DON PEDRO. My love is thine to teach: teach it but how, And thou shalt see how apt it is to learn Any hard lesson that may do thee good.

CLAUDIO. Hath Leonato any son, my lord?

DON PEDRO. No child but Hero; she’s his only heir. Dost thou affect her, Claudio?

CLAUDIO. O! my lord, When you went onward on this ended action, I looked upon her with a soldier’s eye, That lik’d, but had a rougher task in hand Than to drive liking to the name of love; But now I am return’d, and that war-thoughts Have left their places vacant, in their rooms Come thronging soft and delicate desires, All prompting me how fair young Hero is, Saying, I lik’d her ere I went to wars.

DON PEDRO. Thou wilt be like a lover presently, And tire the hearer with a book of words. If thou dost love fair Hero, cherish it, And I will break with her, and with her father, And thou shalt have her. Was’t not to this end That thou began’st to twist so fine a story?

CLAUDIO. How sweetly you do minister to love, That know love’s grief by his complexion! But lest my liking might too sudden seem, I would have salv’d it with a longer treatise.

DON PEDRO. What need the bridge much broader than the flood? The fairest grant is the necessity. Look, what will serve is fit: ’tis once, thou lov’st, And I will fit thee with the remedy. I know we shall have revelling tonight: I will assume thy part in some disguise, And tell fair Hero I am Claudio; And in her bosom I’ll unclasp my heart, And take her hearing prisoner with the force And strong encounter of my amorous tale: Then after to her father will I break; And the conclusion is, she shall be thine. In practice let us put it presently.

SCENE II. A room in Leonato’s house.

Enter Leonato and Antonio, meeting.

LEONATO. How now, brother? Where is my cousin your son? Hath he provided this music?

ANTONIO. He is very busy about it. But, brother, I can tell you strange news that you yet dreamt not of.

LEONATO. Are they good?

ANTONIO. As the event stamps them: but they have a good cover; they show well outward. The Prince and Count Claudio, walking in a thick-pleached alley in my orchard, were thus much overheard by a man of mine: the Prince discovered to Claudio that he loved my niece your daughter and meant to acknowledge it this night in a dance; and if he found her accordant, he meant to take the present time by the top and instantly break with you of it.

LEONATO. Hath the fellow any wit that told you this?

ANTONIO. A good sharp fellow: I will send for him; and question him yourself.

LEONATO. No, no; we will hold it as a dream till it appear itself: but I will acquaint my daughter withal, that she may be the better prepared for an answer, if peradventure this be true. Go you and tell her of it.

[Several persons cross the stage.]

Cousins, you know what you have to do. O! I cry you mercy, friend; go you with me, and I will use your skill. Good cousin, have a care this busy time.

SCENE III. Another room in Leonato’s house.

Enter Don John and Conrade.

CONRADE. What the good-year, my lord! why are you thus out of measure sad?

DON JOHN. There is no measure in the occasion that breeds; therefore the sadness is without limit.

CONRADE. You should hear reason.

DON JOHN. And when I have heard it, what blessings brings it?

CONRADE. If not a present remedy, at least a patient sufferance.

DON JOHN. I wonder that thou (being as thou say’st thou art, born under Saturn) goest about to apply a moral medicine to a mortifying mischief. I cannot hide what I am: I must be sad when I have cause, and smile at no man’s jests; eat when I have stomach, and wait for no man’s leisure; sleep when I am drowsy, and tend on no man’s business; laugh when I am merry, and claw no man in his humour.

CONRADE. Yea; but you must not make the full show of this till you may do it without controlment. You have of late stood out against your brother, and he hath ta’en you newly into his grace; where it is impossible you should take true root but by the fair weather that you make yourself: it is needful that you frame the season for your own harvest.

DON JOHN. I had rather be a canker in a hedge than a rose in his grace; and it better fits my blood to be disdained of all than to fashion a carriage to rob love from any: in this, though I cannot be said to be a flattering honest man, it must not be denied but I am a plain-dealing villain. I am trusted with a muzzle and enfranchised with a clog; therefore I have decreed not to sing in my cage. If I had my mouth, I would bite; if I had my liberty, I would do my liking: in the meantime, let me be that I am, and seek not to alter me.

CONRADE. Can you make no use of your discontent?

DON JOHN. I make all use of it, for I use it only. Who comes here?

Enter Borachio.

What news, Borachio?

BORACHIO. I came yonder from a great supper: the Prince your brother is royally entertained by Leonato; and I can give you intelligence of an intended marriage.

DON JOHN. Will it serve for any model to build mischief on? What is he for a fool that betroths himself to unquietness?

BORACHIO. Marry, it is your brother’s right hand.

DON JOHN. Who? the most exquisite Claudio?

BORACHIO. Even he.

DON JOHN. A proper squire! And who, and who? which way looks he?

BORACHIO. Marry, on Hero, the daughter and heir of Leonato.

DON JOHN. A very forward March-chick! How came you to this?

BORACHIO. Being entertained for a perfumer, as I was smoking a musty room, comes me the Prince and Claudio, hand in hand, in sad conference: I whipt me behind the arras, and there heard it agreed upon that the Prince should woo Hero for himself, and having obtained her, give her to Count Claudio.

DON JOHN. Come, come; let us thither: this may prove food to my displeasure. That young start-up hath all the glory of my overthrow: if I can cross him any way, I bless myself every way. You are both sure, and will assist me?

CONRADE. To the death, my lord.

DON JOHN. Let us to the great supper: their cheer is the greater that I am subdued. Would the cook were of my mind! Shall we go to prove what’s to be done?

BORACHIO. We’ll wait upon your Lordship.

SCENE I. A hall in Leonato’s house.

Enter Leonato, Antonio, Hero, Beatrice and others.

LEONATO. Was not Count John here at supper?

ANTONIO. I saw him not.

BEATRICE. How tartly that gentleman looks! I never can see him but I am heart-burned an hour after.

HERO. He is of a very melancholy disposition.

BEATRICE. He were an excellent man that were made just in the mid-way between him and Benedick: the one is too like an image, and says nothing; and the other too like my lady’s eldest son, evermore tattling.

LEONATO. Then half Signior Benedick’s tongue in Count John’s mouth, and half Count John’s melancholy in Signior Benedick’s face—

BEATRICE. With a good leg and a good foot, uncle, and money enough in his purse, such a man would win any woman in the world if a’ could get her good will.

LEONATO. By my troth, niece, thou wilt never get thee a husband, if thou be so shrewd of thy tongue.

ANTONIO. In faith, she’s too curst.

BEATRICE. Too curst is more than curst: I shall lessen God’s sending that way; for it is said, ‘God sends a curst cow short horns;’ but to a cow too curst he sends none.

LEONATO. So, by being too curst, God will send you no horns?

BEATRICE. Just, if he send me no husband; for the which blessing I am at him upon my knees every morning and evening. Lord! I could not endure a husband with a beard on his face: I had rather lie in the woollen.

LEONATO. You may light on a husband that hath no beard.

BEATRICE. What should I do with him? dress him in my apparel and make him my waiting gentlewoman? He that hath a beard is more than a youth, and he that hath no beard is less than a man; and he that is more than a youth is not for me; and he that is less than a man, I am not for him: therefore I will even take sixpence in earnest of the bear-ward, and lead his apes into hell.

LEONATO. Well then, go you into hell?

BEATRICE. No; but to the gate; and there will the Devil meet me, like an old cuckold, with horns on his head, and say, ‘Get you to heaven, Beatrice, get you to heaven; here’s no place for you maids.’ So deliver I up my apes, and away to Saint Peter for the heavens: he shows me where the bachelors sit, and there live we as merry as the day is long.

ANTONIO. [To Hero.] Well, niece, I trust you will be ruled by your father.

BEATRICE. Yes, faith; it is my cousin’s duty to make curtsy, and say, ‘Father, as it please you:’— but yet for all that, cousin, let him be a handsome fellow, or else make another curtsy, and say, ‘Father, as it please me.’

LEONATO. Well, niece, I hope to see you one day fitted with a husband.

BEATRICE. Not till God make men of some other metal than earth. Would it not grieve a woman to be over-mastered with a piece of valiant dust? to make an account of her life to a clod of wayward marl? No, uncle, I’ll none: Adam’s sons are my brethren; and truly, I hold it a sin to match in my kindred.

LEONATO. Daughter, remember what I told you: if the Prince do solicit you in that kind, you know your answer.

BEATRICE. The fault will be in the music, cousin, if you be not wooed in good time: if the Prince be too important, tell him there is measure in everything, and so dance out the answer. For, hear me, Hero: wooing, wedding, and repenting is as a Scotch jig, a measure, and a cinquepace: the first suit is hot and hasty, like a Scotch jig, and full as fantastical; the wedding, mannerly modest, as a measure, full of state and ancientry; and then comes Repentance, and with his bad legs, falls into the cinquepace faster and faster, till he sink into his grave.

LEONATO. Cousin, you apprehend passing shrewdly.

BEATRICE. I have a good eye, uncle: I can see a church by daylight.

LEONATO. The revellers are entering, brother: make good room.

Enter Don Pedro, Claudio, Benedick, Balthasar, Don John, Borachio, Margaret, Ursula and Others, masked.

DON PEDRO. Lady, will you walk about with your friend?

HERO. So you walk softly and look sweetly and say nothing, I am yours for the walk; and especially when I walk away.

DON PEDRO. With me in your company?

HERO. I may say so, when I please.

DON PEDRO. And when please you to say so?

HERO. When I like your favour; for God defend the lute should be like the case!

DON PEDRO. My visor is Philemon’s roof; within the house is Jove.

HERO. Why, then, your visor should be thatch’d.

DON PEDRO. Speak low, if you speak love.

[Takes her aside.]

BALTHASAR. Well, I would you did like me.

MARGARET. So would not I, for your own sake; for I have many ill qualities.

BALTHASAR. Which is one?

MARGARET. I say my prayers aloud.

BALTHASAR. I love you the better; the hearers may cry Amen.

MARGARET. God match me with a good dancer!

BALTHASAR. Amen.

MARGARET. And God keep him out of my sight when the dance is done! Answer, clerk.

BALTHASAR. No more words: the clerk is answered.

URSULA. I know you well enough: you are Signior Antonio.

ANTONIO. At a word, I am not.

URSULA. I know you by the waggling of your head.

ANTONIO. To tell you true, I counterfeit him.

URSULA. You could never do him so ill-well, unless you were the very man. Here’s his dry hand up and down: you are he, you are he.

URSULA. Come, come; do you think I do not know you by your excellent wit? Can virtue hide itself? Go to, mum, you are he: graces will appear, and there’s an end.

BEATRICE. Will you not tell me who told you so?

BENEDICK. No, you shall pardon me.

BEATRICE. Nor will you not tell me who you are?

BENEDICK. Not now.

BEATRICE. That I was disdainful, and that I had my good wit out of the ‘Hundred Merry Tales.’ Well, this was Signior Benedick that said so.

BENEDICK. What’s he?

BEATRICE. I am sure you know him well enough.

BENEDICK. Not I, believe me.

BEATRICE. Did he never make you laugh?

BENEDICK. I pray you, what is he?

BEATRICE. Why, he is the Prince’s jester: a very dull fool; only his gift is in devising impossible slanders: none but libertines delight in him; and the commendation is not in his wit, but in his villainy; for he both pleases men and angers them, and then they laugh at him and beat him. I am sure he is in the fleet: I would he had boarded me!

BENEDICK. When I know the gentleman, I’ll tell him what you say.

BEATRICE. Do, do: he’ll but break a comparison or two on me; which, peradventure not marked or not laughed at, strikes him into melancholy; and then there’s a partridge wing saved, for the fool will eat no supper that night. [Music within.] We must follow the leaders.

BENEDICK. In every good thing.

BEATRICE. Nay, if they lead to any ill, I will leave them at the next turning.

[Dance. Then exeunt all but Don John, Borachio and Claudio.]

DON JOHN. Sure my brother is amorous on Hero, and hath withdrawn her father to break with him about it. The ladies follow her and but one visor remains.

BORACHIO. And that is Claudio: I know him by his bearing.

DON JOHN. Are you not Signior Benedick?

CLAUDIO. You know me well; I am he.

DON JOHN. Signior, you are very near my brother in his love: he is enamoured on Hero; I pray you, dissuade him from her; she is no equal for his birth: you may do the part of an honest man in it.

CLAUDIO. How know you he loves her?

DON JOHN. I heard him swear his affection.

BORACHIO. So did I too; and he swore he would marry her tonight.

DON JOHN. Come, let us to the banquet.

[Exeunt Don John and Borachio.]

CLAUDIO. Thus answer I in name of Benedick, But hear these ill news with the ears of Claudio. ’Tis certain so; the Prince wooss for himself. Friendship is constant in all other things Save in the office and affairs of love: Therefore all hearts in love use their own tongues; Let every eye negotiate for itself And trust no agent; for beauty is a witch Against whose charms faith melteth into blood. This is an accident of hourly proof, Which I mistrusted not. Farewell, therefore, Hero!

Re-enter Benedick.

BENEDICK. Count Claudio?

CLAUDIO. Yea, the same.

BENEDICK. Come, will you go with me?

CLAUDIO. Whither?

BENEDICK. Even to the next willow, about your own business, Count. What fashion will you wear the garland of? About your neck, like a usurer’s chain? or under your arm, like a lieutenant’s scarf? You must wear it one way, for the Prince hath got your Hero.

CLAUDIO. I wish him joy of her.

BENEDICK. Why, that’s spoken like an honest drovier: so they sell bullocks. But did you think the Prince would have served you thus?

CLAUDIO. I pray you, leave me.

BENEDICK. Ho! now you strike like the blind man: ’twas the boy that stole your meat, and you’ll beat the post.

CLAUDIO. If it will not be, I’ll leave you.

BENEDICK. Alas! poor hurt fowl. Now will he creep into sedges. But, that my Lady Beatrice should know me, and not know me! The Prince’s fool! Ha! it may be I go under that title because I am merry. Yea, but so I am apt to do myself wrong; I am not so reputed: it is the base though bitter disposition of Beatrice that puts the world into her person, and so gives me out. Well, I’ll be revenged as I may.

DON PEDRO. Now, signior, where’s the Count? Did you see him?

BENEDICK. Troth, my lord, I have played the part of Lady Fame. I found him here as melancholy as a lodge in a warren. I told him, and I think I told him true, that your Grace had got the good will of this young lady; and I offered him my company to a willow tree, either to make him a garland, as being forsaken, or to bind him up a rod, as being worthy to be whipped.

DON PEDRO. To be whipped! What’s his fault?

BENEDICK. The flat transgression of a school-boy, who, being overjoy’d with finding a bird’s nest, shows it his companion, and he steals it.

DON PEDRO. Wilt thou make a trust a transgression? The transgression is in the stealer.

BENEDICK. Yet it had not been amiss the rod had been made, and the garland too; for the garland he might have worn himself, and the rod he might have bestowed on you, who, as I take it, have stolen his bird’s nest.

DON PEDRO. I will but teach them to sing, and restore them to the owner.

BENEDICK. If their singing answer your saying, by my faith, you say honestly.

DON PEDRO. The Lady Beatrice hath a quarrel to you: the gentleman that danced with her told her she is much wronged by you.

BENEDICK. O! she misused me past the endurance of a block: an oak but with one green leaf on it would have answered her: my very visor began to assume life and scold with her. She told me, not thinking I had been myself, that I was the Prince’s jester, that I was duller than a great thaw; huddling jest upon jest with such impossible conveyance upon me, that I stood like a man at a mark, with a whole army shooting at me. She speaks poniards, and every word stabs: if her breath were as terrible as her terminations, there were no living near her; she would infect to the north star. I would not marry her, though she were endowed with all that Adam had left him before he transgressed: she would have made Hercules have turned spit, yea, and have cleft his club to make the fire too. Come, talk not of her; you shall find her the infernal Ate in good apparel. I would to God some scholar would conjure her, for certainly, while she is here, a man may live as quiet in hell as in a sanctuary; and people sin upon purpose because they would go thither; so indeed, all disquiet, horror and perturbation follow her.

Re-enter Claudio, Beatrice, Hero and Leonato.

DON PEDRO. Look! here she comes.

BENEDICK. Will your Grace command me any service to the world’s end? I will go on the slightest errand now to the Antipodes that you can devise to send me on; I will fetch you a toothpicker now from the furthest inch of Asia; bring you the length of Prester John’s foot; fetch you a hair off the Great Cham’s beard; do you any embassage to the Pygmies, rather than hold three words’ conference with this harpy. You have no employment for me?

DON PEDRO. None, but to desire your good company.

BENEDICK. O God, sir, here’s a dish I love not: I cannot endure my Lady Tongue.

DON PEDRO. Come, lady, come; you have lost the heart of Signior Benedick.

BEATRICE. Indeed, my lord, he lent it me awhile; and I gave him use for it, a double heart for a single one: marry, once before he won it of me with false dice, therefore your Grace may well say I have lost it.

DON PEDRO. You have put him down, lady, you have put him down.

BEATRICE. So I would not he should do me, my lord, lest I should prove the mother of fools. I have brought Count Claudio, whom you sent me to seek.

DON PEDRO. Why, how now, Count! wherefore are you sad?

CLAUDIO. Not sad, my lord.

DON PEDRO. How then? Sick?

CLAUDIO. Neither, my lord.

BEATRICE. The Count is neither sad, nor sick, nor merry, nor well; but civil Count, civil as an orange, and something of that jealous complexion.

DON PEDRO. I’ faith, lady, I think your blazon to be true; though, I’ll be sworn, if he be so, his conceit is false. Here, Claudio, I have wooed in thy name, and fair Hero is won; I have broke with her father, and, his good will obtained; name the day of marriage, and God give thee joy!

LEONATO. Count, take of me my daughter, and with her my fortunes: his Grace hath made the match, and all grace say Amen to it!

BEATRICE. Speak, Count, ’tis your cue.

CLAUDIO. Silence is the perfectest herald of joy: I were but little happy, if I could say how much. Lady, as you are mine, I am yours: I give away myself for you and dote upon the exchange.

BEATRICE. Speak, cousin; or, if you cannot, stop his mouth with a kiss, and let not him speak neither.

DON PEDRO. In faith, lady, you have a merry heart.

BEATRICE. Yea, my lord; I thank it, poor fool, it keeps on the windy side of care. My cousin tells him in his ear that he is in her heart.

CLAUDIO. And so she doth, cousin.

BEATRICE. Good Lord, for alliance! Thus goes everyone to the world but I, and I am sunburnt. I may sit in a corner and cry heigh-ho for a husband!

DON PEDRO. Lady Beatrice, I will get you one.

BEATRICE. I would rather have one of your father’s getting. Hath your Grace ne’er a brother like you? Your father got excellent husbands, if a maid could come by them.

DON PEDRO. Will you have me, lady?

BEATRICE. No, my lord, unless I might have another for working days: your Grace is too costly to wear every day. But, I beseech your Grace, pardon me; I was born to speak all mirth and no matter.

DON PEDRO. Your silence most offends me, and to be merry best becomes you; for out of question, you were born in a merry hour.

BEATRICE. No, sure, my lord, my mother cried; but then there was a star danced, and under that was I born. Cousins, God give you joy!

LEONATO. Niece, will you look to those things I told you of?

BEATRICE. I cry you mercy, uncle. By your Grace’s pardon.

DON PEDRO. By my troth, a pleasant spirited lady.

LEONATO. There’s little of the melancholy element in her, my lord: she is never sad but when she sleeps; and not ever sad then, for I have heard my daughter say, she hath often dreamed of unhappiness and waked herself with laughing.

DON PEDRO. She cannot endure to hear tell of a husband.

LEONATO. O! by no means: she mocks all her wooers out of suit.

DON PEDRO. She were an excellent wife for Benedick.

LEONATO. O Lord! my lord, if they were but a week married, they would talk themselves mad.

DON PEDRO. Count Claudio, when mean you to go to church?

CLAUDIO. Tomorrow, my lord. Time goes on crutches till love have all his rites.

LEONATO. Not till Monday, my dear son, which is hence a just seven-night; and a time too brief too, to have all things answer my mind.

DON PEDRO. Come, you shake the head at so long a breathing; but, I warrant thee, Claudio, the time shall not go dully by us. I will in the interim undertake one of Hercules’ labours, which is, to bring Signior Benedick and the Lady Beatrice into a mountain of affection the one with the other. I would fain have it a match; and I doubt not but to fashion it, if you three will but minister such assistance as I shall give you direction.

LEONATO. My lord, I am for you, though it cost me ten nights’ watchings.

CLAUDIO. And I, my lord.

DON PEDRO. And you too, gentle Hero?

HERO. I will do any modest office, my lord, to help my cousin to a good husband.

DON PEDRO. And Benedick is not the unhopefullest husband that I know. Thus far can I praise him; he is of a noble strain, of approved valour, and confirmed honesty. I will teach you how to humour your cousin, that she shall fall in love with Benedick; and I, with your two helps, will so practise on Benedick that, in despite of his quick wit and his queasy stomach, he shall fall in love with Beatrice. If we can do this, Cupid is no longer an archer: his glory shall be ours, for we are the only love-gods. Go in with me, and I will tell you my drift.

SCENE II. Another room in Leonato’s house.

Enter Don John and Borachio.

DON JOHN. It is so; the Count Claudio shall marry the daughter of Leonato.

BORACHIO. Yea, my lord; but I can cross it.

DON JOHN. Any bar, any cross, any impediment will be medicinable to me: I am sick in displeasure to him, and whatsoever comes athwart his affection ranges evenly with mine. How canst thou cross this marriage?

BORACHIO. Not honestly, my lord; but so covertly that no dishonesty shall appear in me.

DON JOHN. Show me briefly how.

BORACHIO. I think I told your lordship, a year since, how much I am in the favour of Margaret, the waiting gentlewoman to Hero.

DON JOHN. I remember.

BORACHIO. I can, at any unseasonable instant of the night, appoint her to look out at her lady’s chamber window.

DON JOHN. What life is in that, to be the death of this marriage?

BORACHIO. The poison of that lies in you to temper. Go you to the Prince your brother; spare not to tell him, that he hath wronged his honour in marrying the renowned Claudio,—whose estimation do you mightily hold up,—to a contaminated stale, such a one as Hero.

DON JOHN. What proof shall I make of that?

BORACHIO. Proof enough to misuse the Prince, to vex Claudio, to undo Hero, and kill Leonato. Look you for any other issue?

DON JOHN. Only to despite them, I will endeavour anything.

BORACHIO. Go then; find me a meet hour to draw Don Pedro and the Count Claudio alone: tell them that you know that Hero loves me; intend a kind of zeal both to the Prince and Claudio, as—in love of your brother’s honour, who hath made this match, and his friend’s reputation, who is thus like to be cozened with the semblance of a maid,—that you have discovered thus. They will scarcely believe this without trial: offer them instances, which shall bear no less likelihood than to see me at her chamber window, hear me call Margaret Hero, hear Margaret term me Claudio; and bring them to see this the very night before the intended wedding: for in the meantime I will so fashion the matter that Hero shall be absent; and there shall appear such seeming truth of Hero’s disloyalty, that jealousy shall be called assurance, and all the preparation overthrown.

DON JOHN. Grow this to what adverse issue it can, I will put it in practice. Be cunning in the working this, and thy fee is a thousand ducats.

BORACHIO. Be you constant in the accusation, and my cunning shall not shame me.

DON JOHN. I will presently go learn their day of marriage.

SCENE III. Leonato’s Garden.

Enter Benedick.

BENEDICK. Boy!

Enter a Boy.

BOY. Signior?

BENEDICK. In my chamber window lies a book; bring it hither to me in the orchard.

BOY. I am here already, sir.

BENEDICK. I know that; but I would have thee hence, and here again.

I do much wonder that one man, seeing how much another man is a fool when he dedicates his behaviours to love, will, after he hath laughed at such shallow follies in others, become the argument of his own scorn by falling in love: and such a man is Claudio. I have known, when there was no music with him but the drum and the fife; and now had he rather hear the tabor and the pipe: I have known when he would have walked ten mile afoot to see a good armour; and now will he lie ten nights awake, carving the fashion of a new doublet. He was wont to speak plain and to the purpose, like an honest man and a soldier; and now is he turned orthography; his words are a very fantastical banquet, just so many strange dishes. May I be so converted, and see with these eyes? I cannot tell; I think not: I will not be sworn but love may transform me to an oyster; but I’ll take my oath on it, till he have made an oyster of me, he shall never make me such a fool. One woman is fair, yet I am well; another is wise, yet I am well; another virtuous, yet I am well; but till all graces be in one woman, one woman shall not come in my grace. Rich she shall be, that’s certain; wise, or I’ll none; virtuous, or I’ll never cheapen her; fair, or I’ll never look on her; mild, or come not near me; noble, or not I for an angel; of good discourse, an excellent musician, and her hair shall be of what colour it please God. Ha! the Prince and Monsieur Love! I will hide me in the arbour.

[Withdraws.]

Enter Don Pedro, Leonato and Claudio, followed by Balthasar and Musicians.

DON PEDRO. Come, shall we hear this music?

CLAUDIO. Yea, my good lord. How still the evening is, As hush’d on purpose to grace harmony!

DON PEDRO. See you where Benedick hath hid himself?

CLAUDIO. O! very well, my lord: the music ended, We’ll fit the kid-fox with a penny-worth.

DON PEDRO. Come, Balthasar, we’ll hear that song again.

BALTHASAR. O! good my lord, tax not so bad a voice To slander music any more than once.

DON PEDRO. It is the witness still of excellency, To put a strange face on his own perfection. I pray thee, sing, and let me woo no more.

BALTHASAR. Because you talk of wooing, I will sing; Since many a wooer doth commence his suit To her he thinks not worthy; yet he wooes; Yet will he swear he loves.

DON PEDRO. Nay, pray thee come; Or if thou wilt hold longer argument, Do it in notes.

BALTHASAR. Note this before my notes; There’s not a note of mine that’s worth the noting.

DON PEDRO. Why these are very crotchets that he speaks; Notes, notes, forsooth, and nothing!

BENEDICK. Now, divine air! now is his soul ravished! Is it not strange that sheep’s guts should hale souls out of men’s bodies? Well, a horn for my money, when all’s done.

BALTHASAR [sings.] Sigh no more, ladies, sigh no more, Men were deceivers ever; One foot in sea, and one on shore, To one thing constant never. Then sigh not so, but let them go, And be you blithe and bonny, Converting all your sounds of woe Into Hey nonny, nonny.

Sing no more ditties, sing no mo Of dumps so dull and heavy; The fraud of men was ever so, Since summer first was leavy. Then sigh not so, but let them go, And be you blithe and bonny, Converting all your sounds of woe Into Hey nonny, nonny.

DON PEDRO. By my troth, a good song.

BALTHASAR. And an ill singer, my lord.

DON PEDRO. Ha, no, no, faith; thou singest well enough for a shift.

BENEDICK. [Aside] And he had been a dog that should have howled thus, they would have hanged him; and I pray God his bad voice bode no mischief. I had as lief have heard the night-raven, come what plague could have come after it.

DON PEDRO. Yea, marry; dost thou hear, Balthasar? I pray thee, get us some excellent music, for tomorrow night we would have it at the Lady Hero’s chamber window.

BALTHASAR. The best I can, my lord.

DON PEDRO. Do so: farewell.

[Exeunt Balthasar and Musicians.]

Come hither, Leonato: what was it you told me of today, that your niece Beatrice was in love with Signior Benedick?

CLAUDIO. O! ay:—[Aside to Don Pedro] Stalk on, stalk on; the fowl sits. I did never think that lady would have loved any man.

LEONATO. No, nor I neither; but most wonderful that she should so dote on Signior Benedick, whom she hath in all outward behaviours seemed ever to abhor.

BENEDICK. [Aside] Is’t possible? Sits the wind in that corner?

LEONATO. By my troth, my lord, I cannot tell what to think of it but that she loves him with an enraged affection: it is past the infinite of thought.

DON PEDRO. Maybe she doth but counterfeit.

CLAUDIO. Faith, like enough.

LEONATO. O God! counterfeit! There was never counterfeit of passion came so near the life of passion as she discovers it.

DON PEDRO. Why, what effects of passion shows she?

CLAUDIO. [Aside] Bait the hook well: this fish will bite.

LEONATO. What effects, my lord? She will sit you; [To Claudio] You heard my daughter tell you how.

CLAUDIO. She did, indeed.

DON PEDRO. How, how, I pray you? You amaze me: I would have thought her spirit had been invincible against all assaults of affection.

LEONATO. I would have sworn it had, my lord; especially against Benedick.

BENEDICK. [Aside] I should think this a gull, but that the white-bearded fellow speaks it: knavery cannot, sure, hide itself in such reverence.

CLAUDIO. [Aside] He hath ta’en the infection: hold it up.

DON PEDRO. Hath she made her affection known to Benedick?

LEONATO. No; and swears she never will: that’s her torment.

CLAUDIO. ’Tis true, indeed; so your daughter says: ‘Shall I,’ says she, ‘that have so oft encountered him with scorn, write to him that I love him?’

LEONATO. This says she now when she is beginning to write to him; for she’ll be up twenty times a night, and there will she sit in her smock till she have writ a sheet of paper: my daughter tells us all.

CLAUDIO. Now you talk of a sheet of paper, I remember a pretty jest your daughter told us of.

LEONATO. O! when she had writ it, and was reading it over, she found Benedick and Beatrice between the sheet?

CLAUDIO. That.

LEONATO. O! she tore the letter into a thousand halfpence; railed at herself, that she should be so immodest to write to one that she knew would flout her: ‘I measure him,’ says she, ‘by my own spirit; for I should flout him, if he writ to me; yea, though I love him, I should.’

CLAUDIO. Then down upon her knees she falls, weeps, sobs, beats her heart, tears her hair, prays, curses; ‘O sweet Benedick! God give me patience!’

LEONATO. She doth indeed; my daughter says so; and the ecstasy hath so much overborne her, that my daughter is sometimes afeard she will do a desperate outrage to herself. It is very true.

DON PEDRO. It were good that Benedick knew of it by some other, if she will not discover it.

CLAUDIO. To what end? he would make but a sport of it and torment the poor lady worse.

DON PEDRO. And he should, it were an alms to hang him. She’s an excellent sweet lady, and, out of all suspicion, she is virtuous.

CLAUDIO. And she is exceeding wise.

DON PEDRO. In everything but in loving Benedick.

LEONATO. O! my lord, wisdom and blood combating in so tender a body, we have ten proofs to one that blood hath the victory. I am sorry for her, as I have just cause, being her uncle and her guardian.

DON PEDRO. I would she had bestowed this dotage on me; I would have daffed all other respects and made her half myself. I pray you, tell Benedick of it, and hear what he will say.

LEONATO. Were it good, think you?

CLAUDIO. Hero thinks surely she will die; for she says she will die if he love her not, and she will die ere she make her love known, and she will die if he woo her, rather than she will bate one breath of her accustomed crossness.

DON PEDRO. She doth well: if she should make tender of her love, ’tis very possible he’ll scorn it; for the man,—as you know all,—hath a contemptible spirit.

CLAUDIO. He is a very proper man.

DON PEDRO. He hath indeed a good outward happiness.

CLAUDIO. ’Fore God, and in my mind, very wise.

DON PEDRO. He doth indeed show some sparks that are like wit.

CLAUDIO. And I take him to be valiant.

DON PEDRO. As Hector, I assure you: and in the managing of quarrels you may say he is wise; for either he avoids them with great discretion, or undertakes them with a most Christian-like fear.

LEONATO. If he do fear God, a’ must necessarily keep peace: if he break the peace, he ought to enter into a quarrel with fear and trembling.

DON PEDRO. And so will he do; for the man doth fear God, howsoever it seems not in him by some large jests he will make. Well, I am sorry for your niece. Shall we go seek Benedick and tell him of her love?

CLAUDIO. Never tell him, my lord: let her wear it out with good counsel.

LEONATO. Nay, that’s impossible: she may wear her heart out first.

DON PEDRO. Well, we will hear further of it by your daughter: let it cool the while. I love Benedick well, and I could wish he would modestly examine himself, to see how much he is unworthy so good a lady.

LEONATO. My lord, will you walk? dinner is ready.

CLAUDIO. [Aside] If he do not dote on her upon this, I will never trust my expectation.

DON PEDRO. [Aside] Let there be the same net spread for her; and that must your daughter and her gentlewoman carry. The sport will be, when they hold one an opinion of another’s dotage, and no such matter: that’s the scene that I would see, which will be merely a dumb show. Let us send her to call him in to dinner.

[Exeunt Don Pedro, Claudio and Leonato.]

BENEDICK. [Advancing from the arbour.] This can be no trick: the conference was sadly borne. They have the truth of this from Hero. They seem to pity the lady: it seems her affections have their full bent. Love me? why, it must be requited. I hear how I am censured: they say I will bear myself proudly, if I perceive the love come from her; they say too that she will rather die than give any sign of affection. I did never think to marry: I must not seem proud: happy are they that hear their detractions, and can put them to mending. They say the lady is fair: ’tis a truth, I can bear them witness; and virtuous: ’tis so, I cannot reprove it; and wise, but for loving me: by my troth, it is no addition to her wit, nor no great argument of her folly, for I will be horribly in love with her. I may chance have some odd quirks and remnants of wit broken on me, because I have railed so long against marriage; but doth not the appetite alter? A man loves the meat in his youth that he cannot endure in his age. Shall quips and sentences and these paper bullets of the brain awe a man from the career of his humour? No; the world must be peopled. When I said I would die a bachelor, I did not think I should live till I were married. Here comes Beatrice. By this day! she’s a fair lady: I do spy some marks of love in her.

Enter Beatrice.

BEATRICE. Against my will I am sent to bid you come in to dinner.

BENEDICK. Fair Beatrice, I thank you for your pains.

BEATRICE. I took no more pains for those thanks than you take pains to thank me: if it had been painful, I would not have come.

BENEDICK. You take pleasure then in the message?

BEATRICE. Yea, just so much as you may take upon a knife’s point, and choke a daw withal. You have no stomach, signior: fare you well.

BENEDICK. Ha! ‘Against my will I am sent to bid you come in to dinner,’ there’s a double meaning in that. ‘I took no more pains for those thanks than you took pains to thank me,’ that’s as much as to say, Any pains that I take for you is as easy as thanks. If I do not take pity of her, I am a villain; if I do not love her, I am a Jew. I will go get her picture.

SCENE I. Leonato’s Garden.

Enter Hero, Margaret and Ursula.

HERO. Good Margaret, run thee to the parlour; There shalt thou find my cousin Beatrice Proposing with the Prince and Claudio: Whisper her ear, and tell her, I and Ursala Walk in the orchard, and our whole discourse Is all of her; say that thou overheard’st us, And bid her steal into the pleached bower, Where honey-suckles, ripen’d by the sun, Forbid the sun to enter; like favourites, Made proud by princes, that advance their pride Against that power that bred it. There will she hide her, To listen our propose. This is thy office; Bear thee well in it and leave us alone.

MARGARET. I’ll make her come, I warrant you, presently.

HERO. Now, Ursula, when Beatrice doth come, As we do trace this alley up and down, Our talk must only be of Benedick: When I do name him, let it be thy part To praise him more than ever man did merit. My talk to thee must be how Benedick Is sick in love with Beatrice: of this matter Is little Cupid’s crafty arrow made, That only wounds by hearsay.

Enter Beatrice behind.

Now begin; For look where Beatrice, like a lapwing, runs Close by the ground, to hear our conference.

URSULA. The pleasant’st angling is to see the fish Cut with her golden oars the silver stream, And greedily devour the treacherous bait: So angle we for Beatrice; who even now Is couched in the woodbine coverture. Fear you not my part of the dialogue.

HERO. Then go we near her, that her ear lose nothing Of the false sweet bait that we lay for it.

[They advance to the bower.]

No, truly, Ursula, she is too disdainful; I know her spirits are as coy and wild As haggards of the rock.

URSULA. But are you sure That Benedick loves Beatrice so entirely?

HERO. So says the Prince, and my new-trothed lord.

URSULA. And did they bid you tell her of it, madam?

HERO. They did entreat me to acquaint her of it; But I persuaded them, if they lov’d Benedick, To wish him wrestle with affection, And never to let Beatrice know of it.

URSULA. Why did you so? Doth not the gentleman Deserve as full as fortunate a bed As ever Beatrice shall couch upon?

HERO. O god of love! I know he doth deserve As much as may be yielded to a man; But Nature never fram’d a woman’s heart Of prouder stuff than that of Beatrice; Disdain and scorn ride sparkling in her eyes, Misprising what they look on, and her wit Values itself so highly, that to her All matter else seems weak. She cannot love, Nor take no shape nor project of affection, She is so self-endear’d.

URSULA. Sure I think so; And therefore certainly it were not good She knew his love, lest she make sport at it.

HERO. Why, you speak truth. I never yet saw man, How wise, how noble, young, how rarely featur’d, But she would spell him backward: if fair-fac’d, She would swear the gentleman should be her sister; If black, why, Nature, drawing of an antick, Made a foul blot; if tall, a lance ill-headed; If low, an agate very vilely cut; If speaking, why, a vane blown with all winds; If silent, why, a block moved with none. So turns she every man the wrong side out, And never gives to truth and virtue that Which simpleness and merit purchaseth.

URSULA. Sure, sure, such carping is not commendable.

HERO. No; not to be so odd, and from all fashions, As Beatrice is, cannot be commendable. But who dare tell her so? If I should speak, She would mock me into air: O! she would laugh me Out of myself, press me to death with wit. Therefore let Benedick, like cover’d fire, Consume away in sighs, waste inwardly: It were a better death than die with mocks, Which is as bad as die with tickling.

URSULA. Yet tell her of it: hear what she will say.

HERO. No; rather I will go to Benedick, And counsel him to fight against his passion. And, truly, I’ll devise some honest slanders To stain my cousin with. One doth not know How much an ill word may empoison liking.

URSULA. O! do not do your cousin such a wrong. She cannot be so much without true judgment,— Having so swift and excellent a wit As she is priz’d to have,—as to refuse So rare a gentleman as Signior Benedick.

HERO. He is the only man of Italy, Always excepted my dear Claudio.

URSULA. I pray you, be not angry with me, madam, Speaking my fancy: Signior Benedick, For shape, for bearing, argument and valour, Goes foremost in report through Italy.

HERO. Indeed, he hath an excellent good name.

URSULA. His excellence did earn it, ere he had it. When are you married, madam?

HERO. Why, every day, tomorrow. Come, go in: I’ll show thee some attires, and have thy counsel Which is the best to furnish me tomorrow.

URSULA. She’s lim’d, I warrant you, We have caught her, madam.

HERO. If it prove so, then loving goes by haps: Some Cupid kills with arrows, some with traps.

[Exeunt Hero and Ursula.]

BEATRICE. [Advancing.] What fire is in mine ears? Can this be true? Stand I condemn’d for pride and scorn so much? Contempt, farewell! and maiden pride, adieu! No glory lives behind the back of such. And, Benedick, love on; I will requite thee, Taming my wild heart to thy loving hand: If thou dost love, my kindness shall incite thee To bind our loves up in a holy band; For others say thou dost deserve, and I Believe it better than reportingly.

SCENE II. A Room in Leonato’s House.

Enter Don Pedro, Claudio, Benedick and Leonato.

DON PEDRO. I do but stay till your marriage be consummate, and then go I toward Arragon.

CLAUDIO. I’ll bring you thither, my lord, if you’ll vouchsafe me.

DON PEDRO. Nay, that would be as great a soil in the new gloss of your marriage, as to show a child his new coat and forbid him to wear it. I will only be bold with Benedick for his company; for, from the crown of his head to the sole of his foot, he is all mirth; he hath twice or thrice cut Cupid’s bowstring, and the little hangman dare not shoot at him. He hath a heart as sound as a bell, and his tongue is the clapper; for what his heart thinks, his tongue speaks.

BENEDICK. Gallants, I am not as I have been.

LEONATO. So say I: methinks you are sadder.

CLAUDIO. I hope he be in love.

DON PEDRO. Hang him, truant! there’s no true drop of blood in him to be truly touched with love. If he be sad, he wants money.

BENEDICK. I have the tooth-ache.

DON PEDRO. Draw it.

BENEDICK. Hang it.

CLAUDIO. You must hang it first, and draw it afterwards.

DON PEDRO. What! sigh for the tooth-ache?

LEONATO. Where is but a humour or a worm?

BENEDICK. Well, everyone can master a grief but he that has it.

CLAUDIO. Yet say I, he is in love.

DON PEDRO. There is no appearance of fancy in him, unless it be a fancy that he hath to strange disguises; as to be a Dutchman today, a Frenchman tomorrow; or in the shape of two countries at once, as a German from the waist downward, all slops, and a Spaniard from the hip upward, no doublet. Unless he have a fancy to this foolery, as it appears he hath, he is no fool for fancy, as you would have it appear he is.

CLAUDIO. If he be not in love with some woman, there is no believing old signs: a’ brushes his hat a mornings; what should that bode?

DON PEDRO. Hath any man seen him at the barber’s?

CLAUDIO. No, but the barber’s man hath been seen with him; and the old ornament of his cheek hath already stuffed tennis balls.

LEONATO. Indeed he looks younger than he did, by the loss of a beard.

DON PEDRO. Nay, a’ rubs himself with civet: can you smell him out by that?

CLAUDIO. That’s as much as to say the sweet youth’s in love.

DON PEDRO. The greatest note of it is his melancholy.

CLAUDIO. And when was he wont to wash his face?

DON PEDRO. Yea, or to paint himself? for the which, I hear what they say of him.

CLAUDIO. Nay, but his jesting spirit; which is now crept into a lute-string, and now governed by stops.

DON PEDRO. Indeed, that tells a heavy tale for him. Conclude, conclude he is in love.

CLAUDIO. Nay, but I know who loves him.

DON PEDRO. That would I know too: I warrant, one that knows him not.

CLAUDIO. Yes, and his ill conditions; and in despite of all, dies for him.

DON PEDRO. She shall be buried with her face upwards.

BENEDICK. Yet is this no charm for the tooth-ache. Old signior, walk aside with me: I have studied eight or nine wise words to speak to you, which these hobby-horses must not hear.

[Exeunt Benedick and Leonato.]

DON PEDRO. For my life, to break with him about Beatrice.

CLAUDIO. ’Tis even so. Hero and Margaret have by this played their parts with Beatrice, and then the two bears will not bite one another when they meet.

Enter Don John.

DON JOHN. My lord and brother, God save you!

DON PEDRO. Good den, brother.

DON JOHN. If your leisure served, I would speak with you.

DON PEDRO. In private?

DON JOHN. If it please you; yet Count Claudio may hear, for what I would speak of concerns him.

DON PEDRO. What’s the matter?

DON JOHN. [To Claudio.] Means your lordship to be married tomorrow?

DON PEDRO. You know he does.

DON JOHN. I know not that, when he knows what I know.

CLAUDIO. If there be any impediment, I pray you discover it.

DON JOHN. You may think I love you not: let that appear hereafter, and aim better at me by that I now will manifest. For my brother, I think he holds you well, and in dearness of heart hath holp to effect your ensuing marriage; surely suit ill-spent and labour ill bestowed!

DON PEDRO. Why, what’s the matter?

DON JOHN. I came hither to tell you; and circumstances shortened,—for she has been too long a talking of,—the lady is disloyal.

CLAUDIO. Who, Hero?

DON JOHN. Even she: Leonato’s Hero, your Hero, every man’s Hero.

CLAUDIO. Disloyal?

DON JOHN. The word’s too good to paint out her wickedness; I could say, she were worse: think you of a worse title, and I will fit her to it. Wonder not till further warrant: go but with me tonight, you shall see her chamber window entered, even the night before her wedding-day: if you love her then, tomorrow wed her; but it would better fit your honour to change your mind.

CLAUDIO. May this be so?

DON PEDRO. I will not think it.

DON JOHN. If you dare not trust that you see, confess not that you know. If you will follow me, I will show you enough; and when you have seen more and heard more, proceed accordingly.

CLAUDIO. If I see anything tonight why I should not marry her tomorrow, in the congregation, where I should wed, there will I shame her.

DON PEDRO. And, as I wooed for thee to obtain her, I will join with thee to disgrace her.

DON JOHN. I will disparage her no farther till you are my witnesses: bear it coldly but till midnight, and let the issue show itself.

DON PEDRO. O day untowardly turned!

CLAUDIO. O mischief strangely thwarting!

DON JOHN. O plague right well prevented! So will you say when you have seen the sequel.

Enter Dogberry and Verges, with the Watch.

DOGBERRY. Are you good men and true?

VERGES. Yea, or else it were pity but they should suffer salvation, body and soul.

DOGBERRY. Nay, that were a punishment too good for them, if they should have any allegiance in them, being chosen for the Prince’s watch.

VERGES. Well, give them their charge, neighbour Dogberry.

DOGBERRY. First, who think you the most desartless man to be constable?

FIRST WATCH. Hugh Oatcake, sir, or George Seacoal; for they can write and read.

DOGBERRY. Come hither, neighbour Seacoal. God hath blessed you with a good name: to be a well-favoured man is the gift of Fortune; but to write and read comes by Nature.

SECOND WATCH. Both which, Master Constable,—

DOGBERRY. You have: I knew it would be your answer. Well, for your favour, sir, why, give God thanks, and make no boast of it; and for your writing and reading, let that appear when there is no need of such vanity. You are thought here to be the most senseless and fit man for the constable of the watch; therefore bear you the lanthorn. This is your charge: you shall comprehend all vagrom men; you are to bid any man stand, in the Prince’s name.

SECOND WATCH. How, if a’ will not stand?

DOGBERRY. Why, then, take no note of him, but let him go; and presently call the rest of the watch together, and thank God you are rid of a knave.

VERGES. If he will not stand when he is bidden, he is none of the Prince’s subjects.

DOGBERRY. True, and they are to meddle with none but the Prince’s subjects. You shall also make no noise in the streets: for, for the watch to babble and to talk is most tolerable and not to be endured.

SECOND WATCH. We will rather sleep than talk: we know what belongs to a watch.

DOGBERRY. Why, you speak like an ancient and most quiet watchman, for I cannot see how sleeping should offend; only have a care that your bills be not stolen. Well, you are to call at all the alehouses, and bid those that are drunk get them to bed.

SECOND WATCH. How if they will not?

DOGBERRY. Why then, let them alone till they are sober: if they make you not then the better answer, you may say they are not the men you took them for.

SECOND WATCH. Well, sir.

DOGBERRY. If you meet a thief, you may suspect him, by virtue of your office, to be no true man; and, for such kind of men, the less you meddle or make with them, why, the more is for your honesty.

SECOND WATCH. If we know him to be a thief, shall we not lay hands on him?

DOGBERRY. Truly, by your office, you may; but I think they that touch pitch will be defiled. The most peaceable way for you, if you do take a thief, is to let him show himself what he is and steal out of your company.

VERGES. You have been always called a merciful man, partner.

DOGBERRY. Truly, I would not hang a dog by my will, much more a man who hath any honesty in him.

VERGES. If you hear a child cry in the night, you must call to the nurse and bid her still it.

SECOND WATCH. How if the nurse be asleep and will not hear us?

DOGBERRY. Why then, depart in peace, and let the child wake her with crying; for the ewe that will not hear her lamb when it baes, will never answer a calf when he bleats.

VERGES. ’Tis very true.

DOGBERRY. This is the end of the charge. You constable, are to present the Prince’s own person: if you meet the Prince in the night, you may stay him.

VERGES. Nay, by’r lady, that I think, a’ cannot.

DOGBERRY. Five shillings to one on’t, with any man that knows the statutes, he may stay him: marry, not without the Prince be willing; for, indeed, the watch ought to offend no man, and it is an offence to stay a man against his will.

VERGES. By’r lady, I think it be so.

DOGBERRY. Ha, ah, ha! Well, masters, good night: an there be any matter of weight chances, call up me: keep your fellows’ counsels and your own, and good night. Come, neighbour.

SECOND WATCH. Well, masters, we hear our charge: let us go sit here upon the church bench till two, and then all to bed.

DOGBERRY. One word more, honest neighbours. I pray you, watch about Signior Leonato’s door; for the wedding being there tomorrow, there is a great coil tonight. Adieu; be vigitant, I beseech you.

[Exeunt Dogberry and Verges.]

Enter Borachio and Conrade.

BORACHIO. What, Conrade!

WATCH. [Aside] Peace! stir not.

BORACHIO. Conrade, I say!

CONRADE. Here, man. I am at thy elbow.

BORACHIO. Mass, and my elbow itched; I thought there would a scab follow.

CONRADE. I will owe thee an answer for that; and now forward with thy tale.

BORACHIO. Stand thee close then under this penthouse, for it drizzles rain, and I will, like a true drunkard, utter all to thee.

WATCH. [Aside] Some treason, masters; yet stand close.

BORACHIO. Therefore know, I have earned of Don John a thousand ducats.

CONRADE. Is it possible that any villainy should be so dear?

BORACHIO. Thou shouldst rather ask if it were possible any villainy should be so rich; for when rich villains have need of poor ones, poor ones may make what price they will.

CONRADE. I wonder at it.

BORACHIO. That shows thou art unconfirmed. Thou knowest that the fashion of a doublet, or a hat, or a cloak, is nothing to a man.

CONRADE. Yes, it is apparel.

BORACHIO. I mean, the fashion.

CONRADE. Yes, the fashion is the fashion.

BORACHIO. Tush! I may as well say the fool’s the fool. But seest thou not what a deformed thief this fashion is?

WATCH. [Aside] I know that Deformed; a’ has been a vile thief this seven years; a’ goes up and down like a gentleman: I remember his name.

BORACHIO. Didst thou not hear somebody?

CONRADE. No: ’twas the vane on the house.

BORACHIO. Seest thou not, I say, what a deformed thief this fashion is? how giddily he turns about all the hot bloods between fourteen and five-and-thirty? sometime fashioning them like Pharaoh’s soldiers in the reechy painting; sometime like god Bel’s priests in the old church window; sometime like the shaven Hercules in the smirched worm-eaten tapestry, where his codpiece seems as massy as his club?

CONRADE. All this I see, and I see that the fashion wears out more apparel than the man. But art not thou thyself giddy with the fashion too, that thou hast shifted out of thy tale into telling me of the fashion?

BORACHIO. Not so neither; but know, that I have tonight wooed Margaret, the Lady Hero’s gentlewoman, by the name of Hero: she leans me out at her mistress’ chamber window, bids me a thousand times good night,—I tell this tale vilely:—I should first tell thee how the Prince, Claudio, and my master, planted and placed and possessed by my master Don John, saw afar off in the orchard this amiable encounter.

CONRADE. And thought they Margaret was Hero?

BORACHIO. Two of them did, the Prince and Claudio; but the devil my master, knew she was Margaret; and partly by his oaths, which first possessed them, partly by the dark night, which did deceive them, but chiefly by my villainy, which did confirm any slander that Don John had made, away went Claudio enraged; swore he would meet her, as he was appointed, next morning at the temple, and there, before the whole congregation, shame her with what he saw o’er night, and send her home again without a husband.

FIRST WATCH. We charge you in the Prince’s name, stand!

SECOND WATCH. Call up the right Master Constable. We have here recovered the most dangerous piece of lechery that ever was known in the commonwealth.

FIRST WATCH. And one Deformed is one of them: I know him, a’ wears a lock.

CONRADE. Masters, masters!

SECOND WATCH. You’ll be made bring Deformed forth, I warrant you.

CONRADE. Masters,—

FIRST WATCH. Never speak: we charge you let us obey you to go with us.

BORACHIO. We are like to prove a goodly commodity, being taken up of these men’s bills.

CONRADE. A commodity in question, I warrant you. Come, we’ll obey you.

HERO. Good Ursula, wake my cousin Beatrice, and desire her to rise.

URSULA. I will, lady.

HERO. And bid her come hither.

URSULA. Well.

MARGARET. Troth, I think your other rebato were better.

HERO. No, pray thee, good Meg, I’ll wear this.

MARGARET. By my troth’s not so good; and I warrant your cousin will say so.

HERO. My cousin’s a fool, and thou art another: I’ll wear none but this.

MARGARET. I like the new tire within excellently, if the hair were a thought browner; and your gown’s a most rare fashion, i’ faith. I saw the Duchess of Milan’s gown that they praise so.

HERO. O! that exceeds, they say.

MARGARET. By my troth ’s but a night-gown in respect of yours: cloth o’ gold, and cuts, and laced with silver, set with pearls, down sleeves, side sleeves, and skirts round, underborne with a bluish tinsel; but for a fine, quaint, graceful, and excellent fashion, yours is worth ten on’t.

HERO. God give me joy to wear it! for my heart is exceeding heavy.

MARGARET. ’Twill be heavier soon by the weight of a man.

HERO. Fie upon thee! art not ashamed?

MARGARET. Of what, lady? of speaking honourably? Is not marriage honourable in a beggar? Is not your lord honourable without marriage? I think you would have me say, saving your reverence, ‘a husband:’ an bad thinking do not wrest true speaking, I’ll offend nobody. Is there any harm in ‘the heavier for a husband’? None, I think, and it be the right husband and the right wife; otherwise ’tis light, and not heavy: ask my Lady Beatrice else; here she comes.

HERO. Good morrow, coz.

BEATRICE. Good morrow, sweet Hero.

HERO. Why, how now? do you speak in the sick tune?

BEATRICE. I am out of all other tune, methinks.

MARGARET. Clap’s into ‘Light o’ love’; that goes without a burden: do you sing it, and I’ll dance it.

BEATRICE. Ye, light o’ love with your heels! then, if your husband have stables enough, you’ll see he shall lack no barnes.

MARGARET. O illegitimate construction! I scorn that with my heels.

BEATRICE. ’Tis almost five o’clock, cousin; ’tis time you were ready. By my troth, I am exceeding ill. Heigh-ho!

MARGARET. For a hawk, a horse, or a husband?

BEATRICE. For the letter that begins them all, H.

MARGARET. Well, and you be not turned Turk, there’s no more sailing by the star.

BEATRICE. What means the fool, trow?

MARGARET. Nothing I; but God send everyone their heart’s desire!

HERO. These gloves the Count sent me; they are an excellent perfume.

BEATRICE. I am stuffed, cousin, I cannot smell.

MARGARET. A maid, and stuffed! there’s goodly catching of cold.

BEATRICE. O, God help me! God help me! how long have you professed apprehension?

MARGARET. Ever since you left it. Doth not my wit become me rarely!

BEATRICE. It is not seen enough, you should wear it in your cap. By my troth, I am sick.

MARGARET. Get you some of this distilled Carduus benedictus, and lay it to your heart: it is the only thing for a qualm.

HERO. There thou prick’st her with a thistle.

BEATRICE. Benedictus! why benedictus? you have some moral in this benedictus.

MARGARET. Moral! no, by my troth, I have no moral meaning; I meant, plain holy thistle. You may think, perchance, that I think you are in love: nay, by’r Lady, I am not such a fool to think what I list; nor I list not to think what I can; nor, indeed, I cannot think, if I would think my heart out of thinking, that you are in love, or that you will be in love, or that you can be in love. Yet Benedick was such another, and now is he become a man: he swore he would never marry; and yet now, in despite of his heart, he eats his meat without grudging: and how you may be converted, I know not; but methinks you look with your eyes as other women do.

BEATRICE. What pace is this that thy tongue keeps?

MARGARET. Not a false gallop.

Re-enter Ursula.

URSULA. Madam, withdraw: the Prince, the Count, Signior Benedick, Don John, and all the gallants of the town are come to fetch you to church.

HERO. Help to dress me, good coz, good Meg, good Ursula.

Enter Leonato and Dogberry and Verges.

LEONATO. What would you with me, honest neighbour?

DOGBERRY. Marry, sir, I would have some confidence with you, that decerns you nearly.

LEONATO. Brief, I pray you; for you see it is a busy time with me.

DOGBERRY. Marry, this it is, sir.

VERGES. Yes, in truth it is, sir.

LEONATO. What is it, my good friends?

DOGBERRY. Goodman Verges, sir, speaks a little off the matter: an old man, sir, and his wits are not so blunt as, God help, I would desire they were; but, in faith, honest as the skin between his brows.

VERGES. Yes, I thank God, I am as honest as any man living, that is an old man and no honester than I.

DOGBERRY. Comparisons are odorous: palabras, neighbour Verges.

LEONATO. Neighbours, you are tedious.

DOGBERRY. It pleases your worship to say so, but we are the poor Duke’s officers; but truly, for mine own part, if I were as tedious as a king, I could find in my heart to bestow it all of your worship.

LEONATO. All thy tediousness on me! ah?

DOGBERRY. Yea, and ’twere a thousand pound more than ’tis; for I hear as good exclamation on your worship, as of any man in the city, and though I be but a poor man, I am glad to hear it.

VERGES. And so am I.

LEONATO. I would fain know what you have to say.

VERGES. Marry, sir, our watch tonight, excepting your worship’s presence, ha’ ta’en a couple of as arrant knaves as any in Messina.

DOGBERRY. A good old man, sir; he will be talking; as they say, ‘when the age is in, the wit is out.’ God help us! it is a world to see! Well said, i’ faith, neighbour Verges: well, God’s a good man; and two men ride of a horse, one must ride behind. An honest soul, i’ faith, sir; by my troth he is, as ever broke bread; but God is to be worshipped: all men are not alike; alas! good neighbour.

LEONATO. Indeed, neighbour, he comes too short of you.

DOGBERRY. Gifts that God gives.

LEONATO. I must leave you.

DOGBERRY. One word, sir: our watch, sir, have indeed comprehended two aspicious persons, and we would have them this morning examined before your worship.

LEONATO. Take their examination yourself, and bring it me: I am now in great haste, as may appear unto you.

DOGBERRY. It shall be suffigance.

LEONATO. Drink some wine ere you go: fare you well.

MESSENGER. My lord, they stay for you to give your daughter to her husband.

LEONATO. I’ll wait upon them: I am ready.

DOGBERRY. Go, good partner, go get you to Francis Seacoal; bid him bring his pen and inkhorn to the gaol: we are now to examination these men.

VERGES. And we must do it wisely.

[Exeunt Leonato and Messenger.]

DOGBERRY. We will spare for no wit, I warrant you; here’s that shall drive some of them to a non-come: only get the learned writer to set down our excommunication, and meet me at the gaol.

SCENE I. The Inside of a Church.

Enter Don Pedro, Don John, Leonato, Friar Francis, Claudio, Benedick, Hero, Beatrice &c.

LEONATO. Come, Friar Francis, be brief: only to the plain form of marriage, and you shall recount their particular duties afterwards.

FRIAR. You come hither, my lord, to marry this lady?

LEONATO. To be married to her, friar; you come to marry her.

FRIAR. Lady, you come hither to be married to this Count?

HERO. I do.

FRIAR. If either of you know any inward impediment, why you should not be conjoined, I charge you, on your souls, to utter it.

CLAUDIO. Know you any, Hero?

HERO. None, my lord.

FRIAR. Know you any, Count?

LEONATO. I dare make his answer; none.

CLAUDIO. O! what men dare do! what men may do! what men daily do, not knowing what they do!

BENEDICK. How now! Interjections? Why then, some be of laughing, as ah! ha! he!

CLAUDIO. Stand thee by, Friar. Father, by your leave: Will you with free and unconstrained soul Give me this maid, your daughter?

LEONATO. As freely, son, as God did give her me.

CLAUDIO. And what have I to give you back whose worth May counterpoise this rich and precious gift?

DON PEDRO. Nothing, unless you render her again.

CLAUDIO. Sweet Prince, you learn me noble thankfulness. There, Leonato, take her back again: Give not this rotten orange to your friend; She’s but the sign and semblance of her honour. Behold! how like a maid she blushes here. O! what authority and show of truth Can cunning sin cover itself withal. Comes not that blood as modest evidence To witness simple virtue? Would you not swear, All you that see her, that she were a maid, By these exterior shows? But she is none: She knows the heat of a luxurious bed; Her blush is guiltiness, not modesty.

LEONATO. What do you mean, my lord?

CLAUDIO. Not to be married, Not to knit my soul to an approved wanton.

LEONATO. Dear my lord, if you, in your own proof, Have vanquish’d the resistance of her youth, And made defeat of her virginity,—

CLAUDIO. I know what you would say: if I have known her, You will say she did embrace me as a husband, And so extenuate the forehand sin: No, Leonato, I never tempted her with word too large; But as a brother to his sister show’d Bashful sincerity and comely love.

HERO. And seem’d I ever otherwise to you?

CLAUDIO. Out on thee! Seeming! I will write against it: You seem to me as Dian in her orb, As chaste as is the bud ere it be blown; But you are more intemperate in your blood Than Venus, or those pamper’d animals That rage in savage sensuality.

HERO. Is my lord well, that he doth speak so wide?

LEONATO. Sweet Prince, why speak not you?

DON PEDRO. What should I speak? I stand dishonour’d, that have gone about To link my dear friend to a common stale.

LEONATO. Are these things spoken, or do I but dream?

DON JOHN. Sir, they are spoken, and these things are true.

BENEDICK. This looks not like a nuptial.

HERO. True! O God!

CLAUDIO. Leonato, stand I here? Is this the Prince? Is this the Prince’s brother? Is this face Hero’s? Are our eyes our own?

LEONATO. All this is so; but what of this, my lord?

CLAUDIO. Let me but move one question to your daughter, And by that fatherly and kindly power That you have in her, bid her answer truly.

LEONATO. I charge thee do so, as thou art my child.

HERO. O, God defend me! how am I beset! What kind of catechizing call you this?

CLAUDIO. To make you answer truly to your name.

HERO. Is it not Hero? Who can blot that name With any just reproach?

CLAUDIO. Marry, that can Hero: Hero itself can blot out Hero’s virtue. What man was he talk’d with you yesternight Out at your window, betwixt twelve and one? Now, if you are a maid, answer to this.

HERO. I talk’d with no man at that hour, my lord.

DON PEDRO. Why, then are you no maiden. Leonato, I am sorry you must hear: upon my honour, Myself, my brother, and this grieved Count, Did see her, hear her, at that hour last night, Talk with a ruffian at her chamber window; Who hath indeed, most like a liberal villain, Confess’d the vile encounters they have had A thousand times in secret.

DON JOHN. Fie, fie! they are not to be nam’d, my lord, Not to be spoke of; There is not chastity enough in language Without offence to utter them. Thus, pretty lady, I am sorry for thy much misgovernment.

CLAUDIO. O Hero! what a Hero hadst thou been, If half thy outward graces had been plac’d About thy thoughts and counsels of thy heart! But fare thee well, most foul, most fair! farewell, Thou pure impiety, and impious purity! For thee I’ll lock up all the gates of love, And on my eyelids shall conjecture hang, To turn all beauty into thoughts of harm, And never shall it more be gracious.

LEONATO. Hath no man’s dagger here a point for me?

[Hero swoons.]

BEATRICE. Why, how now, cousin! wherefore sink you down?

DON JOHN. Come, let us go. These things, come thus to light, Smother her spirits up.

[Exeunt Don Pedro, Don John and Claudio.]

BENEDICK. How doth the lady?

BEATRICE. Dead, I think! Help, uncle! Hero! why, Hero! Uncle! Signior Benedick! Friar!

LEONATO. O Fate! take not away thy heavy hand: Death is the fairest cover for her shame That may be wish’d for.

BEATRICE. How now, cousin Hero?

FRIAR. Have comfort, lady.

LEONATO. Dost thou look up?

FRIAR. Yea; wherefore should she not?

LEONATO. Wherefore! Why, doth not every earthly thing Cry shame upon her? Could she here deny The story that is printed in her blood? Do not live, Hero; do not ope thine eyes; For, did I think thou wouldst not quickly die, Thought I thy spirits were stronger than thy shames, Myself would, on the rearward of reproaches, Strike at thy life. Griev’d I, I had but one? Chid I for that at frugal Nature’s frame? O! one too much by thee. Why had I one? Why ever wast thou lovely in my eyes? Why had I not with charitable hand Took up a beggar’s issue at my gates, Who smirched thus, and mir’d with infamy, I might have said, ‘No part of it is mine; This shame derives itself from unknown loins?’ But mine, and mine I lov’d, and mine I prais’d, And mine that I was proud on, mine so much That I myself was to myself not mine, Valuing of her; why, she—O! she is fallen Into a pit of ink, that the wide sea Hath drops too few to wash her clean again, And salt too little which may season give To her foul tainted flesh.

BENEDICK. Sir, sir, be patient. For my part, I am so attir’d in wonder, I know not what to say.

BEATRICE. O! on my soul, my cousin is belied!

BENEDICK. Lady, were you her bedfellow last night?

BEATRICE. No, truly, not; although, until last night, I have this twelvemonth been her bedfellow.

LEONATO. Confirm’d, confirm’d! O! that is stronger made, Which was before barr’d up with ribs of iron. Would the two princes lie? and Claudio lie, Who lov’d her so, that, speaking of her foulness, Wash’d it with tears? Hence from her! let her die.

FRIAR. Hear me a little; For I have only been silent so long, And given way unto this course of fortune, By noting of the lady: I have mark’d A thousand blushing apparitions To start into her face; a thousand innocent shames In angel whiteness bear away those blushes; And in her eye there hath appear’d a fire, To burn the errors that these princes hold Against her maiden truth. Call me a fool; Trust not my reading nor my observations, Which with experimental seal doth warrant The tenure of my book; trust not my age, My reverence, calling, nor divinity, If this sweet lady lie not guiltless here Under some biting error.

LEONATO. Friar, it cannot be. Thou seest that all the grace that she hath left Is that she will not add to her damnation A sin of perjury: she not denies it. Why seek’st thou then to cover with excuse That which appears in proper nakedness?

FRIAR. Lady, what man is he you are accus’d of?

HERO. They know that do accuse me, I know none; If I know more of any man alive Than that which maiden modesty doth warrant, Let all my sins lack mercy! O, my father! Prove you that any man with me convers’d At hours unmeet, or that I yesternight Maintain’d the change of words with any creature, Refuse me, hate me, torture me to death.

FRIAR. There is some strange misprision in the princes.

BENEDICK. Two of them have the very bent of honour; And if their wisdoms be misled in this, The practice of it lives in John the bastard, Whose spirits toil in frame of villainies.

LEONATO. I know not. If they speak but truth of her, These hands shall tear her; if they wrong her honour, The proudest of them shall well hear of it. Time hath not yet so dried this blood of mine, Nor age so eat up my invention, Nor fortune made such havoc of my means, Nor my bad life reft me so much of friends, But they shall find, awak’d in such a kind, Both strength of limb and policy of mind, Ability in means and choice of friends, To quit me of them throughly.

FRIAR. Pause awhile, And let my counsel sway you in this case. Your daughter here the princes left for dead; Let her awhile be secretly kept in, And publish it that she is dead indeed: Maintain a mourning ostentation; And on your family’s old monument Hang mournful epitaphs and do all rites That appertain unto a burial.

LEONATO. What shall become of this? What will this do?

FRIAR. Marry, this well carried shall on her behalf Change slander to remorse; that is some good. But not for that dream I on this strange course, But on this travail look for greater birth. She dying, as it must be so maintain’d, Upon the instant that she was accus’d, Shall be lamented, pitied and excus’d Of every hearer; for it so falls out That what we have we prize not to the worth Whiles we enjoy it, but being lack’d and lost, Why, then we rack the value, then we find The virtue that possession would not show us Whiles it was ours. So will it fare with Claudio: When he shall hear she died upon his words, The idea of her life shall sweetly creep Into his study of imagination, And every lovely organ of her life Shall come apparell’d in more precious habit, More moving, delicate, and full of life Into the eye and prospect of his soul, Than when she liv’d indeed: then shall he mourn,— If ever love had interest in his liver,— And wish he had not so accused her, No, though he thought his accusation true. Let this be so, and doubt not but success Will fashion the event in better shape Than I can lay it down in likelihood. But if all aim but this be levell’d false, The supposition of the lady’s death Will quench the wonder of her infamy: And if it sort not well, you may conceal her,— As best befits her wounded reputation,— In some reclusive and religious life, Out of all eyes, tongues, minds, and injuries.

BENEDICK. Signior Leonato, let the friar advise you: And though you know my inwardness and love Is very much unto the Prince and Claudio, Yet, by mine honour, I will deal in this As secretly and justly as your soul Should with your body.

LEONATO. Being that I flow in grief, The smallest twine may lead me.

FRIAR. ’Tis well consented: presently away; For to strange sores strangely they strain the cure. Come, lady, die to live: this wedding day Perhaps is but prolong’d: have patience and endure.

[Exeunt Friar, Hero and Leonato.]

BENEDICK. Lady Beatrice, have you wept all this while?

BEATRICE. Yea, and I will weep a while longer.

BENEDICK. I will not desire that.

BEATRICE. You have no reason; I do it freely.

BENEDICK. Surely I do believe your fair cousin is wronged.

BEATRICE. Ah! how much might the man deserve of me that would right her.

BENEDICK. Is there any way to show such friendship?

BEATRICE. A very even way, but no such friend.

BENEDICK. May a man do it?

BEATRICE. It is a man’s office, but not yours.

BENEDICK. I do love nothing in the world so well as you: is not that strange?

BEATRICE. As strange as the thing I know not. It were as possible for me to say I loved nothing so well as you; but believe me not, and yet I lie not; I confess nothing, nor I deny nothing. I am sorry for my cousin.

BENEDICK. By my sword, Beatrice, thou lovest me.

BEATRICE. Do not swear by it, and eat it.

BENEDICK. I will swear by it that you love me; and I will make him eat it that says I love not you.

BEATRICE. Will you not eat your word?

BENEDICK. With no sauce that can be devised to it. I protest I love thee.

BEATRICE. Why then, God forgive me!

BENEDICK. What offence, sweet Beatrice?

BEATRICE. You have stayed me in a happy hour: I was about to protest I loved you.

BENEDICK. And do it with all thy heart.

BEATRICE. I love you with so much of my heart that none is left to protest.

BENEDICK. Come, bid me do anything for thee.

BEATRICE. Kill Claudio.

BENEDICK. Ha! not for the wide world.

BEATRICE. You kill me to deny it. Farewell.

BENEDICK. Tarry, sweet Beatrice.

BEATRICE. I am gone, though I am here: there is no love in you: nay, I pray you, let me go.

BENEDICK. Beatrice,—

BEATRICE. In faith, I will go.

BENEDICK. We’ll be friends first.

BEATRICE. You dare easier be friends with me than fight with mine enemy.

BENEDICK. Is Claudio thine enemy?

BEATRICE. Is he not approved in the height a villain, that hath slandered, scorned, dishonoured my kinswoman? O! that I were a man. What! bear her in hand until they come to take hands, and then, with public accusation, uncovered slander, unmitigated rancour,—O God, that I were a man! I would eat his heart in the market-place.

BENEDICK. Hear me, Beatrice,—

BEATRICE. Talk with a man out at a window! a proper saying!

BENEDICK. Nay, but Beatrice,—

BEATRICE. Sweet Hero! she is wronged, she is slandered, she is undone.

BENEDICK. Beat—

BEATRICE. Princes and Counties! Surely, a princely testimony, a goodly Count Comfect; a sweet gallant, surely! O! that I were a man for his sake, or that I had any friend would be a man for my sake! But manhood is melted into curtsies, valour into compliment, and men are only turned into tongue, and trim ones too: he is now as valiant as Hercules, that only tells a lie and swears it. I cannot be a man with wishing, therefore I will die a woman with grieving.

BENEDICK. Tarry, good Beatrice. By this hand, I love thee.

BEATRICE. Use it for my love some other way than swearing by it.

BENEDICK. Think you in your soul the Count Claudio hath wronged Hero?

BEATRICE. Yea, as sure is I have a thought or a soul.

BENEDICK. Enough! I am engaged, I will challenge him. I will kiss your hand, and so leave you. By this hand, Claudio shall render me a dear account. As you hear of me, so think of me. Go, comfort your cousin: I must say she is dead; and so, farewell.

Enter Dogberry, Verges, and Sexton, in gowns; and the Watch, with Conrade and Borachio.

DOGBERRY. Is our whole dissembly appeared?

VERGES. O! a stool and a cushion for the sexton.

SEXTON. Which be the malefactors?

DOGBERRY. Marry, that am I and my partner.

VERGES. Nay, that’s certain: we have the exhibition to examine.

SEXTON. But which are the offenders that are to be examined? let them come before Master Constable.

DOGBERRY. Yea, marry, let them come before me. What is your name, friend?

BORACHIO. Borachio.

DOGBERRY. Pray write down Borachio. Yours, sirrah?

CONRADE. I am a gentleman, sir, and my name is Conrade.

DOGBERRY. Write down Master gentleman Conrade. Masters, do you serve God?

BOTH. Yea, sir, we hope.

DOGBERRY. Write down that they hope they serve God: and write God first; for God defend but God should go before such villains! Masters, it is proved already that you are little better than false knaves, and it will go near to be thought so shortly. How answer you for yourselves?

CONRADE. Marry, sir, we say we are none.

DOGBERRY. A marvellous witty fellow, I assure you; but I will go about with him. Come you hither, sirrah; a word in your ear: sir, I say to you, it is thought you are false knaves.

BORACHIO. Sir, I say to you we are none.

DOGBERRY. Well, stand aside. Fore God, they are both in a tale. Have you writ down, that they are none?

SEXTON. Master Constable, you go not the way to examine: you must call forth the watch that are their accusers.

DOGBERRY. Yea, marry, that’s the eftest way. Let the watch come forth. Masters, I charge you, in the Prince’s name, accuse these men.

FIRST WATCH. This man said, sir, that Don John, the Prince’s brother, was a villain.

DOGBERRY. Write down Prince John a villain. Why, this is flat perjury, to call a Prince’s brother villain.

BORACHIO. Master Constable,—

DOGBERRY. Pray thee, fellow, peace: I do not like thy look, I promise thee.

SEXTON. What heard you him say else?

SECOND WATCH. Marry, that he had received a thousand ducats of Don John for accusing the Lady Hero wrongfully.

DOGBERRY. Flat burglary as ever was committed.

VERGES. Yea, by the mass, that it is.

SEXTON. What else, fellow?

FIRST WATCH. And that Count Claudio did mean, upon his words, to disgrace Hero before the whole assembly, and not marry her.

DOGBERRY. O villain! thou wilt be condemned into everlasting redemption for this.

SEXTON. What else?

SECOND WATCH. This is all.

SEXTON. And this is more, masters, than you can deny. Prince John is this morning secretly stolen away: Hero was in this manner accused, in this manner refused, and, upon the grief of this, suddenly died. Master Constable, let these men be bound, and brought to Leonato’s: I will go before and show him their examination.

DOGBERRY. Come, let them be opinioned.

VERGES. Let them be in the hands—

CONRADE. Off, coxcomb!

DOGBERRY. God’s my life! where’s the sexton? let him write down the Prince’s officer coxcomb. Come, bind them. Thou naughty varlet!

CONRADE. Away! you are an ass; you are an ass.

DOGBERRY. Dost thou not suspect my place? Dost thou not suspect my years? O that he were here to write me down an ass! but, masters, remember that I am an ass; though it be not written down, yet forget not that I am an ass. No, thou villain, thou art full of piety, as shall be proved upon thee by good witness. I am a wise fellow; and, which is more, an officer; and, which is more, a householder; and, which is more, as pretty a piece of flesh as any in Messina; and one that knows the law, go to; and a rich fellow enough, go to; and a fellow that hath had losses; and one that hath two gowns, and everything handsome about him. Bring him away. O that I had been writ down an ass!

Enter Leonato and Antonio.

ANTONIO. If you go on thus, you will kill yourself And ’tis not wisdom thus to second grief Against yourself.

LEONATO. I pray thee, cease thy counsel, Which falls into mine ears as profitless As water in a sieve: give not me counsel; Nor let no comforter delight mine ear But such a one whose wrongs do suit with mine: Bring me a father that so lov’d his child, Whose joy of her is overwhelm’d like mine, And bid him speak of patience; Measure his woe the length and breadth of mine, And let it answer every strain for strain, As thus for thus and such a grief for such, In every lineament, branch, shape, and form: If such a one will smile, and stroke his beard; Bid sorrow wag, cry ‘hem’ when he should groan, Patch grief with proverbs; make misfortune drunk With candle-wasters; bring him yet to me, And I of him will gather patience. But there is no such man; for, brother, men Can counsel and speak comfort to that grief Which they themselves not feel; but, tasting it, Their counsel turns to passion, which before Would give preceptial medicine to rage, Fetter strong madness in a silken thread, Charm ache with air and agony with words. No, no; ’tis all men’s office to speak patience To those that wring under the load of sorrow, But no man’s virtue nor sufficiency To be so moral when he shall endure The like himself. Therefore give me no counsel: My griefs cry louder than advertisement.

ANTONIO. Therein do men from children nothing differ.

LEONATO. I pray thee peace! I will be flesh and blood; For there was never yet philosopher That could endure the toothache patiently, However they have writ the style of gods And made a push at chance and sufferance.

ANTONIO. Yet bend not all the harm upon yourself; Make those that do offend you suffer too.

LEONATO. There thou speak’st reason: nay, I will do so. My soul doth tell me Hero is belied; And that shall Claudio know; so shall the Prince, And all of them that thus dishonour her.

ANTONIO. Here comes the Prince and Claudio hastily.

Enter Don Pedro and Claudio.

DON PEDRO. Good den, good den.

CLAUDIO. Good day to both of you.

LEONATO. Hear you, my lords,—

DON PEDRO. We have some haste, Leonato.

LEONATO. Some haste, my lord! well, fare you well, my lord: Are you so hasty now?—well, all is one.

DON PEDRO. Nay, do not quarrel with us, good old man.

ANTONIO. If he could right himself with quarrelling, Some of us would lie low.

CLAUDIO. Who wrongs him?

LEONATO. Marry, thou dost wrong me; thou dissembler, thou. Nay, never lay thy hand upon thy sword; I fear thee not.

CLAUDIO. Marry, beshrew my hand, If it should give your age such cause of fear. In faith, my hand meant nothing to my sword.

LEONATO. Tush, tush, man! never fleer and jest at me: I speak not like a dotard nor a fool, As, under privilege of age, to brag What I have done being young, or what would do, Were I not old. Know, Claudio, to thy head, Thou hast so wrong’d mine innocent child and me That I am forc’d to lay my reverence by, And, with grey hairs and bruise of many days, Do challenge thee to trial of a man. I say thou hast belied mine innocent child: Thy slander hath gone through and through her heart, And she lies buried with her ancestors; O! in a tomb where never scandal slept, Save this of hers, fram’d by thy villainy!

CLAUDIO. My villainy?

LEONATO. Thine, Claudio; thine, I say.

DON PEDRO. You say not right, old man.

LEONATO. My lord, my lord, I’ll prove it on his body, if he dare, Despite his nice fence and his active practice, His May of youth and bloom of lustihood.

CLAUDIO. Away! I will not have to do with you.

LEONATO. Canst thou so daff me? Thou hast kill’d my child; If thou kill’st me, boy, thou shalt kill a man.

ANTONIO. He shall kill two of us, and men indeed: But that’s no matter; let him kill one first: Win me and wear me; let him answer me. Come, follow me, boy; come, sir boy, come, follow me. Sir boy, I’ll whip you from your foining fence; Nay, as I am a gentleman, I will.

LEONATO. Brother,—

ANTONIO. Content yourself. God knows I lov’d my niece; And she is dead, slander’d to death by villains, That dare as well answer a man indeed As I dare take a serpent by the tongue. Boys, apes, braggarts, Jacks, milksops!

LEONATO. Brother Anthony,—

ANTONIO. Hold you content. What, man! I know them, yea, And what they weigh, even to the utmost scruple, Scambling, out-facing, fashion-monging boys, That lie and cog and flout, deprave and slander, Go antickly, show outward hideousness, And speak off half a dozen dangerous words, How they might hurt their enemies, if they durst; And this is all!

LEONATO. But, brother Anthony,—

ANTONIO. Come, ’tis no matter: Do not you meddle, let me deal in this.

DON PEDRO. Gentlemen both, we will not wake your patience. My heart is sorry for your daughter’s death; But, on my honour, she was charg’d with nothing But what was true and very full of proof.

LEONATO. My lord, my lord—

DON PEDRO. I will not hear you.

LEONATO. No? Come, brother, away. I will be heard.—

ANTONIO. And shall, or some of us will smart for it.

[Exeunt Leonato and Antonio.]

DON PEDRO. See, see; here comes the man we went to seek.

CLAUDIO. Now, signior, what news?

BENEDICK. Good day, my lord.

DON PEDRO. Welcome, signior: you are almost come to part almost a fray.

CLAUDIO. We had like to have had our two noses snapped off with two old men without teeth.

DON PEDRO. Leonato and his brother. What think’st thou? Had we fought, I doubt we should have been too young for them.

BENEDICK. In a false quarrel there is no true valour. I came to seek you both.

CLAUDIO. We have been up and down to seek thee; for we are high-proof melancholy, and would fain have it beaten away. Wilt thou use thy wit?

BENEDICK. It is in my scabbard; shall I draw it?

DON PEDRO. Dost thou wear thy wit by thy side?

CLAUDIO. Never any did so, though very many have been beside their wit. I will bid thee draw, as we do the minstrels; draw, to pleasure us.

DON PEDRO. As I am an honest man, he looks pale. Art thou sick, or angry?

CLAUDIO. What, courage, man! What though care killed a cat, thou hast mettle enough in thee to kill care.

BENEDICK. Sir, I shall meet your wit in the career, and you charge it against me. I pray you choose another subject.

CLAUDIO. Nay then, give him another staff: this last was broke cross.

DON PEDRO. By this light, he changes more and more: I think he be angry indeed.

CLAUDIO. If he be, he knows how to turn his girdle.

BENEDICK. Shall I speak a word in your ear?

CLAUDIO. God bless me from a challenge!

BENEDICK. [Aside to Claudio.] You are a villain, I jest not: I will make it good how you dare, with what you dare, and when you dare. Do me right, or I will protest your cowardice. You have killed a sweet lady, and her death shall fall heavy on you. Let me hear from you.

CLAUDIO. Well I will meet you, so I may have good cheer.

DON PEDRO. What, a feast, a feast?

CLAUDIO. I’ faith, I thank him; he hath bid me to a calf’s-head and a capon, the which if I do not carve most curiously, say my knife’s naught. Shall I not find a woodcock too?

BENEDICK. Sir, your wit ambles well; it goes easily.

DON PEDRO. I’ll tell thee how Beatrice praised thy wit the other day. I said, thou hadst a fine wit. ‘True,’ says she, ‘a fine little one.’ ‘No,’ said I, ‘a great wit.’ ‘Right,’ said she, ‘a great gross one.’ ‘Nay,’ said I, ‘a good wit.’ ‘Just,’ said she, ‘it hurts nobody.’ ‘Nay,’ said I, ‘the gentleman is wise.’ ‘Certain,’ said she, ‘a wise gentleman.’ ‘Nay,’ said I, ‘he hath the tongues.’ ‘That I believe’ said she, ‘for he swore a thing to me on Monday night, which he forswore on Tuesday morning: there’s a double tongue; there’s two tongues.’ Thus did she, an hour together, trans-shape thy particular virtues; yet at last she concluded with a sigh, thou wast the properest man in Italy.

CLAUDIO. For the which she wept heartily and said she cared not.

DON PEDRO. Yea, that she did; but yet, for all that, an if she did not hate him deadly, she would love him dearly. The old man’s daughter told us all.

CLAUDIO. All, all; and moreover, God saw him when he was hid in the garden.

DON PEDRO. But when shall we set the savage bull’s horns on the sensible Benedick’s head?

CLAUDIO. Yea, and text underneath, ‘Here dwells Benedick the married man!’

BENEDICK. Fare you well, boy: you know my mind. I will leave you now to your gossip-like humour; you break jests as braggarts do their blades, which, God be thanked, hurt not. My lord, for your many courtesies I thank you: I must discontinue your company. Your brother the bastard is fled from Messina: you have, among you, killed a sweet and innocent lady. For my Lord Lack-beard there, he and I shall meet; and till then, peace be with him.

DON PEDRO. He is in earnest.

CLAUDIO. In most profound earnest; and, I’ll warrant you, for the love of Beatrice.

DON PEDRO. And hath challenged thee?

CLAUDIO. Most sincerely.

DON PEDRO. What a pretty thing man is when he goes in his doublet and hose and leaves off his wit!

CLAUDIO. He is then a giant to an ape; but then is an ape a doctor to such a man.

DON PEDRO. But, soft you; let me be: pluck up, my heart, and be sad! Did he not say my brother was fled?

Enter Dogberry, Verges, and the Watch, with Conrade and Borachio.

DOGBERRY. Come you, sir: if justice cannot tame you, she shall ne’er weigh more reasons in her balance. Nay, an you be a cursing hypocrite once, you must be looked to.

DON PEDRO. How now! two of my brother’s men bound! Borachio, one!

CLAUDIO. Hearken after their offence, my lord.

DON PEDRO. Officers, what offence have these men done?

DOGBERRY. Marry, sir, they have committed false report; moreover, they have spoken untruths; secondarily, they are slanders; sixth and lastly, they have belied a lady; thirdly, they have verified unjust things; and to conclude, they are lying knaves.

DON PEDRO. First, I ask thee what they have done; thirdly, I ask thee what’s their offence; sixth and lastly, why they are committed; and, to conclude, what you lay to their charge?

CLAUDIO. Rightly reasoned, and in his own division; and, by my troth, there’s one meaning well suited.

DON PEDRO. Who have you offended, masters, that you are thus bound to your answer? This learned constable is too cunning to be understood. What’s your offence?

BORACHIO. Sweet Prince, let me go no farther to mine answer: do you hear me, and let this Count kill me. I have deceived even your very eyes: what your wisdoms could not discover, these shallow fools have brought to light; who, in the night overheard me confessing to this man how Don John your brother incensed me to slander the Lady Hero; how you were brought into the orchard and saw me court Margaret in Hero’s garments; how you disgraced her, when you should marry her. My villainy they have upon record; which I had rather seal with my death than repeat over to my shame. The lady is dead upon mine and my master’s false accusation; and, briefly, I desire nothing but the reward of a villain.

DON PEDRO. Runs not this speech like iron through your blood?

CLAUDIO. I have drunk poison whiles he utter’d it.

DON PEDRO. But did my brother set thee on to this?

BORACHIO. Yea; and paid me richly for the practice of it.

DON PEDRO. He is compos’d and fram’d of treachery: And fled he is upon this villainy.

CLAUDIO. Sweet Hero! now thy image doth appear In the rare semblance that I lov’d it first.

DOGBERRY. Come, bring away the plaintiffs: by this time our sexton hath reformed Signior Leonato of the matter. And masters, do not forget to specify, when time and place shall serve, that I am an ass.

VERGES. Here, here comes Master Signior Leonato, and the sexton too.

Re-enter Leonato, Antonio and the Sexton.

LEONATO. Which is the villain? Let me see his eyes, That, when I note another man like him, I may avoid him. Which of these is he?

BORACHIO. If you would know your wronger, look on me.

LEONATO. Art thou the slave that with thy breath hast kill’d Mine innocent child?

BORACHIO. Yea, even I alone.

LEONATO. No, not so, villain; thou beliest thyself: Here stand a pair of honourable men; A third is fled, that had a hand in it. I thank you, princes, for my daughter’s death: Record it with your high and worthy deeds. ’Twas bravely done, if you bethink you of it.

CLAUDIO. I know not how to pray your patience; Yet I must speak. Choose your revenge yourself; Impose me to what penance your invention Can lay upon my sin: yet sinn’d I not But in mistaking.

DON PEDRO. By my soul, nor I: And yet, to satisfy this good old man, I would bend under any heavy weight That he’ll enjoin me to.

LEONATO. I cannot bid you bid my daughter live; That were impossible; but, I pray you both, Possess the people in Messina here How innocent she died; and if your love Can labour aught in sad invention, Hang her an epitaph upon her tomb, And sing it to her bones: sing it tonight. Tomorrow morning come you to my house, And since you could not be my son-in-law, Be yet my nephew. My brother hath a daughter, Almost the copy of my child that’s dead, And she alone is heir to both of us: Give her the right you should have given her cousin, And so dies my revenge.

CLAUDIO. O noble sir, Your over-kindness doth wring tears from me! I do embrace your offer; and dispose For henceforth of poor Claudio.

LEONATO. Tomorrow then I will expect your coming; Tonight I take my leave. This naughty man Shall face to face be brought to Margaret, Who, I believe, was pack’d in all this wrong, Hir’d to it by your brother.

BORACHIO. No, by my soul she was not; Nor knew not what she did when she spoke to me; But always hath been just and virtuous In anything that I do know by her.

DOGBERRY. Moreover, sir,—which, indeed, is not under white and black,— this plaintiff here, the offender, did call me ass: I beseech you, let it be remembered in his punishment. And also, the watch heard them talk of one Deformed: they say he wears a key in his ear and a lock hanging by it, and borrows money in God’s name, the which he hath used so long and never paid, that now men grow hard-hearted, and will lend nothing for God’s sake. Pray you, examine him upon that point.

LEONATO. I thank thee for thy care and honest pains.

DOGBERRY. Your worship speaks like a most thankful and reverent youth, and I praise God for you.

LEONATO. There’s for thy pains.

DOGBERRY. God save the foundation!

LEONATO. Go, I discharge thee of thy prisoner, and I thank thee.

DOGBERRY. I leave an arrant knave with your worship; which I beseech your worship to correct yourself, for the example of others. God keep your worship! I wish your worship well; God restore you to health! I humbly give you leave to depart, and if a merry meeting may be wished, God prohibit it! Come, neighbour.

LEONATO. Until tomorrow morning, lords, farewell.

ANTONIO. Farewell, my lords: we look for you tomorrow.

DON PEDRO. We will not fail.

CLAUDIO. Tonight I’ll mourn with Hero.

[Exeunt Don Pedro and Claudio.]

LEONATO. [To the Watch.] Bring you these fellows on. We’ll talk with Margaret, How her acquaintance grew with this lewd fellow.

SCENE II. Leonato’s Garden.

Enter Benedick and Margaret, meeting.

BENEDICK. Pray thee, sweet Mistress Margaret, deserve well at my hands by helping me to the speech of Beatrice.

MARGARET. Will you then write me a sonnet in praise of my beauty?

BENEDICK. In so high a style, Margaret, that no man living shall come over it; for, in most comely truth, thou deservest it.

MARGARET. To have no man come over me! why, shall I always keep below stairs?

BENEDICK. Thy wit is as quick as the greyhound’s mouth; it catches.

MARGARET. And yours as blunt as the fencer’s foils, which hit, but hurt not.

BENEDICK. A most manly wit, Margaret; it will not hurt a woman: and so, I pray thee, call Beatrice. I give thee the bucklers.

MARGARET. Give us the swords, we have bucklers of our own.

BENEDICK. If you use them, Margaret, you must put in the pikes with a vice; and they are dangerous weapons for maids.

MARGARET. Well, I will call Beatrice to you, who I think hath legs.

BENEDICK. And therefore will come.

[Exit Margaret.]

The god of love, That sits above, And knows me, and knows me, How pitiful I deserve,—

I mean, in singing: but in loving, Leander the good swimmer, Troilus the first employer of panders, and a whole book full of these quondam carpet-mongers, whose names yet run smoothly in the even road of a blank verse, why, they were never so truly turned over and over as my poor self in love. Marry, I cannot show it in rime; I have tried: I can find out no rime to ‘lady’ but ‘baby’, an innocent rime; for ‘scorn,’ ‘horn’, a hard rime; for ‘school’, ‘fool’, a babbling rime; very ominous endings: no, I was not born under a riming planet, nor I cannot woo in festival terms.

Sweet Beatrice, wouldst thou come when I called thee?

BEATRICE. Yea, signior; and depart when you bid me.

BENEDICK. O, stay but till then!

BEATRICE. ‘Then’ is spoken; fare you well now: and yet, ere I go, let me go with that I came for; which is, with knowing what hath passed between you and Claudio.

BENEDICK. Only foul words; and thereupon I will kiss thee.

BEATRICE. Foul words is but foul wind, and foul wind is but foul breath, and foul breath is noisome; therefore I will depart unkissed.

BENEDICK. Thou hast frighted the word out of his right sense, so forcible is thy wit. But I must tell thee plainly, Claudio undergoes my challenge, and either I must shortly hear from him, or I will subscribe him a coward. And, I pray thee now, tell me, for which of my bad parts didst thou first fall in love with me?

BEATRICE. For them all together; which maintained so politic a state of evil that they will not admit any good part to intermingle with them. But for which of my good parts did you first suffer love for me?

BENEDICK. ‘Suffer love,’ a good epithet! I do suffer love indeed, for I love thee against my will.

BEATRICE. In spite of your heart, I think. Alas, poor heart! If you spite it for my sake, I will spite it for yours; for I will never love that which my friend hates.

BENEDICK. Thou and I are too wise to woo peaceably.

BEATRICE. It appears not in this confession: there’s not one wise man among twenty that will praise himself.

BENEDICK. An old, an old instance, Beatrice, that lived in the time of good neighbours. If a man do not erect in this age his own tomb ere he dies, he shall live no longer in monument than the bell rings and the widow weeps.

BEATRICE. And how long is that think you?

BENEDICK. Question: why, an hour in clamour and a quarter in rheum: therefore is it most expedient for the wise,—if Don Worm, his conscience, find no impediment to the contrary,—to be the trumpet of his own virtues, as I am to myself. So much for praising myself, who, I myself will bear witness, is praiseworthy. And now tell me, how doth your cousin?

BEATRICE. Very ill.

BENEDICK. And how do you?

BEATRICE. Very ill too.

BENEDICK. Serve God, love me, and mend. There will I leave you too, for here comes one in haste.

Enter Ursula.

URSULA. Madam, you must come to your uncle. Yonder’s old coil at home: it is proved, my Lady Hero hath been falsely accused, the Prince and Claudio mightily abused; and Don John is the author of all, who is fled and gone. Will you come presently?

BEATRICE. Will you go hear this news, signior?

BENEDICK. I will live in thy heart, die in thy lap, and be buried in thy eyes; and moreover I will go with thee to thy uncle’s.

SCENE III. The Inside of a Church.

Enter Don Pedro, Claudio and Attendants, with music and tapers.

CLAUDIO. Is this the monument of Leonato?

A LORD. It is, my lord.

CLAUDIO. [Reads from a scroll.]

Epitaph.

Done to death by slanderous tongues Was the Hero that here lies: Death, in guerdon of her wrongs, Gives her fame which never dies. So the life that died with shame Lives in death with glorious fame.

Hang thou there upon the tomb,

Praising her when I am dumb. Now, music, sound, and sing your solemn hymn.

Song.

Pardon, goddess of the night, Those that slew thy virgin knight; For the which, with songs of woe, Round about her tomb they go. Midnight, assist our moan; Help us to sigh and groan, Heavily, heavily: Graves, yawn and yield your dead, Till death be uttered, Heavily, heavily.

CLAUDIO. Now, unto thy bones good night! Yearly will I do this rite.

DON PEDRO. Good morrow, masters: put your torches out. The wolves have prey’d; and look, the gentle day, Before the wheels of Phoebus, round about Dapples the drowsy East with spots of grey. Thanks to you all, and leave us: fare you well.

CLAUDIO. Good morrow, masters: each his several way.

DON PEDRO. Come, let us hence, and put on other weeds; And then to Leonato’s we will go.

CLAUDIO. And Hymen now with luckier issue speed’s, Than this for whom we rend’red up this woe!

SCENE IV. A Room in Leonato’s House.

Enter Leonato, Antonio, Benedick, Beatrice, Margaret, Ursula, Friar Francis and Hero.

FRIAR. Did I not tell you she was innocent?

LEONATO. So are the Prince and Claudio, who accus’d her Upon the error that you heard debated: But Margaret was in some fault for this, Although against her will, as it appears In the true course of all the question.

ANTONIO. Well, I am glad that all things sort so well.

BENEDICK. And so am I, being else by faith enforc’d To call young Claudio to a reckoning for it.

LEONATO. Well, daughter, and you gentlewomen all, Withdraw into a chamber by yourselves, And when I send for you, come hither mask’d: The Prince and Claudio promis’d by this hour To visit me.

You know your office, brother; You must be father to your brother’s daughter, And give her to young Claudio.

ANTONIO. Which I will do with confirm’d countenance.

BENEDICK. Friar, I must entreat your pains, I think.

FRIAR. To do what, signior?

BENEDICK. To bind me, or undo me; one of them. Signior Leonato, truth it is, good signior, Your niece regards me with an eye of favour.

LEONATO. That eye my daughter lent her. ’Tis most true.

BENEDICK. And I do with an eye of love requite her.

LEONATO. The sight whereof I think, you had from me, From Claudio, and the Prince. But what’s your will?

BENEDICK. Your answer, sir, is enigmatical: But, for my will, my will is your good will May stand with ours, this day to be conjoin’d In the state of honourable marriage: In which, good friar, I shall desire your help.

LEONATO. My heart is with your liking.

FRIAR. And my help. Here comes the Prince and Claudio.

Enter Don Pedro and Claudio, with Attendants.

DON PEDRO. Good morrow to this fair assembly.

LEONATO. Good morrow, Prince; good morrow, Claudio: We here attend you. Are you yet determin’d Today to marry with my brother’s daughter?

CLAUDIO. I’ll hold my mind, were she an Ethiope.

LEONATO. Call her forth, brother: here’s the friar ready.

[Exit Antonio.]

DON PEDRO. Good morrow, Benedick. Why, what’s the matter, That you have such a February face, So full of frost, of storm and cloudiness?

CLAUDIO. I think he thinks upon the savage bull. Tush! fear not, man, we’ll tip thy horns with gold, And all Europa shall rejoice at thee, As once Europa did at lusty Jove, When he would play the noble beast in love.

BENEDICK. Bull Jove, sir, had an amiable low: And some such strange bull leap’d your father’s cow, And got a calf in that same noble feat, Much like to you, for you have just his bleat.

CLAUDIO. For this I owe you: here comes other reckonings.

Re-enter Antonio, with the ladies masked.

Which is the lady I must seize upon?

ANTONIO. This same is she, and I do give you her.

CLAUDIO. Why then, she’s mine. Sweet, let me see your face.

LEONATO. No, that you shall not, till you take her hand Before this friar, and swear to marry her.

CLAUDIO. Give me your hand: before this holy friar, I am your husband, if you like of me.

HERO. And when I liv’d, I was your other wife: [Unmasking.] And when you lov’d, you were my other husband.

CLAUDIO. Another Hero!

HERO. Nothing certainer: One Hero died defil’d, but I do live, And surely as I live, I am a maid.

DON PEDRO. The former Hero! Hero that is dead!

LEONATO. She died, my lord, but whiles her slander liv’d.

FRIAR. All this amazement can I qualify: When after that the holy rites are ended, I’ll tell you largely of fair Hero’s death: Meantime, let wonder seem familiar, And to the chapel let us presently.

BENEDICK. Soft and fair, friar. Which is Beatrice?

BEATRICE. [Unmasking.] I answer to that name. What is your will?

BENEDICK. Do not you love me?

BEATRICE. Why, no; no more than reason.

BENEDICK. Why, then, your uncle and the Prince and Claudio Have been deceived; for they swore you did.

BEATRICE. Do not you love me?

BENEDICK. Troth, no; no more than reason.

BEATRICE. Why, then my cousin, Margaret, and Ursula, Are much deceiv’d; for they did swear you did.

BENEDICK. They swore that you were almost sick for me.

BEATRICE. They swore that you were well-nigh dead for me.

BENEDICK. ’Tis no such matter. Then you do not love me?

BEATRICE. No, truly, but in friendly recompense.

LEONATO. Come, cousin, I am sure you love the gentleman.

CLAUDIO. And I’ll be sworn upon ’t that he loves her; For here’s a paper written in his hand, A halting sonnet of his own pure brain, Fashion’d to Beatrice.

HERO. And here’s another, Writ in my cousin’s hand, stolen from her pocket, Containing her affection unto Benedick.

BENEDICK. A miracle! here’s our own hands against our hearts. Come, I will have thee; but, by this light, I take thee for pity.

BEATRICE. I would not deny you; but, by this good day, I yield upon great persuasion, and partly to save your life, for I was told you were in a consumption.

BENEDICK. Peace! I will stop your mouth. [Kisses her.]

DON PEDRO. How dost thou, Benedick, the married man?

BENEDICK. I’ll tell thee what, Prince; a college of witcrackers cannot flout me out of my humour. Dost thou think I care for a satire or an epigram? No; if man will be beaten with brains, a’ shall wear nothing handsome about him. In brief, since I do purpose to marry, I will think nothing to any purpose that the world can say against it; and therefore never flout at me for what I have said against it, for man is a giddy thing, and this is my conclusion. For thy part, Claudio, I did think to have beaten thee; but, in that thou art like to be my kinsman, live unbruised, and love my cousin.

CLAUDIO. I had well hoped thou wouldst have denied Beatrice, that I might have cudgelled thee out of thy single life, to make thee a double-dealer; which, out of question, thou wilt be, if my cousin do not look exceeding narrowly to thee.

BENEDICK. Come, come, we are friends. Let’s have a dance ere we are married, that we may lighten our own hearts and our wives’ heels.

LEONATO. We’ll have dancing afterward.

BENEDICK. First, of my word; therefore play, music! Prince, thou art sad; get thee a wife, get thee a wife: there is no staff more reverent than one tipped with horn.

MESSENGER. My lord, your brother John is ta’en in flight, And brought with armed men back to Messina.

BENEDICK. Think not on him till tomorrow: I’ll devise thee brave punishments for him. Strike up, pipers!

[Dance. Exeunt.]

THE TRAGEDY OF OTHELLO, THE MOOR OF VENICE

ACT I Scene I. Venice. A street Scene II. Venice. Another street Scene III. Venice. A council chamber

ACT II Scene I. A seaport in Cyprus. A Platform Scene II. A street Scene III. A Hall in the Castle

ACT III Scene I. Cyprus. Before the Castle Scene II. Cyprus. A Room in the Castle Scene III. Cyprus. The Garden of the Castle Scene IV. Cyprus. Before the Castle

ACT IV Scene I. Cyprus. Before the Castle Scene II. Cyprus. A Room in the Castle Scene III. Cyprus. Another Room in the Castle

ACT V Scene I. Cyprus. A Street Scene II. Cyprus. A Bedchamber in the castle

DUKE OF VENICE BRABANTIO, a Senator of Venice and Desdemona’s father Other Senators GRATIANO, Brother to Brabantio LODOVICO, Kinsman to Brabantio OTHELLO, a noble Moor in the service of Venice CASSIO, his Lieutenant IAGO, his Ancient MONTANO, Othello’s predecessor in the government of Cyprus RODERIGO, a Venetian Gentleman CLOWN, Servant to Othello

DESDEMONA, Daughter to Brabantio and Wife to Othello EMILIA, Wife to Iago BIANCA, Mistress to Cassio

Officers, Gentlemen, Messenger, Musicians, Herald, Sailor, Attendants, &c.

SCENE: The First Act in Venice; during the rest of the Play at a Seaport in Cyprus.

Enter Roderigo and Iago.

RODERIGO. Tush, never tell me, I take it much unkindly That thou, Iago, who hast had my purse, As if the strings were thine, shouldst know of this.

IAGO. ’Sblood, but you will not hear me. If ever I did dream of such a matter, Abhor me.

RODERIGO. Thou told’st me, thou didst hold him in thy hate.

IAGO. Despise me if I do not. Three great ones of the city, In personal suit to make me his lieutenant, Off-capp’d to him; and by the faith of man, I know my price, I am worth no worse a place. But he, as loving his own pride and purposes, Evades them, with a bombast circumstance, Horribly stuff’d with epithets of war: And in conclusion, Nonsuits my mediators: for “Certes,” says he, “I have already chose my officer.” And what was he? Forsooth, a great arithmetician, One Michael Cassio, a Florentine, A fellow almost damn’d in a fair wife, That never set a squadron in the field, Nor the division of a battle knows More than a spinster, unless the bookish theoric, Wherein the toged consuls can propose As masterly as he: mere prattle without practice Is all his soldiership. But he, sir, had the election, And I, of whom his eyes had seen the proof At Rhodes, at Cyprus, and on other grounds, Christian and heathen, must be belee’d and calm’d By debitor and creditor, this counter-caster, He, in good time, must his lieutenant be, And I, God bless the mark, his Moorship’s ancient.

RODERIGO. By heaven, I rather would have been his hangman.

IAGO. Why, there’s no remedy. ’Tis the curse of service, Preferment goes by letter and affection, And not by old gradation, where each second Stood heir to the first. Now sir, be judge yourself Whether I in any just term am affin’d To love the Moor.

RODERIGO. I would not follow him, then.

IAGO. O, sir, content you. I follow him to serve my turn upon him: We cannot all be masters, nor all masters Cannot be truly follow’d. You shall mark Many a duteous and knee-crooking knave That, doting on his own obsequious bondage, Wears out his time, much like his master’s ass, For nought but provender, and when he’s old, cashier’d. Whip me such honest knaves. Others there are Who, trimm’d in forms, and visages of duty, Keep yet their hearts attending on themselves, And throwing but shows of service on their lords, Do well thrive by them, and when they have lin’d their coats, Do themselves homage. These fellows have some soul, And such a one do I profess myself. For, sir, It is as sure as you are Roderigo, Were I the Moor, I would not be Iago: In following him, I follow but myself. Heaven is my judge, not I for love and duty, But seeming so for my peculiar end. For when my outward action doth demonstrate The native act and figure of my heart In complement extern, ’tis not long after But I will wear my heart upon my sleeve For daws to peck at: I am not what I am.

RODERIGO. What a full fortune does the thick-lips owe, If he can carry’t thus!

IAGO. Call up her father, Rouse him, make after him, poison his delight, Proclaim him in the streets; incense her kinsmen, And though he in a fertile climate dwell, Plague him with flies: though that his joy be joy, Yet throw such changes of vexation on’t, As it may lose some color.

RODERIGO. Here is her father’s house, I’ll call aloud.

IAGO. Do, with like timorous accent and dire yell As when, by night and negligence, the fire Is spied in populous cities.

RODERIGO. What ho, Brabantio! Signior Brabantio, ho!

IAGO. Awake! what ho, Brabantio! Thieves, thieves! Look to your house, your daughter, and your bags! Thieves, thieves!

Brabantio appears above at a window.

BRABANTIO. What is the reason of this terrible summons? What is the matter there?

RODERIGO. Signior, is all your family within?

IAGO. Are your doors locked?

BRABANTIO. Why, wherefore ask you this?

IAGO. Zounds, sir, you’re robb’d, for shame put on your gown, Your heart is burst, you have lost half your soul; Even now, now, very now, an old black ram Is tupping your white ewe. Arise, arise, Awake the snorting citizens with the bell, Or else the devil will make a grandsire of you: Arise, I say.

BRABANTIO. What, have you lost your wits?

RODERIGO. Most reverend signior, do you know my voice?

BRABANTIO. Not I. What are you?

RODERIGO. My name is Roderigo.

BRABANTIO. The worser welcome. I have charg’d thee not to haunt about my doors; In honest plainness thou hast heard me say My daughter is not for thee; and now in madness, Being full of supper and distempering draughts, Upon malicious bravery, dost thou come To start my quiet.

RODERIGO. Sir, sir, sir,—

BRABANTIO. But thou must needs be sure My spirit and my place have in them power To make this bitter to thee.

RODERIGO. Patience, good sir.

BRABANTIO. What tell’st thou me of robbing? This is Venice. My house is not a grange.

RODERIGO. Most grave Brabantio, In simple and pure soul I come to you.

IAGO. Zounds, sir, you are one of those that will not serve God if the devil bid you. Because we come to do you service, and you think we are ruffians, you’ll have your daughter cover’d with a Barbary horse; you’ll have your nephews neigh to you; you’ll have coursers for cousins and gennets for germans.

BRABANTIO. What profane wretch art thou?

IAGO. I am one, sir, that comes to tell you your daughter and the Moor are now making the beast with two backs.

BRABANTIO. Thou art a villain.

IAGO. You are a senator.

BRABANTIO. This thou shalt answer. I know thee, Roderigo.

RODERIGO. Sir, I will answer anything. But I beseech you, If ’t be your pleasure, and most wise consent, (As partly I find it is) that your fair daughter, At this odd-even and dull watch o’ the night, Transported with no worse nor better guard, But with a knave of common hire, a gondolier, To the gross clasps of a lascivious Moor: If this be known to you, and your allowance, We then have done you bold and saucy wrongs. But if you know not this, my manners tell me, We have your wrong rebuke. Do not believe That from the sense of all civility, I thus would play and trifle with your reverence. Your daughter (if you have not given her leave) I say again, hath made a gross revolt, Tying her duty, beauty, wit, and fortunes In an extravagant and wheeling stranger Of here and everywhere. Straight satisfy yourself: If she be in her chamber or your house, Let loose on me the justice of the state For thus deluding you.

BRABANTIO. Strike on the tinder, ho! Give me a taper! Call up all my people! This accident is not unlike my dream, Belief of it oppresses me already. Light, I say, light!

[Exit from above.]

IAGO. Farewell; for I must leave you: It seems not meet nor wholesome to my place To be produc’d, as if I stay I shall, Against the Moor. For I do know the state, However this may gall him with some check, Cannot with safety cast him, for he’s embark’d With such loud reason to the Cyprus wars, Which even now stand in act, that, for their souls, Another of his fathom they have none To lead their business. In which regard, Though I do hate him as I do hell pains, Yet, for necessity of present life, I must show out a flag and sign of love, Which is indeed but sign. That you shall surely find him, Lead to the Sagittary the raised search, And there will I be with him. So, farewell.

Enter Brabantio with Servants and torches.

BRABANTIO. It is too true an evil. Gone she is, And what’s to come of my despised time, Is naught but bitterness. Now Roderigo, Where didst thou see her? (O unhappy girl!) With the Moor, say’st thou? (Who would be a father!) How didst thou know ’twas she? (O, she deceives me Past thought.) What said she to you? Get more tapers, Raise all my kindred. Are they married, think you?

RODERIGO. Truly I think they are.

BRABANTIO. O heaven! How got she out? O treason of the blood! Fathers, from hence trust not your daughters’ minds By what you see them act. Is there not charms By which the property of youth and maidhood May be abused? Have you not read, Roderigo, Of some such thing?

RODERIGO. Yes, sir, I have indeed.

BRABANTIO. Call up my brother. O, would you had had her! Some one way, some another. Do you know Where we may apprehend her and the Moor?

RODERIGO. I think I can discover him, if you please To get good guard, and go along with me.

BRABANTIO. Pray you lead on. At every house I’ll call, I may command at most. Get weapons, ho! And raise some special officers of night. On, good Roderigo. I will deserve your pains.

SCENE II. Venice. Another street.

Enter Othello, Iago and Attendants with torches.

IAGO. Though in the trade of war I have slain men, Yet do I hold it very stuff o’ the conscience To do no contriv’d murder; I lack iniquity Sometimes to do me service: nine or ten times I had thought to have yerk’d him here under the ribs.

OTHELLO. ’Tis better as it is.

IAGO. Nay, but he prated, And spoke such scurvy and provoking terms Against your honour, That with the little godliness I have, I did full hard forbear him. But I pray you, sir, Are you fast married? Be assur’d of this, That the magnifico is much belov’d And hath in his effect a voice potential As double as the duke’s; he will divorce you, Or put upon you what restraint and grievance The law (with all his might to enforce it on) Will give him cable.

OTHELLO. Let him do his spite; My services, which I have done the signiory, Shall out-tongue his complaints. ’Tis yet to know,— Which, when I know that boasting is an honour, I shall promulgate,—I fetch my life and being From men of royal siege. And my demerits May speak unbonneted to as proud a fortune As this that I have reach’d. For know, Iago, But that I love the gentle Desdemona, I would not my unhoused free condition Put into circumscription and confine For the sea’s worth. But look, what lights come yond?

IAGO. Those are the raised father and his friends: You were best go in.

OTHELLO. Not I; I must be found. My parts, my title, and my perfect soul Shall manifest me rightly. Is it they?

IAGO. By Janus, I think no.

Enter Cassio and Officers with torches.

OTHELLO. The servants of the duke and my lieutenant. The goodness of the night upon you, friends! What is the news?

CASSIO. The duke does greet you, general, And he requires your haste-post-haste appearance Even on the instant.

OTHELLO. What is the matter, think you?

CASSIO. Something from Cyprus, as I may divine. It is a business of some heat. The galleys Have sent a dozen sequent messengers This very night at one another’s heels; And many of the consuls, rais’d and met, Are at the duke’s already. You have been hotly call’d for, When, being not at your lodging to be found, The senate hath sent about three several quests To search you out.

OTHELLO. ’Tis well I am found by you. I will but spend a word here in the house, And go with you.

CASSIO. Ancient, what makes he here?

IAGO. Faith, he tonight hath boarded a land carrack: If it prove lawful prize, he’s made forever.

CASSIO. I do not understand.

IAGO. He’s married.

CASSIO. To who?

Enter Othello.

IAGO. Marry to—Come, captain, will you go?

OTHELLO. Have with you.

CASSIO. Here comes another troop to seek for you.

Enter Brabantio, Roderigo and Officers with torches and weapons.

IAGO. It is Brabantio. General, be advis’d, He comes to bad intent.

OTHELLO. Holla, stand there!

RODERIGO. Signior, it is the Moor.

BRABANTIO. Down with him, thief!

[They draw on both sides.]

IAGO. You, Roderigo! Come, sir, I am for you.

OTHELLO. Keep up your bright swords, for the dew will rust them. Good signior, you shall more command with years Than with your weapons.

BRABANTIO. O thou foul thief, where hast thou stow’d my daughter? Damn’d as thou art, thou hast enchanted her, For I’ll refer me to all things of sense, (If she in chains of magic were not bound) Whether a maid so tender, fair, and happy, So opposite to marriage, that she shunn’d The wealthy curled darlings of our nation, Would ever have, to incur a general mock, Run from her guardage to the sooty bosom Of such a thing as thou—to fear, not to delight. Judge me the world, if ’tis not gross in sense, That thou hast practis’d on her with foul charms, Abus’d her delicate youth with drugs or minerals That weakens motion. I’ll have’t disputed on; ’Tis probable, and palpable to thinking. I therefore apprehend and do attach thee For an abuser of the world, a practiser Of arts inhibited and out of warrant.— Lay hold upon him, if he do resist, Subdue him at his peril.

OTHELLO. Hold your hands, Both you of my inclining and the rest: Were it my cue to fight, I should have known it Without a prompter. Where will you that I go To answer this your charge?

BRABANTIO. To prison, till fit time Of law and course of direct session Call thee to answer.

OTHELLO. What if I do obey? How may the duke be therewith satisfied, Whose messengers are here about my side, Upon some present business of the state, To bring me to him?

OFFICER. ’Tis true, most worthy signior, The duke’s in council, and your noble self, I am sure is sent for.

BRABANTIO. How? The duke in council? In this time of the night? Bring him away; Mine’s not an idle cause. The duke himself, Or any of my brothers of the state, Cannot but feel this wrong as ’twere their own. For if such actions may have passage free, Bond-slaves and pagans shall our statesmen be.

SCENE III. Venice. A council chamber.

The Duke and Senators sitting at a table; Officers attending.

DUKE. There is no composition in these news That gives them credit.

FIRST SENATOR. Indeed, they are disproportion’d; My letters say a hundred and seven galleys.

DUKE. And mine a hundred and forty.

SECOND SENATOR And mine two hundred: But though they jump not on a just account, (As in these cases, where the aim reports, ’Tis oft with difference,) yet do they all confirm A Turkish fleet, and bearing up to Cyprus.

DUKE. Nay, it is possible enough to judgement: I do not so secure me in the error, But the main article I do approve In fearful sense.

SAILOR. [Within.] What, ho! what, ho! what, ho!

OFFICER. A messenger from the galleys.

Enter Sailor.

DUKE. Now,—what’s the business?

SAILOR. The Turkish preparation makes for Rhodes, So was I bid report here to the state By Signior Angelo.

DUKE. How say you by this change?

FIRST SENATOR. This cannot be By no assay of reason. ’Tis a pageant To keep us in false gaze. When we consider The importancy of Cyprus to the Turk; And let ourselves again but understand That, as it more concerns the Turk than Rhodes, So may he with more facile question bear it, For that it stands not in such warlike brace, But altogether lacks the abilities That Rhodes is dress’d in. If we make thought of this, We must not think the Turk is so unskilful To leave that latest which concerns him first, Neglecting an attempt of ease and gain, To wake and wage a danger profitless.

DUKE. Nay, in all confidence, he’s not for Rhodes.

OFFICER. Here is more news.

MESSENGER. The Ottomites, reverend and gracious, Steering with due course toward the isle of Rhodes, Have there injointed them with an after fleet.

FIRST SENATOR. Ay, so I thought. How many, as you guess?

MESSENGER. Of thirty sail, and now they do re-stem Their backward course, bearing with frank appearance Their purposes toward Cyprus. Signior Montano, Your trusty and most valiant servitor, With his free duty recommends you thus, And prays you to believe him.

DUKE. ’Tis certain, then, for Cyprus. Marcus Luccicos, is not he in town?

FIRST SENATOR. He’s now in Florence.

DUKE. Write from us to him; post-post-haste dispatch.

FIRST SENATOR. Here comes Brabantio and the valiant Moor.

Enter Brabantio, Othello, Iago, Roderigo and Officers.

DUKE. Valiant Othello, we must straight employ you Against the general enemy Ottoman. [To Brabantio.] I did not see you; welcome, gentle signior, We lack’d your counsel and your help tonight.

BRABANTIO. So did I yours. Good your grace, pardon me. Neither my place, nor aught I heard of business Hath rais’d me from my bed, nor doth the general care Take hold on me; for my particular grief Is of so flood-gate and o’erbearing nature That it engluts and swallows other sorrows, And it is still itself.

DUKE. Why, what’s the matter?

BRABANTIO. My daughter! O, my daughter!

DUKE and SENATORS. Dead?

BRABANTIO. Ay, to me. She is abused, stol’n from me, and corrupted By spells and medicines bought of mountebanks; For nature so preposterously to err, Being not deficient, blind, or lame of sense, Sans witchcraft could not.

DUKE. Whoe’er he be, that in this foul proceeding, Hath thus beguil’d your daughter of herself, And you of her, the bloody book of law You shall yourself read in the bitter letter, After your own sense, yea, though our proper son Stood in your action.

BRABANTIO. Humbly I thank your grace. Here is the man, this Moor, whom now it seems Your special mandate for the state affairs Hath hither brought.

ALL. We are very sorry for ’t.

DUKE. [To Othello.] What, in your own part, can you say to this?

BRABANTIO. Nothing, but this is so.

OTHELLO. Most potent, grave, and reverend signiors, My very noble and approv’d good masters: That I have ta’en away this old man’s daughter, It is most true; true, I have married her. The very head and front of my offending Hath this extent, no more. Rude am I in my speech, And little bless’d with the soft phrase of peace; For since these arms of mine had seven years’ pith, Till now some nine moons wasted, they have us’d Their dearest action in the tented field, And little of this great world can I speak, More than pertains to feats of broil and battle, And therefore little shall I grace my cause In speaking for myself. Yet, by your gracious patience, I will a round unvarnish’d tale deliver Of my whole course of love: what drugs, what charms, What conjuration, and what mighty magic, (For such proceeding I am charged withal) I won his daughter.

BRABANTIO. A maiden never bold: Of spirit so still and quiet that her motion Blush’d at herself; and she, in spite of nature, Of years, of country, credit, everything, To fall in love with what she fear’d to look on! It is judgement maim’d and most imperfect That will confess perfection so could err Against all rules of nature, and must be driven To find out practices of cunning hell, Why this should be. I therefore vouch again, That with some mixtures powerful o’er the blood, Or with some dram conjur’d to this effect, He wrought upon her.

DUKE. To vouch this is no proof; Without more wider and more overt test Than these thin habits and poor likelihoods Of modern seeming do prefer against him.

FIRST SENATOR. But, Othello, speak: Did you by indirect and forced courses Subdue and poison this young maid’s affections? Or came it by request, and such fair question As soul to soul affordeth?

OTHELLO. I do beseech you, Send for the lady to the Sagittary, And let her speak of me before her father. If you do find me foul in her report, The trust, the office I do hold of you, Not only take away, but let your sentence Even fall upon my life.

DUKE. Fetch Desdemona hither.

OTHELLO. Ancient, conduct them, you best know the place.

[Exeunt Iago and Attendants.]

And till she come, as truly as to heaven I do confess the vices of my blood, So justly to your grave ears I’ll present How I did thrive in this fair lady’s love, And she in mine.

DUKE. Say it, Othello.

OTHELLO. Her father lov’d me, oft invited me, Still question’d me the story of my life, From year to year—the battles, sieges, fortunes, That I have pass’d. I ran it through, even from my boyish days To the very moment that he bade me tell it, Wherein I spake of most disastrous chances, Of moving accidents by flood and field; Of hair-breadth scapes i’ th’ imminent deadly breach; Of being taken by the insolent foe, And sold to slavery, of my redemption thence, And portance in my traveler’s history, Wherein of antres vast and deserts idle, Rough quarries, rocks, and hills whose heads touch heaven, It was my hint to speak,—such was the process; And of the Cannibals that each other eat, The Anthropophagi, and men whose heads Do grow beneath their shoulders. This to hear Would Desdemona seriously incline. But still the house affairs would draw her thence, Which ever as she could with haste dispatch, She’d come again, and with a greedy ear Devour up my discourse; which I observing, Took once a pliant hour, and found good means To draw from her a prayer of earnest heart That I would all my pilgrimage dilate, Whereof by parcels she had something heard, But not intentively. I did consent, And often did beguile her of her tears, When I did speak of some distressful stroke That my youth suffer’d. My story being done, She gave me for my pains a world of sighs. She swore, in faith, ’twas strange, ’twas passing strange; ’Twas pitiful, ’twas wondrous pitiful. She wish’d she had not heard it, yet she wish’d That heaven had made her such a man: she thank’d me, And bade me, if I had a friend that lov’d her, I should but teach him how to tell my story, And that would woo her. Upon this hint I spake: She lov’d me for the dangers I had pass’d, And I lov’d her that she did pity them. This only is the witchcraft I have us’d. Here comes the lady. Let her witness it.

Enter Desdemona, Iago and Attendants.

DUKE. I think this tale would win my daughter too. Good Brabantio, Take up this mangled matter at the best. Men do their broken weapons rather use Than their bare hands.

BRABANTIO. I pray you hear her speak. If she confess that she was half the wooer, Destruction on my head, if my bad blame Light on the man!—Come hither, gentle mistress: Do you perceive in all this noble company Where most you owe obedience?

DESDEMONA. My noble father, I do perceive here a divided duty: To you I am bound for life and education. My life and education both do learn me How to respect you. You are the lord of duty, I am hitherto your daughter: but here’s my husband. And so much duty as my mother show’d To you, preferring you before her father, So much I challenge that I may profess Due to the Moor my lord.

BRABANTIO. God be with you! I have done. Please it your grace, on to the state affairs. I had rather to adopt a child than get it.— Come hither, Moor: I here do give thee that with all my heart Which, but thou hast already, with all my heart I would keep from thee.—For your sake, jewel, I am glad at soul I have no other child, For thy escape would teach me tyranny, To hang clogs on them.—I have done, my lord.

DUKE. Let me speak like yourself, and lay a sentence, Which as a grise or step may help these lovers Into your favour. When remedies are past, the griefs are ended By seeing the worst, which late on hopes depended. To mourn a mischief that is past and gone Is the next way to draw new mischief on. What cannot be preserved when fortune takes, Patience her injury a mockery makes. The robb’d that smiles steals something from the thief; He robs himself that spends a bootless grief.

BRABANTIO. So let the Turk of Cyprus us beguile, We lose it not so long as we can smile; He bears the sentence well, that nothing bears But the free comfort which from thence he hears; But he bears both the sentence and the sorrow That, to pay grief, must of poor patience borrow. These sentences to sugar or to gall, Being strong on both sides, are equivocal: But words are words; I never yet did hear That the bruis’d heart was pierced through the ear. I humbly beseech you, proceed to the affairs of state.

DUKE. The Turk with a most mighty preparation makes for Cyprus. Othello, the fortitude of the place is best known to you. And though we have there a substitute of most allowed sufficiency, yet opinion, a sovereign mistress of effects, throws a more safer voice on you: you must therefore be content to slubber the gloss of your new fortunes with this more stubborn and boisterous expedition.

OTHELLO. The tyrant custom, most grave senators, Hath made the flinty and steel couch of war My thrice-driven bed of down: I do agnize A natural and prompt alacrity I find in hardness, and do undertake This present wars against the Ottomites. Most humbly, therefore, bending to your state, I crave fit disposition for my wife, Due reference of place and exhibition, With such accommodation and besort As levels with her breeding.

DUKE. If you please, Be’t at her father’s.

BRABANTIO. I’ll not have it so.

OTHELLO. Nor I.

DESDEMONA. Nor I. I would not there reside, To put my father in impatient thoughts, By being in his eye. Most gracious duke, To my unfolding lend your prosperous ear, And let me find a charter in your voice T’ assist my simpleness.

DUKE. What would you, Desdemona?

DESDEMONA. That I did love the Moor to live with him, My downright violence and storm of fortunes May trumpet to the world: my heart’s subdued Even to the very quality of my lord. I saw Othello’s visage in his mind, And to his honours and his valiant parts Did I my soul and fortunes consecrate. So that, dear lords, if I be left behind, A moth of peace, and he go to the war, The rites for which I love him are bereft me, And I a heavy interim shall support By his dear absence. Let me go with him.

OTHELLO. Let her have your voice. Vouch with me, heaven, I therefore beg it not To please the palate of my appetite, Nor to comply with heat, the young affects In me defunct, and proper satisfaction, But to be free and bounteous to her mind. And heaven defend your good souls that you think I will your serious and great business scant For she is with me. No, when light-wing’d toys Of feather’d Cupid seel with wanton dullness My speculative and offic’d instruments, That my disports corrupt and taint my business, Let housewives make a skillet of my helm, And all indign and base adversities Make head against my estimation.

DUKE. Be it as you shall privately determine, Either for her stay or going. The affair cries haste, And speed must answer it.

FIRST SENATOR. You must away tonight.

OTHELLO. With all my heart.

DUKE. At nine i’ the morning here we’ll meet again. Othello, leave some officer behind, And he shall our commission bring to you, With such things else of quality and respect As doth import you.

OTHELLO. So please your grace, my ancient, A man he is of honesty and trust, To his conveyance I assign my wife, With what else needful your good grace shall think To be sent after me.

DUKE. Let it be so. Good night to everyone. [To Brabantio.] And, noble signior, If virtue no delighted beauty lack, Your son-in-law is far more fair than black.

FIRST SENATOR. Adieu, brave Moor, use Desdemona well.

BRABANTIO. Look to her, Moor, if thou hast eyes to see: She has deceiv’d her father, and may thee.

[Exeunt Duke, Senators, Officers, &c.]

OTHELLO. My life upon her faith! Honest Iago, My Desdemona must I leave to thee. I prithee, let thy wife attend on her, And bring them after in the best advantage.— Come, Desdemona, I have but an hour Of love, of worldly matters, and direction, To spend with thee. We must obey the time.

[Exeunt Othello and Desdemona.]

RODERIGO. Iago—

IAGO. What sayst thou, noble heart?

RODERIGO. What will I do, thinkest thou?

IAGO. Why, go to bed and sleep.

RODERIGO. I will incontinently drown myself.

IAGO. If thou dost, I shall never love thee after. Why, thou silly gentleman!

RODERIGO. It is silliness to live, when to live is torment; and then have we a prescription to die when death is our physician.

IAGO. O villainous! I have looked upon the world for four times seven years, and since I could distinguish betwixt a benefit and an injury, I never found man that knew how to love himself. Ere I would say I would drown myself for the love of a guinea-hen, I would change my humanity with a baboon.

RODERIGO. What should I do? I confess it is my shame to be so fond, but it is not in my virtue to amend it.

IAGO. Virtue! a fig! ’Tis in ourselves that we are thus or thus. Our bodies are gardens, to the which our wills are gardeners. So that if we will plant nettles or sow lettuce, set hyssop and weed up thyme, supply it with one gender of herbs or distract it with many, either to have it sterile with idleness or manured with industry, why, the power and corrigible authority of this lies in our wills. If the balance of our lives had not one scale of reason to poise another of sensuality, the blood and baseness of our natures would conduct us to most preposterous conclusions. But we have reason to cool our raging motions, our carnal stings, our unbitted lusts; whereof I take this, that you call love, to be a sect, or scion.

RODERIGO. It cannot be.

IAGO. It is merely a lust of the blood and a permission of the will. Come, be a man. Drown thyself? Drown cats and blind puppies. I have professed me thy friend, and I confess me knit to thy deserving with cables of perdurable toughness; I could never better stead thee than now. Put money in thy purse; follow thou the wars; defeat thy favour with an usurped beard; I say, put money in thy purse. It cannot be that Desdemona should long continue her love to the Moor,—put money in thy purse,—nor he his to her. It was a violent commencement, and thou shalt see an answerable sequestration—put but money in thy purse. These Moors are changeable in their wills. Fill thy purse with money. The food that to him now is as luscious as locusts shall be to him shortly as acerb as the coloquintida. She must change for youth. When she is sated with his body, she will find the error of her choice. She must have change, she must. Therefore put money in thy purse. If thou wilt needs damn thyself, do it a more delicate way than drowning. Make all the money thou canst. If sanctimony and a frail vow betwixt an erring barbarian and a supersubtle Venetian be not too hard for my wits and all the tribe of hell, thou shalt enjoy her; therefore make money. A pox of drowning thyself! It is clean out of the way: seek thou rather to be hanged in compassing thy joy than to be drowned and go without her.

RODERIGO. Wilt thou be fast to my hopes if I depend on the issue?

IAGO. Thou art sure of me. Go, make money. I have told thee often, and I retell thee again and again, I hate the Moor. My cause is hearted; thine hath no less reason. Let us be conjunctive in our revenge against him: if thou canst cuckold him, thou dost thyself a pleasure, me a sport. There are many events in the womb of time which will be delivered. Traverse, go, provide thy money. We will have more of this tomorrow. Adieu.

RODERIGO. Where shall we meet i’ the morning?

IAGO. At my lodging.

RODERIGO. I’ll be with thee betimes.

IAGO. Go to, farewell. Do you hear, Roderigo?

RODERIGO. What say you?

IAGO. No more of drowning, do you hear?

RODERIGO. I am changed. I’ll sell all my land.

IAGO. Thus do I ever make my fool my purse. For I mine own gain’d knowledge should profane If I would time expend with such a snipe But for my sport and profit. I hate the Moor, And it is thought abroad that ’twixt my sheets He has done my office. I know not if ’t be true, But I, for mere suspicion in that kind, Will do as if for surety. He holds me well, The better shall my purpose work on him. Cassio’s a proper man. Let me see now, To get his place, and to plume up my will In double knavery. How, how? Let’s see. After some time, to abuse Othello’s ear That he is too familiar with his wife. He hath a person and a smooth dispose, To be suspected, fram’d to make women false. The Moor is of a free and open nature That thinks men honest that but seem to be so, And will as tenderly be led by the nose As asses are. I have’t. It is engender’d. Hell and night Must bring this monstrous birth to the world’s light.

SCENE I. A seaport in Cyprus. A Platform.

Enter Montano and two Gentlemen.

MONTANO. What from the cape can you discern at sea?

FIRST GENTLEMAN. Nothing at all, it is a high-wrought flood. I cannot ’twixt the heaven and the main Descry a sail.

MONTANO. Methinks the wind hath spoke aloud at land. A fuller blast ne’er shook our battlements. If it hath ruffian’d so upon the sea, What ribs of oak, when mountains melt on them, Can hold the mortise? What shall we hear of this?

SECOND GENTLEMAN. A segregation of the Turkish fleet. For do but stand upon the foaming shore, The chidden billow seems to pelt the clouds, The wind-shak’d surge, with high and monstrous main, Seems to cast water on the burning Bear, And quench the guards of the ever-fixed pole; I never did like molestation view On the enchafed flood.

MONTANO. If that the Turkish fleet Be not enshelter’d, and embay’d, they are drown’d. It is impossible to bear it out.

THIRD GENTLEMAN. News, lads! Our wars are done. The desperate tempest hath so bang’d the Turks That their designment halts. A noble ship of Venice Hath seen a grievous wreck and sufferance On most part of their fleet.

MONTANO. How? Is this true?

THIRD GENTLEMAN. The ship is here put in, A Veronessa; Michael Cassio, Lieutenant to the warlike Moor Othello, Is come on shore; the Moor himself at sea, And is in full commission here for Cyprus.

MONTANO. I am glad on’t. ’Tis a worthy governor.

THIRD GENTLEMAN. But this same Cassio, though he speak of comfort Touching the Turkish loss, yet he looks sadly, And prays the Moor be safe; for they were parted With foul and violent tempest.

MONTANO. Pray heavens he be; For I have serv’d him, and the man commands Like a full soldier. Let’s to the sea-side, ho! As well to see the vessel that’s come in As to throw out our eyes for brave Othello, Even till we make the main and the aerial blue An indistinct regard.

THIRD GENTLEMAN. Come, let’s do so; For every minute is expectancy Of more arrivance.

Enter Cassio.

CASSIO. Thanks you, the valiant of this warlike isle, That so approve the Moor! O, let the heavens Give him defence against the elements, For I have lost him on a dangerous sea.

MONTANO. Is he well shipp’d?

CASSIO. His bark is stoutly timber’d, and his pilot Of very expert and approv’d allowance; Therefore my hopes, not surfeited to death, Stand in bold cure.

[Within.] A sail, a sail, a sail!

CASSIO. What noise?

MESSENGER. The town is empty; on the brow o’ the sea Stand ranks of people, and they cry “A sail!”

CASSIO. My hopes do shape him for the governor.

[A shot.]

SECOND GENTLEMAN. They do discharge their shot of courtesy. Our friends at least.

CASSIO. I pray you, sir, go forth, And give us truth who ’tis that is arriv’d.

SECOND GENTLEMAN. I shall.

MONTANO. But, good lieutenant, is your general wiv’d?

CASSIO. Most fortunately: he hath achiev’d a maid That paragons description and wild fame, One that excels the quirks of blazoning pens, And in the essential vesture of creation Does tire the ingener.

Enter second Gentleman.

How now? Who has put in?

SECOND GENTLEMAN. ’Tis one Iago, ancient to the general.

CASSIO. He has had most favourable and happy speed: Tempests themselves, high seas, and howling winds, The gutter’d rocks, and congregated sands, Traitors ensteep’d to clog the guiltless keel, As having sense of beauty, do omit Their mortal natures, letting go safely by The divine Desdemona.

MONTANO. What is she?

CASSIO. She that I spake of, our great captain’s captain, Left in the conduct of the bold Iago; Whose footing here anticipates our thoughts A se’nnight’s speed. Great Jove, Othello guard, And swell his sail with thine own powerful breath, That he may bless this bay with his tall ship, Make love’s quick pants in Desdemona’s arms, Give renew’d fire to our extincted spirits, And bring all Cyprus comfort!

Enter Desdemona, Iago, Roderigo, and Emilia.

O, behold, The riches of the ship is come on shore! Ye men of Cyprus, let her have your knees. Hail to thee, lady! and the grace of heaven, Before, behind thee, and on every hand, Enwheel thee round!

DESDEMONA. I thank you, valiant Cassio. What tidings can you tell me of my lord?

CASSIO. He is not yet arrived, nor know I aught But that he’s well, and will be shortly here.

DESDEMONA. O, but I fear—How lost you company?

[Within.] A sail, a sail!

CASSIO. The great contention of the sea and skies Parted our fellowship. But, hark! a sail.

[Guns within.]

SECOND GENTLEMAN. They give their greeting to the citadel. This likewise is a friend.

CASSIO. See for the news.

Good ancient, you are welcome. [To Emilia.] Welcome, mistress. Let it not gall your patience, good Iago, That I extend my manners; ’tis my breeding That gives me this bold show of courtesy.

IAGO. Sir, would she give you so much of her lips As of her tongue she oft bestows on me, You would have enough.

DESDEMONA. Alas, she has no speech.

IAGO. In faith, too much. I find it still when I have list to sleep. Marry, before your ladyship, I grant, She puts her tongue a little in her heart, And chides with thinking.

EMILIA. You have little cause to say so.

IAGO. Come on, come on; you are pictures out of doors, Bells in your parlours, wild-cats in your kitchens, Saints in your injuries, devils being offended, Players in your housewifery, and housewives in your beds.

DESDEMONA. O, fie upon thee, slanderer!

IAGO. Nay, it is true, or else I am a Turk. You rise to play, and go to bed to work.

EMILIA. You shall not write my praise.

IAGO. No, let me not.

DESDEMONA. What wouldst thou write of me, if thou shouldst praise me?

IAGO. O gentle lady, do not put me to’t, For I am nothing if not critical.

DESDEMONA. Come on, assay.—There’s one gone to the harbour?

IAGO. Ay, madam.

DESDEMONA. I am not merry, but I do beguile The thing I am, by seeming otherwise.— Come, how wouldst thou praise me?

IAGO. I am about it, but indeed, my invention Comes from my pate as birdlime does from frieze, It plucks out brains and all: but my Muse labours, And thus she is deliver’d. If she be fair and wise, fairness and wit, The one’s for use, the other useth it.

DESDEMONA. Well prais’d! How if she be black and witty?

IAGO. If she be black, and thereto have a wit, She’ll find a white that shall her blackness fit.

DESDEMONA. Worse and worse.

EMILIA. How if fair and foolish?

IAGO. She never yet was foolish that was fair, For even her folly help’d her to an heir.

DESDEMONA. These are old fond paradoxes to make fools laugh i’ the alehouse. What miserable praise hast thou for her that’s foul and foolish?

IAGO. There’s none so foul and foolish thereunto, But does foul pranks which fair and wise ones do.

DESDEMONA. O heavy ignorance! Thou praisest the worst best. But what praise couldst thou bestow on a deserving woman indeed, one that in the authority of her merit did justly put on the vouch of very malice itself?

IAGO. She that was ever fair and never proud, Had tongue at will and yet was never loud, Never lack’d gold and yet went never gay, Fled from her wish, and yet said, “Now I may”; She that, being anger’d, her revenge being nigh, Bade her wrong stay and her displeasure fly; She that in wisdom never was so frail To change the cod’s head for the salmon’s tail; She that could think and ne’er disclose her mind, See suitors following and not look behind; She was a wight, if ever such wight were—

DESDEMONA. To do what?

IAGO. To suckle fools and chronicle small beer.

DESDEMONA. O most lame and impotent conclusion!—Do not learn of him, Emilia, though he be thy husband.—How say you, Cassio? is he not a most profane and liberal counsellor?

CASSIO. He speaks home, madam. You may relish him more in the soldier than in the scholar.

IAGO. [Aside.] He takes her by the palm. Ay, well said, whisper. With as little a web as this will I ensnare as great a fly as Cassio. Ay, smile upon her, do. I will gyve thee in thine own courtship. You say true, ’tis so, indeed. If such tricks as these strip you out of your lieutenantry, it had been better you had not kissed your three fingers so oft, which now again you are most apt to play the sir in. Very good; well kissed, an excellent courtesy! ’Tis so, indeed. Yet again your fingers to your lips? Would they were clyster-pipes for your sake!

The Moor! I know his trumpet.

CASSIO. ’Tis truly so.

DESDEMONA. Let’s meet him, and receive him.

CASSIO. Lo, where he comes!

Enter Othello and Attendants.

OTHELLO. O my fair warrior!

DESDEMONA. My dear Othello!

OTHELLO. It gives me wonder great as my content To see you here before me. O my soul’s joy! If after every tempest come such calms, May the winds blow till they have waken’d death! And let the labouring bark climb hills of seas Olympus-high, and duck again as low As hell’s from heaven! If it were now to die, ’Twere now to be most happy, for I fear My soul hath her content so absolute That not another comfort like to this Succeeds in unknown fate.

DESDEMONA. The heavens forbid But that our loves and comforts should increase Even as our days do grow!

OTHELLO. Amen to that, sweet powers! I cannot speak enough of this content. It stops me here; it is too much of joy: And this, and this, the greatest discords be [They kiss.] That e’er our hearts shall make!

IAGO. [Aside.] O, you are well tun’d now, But I’ll set down the pegs that make this music, As honest as I am.

OTHELLO. Come, let us to the castle.— News, friends, our wars are done, the Turks are drown’d. How does my old acquaintance of this isle? Honey, you shall be well desir’d in Cyprus; I have found great love amongst them. O my sweet, I prattle out of fashion, and I dote In mine own comforts.—I prithee, good Iago, Go to the bay and disembark my coffers. Bring thou the master to the citadel; He is a good one, and his worthiness Does challenge much respect.—Come, Desdemona, Once more well met at Cyprus.

[Exeunt Othello, Desdemona and Attendants.]

IAGO. Do thou meet me presently at the harbour. Come hither. If thou be’st valiant—as, they say, base men being in love have then a nobility in their natures more than is native to them—list me. The lieutenant tonight watches on the court of guard: first, I must tell thee this: Desdemona is directly in love with him.

RODERIGO. With him? Why, ’tis not possible.

IAGO. Lay thy finger thus, and let thy soul be instructed. Mark me with what violence she first loved the Moor, but for bragging, and telling her fantastical lies. And will she love him still for prating? Let not thy discreet heart think it. Her eye must be fed. And what delight shall she have to look on the devil? When the blood is made dull with the act of sport, there should be, again to inflame it and to give satiety a fresh appetite, loveliness in favour, sympathy in years, manners, and beauties; all which the Moor is defective in: now, for want of these required conveniences, her delicate tenderness will find itself abused, begin to heave the gorge, disrelish and abhor the Moor, very nature will instruct her in it, and compel her to some second choice. Now sir, this granted (as it is a most pregnant and unforced position) who stands so eminently in the degree of this fortune as Cassio does? a knave very voluble; no further conscionable than in putting on the mere form of civil and humane seeming, for the better compassing of his salt and most hidden loose affection? Why, none, why, none! A slipper and subtle knave, a finder out of occasions; that has an eye can stamp and counterfeit advantages, though true advantage never present itself: a devilish knave! Besides, the knave is handsome, young, and hath all those requisites in him that folly and green minds look after. A pestilent complete knave, and the woman hath found him already.

RODERIGO. I cannot believe that in her, she is full of most blessed condition.

IAGO. Blest fig’s end! the wine she drinks is made of grapes: if she had been blessed, she would never have loved the Moor. Blessed pudding! Didst thou not see her paddle with the palm of his hand? Didst not mark that?

RODERIGO. Yes, that I did. But that was but courtesy.

IAGO. Lechery, by this hand. An index and obscure prologue to the history of lust and foul thoughts. They met so near with their lips that their breaths embrac’d together. Villainous thoughts, Roderigo! When these mutualities so marshal the way, hard at hand comes the master and main exercise, the incorporate conclusion. Pish! But, sir, be you ruled by me. I have brought you from Venice. Watch you tonight. For the command, I’ll lay’t upon you. Cassio knows you not. I’ll not be far from you. Do you find some occasion to anger Cassio, either by speaking too loud, or tainting his discipline, or from what other course you please, which the time shall more favourably minister.

RODERIGO. Well.

IAGO. Sir, he is rash, and very sudden in choler, and haply with his truncheon may strike at you: provoke him that he may, for even out of that will I cause these of Cyprus to mutiny, whose qualification shall come into no true taste again but by the displanting of Cassio. So shall you have a shorter journey to your desires by the means I shall then have to prefer them, and the impediment most profitably removed, without the which there were no expectation of our prosperity.

RODERIGO. I will do this, if I can bring it to any opportunity.

IAGO. I warrant thee. Meet me by and by at the citadel: I must fetch his necessaries ashore. Farewell.

RODERIGO. Adieu.

IAGO. That Cassio loves her, I do well believe it; That she loves him, ’tis apt, and of great credit: The Moor, howbeit that I endure him not, Is of a constant, loving, noble nature; And, I dare think, he’ll prove to Desdemona A most dear husband. Now, I do love her too, Not out of absolute lust (though peradventure I stand accountant for as great a sin) But partly led to diet my revenge, For that I do suspect the lusty Moor Hath leap’d into my seat. The thought whereof Doth, like a poisonous mineral, gnaw my inwards, And nothing can or shall content my soul Till I am even’d with him, wife for wife, Or, failing so, yet that I put the Moor At least into a jealousy so strong That judgement cannot cure. Which thing to do, If this poor trash of Venice, whom I trash For his quick hunting, stand the putting on, I’ll have our Michael Cassio on the hip, Abuse him to the Moor in the rank garb (For I fear Cassio with my night-cap too) Make the Moor thank me, love me, and reward me For making him egregiously an ass And practicing upon his peace and quiet Even to madness. ’Tis here, but yet confus’d. Knavery’s plain face is never seen till us’d.

Enter Othello’s Herald with a proclamation.

HERALD. It is Othello’s pleasure, our noble and valiant general, that upon certain tidings now arrived, importing the mere perdition of the Turkish fleet, every man put himself into triumph: some to dance, some to make bonfires, each man to what sport and revels his addition leads him. For besides these beneficial news, it is the celebration of his nuptial. So much was his pleasure should be proclaimed. All offices are open, and there is full liberty of feasting from this present hour of five till the bell have told eleven. Heaven bless the isle of Cyprus and our noble general Othello!

SCENE III. A Hall in the Castle.

Enter Othello, Desdemona, Cassio and Attendants.

OTHELLO. Good Michael, look you to the guard tonight. Let’s teach ourselves that honourable stop, Not to outsport discretion.

CASSIO. Iago hath direction what to do. But notwithstanding with my personal eye Will I look to’t.

OTHELLO. Iago is most honest. Michael, good night. Tomorrow with your earliest Let me have speech with you. [To Desdemona.] Come, my dear love, The purchase made, the fruits are to ensue; That profit’s yet to come ’tween me and you.— Good night.

Enter Iago.

CASSIO. Welcome, Iago. We must to the watch.

IAGO. Not this hour, lieutenant. ’Tis not yet ten o’ th’ clock. Our general cast us thus early for the love of his Desdemona; who let us not therefore blame: he hath not yet made wanton the night with her; and she is sport for Jove.

CASSIO. She’s a most exquisite lady.

IAGO. And, I’ll warrant her, full of game.

CASSIO. Indeed, she is a most fresh and delicate creature.

IAGO. What an eye she has! methinks it sounds a parley to provocation.

CASSIO. An inviting eye, and yet methinks right modest.

IAGO. And when she speaks, is it not an alarm to love?

CASSIO. She is indeed perfection.

IAGO. Well, happiness to their sheets! Come, lieutenant, I have a stoup of wine; and here without are a brace of Cyprus gallants that would fain have a measure to the health of black Othello.

CASSIO. Not tonight, good Iago. I have very poor and unhappy brains for drinking. I could well wish courtesy would invent some other custom of entertainment.

IAGO. O, they are our friends; but one cup: I’ll drink for you.

CASSIO. I have drunk but one cup tonight, and that was craftily qualified too, and behold, what innovation it makes here: I am unfortunate in the infirmity, and dare not task my weakness with any more.

IAGO. What, man! ’Tis a night of revels. The gallants desire it.

CASSIO. Where are they?

IAGO. Here at the door. I pray you, call them in.

CASSIO. I’ll do’t; but it dislikes me.

IAGO. If I can fasten but one cup upon him, With that which he hath drunk tonight already, He’ll be as full of quarrel and offence As my young mistress’ dog. Now my sick fool Roderigo, Whom love hath turn’d almost the wrong side out, To Desdemona hath tonight carous’d Potations pottle-deep; and he’s to watch: Three lads of Cyprus, noble swelling spirits, That hold their honours in a wary distance, The very elements of this warlike isle, Have I tonight fluster’d with flowing cups, And they watch too. Now, ’mongst this flock of drunkards, Am I to put our Cassio in some action That may offend the isle. But here they come: If consequence do but approve my dream, My boat sails freely, both with wind and stream.

Enter Cassio, Montano and Gentlemen; followed by Servant with wine.

CASSIO. ’Fore God, they have given me a rouse already.

MONTANO. Good faith, a little one; not past a pint, as I am a soldier.

IAGO. Some wine, ho! [Sings.]

And let me the cannikin clink, clink, And let me the cannikin clink, clink: A soldier’s a man, O, man’s life’s but a span, Why then let a soldier drink.

Some wine, boys!

CASSIO. ’Fore God, an excellent song.

IAGO. I learned it in England, where indeed they are most potent in potting: your Dane, your German, and your swag-bellied Hollander,—drink, ho!—are nothing to your English.

CASSIO. Is your Englishman so expert in his drinking?

IAGO. Why, he drinks you, with facility, your Dane dead drunk; he sweats not to overthrow your Almain; he gives your Hollander a vomit ere the next pottle can be filled.

CASSIO. To the health of our general!

MONTANO. I am for it, lieutenant; and I’ll do you justice.

IAGO. O sweet England!

King Stephen was a worthy peer, His breeches cost him but a crown; He held them sixpence all too dear, With that he call’d the tailor lown. He was a wight of high renown, And thou art but of low degree: ’Tis pride that pulls the country down, Then take thine auld cloak about thee.

Some wine, ho!

CASSIO. ’Fore God, this is a more exquisite song than the other.

IAGO. Will you hear ’t again?

CASSIO. No, for I hold him to be unworthy of his place that does those things. Well, God’s above all, and there be souls must be saved, and there be souls must not be saved.

IAGO. It’s true, good lieutenant.

CASSIO. For mine own part, no offence to the general, nor any man of quality, I hope to be saved.

IAGO. And so do I too, lieutenant.

CASSIO. Ay, but, by your leave, not before me; the lieutenant is to be saved before the ancient. Let’s have no more of this; let’s to our affairs. Forgive us our sins! Gentlemen, let’s look to our business. Do not think, gentlemen, I am drunk. This is my ancient, this is my right hand, and this is my left. I am not drunk now. I can stand well enough, and I speak well enough.

ALL. Excellent well.

CASSIO. Why, very well then. You must not think, then, that I am drunk.

MONTANO. To the platform, masters. Come, let’s set the watch.

IAGO. You see this fellow that is gone before, He is a soldier fit to stand by Cæsar And give direction: and do but see his vice, ’Tis to his virtue a just equinox, The one as long as th’ other. ’Tis pity of him. I fear the trust Othello puts him in, On some odd time of his infirmity, Will shake this island.

MONTANO. But is he often thus?

IAGO. ’Tis evermore the prologue to his sleep: He’ll watch the horologe a double set If drink rock not his cradle.

MONTANO. It were well The general were put in mind of it. Perhaps he sees it not, or his good nature Prizes the virtue that appears in Cassio, And looks not on his evils: is not this true?

Enter Roderigo.

IAGO. [Aside to him.] How now, Roderigo? I pray you, after the lieutenant; go.

[Exit Roderigo.]

MONTANO. And ’tis great pity that the noble Moor Should hazard such a place as his own second With one of an ingraft infirmity: It were an honest action to say so To the Moor.

IAGO. Not I, for this fair island. I do love Cassio well and would do much To cure him of this evil. But, hark! What noise?

[Cry within: “Help! help!”]

Enter Cassio, driving in Roderigo.

CASSIO. Zounds, you rogue, you rascal!

MONTANO. What’s the matter, lieutenant?

CASSIO. A knave teach me my duty! I’ll beat the knave into a twiggen bottle.

RODERIGO. Beat me?

CASSIO. Dost thou prate, rogue?

[Striking Roderigo.]

MONTANO. Nay, good lieutenant; I pray you, sir, hold your hand.

CASSIO. Let me go, sir, Or I’ll knock you o’er the mazard.

MONTANO. Come, come, you’re drunk.

CASSIO. Drunk?

IAGO. [Aside to Roderigo.] Away, I say! Go out and cry a mutiny.

Nay, good lieutenant, God’s will, gentlemen. Help, ho!—Lieutenant,—sir,—Montano,—sir:— Help, masters! Here’s a goodly watch indeed!

Who’s that which rings the bell?—Diablo, ho! The town will rise. God’s will, lieutenant, hold, You will be sham’d forever.

OTHELLO. What is the matter here?

MONTANO. Zounds, I bleed still, I am hurt to the death.

OTHELLO. Hold, for your lives!

IAGO. Hold, ho! lieutenant,—sir,—Montano,—gentlemen,— Have you forgot all place of sense and duty? Hold! The general speaks to you; hold, hold, for shame!

OTHELLO. Why, how now, ho! From whence ariseth this? Are we turn’d Turks, and to ourselves do that Which heaven hath forbid the Ottomites? For Christian shame, put by this barbarous brawl: He that stirs next to carve for his own rage Holds his soul light; he dies upon his motion. Silence that dreadful bell, it frights the isle From her propriety. What is the matter, masters? Honest Iago, that looks dead with grieving, Speak, who began this? On thy love, I charge thee.

IAGO. I do not know. Friends all but now, even now, In quarter, and in terms like bride and groom Devesting them for bed; and then, but now, As if some planet had unwitted men, Swords out, and tilting one at other’s breast, In opposition bloody. I cannot speak Any beginning to this peevish odds; And would in action glorious I had lost Those legs that brought me to a part of it!

OTHELLO. How comes it, Michael, you are thus forgot?

CASSIO. I pray you, pardon me; I cannot speak.

OTHELLO. Worthy Montano, you were wont be civil. The gravity and stillness of your youth The world hath noted, and your name is great In mouths of wisest censure: what’s the matter, That you unlace your reputation thus, And spend your rich opinion for the name Of a night-brawler? Give me answer to it.

MONTANO. Worthy Othello, I am hurt to danger. Your officer, Iago, can inform you, While I spare speech, which something now offends me, Of all that I do know; nor know I aught By me that’s said or done amiss this night, Unless self-charity be sometimes a vice, And to defend ourselves it be a sin When violence assails us.

OTHELLO. Now, by heaven, My blood begins my safer guides to rule, And passion, having my best judgement collied, Assays to lead the way. Zounds, if I stir, Or do but lift this arm, the best of you Shall sink in my rebuke. Give me to know How this foul rout began, who set it on, And he that is approv’d in this offence, Though he had twinn’d with me, both at a birth, Shall lose me. What! in a town of war, Yet wild, the people’s hearts brimful of fear, To manage private and domestic quarrel, In night, and on the court and guard of safety? ’Tis monstrous. Iago, who began’t?

MONTANO. If partially affin’d, or leagu’d in office, Thou dost deliver more or less than truth, Thou art no soldier.

OTHELLO. I know, Iago, Thy honesty and love doth mince this matter, Making it light to Cassio. Cassio, I love thee, But never more be officer of mine.

Enter Desdemona, attended.

Look, if my gentle love be not rais’d up! I’ll make thee an example.

DESDEMONA. What’s the matter?

IAGO. Touch me not so near. I had rather have this tongue cut from my mouth Than it should do offence to Michael Cassio. Yet I persuade myself, to speak the truth Shall nothing wrong him. Thus it is, general: Montano and myself being in speech, There comes a fellow crying out for help, And Cassio following him with determin’d sword, To execute upon him. Sir, this gentleman Steps in to Cassio and entreats his pause. Myself the crying fellow did pursue, Lest by his clamour (as it so fell out) The town might fall in fright: he, swift of foot, Outran my purpose: and I return’d the rather For that I heard the clink and fall of swords, And Cassio high in oath, which till tonight I ne’er might say before. When I came back, (For this was brief) I found them close together, At blow and thrust, even as again they were When you yourself did part them. More of this matter cannot I report. But men are men; the best sometimes forget; Though Cassio did some little wrong to him, As men in rage strike those that wish them best, Yet surely Cassio, I believe, receiv’d From him that fled some strange indignity, Which patience could not pass.

OTHELLO. All’s well now, sweeting; come away to bed. Sir, for your hurts, myself will be your surgeon. Lead him off.

[Montano is led off.]

Iago, look with care about the town, And silence those whom this vile brawl distracted. Come, Desdemona: ’tis the soldiers’ life To have their balmy slumbers wak’d with strife.

[Exeunt all but Iago and Cassio.]

IAGO. What, are you hurt, lieutenant?

CASSIO. Ay, past all surgery.

IAGO. Marry, Heaven forbid!

CASSIO. Reputation, reputation, reputation! O, I have lost my reputation! I have lost the immortal part of myself, and what remains is bestial. My reputation, Iago, my reputation!

IAGO. As I am an honest man, I thought you had received some bodily wound; there is more sense in that than in reputation. Reputation is an idle and most false imposition, oft got without merit and lost without deserving. You have lost no reputation at all, unless you repute yourself such a loser. What, man, there are ways to recover the general again: you are but now cast in his mood, a punishment more in policy than in malice, even so as one would beat his offenceless dog to affright an imperious lion: sue to him again, and he’s yours.

CASSIO. I will rather sue to be despised than to deceive so good a commander with so slight, so drunken, and so indiscreet an officer. Drunk? and speak parrot? and squabble? swagger? swear? and discourse fustian with one’s own shadow? O thou invisible spirit of wine, if thou hast no name to be known by, let us call thee devil!

IAGO. What was he that you followed with your sword? What had he done to you?

CASSIO. I know not.

IAGO. Is’t possible?

CASSIO. I remember a mass of things, but nothing distinctly; a quarrel, but nothing wherefore. O God, that men should put an enemy in their mouths to steal away their brains! That we should with joy, pleasance, revel, and applause, transform ourselves into beasts!

IAGO. Why, but you are now well enough: how came you thus recovered?

CASSIO. It hath pleased the devil drunkenness to give place to the devil wrath. One unperfectness shows me another, to make me frankly despise myself.

IAGO. Come, you are too severe a moraler. As the time, the place, and the condition of this country stands, I could heartily wish this had not befallen; but since it is as it is, mend it for your own good.

CASSIO. I will ask him for my place again; he shall tell me I am a drunkard! Had I as many mouths as Hydra, such an answer would stop them all. To be now a sensible man, by and by a fool, and presently a beast! O strange! Every inordinate cup is unbless’d, and the ingredient is a devil.

IAGO. Come, come, good wine is a good familiar creature, if it be well used. Exclaim no more against it. And, good lieutenant, I think you think I love you.

CASSIO. I have well approved it, sir.—I drunk!

IAGO. You, or any man living, may be drunk at a time, man. I’ll tell you what you shall do. Our general’s wife is now the general; I may say so in this respect, for that he hath devoted and given up himself to the contemplation, mark, and denotement of her parts and graces. Confess yourself freely to her. Importune her help to put you in your place again. She is of so free, so kind, so apt, so blessed a disposition, she holds it a vice in her goodness not to do more than she is requested. This broken joint between you and her husband entreat her to splinter, and, my fortunes against any lay worth naming, this crack of your love shall grow stronger than it was before.

CASSIO. You advise me well.

IAGO. I protest, in the sincerity of love and honest kindness.

CASSIO. I think it freely; and betimes in the morning I will beseech the virtuous Desdemona to undertake for me; I am desperate of my fortunes if they check me here.

IAGO. You are in the right. Good night, lieutenant, I must to the watch.

CASSIO. Good night, honest Iago.

IAGO. And what’s he then, that says I play the villain? When this advice is free I give and honest, Probal to thinking, and indeed the course To win the Moor again? For ’tis most easy The inclining Desdemona to subdue In any honest suit. She’s fram’d as fruitful As the free elements. And then for her To win the Moor, were’t to renounce his baptism, All seals and symbols of redeemed sin, His soul is so enfetter’d to her love That she may make, unmake, do what she list, Even as her appetite shall play the god With his weak function. How am I then, a villain To counsel Cassio to this parallel course, Directly to his good? Divinity of hell! When devils will the blackest sins put on, They do suggest at first with heavenly shows, As I do now: for whiles this honest fool Plies Desdemona to repair his fortune, And she for him pleads strongly to the Moor, I’ll pour this pestilence into his ear, That she repeals him for her body’s lust; And by how much she strives to do him good, She shall undo her credit with the Moor. So will I turn her virtue into pitch, And out of her own goodness make the net That shall enmesh them all.

How now, Roderigo?

RODERIGO. I do follow here in the chase, not like a hound that hunts, but one that fills up the cry. My money is almost spent, I have been tonight exceedingly well cudgelled; and I think the issue will be, I shall have so much experience for my pains, and so, with no money at all and a little more wit, return again to Venice.

IAGO. How poor are they that have not patience! What wound did ever heal but by degrees? Thou know’st we work by wit, and not by witchcraft, And wit depends on dilatory time. Does’t not go well? Cassio hath beaten thee, And thou, by that small hurt, hast cashier’d Cassio; Though other things grow fair against the sun, Yet fruits that blossom first will first be ripe. Content thyself awhile. By the mass, ’tis morning; Pleasure and action make the hours seem short. Retire thee; go where thou art billeted. Away, I say, thou shalt know more hereafter. Nay, get thee gone.

Two things are to be done, My wife must move for Cassio to her mistress. I’ll set her on; Myself the while to draw the Moor apart, And bring him jump when he may Cassio find Soliciting his wife. Ay, that’s the way. Dull not device by coldness and delay.

SCENE I. Cyprus. Before the Castle.

Enter Cassio and some Musicians.

CASSIO. Masters, play here, I will content your pains, Something that’s brief; and bid “Good morrow, general.”

CLOWN. Why, masters, have your instruments been in Naples, that they speak i’ the nose thus?

FIRST MUSICIAN. How, sir, how?

CLOWN. Are these, I pray you, wind instruments?

FIRST MUSICIAN. Ay, marry, are they, sir.

CLOWN. O, thereby hangs a tail.

FIRST MUSICIAN. Whereby hangs a tale, sir?

CLOWN. Marry, sir, by many a wind instrument that I know. But, masters, here’s money for you: and the general so likes your music, that he desires you, for love’s sake, to make no more noise with it.

FIRST MUSICIAN. Well, sir, we will not.

CLOWN. If you have any music that may not be heard, to’t again. But, as they say, to hear music the general does not greatly care.

FIRST MUSICIAN. We have none such, sir.

CLOWN. Then put up your pipes in your bag, for I’ll away. Go, vanish into air, away!

CASSIO. Dost thou hear, mine honest friend?

CLOWN. No, I hear not your honest friend. I hear you.

CASSIO. Prithee, keep up thy quillets. There’s a poor piece of gold for thee: if the gentlewoman that attends the general’s wife be stirring, tell her there’s one Cassio entreats her a little favour of speech. Wilt thou do this?

CLOWN. She is stirring, sir; if she will stir hither, I shall seem to notify unto her.

CASSIO. Do, good my friend.

[Exit Clown.]

In happy time, Iago.

IAGO. You have not been a-bed, then?

CASSIO. Why, no. The day had broke Before we parted. I have made bold, Iago, To send in to your wife. My suit to her Is, that she will to virtuous Desdemona Procure me some access.

IAGO. I’ll send her to you presently, And I’ll devise a mean to draw the Moor Out of the way, that your converse and business May be more free.

CASSIO. I humbly thank you for’t.

[Exit Iago.]

I never knew A Florentine more kind and honest.

Enter Emilia.

EMILIA. Good morrow, good lieutenant; I am sorry For your displeasure, but all will sure be well. The general and his wife are talking of it, And she speaks for you stoutly: the Moor replies That he you hurt is of great fame in Cyprus And great affinity, and that in wholesome wisdom He might not but refuse you; but he protests he loves you And needs no other suitor but his likings To take the safest occasion by the front To bring you in again.

CASSIO. Yet, I beseech you, If you think fit, or that it may be done, Give me advantage of some brief discourse With Desdemona alone.

EMILIA. Pray you, come in. I will bestow you where you shall have time To speak your bosom freely.

CASSIO. I am much bound to you.

SCENE II. Cyprus. A Room in the Castle.

Enter Othello, Iago and Gentlemen.

OTHELLO. These letters give, Iago, to the pilot, And by him do my duties to the senate. That done, I will be walking on the works, Repair there to me.

IAGO. Well, my good lord, I’ll do’t.

OTHELLO. This fortification, gentlemen, shall we see’t?

GENTLEMEN. We’ll wait upon your lordship.

SCENE III. Cyprus. The Garden of the Castle.

Enter Desdemona, Cassio and Emilia.

DESDEMONA. Be thou assured, good Cassio, I will do All my abilities in thy behalf.

EMILIA. Good madam, do. I warrant it grieves my husband As if the cause were his.

DESDEMONA. O, that’s an honest fellow. Do not doubt, Cassio, But I will have my lord and you again As friendly as you were.

CASSIO. Bounteous madam, Whatever shall become of Michael Cassio, He’s never anything but your true servant.

DESDEMONA. I know’t. I thank you. You do love my lord. You have known him long; and be you well assur’d He shall in strangeness stand no farther off Than in a politic distance.

CASSIO. Ay, but, lady, That policy may either last so long, Or feed upon such nice and waterish diet, Or breed itself so out of circumstance, That, I being absent, and my place supplied, My general will forget my love and service.

DESDEMONA. Do not doubt that. Before Emilia here I give thee warrant of thy place. Assure thee, If I do vow a friendship, I’ll perform it To the last article. My lord shall never rest, I’ll watch him tame, and talk him out of patience; His bed shall seem a school, his board a shrift; I’ll intermingle everything he does With Cassio’s suit. Therefore be merry, Cassio, For thy solicitor shall rather die Than give thy cause away.

Enter Othello and Iago.

EMILIA. Madam, here comes my lord.

CASSIO. Madam, I’ll take my leave.

DESDEMONA. Why, stay, and hear me speak.

CASSIO. Madam, not now. I am very ill at ease, Unfit for mine own purposes.

DESDEMONA. Well, do your discretion.

[Exit Cassio.]

IAGO. Ha, I like not that.

OTHELLO. What dost thou say?

IAGO. Nothing, my lord; or if—I know not what.

OTHELLO. Was not that Cassio parted from my wife?

IAGO. Cassio, my lord? No, sure, I cannot think it, That he would steal away so guilty-like, Seeing you coming.

OTHELLO. I do believe ’twas he.

DESDEMONA. How now, my lord? I have been talking with a suitor here, A man that languishes in your displeasure.

OTHELLO. Who is’t you mean?

DESDEMONA. Why, your lieutenant, Cassio. Good my lord, If I have any grace or power to move you, His present reconciliation take; For if he be not one that truly loves you, That errs in ignorance and not in cunning, I have no judgement in an honest face. I prithee call him back.

OTHELLO. Went he hence now?

DESDEMONA. Ay, sooth; so humbled That he hath left part of his grief with me To suffer with him. Good love, call him back.

OTHELLO. Not now, sweet Desdemon, some other time.

DESDEMONA. But shall’t be shortly?

OTHELLO. The sooner, sweet, for you.

DESDEMONA. Shall’t be tonight at supper?

OTHELLO. No, not tonight.

DESDEMONA. Tomorrow dinner then?

OTHELLO. I shall not dine at home; I meet the captains at the citadel.

DESDEMONA. Why then tomorrow night, or Tuesday morn, On Tuesday noon, or night; on Wednesday morn. I prithee name the time, but let it not Exceed three days. In faith, he’s penitent; And yet his trespass, in our common reason, (Save that, they say, the wars must make examples Out of their best) is not almost a fault To incur a private check. When shall he come? Tell me, Othello: I wonder in my soul, What you would ask me, that I should deny, Or stand so mammering on. What? Michael Cassio, That came a-wooing with you, and so many a time, When I have spoke of you dispraisingly, Hath ta’en your part, to have so much to do To bring him in! Trust me, I could do much.

OTHELLO. Prithee no more. Let him come when he will; I will deny thee nothing.

DESDEMONA. Why, this is not a boon; ’Tis as I should entreat you wear your gloves, Or feed on nourishing dishes, or keep you warm, Or sue to you to do a peculiar profit To your own person: nay, when I have a suit Wherein I mean to touch your love indeed, It shall be full of poise and difficult weight, And fearful to be granted.

OTHELLO. I will deny thee nothing. Whereon, I do beseech thee, grant me this, To leave me but a little to myself.

DESDEMONA. Shall I deny you? No, farewell, my lord.

OTHELLO. Farewell, my Desdemona. I’ll come to thee straight.

DESDEMONA. Emilia, come. Be as your fancies teach you. Whate’er you be, I am obedient.

[Exit with Emilia.]

OTHELLO. Excellent wretch! Perdition catch my soul, But I do love thee! And when I love thee not, Chaos is come again.

IAGO. My noble lord,—

OTHELLO. What dost thou say, Iago?

IAGO. Did Michael Cassio, when you woo’d my lady, Know of your love?

OTHELLO. He did, from first to last. Why dost thou ask?

IAGO. But for a satisfaction of my thought. No further harm.

OTHELLO. Why of thy thought, Iago?

IAGO. I did not think he had been acquainted with her.

OTHELLO. O yes, and went between us very oft.

IAGO. Indeed?

OTHELLO. Indeed? Ay, indeed. Discern’st thou aught in that? Is he not honest?

IAGO. Honest, my lord?

OTHELLO. Honest? ay, honest.

IAGO. My lord, for aught I know.

OTHELLO. What dost thou think?

IAGO. Think, my lord?

OTHELLO. Think, my lord? By heaven, he echoes me, As if there were some monster in his thought Too hideous to be shown. Thou dost mean something. I heard thee say even now, thou lik’st not that, When Cassio left my wife. What didst not like? And when I told thee he was of my counsel In my whole course of wooing, thou criedst, “Indeed?” And didst contract and purse thy brow together, As if thou then hadst shut up in thy brain Some horrible conceit: if thou dost love me, Show me thy thought.

IAGO. My lord, you know I love you.

OTHELLO. I think thou dost; And for I know thou’rt full of love and honesty And weigh’st thy words before thou giv’st them breath, Therefore these stops of thine fright me the more: For such things in a false disloyal knave Are tricks of custom; but in a man that’s just, They’re close dilations, working from the heart, That passion cannot rule.

IAGO. For Michael Cassio, I dare be sworn I think that he is honest.

OTHELLO. I think so too.

IAGO. Men should be what they seem; Or those that be not, would they might seem none!

OTHELLO. Certain, men should be what they seem.

IAGO. Why then, I think Cassio’s an honest man.

OTHELLO. Nay, yet there’s more in this: I prithee, speak to me as to thy thinkings, As thou dost ruminate, and give thy worst of thoughts The worst of words.

IAGO. Good my lord, pardon me. Though I am bound to every act of duty, I am not bound to that all slaves are free to. Utter my thoughts? Why, say they are vile and false: As where’s that palace whereinto foul things Sometimes intrude not? Who has a breast so pure But some uncleanly apprehensions Keep leets and law-days, and in session sit With meditations lawful?

OTHELLO. Thou dost conspire against thy friend, Iago, If thou but think’st him wrong’d and mak’st his ear A stranger to thy thoughts.

IAGO. I do beseech you, Though I perchance am vicious in my guess, As, I confess, it is my nature’s plague To spy into abuses, and of my jealousy Shapes faults that are not,—that your wisdom From one that so imperfectly conceits, Would take no notice; nor build yourself a trouble Out of his scattering and unsure observance. It were not for your quiet nor your good, Nor for my manhood, honesty, or wisdom, To let you know my thoughts.

OTHELLO. What dost thou mean?

IAGO. Good name in man and woman, dear my lord, Is the immediate jewel of their souls. Who steals my purse steals trash. ’Tis something, nothing; ’Twas mine, ’tis his, and has been slave to thousands. But he that filches from me my good name Robs me of that which not enriches him And makes me poor indeed.

OTHELLO. By heaven, I’ll know thy thoughts.

IAGO. You cannot, if my heart were in your hand, Nor shall not, whilst ’tis in my custody.

OTHELLO. Ha?

IAGO. O, beware, my lord, of jealousy; It is the green-ey’d monster which doth mock The meat it feeds on. That cuckold lives in bliss Who, certain of his fate, loves not his wronger; But O, what damned minutes tells he o’er Who dotes, yet doubts, suspects, yet strongly loves!

OTHELLO. O misery!

IAGO. Poor and content is rich, and rich enough; But riches fineless is as poor as winter To him that ever fears he shall be poor. Good heaven, the souls of all my tribe defend From jealousy!

OTHELLO. Why, why is this? Think’st thou I’d make a life of jealousy, To follow still the changes of the moon With fresh suspicions? No. To be once in doubt Is once to be resolv’d: exchange me for a goat When I shall turn the business of my soul To such exsufflicate and blown surmises, Matching thy inference. ’Tis not to make me jealous, To say my wife is fair, feeds well, loves company, Is free of speech, sings, plays, and dances well; Where virtue is, these are more virtuous: Nor from mine own weak merits will I draw The smallest fear or doubt of her revolt, For she had eyes, and chose me. No, Iago, I’ll see before I doubt; when I doubt, prove; And on the proof, there is no more but this: Away at once with love or jealousy!

IAGO. I am glad of it, for now I shall have reason To show the love and duty that I bear you With franker spirit: therefore, as I am bound, Receive it from me. I speak not yet of proof. Look to your wife; observe her well with Cassio; Wear your eye thus, not jealous nor secure. I would not have your free and noble nature, Out of self-bounty, be abus’d. Look to’t. I know our country disposition well; In Venice they do let heaven see the pranks They dare not show their husbands. Their best conscience Is not to leave undone, but keep unknown.

OTHELLO. Dost thou say so?

IAGO. She did deceive her father, marrying you; And when she seem’d to shake and fear your looks, She loved them most.

OTHELLO. And so she did.

IAGO. Why, go to then. She that so young could give out such a seeming, To seal her father’s eyes up close as oak, He thought ’twas witchcraft. But I am much to blame. I humbly do beseech you of your pardon For too much loving you.

OTHELLO. I am bound to thee for ever.

IAGO. I see this hath a little dash’d your spirits.

OTHELLO. Not a jot, not a jot.

IAGO. Trust me, I fear it has. I hope you will consider what is spoke Comes from my love. But I do see you’re mov’d. I am to pray you not to strain my speech To grosser issues nor to larger reach Than to suspicion.

OTHELLO. I will not.

IAGO. Should you do so, my lord, My speech should fall into such vile success Which my thoughts aim’d not. Cassio’s my worthy friend. My lord, I see you’re mov’d.

OTHELLO. No, not much mov’d. I do not think but Desdemona’s honest.

IAGO. Long live she so! And long live you to think so!

OTHELLO. And yet, how nature erring from itself—

IAGO. Ay, there’s the point. As, to be bold with you, Not to affect many proposed matches, Of her own clime, complexion, and degree, Whereto we see in all things nature tends; Foh! One may smell in such a will most rank, Foul disproportion, thoughts unnatural. But pardon me: I do not in position Distinctly speak of her, though I may fear Her will, recoiling to her better judgement, May fall to match you with her country forms, And happily repent.

OTHELLO. Farewell, farewell: If more thou dost perceive, let me know more; Set on thy wife to observe. Leave me, Iago.

IAGO. [Going.] My lord, I take my leave.

OTHELLO. Why did I marry? This honest creature doubtless Sees and knows more, much more, than he unfolds.

IAGO. [Returning.] My lord, I would I might entreat your honour To scan this thing no further. Leave it to time: Though it be fit that Cassio have his place, For sure he fills it up with great ability, Yet if you please to hold him off awhile, You shall by that perceive him and his means. Note if your lady strain his entertainment With any strong or vehement importunity, Much will be seen in that. In the meantime, Let me be thought too busy in my fears (As worthy cause I have to fear I am) And hold her free, I do beseech your honour.

OTHELLO. Fear not my government.

IAGO. I once more take my leave.

OTHELLO. This fellow’s of exceeding honesty, And knows all qualities, with a learned spirit, Of human dealings. If I do prove her haggard, Though that her jesses were my dear heartstrings, I’d whistle her off, and let her down the wind To prey at fortune. Haply, for I am black, And have not those soft parts of conversation That chamberers have, or for I am declin’d Into the vale of years,—yet that’s not much— She’s gone, I am abus’d, and my relief Must be to loathe her. O curse of marriage, That we can call these delicate creatures ours, And not their appetites! I had rather be a toad, And live upon the vapour of a dungeon, Than keep a corner in the thing I love For others’ uses. Yet, ’tis the plague of great ones, Prerogativ’d are they less than the base, ’Tis destiny unshunnable, like death: Even then this forked plague is fated to us When we do quicken. Desdemona comes. If she be false, O, then heaven mocks itself! I’ll not believe’t.

Enter Desdemona and Emilia.

DESDEMONA. How now, my dear Othello? Your dinner, and the generous islanders By you invited, do attend your presence.

OTHELLO. I am to blame.

DESDEMONA. Why do you speak so faintly? Are you not well?

OTHELLO. I have a pain upon my forehead here.

DESDEMONA. Faith, that’s with watching, ’twill away again; Let me but bind it hard, within this hour It will be well.

OTHELLO. Your napkin is too little;

[He puts the handkerchief from him, and she drops it.]

Let it alone. Come, I’ll go in with you.

DESDEMONA. I am very sorry that you are not well.

EMILIA. I am glad I have found this napkin; This was her first remembrance from the Moor. My wayward husband hath a hundred times Woo’d me to steal it. But she so loves the token, For he conjur’d her she should ever keep it, That she reserves it evermore about her To kiss and talk to. I’ll have the work ta’en out, And give’t Iago. What he will do with it Heaven knows, not I, I nothing but to please his fantasy.

IAGO. How now? What do you here alone?

EMILIA. Do not you chide. I have a thing for you.

IAGO. A thing for me? It is a common thing—

EMILIA. Ha?

IAGO. To have a foolish wife.

EMILIA. O, is that all? What will you give me now For that same handkerchief?

IAGO. What handkerchief?

EMILIA. What handkerchief? Why, that the Moor first gave to Desdemona, That which so often you did bid me steal.

IAGO. Hast stol’n it from her?

EMILIA. No, faith, she let it drop by negligence, And, to the advantage, I being here, took ’t up. Look, here it is.

IAGO. A good wench, give it me.

EMILIA. What will you do with’t, that you have been so earnest To have me filch it?

IAGO. [Snatching it.] Why, what’s that to you?

EMILIA. If it be not for some purpose of import, Give ’t me again. Poor lady, she’ll run mad When she shall lack it.

IAGO. Be not acknown on’t, I have use for it. Go, leave me.

[Exit Emilia.]

I will in Cassio’s lodging lose this napkin, And let him find it. Trifles light as air Are to the jealous confirmations strong As proofs of holy writ. This may do something. The Moor already changes with my poison: Dangerous conceits are in their natures poisons, Which at the first are scarce found to distaste, But with a little act upon the blood Burn like the mines of sulphur. I did say so.

Look, where he comes. Not poppy, nor mandragora, Nor all the drowsy syrups of the world, Shall ever medicine thee to that sweet sleep Which thou ow’dst yesterday.

OTHELLO. Ha! ha! false to me?

IAGO. Why, how now, general? No more of that.

OTHELLO. Avaunt! be gone! Thou hast set me on the rack. I swear ’tis better to be much abus’d Than but to know’t a little.

IAGO. How now, my lord?

OTHELLO. What sense had I of her stol’n hours of lust? I saw’t not, thought it not, it harm’d not me. I slept the next night well, was free and merry; I found not Cassio’s kisses on her lips. He that is robb’d, not wanting what is stol’n, Let him not know’t, and he’s not robb’d at all.

IAGO. I am sorry to hear this.

OTHELLO. I had been happy if the general camp, Pioners and all, had tasted her sweet body, So I had nothing known. O, now, for ever Farewell the tranquil mind! Farewell content! Farewell the plumed troops and the big wars That make ambition virtue! O, farewell, Farewell the neighing steed and the shrill trump, The spirit-stirring drum, the ear-piercing fife, The royal banner, and all quality, Pride, pomp, and circumstance of glorious war! And, O you mortal engines, whose rude throats The immortal Jove’s dread clamours counterfeit, Farewell! Othello’s occupation’s gone!

IAGO. Is’t possible, my lord?

OTHELLO. Villain, be sure thou prove my love a whore; Be sure of it. Give me the ocular proof, Or, by the worth of man’s eternal soul, Thou hadst been better have been born a dog Than answer my wak’d wrath.

IAGO. Is’t come to this?

OTHELLO. Make me to see’t, or at the least so prove it, That the probation bear no hinge nor loop To hang a doubt on, or woe upon thy life!

OTHELLO. If thou dost slander her and torture me, Never pray more. Abandon all remorse; On horror’s head horrors accumulate; Do deeds to make heaven weep, all earth amaz’d; For nothing canst thou to damnation add Greater than that.

IAGO. O grace! O heaven defend me! Are you a man? Have you a soul or sense? God be wi’ you. Take mine office.—O wretched fool, That liv’st to make thine honesty a vice! O monstrous world! Take note, take note, O world, To be direct and honest is not safe. I thank you for this profit, and from hence I’ll love no friend, sith love breeds such offence.

OTHELLO. Nay, stay. Thou shouldst be honest.

IAGO. I should be wise; for honesty’s a fool, And loses that it works for.

OTHELLO. By the world, I think my wife be honest, and think she is not. I think that thou art just, and think thou art not. I’ll have some proof: her name, that was as fresh As Dian’s visage, is now begrim’d and black As mine own face. If there be cords or knives, Poison or fire, or suffocating streams, I’ll not endure ’t. Would I were satisfied!

IAGO. I see, sir, you are eaten up with passion. I do repent me that I put it to you. You would be satisfied?

OTHELLO. Would? Nay, I will.

IAGO. And may; but how? How satisfied, my lord? Would you, the supervisor, grossly gape on, Behold her topp’d?

OTHELLO. Death and damnation! O!

IAGO. It were a tedious difficulty, I think, To bring them to that prospect. Damn them then, If ever mortal eyes do see them bolster More than their own! What then? How then? What shall I say? Where’s satisfaction? It is impossible you should see this, Were they as prime as goats, as hot as monkeys, As salt as wolves in pride, and fools as gross As ignorance made drunk. But yet I say, If imputation and strong circumstances, Which lead directly to the door of truth, Will give you satisfaction, you may have’t.

OTHELLO. Give me a living reason she’s disloyal.

IAGO. I do not like the office, But sith I am enter’d in this cause so far, Prick’d to ’t by foolish honesty and love, I will go on. I lay with Cassio lately, And being troubled with a raging tooth, I could not sleep. There are a kind of men so loose of soul, That in their sleeps will mutter their affairs. One of this kind is Cassio: In sleep I heard him say, “Sweet Desdemona, Let us be wary, let us hide our loves;” And then, sir, would he gripe and wring my hand, Cry “O sweet creature!” and then kiss me hard, As if he pluck’d up kisses by the roots, That grew upon my lips, then laid his leg Over my thigh, and sigh’d and kiss’d, and then Cried “Cursed fate that gave thee to the Moor!”

OTHELLO. O monstrous! monstrous!

IAGO. Nay, this was but his dream.

OTHELLO. But this denoted a foregone conclusion. ’Tis a shrewd doubt, though it be but a dream.

IAGO. And this may help to thicken other proofs That do demonstrate thinly.

OTHELLO. I’ll tear her all to pieces.

IAGO. Nay, but be wise. Yet we see nothing done, She may be honest yet. Tell me but this, Have you not sometimes seen a handkerchief Spotted with strawberries in your wife’s hand?

OTHELLO. I gave her such a one, ’twas my first gift.

IAGO. I know not that: but such a handkerchief (I am sure it was your wife’s) did I today See Cassio wipe his beard with.

OTHELLO. If it be that,—

IAGO. If it be that, or any that was hers, It speaks against her with the other proofs.

OTHELLO. O, that the slave had forty thousand lives! One is too poor, too weak for my revenge! Now do I see ’tis true. Look here, Iago; All my fond love thus do I blow to heaven. ’Tis gone. Arise, black vengeance, from thy hollow hell! Yield up, O love, thy crown and hearted throne To tyrannous hate! Swell, bosom, with thy fraught, For ’tis of aspics’ tongues!

IAGO. Yet be content.

OTHELLO. O, blood, Iago, blood!

IAGO. Patience, I say. Your mind perhaps may change.

OTHELLO. Never, Iago. Like to the Pontic Sea, Whose icy current and compulsive course Ne’er feels retiring ebb, but keeps due on To the Propontic and the Hellespont; Even so my bloody thoughts, with violent pace Shall ne’er look back, ne’er ebb to humble love, Till that a capable and wide revenge Swallow them up. Now by yond marble heaven, In the due reverence of a sacred vow [Kneels.] I here engage my words.

IAGO. Do not rise yet. [Kneels.] Witness, you ever-burning lights above, You elements that clip us round about, Witness that here Iago doth give up The execution of his wit, hands, heart, To wrong’d Othello’s service! Let him command, And to obey shall be in me remorse, What bloody business ever.

OTHELLO. I greet thy love, Not with vain thanks, but with acceptance bounteous, And will upon the instant put thee to ’t. Within these three days let me hear thee say That Cassio’s not alive.

IAGO. My friend is dead. ’Tis done at your request. But let her live.

OTHELLO. Damn her, lewd minx! O, damn her, damn her! Come, go with me apart, I will withdraw To furnish me with some swift means of death For the fair devil. Now art thou my lieutenant.

IAGO. I am your own for ever.

SCENE IV. Cyprus. Before the Castle.

Enter Desdemona, Emilia and Clown.

DESDEMONA. Do you know, sirrah, where Lieutenant Cassio lies?

CLOWN. I dare not say he lies anywhere.

DESDEMONA. Why, man?

CLOWN. He’s a soldier; and for one to say a soldier lies is stabbing.

DESDEMONA. Go to. Where lodges he?

CLOWN. To tell you where he lodges is to tell you where I lie.

DESDEMONA. Can anything be made of this?

CLOWN. I know not where he lodges; and for me to devise a lodging, and say he lies here, or he lies there, were to lie in mine own throat.

DESDEMONA. Can you inquire him out, and be edified by report?

CLOWN. I will catechize the world for him, that is, make questions and by them answer.

DESDEMONA. Seek him, bid him come hither. Tell him I have moved my lord on his behalf, and hope all will be well.

CLOWN. To do this is within the compass of man’s wit, and therefore I will attempt the doing it.

DESDEMONA. Where should I lose that handkerchief, Emilia?

EMILIA. I know not, madam.

DESDEMONA. Believe me, I had rather have lost my purse Full of crusadoes. And but my noble Moor Is true of mind and made of no such baseness As jealous creatures are, it were enough To put him to ill thinking.

EMILIA. Is he not jealous?

DESDEMONA. Who, he? I think the sun where he was born Drew all such humours from him.

EMILIA. Look, where he comes.

DESDEMONA. I will not leave him now till Cassio Be call’d to him. How is’t with you, my lord?

OTHELLO. Well, my good lady. [Aside.] O, hardness to dissemble! How do you, Desdemona?

DESDEMONA. Well, my good lord.

OTHELLO. Give me your hand. This hand is moist, my lady.

DESDEMONA. It yet hath felt no age nor known no sorrow.

OTHELLO. This argues fruitfulness and liberal heart. Hot, hot, and moist. This hand of yours requires A sequester from liberty, fasting and prayer, Much castigation, exercise devout; For here’s a young and sweating devil here That commonly rebels. ’Tis a good hand, A frank one.

DESDEMONA. You may indeed say so, For ’twas that hand that gave away my heart.

OTHELLO. A liberal hand. The hearts of old gave hands, But our new heraldry is hands, not hearts.

DESDEMONA. I cannot speak of this. Come now, your promise.

OTHELLO. What promise, chuck?

DESDEMONA. I have sent to bid Cassio come speak with you.

OTHELLO. I have a salt and sorry rheum offends me. Lend me thy handkerchief.

DESDEMONA. Here, my lord.

OTHELLO. That which I gave you.

DESDEMONA. I have it not about me.

OTHELLO. Not?

DESDEMONA. No, faith, my lord.

OTHELLO. That is a fault. That handkerchief Did an Egyptian to my mother give. She was a charmer, and could almost read The thoughts of people. She told her, while she kept it, ’Twould make her amiable and subdue my father Entirely to her love. But if she lost it, Or made a gift of it, my father’s eye Should hold her loathed, and his spirits should hunt After new fancies: she, dying, gave it me, And bid me, when my fate would have me wive, To give it her. I did so; and take heed on’t, Make it a darling like your precious eye. To lose’t or give’t away were such perdition As nothing else could match.

DESDEMONA. Is’t possible?

OTHELLO. ’Tis true. There’s magic in the web of it. A sibyl, that had number’d in the world The sun to course two hundred compasses, In her prophetic fury sew’d the work; The worms were hallow’d that did breed the silk, And it was dyed in mummy, which the skillful Conserv’d of maiden’s hearts.

DESDEMONA. Indeed? Is’t true?

OTHELLO. Most veritable, therefore look to ’t well.

DESDEMONA. Then would to God that I had never seen ’t!

OTHELLO. Ha? wherefore?

DESDEMONA. Why do you speak so startingly and rash?

OTHELLO. Is’t lost? is’t gone? speak, is it out of the way?

DESDEMONA. Heaven bless us!

OTHELLO. Say you?

DESDEMONA. It is not lost, but what and if it were?

OTHELLO. How?

DESDEMONA. I say it is not lost.

OTHELLO. Fetch’t, let me see ’t.

DESDEMONA. Why, so I can, sir, but I will not now. This is a trick to put me from my suit. Pray you, let Cassio be receiv’d again.

OTHELLO. Fetch me the handkerchief! My mind misgives.

DESDEMONA. Come, come. You’ll never meet a more sufficient man.

OTHELLO. The handkerchief!

DESDEMONA. I pray, talk me of Cassio.

DESDEMONA. A man that all his time Hath founded his good fortunes on your love, Shar’d dangers with you,—

DESDEMONA. In sooth, you are to blame.

OTHELLO. Away!

EMILIA. Is not this man jealous?

DESDEMONA. I ne’er saw this before. Sure there’s some wonder in this handkerchief, I am most unhappy in the loss of it.

EMILIA. ’Tis not a year or two shows us a man: They are all but stomachs and we all but food; They eat us hungerly, and when they are full, They belch us.

Enter Cassio and Iago.

Look you, Cassio and my husband.

IAGO. There is no other way; ’tis she must do ’t, And, lo, the happiness! Go and importune her.

DESDEMONA. How now, good Cassio, what’s the news with you?

CASSIO. Madam, my former suit: I do beseech you That by your virtuous means I may again Exist, and be a member of his love, Whom I, with all the office of my heart, Entirely honour. I would not be delay’d. If my offence be of such mortal kind That nor my service past, nor present sorrows, Nor purpos’d merit in futurity, Can ransom me into his love again, But to know so must be my benefit; So shall I clothe me in a forc’d content, And shut myself up in some other course To fortune’s alms.

DESDEMONA. Alas, thrice-gentle Cassio, My advocation is not now in tune; My lord is not my lord; nor should I know him Were he in favour as in humour alter’d. So help me every spirit sanctified, As I have spoken for you all my best, And stood within the blank of his displeasure For my free speech! You must awhile be patient. What I can do I will; and more I will Than for myself I dare. Let that suffice you.

IAGO. Is my lord angry?

EMILIA. He went hence but now, And certainly in strange unquietness.

IAGO. Can he be angry? I have seen the cannon, When it hath blown his ranks into the air And, like the devil, from his very arm Puff’d his own brother, and can he be angry? Something of moment then. I will go meet him. There’s matter in’t indeed if he be angry.

DESDEMONA. I prithee do so.

Something sure of state, Either from Venice, or some unhatch’d practice Made demonstrable here in Cyprus to him, Hath puddled his clear spirit, and in such cases Men’s natures wrangle with inferior things, Though great ones are their object. ’Tis even so. For let our finger ache, and it indues Our other healthful members even to that sense Of pain. Nay, we must think men are not gods, Nor of them look for such observancy As fits the bridal. Beshrew me much, Emilia, I was (unhandsome warrior as I am) Arraigning his unkindness with my soul; But now I find I had suborn’d the witness, And he’s indicted falsely.

EMILIA. Pray heaven it be state matters, as you think, And no conception nor no jealous toy Concerning you.

DESDEMONA. Alas the day, I never gave him cause!

EMILIA. But jealous souls will not be answer’d so; They are not ever jealous for the cause, But jealous for they are jealous: ’tis a monster Begot upon itself, born on itself.

DESDEMONA. Heaven keep that monster from Othello’s mind!

EMILIA. Lady, amen.

DESDEMONA. I will go seek him. Cassio, walk hereabout: If I do find him fit, I’ll move your suit, And seek to effect it to my uttermost.

CASSIO. I humbly thank your ladyship.

[Exeunt Desdemona and Emilia.]

Enter Bianca.

BIANCA. Save you, friend Cassio!

CASSIO. What make you from home? How is it with you, my most fair Bianca? I’ faith, sweet love, I was coming to your house.

BIANCA. And I was going to your lodging, Cassio. What, keep a week away? Seven days and nights? Eight score eight hours, and lovers’ absent hours, More tedious than the dial eight score times? O weary reckoning!

CASSIO. Pardon me, Bianca. I have this while with leaden thoughts been press’d, But I shall in a more continuate time Strike off this score of absence. Sweet Bianca,

[Giving her Desdemona’s handkerchief.]

Take me this work out.

BIANCA. O Cassio, whence came this? This is some token from a newer friend. To the felt absence now I feel a cause. Is’t come to this? Well, well.

CASSIO. Go to, woman! Throw your vile guesses in the devil’s teeth, From whence you have them. You are jealous now That this is from some mistress, some remembrance. No, in good troth, Bianca.

BIANCA. Why, whose is it?

CASSIO. I know not neither. I found it in my chamber. I like the work well. Ere it be demanded, As like enough it will, I’d have it copied. Take it, and do ’t, and leave me for this time.

BIANCA. Leave you, wherefore?

CASSIO. I do attend here on the general, And think it no addition, nor my wish, To have him see me woman’d.

BIANCA. Why, I pray you?

CASSIO. Not that I love you not.

BIANCA. But that you do not love me. I pray you bring me on the way a little, And say if I shall see you soon at night.

CASSIO. ’Tis but a little way that I can bring you, For I attend here. But I’ll see you soon.

BIANCA. ’Tis very good; I must be circumstanc’d.

IAGO. Will you think so?

OTHELLO. Think so, Iago?

IAGO. What, To kiss in private?

OTHELLO. An unauthoriz’d kiss.

IAGO. Or to be naked with her friend in bed An hour or more, not meaning any harm?

OTHELLO. Naked in bed, Iago, and not mean harm? It is hypocrisy against the devil: They that mean virtuously and yet do so, The devil their virtue tempts, and they tempt heaven.

IAGO. So they do nothing, ’tis a venial slip. But if I give my wife a handkerchief—

OTHELLO. What then?

IAGO. Why then, ’tis hers, my lord, and being hers, She may, I think, bestow’t on any man.

OTHELLO. She is protectress of her honour too. May she give that?

IAGO. Her honour is an essence that’s not seen; They have it very oft that have it not: But for the handkerchief—

OTHELLO. By heaven, I would most gladly have forgot it. Thou said’st (O, it comes o’er my memory, As doth the raven o’er the infected house, Boding to all) he had my handkerchief.

IAGO. Ay, what of that?

OTHELLO. That’s not so good now.

IAGO. What If I had said I had seen him do you wrong? Or heard him say (as knaves be such abroad, Who having, by their own importunate suit, Or voluntary dotage of some mistress, Convinced or supplied them, cannot choose But they must blab.)

OTHELLO. Hath he said anything?

IAGO. He hath, my lord, but be you well assur’d, No more than he’ll unswear.

OTHELLO. What hath he said?

IAGO. Faith, that he did—I know not what he did.

OTHELLO. What? What?

IAGO. Lie.

OTHELLO. With her?

IAGO. With her, on her, what you will.

OTHELLO. Lie with her! lie on her!—We say lie on her when they belie her.—Lie with her! that’s fulsome. Handkerchief—confessions—handkerchief! To confess, and be hanged for his labour. First, to be hanged, and then to confess. I tremble at it. Nature would not invest herself in such shadowing passion without some instruction. It is not words that shake me thus. Pish! Noses, ears, and lips. Is’t possible?—Confess?—handkerchief?—O devil!—

[Falls in a trance.]

IAGO. Work on, My medicine, work! Thus credulous fools are caught, And many worthy and chaste dames even thus, All guiltless, meet reproach. What, ho! my lord! My lord, I say! Othello!

How now, Cassio!

CASSIO. What’s the matter?

IAGO. My lord is fallen into an epilepsy. This is his second fit. He had one yesterday.

CASSIO. Rub him about the temples.

IAGO. No, forbear; The lethargy must have his quiet course. If not, he foams at mouth, and by and by Breaks out to savage madness. Look, he stirs: Do you withdraw yourself a little while, He will recover straight. When he is gone, I would on great occasion speak with you.

How is it, general? Have you not hurt your head?

OTHELLO. Dost thou mock me?

IAGO. I mock you? No, by heaven. Would you would bear your fortune like a man!

OTHELLO. A horned man’s a monster and a beast.

IAGO. There’s many a beast, then, in a populous city, And many a civil monster.

OTHELLO. Did he confess it?

IAGO. Good sir, be a man. Think every bearded fellow that’s but yok’d May draw with you. There’s millions now alive That nightly lie in those unproper beds Which they dare swear peculiar: your case is better. O, ’tis the spite of hell, the fiend’s arch-mock, To lip a wanton in a secure couch, And to suppose her chaste! No, let me know, And knowing what I am, I know what she shall be.

OTHELLO. O, thou art wise, ’tis certain.

IAGO. Stand you awhile apart, Confine yourself but in a patient list. Whilst you were here o’erwhelmed with your grief, (A passion most unsuiting such a man) Cassio came hither. I shifted him away, And laid good ’scuse upon your ecstasy, Bade him anon return, and here speak with me, The which he promis’d. Do but encave yourself, And mark the fleers, the gibes, and notable scorns, That dwell in every region of his face; For I will make him tell the tale anew, Where, how, how oft, how long ago, and when He hath, and is again to cope your wife: I say, but mark his gesture. Marry, patience, Or I shall say you are all in all in spleen, And nothing of a man.

OTHELLO. Dost thou hear, Iago? I will be found most cunning in my patience; But,—dost thou hear?—most bloody.

IAGO. That’s not amiss. But yet keep time in all. Will you withdraw?

[Othello withdraws.]

Now will I question Cassio of Bianca, A housewife that by selling her desires Buys herself bread and clothes: it is a creature That dotes on Cassio, (as ’tis the strumpet’s plague To beguile many and be beguil’d by one.) He, when he hears of her, cannot refrain From the excess of laughter. Here he comes.

As he shall smile Othello shall go mad, And his unbookish jealousy must construe Poor Cassio’s smiles, gestures, and light behaviour Quite in the wrong. How do you now, lieutenant?

CASSIO. The worser that you give me the addition Whose want even kills me.

IAGO. Ply Desdemona well, and you are sure on’t. [Speaking lower.] Now, if this suit lay in Bianca’s power, How quickly should you speed!

CASSIO. Alas, poor caitiff!

OTHELLO. [Aside.] Look how he laughs already!

IAGO. I never knew a woman love man so.

CASSIO. Alas, poor rogue! I think, i’ faith, she loves me.

OTHELLO. [Aside.] Now he denies it faintly and laughs it out.

IAGO. Do you hear, Cassio?

OTHELLO. Now he importunes him To tell it o’er. Go to, well said, well said.

IAGO. She gives it out that you shall marry her. Do you intend it?

CASSIO. Ha, ha, ha!

OTHELLO. Do you triumph, Roman? Do you triumph?

CASSIO. I marry her? What? A customer? I prithee, bear some charity to my wit, do not think it so unwholesome. Ha, ha, ha!

OTHELLO. So, so, so, so. They laugh that wins.

IAGO. Faith, the cry goes that you shall marry her.

CASSIO. Prithee say true.

IAGO. I am a very villain else.

OTHELLO. Have you scored me? Well.

CASSIO. This is the monkey’s own giving out. She is persuaded I will marry her, out of her own love and flattery, not out of my promise.

OTHELLO. Iago beckons me. Now he begins the story.

CASSIO. She was here even now. She haunts me in every place. I was the other day talking on the sea-bank with certain Venetians, and thither comes the bauble, and falls thus about my neck.

OTHELLO. Crying, “O dear Cassio!” as it were: his gesture imports it.

CASSIO. So hangs, and lolls, and weeps upon me; so hales and pulls me. Ha, ha, ha!

OTHELLO. Now he tells how she plucked him to my chamber. O, I see that nose of yours, but not that dog I shall throw it to.

CASSIO. Well, I must leave her company.

IAGO. Before me! look where she comes.

CASSIO. ’Tis such another fitchew! Marry, a perfum’d one. What do you mean by this haunting of me?

BIANCA. Let the devil and his dam haunt you! What did you mean by that same handkerchief you gave me even now? I was a fine fool to take it. I must take out the work? A likely piece of work, that you should find it in your chamber and not know who left it there! This is some minx’s token, and I must take out the work? There, give it your hobby-horse. Wheresoever you had it, I’ll take out no work on’t.

CASSIO. How now, my sweet Bianca? How now, how now?

OTHELLO. By heaven, that should be my handkerchief!

BIANCA. If you’ll come to supper tonight, you may. If you will not, come when you are next prepared for.

IAGO. After her, after her.

CASSIO. Faith, I must; she’ll rail in the street else.

IAGO. Will you sup there?

CASSIO. Faith, I intend so.

IAGO. Well, I may chance to see you, for I would very fain speak with you.

CASSIO. Prithee come, will you?

IAGO. Go to; say no more.

OTHELLO. [Coming forward.] How shall I murder him, Iago?

IAGO. Did you perceive how he laughed at his vice?

OTHELLO. O Iago!

IAGO. And did you see the handkerchief?

OTHELLO. Was that mine?

IAGO. Yours, by this hand: and to see how he prizes the foolish woman your wife! she gave it him, and he hath given it his whore.

OTHELLO. I would have him nine years a-killing. A fine woman, a fair woman, a sweet woman!

IAGO. Nay, you must forget that.

OTHELLO. Ay, let her rot, and perish, and be damned tonight, for she shall not live. No, my heart is turned to stone; I strike it, and it hurts my hand. O, the world hath not a sweeter creature. She might lie by an emperor’s side, and command him tasks.

IAGO. Nay, that’s not your way.

OTHELLO. Hang her, I do but say what she is. So delicate with her needle, an admirable musician! O, she will sing the savageness out of a bear! Of so high and plenteous wit and invention!

IAGO. She’s the worse for all this.

OTHELLO. O, a thousand, a thousand times: and then of so gentle a condition!

IAGO. Ay, too gentle.

OTHELLO. Nay, that’s certain. But yet the pity of it, Iago! O Iago, the pity of it, Iago!

IAGO. If you are so fond over her iniquity, give her patent to offend, for if it touch not you, it comes near nobody.

OTHELLO. I will chop her into messes. Cuckold me!

IAGO. O, ’tis foul in her.

OTHELLO. With mine officer!

IAGO. That’s fouler.

OTHELLO. Get me some poison, Iago; this night. I’ll not expostulate with her, lest her body and beauty unprovide my mind again. This night, Iago.

IAGO. Do it not with poison, strangle her in her bed, even the bed she hath contaminated.

OTHELLO. Good, good. The justice of it pleases. Very good.

IAGO. And for Cassio, let me be his undertaker. You shall hear more by midnight.

OTHELLO. Excellent good. [A trumpet within.] What trumpet is that same?

Enter Lodovico, Desdemona and Attendant.

IAGO. Something from Venice, sure. ’Tis Lodovico Come from the duke. See, your wife is with him.

LODOVICO. Save you, worthy general!

OTHELLO. With all my heart, sir.

LODOVICO. The duke and senators of Venice greet you.

[Gives him a packet.]

OTHELLO. I kiss the instrument of their pleasures.

[Opens the packet and reads.]

DESDEMONA. And what’s the news, good cousin Lodovico?

IAGO. I am very glad to see you, signior. Welcome to Cyprus.

LODOVICO. I thank you. How does Lieutenant Cassio?

IAGO. Lives, sir.

DESDEMONA. Cousin, there’s fall’n between him and my lord An unkind breach, but you shall make all well.

OTHELLO. Are you sure of that?

DESDEMONA. My lord?

OTHELLO. [Reads.] “This fail you not to do, as you will—”

LODOVICO. He did not call; he’s busy in the paper. Is there division ’twixt my lord and Cassio?

DESDEMONA. A most unhappy one. I would do much To atone them, for the love I bear to Cassio.

OTHELLO. Fire and brimstone!

OTHELLO. Are you wise?

DESDEMONA. What, is he angry?

LODOVICO. May be the letter mov’d him; For, as I think, they do command him home, Deputing Cassio in his government.

DESDEMONA. Trust me, I am glad on’t.

OTHELLO. Indeed!

OTHELLO. I am glad to see you mad.

DESDEMONA. Why, sweet Othello?

OTHELLO. Devil!

[Striking her.]

DESDEMONA. I have not deserv’d this.

LODOVICO. My lord, this would not be believ’d in Venice, Though I should swear I saw’t: ’tis very much. Make her amends. She weeps.

OTHELLO. O devil, devil! If that the earth could teem with woman’s tears, Each drop she falls would prove a crocodile. Out of my sight!

DESDEMONA. I will not stay to offend you.

LODOVICO. Truly, an obedient lady. I do beseech your lordship, call her back.

OTHELLO. Mistress!

OTHELLO. What would you with her, sir?

LODOVICO. Who, I, my lord?

OTHELLO. Ay, you did wish that I would make her turn. Sir, she can turn, and turn, and yet go on, And turn again. And she can weep, sir, weep; And she’s obedient, as you say, obedient, Very obedient. Proceed you in your tears. Concerning this, sir,—O well-painted passion! I am commanded home.—Get you away; I’ll send for you anon.—Sir, I obey the mandate, And will return to Venice.—Hence, avaunt!

[Exit Desdemona.]

Cassio shall have my place. And, sir, tonight, I do entreat that we may sup together. You are welcome, sir, to Cyprus. Goats and monkeys!

LODOVICO. Is this the noble Moor, whom our full senate Call all in all sufficient? Is this the nature Whom passion could not shake? whose solid virtue The shot of accident nor dart of chance Could neither graze nor pierce?

IAGO. He is much chang’d.

LODOVICO. Are his wits safe? Is he not light of brain?

IAGO. He’s that he is. I may not breathe my censure What he might be. If what he might he is not, I would to heaven he were!

LODOVICO. What, strike his wife?

IAGO. Faith, that was not so well; yet would I knew That stroke would prove the worst!

LODOVICO. Is it his use? Or did the letters work upon his blood, And new-create this fault?

IAGO. Alas, alas! It is not honesty in me to speak What I have seen and known. You shall observe him, And his own courses will denote him so That I may save my speech: do but go after, And mark how he continues.

LODOVICO. I am sorry that I am deceiv’d in him.

Enter Othello and Emilia.

OTHELLO. You have seen nothing, then?

EMILIA. Nor ever heard, nor ever did suspect.

OTHELLO. Yes, you have seen Cassio and she together.

EMILIA. But then I saw no harm, and then I heard Each syllable that breath made up between them.

OTHELLO. What, did they never whisper?

EMILIA. Never, my lord.

OTHELLO. Nor send you out o’ the way?

EMILIA. Never.

OTHELLO. To fetch her fan, her gloves, her mask, nor nothing?

OTHELLO. That’s strange.

EMILIA. I durst, my lord, to wager she is honest, Lay down my soul at stake: if you think other, Remove your thought, it doth abuse your bosom. If any wretch have put this in your head, Let heaven requite it with the serpent’s curse, For if she be not honest, chaste, and true, There’s no man happy. The purest of their wives Is foul as slander.

OTHELLO. Bid her come hither. Go.

She says enough. Yet she’s a simple bawd That cannot say as much. This is a subtle whore, A closet lock and key of villainous secrets. And yet she’ll kneel and pray. I have seen her do ’t.

DESDEMONA. My lord, what is your will?

OTHELLO. Pray, chuck, come hither.

DESDEMONA. What is your pleasure?

OTHELLO. Let me see your eyes. Look in my face.

DESDEMONA. What horrible fancy’s this?

OTHELLO. [To Emilia.] Some of your function, mistress, Leave procreants alone, and shut the door. Cough, or cry hem, if anybody come. Your mystery, your mystery. Nay, dispatch.

DESDEMONA. Upon my knees, what doth your speech import? I understand a fury in your words, But not the words.

OTHELLO. Why, what art thou?

DESDEMONA. Your wife, my lord, your true and loyal wife.

OTHELLO. Come, swear it, damn thyself, Lest, being like one of heaven, the devils themselves Should fear to seize thee. Therefore be double-damn’d. Swear thou art honest.

DESDEMONA. Heaven doth truly know it.

OTHELLO. Heaven truly knows that thou art false as hell.

DESDEMONA. To whom, my lord? With whom? How am I false?

OTHELLO. O Desdemona, away! away! away!

DESDEMONA. Alas the heavy day, why do you weep? Am I the motive of these tears, my lord? If haply you my father do suspect An instrument of this your calling back, Lay not your blame on me. If you have lost him, Why, I have lost him too.

OTHELLO. Had it pleas’d heaven To try me with affliction, had they rain’d All kinds of sores and shames on my bare head, Steep’d me in poverty to the very lips, Given to captivity me and my utmost hopes, I should have found in some place of my soul A drop of patience. But, alas, to make me A fixed figure for the time of scorn To point his slow unmoving finger at. Yet could I bear that too, well, very well: But there, where I have garner’d up my heart, Where either I must live or bear no life, The fountain from the which my current runs, Or else dries up, to be discarded thence, Or keep it as a cistern for foul toads To knot and gender in!—turn thy complexion there, Patience, thou young and rose-lipp’d cherubin, Ay, there, look grim as hell!

DESDEMONA. I hope my noble lord esteems me honest.

OTHELLO. O, ay, as summer flies are in the shambles, That quicken even with blowing. O thou weed, Who art so lovely fair, and smell’st so sweet, That the sense aches at thee, Would thou hadst ne’er been born!

DESDEMONA. Alas, what ignorant sin have I committed?

OTHELLO. Was this fair paper, this most goodly book, Made to write “whore” upon? What committed? Committed! O thou public commoner! I should make very forges of my cheeks, That would to cinders burn up modesty, Did I but speak thy deeds. What committed! Heaven stops the nose at it, and the moon winks; The bawdy wind, that kisses all it meets, Is hush’d within the hollow mine of earth, And will not hear it. What committed! Impudent strumpet!

DESDEMONA. By heaven, you do me wrong.

OTHELLO. Are not you a strumpet?

DESDEMONA. No, as I am a Christian: If to preserve this vessel for my lord From any other foul unlawful touch Be not to be a strumpet, I am none.

OTHELLO. What, not a whore?

DESDEMONA. No, as I shall be sav’d.

OTHELLO. Is’t possible?

DESDEMONA. O, heaven forgive us!

OTHELLO. I cry you mercy then. I took you for that cunning whore of Venice That married with Othello.—You, mistress,

That have the office opposite to Saint Peter, And keeps the gate of hell. You, you, ay, you! We have done our course; there’s money for your pains. I pray you turn the key, and keep our counsel.

EMILIA. Alas, what does this gentleman conceive? How do you, madam? How do you, my good lady?

DESDEMONA. Faith, half asleep.

EMILIA. Good madam, what’s the matter with my lord?

DESDEMONA. With who?

EMILIA. Why, with my lord, madam.

DESDEMONA. Who is thy lord?

EMILIA. He that is yours, sweet lady.

DESDEMONA. I have none. Do not talk to me, Emilia, I cannot weep, nor answer have I none But what should go by water. Prithee, tonight Lay on my bed my wedding sheets, remember, And call thy husband hither.

EMILIA. Here’s a change indeed!

DESDEMONA. ’Tis meet I should be us’d so, very meet. How have I been behav’d, that he might stick The small’st opinion on my least misuse?

Enter Iago and Emilia.

IAGO. What is your pleasure, madam? How is’t with you?

DESDEMONA. I cannot tell. Those that do teach young babes Do it with gentle means and easy tasks. He might have chid me so, for, in good faith, I am a child to chiding.

IAGO. What’s the matter, lady?

EMILIA. Alas, Iago, my lord hath so bewhor’d her, Thrown such despite and heavy terms upon her, As true hearts cannot bear.

DESDEMONA. Am I that name, Iago?

IAGO. What name, fair lady?

DESDEMONA. Such as she says my lord did say I was.

EMILIA. He call’d her whore: a beggar in his drink Could not have laid such terms upon his callet.

IAGO. Why did he so?

DESDEMONA. I do not know. I am sure I am none such.

IAGO. Do not weep, do not weep: alas the day!

EMILIA. Hath she forsook so many noble matches, Her father, and her country, and her friends, To be call’d whore? would it not make one weep?

DESDEMONA. It is my wretched fortune.

IAGO. Beshrew him for’t! How comes this trick upon him?

DESDEMONA. Nay, heaven doth know.

EMILIA. I will be hang’d, if some eternal villain, Some busy and insinuating rogue, Some cogging, cozening slave, to get some office, Have not devis’d this slander. I’ll be hang’d else.

IAGO. Fie, there is no such man. It is impossible.

DESDEMONA. If any such there be, heaven pardon him!

EMILIA. A halter pardon him, and hell gnaw his bones! Why should he call her whore? who keeps her company? What place? what time? what form? what likelihood? The Moor’s abused by some most villainous knave, Some base notorious knave, some scurvy fellow. O heaven, that such companions thou’dst unfold, And put in every honest hand a whip To lash the rascals naked through the world Even from the east to the west!

IAGO. Speak within door.

EMILIA. O, fie upon them! Some such squire he was That turn’d your wit the seamy side without, And made you to suspect me with the Moor.

IAGO. You are a fool. Go to.

DESDEMONA. Alas, Iago, What shall I do to win my lord again? Good friend, go to him. For by this light of heaven, I know not how I lost him. Here I kneel. If e’er my will did trespass ’gainst his love, Either in discourse of thought or actual deed, Or that mine eyes, mine ears, or any sense, Delighted them in any other form, Or that I do not yet, and ever did, And ever will, (though he do shake me off To beggarly divorcement) love him dearly, Comfort forswear me! Unkindness may do much; And his unkindness may defeat my life, But never taint my love. I cannot say “whore,” It does abhor me now I speak the word; To do the act that might the addition earn Not the world’s mass of vanity could make me.

IAGO. I pray you, be content. ’Tis but his humour. The business of the state does him offence, And he does chide with you.

DESDEMONA. If ’twere no other,—

IAGO. ’Tis but so, I warrant.

Hark, how these instruments summon to supper. The messengers of Venice stay the meat. Go in, and weep not. All things shall be well.

RODERIGO. I do not find that thou dealest justly with me.

IAGO. What in the contrary?

RODERIGO. Every day thou daffest me with some device, Iago, and rather, as it seems to me now, keepest from me all conveniency than suppliest me with the least advantage of hope. I will indeed no longer endure it. Nor am I yet persuaded to put up in peace what already I have foolishly suffered.

IAGO. Will you hear me, Roderigo?

RODERIGO. Faith, I have heard too much, for your words and performances are no kin together.

IAGO. You charge me most unjustly.

RODERIGO. With naught but truth. I have wasted myself out of my means. The jewels you have had from me to deliver to Desdemona would half have corrupted a votarist: you have told me she hath received them, and returned me expectations and comforts of sudden respect and acquaintance, but I find none.

IAGO. Well, go to, very well.

RODERIGO. Very well, go to, I cannot go to, man, nor ’tis not very well. Nay, I say ’tis very scurvy, and begin to find myself fopped in it.

IAGO. Very well.

RODERIGO. I tell you ’tis not very well. I will make myself known to Desdemona. If she will return me my jewels, I will give over my suit and repent my unlawful solicitation. If not, assure yourself I will seek satisfaction of you.

IAGO. You have said now.

RODERIGO. Ay, and said nothing but what I protest intendment of doing.

IAGO. Why, now I see there’s mettle in thee, and even from this instant do build on thee a better opinion than ever before. Give me thy hand, Roderigo. Thou hast taken against me a most just exception, but yet I protest, I have dealt most directly in thy affair.

RODERIGO. It hath not appeared.

IAGO. I grant indeed it hath not appeared, and your suspicion is not without wit and judgement. But, Roderigo, if thou hast that in thee indeed, which I have greater reason to believe now than ever,—I mean purpose, courage, and valour,—this night show it. If thou the next night following enjoy not Desdemona, take me from this world with treachery and devise engines for my life.

RODERIGO. Well, what is it? Is it within reason and compass?

IAGO. Sir, there is especial commission come from Venice to depute Cassio in Othello’s place.

RODERIGO. Is that true? Why then Othello and Desdemona return again to Venice.

IAGO. O, no; he goes into Mauritania, and takes away with him the fair Desdemona, unless his abode be lingered here by some accident: wherein none can be so determinate as the removing of Cassio.

RODERIGO. How do you mean “removing” of him?

IAGO. Why, by making him uncapable of Othello’s place: knocking out his brains.

RODERIGO. And that you would have me to do?

IAGO. Ay, if you dare do yourself a profit and a right. He sups tonight with a harlotry, and thither will I go to him. He knows not yet of his honourable fortune. If you will watch his going thence, which I will fashion to fall out between twelve and one, you may take him at your pleasure: I will be near to second your attempt, and he shall fall between us. Come, stand not amazed at it, but go along with me. I will show you such a necessity in his death that you shall think yourself bound to put it on him. It is now high supper-time, and the night grows to waste. About it.

RODERIGO. I will hear further reason for this.

IAGO. And you shall be satisfied.

SCENE III. Cyprus. Another Room in the Castle.

Enter Othello, Lodovico, Desdemona, Emilia and Attendants.

LODOVICO. I do beseech you, sir, trouble yourself no further.

OTHELLO. O, pardon me; ’twill do me good to walk.

LODOVICO. Madam, good night. I humbly thank your ladyship.

DESDEMONA. Your honour is most welcome.

OTHELLO. Will you walk, sir?— O, Desdemona,—

OTHELLO. Get you to bed on th’ instant, I will be return’d forthwith. Dismiss your attendant there. Look ’t be done.

DESDEMONA. I will, my lord.

[Exeunt Othello, Lodovico and Attendants.]

EMILIA. How goes it now? He looks gentler than he did.

DESDEMONA. He says he will return incontinent, He hath commanded me to go to bed, And bade me to dismiss you.

EMILIA. Dismiss me?

DESDEMONA. It was his bidding. Therefore, good Emilia, Give me my nightly wearing, and adieu. We must not now displease him.

EMILIA. I would you had never seen him!

DESDEMONA. So would not I. My love doth so approve him, That even his stubbornness, his checks, his frowns,— Prithee, unpin me,—have grace and favour in them.

EMILIA. I have laid those sheets you bade me on the bed.

DESDEMONA. All’s one. Good faith, how foolish are our minds! If I do die before thee, prithee, shroud me In one of those same sheets.

EMILIA. Come, come, you talk.

DESDEMONA. My mother had a maid call’d Barbary, She was in love, and he she lov’d prov’d mad And did forsake her. She had a song of “willow”, An old thing ’twas, but it express’d her fortune, And she died singing it. That song tonight Will not go from my mind. I have much to do But to go hang my head all at one side And sing it like poor Barbary. Prithee dispatch.

EMILIA. Shall I go fetch your night-gown?

DESDEMONA. No, unpin me here. This Lodovico is a proper man.

EMILIA. A very handsome man.

DESDEMONA. He speaks well.

EMILIA. I know a lady in Venice would have walked barefoot to Palestine for a touch of his nether lip.

DESDEMONA. [Singing.] The poor soul sat sighing by a sycamore tree, Sing all a green willow. Her hand on her bosom, her head on her knee, Sing willow, willow, willow. The fresh streams ran by her, and murmur’d her moans, Sing willow, willow, willow; Her salt tears fell from her, and soften’d the stones;—

Lay by these:—

[Sings.] Sing willow, willow, willow.

Prithee hie thee. He’ll come anon.

[Sings.] Sing all a green willow must be my garland. Let nobody blame him, his scorn I approve,—

Nay, that’s not next. Hark! who is’t that knocks?

EMILIA. It’s the wind.

DESDEMONA. [Sings.] I call’d my love false love; but what said he then? Sing willow, willow, willow: If I court mo women, you’ll couch with mo men.

So get thee gone; good night. Mine eyes do itch; Doth that bode weeping?

EMILIA. ’Tis neither here nor there.

DESDEMONA. I have heard it said so. O, these men, these men! Dost thou in conscience think,—tell me, Emilia,— That there be women do abuse their husbands In such gross kind?

EMILIA. There be some such, no question.

DESDEMONA. Wouldst thou do such a deed for all the world?

EMILIA. Why, would not you?

DESDEMONA. No, by this heavenly light!

EMILIA. Nor I neither by this heavenly light, I might do’t as well i’ the dark.

EMILIA. The world’s a huge thing. It is a great price For a small vice.

DESDEMONA. In troth, I think thou wouldst not.

EMILIA. In troth, I think I should, and undo’t when I had done. Marry, I would not do such a thing for a joint-ring, nor for measures of lawn, nor for gowns, petticoats, nor caps, nor any petty exhibition; but, for the whole world—why, who would not make her husband a cuckold to make him a monarch? I should venture purgatory for ’t.

DESDEMONA. Beshrew me, if I would do such a wrong for the whole world.

EMILIA. Why, the wrong is but a wrong i’ the world; and having the world for your labour, ’tis a wrong in your own world, and you might quickly make it right.

DESDEMONA. I do not think there is any such woman.

EMILIA. Yes, a dozen; and as many to the vantage as would store the world they played for. But I do think it is their husbands’ faults If wives do fall: say that they slack their duties, And pour our treasures into foreign laps; Or else break out in peevish jealousies, Throwing restraint upon us. Or say they strike us, Or scant our former having in despite. Why, we have galls; and though we have some grace, Yet have we some revenge. Let husbands know Their wives have sense like them: they see, and smell And have their palates both for sweet and sour, As husbands have. What is it that they do When they change us for others? Is it sport? I think it is. And doth affection breed it? I think it doth. Is’t frailty that thus errs? It is so too. And have not we affections, Desires for sport, and frailty, as men have? Then let them use us well: else let them know, The ills we do, their ills instruct us so.

DESDEMONA. Good night, good night. Heaven me such usage send, Not to pick bad from bad, but by bad mend!

SCENE I. Cyprus. A Street.

Enter Iago and Roderigo.

IAGO. Here, stand behind this bulk. Straight will he come. Wear thy good rapier bare, and put it home. Quick, quick, fear nothing; I’ll be at thy elbow. It makes us, or it mars us, think on that, And fix most firm thy resolution.

RODERIGO. Be near at hand, I may miscarry in ’t.

IAGO. Here, at thy hand. Be bold, and take thy stand.

[Retires to a little distance.]

RODERIGO. I have no great devotion to the deed; And yet he hath given me satisfying reasons. ’Tis but a man gone. Forth, my sword; he dies.

[Goes to his stand.]

IAGO. I have rubb’d this young quat almost to the sense, And he grows angry. Now, whether he kill Cassio, Or Cassio him, or each do kill the other, Every way makes my gain. Live Roderigo, He calls me to a restitution large Of gold and jewels that I bobb’d from him, As gifts to Desdemona. It must not be. If Cassio do remain, He hath a daily beauty in his life That makes me ugly. And besides, the Moor May unfold me to him; there stand I in much peril. No, he must die. But so, I hear him coming.

RODERIGO. I know his gait; ’tis he. Villain, thou diest!

[Rushes out, and makes a pass at Cassio.]

CASSIO. That thrust had been mine enemy indeed, But that my coat is better than thou know’st. I will make proof of thine.

[Draws, and wounds Roderigo.]

RODERIGO. O, I am slain!

[Iago rushes from his post, cuts Cassio behind in the leg, and exit.]

CASSIO. I am maim’d forever. Help, ho! murder, murder!

[Falls.]

OTHELLO. The voice of Cassio. Iago keeps his word.

RODERIGO. O, villain that I am!

OTHELLO. It is even so.

CASSIO. O, help, ho! light! a surgeon!

OTHELLO. ’Tis he. O brave Iago, honest and just, That hast such noble sense of thy friend’s wrong! Thou teachest me,—minion, your dear lies dead, And your unbless’d fate hies. Strumpet, I come! Forth of my heart those charms, thine eyes, are blotted; Thy bed, lust-stain’d, shall with lust’s blood be spotted.

Enter Lodovico and Gratiano.

CASSIO. What, ho! No watch? No passage? murder, murder!

GRATIANO. ’Tis some mischance; the cry is very direful.

CASSIO. O, help!

LODOVICO. Hark!

RODERIGO. O wretched villain!

LODOVICO. Two or three groan. It is a heavy night. These may be counterfeits. Let’s think’t unsafe To come in to the cry without more help.

RODERIGO. Nobody come? Then shall I bleed to death.

Enter Iago with a light.

GRATIANO. Here’s one comes in his shirt, with light and weapons.

IAGO. Who’s there? Whose noise is this that cries on murder?

LODOVICO. We do not know.

IAGO. Did not you hear a cry?

CASSIO. Here, here! for heaven’s sake, help me!

IAGO. What’s the matter?

GRATIANO. This is Othello’s ancient, as I take it.

LODOVICO. The same indeed, a very valiant fellow.

IAGO. What are you here that cry so grievously?

CASSIO. Iago? O, I am spoil’d, undone by villains! Give me some help.

IAGO. O me, lieutenant! What villains have done this?

CASSIO. I think that one of them is hereabout, And cannot make away.

IAGO. O treacherous villains! [To Lodovico and Gratiano.] What are you there? Come in and give some help.

RODERIGO. O, help me here!

CASSIO. That’s one of them.

IAGO. O murderous slave! O villain!

[Stabs Roderigo.]

RODERIGO. O damn’d Iago! O inhuman dog!

IAGO. Kill men i’ the dark! Where be these bloody thieves? How silent is this town! Ho! murder! murder! What may you be? Are you of good or evil?

LODOVICO. As you shall prove us, praise us.

IAGO. Signior Lodovico?

LODOVICO. He, sir.

IAGO. I cry you mercy. Here’s Cassio hurt by villains.

GRATIANO. Cassio!

IAGO. How is’t, brother?

CASSIO. My leg is cut in two.

IAGO. Marry, heaven forbid! Light, gentlemen, I’ll bind it with my shirt.

BIANCA. What is the matter, ho? Who is’t that cried?

IAGO. Who is’t that cried?

BIANCA. O my dear Cassio, my sweet Cassio! O Cassio, Cassio, Cassio!

IAGO. O notable strumpet! Cassio, may you suspect Who they should be that have thus mangled you?

CASSIO. No.

GRATIANO. I am sorry to find you thus; I have been to seek you.

IAGO. Lend me a garter. So.—O, for a chair, To bear him easily hence!

BIANCA. Alas, he faints! O Cassio, Cassio, Cassio!

IAGO. Gentlemen all, I do suspect this trash To be a party in this injury. Patience awhile, good Cassio. Come, come; Lend me a light. Know we this face or no? Alas, my friend and my dear countryman Roderigo? No. Yes, sure; O heaven! Roderigo.

GRATIANO. What, of Venice?

IAGO. Even he, sir. Did you know him?

GRATIANO. Know him? Ay.

IAGO. Signior Gratiano? I cry you gentle pardon. These bloody accidents must excuse my manners, That so neglected you.

GRATIANO. I am glad to see you.

IAGO. How do you, Cassio? O, a chair, a chair!

GRATIANO. Roderigo!

IAGO. He, he, ’tis he.

[A chair brought in.]

O, that’s well said; the chair. Some good man bear him carefully from hence, I’ll fetch the general’s surgeon. [To Bianca] For you, mistress, Save you your labour. He that lies slain here, Cassio, Was my dear friend. What malice was between you?

CASSIO. None in the world. Nor do I know the man.

IAGO. [To Bianca.] What, look you pale?—O, bear him out o’ the air.

[Cassio and Roderigo are borne off.]

Stay you, good gentlemen.—Look you pale, mistress? Do you perceive the gastness of her eye? Nay, if you stare, we shall hear more anon. Behold her well. I pray you, look upon her. Do you see, gentlemen? Nay, guiltiness will speak Though tongues were out of use.

EMILIA. ’Las, what’s the matter? What’s the matter, husband?

IAGO. Cassio hath here been set on in the dark By Roderigo, and fellows that are ’scap’d. He’s almost slain, and Roderigo dead.

EMILIA. Alas, good gentleman! alas, good Cassio!

IAGO. This is the fruit of whoring. Prithee, Emilia, Go know of Cassio where he supp’d tonight. What, do you shake at that?

BIANCA. He supp’d at my house, but I therefore shake not.

IAGO. O, did he so? I charge you go with me.

EMILIA. Fie, fie upon thee, strumpet!

BIANCA. I am no strumpet, but of life as honest As you that thus abuse me.

EMILIA. As I? Foh! fie upon thee!

IAGO. Kind gentlemen, let’s go see poor Cassio dress’d. Come, mistress, you must tell’s another tale. Emilia, run you to the citadel, And tell my lord and lady what hath happ’d. Will you go on afore? [Aside.] This is the night That either makes me or fordoes me quite.

SCENE II. Cyprus. A Bedchamber in the castle.

Desdemona in bed asleep; a light burning.

OTHELLO. It is the cause, it is the cause, my soul, Let me not name it to you, you chaste stars! It is the cause. Yet I’ll not shed her blood, Nor scar that whiter skin of hers than snow, And smooth as monumental alabaster. Yet she must die, else she’ll betray more men. Put out the light, and then put out the light: If I quench thee, thou flaming minister, I can again thy former light restore, Should I repent me. But once put out thy light, Thou cunning’st pattern of excelling nature, I know not where is that Promethean heat That can thy light relume. When I have pluck’d thy rose, I cannot give it vital growth again, It must needs wither. I’ll smell it on the tree.

O, balmy breath, that dost almost persuade Justice to break her sword! One more, one more. Be thus when thou art dead, and I will kill thee, And love thee after. One more, and this the last. So sweet was ne’er so fatal. I must weep, But they are cruel tears. This sorrow’s heavenly, It strikes where it doth love. She wakes.

DESDEMONA. Who’s there? Othello?

OTHELLO. Ay, Desdemona.

DESDEMONA. Will you come to bed, my lord?

OTHELLO. Have you pray’d tonight, Desdemona?

DESDEMONA. Ay, my lord.

OTHELLO. If you bethink yourself of any crime Unreconcil’d as yet to heaven and grace, Solicit for it straight.

DESDEMONA. Alack, my lord, what may you mean by that?

OTHELLO. Well, do it, and be brief, I will walk by. I would not kill thy unprepared spirit, No, heaven forfend! I would not kill thy soul.

DESDEMONA. Talk you of killing?

OTHELLO. Ay, I do.

DESDEMONA. Then heaven have mercy on me!

OTHELLO. Amen, with all my heart!

DESDEMONA. If you say so, I hope you will not kill me.

OTHELLO. Hum!

DESDEMONA. And yet I fear you, for you are fatal then When your eyes roll so: why I should fear I know not, Since guiltiness I know not, but yet I feel I fear.

OTHELLO. Think on thy sins.

DESDEMONA. They are loves I bear to you.

OTHELLO. Ay, and for that thou diest.

DESDEMONA. That death’s unnatural that kills for loving. Alas, why gnaw you so your nether lip? Some bloody passion shakes your very frame. These are portents; but yet I hope, I hope, They do not point on me.

OTHELLO. Peace, and be still!

DESDEMONA. I will so. What’s the matter?

OTHELLO. That handkerchief which I so loved and gave thee, Thou gav’st to Cassio.

DESDEMONA. No, by my life and soul! Send for the man and ask him.

OTHELLO. Sweet soul, take heed, take heed of perjury, Thou’rt on thy death-bed.

DESDEMONA. Ay, but not yet to die.

OTHELLO. Yes, presently: Therefore confess thee freely of thy sin. For to deny each article with oath Cannot remove nor choke the strong conception That I do groan withal. Thou art to die.

DESDEMONA. Then, Lord have mercy on me!

OTHELLO. I say, amen.

DESDEMONA. And have you mercy too! I never did Offend you in my life, never lov’d Cassio But with such general warranty of heaven As I might love. I never gave him token.

OTHELLO. By heaven, I saw my handkerchief in ’s hand. O perjur’d woman, thou dost stone my heart, And mak’st me call what I intend to do A murder, which I thought a sacrifice. I saw the handkerchief.

DESDEMONA. He found it then. I never gave it him. Send for him hither. Let him confess a truth.

OTHELLO. He hath confess’d.

DESDEMONA. What, my lord?

OTHELLO. That he hath us’d thee.

DESDEMONA. How? Unlawfully?

OTHELLO. Ay.

DESDEMONA. He will not say so.

OTHELLO. No, his mouth is stopp’d. Honest Iago hath ta’en order for ’t.

DESDEMONA. O, my fear interprets! What, is he dead?

OTHELLO. Had all his hairs been lives, my great revenge Had stomach for them all.

DESDEMONA. Alas, he is betray’d, and I undone!

OTHELLO. Out, strumpet! Weep’st thou for him to my face?

DESDEMONA. O, banish me, my lord, but kill me not!

OTHELLO. Down, strumpet!

DESDEMONA. Kill me tomorrow, let me live tonight!

OTHELLO. Nay, if you strive,—

DESDEMONA. But half an hour!

OTHELLO. Being done, there is no pause.

DESDEMONA. But while I say one prayer!

OTHELLO. It is too late.

[Smothers her.]

EMILIA. [Within.] My lord, my lord! what, ho! my lord, my lord!

OTHELLO. What noise is this? Not dead? Not yet quite dead? I that am cruel am yet merciful, I would not have thee linger in thy pain. So, so.

EMILIA. [Within.] What, ho! my lord, my lord!

OTHELLO. Who’s there?

EMILIA. [Within.] O, good my lord, I would speak a word with you!

OTHELLO. Yes. ’Tis Emilia, by and by. She’s dead. ’Tis like she comes to speak of Cassio’s death; The noise was high.—Ha! no more moving? Still as the grave. Shall she come in? Were’t good? I think she stirs again; no. What’s best to do? If she come in, she’ll sure speak to my wife. My wife! my wife! what wife? I have no wife. O, insupportable! O heavy hour! Methinks it should be now a huge eclipse Of sun and moon, and that the affrighted globe Should yawn at alteration.

EMILIA. [Within.] I do beseech you That I may speak with you, O, good my lord!

OTHELLO. I had forgot thee: O, come in, Emilia. Soft, by and by; let me the curtains draw. Where art thou?

[Unlocks the door.]

What’s the matter with thee now?

EMILIA. O, my good lord, yonder’s foul murders done!

OTHELLO. What, now?

EMILIA. But now, my lord.

OTHELLO. It is the very error of the moon, She comes more nearer earth than she was wont And makes men mad.

EMILIA. Cassio, my lord, hath kill’d a young Venetian Call’d Roderigo.

OTHELLO. Roderigo kill’d? And Cassio kill’d?

EMILIA. No, Cassio is not kill’d.

OTHELLO. Not Cassio kill’d! Then murder’s out of tune, And sweet revenge grows harsh.

DESDEMONA. O, falsely, falsely murder’d!

EMILIA. Alas, what cry is that?

OTHELLO. That? What?

EMILIA. Out, and alas! That was my lady’s voice. Help! help, ho! help! O lady, speak again, Sweet Desdemona! O sweet mistress, speak!

DESDEMONA. A guiltless death I die.

EMILIA. O, who hath done this deed?

DESDEMONA. Nobody; I myself. Farewell. Commend me to my kind lord. O, farewell!

[She dies.]

OTHELLO. Why, how should she be murder’d?

EMILIA. Alas, who knows?

OTHELLO. You heard her say herself, it was not I.

EMILIA. She said so. I must needs report the truth.

OTHELLO. She’s like a liar, gone to burning hell. ’Twas I that kill’d her.

EMILIA. O, the more angel she, And you the blacker devil!

OTHELLO. She turn’d to folly, and she was a whore.

EMILIA. Thou dost belie her, and thou art a devil.

OTHELLO. She was false as water.

EMILIA. Thou art rash as fire, to say That she was false: O, she was heavenly true!

OTHELLO. Cassio did top her; ask thy husband else. O, I were damn’d beneath all depth in hell, But that I did proceed upon just grounds To this extremity. Thy husband knew it all.

EMILIA. My husband?

OTHELLO. Thy husband.

EMILIA. That she was false to wedlock?

OTHELLO. Ay, with Cassio. Nay, had she been true, If heaven would make me such another world Of one entire and perfect chrysolite, I’d not have sold her for it.

OTHELLO. Ay, ’twas he that told me first. An honest man he is, and hates the slime That sticks on filthy deeds.

OTHELLO. What needs this iterance, woman? I say thy husband.

EMILIA. O mistress, villainy hath made mocks with love! My husband say that she was false?

OTHELLO. He, woman; I say thy husband: dost understand the word? My friend, thy husband, honest, honest Iago.

EMILIA. If he say so, may his pernicious soul Rot half a grain a day! he lies to the heart. She was too fond of her most filthy bargain.

OTHELLO. Ha!

EMILIA. Do thy worst: This deed of thine is no more worthy heaven Than thou wast worthy her.

OTHELLO. Peace, you were best.

EMILIA. Thou hast not half that power to do me harm As I have to be hurt. O gull! O dolt! As ignorant as dirt! Thou hast done a deed (I care not for thy sword) I’ll make thee known, Though I lost twenty lives. Help! help, ho! help! The Moor hath kill’d my mistress! Murder, murder!

Enter Montano, Gratiano and Iago.

MONTANO. What is the matter? How now, general?

EMILIA. O, are you come, Iago? You have done well, That men must lay their murders on your neck.

GRATIANO. What is the matter?

EMILIA. Disprove this villain, if thou be’st a man. He says thou told’st him that his wife was false. I know thou didst not, thou’rt not such a villain. Speak, for my heart is full.

IAGO. I told him what I thought, and told no more Than what he found himself was apt and true.

EMILIA. But did you ever tell him she was false?

IAGO. I did.

EMILIA. You told a lie, an odious, damned lie; Upon my soul, a lie; a wicked lie. She false with Cassio? Did you say with Cassio?

IAGO. With Cassio, mistress. Go to, charm your tongue.

EMILIA. I will not charm my tongue; I am bound to speak. My mistress here lies murder’d in her bed.

ALL. O heavens forfend!

EMILIA. And your reports have set the murder on.

OTHELLO. Nay, stare not, masters, it is true indeed.

GRATIANO. ’Tis a strange truth.

MONTANO. O monstrous act!

EMILIA. Villany, villany, villany! I think upon’t, I think I smell’t; O villany! I thought so then. I’ll kill myself for grief. O villany, villany!

IAGO. What, are you mad? I charge you, get you home.

EMILIA. Good gentlemen, let me have leave to speak. ’Tis proper I obey him, but not now. Perchance, Iago, I will ne’er go home.

OTHELLO. O! O! O!

[Hanging over his wife.]

EMILIA. Nay, lay thee down and roar; For thou hast kill’d the sweetest innocent That e’er did lift up eye.

OTHELLO. [Rising.] O, she was foul! I scarce did know you, uncle, there lies your niece, Whose breath indeed these hands have newly stopp’d. I know this act shows horrible and grim.

GRATIANO. Poor Desdemona! I am glad thy father’s dead. Thy match was mortal to him, and pure grief Shore his old thread in twain: did he live now, This sight would make him do a desperate turn, Yea, curse his better angel from his side, And fall to reprobance.

OTHELLO. ’Tis pitiful. But yet Iago knows That she with Cassio hath the act of shame A thousand times committed; Cassio confess’d it, And she did gratify his amorous works With that recognizance and pledge of love Which I first gave her; I saw it in his hand. It was a handkerchief, an antique token My father gave my mother.

EMILIA. O heaven! O heavenly powers!

IAGO. Come, hold your peace.

EMILIA. ’Twill out, ’twill out. I peace? No, I will speak as liberal as the north. Let heaven and men and devils, let them all, All, all, cry shame against me, yet I’ll speak.

IAGO. Be wise, and get you home.

EMILIA. I will not.

[Iago offers to stab his wife.]

GRATIANO. Fie! Your sword upon a woman?

EMILIA. O thou dull Moor, that handkerchief thou speak’st of I found by fortune and did give my husband; For often with a solemn earnestness, More than indeed belong’d to such a trifle, He begg’d of me to steal it.

IAGO. Villanous whore!

EMILIA. She give it Cassio! no, alas, I found it, And I did give’t my husband.

IAGO. Filth, thou liest!

EMILIA. By heaven, I do not, I do not, gentlemen. O murderous coxcomb! What should such a fool Do with so good a wife?

OTHELLO Are there not stones in heaven But what serve for thunder? Precious villain!

[Iago stabs Emilia and then runs out.]

GRATIANO. The woman falls. Sure, he hath kill’d his wife.

EMILIA. Ay, ay. O, lay me by my mistress’ side.

GRATIANO. He’s gone, but his wife’s kill’d.

MONTANO. ’Tis a notorious villain. Take you this weapon, Which I have here recover’d from the Moor. Come, guard the door without, let him not pass, But kill him rather. I’ll after that same villain, For ’tis a damned slave.

[Exit Montano and Gratiano.]

OTHELLO. I am not valiant neither, But every puny whipster gets my sword. But why should honour outlive honesty? Let it go all.

EMILIA. What did thy song bode, lady? Hark, canst thou hear me? I will play the swan, And die in music. [Sings.] Willow, willow, willow. Moor, she was chaste. She lov’d thee, cruel Moor, So come my soul to bliss, as I speak true; So speaking as I think, I die, I die.

OTHELLO. I have another weapon in this chamber, It is a sword of Spain, the ice-brook’s temper. O, here it is. Uncle, I must come forth.

GRATIANO. [Within.] If thou attempt it, it will cost thee dear; Thou hast no weapon, and perforce must suffer.

OTHELLO. Look in upon me then, and speak with me, Or, naked as I am, I will assault thee.

OTHELLO. Behold, I have a weapon. A better never did itself sustain Upon a soldier’s thigh: I have seen the day That with this little arm and this good sword I have made my way through more impediments Than twenty times your stop. But, O vain boast! Who can control his fate? ’Tis not so now. Be not afraid, though you do see me weapon’d. Here is my journey’s end, here is my butt, And very sea-mark of my utmost sail. Do you go back dismay’d? ’Tis a lost fear. Man but a rush against Othello’s breast, And he retires. Where should Othello go? Now, how dost thou look now? O ill-starr’d wench, Pale as thy smock, when we shall meet at compt, This look of thine will hurl my soul from heaven, And fiends will snatch at it. Cold, cold, my girl! Even like thy chastity. O cursed, cursed slave! Whip me, ye devils, From the possession of this heavenly sight! Blow me about in winds, roast me in sulphur, Wash me in steep-down gulfs of liquid fire! O Desdemon! Dead, Desdemon! dead! Oh, oh!

Enter Lodovico, Montano, Cassio carried in a chair, and Officers with Iago prisoner.

LODOVICO. Where is this rash and most unfortunate man?

OTHELLO. That’s he that was Othello. Here I am.

LODOVICO. Where is that viper? Bring the villain forth.

OTHELLO. I look down towards his feet; but that’s a fable. If that thou be’st a devil, I cannot kill thee.

[Wounds Iago.]

LODOVICO. Wrench his sword from him.

IAGO. I bleed, sir, but not kill’d.

OTHELLO. I am not sorry neither. I’d have thee live, For in my sense ’tis happiness to die.

LODOVICO. O thou Othello, that wert once so good, Fall’n in the practice of a damned slave, What shall be said to thee?

OTHELLO. Why, anything; An honourable murderer, if you will. For naught did I in hate, but all in honour.

LODOVICO. This wretch hath part confess’d his villany. Did you and he consent in Cassio’s death?

CASSIO. Dear general, I never gave you cause.

OTHELLO. I do believe it, and I ask your pardon. Will you, I pray, demand that demi-devil Why he hath thus ensnar’d my soul and body?

IAGO. Demand me nothing. What you know, you know. From this time forth I never will speak word.

LODOVICO. What, not to pray?

GRATIANO. Torments will ope your lips.

OTHELLO. Well, thou dost best.

LODOVICO. Sir, you shall understand what hath befall’n, Which, as I think, you know not. Here is a letter Found in the pocket of the slain Roderigo, And here another. The one of them imports The death of Cassio, to be undertook By Roderigo.

OTHELLO. O villain!

CASSIO. Most heathenish and most gross!

LODOVICO. Now here’s another discontented paper, Found in his pocket too; and this, it seems, Roderigo meant to have sent this damned villain, But that, belike, Iago in the interim Came in and satisfied him.

OTHELLO. O the pernicious caitiff! How came you, Cassio, by that handkerchief That was my wife’s?

CASSIO. I found it in my chamber. And he himself confess’d but even now, That there he dropp’d it for a special purpose Which wrought to his desire.

OTHELLO. O fool! fool! fool!

CASSIO. There is besides in Roderigo’s letter, How he upbraids Iago, that he made him Brave me upon the watch, whereon it came That I was cast. And even but now he spake, After long seeming dead, Iago hurt him, Iago set him on.

LODOVICO. You must forsake this room, and go with us. Your power and your command is taken off, And Cassio rules in Cyprus. For this slave, If there be any cunning cruelty That can torment him much and hold him long, It shall be his. You shall close prisoner rest, Till that the nature of your fault be known To the Venetian state. Come, bring away.

OTHELLO. Soft you; a word or two before you go. I have done the state some service, and they know’t. No more of that. I pray you, in your letters, When you shall these unlucky deeds relate, Speak of me as I am. Nothing extenuate, Nor set down aught in malice. Then must you speak Of one that loved not wisely, but too well; Of one not easily jealous, but being wrought, Perplex’d in the extreme; of one whose hand, Like the base Judean, threw a pearl away Richer than all his tribe; of one whose subdu’d eyes, Albeit unused to the melting mood, Drop tears as fast as the Arabian trees Their medicinal gum. Set you down this. And say besides, that in Aleppo once, Where a malignant and a turban’d Turk Beat a Venetian and traduc’d the state, I took by the throat the circumcised dog, And smote him, thus.

[Stabs himself.]

LODOVICO. O bloody period!

GRATIANO. All that’s spoke is marr’d.

OTHELLO. I kiss’d thee ere I kill’d thee. No way but this, Killing myself, to die upon a kiss.

[Falling upon Desdemona.]

CASSIO. This did I fear, but thought he had no weapon, For he was great of heart.

LODOVICO. [To Iago.] O Spartan dog, More fell than anguish, hunger, or the sea, Look on the tragic loading of this bed. This is thy work. The object poisons sight, Let it be hid. Gratiano, keep the house, And seize upon the fortunes of the Moor, For they succeed on you. To you, lord governor, Remains the censure of this hellish villain. The time, the place, the torture, O, enforce it! Myself will straight aboard, and to the state This heavy act with heavy heart relate.

PERICLES, PRINCE OF TYRE

ACT I Chorus. Before the palace of Antioch Scene I. Antioch. A room in the palace Scene II. Tyre. A room in the palace Scene III. Tyre. An ante-chamber in the Palace Scene IV. Tarsus. A room in the Governor’s house

ACT II Chorus. Chorus Scene I. Pentapolis. An open place by the seaside Scene II. The same. A public way, or platform leading to the lists Scene III. The same. A hall of state: a banquet prepared Scene IV. Tyre. A room in the Governor’s house Scene V. Pentapolis. A room in the palace

ACT III Chorus. Chorus Scene I. On shipboard Scene II. Ephesus. A room in Cerimon’s house Scene III. Tarsus. A room in Cleon’s house Scene IV. Ephesus. A room in Cerimon’s house

ACT IV Chorus. Chorus Scene I. Tarsus. An open place near the seashore Scene II. Mytilene. A room in a brothel Scene III. Tarsus. A room in Cleon’s house Scene IV. Before the monument of Marina at Tarsus Scene V. Mytilene. A street before the brothel Scene VI. The same. A room in the brothel

ACT V Chorus. Chorus Scene I. On board Pericles’ ship, off Mytilene Scene II. Before the temple of Diana at Ephesus Scene III. The temple of Diana at Ephesus

ANTIOCHUS, king of Antioch. PERICLES, prince of Tyre. HELICANUS, ESCANES, two lords of Tyre. SIMONIDES, king of Pentapolis. CLEON, governor of Tarsus. LYSIMACHUS, governor of Mytilene. CERIMON, a lord of Ephesus. THALIARD, a lord of Antioch. PHILEMON, servant to Cerimon. LEONINE, servant to Dionyza. Marshal. A Pandar. BOULT, his servant. The Daughter of Antiochus. DIONYZA, wife to Cleon. THAISA, daughter to Simonides. MARINA, daughter to Pericles and Thaisa. LYCHORIDA, nurse to Marina. A Bawd. Lords, Knights, Gentlemen, Sailors, Pirates, Fishermen, and Messengers. DIANA. GOWER, as Chorus.

SCENE: Dispersedly in various countries.

Before the palace of Antioch.

To sing a song that old was sung, From ashes ancient Gower is come; Assuming man’s infirmities, To glad your ear, and please your eyes. It hath been sung at festivals, On ember-eves and holy-ales; And lords and ladies in their lives Have read it for restoratives: The purchase is to make men glorious, Et bonum quo antiquius eo melius. If you, born in these latter times, When wit’s more ripe, accept my rhymes, And that to hear an old man sing May to your wishes pleasure bring, I life would wish, and that I might Waste it for you, like taper-light. This Antioch, then, Antiochus the Great Built up, this city, for his chiefest seat; The fairest in all Syria. I tell you what mine authors say: This king unto him took a fere, Who died and left a female heir, So buxom, blithe, and full of face, As heaven had lent her all his grace; With whom the father liking took, And her to incest did provoke. Bad child; worse father! to entice his own To evil should be done by none: But custom what they did begin Was with long use account’d no sin. The beauty of this sinful dame Made many princes thither frame, To seek her as a bedfellow, In marriage pleasures playfellow: Which to prevent he made a law, To keep her still, and men in awe, That whoso ask’d her for his wife, His riddle told not, lost his life: So for her many a wight did die, As yon grim looks do testify. What now ensues, to the judgement your eye I give, my cause who best can justify.

SCENE I. Antioch. A room in the palace.

Enter Antiochus, Prince Pericles and followers.

ANTIOCHUS. Young prince of Tyre, you have at large received The danger of the task you undertake.

PERICLES. I have, Antiochus, and, with a soul Emboldened with the glory of her praise, Think death no hazard in this enterprise.

ANTIOCHUS. Music! Bring in our daughter, clothed like a bride, For the embracements even of Jove himself; At whose conception, till Lucina reigned, Nature this dowry gave, to glad her presence, The senate house of planets all did sit, To knit in her their best perfections.

Music. Enter the Daughter of Antiochus.

PERICLES. See where she comes, apparell’d like the spring, Graces her subjects, and her thoughts the king Of every virtue gives renown to men! Her face the book of praises, where is read Nothing but curious pleasures, as from thence Sorrow were ever razed, and testy wrath Could never be her mild companion. You gods that made me man, and sway in love, That have inflamed desire in my breast To taste the fruit of yon celestial tree, Or die in the adventure, be my helps, As I am son and servant to your will, To compass such a boundless happiness!

ANTIOCHUS. Prince Pericles,—

PERICLES. That would be son to great Antiochus.

ANTIOCHUS. Before thee stands this fair Hesperides, With golden fruit, but dangerous to be touch’d; For death-like dragons here affright thee hard: Her face, like heaven, enticeth thee to view Her countless glory, which desert must gain; And which, without desert, because thine eye Presumes to reach, all the whole heap must die. Yon sometimes famous princes, like thyself, Drawn by report, adventurous by desire, Tell thee, with speechless tongues and semblance pale, That without covering, save yon field of stars, Here they stand Martyrs, slain in Cupid’s wars; And with dead cheeks advise thee to desist For going on death’s net, whom none resist.

PERICLES. Antiochus, I thank thee, who hath taught My frail mortality to know itself, And by those fearful objects to prepare This body, like to them, to what I must; For death remember’d should be like a mirror, Who tells us life’s but breath, to trust it error. I’ll make my will then, and, as sick men do Who know the world, see heaven, but, feeling woe, Gripe not at earthly joys as erst they did; So I bequeath a happy peace to you And all good men, as every prince should do; My riches to the earth from whence they came; [To the daughter of Antiochus.] But my unspotted fire of love to you. Thus ready for the way of life or death, I wait the sharpest blow, Antiochus.

ANTIOCHUS. Scorning advice, read the conclusion, then: Which read and not expounded, ’tis decreed, As these before thee thou thyself shalt bleed.

DAUGHTER. Of all ’ssayed yet, mayst thou prove prosperous! Of all ’ssayed yet, I wish thee happiness!

PERICLES Like a bold champion, I assume the lists, Nor ask advice of any other thought But faithfulness and courage.

[He reads the riddle.]

I am no viper, yet I feed On mother’s flesh which did me breed. I sought a husband, in which labour I found that kindness in a father: He’s father, son, and husband mild; I mother, wife, and yet his child. How they may be, and yet in two, As you will live resolve it you.

Sharp physic is the last: but, O you powers That give heaven countless eyes to view men’s acts, Why cloud they not their sights perpetually, If this be true, which makes me pale to read it? Fair glass of light, I loved you, and could still,

[Takes hold of the hand of the Princess.]

Were not this glorious casket stored with ill: But I must tell you, now my thoughts revolt; For he’s no man on whom perfections wait That, knowing sin within, will touch the gate, You are a fair viol, and your sense the strings; Who, finger’d to make man his lawful music, Would draw heaven down, and all the gods to hearken; But being play’d upon before your time, Hell only danceth at so harsh a chime. Good sooth, I care not for you.

ANTIOCHUS. Prince Pericles, touch not, upon thy life, For that’s an article within our law, As dangerous as the rest. Your time’s expired: Either expound now, or receive your sentence.

PERICLES. Great king, Few love to hear the sins they love to act; ’Twould braid yourself too near for me to tell it. Who has a book of all that monarchs do, He’s more secure to keep it shut than shown: For vice repeated is like the wandering wind, Blows dust in others’ eyes, to spread itself; And yet the end of all is bought thus dear, The breath is gone, and the sore eyes see clear. To stop the air would hurt them. The blind mole casts Copp’d hills towards heaven, to tell the earth is throng’d By man’s oppression; and the poor worm doth die for’t. Kind are earth’s gods; in vice their law’s their will; And if Jove stray, who dares say Jove doth ill? It is enough you know; and it is fit, What being more known grows worse, to smother it. All love the womb that their first bred, Then give my tongue like leave to love my head.

ANTIOCHUS. [Aside] Heaven, that I had thy head! He has found the meaning: But I will gloze with him.—Young prince of Tyre. Though by the tenour of our strict edict, Your exposition misinterpreting, We might proceed to cancel of your days; Yet hope, succeeding from so fair a tree As your fair self, doth tune us otherwise: Forty days longer we do respite you; If by which time our secret be undone, This mercy shows we’ll joy in such a son: And until then your entertain shall be As doth befit our honour and your worth.

[Exeunt all but Pericles.]

PERICLES. How courtesy would seem to cover sin, When what is done is like an hypocrite, The which is good in nothing but in sight! If it be true that I interpret false, Then were it certain you were not so bad As with foul incest to abuse your soul; Where now you’re both a father and a son, By your untimely claspings with your child, Which pleasures fits a husband, not a father; And she an eater of her mother’s flesh, By the defiling of her parent’s bed; And both like serpents are, who though they feed On sweetest flowers, yet they poison breed. Antioch, farewell! for wisdom sees, those men Blush not in actions blacker than the night, Will ’schew no course to keep them from the light. One sin, I know, another doth provoke; Murder’s as near to lust as flame to smoke: Poison and treason are the hands of sin, Ay, and the targets, to put off the shame: Then, lest my life be cropp’d to keep you clear, By flight I’ll shun the danger which I fear.

Re-enter Antiochus.

ANTIOCHUS. He hath found the meaning, For which we mean to have his head. He must not live to trumpet forth my infamy, Nor tell the world Antiochus doth sin In such a loathed manner; And therefore instantly this prince must die; For by his fall my honour must keep high. Who attends us there?

Enter Thaliard.

THALIARD. Doth your highness call?

ANTIOCHUS. Thaliard, you are of our chamber, And our mind partakes her private actions To your secrecy; and for your faithfulness We will advance you. Thaliard, Behold, here’s poison, and here’s gold; We hate the prince of Tyre, and thou must kill him: It fits thee not to ask the reason why, Because we bid it. Say, is it done?

THALIARD. My lord, ’tis done.

ANTIOCHUS. Enough.

Let your breath cool yourself, telling your haste.

MESSENGER. My lord, Prince Pericles is fled.

ANTIOCHUS. As thou wilt live, fly after: and like an arrow shot From a well-experienced archer hits the mark His eye doth level at, so thou ne’er return Unless thou say ‘Prince Pericles is dead.’

THALIARD. My lord, if I can get him within my pistol’s length, I’ll make him sure enough: so, farewell to your highness.

ANTIOCHUS. Thaliard! adieu!

[Exit Thaliard.]

Till Pericles be dead, My heart can lend no succour to my head.

SCENE II. Tyre. A room in the palace.

Enter Pericles with his Lords.

PERICLES. [To Lords without.] Let none disturb us.—Why should this change of thoughts, The sad companion, dull-eyed melancholy, Be my so used a guest as not an hour In the day’s glorious walk or peaceful night, The tomb where grief should sleep, can breed me quiet? Here pleasures court mine eyes, and mine eyes shun them, And danger, which I fear’d, is at Antioch, Whose arm seems far too short to hit me here: Yet neither pleasure’s art can joy my spirits, Nor yet the other’s distance comfort me. Then it is thus: the passions of the mind, That have their first conception by misdread, Have after-nourishment and life by care; And what was first but fear what might be done, Grows elder now and cares it be not done. And so with me: the great Antiochus, ’Gainst whom I am too little to contend, Since he’s so great can make his will his act, Will think me speaking, though I swear to silence; Nor boots it me to say I honour him. If he suspect I may dishonour him: And what may make him blush in being known, He’ll stop the course by which it might be known; With hostile forces he’ll o’erspread the land, And with the ostent of war will look so huge, Amazement shall drive courage from the state; Our men be vanquish’d ere they do resist, And subjects punish’d that ne’er thought offence: Which care of them, not pity of myself, Who am no more but as the tops of trees, Which fence the roots they grow by and defend them, Makes both my body pine and soul to languish, And punish that before that he would punish.

Enter Helicanus with other Lords.

FIRST LORD. Joy and all comfort in your sacred breast!

SECOND LORD. And keep your mind, till you return to us, Peaceful and comfortable!

HELICANUS. Peace, peace, and give experience tongue. They do abuse the king that flatter him: For flattery is the bellows blows up sin; The thing the which is flatter’d, but a spark, To which that spark gives heat and stronger glowing: Whereas reproof, obedient and in order, Fits kings, as they are men, for they may err. When Signior Sooth here does proclaim peace, He flatters you, makes war upon your life. Prince, pardon me, or strike me, if you please; I cannot be much lower than my knees.

PERICLES. All leave us else, but let your cares o’erlook What shipping and what lading’s in our haven, And then return to us.

Helicanus, thou Hast moved us: what seest thou in our looks?

HELICANUS. An angry brow, dread lord.

PERICLES. If there be such a dart in princes’ frowns, How durst thy tongue move anger to our face?

HELICANUS. How dares the plants look up to heaven, from whence They have their nourishment?

PERICLES. Thou know’st I have power To take thy life from thee.

HELICANUS. [Kneeling.] I have ground the axe myself; Do but you strike the blow.

PERICLES. Rise, prithee, rise. Sit down: thou art no flatterer: I thank thee for it; and heaven forbid That kings should let their ears hear their faults hid! Fit counsellor and servant for a prince, Who by thy wisdom makest a prince thy servant, What wouldst thou have me do?

HELICANUS. To bear with patience Such griefs as you yourself do lay upon yourself.

PERICLES. Thou speak’st like a physician, Helicanus, That ministers a potion unto me That thou wouldst tremble to receive thyself. Attend me, then: I went to Antioch, Where, as thou know’st, against the face of death, I sought the purchase of a glorious beauty, From whence an issue I might propagate, Are arms to princes, and bring joys to subjects. Her face was to mine eye beyond all wonder; The rest—hark in thine ear—as black as incest, Which by my knowledge found, the sinful father Seem’d not to strike, but smooth: but thou know’st this, ’Tis time to fear when tyrants seems to kiss. Which fear so grew in me I hither fled, Under the covering of a careful night, Who seem’d my good protector; and, being here, Bethought me what was past, what might succeed. I knew him tyrannous; and tyrants’ fears Decrease not, but grow faster than the years: And should he doubt, as no doubt he doth, That I should open to the listening air How many worthy princes’ bloods were shed, To keep his bed of blackness unlaid ope, To lop that doubt, he’ll fill this land with arms, And make pretence of wrong that I have done him; When all, for mine, if I may call offence, Must feel war’s blow, who spares not innocence: Which love to all, of which thyself art one, Who now reprovest me for it,—

HELICANUS. Alas, sir!

PERICLES. Drew sleep out of mine eyes, blood from my cheeks, Musings into my mind, with thousand doubts How I might stop this tempest ere it came; And finding little comfort to relieve them, I thought it princely charity to grieve them.

HELICANUS. Well, my lord, since you have given me leave to speak, Freely will I speak. Antiochus you fear, And justly too, I think, you fear the tyrant, Who either by public war or private treason Will take away your life. Therefore, my lord, go travel for a while, Till that his rage and anger be forgot, Or till the Destinies do cut his thread of life. Your rule direct to any; if to me, Day serves not light more faithful than I’ll be.

PERICLES. I do not doubt thy faith; But should he wrong my liberties in my absence?

HELCANUS. We’ll mingle our bloods together in the earth, From whence we had our being and our birth.

PERICLES. Tyre, I now look from thee then, and to Tarsus Intend my travel, where I’ll hear from thee; And by whose letters I’ll dispose myself. The care I had and have of subjects’ good On thee I lay, whose wisdom’s strength can bear it. I’ll take thy word for faith, not ask thine oath: Who shuns not to break one will sure crack both: But in our orbs we’ll live so round and safe, That time of both this truth shall ne’er convince, Thou show’dst a subject’s shine, I a true prince.

SCENE III. Tyre. An ante-chamber in the Palace.

THALIARD. So, this is Tyre, and this the court. Here must I kill King Pericles; and if I do it not, I am sure to be hanged at home: ’tis dangerous. Well, I perceive he was a wise fellow, and had good discretion, that, being bid to ask what he would of the king, desired he might know none of his secrets: now do I see he had some reason for’t; for if a king bid a man be a villain, he’s bound by the indenture of his oath to be one. Husht, here come the lords of Tyre.

Enter Helicanus and Escanes with other Lords of Tyre.

HELICANUS. You shall not need, my fellow peers of Tyre, Further to question me of your king’s departure: His seal’d commission, left in trust with me, Doth speak sufficiently he’s gone to travel.

THALIARD. [Aside.] How? the king gone?

HELICANUS. If further yet you will be satisfied, Why, as it were unlicensed of your loves, He would depart, I’ll give some light unto you. Being at Antioch—

THALIARD. [Aside.] What from Antioch?

HELICANUS. Royal Antiochus—on what cause I know not Took some displeasure at him; at least he judged so: And doubting lest that he had err’d or sinn’d, To show his sorrow, he’d correct himself; So puts himself unto the shipman’s toil, With whom each minute threatens life or death.

THALIARD. [Aside.] Well, I perceive I shall not be hang’d now, although I would; But since he’s gone, the king’s seas must please He ’scaped the land, to perish at the sea. I’ll present myself. Peace to the lords of Tyre!

HELICANUS. Lord Thaliard from Antiochus is welcome.

THALIARD. From him I come With message unto princely Pericles; But since my landing I have understood Your lord has betook himself to unknown travels, My message must return from whence it came.

HELICANUS. We have no reason to desire it, Commended to our master, not to us: Yet, ere you shall depart, this we desire, As friends to Antioch, we may feast in Tyre.

SCENE IV. Tarsus. A room in the Governor’s house.

Enter Cleon, the governor of Tarsus, with Dionyza and others.

CLEON. My Dionyza, shall we rest us here, And by relating tales of others’ griefs, See if ’twill teach us to forget our own?

DIONYZA. That were to blow at fire in hope to quench it; For who digs hills because they do aspire Throws down one mountain to cast up a higher. O my distressed lord, even such our griefs are; Here they’re but felt, and seen with mischief’s eyes, But like to groves, being topp’d, they higher rise.

CLEON. O Dionyza, Who wanteth food, and will not say he wants it, Or can conceal his hunger till he famish? Our tongues and sorrows do sound deep Our woes into the air; our eyes do weep, Till tongues fetch breath that may proclaim them louder; That, if heaven slumber while their creatures want, They may awake their helps to comfort them. I’ll then discourse our woes, felt several years, And wanting breath to speak, help me with tears.

DIONYZA. I’ll do my best, sir.

CLEON. This Tarsus, o’er which I have the government, A city on whom plenty held full hand, For riches strew’d herself even in the streets; Whose towers bore heads so high they kiss’d the clouds, And strangers ne’er beheld but wonder’d at; Whose men and dames so jetted and adorn’d, Like one another’s glass to trim them by: Their tables were stored full to glad the sight, And not so much to feed on as delight; All poverty was scorn’d, and pride so great, The name of help grew odious to repeat.

DIONYZA. O, ’tis too true.

CLEON. But see what heaven can do! By this our change, These mouths, who but of late, earth, sea, and air, Were all too little to content and please, Although they gave their creatures in abundance, As houses are defiled for want of use, They are now starved for want of exercise: Those palates who, not yet two summers younger, Must have inventions to delight the taste, Would now be glad of bread and beg for it: Those mothers who, to nousle up their babes, Thought nought too curious, are ready now To eat those little darlings whom they loved. So sharp are hunger’s teeth, that man and wife Draw lots who first shall die to lengthen life: Here stands a lord, and there a lady weeping; Here many sink, yet those which see them fall Have scarce strength left to give them burial. Is not this true?

DIONYZA. Our cheeks and hollow eyes do witness it.

CLEON. O, let those cities that of plenty’s cup And her prosperities so largely taste, With their superflous riots, hear these tears! The misery of Tarsus may be theirs.

LORD. Where’s the lord governor?

CLEON. Here. Speak out thy sorrows which thou bring’st in haste, For comfort is too far for us to expect.

LORD. We have descried, upon our neighbouring shore, A portly sail of ships make hitherward.

CLEON. I thought as much. One sorrow never comes but brings an heir, That may succeed as his inheritor; And so in ours: some neighbouring nation, Taking advantage of our misery, That stuff’d the hollow vessels with their power, To beat us down, the which are down already; And make a conquest of unhappy me, Whereas no glory’s got to overcome.

LORD. That’s the least fear; for, by the semblance Of their white flags display’d, they bring us peace, And come to us as favourers, not as foes.

CLEON. Thou speak’st like him’s untutor’d to repeat: Who makes the fairest show means most deceit. But bring they what they will and what they can, What need we fear? The ground’s the lowest, and we are half way there. Go tell their general we attend him here, To know for what he comes, and whence he comes, And what he craves.

LORD. I go, my lord.

CLEON. Welcome is peace, if he on peace consist; If wars, we are unable to resist.

Enter Pericles with Attendants.

PERICLES. Lord governor, for so we hear you are, Let not our ships and number of our men Be like a beacon fired to amaze your eyes. We have heard your miseries as far as Tyre, And seen the desolation of your streets: Nor come we to add sorrow to your tears, But to relieve them of their heavy load; And these our ships, you happily may think Are like the Trojan horse was stuff’d within With bloody veins, expecting overthrow, Are stored with corn to make your needy bread, And give them life whom hunger starved half dead.

ALL. The gods of Greece protect you! And we’ll pray for you.

PERICLES. Arise, I pray you, rise: We do not look for reverence, but for love, And harbourage for ourself, our ships and men.

CLEON. The which when any shall not gratify, Or pay you with unthankfulness in thought, Be it our wives, our children, or ourselves, The curse of heaven and men succeed their evils! Till when,—the which I hope shall ne’er be seen,— Your grace is welcome to our town and us.

PERICLES. Which welcome we’ll accept; feast here awhile, Until our stars that frown lend us a smile.

GOWER. Here have you seen a mighty king His child, iwis, to incest bring; A better prince and benign lord, That will prove awful both in deed and word. Be quiet then as men should be, Till he hath pass’d necessity. I’ll show you those in troubles reign, Losing a mite, a mountain gain. The good in conversation, To whom I give my benison, Is still at Tarsus, where each man Thinks all is writ he speken can; And to remember what he does, Build his statue to make him glorious: But tidings to the contrary Are brought your eyes; what need speak I?

Dumb-show. Enter at one door Pericles talking with Cleon; all the train with them. Enter at another door a Gentleman with a letter to Pericles; Pericles shows the letter to Cleon; gives the Messenger a reward, and knights him. Exit Pericles at one door, and Cleon at another.

Good Helicane, that stay’d at home. Not to eat honey like a drone From others’ labours; for though he strive To killen bad, keep good alive; And to fulfil his prince’ desire, Sends word of all that haps in Tyre: How Thaliard came full bent with sin And had intent to murder him; And that in Tarsus was not best Longer for him to make his rest. He, doing so, put forth to seas, Where when men been, there’s seldom ease; For now the wind begins to blow; Thunder above and deeps below Make such unquiet, that the ship Should house him safe is wreck’d and split; And he, good prince, having all lost, By waves from coast to coast is tost: All perishen of man, of pelf, Ne aught escapen but himself; Till Fortune, tired with doing bad, Threw him ashore, to give him glad: And here he comes. What shall be next, Pardon old Gower,—this longs the text.

SCENE I. Pentapolis. An open place by the seaside.

Enter Pericles, wet.

PERICLES. Yet cease your ire, you angry stars of heaven! Wind, rain, and thunder, remember earthly man Is but a substance that must yield to you; And I, as fits my nature, do obey you: Alas, the sea hath cast me on the rocks, Wash’d me from shore to shore, and left me breath Nothing to think on but ensuing death: Let it suffice the greatness of your powers To have bereft a prince of all his fortunes; And having thrown him from your watery grave, Here to have death in peace is all he’ll crave.

Enter three Fishermen.

FIRST FISHERMAN. What, ho, Pilch!

SECOND FISHERMAN. Ha, come and bring away the nets!

FIRST FISHERMAN. What, Patch-breech, I say!

THIRD FISHERMAN. What say you, master?

FIRST FISHERMAN. Look how thou stirrest now! Come away, or I’ll fetch thee with a wanion.

THIRD FISHERMAN. Faith, master, I am thinking of the poor men that were cast away before us even now.

FIRST FISHERMAN. Alas, poor souls, it grieved my heart to hear what pitiful cries they made to us to help them, when, well-a-day, we could scarce help ourselves.

THIRD FISHERMAN. Nay, master, said not I as much when I saw the porpus how he bounced and tumbled? They say they’re half fish, half flesh: a plague on them, they ne’er come but I look to be washed. Master, I marvel how the fishes live in the sea.

FIRST FISHERMAN. Why, as men do a-land; the great ones eat up the little ones: I can compare our rich misers to nothing so fitly as to a whale; a’ plays and tumbles, driving the poor fry before him, and at last devours them all at a mouthful. Such whales have I heard on o’ the land, who never leave gaping till they swallowed the whole parish, church, steeple, bells and all.

PERICLES. [Aside.] A pretty moral.

THIRD FISHERMAN. But, master, if I had been the sexton, I would have been that day in the belfry.

SECOND FISHERMAN. Why, man?

THIRD FISHERMAN. Because he should have swallowed me too; and when I had been in his belly, I would have kept such a jangling of the bells, that he should never have left, till he cast bells, steeple, church and parish up again. But if the good King Simonides were of my mind,—

PERICLES. [Aside.] Simonides?

THIRD FISHERMAN. We would purge the land of these drones, that rob the bee of her honey.

PERICLES. [Aside.] How from the finny subject of the sea These fishers tell the infirmities of men; And from their watery empire recollect All that may men approve or men detect! Peace be at your labour, honest fishermen.

SECOND FISHERMAN. Honest! good fellow, what’s that? If it be a day fits you, search out of the calendar, and nobody look after it.

PERICLES. May see the sea hath cast upon your coast.

SECOND FISHERMAN. What a drunken knave was the sea to cast thee in our way!

PERICLES. A man whom both the waters and the wind, In that vast tennis-court, have made the ball For them to play upon, entreats you pity him; He asks of you, that never used to beg.

FIRST FISHERMAN. No, friend, cannot you beg? Here’s them in our country of Greece gets more with begging than we can do with working.

SECOND FISHERMAN. Canst thou catch any fishes, then?

PERICLES. I never practised it.

SECOND FISHERMAN. Nay, then thou wilt starve, sure; for here’s nothing to be got now-a-days, unless thou canst fish for’t.

PERICLES. What I have been I have forgot to know; But what I am, want teaches me to think on: A man throng’d up with cold: my veins are chill, And have no more of life than may suffice To give my tongue that heat to ask your help; Which if you shall refuse, when I am dead, For that I am a man, pray see me buried.

FIRST FISHERMAN. Die quoth-a? Now gods forbid’t, and I have a gown here; come, put it on; keep thee warm. Now, afore me, a handsome fellow! Come, thou shalt go home, and we’ll have flesh for holidays, fish for fasting-days, and moreo’er puddings and flap-jacks, and thou shalt be welcome.

PERICLES. I thank you, sir.

SECOND FISHERMAN. Hark you, my friend; you said you could not beg?

PERICLES. I did but crave.

SECOND FISHERMAN. But crave! Then I’ll turn craver too, and so I shall ’scape whipping.

PERICLES. Why, are your beggars whipped, then?

SECOND FISHERMAN. O, not all, my friend, not all; for if all your beggars were whipped, I would wish no better office than to be beadle. But, master, I’ll go draw up the net.

[Exit with Third Fisherman.]

PERICLES. [Aside.] How well this honest mirth becomes their labour!

FIRST FISHERMAN. Hark you, sir, do you know where ye are?

PERICLES. Not well.

FIRST FISHERMAN. Why, I’ll tell you: this is called Pentapolis, and our King, the good Simonides.

PERICLES. The good Simonides, do you call him?

FIRST FISHERMAN. Ay, sir; and he deserves so to be called for his peaceable reign and good government.

PERICLES. He is a happy king, since he gains from his subjects the name of good government. How far is his court distant from this shore?

FIRST FISHERMAN. Marry sir, half a day’s journey: and I’ll tell you, he hath a fair daughter, and tomorrow is her birth-day; and there are princes and knights come from all parts of the world to joust and tourney for her love.

PERICLES. Were my fortunes equal to my desires, I could wish to make one there.

FIRST FISHERMAN. O, sir, things must be as they may; and what a man cannot get, he may lawfully deal for—his wife’s soul.

Re-enter Second and Third Fishermen, drawing up a net.

SECOND FISHERMAN. Help, master, help! here’s a fish hangs in the net, like a poor man’s right in the law; ’twill hardly come out. Ha! bots on’t, ’tis come at last, and ’tis turned to a rusty armour.

PERICLES. An armour, friends! I pray you, let me see it. Thanks, Fortune, yet, that, after all my crosses, Thou givest me somewhat to repair myself, And though it was mine own, part of my heritage, Which my dead father did bequeath to me, With this strict charge, even as he left his life. ‘Keep it, my Pericles; it hath been a shield ’Twixt me and death;’—and pointed to this brace;— ‘For that it saved me, keep it; in like necessity— The which the gods protect thee from!—may defend thee.’ It kept where I kept, I so dearly loved it; Till the rough seas, that spares not any man, Took it in rage, though calm’d have given’t again: I thank thee for’t: my shipwreck now’s no ill, Since I have here my father gave in his will.

FIRST FISHERMAN. What mean you sir?

PERICLES. To beg of you, kind friends, this coat of worth, For it was sometime target to a king; I know it by this mark. He loved me dearly, And for his sake I wish the having of it; And that you’d guide me to your sovereign court, Where with it I may appear a gentleman; And if that ever my low fortune’s better, I’ll pay your bounties; till then rest your debtor.

FIRST FISHERMAN. Why, wilt thou tourney for the lady?

PERICLES. I’ll show the virtue I have borne in arms.

FIRST FISHERMAN. Why, d’ye take it, and the gods give thee good on’t!

SECOND FISHERMAN. Ay, but hark you, my friend; ’twas we that made up this garment through the rough seams of the waters: there are certain condolements, certain vails. I hope, sir, if you thrive, you’ll remember from whence you had them.

PERICLES. Believe’t I will. By your furtherance I am clothed in steel; And spite of all the rapture of the sea, This jewel holds his building on my arm: Unto thy value I will mount myself Upon a courser, whose delightful steps Shall make the gazer joy to see him tread. Only, my friend, I yet am unprovided Of a pair of bases.

SECOND FISHERMAN. We’ll sure provide: thou shalt have my best gown to make thee a pair; and I’ll bring thee to the court myself.

PERICLES. Then honour be but a goal to my will, This day I’ll rise, or else add ill to ill.

SCENE II. The same. A public way, or platform leading to the lists. A pavilion by the side of it for the reception of the King, Princess, Lords, etc.

Enter Simonides, Thaisa, Lords and Attendants.

SIMONIDES. Are the knights ready to begin the triumph?

FIRST LORD. They are, my liege; And stay your coming to present themselves.

SIMONIDES. Return them, we are ready; and our daughter, In honour of whose birth these triumphs are, Sits here, like beauty’s child, whom Nature gat For men to see, and seeing wonder at.

[Exit a Lord.]

THAISA. It pleaseth you, my royal father, to express My commendations great, whose merit’s less.

SIMONIDES. It’s fit it should be so; for princes are A model, which heaven makes like to itself: As jewels lose their glory if neglected, So princes their renowns if not respected. ’Tis now your honour, daughter, to entertain The labour of each knight in his device.

THAISA. Which, to preserve mine honour, I’ll perform.

The first Knight passes by, and his Squire presents his shield to Thaisa.

SIMONIDES. Who is the first that doth prefer himself?

THAISA. A knight of Sparta, my renowned father; And the device he bears upon his shield Is a black Ethiope reaching at the sun: The word, Lux tua vita mihi.

SIMONIDES. He loves you well that holds his life of you.

The second Knight passes by, and his Squire presents his shield to Thaisa.

Who is the second that presents himself?

THAISA. A prince of Macedon, my royal father; And the device he bears upon his shield Is an arm’d knight that’s conquer’d by a lady; The motto thus, in Spanish, Piu por dulzura que por forza.

The third Knight passes by, and his Squire presents his shield to Thaisa.

SIMONIDES. And what’s the third?

THAISA. The third of Antioch; And his device, a wreath of chivalry; The word, Me pompae provexit apex.

The fourth Knight passes by, and his Squire presents his shield to Thaisa.

SIMONIDES. What is the fourth?

THAISA. A burning torch that’s turned upside down; The word, Quod me alit me extinguit.

SIMONIDES. Which shows that beauty hath his power and will, Which can as well inflame as it can kill.

The fifth Knight passes by, and his Squire presents his shield to Thaisa.

THAISA. The fifth, an hand environed with clouds, Holding out gold that’s by the touchstone tried; The motto thus, Sic spectanda fides.

The sixth Knight, Pericles, passes in rusty armour with bases, and unaccompanied. He presents his device directly to Thaisa.

SIMONIDES. And what’s the sixth and last, the which the knight himself With such a graceful courtesy deliver’d?

THAISA. He seems to be a stranger; but his present is A wither’d branch, that’s only green at top; The motto, In hac spe vivo.

SIMONIDES. A pretty moral; From the dejected state wherein he is, He hopes by you his fortunes yet may flourish.

FIRST LORD. He had need mean better than his outward show Can any way speak in his just commend; For by his rusty outside he appears To have practised more the whipstock than the lance.

SECOND LORD. He well may be a stranger, for he comes To an honour’d triumph strangely furnished.

THIRD LORD. And on set purpose let his armour rust Until this day, to scour it in the dust.

SIMONIDES. Opinion’s but a fool, that makes us scan The outward habit by the inward man. But stay, the knights are coming. We will withdraw into the gallery.

[Exeunt. Great shouts within, and all cry ‘The mean Knight!’]

SCENE III. The same. A hall of state: a banquet prepared.

Enter Simonides, Thaisa, Lords, Attendants and Knights, from tilting.

SIMONIDES. Knights, To say you’re welcome were superfluous. To place upon the volume of your deeds, As in a title-page, your worth in arms, Were more than you expect, or more than’s fit, Since every worth in show commends itself. Prepare for mirth, for mirth becomes a feast: You are princes and my guests.

THAISA. But you, my knight and guest; To whom this wreath of victory I give, And crown you king of this day’s happiness.

PERICLES. ’Tis more by fortune, lady, than by merit.

SIMONIDES. Call it by what you will, the day is yours; And here, I hope, is none that envies it. In framing an artist, art hath thus decreed, To make some good, but others to exceed; And you are her labour’d scholar. Come queen of the feast,— For, daughter, so you are,—here take your place: Marshal the rest, as they deserve their grace.

KNIGHTS. We are honour’d much by good Simonides.

SIMONIDES. Your presence glads our days; honour we love; For who hates honour hates the gods above.

MARSHALL. Sir, yonder is your place.

PERICLES. Some other is more fit.

FIRST KNIGHT. Contend not, sir; for we are gentlemen Have neither in our hearts nor outward eyes Envied the great, nor shall the low despise.

PERICLES. You are right courteous knights.

SIMONIDES. Sit, sir, sit. By Jove, I wonder, that is king of thoughts, These cates resist me, he but thought upon.

THAISA. By Juno, that is queen of marriage, All viands that I eat do seem unsavoury, Wishing him my meat. Sure, he’s a gallant gentleman.

SIMONIDES. He’s but a country gentleman; Has done no more than other knights have done; Has broken a staff or so; so let it pass.

THAISA. To me he seems like diamond to glass.

PERICLES. Yon king’s to me like to my father’s picture, Which tells me in that glory once he was; Had princes sit, like stars, about his throne, And he the sun, for them to reverence; None that beheld him, but, like lesser lights, Did vail their crowns to his supremacy: Where now his son’s like a glow-worm in the night, The which hath fire in darkness, none in light: Whereby I see that time’s the king of men, He’s both their parent, and he is their grave, And gives them what he will, not what they crave.

SIMONIDES. What, are you merry, knights?

KNIGHTS. Who can be other in this royal presence?

SIMONIDES. Here, with a cup that’s stored unto the brim,— As you do love, fill to your mistress’ lips,— We drink this health to you.

KNIGHTS. We thank your grace.

SIMONIDES. Yet pause awhile. Yon knight doth sit too melancholy, As if the entertainment in our court Had not a show might countervail his worth. Note it not you, Thaisa?

THAISA. What is’t to me, my father?

SIMONIDES. O attend, my daughter: Princes in this should live like gods above, Who freely give to everyone that comes to honour them: And princes not doing so are like to gnats, Which make a sound, but kill’d are wonder’d at. Therefore to make his entrance more sweet, Here, say we drink this standing-bowl of wine to him.

THAISA. Alas, my father, it befits not me Unto a stranger knight to be so bold: He may my proffer take for an offence, Since men take women’s gifts for impudence.

SIMONIDES. How? Do as I bid you, or you’ll move me else.

THAISA. [Aside.] Now, by the gods, he could not please me better.

SIMONIDES. And furthermore tell him, we desire to know of him, Of whence he is, his name and parentage.

THAISA. The king my father, sir, has drunk to you.

PERICLES. I thank him.

THAISA. Wishing it so much blood unto your life.

PERICLES. I thank both him and you, and pledge him freely.

THAISA. And further he desires to know of you, Of whence you are, your name and parentage.

PERICLES. A gentleman of Tyre; my name, Pericles; My education been in arts and arms; Who, looking for adventures in the world, Was by the rough seas reft of ships and men, And after shipwreck driven upon this shore.

THAISA. He thanks your grace; names himself Pericles, A gentleman of Tyre, Who only by misfortune of the seas Bereft of ships and men, cast on this shore.

SIMONIDES. Now, by the gods, I pity his misfortune, And will awake him from his melancholy. Come, gentlemen, we sit too long on trifles, And waste the time, which looks for other revels. Even in your armours, as you are address’d, Will well become a soldier’s dance. I will not have excuse, with saying this, ‘Loud music is too harsh for ladies’ heads’ Since they love men in arms as well as beds.

[The Knights dance.]

So, this was well ask’d, ’twas so well perform’d. Come, sir; here is a lady which wants breathing too: And I have heard you knights of Tyre Are excellent in making ladies trip; And that their measures are as excellent.

PERICLES. In those that practise them they are, my lord.

SIMONIDES. O, that’s as much as you would be denied Of your fair courtesy.

[The Knights and Ladies dance.]

Unclasp, unclasp: Thanks gentlemen, to all; all have done well. [To Pericles.] But you the best. Pages and lights to conduct These knights unto their several lodgings. [To Pericles.] Yours, sir, we have given order to be next our own.

PERICLES. I am at your grace’s pleasure.

SIMONIDES. Princes, it is too late to talk of love; And that’s the mark I know you level at: Therefore each one betake him to his rest; Tomorrow all for speeding do their best.

SCENE IV. Tyre. A room in the Governor’s house.

Enter Helicanus and Escanes.

HELICANUS. No, Escanes, know this of me, Antiochus from incest lived not free: For which the most high gods not minding longer To withhold the vengeance that they had in store Due to this heinous capital offence, Even in the height and pride of all his glory, When he was seated in a chariot Of an inestimable value, and his daughter with him, A fire from heaven came and shrivell’d up Their bodies, even to loathing, for they so stunk, That all those eyes adored them ere their fall Scorn now their hand should give them burial.

ESCANES. ’Twas very strange

HELICANUS. And yet but justice; for though this king were great; His greatness was no guard to bar heaven’s shaft, But sin had his reward.

ESCANES. ’Tis very true.

Enter two or three Lords.

FIRST LORD. See, not a man in private conference Or council has respect with him but he.

SECOND LORD. It shall no longer grieve without reproof.

THIRD LORD. And cursed be he that will not second it.

FIRST LORD. Follow me, then. Lord Helicane, a word.

HELICANUS. With me? and welcome: happy day, my lords.

FIRST LORD. Know that our griefs are risen to the top, And now at length they overflow their banks.

HELICANUS. Your griefs! for what? Wrong not your prince you love.

FIRST LORD. Wrong not yourself, then, noble Helicane; But if the prince do live, let us salute him. Or know what ground’s made happy by his breath. If in the world he live, we’ll seek him out; If in his grave he rest, we’ll find him there. We’ll be resolved he lives to govern us, Or dead, give’s cause to mourn his funeral, And leave us to our free election.

SECOND LORD. Whose death’s indeed the strongest in our censure: And knowing this kingdom is without a head,— Like goodly buildings left without a roof Soon fall to ruin,—your noble self, That best know how to rule and how to reign, We thus submit unto,—our sovereign.

ALL. Live, noble Helicane!

HELICANUS. For honour’s cause, forbear your suffrages: If that you love Prince Pericles, forbear. Take I your wish, I leap into the seas, Where’s hourly trouble for a minute’s ease. A twelvemonth longer, let me entreat you To forbear the absence of your king; If in which time expired, he not return, I shall with aged patience bear your yoke. But if I cannot win you to this love, Go search like nobles, like noble subjects, And in your search spend your adventurous worth; Whom if you find, and win unto return, You shall like diamonds sit about his crown.

FIRST LORD. To wisdom he’s a fool that will not yield; And since Lord Helicane enjoineth us, We with our travels will endeavour us.

HELICANUS. Then you love us, we you, and we’ll clasp hands: When peers thus knit, a kingdom ever stands.

SCENE V. Pentapolis. A room in the palace.

Enter Simonides reading a letter at one door; the Knights meet him.

FIRST KNIGHT. Good morrow to the good Simonides.

SIMONIDES. Knights, from my daughter this I let you know, That for this twelvemonth she’ll not undertake A married life. Her reason to herself is only known, Which yet from her by no means can I get.

SECOND KNIGHT. May we not get access to her, my lord?

SIMONIDES. Faith, by no means; she hath so strictly tied Her to her chamber, that ’tis impossible. One twelve moons more she’ll wear Diana’s livery; This by the eye of Cynthia hath she vow’d, And on her virgin honour will not break it.

THIRD KNIGHT. Loath to bid farewell, we take our leaves.

[Exeunt Knights.]

SIMONIDES. So, they are well dispatch’d; now to my daughter’s letter: She tells me here, she’ll wed the stranger knight, Or never more to view nor day nor light. ’Tis well, mistress; your choice agrees with mine; I like that well: nay, how absolute she’s in’t, Not minding whether I dislike or no! Well, I do commend her choice; And will no longer have it be delay’d. Soft! here he comes: I must dissemble it.

Enter Pericles.

PERICLES. All fortune to the good Simonides!

SIMONIDES. To you as much. Sir, I am beholding to you For your sweet music this last night: I do Protest my ears were never better fed With such delightful pleasing harmony.

PERICLES. It is your grace’s pleasure to commend; Not my desert.

SIMONIDES. Sir, you are music’s master.

PERICLES. The worst of all her scholars, my good lord.

SIMONIDES. Let me ask you one thing: What do you think of my daughter, sir?

PERICLES. A most virtuous princess.

SIMONIDES. And she is fair too, is she not?

PERICLES. As a fair day in summer, wondrous fair.

SIMONIDES. Sir, my daughter thinks very well of you; Ay, so well, that you must be her master, And she will be your scholar: therefore look to it.

PERICLES. I am unworthy for her schoolmaster.

SIMONIDES. She thinks not so; peruse this writing else.

PERICLES. [Aside.] What’s here? A letter, that she loves the knight of Tyre! ’Tis the king’s subtlety to have my life. O, seek not to entrap me, gracious lord, A stranger and distressed gentleman, That never aim’d so high to love your daughter, But bent all offices to honour her.

SIMONIDES. Thou hast bewitch’d my daughter, And thou art a villain.

PERICLES. By the gods, I have not: Never did thought of mine levy offence; Nor never did my actions yet commence A deed might gain her love or your displeasure.

SIMONIDES. Traitor, thou liest.

PERICLES. Traitor?

SIMONIDES. Ay, traitor.

PERICLES. Even in his throat—unless it be the king— That calls me traitor, I return the lie.

SIMONIDES. [Aside.] Now, by the gods, I do applaud his courage.

PERICLES. My actions are as noble as my thoughts, That never relish’d of a base descent. I came unto your court for honour’s cause, And not to be a rebel to her state; And he that otherwise accounts of me, This sword shall prove he’s honour’s enemy.

SIMONIDES. No? Here comes my daughter, she can witness it.

Enter Thaisa.

PERICLES. Then, as you are as virtuous as fair, Resolve your angry father, if my tongue Did e’er solicit, or my hand subscribe To any syllable that made love to you.

THAISA. Why, sir, say if you had, Who takes offence at that would make me glad?

SIMONIDES. Yea, mistress, are you so peremptory? [Aside.] I am glad on’t with all my heart.— I’ll tame you; I’ll bring you in subjection. Will you, not having my consent, Bestow your love and your affections Upon a stranger? [Aside.] Who, for aught I know May be, nor can I think the contrary, As great in blood as I myself.— Therefore hear you, mistress; either frame Your will to mine, and you, sir, hear you, Either be ruled by me, or I will make you— Man and wife. Nay, come, your hands, And lips must seal it too: and being join’d, I’ll thus your hopes destroy; and for further grief, God give you joy! What, are you both pleased?

THAISA. Yes, if you love me, sir.

PERICLES. Even as my life my blood that fosters it.

SIMONIDES. What, are you both agreed?

BOTH. Yes, if’t please your majesty.

SIMONIDES. It pleaseth me so well, that I will see you wed; And then with what haste you can, get you to bed.

GOWER. Now sleep yslaked hath the rouse; No din but snores about the house, Made louder by the o’erfed breast Of this most pompous marriage feast. The cat, with eyne of burning coal, Now couches fore the mouse’s hole; And crickets sing at the oven’s mouth, Are the blither for their drouth. Hymen hath brought the bride to bed, Where, by the loss of maidenhead, A babe is moulded. Be attent, And time that is so briefly spent With your fine fancies quaintly eche: What’s dumb in show I’ll plain with speech.

Dumb-show. Enter, Pericles and Simonides at one door with Attendants; a Messenger meets them, kneels, and gives Pericles a letter: Pericles shows it Simonides; the Lords kneel to him. Then enter Thaisa with child, with Lychorida, a nurse. The King shows her the letter; she rejoices: she and Pericles take leave of her father, and depart, with Lychorida and their Attendants. Then exeunt Simonides and the rest.

By many a dern and painful perch Of Pericles the careful search, By the four opposing coigns Which the world together joins, Is made with all due diligence That horse and sail and high expense Can stead the quest. At last from Tyre, Fame answering the most strange enquire, To th’ court of King Simonides Are letters brought, the tenour these: Antiochus and his daughter dead; The men of Tyrus on the head Of Helicanus would set on The crown of Tyre, but he will none: The mutiny he there hastes t’oppress; Says to ’em, if King Pericles Come not home in twice six moons, He, obedient to their dooms, Will take the crown. The sum of this, Brought hither to Pentapolis Y-ravished the regions round, And everyone with claps can sound, ‘Our heir apparent is a king! Who dreamt, who thought of such a thing?’ Brief, he must hence depart to Tyre: His queen with child makes her desire— Which who shall cross?—along to go: Omit we all their dole and woe: Lychorida, her nurse, she takes, And so to sea. Their vessel shakes On Neptune’s billow; half the flood Hath their keel cut: but fortune’s mood Varies again; the grisled north Disgorges such a tempest forth, That, as a duck for life that dives, So up and down the poor ship drives: The lady shrieks, and well-a-near Does fall in travail with her fear: And what ensues in this fell storm Shall for itself itself perform. I nill relate, action may Conveniently the rest convey; Which might not what by me is told. In your imagination hold This stage the ship, upon whose deck The sea-tost Pericles appears to speak.

SCENE I.

Enter Pericles, on shipboard.

PERICLES. Thou god of this great vast, rebuke these surges, Which wash both heaven and hell; and thou that hast Upon the winds command, bind them in brass, Having call’d them from the deep! O, still Thy deafening, dreadful thunders; gently quench Thy nimble, sulphurous flashes! O, how, Lychorida, How does my queen? Thou stormest venomously; Wilt thou spit all thyself? The seaman’s whistle Is as a whisper in the ears of death, Unheard. Lychorida! - Lucina, O! Divinest patroness, and midwife gentle To those that cry by night, convey thy deity Aboard our dancing boat; make swift the pangs Of my queen’s travails! Now, Lychorida!

Enter Lychorida with an infant.

LYCHORIDA. Here is a thing too young for such a place, Who, if it had conceit, would die, as I Am like to do: take in your arms this piece Of your dead queen.

PERICLES. How? how, Lychorida?

LYCHORIDA. Patience, good sir; do not assist the storm. Here’s all that is left living of your queen, A little daughter: for the sake of it, Be manly, and take comfort.

PERICLES. O you gods! Why do you make us love your goodly gifts, And snatch them straight away? We here below Recall not what we give, and therein may Vie honour with you.

LYCHORIDA. Patience, good sir. Even for this charge.

PERICLES. Now, mild may be thy life! For a more blustrous birth had never babe: Quiet and gentle thy conditions! for Thou art the rudeliest welcome to this world That ever was prince’s child. Happy what follows! Thou hast as chiding a nativity As fire, air, water, earth, and heaven can make, To herald thee from the womb. Even at the first thy loss is more than can Thy portage quit, with all thou canst find here, Now, the good gods throw their best eyes upon’t!

Enter two Sailors

FIRST SAILOR. What courage, sir? God save you!

PERICLES. Courage enough: I do not fear the flaw; It hath done to me the worst. Yet, for the love Of this poor infant, this fresh new sea-farer, I would it would be quiet.

FIRST SAILOR. Slack the bolins there! Thou wilt not, wilt thou? Blow, and split thyself.

SECOND SAILOR. But sea-room, and the brine and cloudy billow kiss the moon, I care not.

FIRST SAILOR. Sir, your queen must overboard: the sea works high, the wind is loud and will not lie till the ship be cleared of the dead.

PERICLES. That’s your superstition.

FIRST SAILOR. Pardon us, sir; with us at sea it has been still observed; and we are strong in custom. Therefore briefly yield her; for she must overboard straight.

PERICLES. As you think meet. Most wretched queen!

LYCHORIDA. Here she lies, sir.

PERICLES. A terrible childbed hast thou had, my dear; No light, no fire: th’unfriendly elements Forgot thee utterly; nor have I time To give thee hallow’d to thy grave, but straight Must cast thee, scarcely coffin’d, in the ooze; Where, for a monument upon thy bones, And e’er-remaining lamps, the belching whale And humming water must o’erwhelm thy corpse, Lying with simple shells. O Lychorida. Bid Nestor bring me spices, ink and paper, My casket and my jewels; and bid Nicander Bring me the satin coffer: lay the babe Upon the pillow: hie thee, whiles I say A priestly farewell to her: suddenly, woman.

[Exit Lychorida.]

SECOND SAILOR. Sir, we have a chest beneath the hatches, caulked and bitumed ready.

PERICLES. I thank thee. Mariner, say what coast is this?

SECOND SAILOR. We are near Tarsus.

PERICLES. Thither, gentle mariner, Alter thy course for Tyre. When canst thou reach it?

SECOND SAILOR. By break of day, if the wind cease.

PERICLES. O, make for Tarsus! There will I visit Cleon, for the babe Cannot hold out to Tyrus. There I’ll leave it At careful nursing. Go thy ways, good mariner: I’ll bring the body presently.

SCENE II. Ephesus. A room in Cerimon’s house.

Enter Cerimon, with a Servant, and some Persons who have been shipwrecked.

CERIMON. Philemon, ho!

Enter Philemon.

PHILEMON. Doth my lord call?

CERIMON. Get fire and meat for these poor men: ’T has been a turbulent and stormy night.

SERVANT. I have been in many; but such a night as this, Till now, I ne’er endured.

CERIMON. Your master will be dead ere you return; There’s nothing can be minister’d to nature That can recover him. [To Philemon.] Give this to the ’pothecary, And tell me how it works.

[Exeunt all but Cerimon.]

FIRST GENTLEMAN. Good morrow.

SECOND GENTLEMAN. Good morrow to your lordship.

CERIMON. Gentlemen, why do you stir so early?

FIRST GENTLEMAN. Sir, our lodgings, standing bleak upon the sea, Shook as the earth did quake; The very principals did seem to rend, And all to topple: pure surprise and fear Made me to quit the house.

SECOND GENTLEMAN. That is the cause we trouble you so early; ’Tis not our husbandry.

CERIMON. O, you say well.

FIRST GENTLEMAN. But I much marvel that your lordship, having Rich tire about you, should at these early hours Shake off the golden slumber of repose. ’Tis most strange, Nature should be so conversant with pain. Being thereto not compell’d.

CERIMON. I hold it ever, Virtue and cunning were endowments greater Than nobleness and riches: careless heirs May the two latter darken and expend; But immortality attends the former, Making a man a god. ’Tis known, I ever Have studied physic, through which secret art, By turning o’er authorities, I have, Together with my practice, made familiar To me and to my aid the blest infusions That dwell in vegetives, in metals, stones; And I can speak of the disturbances That nature works, and of her cures; which doth give me A more content in course of true delight Than to be thirsty after tottering honour, Or tie my pleasure up in silken bags, To please the fool and death.

SECOND GENTLEMAN. Your honour has through Ephesus pour’d forth Your charity, and hundreds call themselves Your creatures, who by you have been restored: And not your knowledge, your personal pain, but even Your purse, still open, hath built Lord Cerimon Such strong renown as time shall never—

Enter two or three Servants with a chest.

FIRST SERVANT. So, lift there.

CERIMON. What’s that?

FIRST SERVANT. Sir, even now Did the sea toss upon our shore this chest: ’Tis of some wreck.

CERIMON. Set’t down, let’s look upon’t.

SECOND GENTLEMAN. ’Tis like a coffin, sir.

CERIMON. Whate’er it be, ’Tis wondrous heavy. Wrench it open straight: If the sea’s stomach be o’ercharged with gold, ’Tis a good constraint of fortune it belches upon us.

SECOND GENTLEMAN. ’Tis so, my lord.

CERIMON. How close ’tis caulk’d and bitumed! Did the sea cast it up?

FIRST SERVANT. I never saw so huge a billow, sir, As toss’d it upon shore.

CERIMON. Wrench it open; Soft! it smells most sweetly in my sense.

SECOND GENTLEMAN. A delicate odour.

CERIMON. As ever hit my nostril. So up with it. O you most potent gods! what’s here? a corpse!

FIRST GENTLEMAN. Most strange!

CERIMON. Shrouded in cloth of state; balm’d and entreasured With full bags of spices! A passport too! Apollo, perfect me in the characters!

[Reads from a scroll.]

Here I give to understand, If e’er this coffin drives a-land, I, King Pericles, have lost This queen, worth all our mundane cost. Who finds her, give her burying; She was the daughter of a king: Besides this treasure for a fee, The gods requite his charity. If thou livest, Pericles, thou hast a heart That even cracks for woe! This chanced tonight.

SECOND GENTLEMAN. Most likely, sir.

CERIMON. Nay, certainly tonight; For look how fresh she looks! They were too rough That threw her in the sea. Make a fire within Fetch hither all my boxes in my closet.

Death may usurp on nature many hours, And yet the fire of life kindle again The o’erpress’d spirits. I heard of an Egyptian That had nine hours lain dead, Who was by good appliance recovered.

Re-enter a Servant with napkins and fire.

Well said, well said; the fire and cloths. The rough and woeful music that we have, Cause it to sound, beseech you The viol once more: how thou stirr’st, thou block! The music there!—I pray you, give her air. Gentlemen, this queen will live. Nature awakes; a warmth breathes out of her. She hath not been entranced above five hours. See how she ’gins to blow into life’s flower again!

FIRST GENTLEMAN. The heavens, through you, increase our wonder And sets up your fame for ever.

CERIMON. She is alive; behold, her eyelids, Cases to those heavenly jewels which Pericles hath lost, Begin to part their fringes of bright gold; The diamonds of a most praised water doth appear, To make the world twice rich. Live, and make us weep To hear your fate, fair creature, rare as you seem to be.

[She moves.]

THAISA. O dear Diana, Where am I? Where’s my lord? What world is this?

SECOND GENTLEMAN. Is not this strange?

FIRST GENTLEMAN. Most rare.

CERIMON. Hush, my gentle neighbours! Lend me your hands; to the next chamber bear her. Get linen: now this matter must be look’d to, For her relapse is mortal. Come, come; And Aesculapius guide us!

[Exeunt, carrying her away.]

SCENE III. Tarsus. A room in Cleon’s house.

Enter Pericles, Cleon, Dionyza and Lychorida with Marina in her arms.

PERICLES. Most honour’d Cleon, I must needs be gone; My twelve months are expired, and Tyrus stands In a litigious peace. You and your lady, Take from my heart all thankfulness! The gods Make up the rest upon you!

CLEON. Your shafts of fortune, though they hurt you mortally, Yet glance full wanderingly on us.

DIONYZA. O, your sweet queen! That the strict fates had pleased you had brought her hither, To have bless’d mine eyes with her!

PERICLES. We cannot but obey The powers above us. Could I rage and roar As doth the sea she lies in, yet the end Must be as ’tis. My gentle babe Marina, Whom, for she was born at sea, I have named so, Here I charge your charity withal, Leaving her the infant of your care; Beseeching you to give her princely training, That she may be manner’d as she is born.

CLEON. Fear not, my lord, but think Your grace, that fed my country with your corn, For which the people’s prayers still fall upon you, Must in your child be thought on. If neglection Should therein make me vile, the common body, By you relieved, would force me to my duty: But if to that my nature need a spur, The gods revenge it upon me and mine, To the end of generation!

PERICLES. I believe you; Your honour and your goodness teach me to’t, Without your vows. Till she be married, madam, By bright Diana, whom we honour, all Unscissored shall this hair of mine remain, Though I show ill in’t. So I take my leave. Good madam, make me blessed in your care In bringing up my child.

DIONYZA. I have one myself, Who shall not be more dear to my respect Than yours, my lord.

PERICLES. Madam, my thanks and prayers.

CLEON. We’ll bring your grace e’en to the edge o’the shore, Then give you up to the mask’d Neptune and The gentlest winds of heaven.

PERICLES. I will embrace your offer. Come, dearest madam. O, no tears, Lychorida, no tears. Look to your little mistress, on whose grace You may depend hereafter. Come, my lord.

SCENE IV. Ephesus. A room in Cerimon’s house.

Enter Cerimon and Thaisa.

CERIMON. Madam, this letter, and some certain jewels, Lay with you in your coffer, which are At your command. Know you the character?

THAISA. It is my lord’s. That I was shipp’d at sea, I well remember, Even on my groaning time; but whether there Deliver’d, by the holy gods, I cannot rightly say. But since King Pericles, My wedded lord, I ne’er shall see again, A vestal livery will I take me to, And never more have joy.

CERIMON. Madam, if this you purpose as ye speak, Diana’s temple is not distant far, Where you may abide till your date expire. Moreover, if you please, a niece of mine Shall there attend you.

THAISA. My recompense is thanks, that’s all; Yet my good will is great, though the gift small.

GOWER. Imagine Pericles arrived at Tyre, Welcomed and settled to his own desire. His woeful queen we leave at Ephesus, Unto Diana there a votaress. Now to Marina bend your mind, Whom our fast-growing scene must find At Tarsus, and by Cleon train’d In music’s letters; who hath gain’d Of education all the grace, Which makes her both the heart and place Of general wonder. But, alack, That monster envy, oft the wrack Of earned praise, Marina’s life Seeks to take off by treason’s knife, And in this kind our Cleon hath One daughter, and a full grown wench Even ripe for marriage-rite; this maid Hight Philoten: and it is said For certain in our story, she Would ever with Marina be. Be’t when she weaved the sleided silk With fingers long, small, white as milk; Or when she would with sharp needle wound, The cambric, which she made more sound By hurting it; or when to th’ lute She sung, and made the night-bird mute That still records with moan; or when She would with rich and constant pen Vail to her mistress Dian; still This Philoten contends in skill With absolute Marina: so The dove of Paphos might with the crow Vie feathers white. Marina gets All praises, which are paid as debts, And not as given. This so darks In Philoten all graceful marks, That Cleon’s wife, with envy rare, A present murderer does prepare For good Marina, that her daughter Might stand peerless by this slaughter. The sooner her vile thoughts to stead, Lychorida, our nurse, is dead: And cursed Dionyza hath The pregnant instrument of wrath Prest for this blow. The unborn event I do commend to your content: Only I carry winged time Post on the lame feet of my rhyme; Which never could I so convey, Unless your thoughts went on my way. Dionyza does appear, With Leonine, a murderer.

Scene I. Tarsus. An open place near the seashore.

Enter Dionyza with Leonine.

DIONYZA. Thy oath remember; thou hast sworn to do’t: ’Tis but a blow, which never shall be known. Thou canst not do a thing in the world so soon, To yield thee so much profit. Let not conscience, Which is but cold, inflaming love i’ thy bosom, Inflame too nicely; nor let pity, which Even women have cast off, melt thee, but be A soldier to thy purpose.

LEONINE. I will do’t; but yet she is a goodly creature.

DIONYZA. The fitter, then, the gods should have her. Here she comes weeping for her only mistress’ death. Thou art resolved?

LEONINE. I am resolved.

Enter Marina with a basket of flowers.

MARINA. No, I will rob Tellus of her weed To strew thy green with flowers: the yellows, blues, The purple violets, and marigolds, Shall as a carpet hang upon thy grave, While summer days do last. Ay me! poor maid, Born in a tempest, when my mother died, This world to me is like a lasting storm, Whirring me from my friends.

DIONYZA. How now, Marina! why do you keep alone? How chance my daughter is not with you? Do not consume your blood with sorrowing; Have you a nurse of me? Lord, how your favour’s Changed with this unprofitable woe! Come, give me your flowers, ere the sea mar it. Walk with Leonine; the air is quick there, And it pierces and sharpens the stomach. Come, Leonine, take her by the arm, walk with her.

MARINA. No, I pray you; I’ll not bereave you of your servant.

DIONYZA. Come, come; I love the king your father, and yourself, With more than foreign heart. We every day Expect him here: when he shall come and find Our paragon to all reports thus blasted, He will repent the breadth of his great voyage; Blame both my lord and me, that we have taken No care to your best courses. Go, I pray you, Walk, and be cheerful once again; reserve That excellent complexion, which did steal The eyes of young and old. Care not for me; I can go home alone.

MARINA. Well, I will go; But yet I have no desire to it.

DIONYZA. Come, come, I know ’tis good for you. Walk half an hour, Leonine, at the least: Remember what I have said.

LEONINE. I warrant you, madam.

DIONYZA. I’ll leave you, my sweet lady, for a while: Pray, walk softly, do not heat your blood: What! I must have a care of you.

MARINA. My thanks, sweet madam.

[Exit Dionyza.]

Is this wind westerly that blows?

LEONINE. South-west.

MARINA. When I was born the wind was north.

LEONINE. Was’t so?

MARINA. My father, as nurse said, did never fear, But cried ‘Good seamen!’ to the sailors, Galling his kingly hands, haling ropes; And clasping to the mast, endured a sea That almost burst the deck.

LEONINE. When was this?

MARINA. When I was born: Never was waves nor wind more violent; And from the ladder tackle washes off A canvas-climber. ‘Ha!’ says one, ‘wolt out?’ And with a dropping industry they skip From stem to stern: the boatswain whistles, and The master calls and trebles their confusion.

LEONINE. Come, say your prayers.

MARINA. What mean you?

LEONINE. If you require a little space for prayer, I grant it: pray; but be not tedious, For the gods are quick of ear, and I am sworn To do my work with haste.

MARINA. Why will you kill me?

LEONINE. To satisfy my lady.

MARINA. Why would she have me kill’d now? As I can remember, by my troth, I never did her hurt in all my life: I never spake bad word, nor did ill turn To any living creature: believe me, la, I never kill’d a mouse, nor hurt a fly: I trod upon a worm against my will, But I wept for it. How have I offended, Wherein my death might yield her any profit, Or my life imply her any danger?

LEONINE. My commission Is not to reason of the deed, but do it.

MARINA. You will not do’t for all the world, I hope. You are well favour’d, and your looks foreshow You have a gentle heart. I saw you lately, When you caught hurt in parting two that fought: Good sooth, it show’d well in you: do so now: Your lady seeks my life; come you between, And save poor me, the weaker.

LEONINE. I am sworn, And will dispatch.

[He seizes her.]

Enter Pirates.

FIRST PIRATE. Hold, villain!

[Leonine runs away.]

SECOND PIRATE. A prize! a prize!

THIRD PIRATE. Half part, mates, half part, Come, let’s have her aboard suddenly.

[Exeunt Pirates with Marina.]

Re-enter Leonine.

LEONINE. These roguing thieves serve the great pirate Valdes; And they have seized Marina. Let her go: There’s no hope she will return. I’ll swear she’s dead And thrown into the sea. But I’ll see further: Perhaps they will but please themselves upon her, Not carry her aboard. If she remain, Whom they have ravish’d must by me be slain.

Scene II. Mytilene. A room in a brothel.

Enter Pandar, Bawd and Boult.

PANDAR. Boult!

BOULT. Sir?

PANDAR. Search the market narrowly; Mytilene is full of gallants. We lost too much money this mart by being too wenchless.

BAWD. We were never so much out of creatures. We have but poor three, and they can do no more than they can do; and they with continual action are even as good as rotten.

PANDAR. Therefore let’s have fresh ones, whate’er we pay for them. If there be not a conscience to be used in every trade, we shall never prosper.

BAWD. Thou sayest true: ’tis not our bringing up of poor bastards,—as, I think, I have brought up some eleven—

BOULT. Ay, to eleven; and brought them down again. But shall I search the market?

BAWD. What else, man? The stuff we have, a strong wind will blow it to pieces, they are so pitifully sodden.

PANDAR. Thou sayest true; they’re too unwholesome, o’ conscience. The poor Transylvanian is dead, that lay with the little baggage.

BOULT. Ay, she quickly pooped him; she made him roast-meat for worms. But I’ll go search the market.

PANDAR. Three or four thousand chequins were as pretty a proportion to live quietly, and so give over.

BAWD. Why to give over, I pray you? Is it a shame to get when we are old?

PANDAR. O, our credit comes not in like the commodity, nor the commodity wages not with the danger: therefore, if in our youths we could pick up some pretty estate, ’twere not amiss to keep our door hatched. Besides, the sore terms we stand upon with the gods will be strong with us for giving over.

BAWD. Come, others sorts offend as well as we.

PANDAR. As well as we! ay, and better too; we offend worse. Neither is our profession any trade; it’s no calling. But here comes Boult.

Re-enter Boult, with the Pirates and Marina.

BOULT [To Pirates.] Come your ways. My masters, you say she’s a virgin?

FIRST PIRATE. O sir, we doubt it not.

BOULT. Master, I have gone through for this piece, you see: if you like her, so; if not, I have lost my earnest.

BAWD. Boult, has she any qualities?

BOULT. She has a good face, speaks well and has excellent good clothes: there’s no farther necessity of qualities can make her be refused.

BAWD. What is her price, Boult?

BOULT. I cannot be baited one doit of a thousand pieces.

PANDAR. Well, follow me, my masters, you shall have your money presently. Wife, take her in; instruct her what she has to do, that she may not be raw in her entertainment.

[Exeunt Pandar and Pirates.]

BAWD. Boult, take you the marks of her, the colour of her hair, complexion, height, her age, with warrant of her virginity; and cry ‘He that will give most shall have her first.’ Such a maidenhead were no cheap thing, if men were as they have been. Get this done as I command you.

BOULT. Performance shall follow.

MARINA. Alack that Leonine was so slack, so slow! He should have struck, not spoke; or that these pirates, Not enough barbarous, had not o’erboard thrown me For to seek my mother!

BAWD. Why lament you, pretty one?

MARINA. That I am pretty.

BAWD. Come, the gods have done their part in you.

MARINA. I accuse them not.

BAWD. You are light into my hands, where you are like to live.

MARINA. The more my fault To scape his hands where I was like to die.

BAWD. Ay, and you shall live in pleasure.

MARINA. No.

BAWD. Yes, indeed shall you, and taste gentlemen of all fashions: you shall fare well; you shall have the difference of all complexions. What! do you stop your ears?

MARINA. Are you a woman?

BAWD. What would you have me be, an I be not a woman?

MARINA. An honest woman, or not a woman.

BAWD. Marry, whip the gosling: I think I shall have something to do with you. Come, you’re a young foolish sapling, and must be bowed as I would have you.

MARINA. The gods defend me!

BAWD. If it please the gods to defend you by men, then men must comfort you, men must feed you, men stir you up. Boult’s returned.

Re-enter Boult.

Now, sir, hast thou cried her through the market?

BOULT. I have cried her almost to the number of her hairs; I have drawn her picture with my voice.

BAWD. And I prithee tell me, how dost thou find the inclination of the people, especially of the younger sort?

BOULT. Faith, they listened to me as they would have hearkened to their father’s testament. There was a Spaniard’s mouth so watered, that he went to bed to her very description.

BAWD. We shall have him here tomorrow with his best ruff on.

BOULT. Tonight, tonight. But, mistress, do you know the French knight that cowers i’ the hams?

BAWD. Who, Monsieur Veroles?

BOULT. Ay, he: he offered to cut a caper at the proclamation; but he made a groan at it, and swore he would see her tomorrow.

BAWD. Well, well, as for him, he brought his disease hither: here he does but repair it. I know he will come in our shadow, to scatter his crowns in the sun.

BOULT. Well, if we had of every nation a traveller, we should lodge them with this sign.

[To Marina.] Pray you, come hither awhile. You have fortunes coming upon you. Mark me: you must seem to do that fearfully which you commit willingly, despise profit where you have most gain. To weep that you live as ye do makes pity in your lovers: seldom but that pity begets you a good opinion, and that opinion a mere profit.

MARINA. I understand you not.

BOULT. O, take her home, mistress, take her home: these blushes of hers must be quenched with some present practice.

BAWD. Thou sayest true, i’faith so they must; for your bride goes to that with shame which is her way to go with warrant.

BOULT. Faith, some do and some do not. But, mistress, if I have bargained for the joint,—

BAWD. Thou mayst cut a morsel off the spit.

BOULT. I may so.

BAWD. Who should deny it? Come young one, I like the manner of your garments well.

BOULT. Ay, by my faith, they shall not be changed yet.

BAWD. Boult, spend thou that in the town: report what a sojourner we have; you’ll lose nothing by custom. When nature framed this piece, she meant thee a good turn; therefore say what a paragon she is, and thou hast the harvest out of thine own report.

BOULT. I warrant you, mistress, thunder shall not so awake the beds of eels as my giving out her beauty stirs up the lewdly inclined. I’ll bring home some tonight.

BAWD. Come your ways; follow me.

MARINA. If fires be hot, knives sharp, or waters deep, Untied I still my virgin knot will keep. Diana, aid my purpose!

BAWD. What have we to do with Diana? Pray you, will you go with us?

Enter Cleon and Dionyza.

DIONYZA. Why, are you foolish? Can it be undone?

CLEON. O, Dionyza, such a piece of slaughter The sun and moon ne’er look’d upon!

DIONYZA. I think you’ll turn a child again.

CLEON. Were I chief lord of all this spacious world, I’d give it to undo the deed. A lady, Much less in blood than virtue, yet a princess To equal any single crown o’ the earth I’ the justice of compare! O villain Leonine! Whom thou hast poison’d too: If thou hadst drunk to him, ’t had been a kindness Becoming well thy face. What canst thou say When noble Pericles shall demand his child?

DIONYZA. That she is dead. Nurses are not the fates, To foster it, nor ever to preserve. She died at night; I’ll say so. Who can cross it? Unless you play the pious innocent, And for an honest attribute cry out ‘She died by foul play.’

CLEON. O, go to. Well, well, Of all the faults beneath the heavens, the gods Do like this worst.

DIONYZA. Be one of those that thinks The petty wrens of Tarsus will fly hence, And open this to Pericles. I do shame To think of what a noble strain you are, And of how coward a spirit.

CLEON. To such proceeding Whoever but his approbation added, Though not his prime consent, he did not flow From honourable courses.

DIONYZA. Be it so, then: Yet none does know, but you, how she came dead, Nor none can know, Leonine being gone. She did distain my child, and stood between Her and her fortunes: none would look on her, But cast their gazes on Marina’s face; Whilst ours was blurted at and held a malkin Not worth the time of day. It pierced me through; And though you call my course unnatural, You not your child well loving, yet I find It greets me as an enterprise of kindness Perform’d to your sole daughter.

CLEON. Heavens forgive it!

DIONYZA. And as for Pericles, what should he say? We wept after her hearse, and yet we mourn. Her monument is almost finish’d, and her epitaphs In glittering golden characters express A general praise to her, and care in us At whose expense ’tis done.

CLEON. Thou art like the harpy, Which, to betray, dost, with thine angel’s face, Seize with thine eagle’s talons.

DIONYZA. You are like one that superstitiously Doth swear to the gods that winter kills the flies: But yet I know you’ll do as I advise.

SCENE IV.

Enter Gower, before the monument of Marina at Tarsus.

GOWER. Thus time we waste, and long leagues make short; Sail seas in cockles, have and wish but for’t; Making, to take your imagination, From bourn to bourn, region to region. By you being pardon’d, we commit no crime To use one language in each several clime Where our scenes seem to live. I do beseech you To learn of me, who stand i’the gaps to teach you, The stages of our story. Pericles Is now again thwarting the wayward seas Attended on by many a lord and knight, To see his daughter, all his life’s delight. Old Helicanus goes along. Behind Is left to govern, if you bear in mind, Old Escanes, whom Helicanus late Advanced in time to great and high estate. Well-sailing ships and bounteous winds have brought This king to Tarsus,—think his pilot thought; So with his steerage shall your thoughts go on,— To fetch his daughter home, who first is gone. Like motes and shadows see them move awhile; Your ears unto your eyes I’ll reconcile.

Dumb-show. Enter Pericles at one door with all his train; Cleon and Dionyza at the other. Cleon shows Pericles the tomb; whereat Pericles makes lamentation, puts on sackcloth and in a mighty passion departs. Then exeunt Cleon and Dionyza.

See how belief may suffer by foul show; This borrow’d passion stands for true old woe; And Pericles, in sorrow all devour’d, With sighs shot through; and biggest tears o’ershower’d, Leaves Tarsus and again embarks. He swears Never to wash his face, nor cut his hairs: He puts on sackcloth, and to sea he bears A tempest, which his mortal vessel tears, And yet he rides it out. Now please you wit The epitaph is for Marina writ By wicked Dionyza.

[Reads the inscription on Marina’s monument.]

The fairest, sweet’st, and best lies here, Who wither’d in her spring of year. She was of Tyrus the King’s daughter, On whom foul death hath made this slaughter; Marina was she call’d; and at her birth, Thetis, being proud, swallow’d some part o’ the earth: Therefore the earth, fearing to be o’erflow’d, Hath Thetis’ birth-child on the heavens bestow’d: Wherefore she does, and swears she’ll never stint, Make raging battery upon shores of flint.

No visor does become black villany So well as soft and tender flattery. Let Pericles believe his daughter’s dead, And bear his courses to be ordered By Lady Fortune; while our scene must play His daughter’s woe and heavy well-a-day In her unholy service. Patience, then, And think you now are all in Mytilene.

SCENE V. Mytilene. A street before the brothel.

Enter, from the brothel, two Gentlemen.

FIRST GENTLEMAN. Did you ever hear the like?

SECOND GENTLEMAN. No, nor never shall do in such a place as this, she being once gone.

FIRST GENTLEMAN. But to have divinity preached there! did you ever dream of such a thing?

SECOND GENTLEMAN. No, no. Come, I am for no more bawdy houses: shall’s go hear the vestals sing?

FIRST GENTLEMAN. I’ll do anything now that is virtuous; but I am out of the road of rutting for ever.

SCENE VI. The same. A room in the brothel.

PANDAR. Well, I had rather than twice the worth of her she had ne’er come here.

BAWD. Fie, fie upon her! She’s able to freeze the god Priapus, and undo a whole generation. We must either get her ravished, or be rid of her. When she should do for clients her fitment, and do me the kindness of our profession, she has me her quirks, her reasons, her master reasons, her prayers, her knees; that she would make a puritan of the devil, if he should cheapen a kiss of her.

BOULT. Faith, I must ravish her, or she’ll disfurnish us of all our cavaliers, and make our swearers priests.

PANDAR. Now, the pox upon her green sickness for me!

BAWD. Faith, there’s no way to be rid on’t but by the way to the pox. Here comes the Lord Lysimachus disguised.

BOULT. We should have both lord and lown, if the peevish baggage would but give way to customers.

Enter Lysimachus.

LYSIMACHUS. How now! How a dozen of virginities?

BAWD. Now, the gods to bless your honour!

BOULT. I am glad to see your honour in good health.

LYSIMACHUS. You may so; ’tis the better for you that your resorters stand upon sound legs. How now? Wholesome iniquity have you that a man may deal withal, and defy the surgeon?

BAWD. We have here one, sir, if she would—but there never came her like in Mytilene.

LYSIMACHUS. If she’d do the deed of darkness, thou wouldst say.

BAWD. Your honour knows what ’tis to say well enough.

LYSIMACHUS. Well, call forth, call forth.

BOULT. For flesh and blood, sir, white and red, you shall see a rose; and she were a rose indeed, if she had but—

LYSIMACHUS. What, prithee?

BOULT. O, sir, I can be modest.

LYSIMACHUS. That dignifies the renown of a bawd no less than it gives a good report to a number to be chaste.

[Exit Boult.]

BAWD. Here comes that which grows to the stalk; never plucked yet, I can assure you.

Re-enter Boult with Marina.

Is she not a fair creature?

LYSIMACHUS. Faith, she would serve after a long voyage at sea. Well, there’s for you: leave us.

BAWD. I beseech your honour, give me leave: a word, and I’ll have done presently.

LYSIMACHUS. I beseech you, do.

BAWD. [To Marina.] First, I would have you note, this is an honourable man.

MARINA. I desire to find him so, that I may worthily note him.

BAWD. Next, he’s the governor of this country, and a man whom I am bound to.

MARINA. If he govern the country, you are bound to him indeed; but how honourable he is in that, I know not.

BAWD. Pray you, without any more virginal fencing, will you use him kindly? He will line your apron with gold.

MARINA. What he will do graciously, I will thankfully receive.

LYSIMACHUS. Ha’ you done?

BAWD. My lord, she’s not paced yet: you must take some pains to work her to your manage. Come, we will leave his honour and her together. Go thy ways.

[Exeunt Bawd, Pandar and Boult.]

LYSIMACHUS. Now, pretty one, how long have you been at this trade?

MARINA. What trade, sir?

LYSIMACHUS. Why, I cannot name’t but I shall offend.

MARINA. I cannot be offended with my trade. Please you to name it.

LYSIMACHUS. How long have you been of this profession?

MARINA. E’er since I can remember.

LYSIMACHUS. Did you go to’t so young? Were you a gamester at five or at seven?

MARINA. Earlier, too, sir, if now I be one.

LYSIMACHUS. Why, the house you dwell in proclaims you to be a creature of sale.

MARINA. Do you know this house to be a place of such resort, and will come into’t? I hear say you are of honourable parts, and are the governor of this place.

LYSIMACHUS. Why, hath your principal made known unto you who I am?

MARINA. Who is my principal?

LYSIMACHUS. Why, your herb-woman; she that sets seeds and roots of shame and iniquity. O, you have heard something of my power, and so stand aloof for more serious wooing. But I protest to thee, pretty one, my authority shall not see thee, or else look friendly upon thee. Come, bring me to some private place: come, come.

MARINA. If you were born to honour, show it now; If put upon you, make the judgement good That thought you worthy of it.

LYSIMACHUS. How’s this? how’s this? Some more; be sage.

MARINA. For me, That am a maid, though most ungentle Fortune Have placed me in this sty, where, since I came, Diseases have been sold dearer than physic, O, that the gods Would set me free from this unhallow’d place, Though they did change me to the meanest bird That flies i’ the purer air!

LYSIMACHUS. I did not think Thou couldst have spoke so well; ne’er dream’d thou couldst. Had I brought hither a corrupted mind, Thy speech had alter’d it. Hold, here’s gold for thee: Persever in that clear way thou goest, And the gods strengthen thee!

MARINA. The good gods preserve you!

LYSIMACHUS. For me, be you thoughten That I came with no ill intent; for to me The very doors and windows savour vilely. Fare thee well. Thou art a piece of virtue, and I doubt not but thy training hath been noble. Hold, here’s more gold for thee. A curse upon him, die he like a thief, That robs thee of thy goodness! If thou dost Hear from me, it shall be for thy good.

BOULT. I beseech your honour, one piece for me.

LYSIMACHUS. Avaunt, thou damned door-keeper! Your house but for this virgin that doth prop it, Would sink and overwhelm you. Away!

BOULT. How’s this? We must take another course with you. If your peevish chastity, which is not worth a breakfast in the cheapest country under the cope, shall undo a whole household, let me be gelded like a spaniel. Come your ways.

MARINA. Whither would you have me?

BOULT. I must have your maidenhead taken off, or the common hangman shall execute it. Come your ways. We’ll have no more gentlemen driven away. Come your ways, I say.

Re-enter Bawd.

BAWD. How now! what’s the matter?

BOULT. Worse and worse, mistress; she has here spoken holy words to the Lord Lysimachus.

BAWD. O, abominable!

BOULT. She makes our profession as it were to stink afore the face of the gods.

BAWD. Marry, hang her up for ever!

BOULT. The nobleman would have dealt with her like a nobleman, and she sent him away as cold as a snowball; saying his prayers too.

BAWD. Boult, take her away; use her at thy pleasure: crack the glass of her virginity, and make the rest malleable.

BOULT. An if she were a thornier piece of ground than she is, she shall be ploughed.

MARINA. Hark, hark, you gods!

BAWD. She conjures: away with her! Would she had never come within my doors! Marry, hang you! She’s born to undo us. Will you not go the way of womankind? Marry, come up, my dish of chastity with rosemary and bays!

BOULT. Come, mistress; come your way with me.

MARINA. Whither wilt thou have me?

BOULT. To take from you the jewel you hold so dear.

MARINA. Prithee, tell me one thing first.

BOULT. Come now, your one thing?

MARINA. What canst thou wish thine enemy to be?

BOULT. Why, I could wish him to be my master, or rather, my mistress.

MARINA. Neither of these are so bad as thou art, Since they do better thee in their command. Thou hold’st a place, for which the pained’st fiend Of hell would not in reputation change: Thou art the damned doorkeeper to every Coistrel that comes inquiring for his Tib. To the choleric fisting of every rogue Thy ear is liable, thy food is such As hath been belch’d on by infected lungs.

BOULT. What would you have me do? Go to the wars, would you? where a man may serve seven years for the loss of a leg, and have not money enough in the end to buy him a wooden one?

MARINA. Do anything but this thou doest. Empty Old receptacles, or common shores, of filth; Serve by indenture to the common hangman: Any of these ways are yet better than this; For what thou professest, a baboon, could he speak, Would own a name too dear. O, that the gods Would safely deliver me from this place! Here, here’s gold for thee. If that thy master would gain by me, Proclaim that I can sing, weave, sew, and dance, With other virtues, which I’ll keep from boast; And I will undertake all these to teach. I doubt not but this populous city will Yield many scholars.

BOULT. But can you teach all this you speak of?

MARINA. Prove that I cannot, take me home again, And prostitute me to the basest groom That doth frequent your house.

BOULT. Well, I will see what I can do for thee: if I can place thee, I will.

MARINA. But amongst honest women.

BOULT. Faith, my acquaintance lies little amongst them. But since my master and mistress have bought you, there’s no going but by their consent: therefore I will make them acquainted with your purpose, and I doubt not but I shall find them tractable enough. Come, I’ll do for thee what I can; come your ways.

GOWER. Marina thus the brothel ’scapes, and chances Into an honest house, our story says. She sings like one immortal, and she dances As goddess-like to her admired lays; Deep clerks she dumbs; and with her nee’le composes Nature’s own shape, of bud, bird, branch, or berry, That even her art sisters the natural roses; Her inkle, silk, twin with the rubied cherry: That pupils lacks she none of noble race, Who pour their bounty on her; and her gain She gives the cursed bawd. Here we her place; And to her father turn our thoughts again, Where we left him, on the sea. We there him lost; Whence, driven before the winds, he is arrived Here where his daughter dwells; and on this coast Suppose him now at anchor. The city strived God Neptune’s annual feast to keep: from whence Lysimachus our Tyrian ship espies, His banners sable, trimm’d with rich expense; And to him in his barge with fervour hies. In your supposing once more put your sight Of heavy Pericles; think this his bark: Where what is done in action, more, if might, Shall be discover’d; please you, sit and hark.

SCENE I. On board Pericles’ ship, off Mytilene. A close pavilion on deck, with a curtain before it; Pericles within it, reclined on a couch. A barge lying beside the Tyrian vessel.

Enter two Sailors, one belonging to the Tyrian vessel, the other to the barge; to them Helicanus.

TYRIAN SAILOR. [To the Sailor of Mytilene.] Where is lord Helicanus? He can resolve you. O, here he is. Sir, there’s a barge put off from Mytilene, And in it is Lysimachus the governor, Who craves to come aboard. What is your will?

HELICANUS. That he have his. Call up some gentlemen.

TYRIAN SAILOR. Ho, gentlemen! my lord calls.

Enter two or three Gentlemen.

FIRST GENTLEMAN. Doth your lordship call?

HELICANUS. Gentlemen, there is some of worth would come aboard; I pray ye, greet them fairly.

[The Gentlemen and the two Sailors descend and go on board the barge.]

Enter, from thence, Lysimachus and Lords; with the Gentlemen and the two Sailors.

TYRIAN SAILOR. Sir, This is the man that can, in aught you would, Resolve you.

LYSIMACHUS. Hail, reverend sir! the gods preserve you!

HELICANUS. And you, sir, to outlive the age I am, And die as I would do.

LYSIMACHUS. You wish me well. Being on shore, honouring of Neptune’s triumphs, Seeing this goodly vessel ride before us, I made to it, to know of whence you are.

HELICANUS. First, what is your place?

LYSIMACHUS. I am the governor of this place you lie before.

HELICANUS. Sir, our vessel is of Tyre, in it the king; A man who for this three months hath not spoken To anyone, nor taken sustenance But to prorogue his grief.

LYSIMACHUS. Upon what ground is his distemperature?

HELICANUS. ’Twould be too tedious to repeat; But the main grief springs from the loss Of a beloved daughter and a wife.

LYSIMACHUS. May we not see him?

HELICANUS. You may; But bootless is your sight: he will not speak To any.

LYSIMACHUS. Yet let me obtain my wish.

HELICANUS. Behold him. [Pericles discovered.] This was a goodly person. Till the disaster that, one mortal night, Drove him to this.

LYSIMACHUS. Sir king, all hail! The gods preserve you! Hail, royal sir!

HELICANUS. It is in vain; he will not speak to you.

FIRST LORD. Sir, we have a maid in Mytilene, I durst wager, Would win some words of him.

LYSIMACHUS. ’Tis well bethought. She questionless with her sweet harmony And other chosen attractions, would allure, And make a battery through his deafen’d parts, Which now are midway stopp’d: She is all happy as the fairest of all, And, with her fellow maids, is now upon The leafy shelter that abuts against The island’s side.

[Whispers a Lord who goes off in the barge of Lysimachus.]

HELICANUS. Sure, all’s effectless; yet nothing we’ll omit That bears recovery’s name. But, since your kindness We have stretch’d thus far, let us beseech you That for our gold we may provision have, Wherein we are not destitute for want, But weary for the staleness.

LYSIMACHUS. O, sir, a courtesy Which if we should deny, the most just gods For every graff would send a caterpillar, And so inflict our province. Yet once more Let me entreat to know at large the cause Of your king’s sorrow.

HELICANUS. Sit, sir, I will recount it to you: But, see, I am prevented.

Re-enter from the barge, Lord with Marina and a young Lady.

LYSIMACHUS. O, here is the lady that I sent for. Welcome, fair one! Is’t not a goodly presence?

HELICANUS. She’s a gallant lady.

LYSIMACHUS. She’s such a one, that, were I well assured Came of a gentle kind and noble stock, I’d wish no better choice, and think me rarely wed. Fair one, all goodness that consists in bounty Expect even here, where is a kingly patient: If that thy prosperous and artificial feat Can draw him but to answer thee in aught, Thy sacred physic shall receive such pay As thy desires can wish.

MARINA. Sir, I will use My utmost skill in his recovery, provided That none but I and my companion maid Be suffer’d to come near him.

LYSIMACHUS. Come, let us leave her, And the gods make her prosperous!

[Marina sings.]

LYSIMACHUS. Mark’d he your music?

MARINA. No, nor look’d on us.

LYSIMACHUS. See, she will speak to him.

MARINA. Hail, sir! My lord, lend ear.

PERICLES. Hum, ha!

MARINA. I am a maid, My lord, that ne’er before invited eyes, But have been gazed on like a comet: she speaks, My lord, that, may be, hath endured a grief Might equal yours, if both were justly weigh’d. Though wayward Fortune did malign my state, My derivation was from ancestors Who stood equivalent with mighty kings: But time hath rooted out my parentage, And to the world and awkward casualties Bound me in servitude. [Aside.] I will desist; But there is something glows upon my cheek, And whispers in mine ear ‘Go not till he speak.’

PERICLES. My fortunes—parentage—good parentage— To equal mine!—was it not thus? what say you?

MARINA. I said, my lord, if you did know my parentage, You would not do me violence.

PERICLES. I do think so. Pray you, turn your eyes upon me. You are like something that—what country-woman? Here of these shores?

MARINA. No, nor of any shores: Yet I was mortally brought forth, and am No other than I appear.

PERICLES. I am great with woe, and shall deliver weeping. My dearest wife was like this maid, and such a one My daughter might have been: my queen’s square brows; Her stature to an inch; as wand-like straight; As silver-voiced; her eyes as jewel-like And cased as richly; in pace another Juno; Who starves the ears she feeds, and makes them hungry, The more she gives them speech. Where do you live?

MARINA. Where I am but a stranger: from the deck You may discern the place.

PERICLES. Where were you bred? And how achieved you these endowments, which You make more rich to owe?

MARINA. If I should tell my history, it would seem Like lies disdain’d in the reporting.

PERICLES. Prithee, speak: Falseness cannot come from thee; for thou look’st Modest as Justice, and thou seem’st a palace For the crown’d Truth to dwell in: I will believe thee, And make my senses credit thy relation To points that seem impossible; for thou look’st Like one I loved indeed. What were thy friends? Didst thou not say, when I did push thee back— Which was when I perceived thee—that thou cam’st From good descending?

MARINA. So indeed I did.

PERICLES. Report thy parentage. I think thou said’st Thou hadst been toss’d from wrong to injury, And that thou thought’st thy griefs might equal mine, If both were open’d.

MARINA. Some such thing, I said, and said no more but what my thoughts Did warrant me was likely.

PERICLES. Tell thy story; If thine consider’d prove the thousand part Of my endurance, thou art a man, and I Have suffer’d like a girl: yet thou dost look Like Patience gazing on kings’ graves, and smiling Extremity out of act. What were thy friends? How lost thou them? Thy name, my most kind virgin? Recount, I do beseech thee: come, sit by me.

MARINA. My name is Marina.

PERICLES. O, I am mock’d, And thou by some incensed god sent hither To make the world to laugh at me.

MARINA. Patience, good sir, Or here I’ll cease.

PERICLES. Nay, I’ll be patient. Thou little know’st how thou dost startle me, To call thyself Marina.

MARINA. The name Was given me by one that had some power, My father, and a king.

PERICLES. How! a king’s daughter? And call’d Marina?

MARINA. You said you would believe me; But, not to be a troubler of your peace, I will end here.

PERICLES. But are you flesh and blood? Have you a working pulse? and are no fairy? Motion! Well; speak on. Where were you born? And wherefore call’d Marina?

MARINA. Call’d Marina For I was born at sea.

PERICLES. At sea! What mother?

MARINA. My mother was the daughter of a king; Who died the minute I was born, As my good nurse Lychorida hath oft Deliver’d weeping.

PERICLES. O, stop there a little! [Aside.] This is the rarest dream that e’er dull sleep Did mock sad fools withal: this cannot be: My daughter, buried. Well, where were you bred? I’ll hear you more, to the bottom of your story, And never interrupt you.

MARINA. You scorn: believe me, ’twere best I did give o’er.

PERICLES. I will believe you by the syllable Of what you shall deliver. Yet, give me leave: How came you in these parts? Where were you bred?

MARINA. The king my father did in Tarsus leave me; Till cruel Cleon, with his wicked wife, Did seek to murder me: and having woo’d A villain to attempt it, who having drawn to do’t, A crew of pirates came and rescued me; Brought me to Mytilene. But, good sir. Whither will you have me? Why do you weep? It may be, You think me an impostor: no, good faith; I am the daughter to King Pericles, If good King Pericles be.

PERICLES. Ho, Helicanus!

Enter Helicanus and Lysimachus.

HELICANUS. Calls my lord?

PERICLES. Thou art a grave and noble counsellor, Most wise in general: tell me, if thou canst, What this maid is, or what is like to be, That thus hath made me weep.

HELICANUS. I know not, But here is the regent, sir, of Mytilene Speaks nobly of her.

LYSIMACHUS. She would never tell Her parentage; being demanded that, She would sit still and weep.

PERICLES. O Helicanus, strike me, honour’d sir; Give me a gash, put me to present pain; Lest this great sea of joys rushing upon me O’erbear the shores of my mortality, And drown me with their sweetness. [To Marina] O, come hither, Thou that beget’st him that did thee beget; Thou that wast born at sea, buried at Tarsus, And found at sea again! O Helicanus, Down on thy knees, thank the holy gods as loud As thunder threatens us: this is Marina. What was thy mother’s name? tell me but that, For truth can never be confirm’d enough, Though doubts did ever sleep.

MARINA. First, sir, I pray, what is your title?

PERICLES. I am Pericles of Tyre: but tell me now My drown’d queen’s name, as in the rest you said Thou hast been godlike perfect, The heir of kingdoms and another life To Pericles thy father.

MARINA. Is it no more to be your daughter than To say my mother’s name was Thaisa? Thaisa was my mother, who did end The minute I began.

PERICLES. Now, blessing on thee! rise; thou art my child. Give me fresh garments. Mine own, Helicanus; She is not dead at Tarsus, as she should have been, By savage Cleon: she shall tell thee all; When thou shalt kneel, and justify in knowledge She is thy very princess. Who is this?

HELICANUS. Sir, ’tis the governor of Mytilene, Who, hearing of your melancholy state, Did come to see you.

PERICLES. I embrace you. Give me my robes. I am wild in my beholding. O heavens bless my girl! But, hark, what music? Tell Helicanus, my Marina, tell him O’er, point by point, for yet he seems to doubt, How sure you are my daughter. But, what music?

HELICANUS. My lord, I hear none.

PERICLES. None! The music of the spheres! List, my Marina.

LYSIMACHUS. It is not good to cross him; give him way.

PERICLES. Rarest sounds! Do ye not hear?

LYSIMACHUS. Music, my lord? I hear.

PERICLES. Most heavenly music! It nips me unto listening, and thick slumber Hangs upon mine eyes: let me rest.

LYSIMACHUS. A pillow for his head: So, leave him all. Well, my companion friends, If this but answer to my just belief, I’ll well remember you.

Diana appears to Pericles as in a vision.

DIANA. My temple stands in Ephesus: hie thee thither, And do upon mine altar sacrifice. There, when my maiden priests are met together, Before the people all, Reveal how thou at sea didst lose thy wife: To mourn thy crosses, with thy daughter’s, call And give them repetition to the life. Or perform my bidding, or thou livest in woe: Do it, and happy; by my silver bow! Awake and tell thy dream.

[Disappears.]

PERICLES. Celestial Dian, goddess argentine, I will obey thee. Helicanus!

Re-enter Helicanus, Lysimachus and Marina.

HELICANUS. Sir?

PERICLES. My purpose was for Tarsus, there to strike The inhospitable Cleon; but I am For other service first: toward Ephesus Turn our blown sails; eftsoons I’ll tell thee why. [To Lysimachus.] Shall we refresh us, sir, upon your shore, And give you gold for such provision As our intents will need?

LYSIMACHUS. Sir, with all my heart, And when you come ashore I have another suit.

PERICLES. You shall prevail, were it to woo my daughter; For it seems you have been noble towards her.

LYSIMACHUS. Sir, lend me your arm.

PERICLES. Come, my Marina.

SCENE II.

Enter Gower before the temple of Diana at Ephesus.

GOWER. Now our sands are almost run; More a little, and then dumb. This, my last boon, give me, For such kindness must relieve me, That you aptly will suppose What pageantry, what feats, what shows, What minstrelsy, and pretty din, The regent made in Mytilene To greet the king. So he thrived, That he is promised to be wived To fair Marina; but in no wise Till he had done his sacrifice, As Dian bade: whereto being bound, The interim, pray you, all confound. In feather’d briefness sails are fill’d, And wishes fall out as they’re will’d. At Ephesus, the temple see, Our king and all his company. That he can hither come so soon, Is by your fancy’s thankful doom.

SCENE III. The temple of Diana at Ephesus; Thaisa standing near the altar, as high priestess; a number of Virgins on each side; Cerimon and other inhabitants of Ephesus attending.

Enter Pericles with his train; Lysimachus, Helicanus, Marina and a Lady.

PERICLES. Hail, Dian! to perform thy just command, I here confess myself the King of Tyre; Who, frighted from my country, did wed At Pentapolis the fair Thaisa. At sea in childbed died she, but brought forth A maid child call’d Marina; whom, O goddess, Wears yet thy silver livery. She at Tarsus Was nursed with Cleon; who at fourteen years He sought to murder: but her better stars Brought her to Mytilene; ’gainst whose shore Riding, her fortunes brought the maid aboard us, Where by her own most clear remembrance, she Made known herself my daughter.

THAISA. Voice and favour! You are, you are—O royal Pericles!

PERICLES. What means the nun? She dies! help, gentlemen!

CERIMON. Noble sir, If you have told Diana’s altar true, This is your wife.

PERICLES. Reverend appearer, no; I threw her overboard with these very arms.

CERIMON. Upon this coast, I warrant you.

PERICLES. ’Tis most certain.

CERIMON. Look to the lady; O, she’s but o’er-joy’d. Early in blustering morn this lady was Thrown upon this shore. I oped the coffin, Found there rich jewels; recover’d her, and placed her Here in Diana’s temple.

PERICLES. May we see them?

CERIMON. Great sir, they shall be brought you to my house, Whither I invite you. Look, Thaisa is Recovered.

THAISA. O, let me look! If he be none of mine, my sanctity Will to my sense bend no licentious ear, But curb it, spite of seeing. O, my lord, Are you not Pericles? Like him you spake, Like him you are: did you not name a tempest, A birth, and death?

PERICLES. The voice of dead Thaisa!

THAISA. That Thaisa am I, supposed dead And drown’d.

PERICLES. Immortal Dian!

THAISA. Now I know you better, When we with tears parted Pentapolis, The king my father gave you such a ring.

[Shows a ring.]

PERICLES. This, this: no more, you gods! your present kindness Makes my past miseries sports: you shall do well, That on the touching of her lips I may Melt and no more be seen. O, come, be buried A second time within these arms.

MARINA. My heart Leaps to be gone into my mother’s bosom.

[Kneels to Thaisa.]

PERICLES. Look, who kneels here! Flesh of thy flesh, Thaisa; Thy burden at the sea, and call’d Marina For she was yielded there.

THAISA. Blest, and mine own!

HELICANUS. Hail, madam, and my queen!

THAISA. I know you not.

PERICLES. You have heard me say, when I did fly from Tyre, I left behind an ancient substitute: Can you remember what I call’d the man? I have named him oft.

THAISA. ’Twas Helicanus then.

PERICLES. Still confirmation: Embrace him, dear Thaisa; this is he. Now do I long to hear how you were found: How possibly preserved; and who to thank, Besides the gods, for this great miracle.

THAISA. Lord Cerimon, my lord; this man, Through whom the gods have shown their power; that can From first to last resolve you.

PERICLES. Reverend sir, The gods can have no mortal officer More like a god than you. Will you deliver How this dead queen relives?

CERIMON. I will, my lord. Beseech you, first go with me to my house, Where shall be shown you all was found with her; How she came placed here in the temple; No needful thing omitted.

PERICLES. Pure Dian, bless thee for thy vision! I Will offer night-oblations to thee. Thaisa, This prince, the fair betrothed of your daughter, Shall marry her at Pentapolis. And now this ornament Makes me look dismal will I clip to form; And what this fourteen years no razor touch’d To grace thy marriage-day, I’ll beautify.

THAISA. Lord Cerimon hath letters of good credit, sir, My father’s dead.

PERICLES. Heavens make a star of him! Yet there, my queen, We’ll celebrate their nuptials, and ourselves Will in that kingdom spend our following days: Our son and daughter shall in Tyrus reign. Lord Cerimon, we do our longing stay To hear the rest untold. Sir, lead’s the way.

GOWER. In Antiochus and his daughter you have heard Of monstrous lust the due and just reward: In Pericles, his queen and daughter seen, Although assail’d with Fortune fierce and keen, Virtue preserved from fell destruction’s blast, Led on by heaven, and crown’d with joy at last. In Helicanus may you well descry A figure of truth, of faith, of loyalty: In reverend Cerimon there well appears The worth that learned charity aye wears: For wicked Cleon and his wife, when fame Had spread their cursed deed, the honour’d name Of Pericles, to rage the city turn, That him and his they in his palace burn. The gods for murder seemed so content To punish, although not done, but meant. So on your patience evermore attending, New joy wait on you! Here our play has ending.

THE LIFE AND DEATH OF KING RICHARD THE SECOND

ACT I Scene I. London. A Room in the palace. Scene II. The same. A room in the Duke of Lancaster’s palace. Scene III. Open Space, near Coventry. Lists set out, and a Throne. Heralds, &c., attending. Scene IV. London. A Room in the King’s Castle. ACT II Scene I. London. An Apartment in Ely House. Scene II. The Same. A Room in the Castle. Scene III. The Wolds in Gloucestershire. Scene IV. A camp in Wales. ACT III Scene I. Bristol. Bolingbroke’s camp. Scene II. The coast of Wales. A castle in view. Scene III. Wales. Before Flint Castle. Scene IV. Langley. The Duke of York’s garden. ACT IV Scene I. Westminster Hall. ACT V Scene I. London. A street leading to the Tower. Scene II. The same. A room in the Duke of York’s palace. Scene III. Windsor. A room in the Castle. Scene IV. Another room in the Castle. Scene V. Pomfret. The dungeon of the Castle. Scene VI. Windsor. An Apartment in the Castle.

KING RICHARD THE SECOND JOHN OF GAUNT, Duke of Lancaster - uncle to the King EDMUND LANGLEY, Duke of York - uncle to the King HENRY, surnamed BOLINGBROKE, Duke of Hereford, son of John of Gaunt, afterwards King Henry IV DUKE OF AUMERLE, son of the Duke of York THOMAS MOWBRAY, Duke of Norfolk DUKE OF SURREY EARL OF SALISBURY LORD BERKELEY BUSHY - Servant to King Richard BAGOT - Servant to King Richard GREEN - Servant to King Richard EARL OF NORTHUMBERLAND HARRY PERCY, surnamed Hotspur, his son LORD ROSS LORD WILLOUGHBY LORD FITZWATER BISHOP OF CARLISLE ABBOT OF WESTMINSTER LORD MARSHAL SIR PIERCE OF EXTON SIR STEPHEN SCROOP Captain of a band of Welshmen

QUEEN TO KING RICHARD DUCHESS OF GLOUCESTER DUCHESS OF YORK Lady attending on the Queen

Lords, Heralds, Officers, Soldiers, Gardeners, Keeper, Messenger, Groom, and other Attendants

SCENE: Dispersedly in England and Wales.

SCENE I. London. A Room in the palace.

Enter King Richard, John of Gaunt, with other Nobles and Attendants.

KING RICHARD. Old John of Gaunt, time-honoured Lancaster, Hast thou, according to thy oath and band, Brought hither Henry Hereford, thy bold son, Here to make good the boist’rous late appeal, Which then our leisure would not let us hear, Against the Duke of Norfolk, Thomas Mowbray?

GAUNT. I have, my liege.

KING RICHARD. Tell me, moreover, hast thou sounded him If he appeal the Duke on ancient malice, Or worthily, as a good subject should, On some known ground of treachery in him?

GAUNT. As near as I could sift him on that argument, On some apparent danger seen in him Aimed at your Highness, no inveterate malice.

KING RICHARD. Then call them to our presence. Face to face And frowning brow to brow, ourselves will hear The accuser and the accused freely speak. High-stomached are they both and full of ire, In rage, deaf as the sea, hasty as fire.

Enter Bolingbroke and Mowbray.

BOLINGBROKE. Many years of happy days befall My gracious sovereign, my most loving liege!

MOWBRAY. Each day still better other’s happiness Until the heavens, envying earth’s good hap, Add an immortal title to your crown!

KING RICHARD. We thank you both. Yet one but flatters us, As well appeareth by the cause you come, Namely, to appeal each other of high treason. Cousin of Hereford, what dost thou object Against the Duke of Norfolk, Thomas Mowbray?

BOLINGBROKE. First—heaven be the record to my speech!— In the devotion of a subject’s love, Tend’ring the precious safety of my prince, And free from other misbegotten hate, Come I appellant to this princely presence. Now, Thomas Mowbray, do I turn to thee, And mark my greeting well; for what I speak My body shall make good upon this earth, Or my divine soul answer it in heaven. Thou art a traitor and a miscreant, Too good to be so and too bad to live, Since the more fair and crystal is the sky, The uglier seem the clouds that in it fly. Once more, the more to aggravate the note, With a foul traitor’s name stuff I thy throat, And wish, so please my sovereign, ere I move, What my tongue speaks, my right-drawn sword may prove.

MOWBRAY. Let not my cold words here accuse my zeal. ’Tis not the trial of a woman’s war, The bitter clamour of two eager tongues, Can arbitrate this cause betwixt us twain; The blood is hot that must be cooled for this. Yet can I not of such tame patience boast As to be hushed and naught at all to say. First, the fair reverence of your highness curbs me From giving reins and spurs to my free speech, Which else would post until it had returned These terms of treason doubled down his throat. Setting aside his high blood’s royalty, And let him be no kinsman to my liege, I do defy him, and I spit at him, Call him a slanderous coward and a villain; Which to maintain, I would allow him odds And meet him, were I tied to run afoot Even to the frozen ridges of the Alps, Or any other ground inhabitable Wherever Englishman durst set his foot. Meantime let this defend my loyalty: By all my hopes, most falsely doth he lie.

BOLINGBROKE. Pale trembling coward, there I throw my gage, Disclaiming here the kindred of the King, And lay aside my high blood’s royalty, Which fear, not reverence, makes thee to except. If guilty dread have left thee so much strength As to take up mine honour’s pawn, then stoop. By that and all the rites of knighthood else, Will I make good against thee, arm to arm, What I have spoke or thou canst worst devise.

MOWBRAY. I take it up; and by that sword I swear Which gently laid my knighthood on my shoulder, I’ll answer thee in any fair degree Or chivalrous design of knightly trial. And when I mount, alive may I not light If I be traitor or unjustly fight!

KING RICHARD. What doth our cousin lay to Mowbray’s charge? It must be great that can inherit us So much as of a thought of ill in him.

BOLINGBROKE. Look what I speak, my life shall prove it true: That Mowbray hath received eight thousand nobles In name of lendings for your highness’ soldiers, The which he hath detained for lewd employments, Like a false traitor and injurious villain. Besides I say, and will in battle prove, Or here or elsewhere to the furthest verge That ever was surveyed by English eye, That all the treasons for these eighteen years Complotted and contrived in this land Fetch from false Mowbray their first head and spring. Further I say, and further will maintain Upon his bad life to make all this good, That he did plot the Duke of Gloucester’s death, Suggest his soon-believing adversaries, And consequently, like a traitor coward, Sluiced out his innocent soul through streams of blood, Which blood, like sacrificing Abel’s, cries Even from the tongueless caverns of the earth To me for justice and rough chastisement. And, by the glorious worth of my descent, This arm shall do it, or this life be spent.

KING RICHARD. How high a pitch his resolution soars! Thomas of Norfolk, what sayst thou to this?

MOWBRAY. O! let my sovereign turn away his face And bid his ears a little while be deaf, Till I have told this slander of his blood How God and good men hate so foul a liar.

KING RICHARD. Mowbray, impartial are our eyes and ears. Were he my brother, nay, my kingdom’s heir, As he is but my father’s brother’s son, Now, by my sceptre’s awe I make a vow Such neighbour nearness to our sacred blood Should nothing privilege him nor partialize The unstooping firmness of my upright soul. He is our subject, Mowbray; so art thou. Free speech and fearless I to thee allow.

MOWBRAY. Then, Bolingbroke, as low as to thy heart, Through the false passage of thy throat, thou liest. Three parts of that receipt I had for Calais Disbursed I duly to his highness’ soldiers; The other part reserved I by consent, For that my sovereign liege was in my debt Upon remainder of a dear account Since last I went to France to fetch his queen. Now swallow down that lie. For Gloucester’s death, I slew him not, but to my own disgrace Neglected my sworn duty in that case. For you, my noble Lord of Lancaster, The honourable father to my foe, Once did I lay an ambush for your life, A trespass that doth vex my grieved soul; But ere I last received the sacrament I did confess it and exactly begged Your Grace’s pardon, and I hope I had it. This is my fault. As for the rest appealed, It issues from the rancour of a villain, A recreant and most degenerate traitor, Which in myself I boldly will defend, And interchangeably hurl down my gage Upon this overweening traitor’s foot, To prove myself a loyal gentleman Even in the best blood chambered in his bosom. In haste whereof most heartily I pray Your highness to assign our trial day.

KING RICHARD. Wrath-kindled gentlemen, be ruled by me. Let’s purge this choler without letting blood. This we prescribe, though no physician; Deep malice makes too deep incision. Forget, forgive, conclude and be agreed; Our doctors say this is no month to bleed. Good uncle, let this end where it begun; We’ll calm the Duke of Norfolk, you your son.

GAUNT. To be a make-peace shall become my age. Throw down, my son, the Duke of Norfolk’s gage.

KING RICHARD. And, Norfolk, throw down his.

GAUNT. When, Harry, when? Obedience bids I should not bid again.

KING RICHARD. Norfolk, throw down, we bid; there is no boot.

MOWBRAY. Myself I throw, dread sovereign, at thy foot. My life thou shalt command, but not my shame. The one my duty owes; but my fair name, Despite of death that lives upon my grave, To dark dishonour’s use thou shalt not have. I am disgraced, impeached, and baffled here, Pierced to the soul with slander’s venomed spear, The which no balm can cure but his heart-blood Which breathed this poison.

KING RICHARD. Rage must be withstood. Give me his gage. Lions make leopards tame.

MOWBRAY. Yea, but not change his spots. Take but my shame, And I resign my gage. My dear dear lord, The purest treasure mortal times afford Is spotless reputation; that away, Men are but gilded loam or painted clay. A jewel in a ten-times-barred-up chest Is a bold spirit in a loyal breast. Mine honour is my life; both grow in one. Take honour from me, and my life is done. Then, dear my liege, mine honour let me try; In that I live, and for that will I die.

KING RICHARD. Cousin, throw up your gage; do you begin.

BOLINGBROKE. O, God defend my soul from such deep sin! Shall I seem crest-fallen in my father’s sight? Or with pale beggar-fear impeach my height Before this outdared dastard? Ere my tongue Shall wound my honour with such feeble wrong Or sound so base a parle, my teeth shall tear The slavish motive of recanting fear And spit it bleeding in his high disgrace, Where shame doth harbour, even in Mowbray’s face.

[Exit Gaunt.]

KING RICHARD. We were not born to sue, but to command; Which since we cannot do to make you friends, Be ready, as your lives shall answer it, At Coventry upon Saint Lambert’s day. There shall your swords and lances arbitrate The swelling difference of your settled hate. Since we cannot atone you, we shall see Justice design the victor’s chivalry. Lord Marshal, command our officers-at-arms Be ready to direct these home alarms.

SCENE II. The same. A room in the Duke of Lancaster’s palace.

Enter John of Gaunt with the Duchess of Gloucester.

GAUNT. Alas, the part I had in Woodstock’s blood Doth more solicit me than your exclaims To stir against the butchers of his life. But since correction lieth in those hands Which made the fault that we cannot correct, Put we our quarrel to the will of heaven, Who, when they see the hours ripe on earth, Will rain hot vengeance on offenders’ heads.

DUCHESS. Finds brotherhood in thee no sharper spur? Hath love in thy old blood no living fire? Edward’s seven sons, whereof thyself art one, Were as seven vials of his sacred blood, Or seven fair branches springing from one root. Some of those seven are dried by nature’s course, Some of those branches by the Destinies cut; But Thomas, my dear lord, my life, my Gloucester, One vial full of Edward’s sacred blood, One flourishing branch of his most royal root, Is cracked, and all the precious liquor spilt, Is hacked down, and his summer leaves all faded, By envy’s hand and murder’s bloody axe. Ah, Gaunt! his blood was thine! That bed, that womb, That metal, that self mould, that fashioned thee Made him a man; and though thou livest and breathest, Yet art thou slain in him. Thou dost consent In some large measure to thy father’s death In that thou seest thy wretched brother die, Who was the model of thy father’s life. Call it not patience, Gaunt; it is despair. In suff’ring thus thy brother to be slaughtered, Thou showest the naked pathway to thy life, Teaching stern murder how to butcher thee. That which in mean men we entitle patience Is pale cold cowardice in noble breasts. What shall I say? To safeguard thine own life, The best way is to venge my Gloucester’s death.

GAUNT. God’s is the quarrel; for God’s substitute, His deputy anointed in His sight, Hath caused his death, the which if wrongfully, Let heaven revenge, for I may never lift An angry arm against His minister.

DUCHESS. Where then, alas! may I complain myself?

GAUNT. To God, the widow’s champion and defence.

DUCHESS. Why then, I will. Farewell, old Gaunt. Thou goest to Coventry, there to behold Our cousin Hereford and fell Mowbray fight. O, sit my husband’s wrongs on Hereford’s spear, That it may enter butcher Mowbray’s breast! Or if misfortune miss the first career, Be Mowbray’s sins so heavy in his bosom That they may break his foaming courser’s back And throw the rider headlong in the lists, A caitiff recreant to my cousin Hereford! Farewell, old Gaunt. Thy sometimes brother’s wife With her companion, Grief, must end her life.

GAUNT. Sister, farewell; I must to Coventry. As much good stay with thee as go with me!

DUCHESS. Yet one word more. Grief boundeth where it falls, Not with the empty hollowness, but weight. I take my leave before I have begun, For sorrow ends not when it seemeth done. Commend me to thy brother, Edmund York. Lo, this is all. Nay, yet depart not so! Though this be all, do not so quickly go; I shall remember more. Bid him—ah, what?— With all good speed at Plashy visit me. Alack, and what shall good old York there see But empty lodgings and unfurnished walls, Unpeopled offices, untrodden stones? And what hear there for welcome but my groans? Therefore commend me; let him not come there To seek out sorrow that dwells everywhere. Desolate, desolate, will I hence and die! The last leave of thee takes my weeping eye.

SCENE III. Open Space, near Coventry. Lists set out, and a Throne. Heralds, &c., attending.

Enter the Lord Marshal and the Duke of Aumerle.

MARSHAL. My Lord Aumerle, is Harry Hereford armed?

AUMERLE. Yea, at all points, and longs to enter in.

MARSHAL. The Duke of Norfolk, sprightfully and bold, Stays but the summons of the appelant’s trumpet.

AUMERLE. Why then, the champions are prepared and stay For nothing but his Majesty’s approach.

Enter King Richard, who takes his seat on his Throne; Gaunt, Bushy, Bagot, Green and others, who take their places. A trumpet is sounded, and answered by another trumpet within. Then enter Mowbray in armour, defendant, preceded by a Herald.

KING RICHARD. Marshal, demand of yonder champion The cause of his arrival here in arms. Ask him his name, and orderly proceed To swear him in the justice of his cause.

MARSHAL. In God’s name and the King’s, say who thou art, And why thou comest thus knightly clad in arms, Against what man thou com’st, and what thy quarrel. Speak truly, on thy knighthood and thy oath, As so defend thee heaven and thy valour.

MOWBRAY. My name is Thomas Mowbray, Duke of Norfolk, Who hither come engaged by my oath— Which God defend a knight should violate!— Both to defend my loyalty and truth To God, my King, and my succeeding issue, Against the Duke of Hereford that appeals me, And, by the grace of God and this mine arm, To prove him, in defending of myself, A traitor to my God, my king, and me; And as I truly fight, defend me heaven.

[He takes his seat.]

Trumpet sounds. Enter Bolingbroke, appellant, in armour, preceded by a Herald.

KING RICHARD. Marshal, ask yonder knight in arms Both who he is and why he cometh hither Thus plated in habiliments of war, And formally, according to our law, Depose him in the justice of his cause.

MARSHAL. What is thy name? And wherefore com’st thou hither Before King Richard in his royal lists? Against whom comest thou? and what’s thy quarrel? Speak like a true knight, so defend thee heaven!

BOLINGBROKE. Harry of Hereford, Lancaster, and Derby, Am I, who ready here do stand in arms To prove by God’s grace and my body’s valour, In lists, on Thomas Mowbray, Duke of Norfolk, That he’s a traitor foul and dangerous, To God of heaven, King Richard, and to me. And as I truly fight, defend me heaven.

MARSHAL. On pain of death, no person be so bold Or daring-hardy as to touch the lists, Except the Marshal and such officers Appointed to direct these fair designs.

BOLINGBROKE. Lord Marshal, let me kiss my sovereign’s hand And bow my knee before his Majesty. For Mowbray and myself are like two men That vow a long and weary pilgrimage; Then let us take a ceremonious leave And loving farewell of our several friends.

MARSHAL. The appellant in all duty greets your highness And craves to kiss your hand and take his leave.

KING RICHARD. [Descends from his throne.] We will descend and fold him in our arms. Cousin of Hereford, as thy cause is right, So be thy fortune in this royal fight. Farewell, my blood, which if today thou shed, Lament we may, but not revenge thee dead.

BOLINGBROKE. O, let no noble eye profane a tear For me, if I be gored with Mowbray’s spear. As confident as is the falcon’s flight Against a bird, do I with Mowbray fight. My loving lord, I take my leave of you. Of you, my noble cousin, Lord Aumerle; Not sick, although I have to do with death, But lusty, young, and cheerly drawing breath. Lo! as at English feasts, so I regreet The daintiest last, to make the end most sweet. O thou, the earthly author of my blood, Whose youthful spirit, in me regenerate, Doth with a twofold vigour lift me up To reach at victory above my head, Add proof unto mine armour with thy prayers, And with thy blessings steel my lance’s point, That it may enter Mowbray’s waxen coat And furbish new the name of John o’ Gaunt, Even in the lusty haviour of his son.

GAUNT. God in thy good cause make thee prosperous. Be swift like lightning in the execution, And let thy blows, doubly redoubled, Fall like amazing thunder on the casque Of thy adverse pernicious enemy. Rouse up thy youthful blood, be valiant, and live.

BOLINGBROKE. Mine innocence and Saint George to thrive!

MOWBRAY. [Rising.] However God or fortune cast my lot, There lives or dies, true to King Richard’s throne, A loyal, just, and upright gentleman. Never did captive with a freer heart Cast off his chains of bondage and embrace His golden uncontrolled enfranchisement, More than my dancing soul doth celebrate This feast of battle with mine adversary. Most mighty liege, and my companion peers, Take from my mouth the wish of happy years. As gentle and as jocund as to jest Go I to fight. Truth hath a quiet breast.

KING RICHARD. Farewell, my lord. Securely I espy Virtue with valour couched in thine eye. Order the trial, Marshal, and begin.

[The King and the Lords return to their seats.]

MARSHAL. Harry of Hereford, Lancaster, and Derby, Receive thy lance; and God defend the right.

BOLINGBROKE. [Rising.] Strong as a tower in hope, I cry “Amen”!

MARSHAL. [To an officer.] Go bear this lance to Thomas, Duke of Norfolk.

FIRST HERALD. Harry of Hereford, Lancaster, and Derby, Stands here for God, his sovereign, and himself, On pain to be found false and recreant, To prove the Duke of Norfolk, Thomas Mowbray, A traitor to his God, his King, and him, And dares him to set forward to the fight.

SECOND HERALD. Here standeth Thomas Mowbray, Duke of Norfolk, On pain to be found false and recreant, Both to defend himself and to approve Henry of Hereford, Lancaster, and Derby, To God, his sovereign, and to him disloyal, Courageously and with a free desire, Attending but the signal to begin.

MARSHAL. Sound trumpets, and set forward, combatants.

[A charge sounded.]

Stay! the King hath thrown his warder down.

KING RICHARD. Let them lay by their helmets and their spears, And both return back to their chairs again. Withdraw with us, and let the trumpets sound While we return these dukes what we decree.

[A long flourish.]

[To the Combatants.] Draw near, And list what with our council we have done. For that our kingdom’s earth should not be soiled With that dear blood which it hath fostered; And for our eyes do hate the dire aspect Of civil wounds ploughed up with neighbours’ swords; And for we think the eagle-winged pride Of sky-aspiring and ambitious thoughts, With rival-hating envy, set on you To wake our peace, which in our country’s cradle Draws the sweet infant breath of gentle sleep, Which so roused up with boist’rous untuned drums, With harsh-resounding trumpets’ dreadful bray, And grating shock of wrathful iron arms, Might from our quiet confines fright fair peace And make us wade even in our kindred’s blood: Therefore we banish you our territories. You, cousin Hereford, upon pain of life, Till twice five summers have enriched our fields Shall not regreet our fair dominions, But tread the stranger paths of banishment.

BOLINGBROKE. Your will be done. This must my comfort be: That sun that warms you here shall shine on me, And those his golden beams to you here lent Shall point on me and gild my banishment.

KING RICHARD. Norfolk, for thee remains a heavier doom, Which I with some unwillingness pronounce: The sly slow hours shall not determinate The dateless limit of thy dear exile. The hopeless word of “never to return” Breathe I against thee, upon pain of life.

MOWBRAY. A heavy sentence, my most sovereign liege, And all unlooked for from your highness’ mouth. A dearer merit, not so deep a maim As to be cast forth in the common air, Have I deserved at your highness’ hands. The language I have learnt these forty years, My native English, now I must forgo; And now my tongue’s use is to me no more Than an unstringed viol or a harp, Or like a cunning instrument cased up Or, being open, put into his hands That knows no touch to tune the harmony. Within my mouth you have engaoled my tongue, Doubly portcullised with my teeth and lips, And dull unfeeling, barren ignorance Is made my gaoler to attend on me. I am too old to fawn upon a nurse, Too far in years to be a pupil now. What is thy sentence, then, but speechless death, Which robs my tongue from breathing native breath?

KING RICHARD. It boots thee not to be compassionate. After our sentence plaining comes too late.

MOWBRAY. Then thus I turn me from my country’s light, To dwell in solemn shades of endless night.

[Retiring.]

KING RICHARD. Return again, and take an oath with thee. Lay on our royal sword your banished hands. Swear by the duty that you owe to God— Our part therein we banish with yourselves— To keep the oath that we administer: You never shall, so help you truth and God, Embrace each other’s love in banishment; Nor never look upon each other’s face; Nor never write, regreet, nor reconcile This louring tempest of your home-bred hate; Nor never by advised purpose meet To plot, contrive, or complot any ill ’Gainst us, our state, our subjects, or our land.

BOLINGBROKE. I swear.

MOWBRAY. And I, to keep all this.

BOLINGBROKE. Norfolk, so far as to mine enemy: By this time, had the King permitted us, One of our souls had wandered in the air, Banished this frail sepulchre of our flesh, As now our flesh is banished from this land. Confess thy treasons ere thou fly the realm. Since thou hast far to go, bear not along The clogging burden of a guilty soul.

MOWBRAY. No, Bolingbroke. If ever I were traitor, My name be blotted from the book of life, And I from heaven banished as from hence! But what thou art, God, thou, and I do know; And all too soon, I fear, the King shall rue. Farewell, my liege. Now no way can I stray; Save back to England, all the world’s my way.

KING RICHARD. Uncle, even in the glasses of thine eyes I see thy grieved heart. Thy sad aspect Hath from the number of his banished years Plucked four away. [To Bolingbroke.] Six frozen winters spent, Return with welcome home from banishment.

BOLINGBROKE. How long a time lies in one little word! Four lagging winters and four wanton springs End in a word: such is the breath of kings.

GAUNT. I thank my liege that in regard of me He shortens four years of my son’s exile; But little vantage shall I reap thereby, For, ere the six years that he hath to spend Can change their moons and bring their times about, My oil-dried lamp and time-bewasted light Shall be extinct with age and endless night; My inch of taper will be burnt and done, And blindfold death not let me see my son.

KING RICHARD. Why, uncle, thou hast many years to live.

GAUNT. But not a minute, king, that thou canst give. Shorten my days thou canst with sullen sorrow, And pluck nights from me, but not lend a morrow. Thou canst help time to furrow me with age, But stop no wrinkle in his pilgrimage; Thy word is current with him for my death, But dead, thy kingdom cannot buy my breath.

KING RICHARD. Thy son is banished upon good advice, Whereto thy tongue a party-verdict gave. Why at our justice seem’st thou then to lour?

GAUNT. Things sweet to taste prove in digestion sour. You urged me as a judge, but I had rather You would have bid me argue like a father. O, had it been a stranger, not my child, To smooth his fault I should have been more mild. A partial slander sought I to avoid, And in the sentence my own life destroyed. Alas, I looked when some of you should say I was too strict to make mine own away; But you gave leave to my unwilling tongue Against my will to do myself this wrong.

KING RICHARD. Cousin, farewell, and, uncle, bid him so. Six years we banish him, and he shall go.

[Flourish. Exit King Richard and Train.]

AUMERLE. Cousin, farewell. What presence must not know, From where you do remain let paper show.

MARSHAL. My lord, no leave take I, for I will ride, As far as land will let me, by your side.

GAUNT. O, to what purpose dost thou hoard thy words, That thou return’st no greeting to thy friends?

BOLINGBROKE. I have too few to take my leave of you, When the tongue’s office should be prodigal To breathe the abundant dolour of the heart.

GAUNT. Thy grief is but thy absence for a time.

BOLINGBROKE. Joy absent, grief is present for that time.

GAUNT. What is six winters? They are quickly gone.

BOLINGBROKE. To men in joy; but grief makes one hour ten.

GAUNT. Call it a travel that thou tak’st for pleasure.

BOLINGBROKE. My heart will sigh when I miscall it so, Which finds it an enforced pilgrimage.

GAUNT. The sullen passage of thy weary steps Esteem as foil wherein thou art to set The precious jewel of thy home return.

BOLINGBROKE. Nay, rather, every tedious stride I make Will but remember me what a deal of world I wander from the jewels that I love. Must I not serve a long apprenticehood To foreign passages, and in the end, Having my freedom, boast of nothing else But that I was a journeyman to grief?

GAUNT. All places that the eye of heaven visits Are to a wise man ports and happy havens. Teach thy necessity to reason thus: There is no virtue like necessity. Think not the King did banish thee, But thou the King. Woe doth the heavier sit Where it perceives it is but faintly borne. Go, say I sent thee forth to purchase honour, And not the King exiled thee; or suppose Devouring pestilence hangs in our air, And thou art flying to a fresher clime. Look what thy soul holds dear, imagine it To lie that way thou goest, not whence thou com’st. Suppose the singing birds musicians, The grass whereon thou tread’st the presence strewed, The flowers fair ladies, and thy steps no more Than a delightful measure or a dance; For gnarling sorrow hath less power to bite The man that mocks at it and sets it light.

BOLINGBROKE. O, who can hold a fire in his hand By thinking on the frosty Caucasus? Or cloy the hungry edge of appetite By bare imagination of a feast? Or wallow naked in December snow By thinking on fantastic summer’s heat? O no, the apprehension of the good Gives but the greater feeling to the worse. Fell sorrow’s tooth doth never rankle more Than when it bites but lanceth not the sore.

GAUNT. Come, come, my son, I’ll bring thee on thy way. Had I thy youth and cause, I would not stay.

BOLINGBROKE. Then, England’s ground, farewell; sweet soil, adieu, My mother and my nurse that bears me yet! Where’er I wander, boast of this I can, Though banished, yet a true-born Englishman.

SCENE IV. London. A Room in the King’s Castle

Enter King Richard, Green and Bagot at one door; Aumerle at another.

KING RICHARD. We did observe.—Cousin Aumerle, How far brought you high Hereford on his way?

AUMERLE. I brought high Hereford, if you call him so, But to the next highway, and there I left him.

KING RICHARD. And say, what store of parting tears were shed?

AUMERLE. Faith, none for me, except the northeast wind, Which then blew bitterly against our faces, Awaked the sleeping rheum, and so by chance Did grace our hollow parting with a tear.

KING RICHARD. What said our cousin when you parted with him?

AUMERLE. “Farewell.” And, for my heart disdained that my tongue Should so profane the word, that taught me craft To counterfeit oppression of such grief That words seemed buried in my sorrow’s grave. Marry, would the word “farewell” have lengthened hours And added years to his short banishment, He should have had a volume of farewells, But since it would not, he had none of me.

KING RICHARD. He is our cousin, cousin, but ’tis doubt, When time shall call him home from banishment, Whether our kinsman come to see his friends. Ourself and Bushy, Bagot here and Green, Observed his courtship to the common people, How he did seem to dive into their hearts With humble and familiar courtesy, What reverence he did throw away on slaves, Wooing poor craftsmen with the craft of smiles And patient underbearing of his fortune, As ’twere to banish their affects with him. Off goes his bonnet to an oyster-wench; A brace of draymen bid God speed him well, And had the tribute of his supple knee, With “Thanks, my countrymen, my loving friends”, As were our England in reversion his, And he our subjects’ next degree in hope.

GREEN. Well, he is gone, and with him go these thoughts. Now for the rebels which stand out in Ireland, Expedient manage must be made, my liege, Ere further leisure yield them further means For their advantage and your highness’ loss.

KING RICHARD. We will ourself in person to this war. And, for our coffers, with too great a court And liberal largess, are grown somewhat light, We are enforced to farm our royal realm, The revenue whereof shall furnish us For our affairs in hand. If that come short, Our substitutes at home shall have blank charters Whereto, when they shall know what men are rich, They shall subscribe them for large sums of gold, And send them after to supply our wants; For we will make for Ireland presently.

Enter Bushy.

Bushy, what news?

BUSHY. Old John of Gaunt is grievous sick, my lord, Suddenly taken, and hath sent posthaste To entreat your Majesty to visit him.

KING RICHARD. Where lies he?

BUSHY. At Ely House.

KING RICHARD. Now put it, God, in his physician’s mind To help him to his grave immediately! The lining of his coffers shall make coats To deck our soldiers for these Irish wars. Come, gentlemen, let’s all go visit him. Pray God we may make haste and come too late!

SCENE I. London. An Apartment in Ely House.

Gaunt on a couch; the Duke of York and Others standing by him.

GAUNT. Will the King come, that I may breathe my last In wholesome counsel to his unstaid youth?

YORK. Vex not yourself, nor strive not with your breath, For all in vain comes counsel to his ear.

GAUNT. O, but they say the tongues of dying men Enforce attention like deep harmony. Where words are scarce, they are seldom spent in vain, For they breathe truth that breathe their words in pain. He that no more must say is listened more Than they whom youth and ease have taught to glose. More are men’s ends marked than their lives before. The setting sun and music at the close, As the last taste of sweets, is sweetest last, Writ in remembrance more than things long past. Though Richard my life’s counsel would not hear, My death’s sad tale may yet undeaf his ear.

YORK. No, it is stopped with other flattering sounds, As praises, of whose state the wise are fond; Lascivious metres, to whose venom sound The open ear of youth doth always listen; Report of fashions in proud Italy, Whose manners still our tardy-apish nation Limps after in base imitation. Where doth the world thrust forth a vanity— So it be new, there’s no respect how vile— That is not quickly buzzed into his ears? Then all too late comes counsel to be heard, Where will doth mutiny with wit’s regard. Direct not him whose way himself will choose. ’Tis breath thou lack’st, and that breath wilt thou lose.

GAUNT. Methinks I am a prophet new inspired, And thus expiring do foretell of him: His rash fierce blaze of riot cannot last, For violent fires soon burn out themselves; Small showers last long, but sudden storms are short; He tires betimes that spurs too fast betimes; With eager feeding food doth choke the feeder. Light vanity, insatiate cormorant, Consuming means, soon preys upon itself. This royal throne of kings, this sceptered isle, This earth of majesty, this seat of Mars, This other Eden, demi-paradise, This fortress built by Nature for herself Against infection and the hand of war, This happy breed of men, this little world, This precious stone set in the silver sea, Which serves it in the office of a wall Or as a moat defensive to a house, Against the envy of less happier lands; This blessed plot, this earth, this realm, this England, This nurse, this teeming womb of royal kings, Feared by their breed, and famous by their birth, Renowned for their deeds as far from home, For Christian service and true chivalry, As is the sepulchre in stubborn Jewry Of the world’s ransom, blessed Mary’s Son, This land of such dear souls, this dear dear land, Dear for her reputation through the world, Is now leased out—I die pronouncing it— Like to a tenement or pelting farm. England, bound in with the triumphant sea, Whose rocky shore beats back the envious siege Of wat’ry Neptune, is now bound in with shame, With inky blots and rotten parchment bonds That England that was wont to conquer others Hath made a shameful conquest of itself. Ah, would the scandal vanish with my life, How happy then were my ensuing death!

Enter King Richard and Queen; Aumerle, Bushy, Green, Bagot, Ross and Willoughby.

YORK. The King is come. Deal mildly with his youth, For young hot colts, being raged, do rage the more.

QUEEN. How fares our noble uncle, Lancaster?

KING RICHARD. What comfort, man? How is’t with aged Gaunt?

GAUNT. O, how that name befits my composition! Old Gaunt indeed, and gaunt in being old. Within me grief hath kept a tedious fast, And who abstains from meat that is not gaunt? For sleeping England long time have I watched; Watching breeds leanness, leanness is all gaunt. The pleasure that some fathers feed upon Is my strict fast—I mean my children’s looks, And therein fasting, hast thou made me gaunt. Gaunt am I for the grave, gaunt as a grave, Whose hollow womb inherits nought but bones.

KING RICHARD. Can sick men play so nicely with their names?

GAUNT. No, misery makes sport to mock itself. Since thou dost seek to kill my name in me, I mock my name, great king, to flatter thee.

KING RICHARD. Should dying men flatter with those that live?

GAUNT. No, no, men living flatter those that die.

KING RICHARD. Thou, now a-dying, sayest thou flatterest me.

GAUNT. O, no, thou diest, though I the sicker be.

KING RICHARD. I am in health, I breathe, and see thee ill.

GAUNT. Now, He that made me knows I see thee ill, Ill in myself to see, and in thee seeing ill. Thy death-bed is no lesser than thy land, Wherein thou liest in reputation sick; And thou, too careless patient as thou art, Committ’st thy anointed body to the cure Of those physicians that first wounded thee. A thousand flatterers sit within thy crown, Whose compass is no bigger than thy head; And yet, encaged in so small a verge, The waste is no whit lesser than thy land. O, had thy grandsire with a prophet’s eye Seen how his son’s son should destroy his sons, From forth thy reach he would have laid thy shame, Deposing thee before thou wert possessed, Which art possessed now to depose thyself. Why, cousin, wert thou regent of the world, It were a shame to let this land by lease; But for thy world enjoying but this land, Is it not more than shame to shame it so? Landlord of England art thou now, not king. Thy state of law is bondslave to the law, And thou—

KING RICHARD. A lunatic lean-witted fool, Presuming on an ague’s privilege, Darest with thy frozen admonition Make pale our cheek, chasing the royal blood With fury from his native residence. Now, by my seat’s right royal majesty, Wert thou not brother to great Edward’s son, This tongue that runs so roundly in thy head Should run thy head from thy unreverent shoulders.

GAUNT. O! spare me not, my brother Edward’s son, For that I was his father Edward’s son. That blood already, like the pelican, Hast thou tapped out, and drunkenly caroused. My brother Gloucester, plain well-meaning soul, Whom fair befall in heaven ’mongst happy souls!— May be a precedent and witness good That thou respect’st not spilling Edward’s blood. Join with the present sickness that I have, And thy unkindness be like crooked age To crop at once a too-long withered flower. Live in thy shame, but die not shame with thee! These words hereafter thy tormentors be! Convey me to my bed, then to my grave. Love they to live that love and honour have.

[Exit, borne off by his Attendants.]

KING RICHARD. And let them die that age and sullens have, For both hast thou, and both become the grave.

YORK. I do beseech your Majesty, impute his words To wayward sickliness and age in him. He loves you, on my life, and holds you dear As Harry, Duke of Hereford, were he here.

KING RICHARD. Right, you say true: as Hereford’s love, so his; As theirs, so mine; and all be as it is.

NORTHUMBERLAND. My liege, old Gaunt commends him to your Majesty.

KING RICHARD. What says he?

NORTHUMBERLAND. Nay, nothing; all is said. His tongue is now a stringless instrument; Words, life, and all, old Lancaster hath spent.

YORK. Be York the next that must be bankrupt so! Though death be poor, it ends a mortal woe.

KING RICHARD. The ripest fruit first falls, and so doth he. His time is spent; our pilgrimage must be. So much for that. Now for our Irish wars: We must supplant those rough rug-headed kerns, Which live like venom where no venom else But only they have privilege to live. And, for these great affairs do ask some charge, Towards our assistance we do seize to us The plate, coin, revenues, and moveables Whereof our uncle Gaunt did stand possessed.

YORK. How long shall I be patient? Ah, how long Shall tender duty make me suffer wrong? Not Gloucester’s death, nor Hereford’s banishment, Nor Gaunt’s rebukes, nor England’s private wrongs, Nor the prevention of poor Bolingbroke About his marriage, nor my own disgrace, Have ever made me sour my patient cheek, Or bend one wrinkle on my sovereign’s face. I am the last of noble Edward’s sons, Of whom thy father, Prince of Wales, was first. In war was never lion raged more fierce, In peace was never gentle lamb more mild, Than was that young and princely gentleman. His face thou hast, for even so looked he, Accomplished with the number of thy hours; But when he frowned, it was against the French And not against his friends. His noble hand Did win what he did spend, and spent not that Which his triumphant father’s hand had won. His hands were guilty of no kindred’s blood, But bloody with the enemies of his kin. O Richard! York is too far gone with grief, Or else he never would compare between.

KING RICHARD. Why, uncle, what’s the matter?

YORK. O my liege. Pardon me, if you please; if not, I, pleased Not to be pardoned, am content withal. Seek you to seize and gripe into your hands The royalties and rights of banished Hereford? Is not Gaunt dead? And doth not Hereford live? Was not Gaunt just? And is not Harry true? Did not the one deserve to have an heir? Is not his heir a well-deserving son? Take Hereford’s rights away, and take from Time His charters and his customary rights; Let not tomorrow then ensue today; Be not thyself; for how art thou a king But by fair sequence and succession? Now, afore God—God forbid I say true!— If you do wrongfully seize Hereford’s rights, Call in the letters patents that he hath By his attorneys-general to sue His livery, and deny his offered homage, You pluck a thousand dangers on your head, You lose a thousand well-disposed hearts, And prick my tender patience to those thoughts Which honour and allegiance cannot think.

KING RICHARD. Think what you will, we seize into our hands His plate, his goods, his money, and his lands.

YORK. I’ll not be by the while. My liege, farewell. What will ensue hereof there’s none can tell; But by bad courses may be understood That their events can never fall out good.

KING RICHARD. Go, Bushy, to the Earl of Wiltshire straight. Bid him repair to us to Ely House To see this business. Tomorrow next We will for Ireland, and ’tis time, I trow. And we create, in absence of ourself, Our Uncle York Lord Governor of England, For he is just, and always loved us well. Come on, our queen. Tomorrow must we part; Be merry, for our time of stay is short.

[Exeunt King, Queen, Bushy, Aumerle, Green and Bagot.]

NORTHUMBERLAND. Well, lords, the Duke of Lancaster is dead.

ROSS. And living too, for now his son is Duke.

WILLOUGHBY. Barely in title, not in revenues.

NORTHUMBERLAND. Richly in both, if justice had her right.

ROSS. My heart is great, but it must break with silence Ere’t be disburdened with a liberal tongue.

NORTHUMBERLAND. Nay, speak thy mind, and let him ne’er speak more That speaks thy words again to do thee harm!

WILLOUGHBY. Tends that thou wouldst speak to the Duke of Hereford? If it be so, out with it boldly, man. Quick is mine ear to hear of good towards him.

ROSS. No good at all that I can do for him, Unless you call it good to pity him, Bereft and gelded of his patrimony.

NORTHUMBERLAND. Now, afore God, ’tis shame such wrongs are borne In him, a royal prince, and many moe Of noble blood in this declining land. The King is not himself, but basely led By flatterers; and what they will inform, Merely in hate ’gainst any of us all, That will the King severely prosecute ’Gainst us, our lives, our children, and our heirs.

ROSS. The commons hath he pilled with grievous taxes, And quite lost their hearts. The nobles hath he fined For ancient quarrels and quite lost their hearts.

WILLOUGHBY. And daily new exactions are devised, As blanks, benevolences, and I wot not what. But what, i’ God’s name, doth become of this?

NORTHUMBERLAND. Wars hath not wasted it, for warred he hath not, But basely yielded upon compromise That which his ancestors achieved with blows. More hath he spent in peace than they in wars.

ROSS. The Earl of Wiltshire hath the realm in farm.

WILLOUGHBY. The King’s grown bankrupt like a broken man.

NORTHUMBERLAND. Reproach and dissolution hangeth over him.

ROSS. He hath not money for these Irish wars, His burdenous taxations notwithstanding, But by the robbing of the banished Duke.

NORTHUMBERLAND. His noble kinsman. Most degenerate king! But, lords, we hear this fearful tempest sing, Yet seek no shelter to avoid the storm; We see the wind sit sore upon our sails, And yet we strike not, but securely perish.

ROSS. We see the very wrack that we must suffer; And unavoided is the danger now For suffering so the causes of our wrack.

NORTHUMBERLAND. Not so. Even through the hollow eyes of death I spy life peering; but I dare not say How near the tidings of our comfort is.

WILLOUGHBY. Nay, let us share thy thoughts as thou dost ours.

ROSS. Be confident to speak, Northumberland. We three are but thyself, and, speaking so, Thy words are but as thoughts. Therefore be bold.

NORTHUMBERLAND. Then thus: I have from Le Port Blanc, a bay In Brittany, received intelligence That Harry Duke of Hereford, Rainold Lord Cobham, That late broke from the Duke of Exeter, His brother, Archbishop late of Canterbury, Sir Thomas Erpingham, Sir John Ramston, Sir John Norbery, Sir Robert Waterton, and Francis Coint, All these well furnished by the Duke of Brittany With eight tall ships, three thousand men of war, Are making hither with all due expedience, And shortly mean to touch our northern shore. Perhaps they had ere this, but that they stay The first departing of the king for Ireland. If then we shall shake off our slavish yoke, Imp out our drooping country’s broken wing, Redeem from broking pawn the blemished crown, Wipe off the dust that hides our sceptre’s gilt, And make high majesty look like itself, Away with me in post to Ravenspurgh. But if you faint, as fearing to do so, Stay and be secret, and myself will go.

ROSS. To horse, to horse! Urge doubts to them that fear.

WILLOUGHBY. Hold out my horse, and I will first be there.

SCENE II. The Same. A Room in the Castle.

Enter Queen, Bushy and Bagot.

BUSHY. Madam, your Majesty is too much sad. You promised, when you parted with the King, To lay aside life-harming heaviness And entertain a cheerful disposition.

QUEEN. To please the King I did; to please myself I cannot do it. Yet I know no cause Why I should welcome such a guest as grief, Save bidding farewell to so sweet a guest As my sweet Richard. Yet again methinks, Some unborn sorrow, ripe in Fortune’s womb, Is coming towards me, and my inward soul With nothing trembles. At something it grieves More than with parting from my lord the King.

BUSHY. Each substance of a grief hath twenty shadows, Which shows like grief itself, but is not so; For sorrow’s eye, glazed with blinding tears, Divides one thing entire to many objects, Like perspectives which, rightly gazed upon, Show nothing but confusion; eyed awry, Distinguish form. So your sweet Majesty, Looking awry upon your lord’s departure, Find shapes of grief more than himself to wail, Which, looked on as it is, is naught but shadows Of what it is not. Then, thrice-gracious Queen, More than your lord’s departure weep not. More is not seen, Or if it be, ’tis with false sorrow’s eye, Which for things true weeps things imaginary.

QUEEN. It may be so; but yet my inward soul Persuades me it is otherwise. Howe’er it be, I cannot but be sad—so heavy sad As thought, in thinking, on no thought I think, Makes me with heavy nothing faint and shrink.

BUSHY. ’Tis nothing but conceit, my gracious lady.

QUEEN. ’Tis nothing less. Conceit is still derived From some forefather grief. Mine is not so, For nothing hath begot my something grief, Or something hath the nothing that I grieve. ’Tis in reversion that I do possess, But what it is, that is not yet known what, I cannot name. ’Tis nameless woe, I wot.

Enter Green.

GREEN. God save your majesty! And well met, gentlemen. I hope the King is not yet shipped for Ireland.

QUEEN. Why hop’st thou so? ’Tis better hope he is, For his designs crave haste, his haste good hope. Then wherefore dost thou hope he is not shipped?

GREEN. That he, our hope, might have retired his power, And driven into despair an enemy’s hope Who strongly hath set footing in this land. The banished Bolingbroke repeals himself, And with uplifted arms is safe arrived At Ravenspurgh.

QUEEN. Now God in heaven forbid!

GREEN. Ah, madam, ’tis too true; and that is worse, The Lord Northumberland, his son young Harry Percy, The Lords of Ross, Beaumond, and Willoughby, With all their powerful friends, are fled to him.

BUSHY. Why have you not proclaimed Northumberland And all the rest revolted faction traitors?

GREEN. We have, whereupon the Earl of Worcester Hath broken his staff, resigned his stewardship, And all the household servants fled with him To Bolingbroke.

QUEEN. So, Green, thou art the midwife to my woe, And Bolingbroke my sorrow’s dismal heir. Now hath my soul brought forth her prodigy, And I, a gasping new-delivered mother, Have woe to woe, sorrow to sorrow joined.

BUSHY. Despair not, madam.

QUEEN. Who shall hinder me? I will despair and be at enmity With cozening hope. He is a flatterer, A parasite, a keeper-back of death, Who gently would dissolve the bands of life, Which false hope lingers in extremity.

GREEN. Here comes the Duke of York.

QUEEN. With signs of war about his aged neck. O! full of careful business are his looks! Uncle, for God’s sake, speak comfortable words.

YORK. Should I do so, I should belie my thoughts. Comfort’s in heaven, and we are on the earth, Where nothing lives but crosses, cares, and grief. Your husband, he is gone to save far off, Whilst others come to make him lose at home. Here am I left to underprop his land, Who, weak with age, cannot support myself. Now comes the sick hour that his surfeit made; Now shall he try his friends that flattered him.

SERVINGMAN. My lord, your son was gone before I came.

YORK. He was? Why, so! Go all which way it will! The nobles they are fled, the commons they are cold And will, I fear, revolt on Hereford’s side. Sirrah, get thee to Plashy, to my sister Gloucester; Bid her send me presently a thousand pound. Hold, take my ring.

SERVINGMAN. My lord, I had forgot to tell your lordship: Today, as I came by, I called there— But I shall grieve you to report the rest.

YORK. What is’t, knave?

SERVINGMAN. An hour before I came, the Duchess died.

YORK. God for his mercy, what a tide of woes Comes rushing on this woeful land at once! I know not what to do. I would to God, So my untruth had not provoked him to it, The King had cut off my head with my brother’s. What, are there no posts dispatched for Ireland? How shall we do for money for these wars? Come, sister—cousin, I would say, pray, pardon me. Go, fellow, get thee home; provide some carts And bring away the armour that is there.

[Exit Servingman.]

Gentlemen, will you go muster men? If I know how or which way to order these affairs Thus disorderly thrust into my hands, Never believe me. Both are my kinsmen. Th’ one is my sovereign, whom both my oath And duty bids defend; th’ other again Is my kinsman, whom the King hath wronged, Whom conscience and my kindred bids to right. Well, somewhat we must do. Come, cousin, I’ll dispose of you. Gentlemen, go muster up your men, And meet me presently at Berkeley Castle. I should to Plashy too, But time will not permit. All is uneven, And everything is left at six and seven.

[Exeunt York and Queen.]

BUSHY. The wind sits fair for news to go to Ireland, But none returns. For us to levy power Proportionable to the enemy Is all unpossible.

GREEN. Besides, our nearness to the King in love Is near the hate of those love not the King.

BAGOT. And that is the wavering commons, for their love Lies in their purses; and whoso empties them, By so much fills their hearts with deadly hate.

BUSHY. Wherein the King stands generally condemned.

BAGOT. If judgment lie in them, then so do we, Because we ever have been near the King.

GREEN. Well, I will for refuge straight to Bristol Castle. The Earl of Wiltshire is already there.

BUSHY. Thither will I with you, for little office Will the hateful commons perform for us, Except like curs to tear us all to pieces. Will you go along with us?

BAGOT. No, I will to Ireland to his Majesty. Farewell. If heart’s presages be not vain, We three here part that ne’er shall meet again.

BUSHY. That’s as York thrives to beat back Bolingbroke.

GREEN. Alas, poor Duke! The task he undertakes Is numb’ring sands and drinking oceans dry. Where one on his side fights, thousands will fly. Farewell at once, for once, for all, and ever.

BUSHY. Well, we may meet again.

BAGOT. I fear me, never.

SCENE III. The Wolds in Gloucestershire.

Enter Bolingbroke and Northumberland with Forces.

BOLINGBROKE. How far is it, my lord, to Berkeley now?

NORTHUMBERLAND. Believe me, noble lord, I am a stranger here in Gloucestershire. These high wild hills and rough uneven ways Draws out our miles and makes them wearisome. And yet your fair discourse hath been as sugar, Making the hard way sweet and delectable. But I bethink me what a weary way From Ravenspurgh to Cotshall will be found In Ross and Willoughby, wanting your company, Which, I protest, hath very much beguiled The tediousness and process of my travel. But theirs is sweetened with the hope to have The present benefit which I possess; And hope to joy is little less in joy Than hope enjoyed. By this the weary lords Shall make their way seem short as mine hath done By sight of what I have, your noble company.

BOLINGBROKE. Of much less value is my company Than your good words. But who comes here?

Enter Harry Percy.

NORTHUMBERLAND. It is my son, young Harry Percy, Sent from my brother Worcester, whencesoever. Harry, how fares your uncle?

PERCY. I had thought, my lord, to have learned his health of you.

NORTHUMBERLAND. Why, is he not with the Queen?

PERCY. No, my good lord. He hath forsook the court, Broken his staff of office, and dispersed The household of the King.

NORTHUMBERLAND. What was his reason? He was not so resolved when last we spake together.

PERCY. Because your lordship was proclaimed traitor. But he, my lord, is gone to Ravenspurgh To offer service to the Duke of Hereford, And sent me over by Berkeley to discover What power the Duke of York had levied there, Then with directions to repair to Ravenspurgh.

NORTHUMBERLAND. Have you forgot the Duke of Hereford, boy?

PERCY. No, my good lord; for that is not forgot Which ne’er I did remember. To my knowledge, I never in my life did look on him.

NORTHUMBERLAND. Then learn to know him now. This is the Duke.

PERCY. My gracious lord, I tender you my service, Such as it is, being tender, raw, and young, Which elder days shall ripen and confirm To more approved service and desert.

BOLINGBROKE. I thank thee, gentle Percy; and be sure I count myself in nothing else so happy As in a soul rememb’ring my good friends; And as my fortune ripens with thy love, It shall be still thy true love’s recompense. My heart this covenant makes, my hand thus seals it.

NORTHUMBERLAND. How far is it to Berkeley, and what stir Keeps good old York there with his men of war?

PERCY. There stands the castle by yon tuft of trees, Manned with three hundred men, as I have heard. And in it are the Lords of York, Berkeley, and Seymour, None else of name and noble estimate.

Enter Ross and Willoughby.

NORTHUMBERLAND. Here come the Lords of Ross and Willoughby, Bloody with spurring, fiery-red with haste.

BOLINGBROKE. Welcome, my lords. I wot your love pursues A banished traitor. All my treasury Is yet but unfelt thanks, which, more enriched, Shall be your love and labour’s recompense.

ROSS. Your presence makes us rich, most noble lord.

WILLOUGHBY. And far surmounts our labour to attain it.

BOLINGBROKE. Evermore thanks, the exchequer of the poor; Which, till my infant fortune comes to years, Stands for my bounty. But who comes here?

Enter Berkeley.

NORTHUMBERLAND. It is my Lord of Berkeley, as I guess.

BERKELEY. My Lord of Hereford, my message is to you.

BOLINGBROKE. My lord, my answer is—to “Lancaster”, And I am come to seek that name in England; And I must find that title in your tongue Before I make reply to aught you say.

BERKELEY. Mistake me not, my lord, ’tis not my meaning To rase one title of your honour out. To you, my lord, I come, what lord you will, From the most gracious regent of this land, The Duke of York, to know what pricks you on To take advantage of the absent time, And fright our native peace with self-borne arms.

Enter York, attended.

BOLINGBROKE. I shall not need transport my words by you. Here comes his Grace in person. My noble uncle!

YORK. Show me thy humble heart, and not thy knee, Whose duty is deceivable and false.

BOLINGBROKE. My gracious uncle—

YORK. Tut, tut! Grace me no grace, nor uncle me no uncle. I am no traitor’s uncle, and that word “grace” In an ungracious mouth is but profane. Why have those banished and forbidden legs Dared once to touch a dust of England’s ground? But then more why: why have they dared to march So many miles upon her peaceful bosom, Frighting her pale-faced villages with war And ostentation of despised arms? Com’st thou because the anointed king is hence? Why, foolish boy, the King is left behind, And in my loyal bosom lies his power. Were I but now lord of such hot youth As when brave Gaunt, thy father, and myself Rescued the Black Prince, that young Mars of men, From forth the ranks of many thousand French, O, then how quickly should this arm of mine, Now prisoner to the palsy, chastise thee And minister correction to thy fault!

BOLINGBROKE. My gracious uncle, let me know my fault. On what condition stands it and wherein?

YORK. Even in condition of the worst degree, In gross rebellion and detested treason. Thou art a banished man, and here art come, Before the expiration of thy time, In braving arms against thy sovereign.

BOLINGBROKE. As I was banished, I was banished Hereford; But as I come, I come for Lancaster. And, noble uncle, I beseech your Grace Look on my wrongs with an indifferent eye. You are my father, for methinks in you I see old Gaunt alive. O then, my father, Will you permit that I shall stand condemned A wandering vagabond, my rights and royalties Plucked from my arms perforce and given away To upstart unthrifts? Wherefore was I born? If that my cousin king be King in England, It must be granted I am Duke of Lancaster. You have a son, Aumerle, my noble cousin. Had you first died and he been thus trod down, He should have found his uncle Gaunt a father To rouse his wrongs and chase them to the bay. I am denied to sue my livery here, And yet my letters patents give me leave. My father’s goods are all distrained and sold, And these, and all, are all amiss employed. What would you have me do? I am a subject, And challenge law. Attorneys are denied me, And therefore personally I lay my claim To my inheritance of free descent.

NORTHUMBERLAND. The noble Duke hath been too much abused.

ROSS. It stands your Grace upon to do him right.

WILLOUGHBY. Base men by his endowments are made great.

YORK. My lords of England, let me tell you this: I have had feeling of my cousin’s wrongs And laboured all I could to do him right. But in this kind to come, in braving arms, Be his own carver and cut out his way To find out right with wrong, it may not be. And you that do abet him in this kind Cherish rebellion and are rebels all.

NORTHUMBERLAND. The noble Duke hath sworn his coming is But for his own; and for the right of that We all have strongly sworn to give him aid; And let him never see joy that breaks that oath!

YORK. Well, well, I see the issue of these arms. I cannot mend it, I must needs confess, Because my power is weak and all ill-left; But if I could, by Him that gave me life, I would attach you all and make you stoop Unto the sovereign mercy of the King. But since I cannot, be it known unto you I do remain as neuter. So fare you well— Unless you please to enter in the castle And there repose you for this night.

BOLINGBROKE. An offer, uncle, that we will accept; But we must win your Grace to go with us To Bristol Castle, which they say is held By Bushy, Bagot, and their complices, The caterpillars of the commonwealth, Which I have sworn to weed and pluck away.

YORK. It may be I will go with you; but yet I’ll pause, For I am loath to break our country’s laws. Nor friends nor foes, to me welcome you are. Things past redress are now with me past care.

SCENE IV. A camp in Wales.

Enter Earl of Salisbury and a Welsh Captain.

CAPTAIN. My Lord of Salisbury, we have stayed ten days And hardly kept our countrymen together, And yet we hear no tidings from the King. Therefore we will disperse ourselves. Farewell.

SALISBURY. Stay yet another day, thou trusty Welshman. The King reposeth all his confidence in thee.

CAPTAIN. ’Tis thought the King is dead. We will not stay. The bay trees in our country are all withered, And meteors fright the fixed stars of heaven; The pale-faced moon looks bloody on the earth, And lean-looked prophets whisper fearful change; Rich men look sad, and ruffians dance and leap, The one in fear to lose what they enjoy, The other to enjoy by rage and war. These signs forerun the death or fall of kings. Farewell. Our countrymen are gone and fled, As well assured Richard their king is dead.

SALISBURY. Ah, Richard! With the eyes of heavy mind I see thy glory like a shooting star Fall to the base earth from the firmament. Thy sun sets weeping in the lowly west, Witnessing storms to come, woe, and unrest. Thy friends are fled, to wait upon thy foes, And crossly to thy good all fortune goes.

SCENE I. Bristol. Bolingbroke’s camp.

Enter Bolingbroke, York, Northumberland, Harry Percy, Willoughby, Ross; Officers behind, with Bushy and Green, prisoners.

BOLINGBROKE. Bring forth these men. Bushy and Green, I will not vex your souls— Since presently your souls must part your bodies— With too much urging your pernicious lives, For ’twere no charity; yet to wash your blood From off my hands, here in the view of men I will unfold some causes of your deaths: You have misled a prince, a royal king, A happy gentleman in blood and lineaments, By you unhappied and disfigured clean. You have in manner with your sinful hours Made a divorce betwixt his queen and him, Broke the possession of a royal bed, And stained the beauty of a fair queen’s cheeks With tears drawn from her eyes by your foul wrongs. Myself, a prince by fortune of my birth, Near to the King in blood, and near in love Till you did make him misinterpret me, Have stooped my neck under your injuries And sighed my English breath in foreign clouds, Eating the bitter bread of banishment, Whilst you have fed upon my signories, Disparked my parks and felled my forest woods, From my own windows torn my household coat, Rased out my imprese, leaving me no sign Save men’s opinions and my living blood To show the world I am a gentleman. This and much more, much more than twice all this, Condemns you to the death. See them delivered over To execution and the hand of death.

BUSHY. More welcome is the stroke of death to me Than Bolingbroke to England. Lords, farewell.

GREEN. My comfort is that heaven will take our souls And plague injustice with the pains of hell.

BOLINGBROKE. My Lord Northumberland, see them dispatched.

[Exeunt Northumberland and Others, with Bushy and Green.]

Uncle, you say the Queen is at your house; For God’s sake, fairly let her be entreated. Tell her I send to her my kind commends; Take special care my greetings be delivered.

YORK. A gentleman of mine I have dispatched With letters of your love to her at large.

BOLINGBROKE. Thanks, gentle uncle. Come, lords, away, To fight with Glendower and his complices. A while to work, and after holiday.

SCENE II. The coast of Wales. A castle in view.

Flourish: drums and trumpets. Enter King Richard, the Bishop of Carlisle, Aumerle and soldiers.

KING RICHARD. Barkloughly Castle call they this at hand?

AUMERLE. Yea, my lord. How brooks your Grace the air After your late tossing on the breaking seas?

KING RICHARD. Needs must I like it well. I weep for joy To stand upon my kingdom once again. Dear earth, I do salute thee with my hand, Though rebels wound thee with their horses’ hoofs. As a long-parted mother with her child Plays fondly with her tears and smiles in meeting, So weeping-smiling greet I thee, my earth, And do thee favours with my royal hands. Feed not thy sovereign’s foe, my gentle earth, Nor with thy sweets comfort his ravenous sense, But let thy spiders, that suck up thy venom, And heavy-gaited toads lie in their way, Doing annoyance to the treacherous feet Which with usurping steps do trample thee. Yield stinging nettles to mine enemies; And when they from thy bosom pluck a flower, Guard it, I pray thee, with a lurking adder Whose double tongue may with a mortal touch Throw death upon thy sovereign’s enemies. Mock not my senseless conjuration, lords. This earth shall have a feeling, and these stones Prove armed soldiers, ere her native king Shall falter under foul rebellion’s arms.

CARLISLE. Fear not, my lord. That Power that made you king Hath power to keep you king in spite of all. The means that heaven yields must be embraced And not neglected; else if heaven would, And we will not. Heaven’s offer we refuse, The proffered means of succour and redress.

AUMERLE. He means, my lord, that we are too remiss, Whilst Bolingbroke, through our security, Grows strong and great in substance and in power.

KING RICHARD. Discomfortable cousin, know’st thou not That when the searching eye of heaven is hid Behind the globe that lights the lower world, Then thieves and robbers range abroad unseen In murders and in outrage boldly here; But when from under this terrestrial ball He fires the proud tops of the eastern pines And darts his light through every guilty hole, Then murders, treasons, and detested sins, The cloak of night being plucked from off their backs, Stand bare and naked, trembling at themselves? So when this thief, this traitor, Bolingbroke, Who all this while hath revelled in the night Whilst we were wand’ring with the Antipodes, Shall see us rising in our throne, the east, His treasons will sit blushing in his face, Not able to endure the sight of day, But self-affrighted, tremble at his sin. Not all the water in the rough rude sea Can wash the balm off from an anointed king; The breath of worldly men cannot depose The deputy elected by the Lord. For every man that Bolingbroke hath pressed To lift shrewd steel against our golden crown, God for his Richard hath in heavenly pay A glorious angel. Then, if angels fight, Weak men must fall, for heaven still guards the right.

Welcome, my lord. How far off lies your power?

SALISBURY. Nor near nor farther off, my gracious lord, Than this weak arm. Discomfort guides my tongue And bids me speak of nothing but despair. One day too late, I fear me, noble lord, Hath clouded all thy happy days on earth. O, call back yesterday, bid time return, And thou shalt have twelve thousand fighting men! Today, today, unhappy day, too late, O’erthrows thy joys, friends, fortune, and thy state; For all the Welshmen, hearing thou wert dead, Are gone to Bolingbroke, dispersed, and fled.

AUMERLE. Comfort, my liege. Why looks your Grace so pale?

KING RICHARD. But now, the blood of twenty thousand men Did triumph in my face, and they are fled; And till so much blood thither come again Have I not reason to look pale and dead? All souls that will be safe, fly from my side, For time hath set a blot upon my pride.

AUMERLE. Comfort, my liege. Remember who you are.

KING RICHARD. I had forgot myself. Am I not king? Awake, thou coward majesty! thou sleepest! Is not the King’s name twenty thousand names? Arm, arm, my name! A puny subject strikes At thy great glory. Look not to the ground, Ye favourites of a king. Are we not high? High be our thoughts. I know my uncle York Hath power enough to serve our turn. But who comes here?

Enter Sir Stephen Scroop.

SCROOP. More health and happiness betide my liege Than can my care-tuned tongue deliver him.

KING RICHARD. Mine ear is open and my heart prepared. The worst is worldly loss thou canst unfold. Say, is my kingdom lost? Why, ’twas my care, And what loss is it to be rid of care? Strives Bolingbroke to be as great as we? Greater he shall not be. If he serve God, We’ll serve Him too, and be his fellow so. Revolt our subjects? That we cannot mend. They break their faith to God as well as us. Cry woe, destruction, ruin, loss, decay. The worst is death, and death will have his day.

SCROOP. Glad am I that your highness is so armed To bear the tidings of calamity. Like an unseasonable stormy day Which makes the silver rivers drown their shores As if the world were all dissolved to tears, So high above his limits swells the rage Of Bolingbroke, covering your fearful land With hard bright steel and hearts harder than steel. Whitebeards have armed their thin and hairless scalps Against thy majesty; boys with women’s voices Strive to speak big and clap their female joints In stiff unwieldy arms against thy crown; Thy very beadsmen learn to bend their bows Of double-fatal yew against thy state; Yea, distaff-women manage rusty bills Against thy seat. Both young and old rebel, And all goes worse than I have power to tell.

KING RICHARD. Too well, too well thou tell’st a tale so ill. Where is the Earl of Wiltshire? Where is Bagot? What is become of Bushy? Where is Green? That they have let the dangerous enemy Measure our confines with such peaceful steps? If we prevail, their heads shall pay for it. I warrant they have made peace with Bolingbroke.

SCROOP. Peace have they made with him indeed, my lord.

KING RICHARD. O villains, vipers, damned without redemption! Dogs, easily won to fawn on any man! Snakes, in my heart-blood warmed, that sting my heart! Three Judases, each one thrice worse than Judas! Would they make peace? Terrible hell Make war upon their spotted souls for this!

SCROOP. Sweet love, I see, changing his property, Turns to the sourest and most deadly hate. Again uncurse their souls. Their peace is made With heads, and not with hands. Those whom you curse Have felt the worst of death’s destroying wound And lie full low, graved in the hollow ground.

AUMERLE. Is Bushy, Green, and the Earl of Wiltshire dead?

SCROOP. Ay, all of them at Bristol lost their heads.

AUMERLE. Where is the Duke my father with his power?

KING RICHARD. No matter where. Of comfort no man speak! Let’s talk of graves, of worms, and epitaphs, Make dust our paper, and with rainy eyes Write sorrow on the bosom of the earth. Let’s choose executors and talk of wills. And yet not so, for what can we bequeath Save our deposed bodies to the ground? Our lands, our lives, and all are Bolingbroke’s, And nothing can we call our own but death And that small model of the barren earth Which serves as paste and cover to our bones. For God’s sake let us sit upon the ground And tell sad stories of the death of kings— How some have been deposed, some slain in war, Some haunted by the ghosts they have deposed, Some poisoned by their wives, some sleeping killed, All murdered. For within the hollow crown That rounds the mortal temples of a king Keeps Death his court; and there the antic sits, Scoffing his state and grinning at his pomp, Allowing him a breath, a little scene, To monarchize, be feared, and kill with looks, Infusing him with self and vain conceit, As if this flesh which walls about our life Were brass impregnable; and, humoured thus, Comes at the last, and with a little pin Bores through his castle wall, and farewell, king! Cover your heads, and mock not flesh and blood With solemn reverence. Throw away respect, Tradition, form, and ceremonious duty, For you have but mistook me all this while. I live with bread like you, feel want, Taste grief, need friends. Subjected thus, How can you say to me I am a king?

CARLISLE. My lord, wise men ne’er sit and wail their woes, But presently prevent the ways to wail. To fear the foe, since fear oppresseth strength, Gives in your weakness strength unto your foe, And so your follies fight against yourself. Fear and be slain—no worse can come to fight; And fight and die is death destroying death, Where fearing dying pays death servile breath.

AUMERLE. My father hath a power. Enquire of him, And learn to make a body of a limb.

KING RICHARD. Thou chid’st me well. Proud Bolingbroke, I come To change blows with thee for our day of doom. This ague fit of fear is overblown; An easy task it is to win our own. Say, Scroop, where lies our uncle with his power? Speak sweetly, man, although thy looks be sour.

SCROOP. Men judge by the complexion of the sky The state in inclination of the day; So may you by my dull and heavy eye. My tongue hath but a heavier tale to say. I play the torturer by small and small To lengthen out the worst that must be spoken: Your uncle York is joined with Bolingbroke, And all your northern castles yielded up, And all your southern gentlemen in arms Upon his party.

KING RICHARD. Thou hast said enough. [To Aumerle.] Beshrew thee, cousin, which didst lead me forth Of that sweet way I was in to despair. What say you now? What comfort have we now? By heaven, I’ll hate him everlastingly That bids me be of comfort any more. Go to Flint Castle. There I’ll pine away; A king, woe’s slave, shall kingly woe obey. That power I have, discharge, and let them go To ear the land that hath some hope to grow, For I have none. Let no man speak again To alter this, for counsel is but vain.

AUMERLE. My liege, one word.

KING RICHARD. He does me double wrong That wounds me with the flatteries of his tongue. Discharge my followers. Let them hence away, From Richard’s night to Bolingbroke’s fair day.

SCENE III. Wales. Before Flint Castle.

Enter, with drum and colours, Bolingbroke and Forces; Northumberland and Others.

BOLINGBROKE. So that by this intelligence we learn The Welshmen are dispersed, and Salisbury Is gone to meet the King, who lately landed With some few private friends upon this coast.

NORTHUMBERLAND. The news is very fair and good, my lord: Richard not far from hence hath hid his head.

YORK. It would beseem the Lord Northumberland To say “King Richard”. Alack the heavy day When such a sacred king should hide his head!

NORTHUMBERLAND. Your Grace mistakes; only to be brief Left I his title out.

YORK. The time hath been, Would you have been so brief with him, he would Have been so brief with you to shorten you, For taking so the head, your whole head’s length.

BOLINGBROKE. Mistake not, uncle, further than you should.

YORK. Take not, good cousin, further than you should, Lest you mistake. The heavens are o’er our heads.

BOLINGBROKE. I know it, uncle, and oppose not myself Against their will. But who comes here?

Welcome, Harry. What, will not this castle yield?

PERCY. The castle royally is manned, my lord, Against thy entrance.

BOLINGBROKE. Royally! Why, it contains no king?

PERCY. Yes, my good lord, It doth contain a king. King Richard lies Within the limits of yon lime and stone, And with him are the Lord Aumerle, Lord Salisbury, Sir Stephen Scroop, besides a clergyman Of holy reverence—who, I cannot learn.

NORTHUMBERLAND. O, belike it is the Bishop of Carlisle.

BOLINGBROKE. [To Northumberland.] Noble lord, Go to the rude ribs of that ancient castle; Through brazen trumpet send the breath of parley Into his ruined ears, and thus deliver: Henry Bolingbroke On both his knees doth kiss King Richard’s hand And sends allegiance and true faith of heart To his most royal person, hither come Even at his feet to lay my arms and power, Provided that my banishment repealed And lands restored again be freely granted. If not, I’ll use the advantage of my power And lay the summer’s dust with showers of blood Rained from the wounds of slaughtered Englishmen— The which how far off from the mind of Bolingbroke It is such crimson tempest should bedrench The fresh green lap of fair King Richard’s land, My stooping duty tenderly shall show. Go signify as much, while here we march Upon the grassy carpet of this plain. Let’s march without the noise of threat’ning drum, That from this castle’s tottered battlements Our fair appointments may be well perused. Methinks King Richard and myself should meet With no less terror than the elements Of fire and water, when their thund’ring shock At meeting tears the cloudy cheeks of heaven. Be he the fire, I’ll be the yielding water; The rage be his, whilst on the earth I rain My waters—on the earth, and not on him. March on, and mark King Richard how he looks.

A parley sounded, and answered by a trumpet within. Flourish. Enter on the Walls, the King, the Bishop of Carlisle, Aumerle, Scroop and Salisbury

See, see, King Richard doth himself appear, As doth the blushing discontented sun From out the fiery portal of the east, When he perceives the envious clouds are bent To dim his glory and to stain the track Of his bright passage to the occident.

YORK. Yet he looks like a king. Behold, his eye, As bright as is the eagle’s, lightens forth Controlling majesty. Alack, alack, for woe That any harm should stain so fair a show!

KING RICHARD. [To Northumberland.] We are amazed, and thus long have we stood To watch the fearful bending of thy knee Because we thought ourself thy lawful king. And if we be, how dare thy joints forget To pay their awful duty to our presence? If we be not, show us the hand of God That hath dismissed us from our stewardship; For well we know no hand of blood and bone Can gripe the sacred handle of our sceptre, Unless he do profane, steal, or usurp. And though you think that all, as you have done, Have torn their souls by turning them from us, And we are barren and bereft of friends, Yet know: my master, God omnipotent, Is mustering in his clouds on our behalf Armies of pestilence, and they shall strike Your children yet unborn and unbegot, That lift your vassal hands against my head And threat the glory of my precious crown. Tell Bolingbroke—for yon methinks he stands— That every stride he makes upon my land Is dangerous treason. He is come to open The purple testament of bleeding war; But ere the crown he looks for live in peace, Ten thousand bloody crowns of mothers’ sons Shall ill become the flower of England’s face, Change the complexion of her maid-pale peace To scarlet indignation, and bedew Her pastures’ grass with faithful English blood.

NORTHUMBERLAND. The King of Heaven forbid our lord the King Should so with civil and uncivil arms Be rushed upon! Thy thrice-noble cousin, Harry Bolingbroke, doth humbly kiss thy hand; And by the honourable tomb he swears That stands upon your royal grandsire’s bones, And by the royalties of both your bloods, Currents that spring from one most gracious head, And by the buried hand of warlike Gaunt, And by the worth and honour of himself, Comprising all that may be sworn or said, His coming hither hath no further scope Than for his lineal royalties, and to beg Enfranchisement immediate on his knees; Which on thy royal party granted once, His glittering arms he will commend to rust, His barbed steeds to stables, and his heart To faithful service of your Majesty. This swears he, as he is a prince and just; And as I am a gentleman I credit him.

KING RICHARD. Northumberland, say, thus the King returns: His noble cousin is right welcome hither, And all the number of his fair demands Shall be accomplished without contradiction. With all the gracious utterance thou hast, Speak to his gentle hearing kind commends.

[Northumberland returns to Bolingbroke.]

[To Aumerle.] We do debase ourselves, cousin, do we not, To look so poorly and to speak so fair? Shall we call back Northumberland and send Defiance to the traitor, and so die?

AUMERLE. No, good my lord. Let’s fight with gentle words Till time lend friends, and friends their helpful swords.

KING RICHARD. O God, O God, that e’er this tongue of mine That laid the sentence of dread banishment On yon proud man should take it off again With words of sooth! O, that I were as great As is my grief, or lesser than my name, Or that I could forget what I have been, Or not remember what I must be now. Swell’st thou, proud heart? I’ll give thee scope to beat, Since foes have scope to beat both thee and me.

AUMERLE. Northumberland comes back from Bolingbroke.

KING RICHARD. What must the King do now? Must he submit? The King shall do it. Must he be deposed? The King shall be contented. Must he lose The name of King? I’ God’s name, let it go. I’ll give my jewels for a set of beads, My gorgeous palace for a hermitage, My gay apparel for an almsman’s gown, My figured goblets for a dish of wood, My sceptre for a palmer’s walking-staff, My subjects for a pair of carved saints, And my large kingdom for a little grave, A little, little grave, an obscure grave; Or I’ll be buried in the King’s highway, Some way of common trade, where subjects’ feet May hourly trample on their sovereign’s head; For on my heart they tread now whilst I live, And, buried once, why not upon my head? Aumerle, thou weep’st, my tender-hearted cousin! We’ll make foul weather with despised tears; Our sighs and they shall lodge the summer corn And make a dearth in this revolting land. Or shall we play the wantons with our woes And make some pretty match with shedding tears? As thus, to drop them still upon one place Till they have fretted us a pair of graves Within the earth; and, therein laid, there lies Two kinsmen digged their graves with weeping eyes. Would not this ill do well? Well, well, I see I talk but idly, and you laugh at me. Most mighty prince, my Lord Northumberland, What says King Bolingbroke? Will his Majesty Give Richard leave to live till Richard die? You make a leg, and Bolingbroke says ay.

NORTHUMBERLAND. My lord, in the base court he doth attend To speak with you. May it please you to come down?

KING RICHARD. Down, down I come, like glist’ring Phaëthon, Wanting the manage of unruly jades. In the base court? Base court, where kings grow base, To come at traitors’ calls, and do them grace. In the base court? Come down? Down, court! down, king! For night-owls shriek where mounting larks should sing.

[Exeunt from above.]

BOLINGBROKE. What says his Majesty?

NORTHUMBERLAND. Sorrow and grief of heart Makes him speak fondly like a frantic man. Yet he is come.

Enter King Richard and his attendants.

BOLINGBROKE. Stand all apart, And show fair duty to his Majesty. [Kneeling.] My gracious lord.

KING RICHARD. Fair cousin, you debase your princely knee To make the base earth proud with kissing it. Me rather had my heart might feel your love Than my unpleased eye see your courtesy. Up, cousin, up. Your heart is up, I know, Thus high at least, although your knee be low.

BOLINGBROKE. My gracious lord, I come but for mine own.

KING RICHARD. Your own is yours, and I am yours, and all.

BOLINGBROKE. So far be mine, my most redoubted lord, As my true service shall deserve your love.

KING RICHARD. Well you deserve. They well deserve to have That know the strong’st and surest way to get. Uncle, give me your hands. Nay, dry your eyes. Tears show their love, but want their remedies. Cousin, I am too young to be your father, Though you are old enough to be my heir. What you will have, I’ll give, and willing too; For do we must what force will have us do. Set on towards London, cousin, is it so?

BOLINGBROKE. Yea, my good lord.

KING RICHARD. Then I must not say no.

SCENE IV. Langley. The Duke of York’s garden.

Enter the Queen and two Ladies.

QUEEN. What sport shall we devise here in this garden To drive away the heavy thought of care?

LADY. Madam, we’ll play at bowls.

QUEEN. ’Twill make me think the world is full of rubs And that my fortune runs against the bias.

LADY. Madam, we’ll dance.

QUEEN. My legs can keep no measure in delight When my poor heart no measure keeps in grief. Therefore no dancing, girl; some other sport.

LADY. Madam, we’ll tell tales.

QUEEN. Of sorrow or of joy?

LADY. Of either, madam.

QUEEN. Of neither, girl. For if of joy, being altogether wanting, It doth remember me the more of sorrow; Or if of grief, being altogether had, It adds more sorrow to my want of joy. For what I have I need not to repeat, And what I want it boots not to complain.

LADY. Madam, I’ll sing.

QUEEN. ’Tis well that thou hast cause; But thou shouldst please me better wouldst thou weep.

LADY. I could weep, madam, would it do you good.

QUEEN. And I could sing, would weeping do me good, And never borrow any tear of thee. But stay, here come the gardeners. Let’s step into the shadow of these trees. My wretchedness unto a row of pins, They will talk of state, for everyone doth so Against a change; woe is forerun with woe.

[Queen and Ladies retire.]

Enter a Gardener and two Servants.

GARDENER. Go, bind thou up young dangling apricocks, Which, like unruly children, make their sire Stoop with oppression of their prodigal weight. Give some supportance to the bending twigs. Go thou, and like an executioner Cut off the heads of too fast-growing sprays That look too lofty in our commonwealth. All must be even in our government. You thus employed, I will go root away The noisome weeds which without profit suck The soil’s fertility from wholesome flowers.

SERVANT. Why should we in the compass of a pale Keep law and form and due proportion, Showing, as in a model, our firm estate, When our sea-walled garden, the whole land, Is full of weeds, her fairest flowers choked up, Her fruit trees all unpruned, her hedges ruined, Her knots disordered, and her wholesome herbs Swarming with caterpillars?

GARDENER. Hold thy peace. He that hath suffered this disordered spring Hath now himself met with the fall of leaf. The weeds which his broad-spreading leaves did shelter, That seemed in eating him to hold him up, Are plucked up, root and all, by Bolingbroke— I mean the Earl of Wiltshire, Bushy, Green.

SERVANT. What, are they dead?

GARDENER. They are. And Bolingbroke Hath seized the wasteful King. O, what pity is it That he had not so trimmed and dressed his land As we this garden! We at time of year Do wound the bark, the skin of our fruit trees, Lest, being over-proud in sap and blood, With too much riches it confound itself. Had he done so to great and growing men, They might have lived to bear and he to taste Their fruits of duty. Superfluous branches We lop away, that bearing boughs may live. Had he done so, himself had home the crown, Which waste of idle hours hath quite thrown down.

SERVANT. What, think you the King shall be deposed?

GARDENER. Depressed he is already, and deposed ’Tis doubt he will be. Letters came last night To a dear friend of the good Duke of York’s That tell black tidings.

QUEEN. O, I am pressed to death through want of speaking!

Thou, old Adam’s likeness, set to dress this garden, How dares thy harsh rude tongue sound this unpleasing news? What Eve, what serpent, hath suggested thee To make a second fall of cursed man? Why dost thou say King Richard is deposed? Dar’st thou, thou little better thing than earth, Divine his downfall? Say, where, when, and how, Cam’st thou by this ill tidings? Speak, thou wretch!

GARDENER. Pardon me, madam. Little joy have I To breathe this news; yet what I say is true. King Richard, he is in the mighty hold Of Bolingbroke. Their fortunes both are weighed. In your lord’s scale is nothing but himself, And some few vanities that make him light; But in the balance of great Bolingbroke, Besides himself, are all the English peers, And with that odds he weighs King Richard down. Post you to London, and you will find it so. I speak no more than everyone doth know.

QUEEN. Nimble mischance, that art so light of foot, Doth not thy embassage belong to me, And am I last that knows it? O, thou thinkest To serve me last that I may longest keep Thy sorrow in my breast. Come, ladies, go To meet at London London’s king in woe. What, was I born to this, that my sad look Should grace the triumph of great Bolingbroke? Gard’ner, for telling me these news of woe, Pray God the plants thou graft’st may never grow!

GARDENER. Poor Queen, so that thy state might be no worse, I would my skill were subject to thy curse. Here did she fall a tear. Here in this place I’ll set a bank of rue, sour herb of grace. Rue even for ruth here shortly shall be seen In the remembrance of a weeping queen.

SCENE I. Westminster Hall.

The Lords spiritual on the right side of the throne; the Lords temporal on the left; the Commons below. Enter Bolingbroke, Aumerle, Surrey, Northumberland, Harry Percy, Fitzwater, another Lord, the Bishop of Carlisle, the Abbot of Westminster and attendants.

BOLINGBROKE. Call forth Bagot.

Enter Officers with Bagot.

Now, Bagot, freely speak thy mind, What thou dost know of noble Gloucester’s death, Who wrought it with the King, and who performed The bloody office of his timeless end.

BAGOT. Then set before my face the Lord Aumerle.

BOLINGBROKE. Cousin, stand forth, and look upon that man.

BAGOT. My Lord Aumerle, I know your daring tongue Scorns to unsay what once it hath delivered. In that dead time when Gloucester’s death was plotted, I heard you say “Is not my arm of length, That reacheth from the restful English Court As far as Calais, to mine uncle’s head?” Amongst much other talk that very time I heard you say that you had rather refuse The offer of an hundred thousand crowns Than Bolingbroke’s return to England, Adding withal, how blest this land would be In this your cousin’s death.

AUMERLE. Princes and noble lords, What answer shall I make to this base man? Shall I so much dishonour my fair stars On equal terms to give him chastisement? Either I must, or have mine honour soiled With the attainder of his slanderous lips. There is my gage, the manual seal of death That marks thee out for hell. I say thou liest, And will maintain what thou hast said is false In thy heart-blood, though being all too base To stain the temper of my knightly sword.

BOLINGBROKE. Bagot, forbear. Thou shalt not take it up.

AUMERLE. Excepting one, I would he were the best In all this presence that hath moved me so.

FITZWATER. If that thy valour stand on sympathy, There is my gage, Aumerle, in gage to thine. By that fair sun which shows me where thou stand’st, I heard thee say, and vauntingly thou spak’st it, That thou wert cause of noble Gloucester’s death. If thou deniest it twenty times, thou liest! And I will turn thy falsehood to thy heart, Where it was forged, with my rapier’s point.

AUMERLE. Thou dar’st not, coward, live to see that day.

FITZWATER. Now, by my soul, I would it were this hour.

AUMERLE. Fitzwater, thou art damned to hell for this.

HARRY PERCY. Aumerle, thou liest. His honour is as true In this appeal as thou art an unjust; And that thou art so, there I throw my gage, To prove it on thee to the extremest point Of mortal breathing. Seize it if thou dar’st.

AUMERLE. And if I do not, may my hands rot off And never brandish more revengeful steel Over the glittering helmet of my foe!

ANOTHER LORD. I task the earth to the like, forsworn Aumerle, And spur thee on with full as many lies As may be holloaed in thy treacherous ear From sun to sun. There is my honour’s pawn. Engage it to the trial if thou dar’st.

AUMERLE. Who sets me else? By heaven, I’ll throw at all. I have a thousand spirits in one breast To answer twenty thousand such as you.

SURREY. My Lord Fitzwater, I do remember well The very time Aumerle and you did talk.

FITZWATER. ’Tis very true. You were in presence then, And you can witness with me this is true.

SURREY. As false, by heaven, as heaven itself is true.

FITZWATER. Surrey, thou liest.

SURREY. Dishonourable boy! That lie shall lie so heavy on my sword That it shall render vengeance and revenge Till thou the lie-giver and that lie do lie In earth as quiet as thy father’s skull. In proof whereof, there is my honour’s pawn. Engage it to the trial if thou dar’st.

FITZWATER. How fondly dost thou spur a forward horse! If I dare eat, or drink, or breathe, or live, I dare meet Surrey in a wilderness And spit upon him, whilst I say he lies, And lies, and lies. There is my bond of faith To tie thee to my strong correction. As I intend to thrive in this new world, Aumerle is guilty of my true appeal. Besides, I heard the banished Norfolk say That thou, Aumerle, didst send two of thy men To execute the noble duke at Calais.

AUMERLE. Some honest Christian trust me with a gage. That Norfolk lies, here do I throw down this, If he may be repealed to try his honour.

BOLINGBROKE. These differences shall all rest under gage Till Norfolk be repealed. Repealed he shall be, And, though mine enemy, restored again To all his lands and signories. When he is returned, Against Aumerle we will enforce his trial.

CARLISLE. That honourable day shall ne’er be seen. Many a time hath banished Norfolk fought For Jesu Christ in glorious Christian field, Streaming the ensign of the Christian cross Against black pagans, Turks, and Saracens; And, toiled with works of war, retired himself To Italy, and there at Venice gave His body to that pleasant country’s earth And his pure soul unto his captain, Christ, Under whose colours he had fought so long.

BOLINGBROKE. Why, Bishop, is Norfolk dead?

CARLISLE. As surely as I live, my lord.

BOLINGBROKE. Sweet peace conduct his sweet soul to the bosom Of good old Abraham! Lords appellants, Your differences shall all rest under gage Till we assign you to your days of trial.

YORK. Great Duke of Lancaster, I come to thee From plume-plucked Richard, who with willing soul Adopts thee heir, and his high sceptre yields To the possession of thy royal hand. Ascend his throne, descending now from him, And long live Henry, of that name the fourth!

BOLINGBROKE. In God’s name, I’ll ascend the regal throne.

CARLISLE. Marry, God forbid! Worst in this royal presence may I speak, Yet best beseeming me to speak the truth. Would God that any in this noble presence Were enough noble to be upright judge Of noble Richard! Then true noblesse would Learn him forbearance from so foul a wrong. What subject can give sentence on his king? And who sits here that is not Richard’s subject? Thieves are not judged but they are by to hear, Although apparent guilt be seen in them; And shall the figure of God’s majesty, His captain, steward, deputy elect, Anointed, crowned, planted many years, Be judged by subject and inferior breath, And he himself not present? O, forfend it, God, That in a Christian climate souls refined Should show so heinous, black, obscene a deed! I speak to subjects, and a subject speaks, Stirred up by God, thus boldly for his king. My Lord of Hereford here, whom you call king, Is a foul traitor to proud Hereford’s king. And if you crown him, let me prophesy The blood of English shall manure the ground And future ages groan for this foul act. Peace shall go sleep with Turks and infidels, And in this seat of peace tumultuous wars Shall kin with kin and kind with kind confound. Disorder, horror, fear, and mutiny Shall here inhabit, and this land be called The field of Golgotha and dead men’s skulls. O, if you raise this house against this house, It will the woefullest division prove That ever fell upon this cursed earth. Prevent it, resist it, let it not be so, Lest child, child’s children, cry against you, “woe!”

NORTHUMBERLAND. Well have you argued, sir; and, for your pains, Of capital treason we arrest you here. My Lord of Westminster, be it your charge To keep him safely till his day of trial. May it please you, lords, to grant the commons’ suit?

BOLINGBROKE. Fetch hither Richard, that in common view He may surrender. So we shall proceed Without suspicion.

YORK. I will be his conduct.

BOLINGBROKE. Lords, you that here are under our arrest, Procure your sureties for your days of answer. Little are we beholding to your love, And little looked for at your helping hands.

Enter York with King Richard and Officers bearing the Crown, &c.

KING RICHARD. Alack, why am I sent for to a king Before I have shook off the regal thoughts Wherewith I reigned? I hardly yet have learned To insinuate, flatter, bow, and bend my knee. Give sorrow leave awhile to tutor me To this submission. Yet I well remember The favours of these men. Were they not mine? Did they not sometime cry “All hail!” to me? So Judas did to Christ, but He in twelve, Found truth in all but one; I, in twelve thousand, none. God save the King! Will no man say, “Amen”? Am I both priest and clerk? Well then, amen. God save the King, although I be not he, And yet, Amen, if heaven do think him me. To do what service am I sent for hither?

YORK. To do that office of thine own good will Which tired majesty did make thee offer: The resignation of thy state and crown To Henry Bolingbroke.

KING RICHARD. Give me the crown. Here, cousin, seize the crown. Here, cousin, On this side my hand, and on that side thine. Now is this golden crown like a deep well That owes two buckets, filling one another, The emptier ever dancing in the air, The other down, unseen, and full of water. That bucket down and full of tears am I, Drinking my griefs, whilst you mount up on high.

BOLINGBROKE. I thought you had been willing to resign.

KING RICHARD. My crown I am, but still my griefs are mine. You may my glories and my state depose, But not my griefs; still am I king of those.

BOLINGBROKE. Part of your cares you give me with your crown.

KING RICHARD. Your cares set up do not pluck my cares down. My care is loss of care, by old care done; Your care is gain of care, by new care won. The cares I give I have, though given away; They ’tend the crown, yet still with me they stay.

BOLINGBROKE. Are you contented to resign the crown?

KING RICHARD. Ay, no; no, ay; for I must nothing be. Therefore no “no”, for I resign to thee. Now mark me how I will undo myself: I give this heavy weight from off my head, And this unwieldy sceptre from my hand, The pride of kingly sway from out my heart; With mine own tears I wash away my balm, With mine own hands I give away my crown, With mine own tongue deny my sacred state, With mine own breath release all duteous oaths. All pomp and majesty I do forswear; My manors, rents, revenues, I forgo; My acts, decrees, and statutes, I deny. God pardon all oaths that are broke to me; God keep all vows unbroke are made to thee. Make me, that nothing have, with nothing grieved, And thou with all pleased that hast all achieved. Long mayst thou live in Richard’s seat to sit, And soon lie Richard in an earthly pit! God save King Henry, unkinged Richard says, And send him many years of sunshine days! What more remains?

NORTHUMBERLAND. [Offering a paper.] No more, but that you read These accusations, and these grievous crimes Committed by your person and your followers Against the state and profit of this land; That, by confessing them, the souls of men May deem that you are worthily deposed.

KING RICHARD. Must I do so? And must I ravel out My weaved-up follies? Gentle Northumberland, If thy offences were upon record, Would it not shame thee in so fair a troop To read a lecture of them? If thou wouldst, There shouldst thou find one heinous article Containing the deposing of a king And cracking the strong warrant of an oath, Marked with a blot, damned in the book of heaven. Nay, all of you that stand and look upon me Whilst that my wretchedness doth bait myself, Though some of you, with Pilate, wash your hands, Showing an outward pity, yet you Pilates Have here delivered me to my sour cross, And water cannot wash away your sin.

NORTHUMBERLAND. My lord, dispatch. Read o’er these articles.

KING RICHARD. Mine eyes are full of tears; I cannot see: And yet salt water blinds them not so much But they can see a sort of traitors here. Nay, if I turn mine eyes upon myself, I find myself a traitor with the rest; For I have given here my soul’s consent T’ undeck the pompous body of a king, Made glory base and sovereignty a slave, Proud majesty a subject, state a peasant.

NORTHUMBERLAND. My lord—

KING RICHARD. No lord of thine, thou haught insulting man, Nor no man’s lord! I have no name, no title, No, not that name was given me at the font, But ’tis usurped. Alack the heavy day! That I have worn so many winters out And know not now what name to call myself. O, that I were a mockery king of snow, Standing before the sun of Bolingbroke, To melt myself away in water-drops! Good king, great king, and yet not greatly good, An if my word be sterling yet in England, Let it command a mirror hither straight, That it may show me what a face I have, Since it is bankrupt of his majesty.

BOLINGBROKE. Go, some of you, and fetch a looking-glass.

NORTHUMBERLAND. Read o’er this paper while the glass doth come.

KING RICHARD. Fiend, thou torments me ere I come to hell!

BOLINGBROKE. Urge it no more, my Lord Northumberland.

NORTHUMBERLAND. The commons will not then be satisfied.

KING RICHARD. They shall be satisfied. I’ll read enough When I do see the very book indeed Where all my sins are writ, and that’s myself.

Re-enter Attendant with glass.

Give me that glass, and therein will I read. No deeper wrinkles yet? Hath sorrow struck So many blows upon this face of mine And made no deeper wounds? O flatt’ring glass, Like to my followers in prosperity, Thou dost beguile me. Was this face the face That every day under his household roof Did keep ten thousand men? Was this the face That like the sun did make beholders wink? Is this the face which faced so many follies, That was at last outfaced by Bolingbroke? A brittle glory shineth in this face. As brittle as the glory is the face!

[Dashes the glass against the ground.]

For there it is, cracked in an hundred shivers. Mark, silent king, the moral of this sport, How soon my sorrow hath destroyed my face.

BOLINGBROKE. The shadow of your sorrow hath destroyed The shadow of your face.

KING RICHARD. Say that again. The shadow of my sorrow? Ha, let’s see. ’Tis very true, my grief lies all within; And these external manner of laments Are merely shadows to the unseen grief That swells with silence in the tortured soul. There lies the substance. And I thank thee, king, For thy great bounty, that not only giv’st Me cause to wail, but teachest me the way How to lament the cause. I’ll beg one boon, And then be gone and trouble you no more. Shall I obtain it?

BOLINGBROKE. Name it, fair cousin.

KING RICHARD. “Fair cousin”? I am greater than a king; For when I was a king, my flatterers Were then but subjects. Being now a subject, I have a king here to my flatterer. Being so great, I have no need to beg.

BOLINGBROKE. Yet ask.

KING RICHARD. And shall I have?

BOLINGBROKE. You shall.

KING RICHARD. Then give me leave to go.

BOLINGBROKE. Whither?

KING RICHARD. Whither you will, so I were from your sights.

BOLINGBROKE. Go, some of you, convey him to the Tower.

KING RICHARD. O, good! “Convey”? Conveyers are you all, That rise thus nimbly by a true king’s fall.

[Exeunt King Richard and Guard.]

BOLINGBROKE. On Wednesday next we solemnly set down Our coronation. Lords, prepare yourselves.

[Exeunt all but the Bishop of Carlisle, the Abbot of Westminster and Aumerle.]

ABBOT. A woeful pageant have we here beheld.

CARLISLE. The woe’s to come. The children yet unborn Shall feel this day as sharp to them as thorn.

AUMERLE. You holy clergymen, is there no plot To rid the realm of this pernicious blot?

ABBOT. My lord, Before I freely speak my mind herein, You shall not only take the sacrament To bury mine intents, but also to effect Whatever I shall happen to devise. I see your brows are full of discontent, Your hearts of sorrow, and your eyes of tears. Come home with me to supper. I will lay A plot shall show us all a merry day.

SCENE I. London. A street leading to the Tower.

Enter the Queen and ladies.

QUEEN. This way the King will come. This is the way To Julius Caesar’s ill-erected tower, To whose flint bosom my condemned lord Is doomed a prisoner by proud Bolingbroke. Here let us rest, if this rebellious earth Have any resting for her true king’s queen.

Enter King Richard and Guard.

But soft, but see, or rather do not see My fair rose wither; yet look up, behold, That you in pity may dissolve to dew And wash him fresh again with true-love tears. Ah, thou, the model where old Troy did stand, Thou map of honour, thou King Richard’s tomb, And not King Richard! Thou most beauteous inn, Why should hard-favoured grief be lodged in thee, When triumph is become an alehouse guest?

KING RICHARD. Join not with grief, fair woman, do not so, To make my end too sudden. Learn, good soul, To think our former state a happy dream, From which awaked, the truth of what we are Shows us but this. I am sworn brother, sweet, To grim Necessity, and he and I Will keep a league till death. Hie thee to France, And cloister thee in some religious house. Our holy lives must win a new world’s crown, Which our profane hours here have thrown down.

QUEEN. What, is my Richard both in shape and mind Transformed and weakened! Hath Bolingbroke Deposed thine intellect? Hath he been in thy heart? The lion dying thrusteth forth his paw And wounds the earth, if nothing else, with rage To be o’erpowered; and wilt thou, pupil-like, Take the correction mildly, kiss the rod, And fawn on rage with base humility, Which art a lion and the king of beasts?

KING RICHARD. A king of beasts, indeed! If aught but beasts, I had been still a happy king of men. Good sometimes queen, prepare thee hence for France. Think I am dead, and that even here thou tak’st, As from my death-bed, thy last living leave. In winter’s tedious nights sit by the fire With good old folks, and let them tell thee tales Of woeful ages long ago betid; And ere thou bid good night, to quit their griefs, Tell thou the lamentable tale of me, And send the hearers weeping to their beds. For why, the senseless brands will sympathize The heavy accent of thy moving tongue, And in compassion weep the fire out; And some will mourn in ashes, some coal-black, For the deposing of a rightful king.

Enter Northumberland, attended.

NORTHUMBERLAND. My lord, the mind of Bolingbroke is changed. You must to Pomfret, not unto the Tower. And, madam, there is order ta’en for you: With all swift speed you must away to France.

KING RICHARD. Northumberland, thou ladder wherewithal The mounting Bolingbroke ascends my throne, The time shall not be many hours of age More than it is ere foul sin, gathering head, Shall break into corruption. Thou shalt think, Though he divide the realm and give thee half It is too little, helping him to all. And he shall think that thou, which knowst the way To plant unrightful kings, wilt know again, Being ne’er so little urged, another way To pluck him headlong from the usurped throne. The love of wicked men converts to fear, That fear to hate, and hate turns one or both To worthy danger and deserved death.

NORTHUMBERLAND. My guilt be on my head, and there an end. Take leave and part, for you must part forthwith.

KING RICHARD. Doubly divorced! Bad men, you violate A twofold marriage, ’twixt my crown and me, And then betwixt me and my married wife. Let me unkiss the oath ’twixt thee and me; And yet not so, for with a kiss ’twas made. Part us, Northumberland: I towards the north, Where shivering cold and sickness pines the clime; My wife to France, from whence set forth in pomp, She came adorned hither like sweet May, Sent back like Hallowmas or short’st of day.

QUEEN. And must we be divided? Must we part?

KING RICHARD. Ay, hand from hand, my love, and heart from heart.

QUEEN. Banish us both, and send the King with me.

NORTHUMBERLAND. That were some love, but little policy.

QUEEN. Then whither he goes, thither let me go.

KING RICHARD. So two, together weeping, make one woe. Weep thou for me in France, I for thee here; Better far off than near, be ne’er the near. Go, count thy way with sighs, I mine with groans.

QUEEN. So longest way shall have the longest moans.

KING RICHARD. Twice for one step I’ll groan, the way being short, And piece the way out with a heavy heart. Come, come, in wooing sorrow let’s be brief, Since, wedding it, there is such length in grief. One kiss shall stop our mouths, and dumbly part; Thus give I mine, and thus take I thy heart.

QUEEN. Give me mine own again; ’twere no good part To take on me to keep and kill thy heart.

[They kiss again.]

So, now I have mine own again, be gone, That I may strive to kill it with a groan.

KING RICHARD. We make woe wanton with this fond delay: Once more, adieu. The rest let sorrow say.

SCENE II. The same. A room in the Duke of York’s palace.

Enter York and his Duchess.

DUCHESS. My Lord, you told me you would tell the rest, When weeping made you break the story off Of our two cousins’ coming into London.

YORK. Where did I leave?

DUCHESS. At that sad stop, my lord, Where rude misgoverned hands from windows’ tops Threw dust and rubbish on King Richard’s head.

YORK. Then, as I said, the Duke, great Bolingbroke, Mounted upon a hot and fiery steed, Which his aspiring rider seemed to know, With slow but stately pace kept on his course, Whilst all tongues cried “God save thee, Bolingbroke!” You would have thought the very windows spake, So many greedy looks of young and old Through casements darted their desiring eyes Upon his visage, and that all the walls With painted imagery had said at once “Jesu preserve thee! Welcome, Bolingbroke!” Whilst he, from the one side to the other turning, Bareheaded, lower than his proud steed’s neck, Bespake them thus, “I thank you, countrymen.” And thus still doing, thus he passed along.

DUCHESS. Alack, poor Richard! Where rode he the whilst?

YORK. As in a theatre the eyes of men After a well-graced actor leaves the stage, Are idly bent on him that enters next, Thinking his prattle to be tedious, Even so, or with much more contempt, men’s eyes Did scowl on gentle Richard. No man cried “God save him!” No joyful tongue gave him his welcome home, But dust was thrown upon his sacred head, Which with such gentle sorrow he shook off, His face still combating with tears and smiles, The badges of his grief and patience, That had not God for some strong purpose, steeled The hearts of men, they must perforce have melted, And barbarism itself have pitied him. But heaven hath a hand in these events, To whose high will we bound our calm contents. To Bolingbroke are we sworn subjects now, Whose state and honour I for aye allow.

Enter Aumerle.

DUCHESS. Here comes my son Aumerle.

YORK. Aumerle that was; But that is lost for being Richard’s friend, And, madam, you must call him Rutland now. I am in Parliament pledge for his truth And lasting fealty to the new-made king.

DUCHESS. Welcome, my son. Who are the violets now That strew the green lap of the new-come spring?

AUMERLE. Madam, I know not, nor I greatly care not. God knows I had as lief be none as one.

YORK. Well, bear you well in this new spring of time, Lest you be cropped before you come to prime. What news from Oxford? Do these jousts and triumphs hold?

AUMERLE. For aught I know, my lord, they do.

YORK. You will be there, I know.

AUMERLE. If God prevent not, I purpose so.

YORK. What seal is that that hangs without thy bosom? Yea, look’st thou pale? Let me see the writing.

AUMERLE. My lord, ’tis nothing.

YORK. No matter, then, who see it. I will be satisfied. Let me see the writing.

AUMERLE. I do beseech your Grace to pardon me. It is a matter of small consequence, Which for some reasons I would not have seen.

YORK. Which for some reasons, sir, I mean to see. I fear, I fear—

DUCHESS. What should you fear? ’Tis nothing but some bond that he is entered into For gay apparel ’gainst the triumph day.

YORK. Bound to himself? What doth he with a bond That he is bound to? Wife, thou art a fool. Boy, let me see the writing.

AUMERLE. I do beseech you, pardon me. I may not show it.

YORK. I will be satisfied. Let me see it, I say.

[Snatches it and reads it.]

Treason, foul treason! Villain! traitor! slave!

DUCHESS. What is the matter, my lord?

YORK. Ho! who is within there?

Saddle my horse. God for his mercy, what treachery is here!

DUCHESS. Why, what is it, my lord?

YORK. Give me my boots, I say. Saddle my horse. Now, by mine honour, by my life, my troth, I will appeach the villain.

DUCHESS. What is the matter?

YORK. Peace, foolish woman.

DUCHESS. I will not peace. What is the matter, Aumerle?

AUMERLE. Good mother, be content. It is no more Than my poor life must answer.

DUCHESS. Thy life answer?

YORK. Bring me my boots. I will unto the King.

Re-enter Servant with boots.

DUCHESS. Strike him, Aumerle! Poor boy, thou art amazed. [To Servant.] Hence, villain! Never more come in my sight.

YORK. Give me my boots, I say.

DUCHESS. Why, York, what wilt thou do? Wilt thou not hide the trespass of thine own? Have we more sons? Or are we like to have? Is not my teeming date drunk up with time? And wilt thou pluck my fair son from mine age And rob me of a happy mother’s name? Is he not like thee? Is he not thine own?

YORK. Thou fond mad woman, Wilt thou conceal this dark conspiracy? A dozen of them here have ta’en the sacrament And interchangeably set down their hands To kill the King at Oxford.

DUCHESS. He shall be none; We’ll keep him here. Then what is that to him?

YORK. Away, fond woman! Were he twenty times my son, I would appeach him.

DUCHESS. Hadst thou groaned for him As I have done, thou wouldst be more pitiful. But now I know thy mind: thou dost suspect That I have been disloyal to thy bed And that he is a bastard, not thy son. Sweet York, sweet husband, be not of that mind. He is as like thee as a man may be, Not like to me, or any of my kin, And yet I love him.

YORK. Make way, unruly woman!

DUCHESS. After, Aumerle! Mount thee upon his horse! Spur post, and get before him to the King, And beg thy pardon ere he do accuse thee. I’ll not be long behind. Though I be old, I doubt not but to ride as fast as York. And never will I rise up from the ground Till Bolingbroke have pardoned thee. Away, be gone!

SCENE III. Windsor. A room in the Castle.

Enter Bolingbroke as King, Harry Percy and other Lords.

KING HENRY. Can no man tell me of my unthrifty son? ’Tis full three months since I did see him last. If any plague hang over us, ’tis he. I would to God, my lords, he might be found. Inquire at London, ’mongst the taverns there, For there, they say, he daily doth frequent With unrestrained loose companions, Even such, they say, as stand in narrow lanes And beat our watch and rob our passengers, While he, young wanton and effeminate boy, Takes on the point of honour to support So dissolute a crew.

PERCY. My lord, some two days since I saw the Prince, And told him of those triumphs held at Oxford.

KING HENRY. And what said the gallant?

PERCY. His answer was he would unto the stews, And from the common’st creature pluck a glove And wear it as a favour, and with that He would unhorse the lustiest challenger.

KING HENRY. As dissolute as desperate! Yet through both I see some sparks of better hope, which elder years May happily bring forth. But who comes here?

AUMERLE. Where is the King?

KING HENRY. What means our cousin that he stares and looks so wildly?

AUMERLE. God save your Grace! I do beseech your majesty To have some conference with your Grace alone.

KING HENRY. Withdraw yourselves, and leave us here alone.

[Exeunt Harry Percy and Lords.]

What is the matter with our cousin now?

AUMERLE. [Kneels.] For ever may my knees grow to the earth, My tongue cleave to my roof within my mouth, Unless a pardon ere I rise or speak.

KING HENRY. Intended or committed was this fault? If on the first, how heinous e’er it be, To win thy after-love I pardon thee.

AUMERLE. Then give me leave that I may turn the key, That no man enter till my tale be done.

KING HENRY. Have thy desire.

[Aumerle locks the door.]

YORK. [Within.] My liege, beware! Look to thyself! Thou hast a traitor in thy presence there.

KING HENRY. [Drawing.] Villain, I’ll make thee safe.

AUMERLE. Stay thy revengeful hand. Thou hast no cause to fear.

YORK. [Within.] Open the door, secure, foolhardy king! Shall I for love speak treason to thy face? Open the door, or I will break it open.

[King Henry unlocks the door; and afterwards, relocks it.]

KING HENRY. What is the matter, uncle? Speak! Recover breath. Tell us how near is danger, That we may arm us to encounter it.

YORK. Peruse this writing here, and thou shalt know The treason that my haste forbids me show.

AUMERLE. Remember, as thou read’st, thy promise passed. I do repent me. Read not my name there; My heart is not confederate with my hand.

YORK. It was, villain, ere thy hand did set it down. I tore it from the traitor’s bosom, king. Fear, and not love, begets his penitence. Forget to pity him, lest thy pity prove A serpent that will sting thee to the heart.

KING HENRY. O heinous, strong, and bold conspiracy! O loyal father of a treacherous son! Thou sheer, immaculate, and silver fountain From whence this stream through muddy passages Hath held his current and defiled himself! Thy overflow of good converts to bad, And thy abundant goodness shall excuse This deadly blot in thy digressing son.

YORK. So shall my virtue be his vice’s bawd, And he shall spend mine honour with his shame, As thriftless sons their scraping fathers’ gold. Mine honour lives when his dishonour dies, Or my shamed life in his dishonour lies. Thou kill’st me in his life: giving him breath, The traitor lives, the true man’s put to death.

DUCHESS. [Within.] What ho, my liege! For God’s sake, let me in!

KING HENRY. What shrill-voiced suppliant makes this eager cry?

DUCHESS. [Within.] A woman, and thine aunt, great king, ’tis I. Speak with me, pity me, open the door! A beggar begs that never begged before.

KING HENRY. Our scene is altered from a serious thing, And now changed to “The Beggar and the King.” My dangerous cousin, let your mother in. I know she’s come to pray for your foul sin.

Enter Duchess.

YORK. If thou do pardon whosoever pray, More sins for this forgiveness prosper may. This festered joint cut off, the rest rest sound; This let alone will all the rest confound.

DUCHESS. O King, believe not this hard-hearted man. Love loving not itself none other can.

YORK. Thou frantic woman, what dost thou make here? Shall thy old dugs once more a traitor rear?

DUCHESS. Sweet York, be patient. [Kneels.] Hear me, gentle liege.

KING HENRY. Rise up, good aunt.

DUCHESS. Not yet, I thee beseech. For ever will I walk upon my knees And never see day that the happy sees, Till thou give joy, until thou bid me joy By pardoning Rutland, my transgressing boy.

AUMERLE. Unto my mother’s prayers I bend my knee.

YORK. Against them both, my true joints bended be.

Ill mayst thou thrive if thou grant any grace!

DUCHESS. Pleads he in earnest? Look upon his face. His eyes do drop no tears, his prayers are in jest; His words come from his mouth, ours from our breast. He prays but faintly and would be denied; We pray with heart and soul and all beside: His weary joints would gladly rise, I know; Our knees still kneel till to the ground they grow. His prayers are full of false hypocrisy; Ours of true zeal and deep integrity. Our prayers do outpray his; then let them have That mercy which true prayer ought to have.

KING HENRY. Good aunt, stand up.

DUCHESS. Nay, do not say “stand up”. Say “pardon” first, and afterwards “stand up”. An if I were thy nurse, thy tongue to teach, “Pardon” should be the first word of thy speech. I never longed to hear a word till now. Say “pardon,” king; let pity teach thee how. The word is short, but not so short as sweet; No word like “pardon” for kings’ mouths so meet.

YORK. Speak it in French, King, say “pardonne moy.”

DUCHESS. Dost thou teach pardon pardon to destroy? Ah! my sour husband, my hard-hearted lord, That sets the word itself against the word! Speak “pardon” as ’tis current in our land; The chopping French we do not understand. Thine eye begins to speak, set thy tongue there, Or in thy piteous heart plant thou thine ear, That, hearing how our plaints and prayers do pierce, Pity may move thee “pardon” to rehearse.

DUCHESS. I do not sue to stand. Pardon is all the suit I have in hand.

KING HENRY. I pardon him, as God shall pardon me.

DUCHESS. O, happy vantage of a kneeling knee! Yet am I sick for fear. Speak it again, Twice saying “pardon” doth not pardon twain, But makes one pardon strong.

KING HENRY. With all my heart I pardon him.

DUCHESS. A god on earth thou art.

KING HENRY. But for our trusty brother-in-law and the Abbot, With all the rest of that consorted crew, Destruction straight shall dog them at the heels. Good uncle, help to order several powers To Oxford, or where’er these traitors are; They shall not live within this world, I swear, But I will have them, if I once know where. Uncle, farewell, and cousin, adieu. Your mother well hath prayed, and prove you true.

DUCHESS. Come, my old son. I pray God make thee new.

Enter Exton and a Servant.

EXTON. Didst thou not mark the King, what words he spake: “Have I no friend will rid me of this living fear?” Was it not so?

SERVANT. These were his very words.

EXTON. “Have I no friend?” quoth he. He spake it twice And urged it twice together, did he not?

SERVANT. He did.

EXTON. And speaking it, he wishtly looked on me, As who should say “I would thou wert the man That would divorce this terror from my heart”, Meaning the king at Pomfret. Come, let’s go. I am the King’s friend, and will rid his foe.

SCENE V. Pomfret. The dungeon of the Castle.

RICHARD. I have been studying how I may compare This prison where I live unto the world; And for because the world is populous And here is not a creature but myself, I cannot do it. Yet I’ll hammer it out. My brain I’ll prove the female to my soul, My soul the father, and these two beget A generation of still-breeding thoughts, And these same thoughts people this little world, In humours like the people of this world, For no thought is contented. The better sort, As thoughts of things divine, are intermixed With scruples, and do set the word itself Against the word, as thus: “Come, little ones”; And then again: “It is as hard to come as for a camel To thread the postern of a needle’s eye.” Thoughts tending to ambition, they do plot Unlikely wonders: how these vain weak nails May tear a passage through the flinty ribs Of this hard world, my ragged prison walls, And, for they cannot, die in their own pride. Thoughts tending to content flatter themselves That they are not the first of fortune’s slaves, Nor shall not be the last, like silly beggars Who sitting in the stocks refuge their shame That many have and others must sit there; And in this thought they find a kind of ease, Bearing their own misfortunes on the back Of such as have before endured the like. Thus play I in one person many people, And none contented. Sometimes am I king; Then treasons make me wish myself a beggar, And so I am. Then crushing penury Persuades me I was better when a king; Then am I kinged again, and by and by Think that I am unkinged by Bolingbroke, And straight am nothing. But whate’er I be, Nor I nor any man that but man is With nothing shall be pleased till he be eased With being nothing. Music do I hear? [Music.] Ha, ha! keep time! How sour sweet music is When time is broke and no proportion kept! So is it in the music of men’s lives. And here have I the daintiness of ear To check time broke in a disordered string; But for the concord of my state and time Had not an ear to hear my true time broke. I wasted time, and now doth time waste me; For now hath time made me his numb’ring clock. My thoughts are minutes, and with sighs they jar Their watches on unto mine eyes, the outward watch, Whereto my finger, like a dial’s point, Is pointing still, in cleansing them from tears. Now, sir, the sound that tells what hour it is Are clamorous groans which strike upon my heart, Which is the bell. So sighs and tears and groans Show minutes, times, and hours. But my time Runs posting on in Bolingbroke’s proud joy, While I stand fooling here, his Jack o’ the clock. This music mads me! Let it sound no more; For though it have holp madmen to their wits, In me it seems it will make wise men mad. Yet blessing on his heart that gives it me, For ’tis a sign of love; and love to Richard Is a strange brooch in this all-hating world.

Enter a Groom of the stable.

GROOM. Hail, royal Prince!

RICHARD. Thanks, noble peer. The cheapest of us is ten groats too dear. What art thou, and how comest thou hither Where no man never comes but that sad dog That brings me food to make misfortune live?

GROOM. I was a poor groom of thy stable, king, When thou wert king; who, travelling towards York, With much ado at length have gotten leave To look upon my sometimes royal master’s face. O, how it erned my heart when I beheld In London streets, that coronation day, When Bolingbroke rode on roan Barbary, That horse that thou so often hast bestrid, That horse that I so carefully have dressed.

RICHARD. Rode he on Barbary? Tell me, gentle friend, How went he under him?

GROOM. So proudly as if he disdained the ground.

RICHARD. So proud that Bolingbroke was on his back! That jade hath eat bread from my royal hand; This hand hath made him proud with clapping him. Would he not stumble? Would he not fall down, Since pride must have a fall, and break the neck Of that proud man that did usurp his back? Forgiveness, horse! Why do I rail on thee, Since thou, created to be awed by man, Wast born to bear? I was not made a horse, And yet I bear a burden like an ass, Spurred, galled and tired by jauncing Bolingbroke.

Enter Keeper with a dish.

KEEPER. [To the Groom.] Fellow, give place. Here is no longer stay.

RICHARD. If thou love me, ’tis time thou wert away.

GROOM. My tongue dares not, that my heart shall say.

KEEPER. My lord, will’t please you to fall to?

RICHARD. Taste of it first as thou art wont to do.

KEEPER. My lord, I dare not. Sir Pierce of Exton, Who lately came from the King, commands the contrary.

RICHARD. The devil take Henry of Lancaster and thee! Patience is stale, and I am weary of it.

[Strikes the Keeper.]

KEEPER. Help, help, help!

Enter Exton and Servants, armed.

RICHARD. How now! What means death in this rude assault? Villain, thy own hand yields thy death’s instrument.

[Snatching a weapon and killing one.]

Go thou and fill another room in hell.

[He kills another, then Exton strikes him down.]

That hand shall burn in never-quenching fire That staggers thus my person. Exton, thy fierce hand Hath with the King’s blood stained the King’s own land. Mount, mount, my soul! Thy seat is up on high, Whilst my gross flesh sinks downward, here to die.

EXTON. As full of valour as of royal blood! Both have I spilled. O, would the deed were good! For now the devil that told me I did well Says that this deed is chronicled in hell. This dead king to the living king I’ll bear. Take hence the rest, and give them burial here.

SCENE VI. Windsor. An Apartment in the Castle.

Flourish. Enter King Henry and York with Lords and Attendants.

KING HENRY. Kind uncle York, the latest news we hear Is that the rebels have consumed with fire Our town of Cicester in Gloucestershire, But whether they be ta’en or slain we hear not.

Welcome, my lord. What is the news?

NORTHUMBERLAND. First, to thy sacred state wish I all happiness. The next news is: I have to London sent The heads of Salisbury, Spencer, Blunt, and Kent. The manner of their taking may appear At large discoursed in this paper here.

KING HENRY. We thank thee, gentle Percy, for thy pains, And to thy worth will add right worthy gains.

Enter Fitzwater.

FITZWATER. My lord, I have from Oxford sent to London The heads of Brocas and Sir Bennet Seely, Two of the dangerous consorted traitors That sought at Oxford thy dire overthrow.

KING HENRY. Thy pains, Fitzwater, shall not be forgot. Right noble is thy merit, well I wot.

Enter Harry Percy with the Bishop of Carlisle.

PERCY. The grand conspirator, Abbot of Westminster, With clog of conscience and sour melancholy, Hath yielded up his body to the grave. But here is Carlisle living, to abide Thy kingly doom and sentence of his pride.

KING HENRY. Carlisle, this is your doom: Choose out some secret place, some reverend room, More than thou hast, and with it joy thy life. So as thou liv’st in peace, die free from strife; For though mine enemy thou hast ever been, High sparks of honour in thee have I seen.

Enter Exton with attendants, bearing a coffin.

EXTON. Great king, within this coffin I present Thy buried fear. Herein all breathless lies The mightiest of thy greatest enemies, Richard of Bordeaux, by me hither brought.

KING HENRY. Exton, I thank thee not, for thou hast wrought A deed of slander with thy fatal hand Upon my head and all this famous land.

EXTON. From your own mouth, my lord, did I this deed.

KING HENRY. They love not poison that do poison need, Nor do I thee. Though I did wish him dead, I hate the murderer, love him murdered. The guilt of conscience take thou for thy labour, But neither my good word nor princely favour. With Cain go wander thorough shades of night, And never show thy head by day nor light. Lords, I protest my soul is full of woe That blood should sprinkle me to make me grow. Come, mourn with me for what I do lament, And put on sullen black incontinent. I’ll make a voyage to the Holy Land To wash this blood off from my guilty hand. March sadly after; grace my mournings here In weeping after this untimely bier.

KING RICHARD THE THIRD

ACT I Scene I. London. A street Scene II. London. Another street Scene III. London. A Room in the Palace Scene IV. London. A Room in the Tower

ACT II Scene I. London. A Room in the palace Scene II. Another Room in the palace Scene III. London. A street Scene IV. London. A Room in the Palace

ACT III Scene I. London. A street Scene II. Before Lord Hastings’ house Scene III. Pomfret. Before the Castle Scene IV. London. A Room in the Tower Scene V. London. The Tower Walls Scene VI. London. A street Scene VII. London. Court of Baynard’s Castle

ACT IV Scene I. London. Before the Tower Scene II. London. A Room of State in the Palace Scene III. London. Another Room in the Palace Scene IV. London. Before the Palace Scene V. A Room in Lord Stanley’s house

ACT V Scene I. Salisbury. An open place Scene II. Plain near Tamworth Scene III. Bosworth Field Scene IV. Another part of the Field Scene V. Another part of the Field

RICHARD, DUKE OF GLOUCESTER, afterwards KING RICHARD III. LADY ANNE, widow to Edward, Prince of Wales, son to King Henry VI.; afterwards married to the Duke of Gloucester

KING EDWARD THE FOURTH, brother to Richard QUEEN ELIZABETH, Queen to King Edward IV. Sons to the king: EDWARD, PRINCE OF WALES, afterwards KING EDWARD V. RICHARD, DUKE OF YORK

GEORGE, DUKE OF CLARENCE, brother to Edward and Richard BOY, son to Clarence GIRL, daughter to Clarence

DUCHESS OF YORK, mother to King Edward IV., Clarence, and Gloucester QUEEN MARGARET, widow to King Henry VI. DUKE OF BUCKINGHAM LORD HASTINGS, the Lord Chamberlain LORD STANLEY, the Earl of Derby EARL RIVERS, brother to Queen Elizabeth LORD GREY, son of Queen Elizabeth by her former marriage MARQUESS OF DORSET, son of Queen Elizabeth by her former marriage SIR THOMAS VAUGHAN

SIR WILLIAM CATESBY SIR RICHARD RATCLIFFE LORD LOVELL DUKE OF NORFOLK EARL OF SURREY

HENRY, EARL OF RICHMOND, afterwards KING HENRY VII. EARL OF OXFORD SIR JAMES BLUNT SIR WALTER HERBERT SIR WILLIAM BRANDON CHRISTOPHER URSWICK, a priest THOMAS ROTHERHAM, ARCHBISHOP OF YORK CARDINAL BOURCHIER, ARCHBISHOP OF CANTERBURY John Morton, BISHOP OF ELY SIR ROBERT BRAKENBURY, Lieutenant of the Tower SIR JAMES TYRREL Another Priest LORD MAYOR OF LONDON SHERIFF OF WILTSHIRE

Lords, and other Attendants; two Gentlemen, a Pursuivant, Scrivener, Citizens, Murderers, Messengers, Ghosts, Soldiers, &c.

SCENE: England

SCENE I. London. A street

Enter Richard, Duke of Gloucester, alone.

RICHARD. Now is the winter of our discontent Made glorious summer by this son of York; And all the clouds that loured upon our house In the deep bosom of the ocean buried. Now are our brows bound with victorious wreaths, Our bruised arms hung up for monuments, Our stern alarums changed to merry meetings, Our dreadful marches to delightful measures. Grim-visaged war hath smoothed his wrinkled front; And now, instead of mounting barbed steeds To fright the souls of fearful adversaries, He capers nimbly in a lady’s chamber To the lascivious pleasing of a lute. But I, that am not shaped for sportive tricks, Nor made to court an amorous looking-glass; I, that am rudely stamped, and want love’s majesty To strut before a wanton ambling nymph; I, that am curtailed of this fair proportion, Cheated of feature by dissembling nature, Deformed, unfinished, sent before my time Into this breathing world scarce half made up, And that so lamely and unfashionable That dogs bark at me as I halt by them— Why, I, in this weak piping time of peace, Have no delight to pass away the time, Unless to spy my shadow in the sun, And descant on mine own deformity. And therefore, since I cannot prove a lover To entertain these fair well-spoken days, I am determined to prove a villain, And hate the idle pleasures of these days. Plots have I laid, inductions dangerous, By drunken prophecies, libels, and dreams, To set my brother Clarence and the King In deadly hate the one against the other; And if King Edward be as true and just As I am subtle, false, and treacherous, This day should Clarence closely be mewed up About a prophecy which says that “G” Of Edward’s heirs the murderer shall be. Dive, thoughts, down to my soul. Here Clarence comes.

Enter Clarence, guarded and Brakenbury.

Brother, good day. What means this armed guard That waits upon your Grace?

CLARENCE. His Majesty, Tend’ring my person’s safety, hath appointed This conduct to convey me to the Tower.

RICHARD. Upon what cause?

CLARENCE. Because my name is George.

RICHARD. Alack, my lord, that fault is none of yours. He should, for that, commit your godfathers. O, belike his Majesty hath some intent That you should be new-christened in the Tower. But what’s the matter, Clarence? May I know?

CLARENCE. Yea, Richard, when I know, for I protest As yet I do not. But, as I can learn, He hearkens after prophecies and dreams, And from the cross-row plucks the letter G, And says a wizard told him that by “G” His issue disinherited should be. And for my name of George begins with G, It follows in his thought that I am he. These, as I learn, and such like toys as these, Hath moved his Highness to commit me now.

RICHARD. Why, this it is when men are ruled by women. ’Tis not the King that sends you to the Tower; My Lady Grey his wife, Clarence, ’tis she That tempers him to this extremity. Was it not she and that good man of worship, Antony Woodville, her brother there, That made him send Lord Hastings to the Tower, From whence this present day he is delivered? We are not safe, Clarence; we are not safe.

CLARENCE. By heaven, I think there is no man secure But the Queen’s kindred, and night-walking heralds That trudge betwixt the King and Mistress Shore. Heard you not what an humble suppliant Lord Hastings was to her for his delivery?

RICHARD. Humbly complaining to her deity Got my Lord Chamberlain his liberty. I’ll tell you what: I think it is our way, If we will keep in favour with the King, To be her men and wear her livery. The jealous o’er-worn widow and herself, Since that our brother dubbed them gentlewomen, Are mighty gossips in our monarchy.

BRAKENBURY. I beseech your Graces both to pardon me. His Majesty hath straitly given in charge That no man shall have private conference, Of what degree soever, with your brother.

RICHARD. Even so; an please your worship, Brakenbury, You may partake of anything we say. We speak no treason, man. We say the King Is wise and virtuous, and his noble Queen Well struck in years, fair, and not jealous. We say that Shore’s wife hath a pretty foot, A cherry lip, a bonny eye, a passing pleasing tongue; And that the Queen’s kindred are made gentlefolks. How say you, sir? Can you deny all this?

BRAKENBURY. With this, my lord, myself have naught to do.

RICHARD. Naught to do with Mistress Shore? I tell thee, fellow, He that doth naught with her, excepting one, Were best to do it secretly alone.

BRAKENBURY. What one, my lord?

RICHARD. Her husband, knave! Wouldst thou betray me?

BRAKENBURY. I do beseech your Grace to pardon me, and withal Forbear your conference with the noble Duke.

CLARENCE. We know thy charge, Brakenbury, and will obey.

RICHARD. We are the Queen’s abjects and must obey. Brother, farewell. I will unto the King, And whatsoe’er you will employ me in, Were it to call King Edward’s widow “sister,” I will perform it to enfranchise you. Meantime, this deep disgrace in brotherhood Touches me deeper than you can imagine.

CLARENCE. I know it pleaseth neither of us well.

RICHARD. Well, your imprisonment shall not be long. I will deliver or else lie for you. Meantime, have patience.

CLARENCE. I must perforce. Farewell.

[Exeunt Clarence, Brakenbury and guard.]

RICHARD. Go tread the path that thou shalt ne’er return. Simple, plain Clarence, I do love thee so That I will shortly send thy soul to heaven, If heaven will take the present at our hands. But who comes here? The new-delivered Hastings?

Enter Lord Hastings.

HASTINGS. Good time of day unto my gracious lord.

RICHARD. As much unto my good Lord Chamberlain. Well are you welcome to the open air. How hath your lordship brooked imprisonment?

HASTINGS. With patience, noble lord, as prisoners must; But I shall live, my lord, to give them thanks That were the cause of my imprisonment.

RICHARD. No doubt, no doubt; and so shall Clarence too, For they that were your enemies are his, And have prevailed as much on him as you.

HASTINGS. More pity that the eagles should be mewed, Whiles kites and buzzards prey at liberty.

RICHARD. What news abroad?

HASTINGS. No news so bad abroad as this at home: The King is sickly, weak, and melancholy, And his physicians fear him mightily.

RICHARD. Now, by Saint John, that news is bad indeed. O, he hath kept an evil diet long, And overmuch consumed his royal person. ’Tis very grievous to be thought upon. Where is he, in his bed?

HASTINGS. He is.

RICHARD. Go you before, and I will follow you.

He cannot live, I hope, and must not die Till George be packed with post-horse up to heaven. I’ll in to urge his hatred more to Clarence With lies well steeled with weighty arguments; And, if I fail not in my deep intent, Clarence hath not another day to live; Which done, God take King Edward to his mercy, And leave the world for me to bustle in. For then I’ll marry Warwick’s youngest daughter. What though I killed her husband and her father? The readiest way to make the wench amends Is to become her husband and her father; The which will I, not all so much for love As for another secret close intent, By marrying her which I must reach unto. But yet I run before my horse to market. Clarence still breathes; Edward still lives and reigns. When they are gone, then must I count my gains.

SCENE II. London. Another street

Enter the corse of King Henry the Sixth, with Halberds to guard it, Lady Anne, being the mourner, Tressel and Berkeley and other Gentlemen.

ANNE. Set down, set down your honourable load, If honour may be shrouded in a hearse, Whilst I awhile obsequiously lament Th’ untimely fall of virtuous Lancaster. Poor key-cold figure of a holy king, Pale ashes of the house of Lancaster. Thou bloodless remnant of that royal blood, Be it lawful that I invocate thy ghost To hear the lamentations of poor Anne, Wife to thy Edward, to thy slaughtered son, Stabbed by the selfsame hand that made these wounds. Lo, in these windows that let forth thy life I pour the helpless balm of my poor eyes. O, cursed be the hand that made these holes; Cursed the heart that had the heart to do it; Cursed the blood that let this blood from hence. More direful hap betide that hated wretch That makes us wretched by the death of thee Than I can wish to adders, spiders, toads, Or any creeping venomed thing that lives. If ever he have child, abortive be it, Prodigious, and untimely brought to light, Whose ugly and unnatural aspect May fright the hopeful mother at the view, And that be heir to his unhappiness. If ever he have wife, let her be made More miserable by the death of him Than I am made by my young lord and thee. Come now towards Chertsey with your holy load, Taken from Paul’s to be interred there; And still, as you are weary of this weight, Rest you, whiles I lament King Henry’s corse.

[They take up the bier.]

Enter Richard, Duke of Gloucester.

RICHARD. Stay, you that bear the corse, and set it down.

ANNE. What black magician conjures up this fiend To stop devoted charitable deeds?

RICHARD. Villains, set down the corse or, by Saint Paul, I’ll make a corse of him that disobeys!

RICHARD. Unmannered dog, stand thou, when I command! Advance thy halberd higher than my breast, Or by Saint Paul I’ll strike thee to my foot And spurn upon thee, beggar, for thy boldness.

[They set down the bier.]

GENTLEMAN. My lord, stand back, and let the coffin pass.

RICHARD. Sweet saint, for charity, be not so curst.

ANNE. Foul devil, for God’s sake, hence, and trouble us not; For thou hast made the happy earth thy hell, Filled it with cursing cries and deep exclaims. If thou delight to view thy heinous deeds, Behold this pattern of thy butcheries. O, gentlemen, see, see dead Henry’s wounds Open their congealed mouths and bleed afresh! Blush, blush, thou lump of foul deformity, For ’tis thy presence that exhales this blood From cold and empty veins where no blood dwells. Thy deeds, inhuman and unnatural, Provokes this deluge most unnatural. O God, which this blood mad’st, revenge his death! O earth, which this blood drink’st, revenge his death! Either heaven with lightning strike the murderer dead, Or earth gape open wide and eat him quick, As thou dost swallow up this good King’s blood, Which his hell-governed arm hath butchered.

RICHARD. Lady, you know no rules of charity, Which renders good for bad, blessings for curses.

ANNE. What, do you tremble? Are you all afraid? Alas, I blame you not, for you are mortal, And mortal eyes cannot endure the devil. Avaunt, thou dreadful minister of hell! Thou hadst but power over his mortal body; His soul thou canst not have; therefore begone.

RICHARD. But I know none, and therefore am no beast.

ANNE. Villain, thou know’st nor law of God nor man. No beast so fierce but knows some touch of pity.

RICHARD. More wonderful when angels are so angry. Vouchsafe, divine perfection of a woman, Of these supposed crimes to give me leave, By circumstance, but to acquit myself.

ANNE. O wonderful, when devils tell the truth!

RICHARD. Fairer than tongue can name thee, let me have Some patient leisure to excuse myself.

ANNE. Fouler than heart can think thee, thou canst make No excuse current but to hang thyself.

RICHARD. By such despair I should accuse myself.

ANNE. Vouchsafe, diffused infection of a man, Of these known evils but to give me leave, By circumstance, to accuse thy cursed self.

RICHARD. Say that I slew them not?

ANNE. And by despairing shalt thou stand excused For doing worthy vengeance on thyself That didst unworthy slaughter upon others.

RICHARD. I did not kill your husband.

ANNE. Why then he is alive.

ANNE. Then say they were not slain. But dead they are, and, devilish slave, by thee.

ANNE. In thy foul throat thou liest. Queen Margaret saw Thy murd’rous falchion smoking in his blood, The which thou once didst bend against her breast, But that thy brothers beat aside the point.

RICHARD. I was provoked by her sland’rous tongue, That laid their guilt upon my guiltless shoulders.

RICHARD. Nay, he is dead, and slain by Edward’s hand.

RICHARD. I grant ye.

ANNE. Dost grant me, hedgehog? Then, God grant me too Thou mayst be damned for that wicked deed. O, he was gentle, mild, and virtuous.

RICHARD. The better for the King of Heaven that hath him.

ANNE. Thou wast provoked by thy bloody mind, That never dream’st on aught but butcheries. Didst thou not kill this King?

ANNE. He is in heaven, where thou shalt never come.

RICHARD. Let him thank me that holp to send him thither, For he was fitter for that place than earth.

ANNE. And thou unfit for any place but hell.

RICHARD. Yes, one place else, if you will hear me name it.

ANNE. Some dungeon.

RICHARD. Your bed-chamber.

ANNE. Ill rest betide the chamber where thou liest!

RICHARD. So will it, madam, till I lie with you.

ANNE. I hope so.

RICHARD. I know so. But, gentle Lady Anne, To leave this keen encounter of our wits, And fall something into a slower method: Is not the causer of the timeless deaths Of these Plantagenets, Henry and Edward, As blameful as the executioner?

ANNE. Thou wast the cause and most accursed effect.

RICHARD. Your beauty was the cause of that effect: Your beauty, that did haunt me in my sleep To undertake the death of all the world, So I might live one hour in your sweet bosom.

ANNE. If I thought that, I tell thee, homicide, These nails should rend that beauty from my cheeks.

RICHARD. These eyes could not endure that beauty’s wrack; You should not blemish it if I stood by. As all the world is cheered by the sun, So I by that; it is my day, my life.

ANNE. Black night o’ershade thy day, and death thy life.

RICHARD. Curse not thyself, fair creature; thou art both.

ANNE. I would I were, to be revenged on thee.

RICHARD. It is a quarrel most unnatural, To be revenged on him that loveth thee.

ANNE. It is a quarrel just and reasonable, To be revenged on him that killed my husband.

RICHARD. He that bereft thee, lady, of thy husband, Did it to help thee to a better husband.

ANNE. His better doth not breathe upon the earth.

RICHARD. He lives that loves thee better than he could.

ANNE. Name him.

RICHARD. Plantagenet.

ANNE. Why, that was he.

RICHARD. The selfsame name, but one of better nature.

ANNE. Where is he?

RICHARD. Here.

[She spits at him.]

Why dost thou spit at me?

ANNE. Would it were mortal poison, for thy sake.

RICHARD. Never came poison from so sweet a place.

ANNE. Never hung poison on a fouler toad. Out of my sight! Thou dost infect mine eyes.

RICHARD. Thine eyes, sweet lady, have infected mine.

ANNE. Would they were basilisks to strike thee dead!

RICHARD. I would they were, that I might die at once; For now they kill me with a living death. Those eyes of thine from mine have drawn salt tears, Shamed their aspects with store of childish drops. These eyes, which never shed remorseful tear, No, when my father York and Edward wept To hear the piteous moan that Rutland made When black-faced Clifford shook his sword at him; Nor when thy warlike father, like a child, Told the sad story of my father’s death, And twenty times made pause to sob and weep, That all the standers-by had wet their cheeks Like trees bedashed with rain. In that sad time My manly eyes did scorn an humble tear; And what these sorrows could not thence exhale, Thy beauty hath, and made them blind with weeping. I never sued to friend nor enemy; My tongue could never learn sweet smoothing word; But now thy beauty is proposed my fee, My proud heart sues, and prompts my tongue to speak.

[She looks scornfully at him.]

Teach not thy lip such scorn; for it was made For kissing, lady, not for such contempt. If thy revengeful heart cannot forgive, Lo, here I lend thee this sharp-pointed sword, Which if thou please to hide in this true breast And let the soul forth that adoreth thee, I lay it naked to the deadly stroke, And humbly beg the death upon my knee,

[He kneels and lays his breast open; she offers at it with his sword.]

Nay, do not pause, for I did kill King Henry— But ’twas thy beauty that provoked me. Nay, now dispatch; ’twas I that stabbed young Edward— But ’twas thy heavenly face that set me on.

[She falls the sword.]

Take up the sword again, or take up me.

ANNE. Arise, dissembler. Though I wish thy death, I will not be thy executioner.

RICHARD. Then bid me kill myself, and I will do it.

ANNE. I have already.

RICHARD. That was in thy rage. Speak it again, and even with the word, This hand, which for thy love did kill thy love, Shall for thy love kill a far truer love. To both their deaths shalt thou be accessary.

ANNE. I would I knew thy heart.

RICHARD. ’Tis figured in my tongue.

ANNE. I fear me both are false.

RICHARD. Then never was man true.

ANNE. Well, well, put up your sword.

RICHARD. Say then my peace is made.

ANNE. That shalt thou know hereafter.

RICHARD. But shall I live in hope?

ANNE. All men, I hope, live so.

RICHARD. Vouchsafe to wear this ring.

ANNE. To take is not to give.

[He places the ring on her hand.]

RICHARD. Look how my ring encompasseth thy finger; Even so thy breast encloseth my poor heart; Wear both of them, for both of them are thine. And if thy poor devoted servant may But beg one favour at thy gracious hand, Thou dost confirm his happiness for ever.

ANNE. What is it?

RICHARD. That it may please you leave these sad designs To him that hath most cause to be a mourner, And presently repair to Crosby Place; Where, after I have solemnly interred At Chertsey monastery this noble King, And wet his grave with my repentant tears, I will with all expedient duty see you. For divers unknown reasons, I beseech you, Grant me this boon.

ANNE. With all my heart, and much it joys me too To see you are become so penitent. Tressel and Berkeley, go along with me.

RICHARD. Bid me farewell.

ANNE. ’Tis more than you deserve; But since you teach me how to flatter you, Imagine I have said farewell already.

[Exeunt Lady Anne, Tressel and Berkeley.]

RICHARD. Sirs, take up the corse.

GENTLEMAN. Towards Chertsey, noble lord?

RICHARD. No, to White Friars; there attend my coming.

[Exeunt Halberds and Gentlemen with corse.]

Was ever woman in this humour wooed? Was ever woman in this humour won? I’ll have her, but I will not keep her long. What, I that killed her husband and his father, To take her in her heart’s extremest hate, With curses in her mouth, tears in her eyes, The bleeding witness of her hatred by, Having God, her conscience, and these bars against me, And I no friends to back my suit at all, But the plain devil and dissembling looks? And yet to win her, all the world to nothing! Ha! Hath she forgot already that brave prince, Edward, her lord, whom I, some three months since, Stabbed in my angry mood at Tewksbury? A sweeter and a lovelier gentleman, Framed in the prodigality of nature, Young, valiant, wise, and, no doubt, right royal, The spacious world cannot again afford. And will she yet abase her eyes on me, That cropped the golden prime of this sweet prince, And made her widow to a woeful bed? On me, whose all not equals Edward’s moiety? On me, that halt and am misshapen thus? My dukedom to a beggarly denier, I do mistake my person all this while! Upon my life, she finds, although I cannot, Myself to be a marvellous proper man. I’ll be at charges for a looking-glass, And entertain a score or two of tailors To study fashions to adorn my body. Since I am crept in favour with myself, I will maintain it with some little cost. But first I’ll turn yon fellow in his grave, And then return lamenting to my love. Shine out, fair sun, till I have bought a glass, That I may see my shadow as I pass.

SCENE III. London. A Room in the Palace

Enter Queen Elizabeth, the Marquess of Dorset, Lord Rivers and Lord Grey.

RIVERS. Have patience, madam. There’s no doubt his Majesty Will soon recover his accustomed health.

GREY. In that you brook it ill, it makes him worse. Therefore, for God’s sake, entertain good comfort, And cheer his Grace with quick and merry eyes.

QUEEN ELIZABETH. If he were dead, what would betide on me?

GREY. No other harm but loss of such a lord.

QUEEN ELIZABETH. The loss of such a lord includes all harms.

GREY. The heavens have blessed you with a goodly son To be your comforter when he is gone.

QUEEN ELIZABETH. Ah, he is young, and his minority Is put unto the trust of Richard Gloucester, A man that loves not me, nor none of you.

RIVERS. Is it concluded he shall be Protector?

QUEEN ELIZABETH. It is determined, not concluded yet; But so it must be, if the King miscarry.

Enter Buckingham and Stanley, Earl of Derby.

GREY. Here come the Lords of Buckingham and Derby.

BUCKINGHAM. Good time of day unto your royal Grace.

STANLEY. God make your Majesty joyful as you have been.

QUEEN ELIZABETH. The Countess Richmond, good my Lord of Derby, To your good prayer will scarcely say amen. Yet, Derby, notwithstanding she’s your wife, And loves not me, be you, good lord, assured I hate not you for her proud arrogance.

STANLEY. I do beseech you, either not believe The envious slanders of her false accusers, Or if she be accused on true report, Bear with her weakness, which I think proceeds From wayward sickness, and no grounded malice.

QUEEN ELIZABETH. Saw you the King today, my Lord of Derby?

STANLEY. But now the Duke of Buckingham and I Are come from visiting his Majesty.

QUEEN ELIZABETH. What likelihood of his amendment, lords?

BUCKINGHAM. Madam, good hope; his Grace speaks cheerfully.

QUEEN ELIZABETH. God grant him health! Did you confer with him?

BUCKINGHAM. Ay, madam; he desires to make atonement Between the Duke of Gloucester and your brothers, And between them and my Lord Chamberlain; And sent to warn them to his royal presence.

QUEEN ELIZABETH. Would all were well—but that will never be. I fear our happiness is at the height.

Enter Richard, Duke of Gloucester and Hastings.

RICHARD. They do me wrong, and I will not endure it! Who is it that complains unto the King That I, forsooth, am stern and love them not? By holy Paul, they love his Grace but lightly That fill his ears with such dissentious rumours. Because I cannot flatter and look fair, Smile in men’s faces, smooth, deceive, and cog, Duck with French nods and apish courtesy, I must be held a rancorous enemy. Cannot a plain man live and think no harm, But thus his simple truth must be abused With silken, sly, insinuating Jacks?

GREY. To who in all this presence speaks your Grace?

RICHARD. To thee, that hast nor honesty nor grace. When have I injured thee? When done thee wrong? Or thee? Or thee? Or any of your faction? A plague upon you all! His royal Grace, Whom God preserve better than you would wish, Cannot be quiet scarce a breathing while But you must trouble him with lewd complaints.

QUEEN ELIZABETH. Brother of Gloucester, you mistake the matter. The King, on his own royal disposition, And not provoked by any suitor else, Aiming, belike, at your interior hatred That in your outward action shows itself Against my children, brothers, and myself, Makes him to send, that he may learn the ground Of your ill will, and thereby to remove it.

RICHARD. I cannot tell. The world is grown so bad That wrens make prey where eagles dare not perch. Since every Jack became a gentleman, There’s many a gentle person made a Jack.

QUEEN ELIZABETH. Come, come, we know your meaning, brother Gloucester. You envy my advancement, and my friends’. God grant we never may have need of you.

RICHARD. Meantime, God grants that we have need of you. Our brother is imprisoned by your means, Myself disgraced, and the nobility Held in contempt, while great promotions Are daily given to ennoble those That scarce some two days since were worth a noble.

QUEEN ELIZABETH. By Him that raised me to this careful height From that contented hap which I enjoyed, I never did incense his Majesty Against the Duke of Clarence, but have been An earnest advocate to plead for him. My lord, you do me shameful injury Falsely to draw me in these vile suspects.

RICHARD. You may deny that you were not the mean Of my Lord Hastings’ late imprisonment.

RIVERS. She may, my lord; for—

RICHARD. She may, Lord Rivers; why, who knows not so? She may do more, sir, than denying that. She may help you to many fair preferments, And then deny her aiding hand therein, And lay those honours on your high desert. What may she not? She may, ay, marry, may she—

RIVERS. What, marry, may she?

RICHARD. What, marry, may she? Marry with a king, A bachelor, and a handsome stripling too. Iwis your grandam had a worser match.

QUEEN ELIZABETH. My lord of Gloucester, I have too long borne Your blunt upbraidings and your bitter scoffs. By heaven, I will acquaint his Majesty Of those gross taunts that oft I have endured. I had rather be a country servant-maid Than a great queen with this condition, To be so baited, scorned, and stormed at.

Enter old Queen Margaret behind.

Small joy have I in being England’s queen.

QUEEN MARGARET. [Aside.] And lessened be that small, God, I beseech Him! Thy honour, state, and seat, is due to me.

RICHARD. What, threat you me with telling of the King? Tell him, and spare not. Look what I have said I will avouch ’t in presence of the King; I dare adventure to be sent to th’ Tower. ’Tis time to speak. My pains are quite forgot.

QUEEN MARGARET. [Aside.] Out, devil! I do remember them too well: Thou killed’st my husband Henry in the Tower, And Edward, my poor son, at Tewksbury.

RICHARD. Ere you were queen, ay, or your husband king, I was a pack-horse in his great affairs; A weeder-out of his proud adversaries, A liberal rewarder of his friends. To royalize his blood, I spilt mine own.

QUEEN MARGARET. [Aside.] Ay, and much better blood than his or thine.

RICHARD. In all which time, you and your husband Grey Were factious for the house of Lancaster. And, Rivers, so were you. Was not your husband In Margaret’s battle at Saint Albans slain? Let me put in your minds, if you forget, What you have been ere this, and what you are; Withal, what I have been, and what I am.

QUEEN MARGARET. [Aside.] A murd’rous villain, and so still thou art.

RICHARD. Poor Clarence did forsake his father Warwick, Ay, and forswore himself—which Jesu pardon!—

QUEEN MARGARET. [Aside.] Which God revenge!

RICHARD. To fight on Edward’s party for the crown; And for his meed, poor lord, he is mewed up. I would to God my heart were flint, like Edward’s, Or Edward’s soft and pitiful, like mine. I am too childish-foolish for this world.

QUEEN MARGARET. [Aside.] Hie thee to hell for shame, and leave this world, Thou cacodemon! There thy kingdom is.

RIVERS. My lord of Gloucester, in those busy days Which here you urge to prove us enemies, We followed then our lord, our sovereign king. So should we you, if you should be our king.

RICHARD. If I should be! I had rather be a pedler. Far be it from my heart, the thought thereof.

QUEEN ELIZABETH. As little joy, my lord, as you suppose You should enjoy, were you this country’s king, As little joy you may suppose in me That I enjoy, being the Queen thereof.

QUEEN MARGARET. [Aside.] As little joy enjoys the Queen thereof, For I am she, and altogether joyless. I can no longer hold me patient.

Hear me, you wrangling pirates, that fall out In sharing that which you have pilled from me! Which of you trembles not that looks on me? If not, that I am Queen, you bow like subjects, Yet that, by you deposed, you quake like rebels. Ah, gentle villain, do not turn away.

RICHARD. Foul wrinkled witch, what mak’st thou in my sight?

QUEEN MARGARET. But repetition of what thou hast marred. That will I make before I let thee go.

RICHARD. Wert thou not banished on pain of death?

QUEEN MARGARET. I was, but I do find more pain in banishment Than death can yield me here by my abode. A husband and a son thou ow’st to me; And thou a kingdom; all of you, allegiance. This sorrow that I have by right is yours; And all the pleasures you usurp are mine.

RICHARD. The curse my noble father laid on thee When thou didst crown his warlike brows with paper, And with thy scorns drew’st rivers from his eyes, And then to dry them, gav’st the Duke a clout Steeped in the faultless blood of pretty Rutland— His curses then, from bitterness of soul Denounced against thee, are all fall’n upon thee, And God, not we, hath plagued thy bloody deed.

QUEEN ELIZABETH. So just is God, to right the innocent.

HASTINGS. O, ’twas the foulest deed to slay that babe, And the most merciless that e’er was heard of.

RIVERS. Tyrants themselves wept when it was reported.

DORSET. No man but prophesied revenge for it.

BUCKINGHAM. Northumberland, then present, wept to see it.

QUEEN MARGARET. What, were you snarling all before I came, Ready to catch each other by the throat, And turn you all your hatred now on me? Did York’s dread curse prevail so much with heaven That Henry’s death, my lovely Edward’s death, Their kingdom’s loss, my woeful banishment, Should all but answer for that peevish brat? Can curses pierce the clouds and enter heaven? Why then, give way, dull clouds, to my quick curses! Though not by war, by surfeit die your King, As ours by murder, to make him a king. Edward thy son, that now is Prince of Wales, For Edward our son, that was Prince of Wales, Die in his youth by like untimely violence. Thyself a queen, for me that was a queen, Outlive thy glory, like my wretched self. Long mayst thou live to wail thy children’s death, And see another, as I see thee now, Decked in thy rights, as thou art stalled in mine; Long die thy happy days before thy death, And, after many lengthened hours of grief, Die neither mother, wife, nor England’s Queen. Rivers and Dorset, you were standers-by, And so wast thou, Lord Hastings, when my son Was stabbed with bloody daggers. God, I pray Him, That none of you may live his natural age, But by some unlooked accident cut off.

RICHARD. Have done thy charm, thou hateful withered hag.

QUEEN MARGARET. And leave out thee? Stay, dog, for thou shalt hear me. If heaven have any grievous plague in store Exceeding those that I can wish upon thee, O, let them keep it till thy sins be ripe, And then hurl down their indignation On thee, the troubler of the poor world’s peace. The worm of conscience still begnaw thy soul; Thy friends suspect for traitors while thou liv’st, And take deep traitors for thy dearest friends; No sleep close up that deadly eye of thine, Unless it be while some tormenting dream Affrights thee with a hell of ugly devils. Thou elvish-marked, abortive, rooting hog, Thou that wast sealed in thy nativity The slave of nature and the son of hell; Thou slander of thy heavy mother’s womb, Thou loathed issue of thy father’s loins, Thou rag of honour, thou detested—

RICHARD. Margaret.

QUEEN MARGARET. Richard!

RICHARD. Ha?

QUEEN MARGARET. I call thee not.

RICHARD. I cry thee mercy then, for I did think That thou hadst called me all these bitter names.

QUEEN MARGARET. Why, so I did, but looked for no reply. O, let me make the period to my curse!

RICHARD. ’Tis done by me, and ends in “Margaret”.

QUEEN ELIZABETH. Thus have you breathed your curse against yourself.

QUEEN MARGARET. Poor painted queen, vain flourish of my fortune, Why strew’st thou sugar on that bottled spider, Whose deadly web ensnareth thee about? Fool, fool; thou whet’st a knife to kill thyself. The day will come that thou shalt wish for me To help thee curse this poisonous bunch-backed toad.

HASTINGS. False-boding woman, end thy frantic curse, Lest to thy harm thou move our patience.

QUEEN MARGARET. Foul shame upon you, you have all moved mine.

RIVERS. Were you well served, you would be taught your duty.

QUEEN MARGARET. To serve me well, you all should do me duty: Teach me to be your queen, and you my subjects. O, serve me well, and teach yourselves that duty!

DORSET. Dispute not with her; she is lunatic.

QUEEN MARGARET. Peace, Master Marquess, you are malapert. Your fire-new stamp of honour is scarce current. O, that your young nobility could judge What ’twere to lose it and be miserable! They that stand high have many blasts to shake them, And if they fall they dash themselves to pieces.

RICHARD. Good counsel, marry. Learn it, learn it, Marquess.

DORSET. It touches you, my lord, as much as me.

RICHARD. Ay, and much more; but I was born so high. Our aery buildeth in the cedar’s top, And dallies with the wind, and scorns the sun.

QUEEN MARGARET. And turns the sun to shade, alas, alas! Witness my son, now in the shade of death, Whose bright out-shining beams thy cloudy wrath Hath in eternal darkness folded up. Your aery buildeth in our aery’s nest. O God, that seest it, do not suffer it! As it is won with blood, lost be it so.

BUCKINGHAM. Peace, peace, for shame, if not for charity.

QUEEN MARGARET. Urge neither charity nor shame to me. Uncharitably with me have you dealt, And shamefully my hopes by you are butchered. My charity is outrage, life my shame, And in that shame still live my sorrow’s rage.

BUCKINGHAM. Have done, have done.

QUEEN MARGARET. O princely Buckingham, I’ll kiss thy hand In sign of league and amity with thee. Now fair befall thee and thy noble house! Thy garments are not spotted with our blood, Nor thou within the compass of my curse.

BUCKINGHAM. Nor no one here, for curses never pass The lips of those that breathe them in the air.

QUEEN MARGARET. I will not think but they ascend the sky, And there awake God’s gentle sleeping peace. O Buckingham, take heed of yonder dog! Look when he fawns, he bites; and when he bites, His venom tooth will rankle to the death. Have not to do with him; beware of him; Sin, death, and hell have set their marks on him, And all their ministers attend on him.

RICHARD. What doth she say, my lord of Buckingham?

BUCKINGHAM. Nothing that I respect, my gracious lord.

QUEEN MARGARET. What, dost thou scorn me for my gentle counsel, And soothe the devil that I warn thee from? O, but remember this another day, When he shall split thy very heart with sorrow, And say, poor Margaret was a prophetess. Live each of you the subjects to his hate, And he to yours, and all of you to God’s!

BUCKINGHAM. My hair doth stand on end to hear her curses.

RIVERS. And so doth mine. I muse why she’s at liberty.

RICHARD. I cannot blame her. By God’s holy mother, She hath had too much wrong; and I repent My part thereof that I have done to her.

QUEEN ELIZABETH. I never did her any, to my knowledge.

RICHARD. Yet you have all the vantage of her wrong. I was too hot to do somebody good That is too cold in thinking of it now. Marry, as for Clarence, he is well repaid; He is franked up to fatting for his pains. God pardon them that are the cause thereof.

RIVERS. A virtuous and a Christian-like conclusion, To pray for them that have done scathe to us.

RICHARD. So do I ever—(Speaks to himself) being well advised; For had I cursed now, I had cursed myself.

Enter Catesby.

CATESBY. Madam, his Majesty doth call for you, And for your Grace, and you, my gracious lords.

QUEEN ELIZABETH. Catesby, I come. Lords, will you go with me?

RIVERS. We wait upon your Grace.

RICHARD. I do the wrong, and first begin to brawl. The secret mischiefs that I set abroach I lay unto the grievous charge of others. Clarence, whom I indeed have cast in darkness, I do beweep to many simple gulls, Namely, to Derby, Hastings, Buckingham; And tell them ’tis the Queen and her allies That stir the King against the Duke my brother. Now they believe it, and withal whet me To be revenged on Rivers, Dorset, Grey. But then I sigh, and, with a piece of Scripture, Tell them that God bids us do good for evil; And thus I clothe my naked villany With odd old ends stol’n forth of Holy Writ, And seem a saint when most I play the devil.

Enter two Murderers.

But soft, here come my executioners. How now, my hardy, stout, resolved mates; Are you now going to dispatch this thing?

FIRST MURDERER. We are, my lord, and come to have the warrant, That we may be admitted where he is.

RICHARD. Well thought upon; I have it here about me.

[Gives the warrant.]

When you have done, repair to Crosby Place. But, sirs, be sudden in the execution, Withal obdurate, do not hear him plead; For Clarence is well-spoken, and perhaps May move your hearts to pity, if you mark him.

SECOND MURDERER. Tut, tut, my lord, we will not stand to prate. Talkers are no good doers. Be assured We go to use our hands, and not our tongues.

RICHARD. Your eyes drop millstones when fools’ eyes fall tears. I like you, lads. About your business straight. Go, go, dispatch.

BOTH MURDERERS. We will, my noble lord.

SCENE IV. London. A Room in the Tower

Enter Clarence and Keeper.

KEEPER. Why looks your Grace so heavily today?

CLARENCE. O, I have passed a miserable night, So full of fearful dreams, of ugly sights, That, as I am a Christian faithful man, I would not spend another such a night Though ’twere to buy a world of happy days, So full of dismal terror was the time!

KEEPER. What was your dream, my lord? I pray you tell me.

CLARENCE. Methoughts that I had broken from the Tower, And was embarked to cross to Burgundy; And in my company my brother Gloucester, Who from my cabin tempted me to walk Upon the hatches. Thence we looked toward England, And cited up a thousand heavy times, During the wars of York and Lancaster, That had befall’n us. As we paced along Upon the giddy footing of the hatches, Methought that Gloucester stumbled, and in falling, Struck me, that thought to stay him, overboard Into the tumbling billows of the main. O Lord, methought what pain it was to drown, What dreadful noise of waters in my ears; What sights of ugly death within my eyes. Methoughts I saw a thousand fearful wracks; A thousand men that fishes gnawed upon; Wedges of gold, great anchors, heaps of pearl, Inestimable stones, unvalued jewels, All scattered in the bottom of the sea. Some lay in dead men’s skulls, and in the holes Where eyes did once inhabit there were crept— As ’twere in scorn of eyes—reflecting gems, That wooed the slimy bottom of the deep, And mocked the dead bones that lay scattered by.

KEEPER. Had you such leisure in the time of death To gaze upon these secrets of the deep?

CLARENCE. Methought I had; and often did I strive To yield the ghost, but still the envious flood Stopped in my soul, and would not let it forth To find the empty, vast, and wand’ring air, But smothered it within my panting bulk, Who almost burst to belch it in the sea.

KEEPER. Awaked you not in this sore agony?

CLARENCE. No, no, my dream was lengthened after life. O, then began the tempest to my soul. I passed, methought, the melancholy flood, With that sour ferryman which poets write of, Unto the kingdom of perpetual night. The first that there did greet my stranger-soul Was my great father-in-law, renowned Warwick, Who spake aloud, “What scourge for perjury Can this dark monarchy afford false Clarence?” And so he vanished. Then came wand’ring by A shadow like an angel, with bright hair Dabbled in blood; and he shrieked out aloud “Clarence is come—false, fleeting, perjured Clarence, That stabbed me in the field by Tewksbury! Seize on him, Furies! Take him unto torment!” With that, methoughts, a legion of foul fiends Environed me, and howled in mine ears Such hideous cries that with the very noise I trembling waked, and for a season after Could not believe but that I was in hell, Such terrible impression made my dream.

KEEPER. No marvel, lord, though it affrighted you; I am afraid, methinks, to hear you tell it.

CLARENCE. Ah, Keeper, Keeper, I have done these things, That now give evidence against my soul, For Edward’s sake, and see how he requites me. O God, if my deep prayers cannot appease Thee, But Thou wilt be avenged on my misdeeds, Yet execute Thy wrath in me alone; O, spare my guiltless wife and my poor children! Keeper, I prithee sit by me awhile. My soul is heavy, and I fain would sleep.

KEEPER. I will, my lord; God give your Grace good rest.

[Clarence reposes himself on a chair.]

Enter Brakenbury the Lieutenant.

BRAKENBURY. Sorrow breaks seasons and reposing hours, Makes the night morning, and the noontide night. Princes have but their titles for their glories, An outward honour for an inward toil; And, for unfelt imaginations, They often feel a world of restless cares, So that between their titles and low name, There’s nothing differs but the outward fame.

Enter the two Murderers.

FIRST MURDERER. Ho, who’s here?

BRAKENBURY. What wouldst thou, fellow? And how cam’st thou hither?

SECOND MURDERER. I would speak with Clarence, and I came hither on my legs.

BRAKENBURY. What, so brief?

FIRST MURDERER. ’Tis better, sir, than to be tedious. Let him see our commission, and talk no more.

[Brakenbury reads the commission.]

BRAKENBURY. I am in this commanded to deliver The noble Duke of Clarence to your hands. I will not reason what is meant hereby, Because I will be guiltless of the meaning. There lies the Duke asleep, and there the keys. I’ll to the King and signify to him That thus I have resigned to you my charge.

FIRST MURDERER. You may, sir; ’tis a point of wisdom. Fare you well.

[Exeunt Brakenbury and the Keeper.]

SECOND MURDERER. What, shall I stab him as he sleeps?

FIRST MURDERER. No. He’ll say ’twas done cowardly, when he wakes.

SECOND MURDERER. Why, he shall never wake until the great Judgement Day.

FIRST MURDERER. Why, then he’ll say we stabbed him sleeping.

SECOND MURDERER. The urging of that word “judgement” hath bred a kind of remorse in me.

FIRST MURDERER. What, art thou afraid?

SECOND MURDERER. Not to kill him, having a warrant, but to be damned for killing him, from the which no warrant can defend me.

FIRST MURDERER. I thought thou hadst been resolute.

SECOND MURDERER. So I am—to let him live.

FIRST MURDERER. I’ll back to the Duke of Gloucester and tell him so.

SECOND MURDERER. Nay, I prithee stay a little. I hope this passionate humour will change. It was wont to hold me but while one tells twenty.

FIRST MURDERER. How dost thou feel thyself now?

SECOND MURDERER. Faith, some certain dregs of conscience are yet within me.

FIRST MURDERER. Remember our reward, when the deed’s done.

SECOND MURDERER. Zounds, he dies! I had forgot the reward.

FIRST MURDERER. Where’s thy conscience now?

SECOND MURDERER. O, in the Duke of Gloucester’s purse.

FIRST MURDERER. So, when he opens his purse to give us our reward, thy conscience flies out.

SECOND MURDERER. ’Tis no matter; let it go. There’s few or none will entertain it.

FIRST MURDERER. What if it come to thee again?

SECOND MURDERER. I’ll not meddle with it; it makes a man coward. A man cannot steal but it accuseth him; a man cannot swear but it checks him; a man cannot lie with his neighbour’s wife but it detects him. ’Tis a blushing shamefaced spirit that mutinies in a man’s bosom. It fills a man full of obstacles. It made me once restore a purse of gold that by chance I found. It beggars any man that keeps it. It is turned out of towns and cities for a dangerous thing; and every man that means to live well endeavours to trust to himself and live without it.

FIRST MURDERER. Zounds, ’tis even now at my elbow, persuading me not to kill the Duke.

SECOND MURDERER. Take the devil in thy mind, and believe him not. He would insinuate with thee but to make thee sigh.

FIRST MURDERER. I am strong-framed; he cannot prevail with me.

SECOND MURDERER. Spoke like a tall man that respects thy reputation. Come, shall we fall to work?

FIRST MURDERER. Take him on the costard with the hilts of thy sword, and then throw him in the malmsey-butt in the next room.

SECOND MURDERER. O excellent device—and make a sop of him.

FIRST MURDERER. Soft, he wakes.

SECOND MURDERER. Strike!

FIRST MURDERER. No, we’ll reason with him.

CLARENCE. Where art thou, keeper? Give me a cup of wine.

SECOND MURDERER. You shall have wine enough, my lord, anon.

CLARENCE. In God’s name, what art thou?

FIRST MURDERER. A man, as you are.

CLARENCE. But not as I am, royal.

SECOND MURDERER. Nor you as we are, loyal.

CLARENCE. Thy voice is thunder, but thy looks are humble.

FIRST MURDERER. My voice is now the King’s, my looks mine own.

CLARENCE. How darkly and how deadly dost thou speak! Your eyes do menace me; why look you pale? Who sent you hither? Wherefore do you come?

SECOND MURDERER. To, to, to—

CLARENCE. To murder me?

BOTH MURDERERS. Ay, ay.

CLARENCE. You scarcely have the hearts to tell me so, And therefore cannot have the hearts to do it. Wherein, my friends, have I offended you?

FIRST MURDERER. Offended us you have not, but the King.

CLARENCE. I shall be reconciled to him again.

SECOND MURDERER. Never, my lord; therefore prepare to die.

CLARENCE. Are you drawn forth among a world of men To slay the innocent? What is my offence? Where is the evidence that doth accuse me? What lawful quest have given their verdict up Unto the frowning judge? Or who pronounced The bitter sentence of poor Clarence’ death? Before I be convict by course of law, To threaten me with death is most unlawful. I charge you, as you hope to have redemption, By Christ’s dear blood shed for our grievous sins, That you depart, and lay no hands on me. The deed you undertake is damnable.

FIRST MURDERER. What we will do, we do upon command.

SECOND MURDERER. And he that hath commanded is our King.

CLARENCE. Erroneous vassals! The great King of kings Hath in the table of his law commanded That thou shalt do no murder. Will you then Spurn at His edict and fulfil a man’s? Take heed, for He holds vengeance in His hand To hurl upon their heads that break His law.

SECOND MURDERER. And that same vengeance doth He hurl on thee For false forswearing, and for murder too. Thou didst receive the sacrament to fight In quarrel of the house of Lancaster.

FIRST MURDERER. And like a traitor to the name of God Didst break that vow, and with thy treacherous blade Unrippedst the bowels of thy sovereign’s son.

SECOND MURDERER. Whom thou wast sworn to cherish and defend.

FIRST MURDERER. How canst thou urge God’s dreadful law to us, When thou hast broke it in such dear degree?

CLARENCE. Alas, for whose sake did I that ill deed? For Edward, for my brother, for his sake. He sends you not to murder me for this, For in that sin he is as deep as I. If God will be avenged for the deed, O, know you yet He doth it publicly; Take not the quarrel from His powerful arm; He needs no indirect or lawless course To cut off those that have offended Him.

FIRST MURDERER. Who made thee then a bloody minister When gallant-springing, brave Plantagenet, That princely novice, was struck dead by thee?

CLARENCE. My brother’s love, the devil, and my rage.

FIRST MURDERER. Thy brother’s love, our duty, and thy faults, Provoke us hither now to slaughter thee.

CLARENCE. If you do love my brother, hate not me. I am his brother, and I love him well. If you are hired for meed, go back again, And I will send you to my brother Gloucester, Who shall reward you better for my life Than Edward will for tidings of my death.

SECOND MURDERER. You are deceived. Your brother Gloucester hates you.

CLARENCE. O no, he loves me, and he holds me dear. Go you to him from me.

FIRST MURDERER. Ay, so we will.

CLARENCE. Tell him when that our princely father York Blessed his three sons with his victorious arm, And charged us from his soul to love each other, He little thought of this divided friendship. Bid Gloucester think of this, and he will weep.

FIRST MURDERER. Ay, millstones, as he lessoned us to weep.

CLARENCE. O, do not slander him, for he is kind.

FIRST MURDERER. Right, as snow in harvest. Come, you deceive yourself. ’Tis he that sends us to destroy you here.

CLARENCE. It cannot be, for he bewept my fortune, And hugged me in his arms, and swore with sobs That he would labour my delivery.

FIRST MURDERER. Why, so he doth, when he delivers you From this earth’s thraldom to the joys of heaven.

SECOND MURDERER. Make peace with God, for you must die, my lord.

CLARENCE. Have you that holy feeling in your souls To counsel me to make my peace with God, And are you yet to your own souls so blind That you will war with God by murd’ring me? O sirs, consider: they that set you on To do this deed will hate you for the deed.

SECOND MURDERER. What shall we do?

CLARENCE. Relent, and save your souls.

FIRST MURDERER. Relent? No, ’tis cowardly and womanish.

CLARENCE. Not to relent is beastly, savage, devilish. Which of you—if you were a prince’s son, Being pent from liberty, as I am now— If two such murderers as yourselves came to you, Would not entreat for life? Ay, you would beg, Were you in my distress. My friend, I spy some pity in thy looks. O, if thine eye be not a flatterer, Come thou on my side, and entreat for me; A begging prince what beggar pities not?

SECOND MURDERER. Look behind you, my lord.

FIRST MURDERER. Take that, and that! [Stabs him.] If all this will not do, I’ll drown you in the malmsey-butt within.

SECOND MURDERER. A bloody deed, and desperately dispatched. How fain, like Pilate, would I wash my hands Of this most grievous murder.

Enter First Murderer.

FIRST MURDERER. How now? What mean’st thou that thou help’st me not? By heavens, the Duke shall know how slack you have been.

SECOND MURDERER. I would he knew that I had saved his brother. Take thou the fee, and tell him what I say, For I repent me that the Duke is slain.

FIRST MURDERER. So do not I. Go, coward as thou art. Well, I’ll go hide the body in some hole Till that the Duke give order for his burial. And when I have my meed, I will away, For this will out, and then I must not stay.

SCENE I. London. A Room in the palace

Enter King Edward, sick, Queen Elizabeth, Dorset, Rivers, Hastings, Buckingham, Grey and others.

KING EDWARD. Why, so. Now have I done a good day’s work. You peers, continue this united league. I every day expect an embassage From my Redeemer, to redeem me hence; And more at peace my soul shall part to heaven Since I have made my friends at peace on earth. Rivers and Hastings, take each other’s hand; Dissemble not your hatred. Swear your love.

RIVERS. By heaven, my soul is purged from grudging hate, And with my hand I seal my true heart’s love.

HASTINGS. So thrive I, as I truly swear the like.

KING EDWARD. Take heed you dally not before your King, Lest He that is the supreme King of kings Confound your hidden falsehood, and award Either of you to be the other’s end.

HASTINGS. So prosper I, as I swear perfect love.

RIVERS. And I, as I love Hastings with my heart.

KING EDWARD. Madam, yourself is not exempt from this; Nor you, son Dorset; Buckingham, nor you. You have been factious one against the other. Wife, love Lord Hastings, let him kiss your hand, And what you do, do it unfeignedly.

QUEEN ELIZABETH. There, Hastings, I will never more remember Our former hatred, so thrive I and mine.

KING EDWARD. Dorset, embrace him; Hastings, love lord Marquess.

DORSET. This interchange of love, I here protest, Upon my part shall be inviolable.

HASTINGS. And so swear I.

[They embrace.]

KING EDWARD. Now, princely Buckingham, seal thou this league With thy embracements to my wife’s allies, And make me happy in your unity.

BUCKINGHAM. Whenever Buckingham doth turn his hate Upon your Grace, but with all duteous love Doth cherish you and yours, God punish me With hate in those where I expect most love. When I have most need to employ a friend, And most assured that he is a friend, Deep, hollow, treacherous, and full of guile Be he unto me: this do I beg of God, When I am cold in love to you or yours.

[Embrace.]

KING EDWARD. A pleasing cordial, princely Buckingham, Is this thy vow unto my sickly heart. There wanteth now our brother Gloucester here, To make the blessed period of this peace.

BUCKINGHAM. And in good time, Here comes Sir Ratcliffe and the Duke.

Enter Ratcliffe and Richard.

RICHARD. Good morrow to my sovereign King and Queen; And, princely peers, a happy time of day.

KING EDWARD. Happy indeed, as we have spent the day. Gloucester, we have done deeds of charity, Made peace of enmity, fair love of hate, Between these swelling wrong-incensed peers.

RICHARD. A blessed labour, my most sovereign lord, Among this princely heap, if any here By false intelligence or wrong surmise Hold me a foe, If I unwittingly, or in my rage, Have aught committed that is hardly borne By any in this presence, I desire To reconcile me to his friendly peace. ’Tis death to me to be at enmity; I hate it, and desire all good men’s love. First, madam, I entreat true peace of you, Which I will purchase with my duteous service; Of you, my noble cousin Buckingham, If ever any grudge were lodged between us; Of you and you, Lord Rivers and of Dorset, That all without desert have frowned on me; Of you, Lord Woodville and Lord Scales;—of you, Dukes, earls, lords, gentlemen; indeed, of all. I do not know that Englishman alive With whom my soul is any jot at odds More than the infant that is born tonight. I thank my God for my humility.

QUEEN ELIZABETH. A holy day shall this be kept hereafter. I would to God all strifes were well compounded. My sovereign lord, I do beseech your Highness To take our brother Clarence to your grace.

RICHARD. Why, madam, have I offered love for this, To be so flouted in this royal presence? Who knows not that the gentle Duke is dead?

[They all start.]

You do him injury to scorn his corse.

KING EDWARD. Who knows not he is dead! Who knows he is?

QUEEN ELIZABETH. All-seeing heaven, what a world is this!

BUCKINGHAM. Look I so pale, Lord Dorset, as the rest?

DORSET. Ay, my good lord, and no man in the presence But his red colour hath forsook his cheeks.

KING EDWARD. Is Clarence dead? The order was reversed.

RICHARD. But he, poor man, by your first order died, And that a winged Mercury did bear; Some tardy cripple bore the countermand, That came too lag to see him buried. God grant that some, less noble and less loyal, Nearer in bloody thoughts, and not in blood, Deserve not worse than wretched Clarence did, And yet go current from suspicion!

Enter Stanley Earl of Derby.

STANLEY. A boon, my sovereign, for my service done!

KING EDWARD. I prithee, peace. My soul is full of sorrow.

STANLEY. I will not rise unless your Highness hear me.

KING EDWARD. Then say at once what is it thou requests.

STANLEY. The forfeit, sovereign, of my servant’s life Who slew today a riotous gentleman Lately attendant on the Duke of Norfolk.

KING EDWARD. Have I a tongue to doom my brother’s death, And shall that tongue give pardon to a slave? My brother killed no man; his fault was thought, And yet his punishment was bitter death. Who sued to me for him? Who, in my wrath, Kneeled at my feet, and bid me be advised? Who spoke of brotherhood? Who spoke of love? Who told me how the poor soul did forsake The mighty Warwick, and did fight for me? Who told me, in the field at Tewksbury, When Oxford had me down, he rescued me, And said, “Dear brother, live, and be a king”? Who told me, when we both lay in the field Frozen almost to death, how he did lap me Even in his garments, and did give himself, All thin and naked, to the numb-cold night? All this from my remembrance brutish wrath Sinfully plucked, and not a man of you Had so much grace to put it in my mind. But when your carters or your waiting vassals Have done a drunken slaughter, and defaced The precious image of our dear Redeemer, You straight are on your knees for pardon, pardon, And I, unjustly too, must grant it you. But for my brother not a man would speak, Nor I, ungracious, speak unto myself For him, poor soul. The proudest of you all Have been beholding to him in his life, Yet none of you would once beg for his life. O God, I fear Thy justice will take hold On me, and you, and mine and yours for this! Come, Hastings, help me to my closet. Ah, poor Clarence!

[Exeunt some with King and Queen.]

RICHARD. This is the fruit of rashness. Marked you not How that the guilty kindred of the Queen Looked pale when they did hear of Clarence’ death? O, they did urge it still unto the King. God will revenge it. Come, lords, will you go To comfort Edward with our company?

BUCKINGHAM. We wait upon your Grace.

SCENE II. Another Room in the palace

Enter the old Duchess of York with the two Children of Clarence.

BOY. Good grandam, tell us, is our father dead?

DUCHESS. No, boy.

GIRL. Why do you weep so oft, and beat your breast, And cry “O Clarence, my unhappy son”?

BOY. Why do you look on us, and shake your head, And call us orphans, wretches, castaways, If that our noble father were alive?

DUCHESS. My pretty cousins, you mistake me both. I do lament the sickness of the King, As loath to lose him, not your father’s death. It were lost sorrow to wail one that’s lost.

BOY. Then you conclude, my grandam, he is dead. The King mine uncle is to blame for it. God will revenge it, whom I will importune With earnest prayers all to that effect.

GIRL. And so will I.

DUCHESS. Peace, children, peace. The King doth love you well. Incapable and shallow innocents, You cannot guess who caused your father’s death.

BOY. Grandam, we can, for my good uncle Gloucester Told me, the King, provoked to it by the Queen, Devised impeachments to imprison him; And when my uncle told me so, he wept, And pitied me, and kindly kissed my cheek; Bade me rely on him as on my father, And he would love me dearly as his child.

DUCHESS. Ah, that deceit should steal such gentle shape, And with a virtuous visard hide deep vice! He is my son, ay, and therein my shame; Yet from my dugs he drew not this deceit.

BOY. Think you my uncle did dissemble, grandam?

DUCHESS. Ay, boy.

BOY. I cannot think it. Hark, what noise is this?

Enter Queen Elizabeth with her hair about her ears, Rivers and Dorset after her.

QUEEN ELIZABETH. Ah, who shall hinder me to wail and weep, To chide my fortune, and torment myself? I’ll join with black despair against my soul And to myself become an enemy.

DUCHESS. What means this scene of rude impatience?

QUEEN ELIZABETH. To make an act of tragic violence. Edward, my lord, thy son, our King, is dead. Why grow the branches when the root is gone? Why wither not the leaves that want their sap? If you will live, lament; if die, be brief, That our swift-winged souls may catch the King’s Or, like obedient subjects, follow him To his new kingdom of ne’er-changing night.

DUCHESS. Ah, so much interest have I in thy sorrow As I had title in thy noble husband. I have bewept a worthy husband’s death, And lived by looking on his images; But now two mirrors of his princely semblance Are cracked in pieces by malignant death, And I, for comfort, have but one false glass, That grieves me when I see my shame in him. Thou art a widow, yet thou art a mother, And hast the comfort of thy children left; But death hath snatched my husband from mine arms And plucked two crutches from my feeble hands, Clarence and Edward. O, what cause have I, Thine being but a moiety of my moan, To overgo thy woes and drown thy cries.

BOY. Ah, aunt, you wept not for our father’s death. How can we aid you with our kindred tears?

GIRL. Our fatherless distress was left unmoaned. Your widow-dolour likewise be unwept!

QUEEN ELIZABETH. Give me no help in lamentation. I am not barren to bring forth complaints. All springs reduce their currents to mine eyes, That I, being governed by the watery moon, May send forth plenteous tears to drown the world. Ah, for my husband, for my dear Lord Edward!

CHILDREN. Ah for our father, for our dear Lord Clarence!

DUCHESS. Alas for both, both mine, Edward and Clarence!

QUEEN ELIZABETH. What stay had I but Edward? And he’s gone.

CHILDREN. What stay had we but Clarence? And he’s gone.

DUCHESS. What stays had I but they? And they are gone.

QUEEN ELIZABETH. Was never widow had so dear a loss.

CHILDREN. Were never orphans had so dear a loss.

DUCHESS. Was never mother had so dear a loss. Alas, I am the mother of these griefs. Their woes are parcelled, mine is general. She for an Edward weeps, and so do I; I for a Clarence weep, so doth not she; These babes for Clarence weep, and so do I; I for an Edward weep, so do not they. Alas, you three, on me, threefold distressed, Pour all your tears. I am your sorrow’s nurse, And I will pamper it with lamentation.

DORSET. Comfort, dear mother. God is much displeased That you take with unthankfulness His doing. In common worldly things ’tis called ungrateful With dull unwillingness to repay a debt Which with a bounteous hand was kindly lent; Much more to be thus opposite with heaven, For it requires the royal debt it lent you.

RIVERS. Madam, bethink you, like a careful mother, Of the young prince your son. Send straight for him; Let him be crowned; in him your comfort lives. Drown desperate sorrow in dead Edward’s grave, And plant your joys in living Edward’s throne.

Enter Richard, Buckingham, Stanley Earl of Derby, Hastings and Ratcliffe.

RICHARD. Sister, have comfort. All of us have cause To wail the dimming of our shining star, But none can help our harms by wailing them. Madam my mother, I do cry you mercy; I did not see your Grace. Humbly on my knee I crave your blessing.

DUCHESS. God bless thee, and put meekness in thy breast, Love, charity, obedience, and true duty.

RICHARD. Amen. [Aside.] And make me die a good old man! That is the butt end of a mother’s blessing; I marvel that her Grace did leave it out.

BUCKINGHAM. You cloudy princes and heart-sorrowing peers That bear this heavy mutual load of moan, Now cheer each other in each other’s love. Though we have spent our harvest of this king, We are to reap the harvest of his son. The broken rancour of your high-swoll’n hates, But lately splintered, knit, and joined together, Must gently be preserved, cherished, and kept. Me seemeth good that with some little train, Forthwith from Ludlow the young Prince be fet Hither to London, to be crowned our King.

RIVERS. Why with some little train, my Lord of Buckingham?

BUCKINGHAM. Marry, my lord, lest by a multitude The new-healed wound of malice should break out, Which would be so much the more dangerous By how much the estate is green and yet ungoverned. Where every horse bears his commanding rein And may direct his course as please himself, As well the fear of harm as harm apparent, In my opinion, ought to be prevented.

RICHARD. I hope the King made peace with all of us; And the compact is firm and true in me.

RIVERS. And so in me, and so, I think, in all. Yet since it is but green, it should be put To no apparent likelihood of breach, Which haply by much company might be urged. Therefore I say with noble Buckingham That it is meet so few should fetch the Prince.

HASTINGS. And so say I.

RICHARD. Then be it so, and go we to determine Who they shall be that straight shall post to Ludlow. Madam, and you, my sister, will you go To give your censures in this business?

[Exeunt all but Buckingham and Richard.]

BUCKINGHAM. My lord, whoever journeys to the Prince, For God’s sake, let not us two stay at home. For by the way I’ll sort occasion, As index to the story we late talked of, To part the Queen’s proud kindred from the Prince.

RICHARD. My other self, my counsel’s consistory, My oracle, my prophet, my dear cousin, I, as a child, will go by thy direction. Toward Ludlow then, for we’ll not stay behind.

SCENE III. London. A street

Enter one Citizen at one door, and Another at the other.

FIRST CITIZEN. Good morrow, neighbour, whither away so fast?

SECOND CITIZEN. I promise you, I scarcely know myself. Hear you the news abroad?

FIRST CITIZEN. Yes, that the King is dead.

SECOND CITIZEN. Ill news, by’r Lady; seldom comes the better. I fear, I fear ’twill prove a giddy world.

Enter another Citizen.

THIRD CITIZEN. Neighbours, God speed.

FIRST CITIZEN. Give you good morrow, sir.

THIRD CITIZEN. Doth the news hold of good King Edward’s death?

SECOND CITIZEN. Ay, sir, it is too true, God help the while.

THIRD CITIZEN. Then, masters, look to see a troublous world.

FIRST CITIZEN. No, no; by God’s good grace, his son shall reign.

THIRD CITIZEN. Woe to that land that’s governed by a child.

SECOND CITIZEN. In him there is a hope of government, Which, in his nonage, council under him, And, in his full and ripened years, himself, No doubt shall then, and till then, govern well.

FIRST CITIZEN. So stood the state when Henry the Sixth Was crowned in Paris but at nine months old.

THIRD CITIZEN. Stood the state so? No, no, good friends, God wot. For then this land was famously enriched With politic grave counsel; then the King Had virtuous uncles to protect his Grace.

FIRST CITIZEN. Why, so hath this, both by his father and mother.

THIRD CITIZEN. Better it were they all came by his father, Or by his father there were none at all, For emulation who shall now be nearest Will touch us all too near, if God prevent not. O, full of danger is the Duke of Gloucester, And the Queen’s sons and brothers haught and proud; And were they to be ruled, and not to rule, This sickly land might solace as before.

FIRST CITIZEN. Come, come, we fear the worst; all will be well.

THIRD CITIZEN. When clouds are seen, wise men put on their cloaks; When great leaves fall, then winter is at hand; When the sun sets, who doth not look for night? Untimely storms make men expect a dearth. All may be well; but, if God sort it so, ’Tis more than we deserve or I expect.

SECOND CITIZEN. Truly, the hearts of men are full of fear. You cannot reason almost with a man That looks not heavily and full of dread.

THIRD CITIZEN. Before the days of change, still is it so. By a divine instinct men’s minds mistrust Ensuing danger, as by proof we see The water swell before a boist’rous storm. But leave it all to God. Whither away?

SECOND CITIZEN. Marry, we were sent for to the Justices.

THIRD CITIZEN. And so was I. I’ll bear you company.

SCENE IV. London. A Room in the Palace

Enter the Archbishop of York, the young Duke of York, Queen Elizabeth and the Duchess of York.

ARCHBISHOP. Last night, I hear, they lay at Stony Stratford, And at Northampton they do rest tonight. Tomorrow or next day they will be here.

DUCHESS. I long with all my heart to see the Prince. I hope he is much grown since last I saw him.

QUEEN ELIZABETH. But I hear no; they say my son of York Has almost overta’en him in his growth.

YORK. Ay, mother, but I would not have it so.

DUCHESS. Why, my good cousin? It is good to grow.

YORK. Grandam, one night as we did sit at supper, My uncle Rivers talked how I did grow More than my brother. “Ay,” quoth my uncle Gloucester, “Small herbs have grace; great weeds do grow apace.” And since, methinks I would not grow so fast, Because sweet flowers are slow and weeds make haste.

DUCHESS. Good faith, good faith, the saying did not hold In him that did object the same to thee! He was the wretched’st thing when he was young, So long a-growing and so leisurely, That if his rule were true, he should be gracious.

ARCHBISHOP. And so no doubt he is, my gracious madam.

DUCHESS. I hope he is, but yet let mothers doubt.

YORK. Now, by my troth, if I had been remembered, I could have given my uncle’s Grace a flout To touch his growth nearer than he touched mine.

DUCHESS. How, my young York? I prithee let me hear it.

YORK. Marry, they say my uncle grew so fast That he could gnaw a crust at two hours old. ’Twas full two years ere I could get a tooth. Grandam, this would have been a biting jest.

DUCHESS. I prithee, pretty York, who told thee this?

YORK. Grandam, his nurse.

DUCHESS. His nurse? Why she was dead ere thou wast born.

YORK. If ’twere not she, I cannot tell who told me.

QUEEN ELIZABETH. A parlous boy! Go to, you are too shrewd.

DUCHESS. Good madam, be not angry with the child.

QUEEN ELIZABETH. Pitchers have ears.

ARCHBISHOP. Here comes a messenger. What news?

MESSENGER. Such news, my lord, as grieves me to report.

QUEEN ELIZABETH. How doth the Prince?

MESSENGER. Well, madam, and in health.

DUCHESS. What is thy news?

MESSENGER. Lord Rivers and Lord Grey are sent to Pomfret, And, with them Sir Thomas Vaughan, prisoners.

DUCHESS. Who hath committed them?

MESSENGER. The mighty Dukes, Gloucester and Buckingham.

ARCHBISHOP. For what offence?

MESSENGER. The sum of all I can, I have disclosed. Why or for what the nobles were committed Is all unknown to me, my gracious lord.

QUEEN ELIZABETH. Ah me! I see the ruin of my house. The tiger now hath seized the gentle hind; Insulting tyranny begins to jut Upon the innocent and aweless throne. Welcome, destruction, blood, and massacre; I see, as in a map, the end of all.

DUCHESS. Accursed and unquiet wrangling days, How many of you have mine eyes beheld? My husband lost his life to get the crown, And often up and down my sons were tossed For me to joy and weep their gain and loss. And being seated, and domestic broils Clean over-blown, themselves, the conquerors Make war upon themselves, brother to brother, Blood to blood, self against self. O, preposterous And frantic outrage, end thy damned spleen, Or let me die, to look on earth no more.

QUEEN ELIZABETH. Come, come, my boy. We will to sanctuary. Madam, farewell.

DUCHESS. Stay, I will go with you.

QUEEN ELIZABETH. You have no cause.

ARCHBISHOP. [To the Queen.] My gracious lady, go, And thither bear your treasure and your goods. For my part, I’ll resign unto your Grace The seal I keep; and so betide to me As well I tender you and all of yours. Go, I’ll conduct you to the sanctuary.

The trumpets sound. Enter young Prince Edward, Richard, Buckingham, Cardinal Bourchier, Catesby and others.

BUCKINGHAM. Welcome, sweet Prince, to London, to your chamber.

RICHARD. Welcome, dear cousin, my thoughts’ sovereign. The weary way hath made you melancholy.

PRINCE. No, uncle, but our crosses on the way Have made it tedious, wearisome, and heavy. I want more uncles here to welcome me.

RICHARD. Sweet prince, the untainted virtue of your years Hath not yet dived into the world’s deceit, Nor more can you distinguish of a man Than of his outward show, which, God He knows, Seldom or never jumpeth with the heart. Those uncles which you want were dangerous; Your Grace attended to their sugared words But looked not on the poison of their hearts. God keep you from them, and from such false friends!

PRINCE. God keep me from false friends, but they were none.

RICHARD. My lord, the Mayor of London comes to greet you.

Enter Lord Mayor with Attendants.

MAYOR. God bless your Grace with health and happy days!

PRINCE. I thank you, good my lord, and thank you all. I thought my mother and my brother York Would long ere this have met us on the way. Fie, what a slug is Hastings, that he comes not To tell us whether they will come or no!

BUCKINGHAM. And in good time, here comes the sweating lord.

PRINCE. Welcome, my lord. What, will our mother come?

HASTINGS. On what occasion God He knows, not I, The Queen your mother and your brother York Have taken sanctuary. The tender prince Would fain have come with me to meet your Grace, But by his mother was perforce withheld.

BUCKINGHAM. Fie, what an indirect and peevish course Is this of hers? Lord cardinal, will your Grace Persuade the Queen to send the Duke of York Unto his princely brother presently? If she deny, Lord Hastings, go with him, And from her jealous arms pluck him perforce.

CARDINAL. My Lord of Buckingham, if my weak oratory Can from his mother win the Duke of York, Anon expect him here; but if she be obdurate To mild entreaties, God in heaven forbid We should infringe the holy privilege Of blessed sanctuary! Not for all this land Would I be guilty of so deep a sin.

BUCKINGHAM. You are too senseless-obstinate, my lord, Too ceremonious and traditional. Weigh it but with the grossness of this age, You break not sanctuary in seizing him. The benefit thereof is always granted To those whose dealings have deserved the place And those who have the wit to claim the place. This prince hath neither claimed it nor deserved it And therefore, in mine opinion, cannot have it. Then taking him from thence that is not there, You break no privilege nor charter there. Oft have I heard of sanctuary-men, But sanctuary children, never till now.

CARDINAL. My lord, you shall o’errule my mind for once. Come on, Lord Hastings, will you go with me?

HASTINGS. I go, my lord.

PRINCE. Good lords, make all the speedy haste you may.

[Exeunt Cardinal and Hastings.]

Say, uncle Gloucester, if our brother come, Where shall we sojourn till our coronation?

RICHARD. Where it seems best unto your royal self. If I may counsel you, some day or two Your Highness shall repose you at the Tower, Then where you please and shall be thought most fit For your best health and recreation.

PRINCE. I do not like the Tower, of any place. Did Julius Caesar build that place, my lord?

BUCKINGHAM. He did, my gracious lord, begin that place, Which, since, succeeding ages have re-edified.

PRINCE. Is it upon record, or else reported Successively from age to age, he built it?

BUCKINGHAM. Upon record, my gracious lord.

PRINCE. But say, my lord, it were not registered, Methinks the truth should live from age to age, As ’twere retailed to all posterity, Even to the general all-ending day.

RICHARD. [Aside.] So wise so young, they say, do never live long.

PRINCE. What say you, uncle?

RICHARD. I say, without characters, fame lives long. [Aside.] Thus, like the formal Vice, Iniquity, I moralize two meanings in one word.

PRINCE. That Julius Caesar was a famous man. With what his valour did enrich his wit, His wit set down to make his valour live; Death makes no conquest of this conqueror, For now he lives in fame, though not in life. I’ll tell you what, my cousin Buckingham.

BUCKINGHAM. What, my gracious lord?

PRINCE. An if I live until I be a man, I’ll win our ancient right in France again, Or die a soldier, as I lived a king.

RICHARD. [Aside.] Short summers lightly have a forward spring.

Enter young Duke of York, Hastings and the Cardinal.

BUCKINGHAM. Now, in good time here comes the Duke of York.

PRINCE. Richard of York, how fares our loving brother?

YORK. Well, my dread lord—so must I call you now.

PRINCE. Ay brother, to our grief, as it is yours. Too late he died that might have kept that title, Which by his death hath lost much majesty.

RICHARD. How fares our cousin, noble lord of York?

YORK. I thank you, gentle uncle. O, my lord, You said that idle weeds are fast in growth. The Prince my brother hath outgrown me far.

RICHARD. He hath, my lord.

YORK. And therefore is he idle?

RICHARD. O, my fair cousin, I must not say so.

YORK. Then he is more beholding to you than I.

RICHARD. He may command me as my sovereign, But you have power in me as in a kinsman.

YORK. I pray you, uncle, give me this dagger.

RICHARD. My dagger, little cousin? With all my heart.

PRINCE. A beggar, brother?

YORK. Of my kind uncle, that I know will give, And being but a toy, which is no grief to give.

RICHARD. A greater gift than that I’ll give my cousin.

YORK. A greater gift? O, that’s the sword to it.

RICHARD. Ay, gentle cousin, were it light enough.

YORK. O, then I see you will part but with light gifts; In weightier things you’ll say a beggar nay.

RICHARD. It is too heavy for your Grace to wear.

YORK. I weigh it lightly, were it heavier.

RICHARD. What, would you have my weapon, little lord?

YORK. I would, that I might thank you as you call me.

RICHARD. How?

YORK. Little.

PRINCE. My lord of York will still be cross in talk. Uncle, your Grace knows how to bear with him.

YORK. You mean, to bear me, not to bear with me. Uncle, my brother mocks both you and me. Because that I am little, like an ape, He thinks that you should bear me on your shoulders.

BUCKINGHAM. With what a sharp-provided wit he reasons! To mitigate the scorn he gives his uncle, He prettily and aptly taunts himself. So cunning and so young is wonderful.

RICHARD. My lord, wil’t please you pass along? Myself and my good cousin Buckingham Will to your mother, to entreat of her To meet you at the Tower and welcome you.

YORK. What, will you go unto the Tower, my lord?

PRINCE. My Lord Protector needs will have it so.

YORK. I shall not sleep in quiet at the Tower.

RICHARD. Why, what should you fear?

YORK. Marry, my uncle Clarence’ angry ghost. My grandam told me he was murdered there.

PRINCE. I fear no uncles dead.

RICHARD. Nor none that live, I hope.

PRINCE. An if they live, I hope I need not fear. But come, my lord. With a heavy heart, Thinking on them, go I unto the Tower.

[A Sennet. Exeunt Prince Edward, York, Hastings, Dorset and all but Richard, Buckingham and Catesby.]

BUCKINGHAM. Think you, my lord, this little prating York Was not incensed by his subtle mother To taunt and scorn you thus opprobriously?

RICHARD. No doubt, no doubt. O, ’tis a parlous boy, Bold, quick, ingenious, forward, capable. He is all the mother’s, from the top to toe.

BUCKINGHAM. Well, let them rest. Come hither, Catesby. Thou art sworn as deeply to effect what we intend As closely to conceal what we impart. Thou know’st our reasons urged upon the way. What think’st thou? Is it not an easy matter To make William Lord Hastings of our mind For the instalment of this noble Duke In the seat royal of this famous isle?

CATESBY. He for his father’s sake so loves the Prince That he will not be won to aught against him.

BUCKINGHAM. What think’st thou then of Stanley? Will not he?

CATESBY. He will do all in all as Hastings doth.

BUCKINGHAM. Well then, no more but this: go, gentle Catesby, And, as it were far off, sound thou Lord Hastings How he doth stand affected to our purpose, And summon him tomorrow to the Tower To sit about the coronation. If thou dost find him tractable to us, Encourage him, and tell him all our reasons. If he be leaden, icy, cold, unwilling, Be thou so too, and so break off the talk, And give us notice of his inclination; For we tomorrow hold divided councils, Wherein thyself shalt highly be employed.

RICHARD. Commend me to Lord William. Tell him, Catesby, His ancient knot of dangerous adversaries Tomorrow are let blood at Pomfret Castle, And bid my lord, for joy of this good news, Give Mistress Shore one gentle kiss the more.

BUCKINGHAM. Good Catesby, go effect this business soundly.

CATESBY. My good lords both, with all the heed I can.

RICHARD. Shall we hear from you, Catesby, ere we sleep?

CATESBY. You shall, my lord.

RICHARD. At Crosby Place, there shall you find us both.

[Exit Catesby.]

BUCKINGHAM. Now, my lord, what shall we do if we perceive Lord Hastings will not yield to our complots?

RICHARD. Chop off his head, man; somewhat we will do. And look when I am king, claim thou of me The earldom of Hereford, and all the movables Whereof the King my brother was possessed.

BUCKINGHAM. I’ll claim that promise at your Grace’s hand.

RICHARD. And look to have it yielded with all kindness. Come, let us sup betimes, that afterwards We may digest our complots in some form.

SCENE II. Before Lord Hastings’ house

Enter a Messenger to the door of Hastings.

MESSENGER. My lord, my lord!

[Knocking.]

HASTINGS. [Within.] Who knocks?

MESSENGER. One from the Lord Stanley.

HASTINGS. [Within.] What is’t o’clock?

MESSENGER. Upon the stroke of four.

HASTINGS. Cannot my Lord Stanley sleep these tedious nights?

MESSENGER. So it appears by that I have to say. First, he commends him to your noble self.

HASTINGS. What then?

MESSENGER. Then certifies your lordship that this night He dreamt the boar had razed off his helm. Besides, he says there are two councils kept, And that may be determined at the one Which may make you and him to rue at th’ other. Therefore he sends to know your lordship’s pleasure, If you will presently take horse with him And with all speed post with him toward the north, To shun the danger that his soul divines.

HASTINGS. Go, fellow, go. Return unto thy lord; Bid him not fear the separated council. His honour and myself are at the one, And at the other is my good friend Catesby, Where nothing can proceed that toucheth us Whereof I shall not have intelligence. Tell him his fears are shallow, without instance. And for his dreams, I wonder he’s so simple To trust the mockery of unquiet slumbers. To fly the boar before the boar pursues Were to incense the boar to follow us, And make pursuit where he did mean no chase. Go, bid thy master rise and come to me, And we will both together to the Tower, Where he shall see the boar will use us kindly.

MESSENGER. I’ll go, my lord, and tell him what you say.

CATESBY. Many good morrows to my noble lord.

HASTINGS. Good morrow, Catesby; you are early stirring. What news, what news in this our tott’ring state?

CATESBY. It is a reeling world indeed, my lord, And I believe will never stand upright Till Richard wear the garland of the realm.

HASTINGS. How, wear the garland? Dost thou mean the crown?

CATESBY. Ay, my good lord.

HASTINGS. I’ll have this crown of mine cut from my shoulders Before I’ll see the crown so foul misplaced. But canst thou guess that he doth aim at it?

CATESBY. Ay, on my life, and hopes to find you forward Upon his party for the gain thereof; And thereupon he sends you this good news, That this same very day your enemies, The kindred of the Queen, must die at Pomfret.

HASTINGS. Indeed, I am no mourner for that news, Because they have been still my adversaries. But that I’ll give my voice on Richard’s side To bar my master’s heirs in true descent, God knows I will not do it, to the death.

CATESBY. God keep your lordship in that gracious mind.

HASTINGS. But I shall laugh at this a twelve-month hence, That they which brought me in my master’s hate, I live to look upon their tragedy. Well, Catesby, ere a fortnight make me older I’ll send some packing that yet think not on’t.

CATESBY. ’Tis a vile thing to die, my gracious lord, When men are unprepared and look not for it.

HASTINGS. O monstrous, monstrous! And so falls it out With Rivers, Vaughan, Grey; and so ’twill do With some men else that think themselves as safe As thou and I, who, as thou know’st, are dear To princely Richard and to Buckingham.

CATESBY. The Princes both make high account of you— [Aside.] For they account his head upon the Bridge.

HASTINGS. I know they do, and I have well deserved it.

Come on, come on. Where is your boar-spear, man? Fear you the boar, and go so unprovided?

STANLEY. My lord, good morrow; good morrow, Catesby. You may jest on, but, by the Holy Rood, I do not like these several councils, I.

HASTINGS. My lord, I hold my life as dear as you do yours, And never in my days, I do protest, Was it so precious to me as ’tis now. Think you, but that I know our state secure, I would be so triumphant as I am?

STANLEY. The lords at Pomfret, when they rode from London, Were jocund and supposed their states were sure, And they indeed had no cause to mistrust; But yet you see how soon the day o’ercast. This sudden stab of rancour I misdoubt; Pray God, I say, I prove a needless coward. What, shall we toward the Tower? The day is spent.

HASTINGS. Come, come. Have with you. Wot you what, my lord? Today the lords you talked of are beheaded.

STANLEY. They, for their truth, might better wear their heads Than some that have accused them wear their hats. But come, my lord, let’s away.

Enter a Pursuivant.

HASTINGS. Go on before; I’ll talk with this good fellow.

[Exeunt Stanley and Catesby.]

How now, sirrah? How goes the world with thee?

PURSUIVANT. The better that your lordship please to ask.

HASTINGS. I tell thee, man, ’tis better with me now Than when thou met’st me last where now we meet. Then was I going prisoner to the Tower, By the suggestion of the Queen’s allies. But now, I tell thee—keep it to thyself— This day those enemies are put to death, And I in better state than e’er I was.

PURSUIVANT. God hold it, to your honour’s good content!

HASTINGS. Gramercy, fellow. There, drink that for me.

[Throws him his purse.]

PURSUIVANT. I thank your honour.

Enter a Priest.

PRIEST. Well met, my lord; I am glad to see your honour.

HASTINGS. I thank thee, good Sir John, with all my heart. I am in your debt for your last exercise. Come the next sabbath, and I will content you.

PRIEST. I’ll wait upon your lordship.

[Exit Priest.]

BUCKINGHAM. What, talking with a priest, Lord Chamberlain? Your friends at Pomfret, they do need the priest; Your honour hath no shriving work in hand.

HASTINGS. Good faith, and when I met this holy man, The men you talk of came into my mind. What, go you toward the Tower?

BUCKINGHAM. I do, my lord, but long I cannot stay there. I shall return before your lordship thence.

HASTINGS. Nay, like enough, for I stay dinner there.

BUCKINGHAM. [Aside.] And supper too, although thou knowest it not. Come, will you go?

HASTINGS. I’ll wait upon your lordship.

SCENE III. Pomfret. Before the Castle

Enter Sir Richard Ratcliffe, with Halberds, carrying the nobles Rivers, Grey and Vaughan to death at Pomfret.

RIVERS. Sir Richard Ratcliffe, let me tell thee this: Today shalt thou behold a subject die For truth, for duty, and for loyalty.

GREY. God bless the Prince from all the pack of you! A knot you are of damned bloodsuckers.

VAUGHAN You live that shall cry woe for this hereafter.

RATCLIFFE Dispatch. The limit of your lives is out.

RIVERS. O Pomfret, Pomfret! O thou bloody prison, Fatal and ominous to noble peers! Within the guilty closure of thy walls Richard the Second here was hacked to death; And, for more slander to thy dismal seat, We give to thee our guiltless blood to drink.

GREY. Now Margaret’s curse is fall’n upon our heads, When she exclaimed on Hastings, you, and I, For standing by when Richard stabbed her son.

RIVERS. Then cursed she Richard, then cursed she Buckingham, Then cursed she Hastings. O, remember, God, To hear her prayer for them, as now for us! And for my sister and her princely sons, Be satisfied, dear God, with our true blood, Which, as thou know’st, unjustly must be spilt.

RATCLIFFE. Make haste. The hour of death is expiate.

RIVERS. Come, Grey, come, Vaughan, let us here embrace. Farewell, until we meet again in heaven.

Enter Buckingham, Stanley Earl of Derby, Hastings, the Bishop of Ely, Norfolk, Ratcliffe, Lovell with others, at a table.

HASTINGS. Now, noble peers, the cause why we are met Is to determine of the coronation. In God’s name speak. When is the royal day?

BUCKINGHAM. Is all things ready for that royal time?

STANLEY. It is, and wants but nomination.

ELY. Tomorrow, then, I judge a happy day.

BUCKINGHAM. Who knows the Lord Protector’s mind herein? Who is most inward with the noble Duke?

ELY. Your Grace, we think, should soonest know his mind.

BUCKINGHAM. We know each other’s faces; for our hearts, He knows no more of mine than I of yours, Or I of his, my lord, than you of mine. Lord Hastings, you and he are near in love.

HASTINGS. I thank his Grace, I know he loves me well; But for his purpose in the coronation I have not sounded him, nor he delivered His gracious pleasure any way therein. But you, my honourable lords, may name the time, And in the Duke’s behalf I’ll give my voice, Which I presume he’ll take in gentle part.

ELY. In happy time, here comes the Duke himself.

RICHARD. My noble lords and cousins all, good morrow. I have been long a sleeper; but I trust My absence doth neglect no great design Which by my presence might have been concluded.

BUCKINGHAM. Had you not come upon your cue, my lord, William Lord Hastings had pronounced your part— I mean your voice for crowning of the King.

RICHARD. Than my Lord Hastings no man might be bolder. His lordship knows me well and loves me well. My lord of Ely, when I was last in Holborn I saw good strawberries in your garden there; I do beseech you, send for some of them.

ELY. Marry, and will, my lord, with all my heart.

RICHARD. Cousin of Buckingham, a word with you.

[They move aside.]

Catesby hath sounded Hastings in our business, And finds the testy gentleman so hot That he will lose his head ere give consent His master’s child, as worshipfully he terms it, Shall lose the royalty of England’s throne.

BUCKINGHAM. Withdraw yourself awhile. I’ll go with you.

[Exeunt Richard and Buckingham.]

STANLEY. We have not yet set down this day of triumph. Tomorrow, in my judgement, is too sudden, For I myself am not so well provided As else I would be, were the day prolonged.

Enter Bishop of Ely.

ELY. Where is my lord the Duke of Gloucester? I have sent for these strawberries.

HASTINGS. His Grace looks cheerfully and smooth this morning. There’s some conceit or other likes him well When that he bids good morrow with such spirit. I think there’s never a man in Christendom Can lesser hide his love or hate than he, For by his face straight shall you know his heart.

STANLEY. What of his heart perceive you in his face By any livelihood he showed today?

HASTINGS. Marry, that with no man here he is offended, For were he, he had shown it in his looks.

Enter Richard and Buckingham.

RICHARD. I pray you all, tell me what they deserve That do conspire my death with devilish plots Of damned witchcraft, and that have prevailed Upon my body with their hellish charms?

HASTINGS. The tender love I bear your Grace, my lord, Makes me most forward in this princely presence To doom th’ offenders, whosoe’er they be. I say, my lord, they have deserved death.

RICHARD. Then be your eyes the witness of their evil. Look how I am bewitched! Behold, mine arm Is like a blasted sapling withered up! And this is Edward’s wife, that monstrous witch, Consorted with that harlot, strumpet Shore, That by their witchcraft thus have marked me.

HASTINGS. If they have done this deed, my noble lord—

RICHARD. If? Thou protector of this damned strumpet, Talk’st thou to me of “ifs”? Thou art a traitor. Off with his head! Now by Saint Paul I swear I will not dine until I see the same. Lovell and Ratcliffe, look that it be done. The rest that love me, rise and follow me.

[Exeunt all but Lovell and Ratcliffe with the Lord Hastings.]

HASTINGS. Woe, woe, for England! Not a whit for me, For I, too fond, might have prevented this. Stanley did dream the boar did raze his helm, And I did scorn it and disdain to fly. Three times today my foot-cloth horse did stumble, And started when he looked upon the Tower, As loath to bear me to the slaughter-house. O, now I need the priest that spake to me; I now repent I told the pursuivant, As too triumphing, how mine enemies Today at Pomfret bloodily were butchered, And I myself secure in grace and favour. O Margaret, Margaret, now thy heavy curse Is lighted on poor Hastings’ wretched head.

RATCLIFFE. Come, come, dispatch. The Duke would be at dinner: Make a short shrift. He longs to see your head.

HASTINGS. O momentary grace of mortal men, Which we more hunt for than the grace of God! Who builds his hope in air of your good looks Lives like a drunken sailor on a mast, Ready with every nod to tumble down Into the fatal bowels of the deep.

LOVELL. Come, come, dispatch. ’Tis bootless to exclaim.

HASTINGS. O bloody Richard! Miserable England, I prophesy the fearfull’st time to thee That ever wretched age hath looked upon. Come, lead me to the block. Bear him my head. They smile at me who shortly shall be dead.

SCENE V. London. The Tower Walls

Enter Richard and Buckingham in rotten armour, marvellous ill-favoured.

RICHARD. Come, cousin, canst thou quake and change thy colour, Murder thy breath in middle of a word, And then again begin, and stop again, As if thou were distraught and mad with terror?

BUCKINGHAM. Tut, I can counterfeit the deep tragedian; Speak, and look back, and pry on every side, Tremble and start at wagging of a straw, Intending deep suspicion. Ghastly looks Are at my service, like enforced smiles, And both are ready in their offices, At anytime to grace my stratagems. But what, is Catesby gone?

RICHARD. He is; and, see, he brings the Mayor along.

Enter the Lord Mayor and Catesby.

BUCKINGHAM. Lord Mayor—

RICHARD. Look to the drawbridge there!

BUCKINGHAM. Hark, a drum.

RICHARD. Catesby, o’erlook the walls.

BUCKINGHAM. Lord Mayor, the reason we have sent—

RICHARD. Look back! Defend thee, here are enemies.

BUCKINGHAM. God and our innocence defend and guard us!

Enter Lovell and Ratcliffe with Hastings’ head.

RICHARD. Be patient, they are friends, Ratcliffe and Lovell.

LOVELL. Here is the head of that ignoble traitor, The dangerous and unsuspected Hastings.

RICHARD. So dear I loved the man that I must weep. I took him for the plainest harmless creature That breathed upon the earth a Christian; Made him my book, wherein my soul recorded The history of all her secret thoughts. So smooth he daubed his vice with show of virtue That, his apparent open guilt omitted— I mean his conversation with Shore’s wife— He lived from all attainder of suspects.

BUCKINGHAM. Well, well, he was the covert’st sheltered traitor That ever lived.— Would you imagine, or almost believe, Were’t not that by great preservation We live to tell it, that the subtle traitor This day had plotted, in the council-house, To murder me and my good lord of Gloucester?

MAYOR. Had he done so?

RICHARD. What, think you we are Turks or Infidels? Or that we would, against the form of law, Proceed thus rashly in the villain’s death, But that the extreme peril of the case, The peace of England, and our persons’ safety, Enforced us to this execution?

MAYOR. Now, fair befall you! He deserved his death, And your good Graces both have well proceeded, To warn false traitors from the like attempts.

BUCKINGHAM. I never looked for better at his hands After he once fell in with Mistress Shore. Yet had we not determined he should die Until your lordship came to see his end Which now the loving haste of these our friends, Something against our meanings, have prevented, Because, my lord, we would have had you heard The traitor speak, and timorously confess The manner and the purpose of his treasons, That you might well have signified the same Unto the citizens, who haply may Misconster us in him, and wail his death.

MAYOR. But, my good lord, your Grace’s word shall serve As well as I had seen and heard him speak; And do not doubt, right noble princes both, But I’ll acquaint our duteous citizens With all your just proceedings in this case.

RICHARD. And to that end we wished your lordship here, T’ avoid the censures of the carping world.

BUCKINGHAM. But since you come too late of our intent, Yet witness what you hear we did intend. And so, my good Lord Mayor, we bid farewell.

[Exit Lord Mayor.]

RICHARD. Go, after, after, cousin Buckingham. The Mayor towards Guildhall hies him in all post. There, at your meet’st advantage of the time, Infer the bastardy of Edward’s children; Tell them how Edward put to death a citizen Only for saying he would make his son Heir to the Crown—meaning indeed his house, Which, by the sign thereof, was termed so. Moreover, urge his hateful luxury And bestial appetite in change of lust, Which stretched unto their servants, daughters, wives, Even where his raging eye or savage heart, Without control, lusted to make a prey. Nay, for a need, thus far come near my person: Tell them, when that my mother went with child Of that insatiate Edward, noble York My princely father then had wars in France, And, by true computation of the time, Found that the issue was not his begot; Which well appeared in his lineaments, Being nothing like the noble Duke, my father. Yet touch this sparingly, as ’twere far off; Because, my lord, you know my mother lives.

BUCKINGHAM. Doubt not, my lord, I’ll play the orator As if the golden fee for which I plead Were for myself. And so, my lord, adieu.

RICHARD. If you thrive well, bring them to Baynard’s Castle, Where you shall find me well accompanied With reverend fathers and well-learned bishops.

BUCKINGHAM. I go; and towards three or four o’clock Look for the news that the Guildhall affords.

RICHARD. Go, Lovell, with all speed to Doctor Shaa. [To Ratcliffe.] Go thou to Friar Penker; bid them both Meet me within this hour at Baynard’s Castle.

[Exeunt Ratcliffe and Lovell.]

Now will I go to take some privy order To draw the brats of Clarence out of sight, And to give order that no manner person Have any time recourse unto the Princes.

SCENE VI. London. A street

Enter a Scrivener.

SCRIVENER. Here is the indictment of the good Lord Hastings, Which in a set hand fairly is engrossed, That it may be today read o’er in Paul’s. And mark how well the sequel hangs together: Eleven hours I have spent to write it over, For yesternight by Catesby was it sent me; The precedent was full as long a-doing And yet within these five hours Hastings lived, Untainted, unexamined, free, at liberty. Here’s a good world the while! Who is so gross That cannot see this palpable device? Yet who so bold but says he sees it not? Bad is the world, and all will come to naught When such ill dealing must be seen in thought.

SCENE VII. London. Court of Baynard’s Castle

Enter Richard and Buckingham at several doors.

RICHARD. How now, how now? What say the citizens?

BUCKINGHAM. Now, by the holy mother of our Lord, The citizens are mum, say not a word.

RICHARD. Touched you the bastardy of Edward’s children?

BUCKINGHAM. I did; with his contract with Lady Lucy, And his contract by deputy in France; Th’ insatiate greediness of his desire, And his enforcement of the city wives; His tyranny for trifles; his own bastardy, As being got, your father then in France, And his resemblance, being not like the Duke. Withal, I did infer your lineaments, Being the right idea of your father, Both in your form and nobleness of mind; Laid open all your victories in Scotland, Your discipline in war, wisdom in peace, Your bounty, virtue, fair humility; Indeed, left nothing fitting for your purpose Untouched or slightly handled in discourse. And when mine oratory drew toward end, I bid them that did love their country’s good Cry “God save Richard, England’s royal King!”

RICHARD. And did they so?

BUCKINGHAM. No, so God help me, they spake not a word, But, like dumb statues or breathing stones, Stared each on other, and looked deadly pale. Which when I saw, I reprehended them, And asked the Mayor what meant this wilful silence. His answer was, the people were not used To be spoke to but by the Recorder. Then he was urged to tell my tale again: “Thus saith the Duke, thus hath the Duke inferred” But nothing spoke in warrant from himself. When he had done, some followers of mine own, At lower end of the hall, hurled up their caps, And some ten voices cried, “God save King Richard!” And thus I took the vantage of those few. “Thanks, gentle citizens and friends,” quoth I; “This general applause and cheerful shout Argues your wisdoms and your love to Richard.” And even here brake off and came away.

RICHARD. What, tongueless blocks were they! Would they not speak? Will not the Mayor then and his brethren, come?

BUCKINGHAM. The mayor is here at hand. Intend some fear; Be not you spoke with but by mighty suit. And look you get a prayer-book in your hand, And stand between two churchmen, good my lord, For on that ground I’ll make a holy descant. And be not easily won to our requests. Play the maid’s part: still answer nay, and take it.

RICHARD. I go, and if you plead as well for them As I can say nay to thee for myself, No doubt we bring it to a happy issue.

BUCKINGHAM. Go, go, up to the leads, the Lord Mayor knocks.

[Exit Richard.]

Enter the Lord Mayor and Citizens.

Welcome, my lord. I dance attendance here. I think the Duke will not be spoke withal.

Now, Catesby, what says your lord to my request?

CATESBY. He doth entreat your Grace, my noble lord, To visit him tomorrow or next day. He is within, with two right reverend fathers, Divinely bent to meditation; And in no worldly suits would he be moved To draw him from his holy exercise.

BUCKINGHAM. Return, good Catesby, to the gracious Duke; Tell him myself, the Mayor and aldermen, In deep designs, in matter of great moment, No less importing than our general good, Are come to have some conference with his Grace.

CATESBY. I’ll signify so much unto him straight.

BUCKINGHAM. Ah ha, my lord, this prince is not an Edward! He is not lolling on a lewd love-bed, But on his knees at meditation; Not dallying with a brace of courtesans, But meditating with two deep divines; Not sleeping, to engross his idle body, But praying, to enrich his watchful soul. Happy were England would this virtuous prince Take on his Grace the sovereignty thereof. But sure I fear we shall not win him to it.

MAYOR. Marry, God defend his Grace should say us nay!

BUCKINGHAM. I fear he will. Here Catesby comes again.

Now, Catesby, what says his Grace?

CATESBY. He wonders to what end you have assembled Such troops of citizens to come to him, His Grace not being warned thereof before. He fears, my lord, you mean no good to him.

BUCKINGHAM. Sorry I am my noble cousin should Suspect me that I mean no good to him. By heaven, we come to him in perfect love, And so once more return and tell his Grace.

When holy and devout religious men Are at their beads, ’tis much to draw them thence, So sweet is zealous contemplation.

Enter Richard aloft, between two Bishops. Catesby reenters.

MAYOR. See where his Grace stands ’tween two clergymen!

BUCKINGHAM. Two props of virtue for a Christian prince, To stay him from the fall of vanity; And, see, a book of prayer in his hand, True ornaments to know a holy man. Famous Plantagenet, most gracious Prince, Lend favourable ear to our requests, And pardon us the interruption Of thy devotion and right Christian zeal.

RICHARD. My lord, there needs no such apology. I do beseech your Grace to pardon me, Who, earnest in the service of my God, Deferred the visitation of my friends. But, leaving this, what is your Grace’s pleasure?

BUCKINGHAM. Even that, I hope, which pleaseth God above, And all good men of this ungoverned isle.

RICHARD. I do suspect I have done some offence That seems disgracious in the city’s eye, And that you come to reprehend my ignorance.

BUCKINGHAM. You have, my lord. Would it might please your Grace, On our entreaties, to amend your fault.

RICHARD. Else wherefore breathe I in a Christian land?

BUCKINGHAM. Know then, it is your fault that you resign The supreme seat, the throne majestical, The sceptered office of your ancestors, Your state of fortune, and your due of birth, The lineal glory of your royal house, To the corruption of a blemished stock; Whiles in the mildness of your sleepy thoughts, Which here we waken to our country’s good, The noble isle doth want her proper limbs; Her face defaced with scars of infamy, Her royal stock graft with ignoble plants, And almost shouldered in the swallowing gulf Of dark forgetfulness and deep oblivion; Which to recure, we heartily solicit Your gracious self to take on you the charge And kingly government of this your land, Not as Protector, steward, substitute, Or lowly factor for another’s gain, But as successively, from blood to blood, Your right of birth, your empery, your own. For this, consorted with the citizens, Your very worshipful and loving friends, And by their vehement instigation, In this just cause come I to move your Grace.

RICHARD. I cannot tell if to depart in silence Or bitterly to speak in your reproof Best fitteth my degree or your condition. If not to answer, you might haply think Tongue-tied ambition, not replying, yielded To bear the golden yoke of sovereignty, Which fondly you would here impose on me; If to reprove you for this suit of yours, So seasoned with your faithful love to me, Then, on the other side, I checked my friends. Therefore, to speak, and to avoid the first, And then, in speaking, not to incur the last, Definitively thus I answer you: Your love deserves my thanks, but my desert Unmeritable shuns your high request. First, if all obstacles were cut away, And that my path were even to the crown As the ripe revenue and due of birth, Yet so much is my poverty of spirit, So mighty and so many my defects, That I would rather hide me from my greatness, Being a bark to brook no mighty sea, Than in my greatness covet to be hid, And in the vapour of my glory smothered. But, God be thanked, there is no need of me, And much I need to help you, were there need. The royal tree hath left us royal fruit, Which, mellowed by the stealing hours of time, Will well become the seat of majesty, And make, no doubt, us happy by his reign. On him I lay that you would lay on me, The right and fortune of his happy stars, Which God defend that I should wring from him.

BUCKINGHAM. My lord, this argues conscience in your Grace; But the respects thereof are nice and trivial, All circumstances well considered. You say that Edward is your brother’s son; So say we too, but not by Edward’s wife. For first was he contract to Lady Lucy Your mother lives a witness to his vow, And afterward by substitute betrothed To Bona, sister to the King of France. These both put off, a poor petitioner, A care-crazed mother to a many sons, A beauty-waning and distressed widow, Even in the afternoon of her best days, Made prize and purchase of his wanton eye, Seduced the pitch and height of his degree To base declension and loathed bigamy. By her, in his unlawful bed, he got This Edward, whom our manners call the Prince. More bitterly could I expostulate, Save that, for reverence to some alive, I give a sparing limit to my tongue. Then, good my lord, take to your royal self This proffered benefit of dignity, If not to bless us and the land withal, Yet to draw forth your noble ancestry From the corruption of abusing times Unto a lineal true-derived course.

MAYOR. Do, good my lord. Your citizens entreat you.

BUCKINGHAM. Refuse not, mighty lord, this proffered love.

CATESBY. O, make them joyful; grant their lawful suit.

RICHARD. Alas, why would you heap those cares on me? I am unfit for state and majesty. I do beseech you, take it not amiss; I cannot, nor I will not, yield to you.

BUCKINGHAM. If you refuse it, as in love and zeal Loath to depose the child, your brother’s son— As well we know your tenderness of heart And gentle, kind, effeminate remorse, Which we have noted in you to your kindred, And equally indeed to all estates— Yet know, whe’er you accept our suit or no, Your brother’s son shall never reign our king, But we will plant some other in the throne, To the disgrace and downfall of your house. And in this resolution here we leave you. Come, citizens; zounds, I’ll entreat no more.

[Exeunt Buckingham, the Mayor and citizens.]

CATESBY. Call him again, sweet Prince; accept their suit. If you deny them, all the land will rue it.

RICHARD. Will you enforce me to a world of cares? Call them again. I am not made of stones, But penetrable to your kind entreaties, Albeit against my conscience and my soul.

Enter Buckingham and the rest.

Cousin of Buckingham, and sage grave men, Since you will buckle Fortune on my back, To bear her burden, whe’er I will or no, I must have patience to endure the load. But if black scandal or foul-faced reproach Attend the sequel of your imposition, Your mere enforcement shall acquittance me From all the impure blots and stains thereof, For God doth know, and you may partly see, How far I am from the desire of this.

MAYOR. God bless your Grace! We see it, and will say it.

RICHARD. In saying so, you shall but say the truth.

BUCKINGHAM. Then I salute you with this royal title: Long live King Richard, England’s worthy King!

ALL. Amen.

BUCKINGHAM. Tomorrow may it please you to be crowned?

RICHARD. Even when you please, for you will have it so.

BUCKINGHAM. Tomorrow, then, we will attend your Grace; And so most joyfully we take our leave.

RICHARD. [To the Bishops.] Come, let us to our holy work again. Farewell, my cousin, farewell, gentle friends.

SCENE I. London. Before the Tower

Enter Queen Elizabeth, the Duchess of York and Marquess of Dorset, at one door; Anne Duchess of Gloucester with Clarence’s young Daughter at another door.

DUCHESS. Who meets us here? My niece Plantagenet Led in the hand of her kind aunt of Gloucester? Now, for my life, she’s wandering to the Tower, On pure heart’s love, to greet the tender Prince. Daughter, well met.

ANNE. God give your Graces both A happy and a joyful time of day.

QUEEN ELIZABETH. As much to you, good sister. Whither away?

ANNE. No farther than the Tower, and, as I guess, Upon the like devotion as yourselves, To gratulate the gentle Princes there.

QUEEN ELIZABETH. Kind sister, thanks; we’ll enter all together.

Enter Brakenbury.

And in good time, here the Lieutenant comes. Master Lieutenant, pray you, by your leave, How doth the Prince and my young son of York?

BRAKENBURY. Right well, dear madam. By your patience, I may not suffer you to visit them. The King hath strictly charged the contrary.

QUEEN ELIZABETH. The King? Who’s that?

BRAKENBURY. I mean the Lord Protector.

QUEEN ELIZABETH. The Lord protect him from that kingly title! Hath he set bounds between their love and me? I am their mother; who shall bar me from them?

DUCHESS. I am their father’s mother. I will see them.

ANNE. Their aunt I am in law, in love their mother. Then bring me to their sights. I’ll bear thy blame, And take thy office from thee, on my peril.

BRAKENBURY. No, madam, no. I may not leave it so. I am bound by oath, and therefore pardon me.

Enter Stanley.

STANLEY. Let me but meet you, ladies, one hour hence, And I’ll salute your Grace of York as mother And reverend looker-on of two fair queens. [To Anne.] Come, madam, you must straight to Westminster, There to be crowned Richard’s royal queen.

QUEEN ELIZABETH. Ah, cut my lace asunder That my pent heart may have some scope to beat, Or else I swoon with this dead-killing news!

ANNE. Despiteful tidings! O unpleasing news!

DORSET. Be of good cheer, mother. How fares your Grace?

QUEEN ELIZABETH. O Dorset, speak not to me; get thee gone. Death and destruction dog thee at thy heels; Thy mother’s name is ominous to children. If thou wilt outstrip death, go, cross the seas, And live with Richmond, from the reach of hell. Go, hie thee, hie thee from this slaughter-house, Lest thou increase the number of the dead, And make me die the thrall of Margaret’s curse, Nor mother, wife, nor England’s counted Queen.

STANLEY. Full of wise care is this your counsel, madam. Take all the swift advantage of the hours; You shall have letters from me to my son In your behalf, to meet you on the way. Be not ta’en tardy by unwise delay.

DUCHESS. O ill-dispersing wind of misery! O my accursed womb, the bed of death! A cockatrice hast thou hatched to the world, Whose unavoided eye is murderous.

STANLEY. Come, madam, come. I in all haste was sent.

ANNE. And I with all unwillingness will go. O, would to God that the inclusive verge Of golden metal that must round my brow Were red-hot steel, to sear me to the brains. Anointed let me be with deadly venom, And die ere men can say “God save the Queen.”

QUEEN ELIZABETH. Go, go, poor soul; I envy not thy glory. To feed my humour, wish thyself no harm.

ANNE. No? Why? When he that is my husband now Came to me as I followed Henry’s corse, When scarce the blood was well washed from his hands Which issued from my other angel husband, And that dear saint which then I weeping followed; O, when, I say, I looked on Richard’s face, This was my wish: “Be thou,” quoth I, “accursed For making me, so young, so old a widow; And when thou wedd’st, let sorrow haunt thy bed; And be thy wife, if any be so mad, More miserable by the life of thee Than thou hast made me by my dear lord’s death.” Lo, ere I can repeat this curse again, Within so small a time, my woman’s heart Grossly grew captive to his honey words, And proved the subject of mine own soul’s curse, Which hitherto hath held my eyes from rest; For never yet one hour in his bed Did I enjoy the golden dew of sleep, But with his timorous dreams was still awaked. Besides, he hates me for my father Warwick, And will, no doubt, shortly be rid of me.

QUEEN ELIZABETH. Poor heart, adieu; I pity thy complaining.

ANNE. No more than with my soul I mourn for yours.

DORSET. Farewell, thou woeful welcomer of glory.

ANNE. Adieu, poor soul, that tak’st thy leave of it.

DUCHESS. [To Dorset.] Go thou to Richmond, and good fortune guide thee. [To Anne.] Go thou to Richard, and good angels tend thee. [To Queen Elizabeth.] Go thou to sanctuary, and good thoughts possess thee. I to my grave, where peace and rest lie with me. Eighty odd years of sorrow have I seen, And each hour’s joy wracked with a week of teen.

QUEEN ELIZABETH. Stay, yet look back with me unto the Tower. Pity, you ancient stones, those tender babes Whom envy hath immured within your walls— Rough cradle for such little pretty one, Rude ragged nurse, old sullen playfellow For tender princes, use my babies well. So foolish sorrows bids your stones farewell.

SCENE II. London. A Room of State in the Palace

The trumpets sound a sennet. Enter Richard in pomp, Buckingham, Catesby, Ratcliffe, Lovell, a Page and others.

KING RICHARD. Stand all apart. Cousin of Buckingham!

BUCKINGHAM. My gracious sovereign!

KING RICHARD. Give me thy hand.

[Here he ascendeth the throne. Sound trumpets.]

Thus high, by thy advice And thy assistance is King Richard seated. But shall we wear these glories for a day, Or shall they last, and we rejoice in them?

BUCKINGHAM. Still live they, and for ever let them last!

KING RICHARD. Ah, Buckingham, now do I play the touch, To try if thou be current gold indeed. Young Edward lives; think now what I would speak.

BUCKINGHAM. Say on, my loving lord.

KING RICHARD. Why, Buckingham, I say I would be King.

BUCKINGHAM. Why, so you are, my thrice-renowned lord.

KING RICHARD. Ha! Am I King? ’Tis so—but Edward lives.

BUCKINGHAM. True, noble Prince.

KING RICHARD. O bitter consequence, That Edward still should live “true noble prince!” Cousin, thou wast not wont to be so dull. Shall I be plain? I wish the bastards dead, And I would have it suddenly performed. What sayst thou now? Speak suddenly, be brief.

BUCKINGHAM. Your Grace may do your pleasure.

KING RICHARD. Tut, tut, thou art all ice; thy kindness freezes. Say, have I thy consent that they shall die?

BUCKINGHAM. Give me some little breath, some pause, dear lord, Before I positively speak in this. I will resolve you herein presently.

CATESBY. [Aside.] The King is angry. See, he gnaws his lip.

KING RICHARD. [Aside.] I will converse with iron-witted fools And unrespective boys; none are for me That look into me with considerate eyes. High-reaching Buckingham grows circumspect. Boy!

PAGE. My lord?

KING RICHARD. Know’st thou not any whom corrupting gold Will tempt unto a close exploit of death?

PAGE. I know a discontented gentleman Whose humble means match not his haughty spirit. Gold were as good as twenty orators, And will, no doubt, tempt him to anything.

KING RICHARD. What is his name?

PAGE. His name, my lord, is Tyrrel.

KING RICHARD. I partly know the man. Go, call him hither, boy.

[Aside.] The deep-revolving witty Buckingham No more shall be the neighbour to my counsels. Hath he so long held out with me, untired, And stops he now for breath? Well, be it so.

How now, Lord Stanley, what’s the news?

STANLEY. Know, my loving lord, The Marquess Dorset, as I hear, is fled To Richmond, in the parts where he abides.

KING RICHARD. Come hither, Catesby. Rumour it abroad That Anne my wife is very grievous sick; I will take order for her keeping close. Inquire me out some mean poor gentleman, Whom I will marry straight to Clarence’ daughter. The boy is foolish, and I fear not him. Look how thou dream’st! I say again, give out That Anne, my Queen, is sick and like to die. About it, for it stands me much upon To stop all hopes whose growth may damage me.

I must be married to my brother’s daughter, Or else my kingdom stands on brittle glass. Murder her brothers, and then marry her— Uncertain way of gain! But I am in So far in blood that sin will pluck on sin. Tear-falling pity dwells not in this eye.

Enter Tyrrel.

Is thy name Tyrrel?

TYRREL. James Tyrrel, and your most obedient subject.

KING RICHARD. Art thou indeed?

TYRREL. Prove me, my gracious lord.

KING RICHARD. Dar’st thou resolve to kill a friend of mine?

TYRREL. Please you. But I had rather kill two enemies.

KING RICHARD. Why then thou hast it; two deep enemies, Foes to my rest, and my sweet sleep’s disturbers, Are they that I would have thee deal upon. Tyrell, I mean those bastards in the Tower.

TYRREL. Let me have open means to come to them, And soon I’ll rid you from the fear of them.

KING RICHARD. Thou sing’st sweet music. Hark, come hither, Tyrrel. Go, by this token. Rise, and lend thine ear. [Whispers.] There is no more but so. Say it is done, And I will love thee, and prefer thee for it.

TYRREL. I will dispatch it straight.

BUCKINGHAM. My lord, I have considered in my mind The late request that you did sound me in.

KING RICHARD. Well, let that rest. Dorset is fled to Richmond.

BUCKINGHAM. I hear the news, my lord.

KING RICHARD. Stanley, he is your wife’s son. Well, look unto it.

BUCKINGHAM. My lord, I claim the gift, my due by promise, For which your honour and your faith is pawned: Th’ earldom of Hereford, and the movables Which you have promised I shall possess.

KING RICHARD. Stanley, look to your wife. If she convey Letters to Richmond, you shall answer it.

BUCKINGHAM. What says your Highness to my just request?

KING RICHARD. I do remember me, Henry the Sixth Did prophesy that Richmond should be King, When Richmond was a little peevish boy. A king perhaps—

BUCKINGHAM. My lord—

KING RICHARD. How chance the prophet could not at that time Have told me, I being by, that I should kill him?

BUCKINGHAM. My lord, your promise for the earldom—

KING RICHARD. Richmond! When last I was at Exeter, The Mayor in courtesy showed me the castle And called it Rougemount, at which name I started, Because a bard of Ireland told me once I should not live long after I saw Richmond.

KING RICHARD. Ay, what’s o’clock?

BUCKINGHAM. I am thus bold to put your Grace in mind Of what you promised me.

KING RICHARD. Well, but what’s o’clock?

BUCKINGHAM. Upon the stroke of ten.

KING RICHARD. Well, let it strike.

BUCKINGHAM. Why let it strike?

KING RICHARD. Because that, like a jack, thou keep’st the stroke Betwixt thy begging and my meditation. I am not in the giving vein today.

BUCKINGHAM. Why then, resolve me whether you will or no.

KING RICHARD. Thou troublest me; I am not in the vein.

[Exit followed by all save Buckingham.]

BUCKINGHAM. And is it thus? Repays he my deep service With such contempt? Made I him King for this? O, let me think on Hastings, and be gone To Brecknock while my fearful head is on!

SCENE III. London. Another Room in the Palace

TYRREL. The tyrannous and bloody act is done, The most arch deed of piteous massacre That ever yet this land was guilty of. Dighton and Forrest, who I did suborn To do this piece of ruthless butchery, Albeit they were fleshed villains, bloody dogs, Melted with tenderness and mild compassion, Wept like two children in their deaths’ sad story. “O, thus,” quoth Dighton, “lay the gentle babes;” “Thus, thus,” quoth Forrest, “girdling one another Within their alabaster innocent arms. Their lips were four red roses on a stalk, And in their summer beauty kissed each other. A book of prayers on their pillow lay, Which once,” quoth Forrest, “almost changed my mind. But, O, the devil—” There the villain stopped; When Dighton thus told on: “We smothered The most replenished sweet work of nature That from the prime creation e’er she framed.” Hence both are gone with conscience and remorse They could not speak; and so I left them both To bear this tidings to the bloody King.

Enter King Richard.

And here he comes. All health, my sovereign lord.

KING RICHARD. Kind Tyrrel, am I happy in thy news?

TYRREL. If to have done the thing you gave in charge Beget your happiness, be happy then, For it is done.

KING RICHARD. But didst thou see them dead?

TYRREL. I did, my lord.

KING RICHARD. And buried, gentle Tyrrel?

TYRREL. The chaplain of the Tower hath buried them, But where, to say the truth, I do not know.

KING RICHARD. Come to me, Tyrrel, soon, at after-supper, When thou shalt tell the process of their death. Meantime, but think how I may do thee good, And be inheritor of thy desire. Farewell till then.

TYRREL. I humbly take my leave.

KING RICHARD. The son of Clarence have I pent up close; His daughter meanly have I matched in marriage; The sons of Edward sleep in Abraham’s bosom, And Anne my wife hath bid the world good night. Now, for I know the Breton Richmond aims At young Elizabeth, my brother’s daughter, And by that knot looks proudly on the crown, To her go I, a jolly thriving wooer.

Enter Ratcliffe.

RATCLIFFE. My lord!

KING RICHARD. Good or bad news, that thou com’st in so bluntly?

RATCLIFFE. Bad news, my lord. Morton is fled to Richmond, And Buckingham, backed with the hardy Welshmen, Is in the field, and still his power increaseth.

KING RICHARD. Ely with Richmond troubles me more near Than Buckingham and his rash-levied strength. Come, I have learned that fearful commenting Is leaden servitor to dull delay; Delay leads impotent and snail-paced beggary; Then fiery expedition be my wing, Jove’s Mercury, and herald for a king! Go, muster men. My counsel is my shield. We must be brief when traitors brave the field.

SCENE IV. London. Before the Palace

Enter old Queen Margaret.

QUEEN MARGARET. So now prosperity begins to mellow, And drop into the rotten mouth of death. Here in these confines slily have I lurked To watch the waning of mine enemies. A dire induction am I witness to, And will to France, hoping the consequence Will prove as bitter, black, and tragical. Withdraw thee, wretched Margaret. Who comes here?

Enter Duchess of York and Queen Elizabeth.

QUEEN ELIZABETH. Ah, my poor Princes! Ah, my tender babes, My unblown flowers, new-appearing sweets! If yet your gentle souls fly in the air And be not fixed in doom perpetual, Hover about me with your airy wings And hear your mother’s lamentation.

QUEEN MARGARET. [Aside.] Hover about her; say that right for right Hath dimmed your infant morn to aged night.

DUCHESS. So many miseries have crazed my voice That my woe-wearied tongue is still and mute. Edward Plantagenet, why art thou dead?

QUEEN MARGARET. [Aside.] Plantagenet doth quit Plantagenet; Edward for Edward pays a dying debt.

QUEEN ELIZABETH. Wilt thou, O God, fly from such gentle lambs, And throw them in the entrails of the wolf? When didst Thou sleep when such a deed was done?

QUEEN MARGARET. [Aside.] When holy Harry died, and my sweet son.

DUCHESS. Dead life, blind sight, poor mortal living ghost, Woe’s scene, world’s shame, grave’s due by life usurped, Brief abstract and record of tedious days, Rest thy unrest on England’s lawful earth, [Sitting.] Unlawfully made drunk with innocent blood.

QUEEN ELIZABETH. Ah, that thou wouldst as soon afford a grave As thou canst yield a melancholy seat, Then would I hide my bones, not rest them here. [Sitting.] Ah, who hath any cause to mourn but we?

QUEEN MARGARET.

If ancient sorrow be most reverend, Give mine the benefit of seigniory, And let my griefs frown on the upper hand. If sorrow can admit society,

[Sitting down with them.]

Tell o’er your woes again by viewing mine. I had an Edward, till a Richard killed him; I had a husband, till a Richard killed him. Thou hadst an Edward, till a Richard killed him; Thou hadst a Richard, till a Richard killed him.

DUCHESS. I had a Richard too, and thou didst kill him; I had a Rutland too; thou holp’st to kill him.

QUEEN MARGARET. Thou hadst a Clarence too, and Richard killed him. From forth the kennel of thy womb hath crept A hell-hound that doth hunt us all to death: That dog, that had his teeth before his eyes, To worry lambs and lap their gentle blood; That excellent grand tyrant of the earth, That reigns in galled eyes of weeping souls; That foul defacer of God’s handiwork Thy womb let loose to chase us to our graves. O upright, just, and true-disposing God, How do I thank thee that this carnal cur Preys on the issue of his mother’s body, And makes her pew-fellow with others’ moan!

DUCHESS. O Harry’s wife, triumph not in my woes! God witness with me, I have wept for thine.

QUEEN MARGARET. Bear with me. I am hungry for revenge, And now I cloy me with beholding it. Thy Edward he is dead, that killed my Edward; The other Edward dead, to quit my Edward; Young York, he is but boot, because both they Matched not the high perfection of my loss. Thy Clarence he is dead that stabbed my Edward; And the beholders of this frantic play, Th’ adulterate Hastings, Rivers, Vaughan, Grey, Untimely smothered in their dusky graves. Richard yet lives, hell’s black intelligencer, Only reserved their factor to buy souls And send them thither. But at hand, at hand Ensues his piteous and unpitied end. Earth gapes, hell burns, fiends roar, saints pray, To have him suddenly conveyed from hence. Cancel his bond of life, dear God, I pray, That I may live to say “The dog is dead.”

QUEEN ELIZABETH. O, thou didst prophesy the time would come That I should wish for thee to help me curse That bottled spider, that foul bunch-backed toad!

QUEEN MARGARET. I called thee then, vain flourish of my fortune; I called thee then, poor shadow, painted queen, The presentation of but what I was, The flattering index of a direful pageant; One heaved a-high to be hurled down below, A mother only mocked with two fair babes; A dream of what thou wast; a garish flag, To be the aim of every dangerous shot; A sign of dignity, a breath, a bubble; A queen in jest, only to fill the scene. Where is thy husband now? Where be thy brothers? Where are thy two sons? Wherein dost thou joy? Who sues, and kneels, and says, “God save the Queen?” Where be the bending peers that flattered thee? Where be the thronging troops that followed thee? Decline all this, and see what now thou art: For happy wife, a most distressed widow; For joyful mother, one that wails the name; For one being sued to, one that humbly sues; For Queen, a very caitiff crowned with care; For she that scorned at me, now scorned of me; For she being feared of all, now fearing one; For she commanding all, obeyed of none. Thus hath the course of justice wheeled about And left thee but a very prey to time, Having no more but thought of what thou wast To torture thee the more, being what thou art. Thou didst usurp my place, and dost thou not Usurp the just proportion of my sorrow? Now thy proud neck bears half my burdened yoke, From which even here I slip my weary head, And leave the burden of it all on thee. Farewell, York’s wife, and Queen of sad mischance. These English woes shall make me smile in France.

QUEEN ELIZABETH. O thou well skilled in curses, stay awhile, And teach me how to curse mine enemies.

QUEEN MARGARET. Forbear to sleep the night, and fast the days; Compare dead happiness with living woe; Think that thy babes were sweeter than they were, And he that slew them fouler than he is. Bettering thy loss makes the bad-causer worse. Revolving this will teach thee how to curse.

QUEEN ELIZABETH. My words are dull. O, quicken them with thine!

QUEEN MARGARET. Thy woes will make them sharp and pierce like mine.

DUCHESS. Why should calamity be full of words?

QUEEN ELIZABETH. Windy attorneys to their clients’ woes, Airy succeeders of intestate joys, Poor breathing orators of miseries, Let them have scope, though what they do impart Help nothing else, yet do they ease the heart.

DUCHESS. If so, then be not tongue-tied. Go with me, And in the breath of bitter words let’s smother My damned son, that thy two sweet sons smothered.

The trumpet sounds. Be copious in exclaims.

Enter King Richard and his Train, including Catesby, marching.

KING RICHARD. Who intercepts me in my expedition?

DUCHESS. O, she that might have intercepted thee, By strangling thee in her accursed womb, From all the slaughters, wretch, that thou hast done.

QUEEN ELIZABETH. Hid’st thou that forehead with a golden crown Where should be branded, if that right were right, The slaughter of the Prince that owed that crown, And the dire death of my poor sons and brothers? Tell me, thou villain-slave, where are my children?

DUCHESS. Thou toad, thou toad, where is thy brother Clarence, And little Ned Plantagenet his son?

QUEEN ELIZABETH. Where is the gentle Rivers, Vaughan, Grey?

DUCHESS. Where is kind Hastings?

KING RICHARD. A flourish, trumpets! Strike alarum, drums! Let not the heavens hear these tell-tale women Rail on the Lord’s anointed. Strike, I say!

[Flourish. Alarums.]

Either be patient and entreat me fair, Or with the clamorous report of war Thus will I drown your exclamations.

DUCHESS. Art thou my son?

KING RICHARD. Ay, I thank God, my father, and yourself.

DUCHESS. Then patiently hear my impatience.

KING RICHARD. Madam, I have a touch of your condition, That cannot brook the accent of reproof.

DUCHESS. O, let me speak!

KING RICHARD. Do then, but I’ll not hear.

DUCHESS. I will be mild and gentle in my words.

KING RICHARD. And brief, good mother, for I am in haste.

DUCHESS. Art thou so hasty? I have stayed for thee, God knows, in torment and in agony.

KING RICHARD. And came I not at last to comfort you?

DUCHESS. No, by the Holy Rood, thou know’st it well Thou cam’st on earth to make the earth my hell. A grievous burden was thy birth to me; Tetchy and wayward was thy infancy; Thy school-days frightful, desp’rate, wild, and furious; Thy prime of manhood daring, bold, and venturous; Thy age confirmed, proud, subtle, sly, and bloody, More mild, but yet more harmful, kind in hatred. What comfortable hour canst thou name That ever graced me with thy company?

KING RICHARD. Faith, none but Humphrey Hower, that called your Grace To breakfast once, forth of my company. If I be so disgracious in your eye, Let me march on and not offend you, madam. Strike up the drum.

DUCHESS. I prithee, hear me speak.

KING RICHARD. You speak too bitterly.

DUCHESS. Hear me a word, For I shall never speak to thee again.

KING RICHARD. So.

DUCHESS. Either thou wilt die by God’s just ordinance Ere from this war thou turn a conqueror, Or I with grief and extreme age shall perish And never more behold thy face again. Therefore take with thee my most grievous curse, Which in the day of battle tire thee more Than all the complete armour that thou wear’st. My prayers on the adverse party fight; And there the little souls of Edward’s children Whisper the spirits of thine enemies And promise them success and victory. Bloody thou art; bloody will be thy end. Shame serves thy life and doth thy death attend.

QUEEN ELIZABETH. Though far more cause, yet much less spirit to curse Abides in me, I say amen to her.

KING RICHARD. Stay, madam, I must talk a word with you.

QUEEN ELIZABETH. I have no more sons of the royal blood For thee to slaughter. For my daughters, Richard, They shall be praying nuns, not weeping queens, And therefore level not to hit their lives.

KING RICHARD. You have a daughter called Elizabeth, Virtuous and fair, royal and gracious.

QUEEN ELIZABETH. And must she die for this? O, let her live, And I’ll corrupt her manners, stain her beauty, Slander myself as false to Edward’s bed, Throw over her the veil of infamy. So she may live unscarred of bleeding slaughter, I will confess she was not Edward’s daughter.

KING RICHARD. Wrong not her birth; she is a royal princess.

QUEEN ELIZABETH. To save her life I’ll say she is not so.

KING RICHARD. Her life is safest only in her birth.

QUEEN ELIZABETH. And only in that safety died her brothers.

KING RICHARD. Lo, at their births good stars were opposite.

QUEEN ELIZABETH. No, to their lives ill friends were contrary.

KING RICHARD. All unavoided is the doom of destiny.

QUEEN ELIZABETH. True, when avoided grace makes destiny. My babes were destined to a fairer death, If grace had blessed thee with a fairer life.

KING RICHARD. You speak as if that I had slain my cousins.

QUEEN ELIZABETH. Cousins, indeed, and by their uncle cozened Of comfort, kingdom, kindred, freedom, life. Whose hand soever lanced their tender hearts, Thy head, all indirectly, gave direction. No doubt the murd’rous knife was dull and blunt Till it was whetted on thy stone-hard heart, To revel in the entrails of my lambs. But that still use of grief makes wild grief tame, My tongue should to thy ears not name my boys Till that my nails were anchored in thine eyes, And I, in such a desp’rate bay of death, Like a poor bark of sails and tackling reft, Rush all to pieces on thy rocky bosom.

KING RICHARD. Madam, so thrive I in my enterprise And dangerous success of bloody wars, As I intend more good to you and yours Than ever you or yours by me were harmed!

QUEEN ELIZABETH. What good is covered with the face of heaven, To be discovered, that can do me good?

KING RICHARD. Th’ advancement of your children, gentle lady.

QUEEN ELIZABETH. Up to some scaffold, there to lose their heads.

KING RICHARD. Unto the dignity and height of fortune, The high imperial type of this earth’s glory.

QUEEN ELIZABETH. Flatter my sorrows with report of it. Tell me what state, what dignity, what honour, Canst thou demise to any child of mine?

KING RICHARD. Even all I have—ay, and myself and all Will I withal endow a child of thine; So in the Lethe of thy angry soul Thou drown the sad remembrance of those wrongs Which thou supposest I have done to thee.

QUEEN ELIZABETH. Be brief, lest that the process of thy kindness Last longer telling than thy kindness’ date.

KING RICHARD. Then know, that from my soul I love thy daughter.

QUEEN ELIZABETH. My daughter’s mother thinks it with her soul.

KING RICHARD. What do you think?

QUEEN ELIZABETH. That thou dost love my daughter from thy soul. So from thy soul’s love didst thou love her brothers, And from my heart’s love I do thank thee for it.

KING RICHARD. Be not so hasty to confound my meaning. I mean that with my soul I love thy daughter, And do intend to make her Queen of England.

QUEEN ELIZABETH. Well, then, who dost thou mean shall be her king?

KING RICHARD. Even he that makes her Queen. Who else should be?

QUEEN ELIZABETH. What, thou?

KING RICHARD. Even so. How think you of it?

QUEEN ELIZABETH. How canst thou woo her?

KING RICHARD. That would I learn of you, As one being best acquainted with her humour.

QUEEN ELIZABETH. And wilt thou learn of me?

KING RICHARD. Madam, with all my heart.

QUEEN ELIZABETH. Send to her, by the man that slew her brothers, A pair of bleeding hearts; thereon engrave “Edward” and “York.” Then haply will she weep. Therefore present to her—as sometimes Margaret Did to thy father, steeped in Rutland’s blood— A handkerchief, which, say to her, did drain The purple sap from her sweet brothers’ body, And bid her wipe her weeping eyes withal. If this inducement move her not to love, Send her a letter of thy noble deeds; Tell her thou mad’st away her uncle Clarence, Her uncle Rivers, ay, and for her sake Mad’st quick conveyance with her good aunt Anne.

KING RICHARD. You mock me, madam; this is not the way To win your daughter.

QUEEN ELIZABETH. There is no other way, Unless thou couldst put on some other shape, And not be Richard, that hath done all this.

KING RICHARD. Say that I did all this for love of her?

QUEEN ELIZABETH. Nay, then indeed she cannot choose but hate thee, Having bought love with such a bloody spoil.

KING RICHARD. Look what is done cannot be now amended. Men shall deal unadvisedly sometimes, Which after-hours gives leisure to repent. If I did take the kingdom from your sons, To make amends I’ll give it to your daughter. If I have killed the issue of your womb, To quicken your increase I will beget Mine issue of your blood upon your daughter. A grandam’s name is little less in love Than is the doting title of a mother; They are as children but one step below, Even of your mettle, of your very blood; Of all one pain, save for a night of groans Endured of her, for whom you bid like sorrow. Your children were vexation to your youth, But mine shall be a comfort to your age. The loss you have is but a son being King, And by that loss your daughter is made Queen. I cannot make you what amends I would; Therefore accept such kindness as I can. Dorset your son, that with a fearful soul Leads discontented steps in foreign soil, This fair alliance quickly shall call home To high promotions and great dignity. The King, that calls your beauteous daughter wife, Familiarly shall call thy Dorset brother; Again shall you be mother to a king, And all the ruins of distressful times Repaired with double riches of content. What, we have many goodly days to see. The liquid drops of tears that you have shed Shall come again, transformed to orient pearl, Advantaging their loan with interest Of ten times double gain of happiness. Go then, my mother, to thy daughter go. Make bold her bashful years with your experience; Prepare her ears to hear a wooer’s tale; Put in her tender heart th’ aspiring flame Of golden sovereignty; acquaint the Princess With the sweet silent hours of marriage joys, And when this arm of mine hath chastised The petty rebel, dull-brained Buckingham, Bound with triumphant garlands will I come And lead thy daughter to a conqueror’s bed; To whom I will retail my conquest won, And she shall be sole victoress, Caesar’s Caesar.

QUEEN ELIZABETH. What were I best to say? Her father’s brother Would be her lord? Or shall I say her uncle? Or he that slew her brothers and her uncles? Under what title shall I woo for thee, That God, the law, my honour, and her love Can make seem pleasing to her tender years?

KING RICHARD. Infer fair England’s peace by this alliance.

QUEEN ELIZABETH. Which she shall purchase with still-lasting war.

KING RICHARD. Tell her the King, that may command, entreats.

QUEEN ELIZABETH. That at her hands, which the King’s King forbids.

KING RICHARD. Say she shall be a high and mighty queen.

QUEEN ELIZABETH. To vail the title, as her mother doth.

KING RICHARD. Say I will love her everlastingly.

QUEEN ELIZABETH. But how long shall that title “ever” last?

KING RICHARD. Sweetly in force unto her fair life’s end.

QUEEN ELIZABETH. But how long fairly shall her sweet life last?

KING RICHARD. As long as heaven and nature lengthens it.

QUEEN ELIZABETH. As long as hell and Richard likes of it.

KING RICHARD. Say I, her sovereign, am her subject low.

QUEEN ELIZABETH. But she, your subject, loathes such sovereignty.

KING RICHARD. Be eloquent in my behalf to her.

QUEEN ELIZABETH. An honest tale speeds best being plainly told.

KING RICHARD. Then plainly to her tell my loving tale.

QUEEN ELIZABETH. Plain and not honest is too harsh a style.

KING RICHARD. Your reasons are too shallow and too quick.

QUEEN ELIZABETH. O no, my reasons are too deep and dead— Too deep and dead, poor infants, in their graves.

KING RICHARD. Harp not on that string, madam; that is past.

QUEEN ELIZABETH. Harp on it still shall I till heart-strings break.

KING RICHARD. Now, by my George, my Garter, and my crown—

QUEEN ELIZABETH. Profaned, dishonoured, and the third usurped.

KING RICHARD. I swear—

QUEEN ELIZABETH. By nothing, for this is no oath. Thy George, profaned, hath lost his lordly honour; Thy Garter, blemished, pawned his knightly virtue; Thy crown, usurped, disgraced his kingly glory. If something thou wouldst swear to be believed, Swear then by something that thou hast not wronged.

KING RICHARD. Now, by the world—

QUEEN ELIZABETH. ’Tis full of thy foul wrongs.

KING RICHARD. My father’s death—

QUEEN ELIZABETH. Thy life hath that dishonoured.

KING RICHARD. Then, by myself—

QUEEN ELIZABETH. Thyself is self-misused.

KING RICHARD. Why, then, by God—

QUEEN ELIZABETH. God’s wrong is most of all. If thou didst fear to break an oath with Him, The unity the King my husband made Thou hadst not broken, nor my brothers died. If thou hadst feared to break an oath by Him, Th’ imperial metal circling now thy head Had graced the tender temples of my child, And both the Princes had been breathing here, Which now, two tender bedfellows for dust, Thy broken faith hath made a prey for worms. What canst thou swear by now?

KING RICHARD. The time to come.

QUEEN ELIZABETH. That thou hast wronged in the time o’erpast; For I myself have many tears to wash Hereafter time, for time past wronged by thee. The children live whose fathers thou hast slaughtered, Ungoverned youth, to wail it in their age; The parents live whose children thou hast butchered, Old barren plants, to wail it with their age. Swear not by time to come, for that thou hast Misused ere used, by times ill-used o’erpast.

KING RICHARD. As I intend to prosper and repent, So thrive I in my dangerous affairs Of hostile arms! Myself myself confound! Heaven and fortune bar me happy hours! Day, yield me not thy light, nor, night, thy rest! Be opposite all planets of good luck To my proceeding if with dear heart’s love, Immaculate devotion, holy thoughts, I tender not thy beauteous princely daughter. In her consists my happiness and thine; Without her follows to myself and thee, Herself, the land, and many a Christian soul, Death, desolation, ruin, and decay. It cannot be avoided but by this; It will not be avoided but by this. Therefore, dear mother—I must call you so— Be the attorney of my love to her; Plead what I will be, not what I have been; Not my deserts, but what I will deserve. Urge the necessity and state of times, And be not peevish found in great designs.

QUEEN ELIZABETH. Shall I be tempted of the devil thus?

KING RICHARD. Ay, if the devil tempt you to do good.

QUEEN ELIZABETH. Shall I forget myself to be myself?

KING RICHARD. Ay, if your self’s remembrance wrong yourself.

QUEEN ELIZABETH. Yet thou didst kill my children.

KING RICHARD. But in your daughter’s womb I bury them, Where, in that nest of spicery, they will breed Selves of themselves, to your recomforture.

QUEEN ELIZABETH. Shall I go win my daughter to thy will?

KING RICHARD. And be a happy mother by the deed.

QUEEN ELIZABETH. I go. Write to me very shortly, And you shall understand from me her mind.

KING RICHARD. Bear her my true love’s kiss; and so, farewell.

[Kissing her. Exit Queen Elizabeth.]

Relenting fool, and shallow, changing woman!

How now, what news?

RATCLIFFE. Most mighty sovereign, on the western coast Rideth a puissant navy; to our shores Throng many doubtful hollow-hearted friends, Unarmed, and unresolved to beat them back. ’Tis thought that Richmond is their admiral; And there they hull, expecting but the aid Of Buckingham to welcome them ashore.

KING RICHARD. Some light-foot friend post to the Duke of Norfolk. Ratcliffe, thyself, or Catesby. Where is he?

CATESBY. Here, my good lord.

KING RICHARD. Catesby, fly to the Duke.

CATESBY. I will my lord, with all convenient haste.

KING RICHARD. Ratcliffe, come hither. Post to Salisbury. When thou com’st thither— [To Catesby.] Dull, unmindful villain, Why stay’st thou here, and go’st not to the Duke?

CATESBY. First, mighty liege, tell me your Highness’ pleasure, What from your Grace I shall deliver to him.

KING RICHARD. O, true, good Catesby. Bid him levy straight The greatest strength and power that he can make, And meet me suddenly at Salisbury.

CATESBY. I go.

RATCLIFFE. What, may it please you, shall I do at Salisbury?

KING RICHARD. Why, what wouldst thou do there before I go?

RATCLIFFE. Your Highness told me I should post before.

KING RICHARD. My mind is changed.

Stanley, what news with you?

STANLEY. None good, my liege, to please you with the hearing; Nor none so bad but well may be reported.

KING RICHARD. Hoyday, a riddle! Neither good nor bad. What need’st thou run so many miles about When thou mayst tell thy tale the nearest way? Once more, what news?

STANLEY. Richmond is on the seas.

KING RICHARD. There let him sink, and be the seas on him! White-livered runagate, what doth he there?

STANLEY. I know not, mighty sovereign, but by guess.

KING RICHARD. Well, as you guess?

STANLEY. Stirred up by Dorset, Buckingham, and Morton, He makes for England, here to claim the crown.

KING RICHARD. Is the chair empty? Is the sword unswayed? Is the King dead? The empire unpossessed? What heir of York is there alive but we? And who is England’s King but great York’s heir? Then tell me, what makes he upon the seas?

STANLEY. Unless for that, my liege, I cannot guess.

KING RICHARD. Unless for that he comes to be your liege, You cannot guess wherefore the Welshman comes. Thou wilt revolt and fly to him, I fear.

STANLEY. No, my good lord; therefore mistrust me not.

KING RICHARD. Where is thy power, then, to beat him back? Where be thy tenants and thy followers? Are they not now upon the western shore, Safe-conducting the rebels from their ships?

STANLEY. No, my good lord, my friends are in the north.

KING RICHARD. Cold friends to me. What do they in the north, When they should serve their sovereign in the west?

STANLEY. They have not been commanded, mighty King. Pleaseth your Majesty to give me leave, I’ll muster up my friends, and meet your Grace Where and what time your Majesty shall please.

KING RICHARD. Ay, ay, thou wouldst be gone to join with Richmond. But I’ll not trust thee.

STANLEY. Most mighty sovereign, You have no cause to hold my friendship doubtful. I never was nor never will be false.

KING RICHARD. Go then, and muster men, but leave behind Your son George Stanley. Look your heart be firm, Or else his head’s assurance is but frail.

STANLEY. So deal with him as I prove true to you.

MESSENGER. My gracious sovereign, now in Devonshire, As I by friends am well advertised, Sir Edward Courtney, and the haughty prelate, Bishop of Exeter, his elder brother, With many more confederates, are in arms.

SECOND MESSENGER. In Kent, my liege, the Guilfords are in arms, And every hour more competitors Flock to the rebels, and their power grows strong.

THIRD MESSENGER. My lord, the army of great Buckingham—

KING RICHARD. Out on you, owls! Nothing but songs of death?

[He strikes him.]

There, take thou that till thou bring better news.

THIRD MESSENGER. The news I have to tell your Majesty Is, that by sudden floods and fall of waters, Buckingham’s army is dispersed and scattered, And he himself wandered away alone, No man knows whither.

KING RICHARD. I cry thee mercy. There is my purse to cure that blow of thine. Hath any well-advised friend proclaimed Reward to him that brings the traitor in?

THIRD MESSENGER. Such proclamation hath been made, my lord.

FOURTH MESSENGER. Sir Thomas Lovell and Lord Marquess Dorset, ’Tis said, my liege, in Yorkshire are in arms. But this good comfort bring I to your Highness: The Breton navy is dispersed by tempest. Richmond, in Dorsetshire, sent out a boat Unto the shore, to ask those on the banks If they were his assistants, yea or no?— Who answered him they came from Buckingham Upon his party. He, mistrusting them, Hoised sail, and made his course again for Brittany.

KING RICHARD. March on, march on, since we are up in arms, If not to fight with foreign enemies, Yet to beat down these rebels here at home.

CATESBY. My liege, the Duke of Buckingham is taken. That is the best news. That the Earl of Richmond Is with a mighty power landed at Milford Is colder tidings, yet they must be told.

KING RICHARD. Away towards Salisbury! While we reason here A royal battle might be won and lost. Someone take order Buckingham be brought To Salisbury; the rest march on with me.

SCENE V. A Room in Lord Stanley’s house

Enter Stanley Earl of Derby and Sir Christopher Urswick.

STANLEY. Sir Christopher, tell Richmond this from me: That in the sty of the most deadly boar My son George Stanley is franked up in hold; If I revolt, off goes young George’s head; The fear of that holds off my present aid. So get thee gone. Commend me to thy lord; Withal say that the Queen hath heartily consented He should espouse Elizabeth her daughter. But tell me, where is princely Richmond now?

CHRISTOPHER. At Pembroke, or at Ha’rfordwest in Wales.

STANLEY. What men of name resort to him?

CHRISTOPHER. Sir Walter Herbert, a renowned soldier; Sir Gilbert Talbot, Sir William Stanley, Oxford, redoubted Pembroke, Sir James Blunt, And Rice ap Thomas, with a valiant crew, And many other of great name and worth; And towards London do they bend their power, If by the way they be not fought withal.

STANLEY. Well, hie thee to thy lord; I kiss his hand. My letter will resolve him of my mind. Farewell.

SCENE I. Salisbury. An open place

Enter Sheriff and Halberds, with Buckingham, led to execution.

BUCKINGHAM. Will not King Richard let me speak with him?

SHERIFF. No, my good lord; therefore be patient.

BUCKINGHAM. Hastings, and Edward’s children, Grey, and Rivers, Holy King Henry, and thy fair son Edward, Vaughan, and all that have miscarried By underhand, corrupted foul injustice, If that your moody discontented souls Do through the clouds behold this present hour, Even for revenge mock my destruction. This is All-Souls’ day, fellow, is it not?

SHERIFF. It is.

BUCKINGHAM. Why, then All-Souls’ day is my body’s doomsday. This is the day which, in King Edward’s time, I wished might fall on me when I was found False to his children and his wife’s allies. This is the day wherein I wished to fall By the false faith of him whom most I trusted. This, this All-Souls’ day to my fearful soul Is the determined respite of my wrongs. That high All-Seer which I dallied with Hath turned my feigned prayer on my head And given in earnest what I begged in jest. Thus doth He force the swords of wicked men To turn their own points in their masters’ bosoms. Thus Margaret’s curse falls heavy on my neck: “When he,” quoth she, “shall split thy heart with sorrow, Remember Margaret was a prophetess.” Come lead me, officers, to the block of shame; Wrong hath but wrong, and blame the due of blame.

[Exit with Officers.]

SCENE II. Plain near Tamworth

Enter Richmond, Oxford, Blunt, Herbert, and others, with drum and colours.

RICHMOND. Fellows in arms, and my most loving friends, Bruised underneath the yoke of tyranny, Thus far into the bowels of the land Have we marched on without impediment; And here receive we from our father Stanley Lines of fair comfort and encouragement. The wretched, bloody, and usurping boar, That spoiled your summer fields and fruitful vines, Swills your warm blood like wash, and makes his trough In your embowelled bosoms—this foul swine Is now even in the centre of this isle, Near to the town of Leicester, as we learn. From Tamworth thither is but one day’s march. In God’s name, cheerly on, courageous friends, To reap the harvest of perpetual peace By this one bloody trial of sharp war.

OXFORD. Every man’s conscience is a thousand men, To fight against that guilty homicide.

HERBERT. I doubt not but his friends will turn to us.

BLUNT. He hath no friends but what are friends for fear, Which in his dearest need will fly from him.

RICHMOND. All for our vantage. Then in God’s name, march. True hope is swift, and flies with swallow’s wings; Kings it makes gods, and meaner creatures kings.

SCENE III. Bosworth Field

Enter King Richard in arms, with Norfolk, Ratcliffe and the Earl of Surrey with others.

KING RICHARD. Here pitch our tent, even here in Bosworth field. My Lord of Surrey, why look you so sad?

SURREY. My heart is ten times lighter than my looks.

KING RICHARD. My lord of Norfolk.

NORFOLK. Here, most gracious liege.

KING RICHARD. Norfolk, we must have knocks, ha, must we not?

NORFOLK. We must both give and take, my loving lord.

KING RICHARD. Up with my tent! Here will I lie tonight. But where tomorrow? Well, all’s one for that. Who hath descried the number of the traitors?

NORFOLK. Six or seven thousand is their utmost power.

KING RICHARD. Why, our battalia trebles that account. Besides, the King’s name is a tower of strength Which they upon the adverse faction want. Up with the tent! Come, noble gentlemen, Let us survey the vantage of the ground. Call for some men of sound direction; Let’s lack no discipline, make no delay, For, lords, tomorrow is a busy day.

[The tent is now ready. Exeunt.]

Enter Richmond, Sir William Brandon, Oxford, Herbert, Blunt, and others who pitch Richmond’s tent.

RICHMOND. The weary sun hath made a golden set, And by the bright track of his fiery car Gives token of a goodly day tomorrow. Sir William Brandon, you shall bear my standard. Give me some ink and paper in my tent; I’ll draw the form and model of our battle, Limit each leader to his several charge, And part in just proportion our small power. My Lord of Oxford, you, Sir William Brandon, And you, Sir Walter Herbert, stay with me. The Earl of Pembroke keeps his regiment.— Good Captain Blunt, bear my goodnight to him, And by the second hour in the morning Desire the Earl to see me in my tent. Yet one thing more, good captain, do for me. Where is Lord Stanley quartered, do you know?

BLUNT. Unless I have mista’en his colours much, Which well I am assured I have not done, His regiment lies half a mile at least South from the mighty power of the King.

RICHMOND. If without peril it be possible, Sweet Blunt, make some good means to speak with him, And give him from me this most needful note.

BLUNT. Upon my life, my lord, I’ll undertake it; And so God give you quiet rest tonight.

RICHMOND. Good night, good Captain Blunt.

[Exit Blunt.]

Come, gentlemen, Let us consult upon tomorrow’s business; Into my tent. The dew is raw and cold.

[Richmond, Brandon Herbert, and Oxford withdraw into the tent. The others exeunt.]

Enter to his tent, King Richard, Ratcliffe, Norfolk and Catesby with Soldiers.

KING RICHARD. What is’t o’clock?

CATESBY. It’s supper time, my lord. It’s nine o’clock.

KING RICHARD. I will not sup tonight. Give me some ink and paper. What, is my beaver easier than it was? And all my armour laid into my tent?

CATESBY. It is, my liege, and all things are in readiness.

KING RICHARD. Good Norfolk, hie thee to thy charge; Use careful watch; choose trusty sentinels.

NORFOLK. I go, my lord.

KING RICHARD. Stir with the lark tomorrow, gentle Norfolk.

NORFOLK. I warrant you, my lord.

KING RICHARD. Catesby!

CATESBY. My lord?

KING RICHARD. Send out a pursuivant-at-arms To Stanley’s regiment. Bid him bring his power Before sunrising, lest his son George fall Into the blind cave of eternal night.

Fill me a bowl of wine. Give me a watch. Saddle white Surrey for the field tomorrow. Look that my staves be sound, and not too heavy. Ratcliffe!

RATCLIFFE. My lord?

KING RICHARD. Saw’st thou the melancholy Lord Northumberland?

RATCLIFFE. Thomas the Earl of Surrey and himself, Much about cockshut time, from troop to troop Went through the army, cheering up the soldiers.

KING RICHARD. So, I am satisfied. Give me a bowl of wine. I have not that alacrity of spirit Nor cheer of mind that I was wont to have. Set it down. Is ink and paper ready?

RATCLIFFE. It is, my lord.

KING RICHARD. Bid my guard watch; leave me. Ratcliffe, about the mid of night come to my tent And help to arm me. Leave me, I say.

[Exit Ratcliffe. Richard withdraws into his tent; attendant soldiers guard it.]

Enter Stanley Earl of Derby to Richmond in his tent.

STANLEY. Fortune and victory sit on thy helm!

RICHMOND. All comfort that the dark night can afford Be to thy person, noble father-in-law. Tell me, how fares our loving mother?

STANLEY. I, by attorney, bless thee from thy mother, Who prays continually for Richmond’s good. So much for that. The silent hours steal on, And flaky darkness breaks within the east. In brief, for so the season bids us be, Prepare thy battle early in the morning, And put thy fortune to the arbitrement Of bloody strokes and mortal-staring war. I, as I may—that which I would I cannot— With best advantage will deceive the time, And aid thee in this doubtful shock of arms. But on thy side I may not be too forward, Lest, being seen, thy brother, tender George, Be executed in his father’s sight. Farewell; the leisure and the fearful time Cuts off the ceremonious vows of love And ample interchange of sweet discourse, Which so-long-sundered friends should dwell upon. God give us leisure for these rites of love! Once more, adieu. Be valiant, and speed well.

RICHMOND. Good lords, conduct him to his regiment. I’ll strive with troubled thoughts to take a nap, Lest leaden slumber peise me down tomorrow When I should mount with wings of victory. Once more, good night, kind lords and gentlemen.

[All but Richmond leave his tent.]

[Kneels.] O Thou, whose captain I account myself, Look on my forces with a gracious eye; Put in their hands Thy bruising irons of wrath, That they may crush down with a heavy fall Th’ usurping helmets of our adversaries; Make us Thy ministers of chastisement, That we may praise Thee in the victory. To Thee I do commend my watchful soul Ere I let fall the windows of mine eyes. Sleeping and waking, O, defend me still!

Enter the Ghost of young Prince Edward, son to Harry the Sixth.

GHOST OF EDWARD. [To King Richard.] Let me sit heavy on thy soul tomorrow. Think how thou stabbed’st me in my prime of youth At Tewksbury; despair therefore, and die! [To Richmond.] Be cheerful, Richmond, for the wronged souls Of butchered princes fight in thy behalf. King Henry’s issue, Richmond, comforts thee.

Enter the Ghost of Henry the Sixth.

GHOST OF HENRY. [To King Richard.] When I was mortal, my anointed body By thee was punched full of deadly holes. Think on the Tower and me. Despair, and die; Harry the Sixth bids thee despair and die. [To Richmond.] Virtuous and holy, be thou conqueror. Harry, that prophesied thou shouldst be King, Doth comfort thee in thy sleep. Live, and flourish!

Enter the Ghost of Clarence.

GHOST OF CLARENCE. [To King Richard.] Let me sit heavy in thy soul tomorrow, I, that was washed to death with fulsome wine, Poor Clarence, by thy guile betrayed to death. Tomorrow in the battle think on me, And fall thy edgeless sword. Despair, and die! [To Richmond.] Thou offspring of the house of Lancaster, The wronged heirs of York do pray for thee. Good angels guard thy battle; live, and flourish.

Enter the Ghosts of Rivers, Grey and Vaughan.

GHOST OF RIVERS. [To King Richard.] Let me sit heavy in thy soul tomorrow, Rivers that died at Pomfret. Despair and die!

GHOST OF GREY. [To King Richard.] Think upon Grey, and let thy soul despair!

GHOST OF VAUGHAN. [To King Richard.] Think upon Vaughan, and with guilty fear Let fall thy lance. Despair and die!

ALL THREE. [To Richmond.] Awake, and think our wrongs in Richard’s bosom Will conquer him. Awake, and win the day.

Enter the Ghost of Hastings.

GHOST OF HASTINGS. [To King Richard.] Bloody and guilty, guiltily awake, And in a bloody battle end thy days. Think on Lord Hastings. Despair and die! [To Richmond.] Quiet untroubled soul, awake, awake. Arm, fight, and conquer for fair England’s sake.

Enter the Ghosts of the two young Princes.

GHOSTS OF PRINCES. [To King Richard.] Dream on thy cousins smothered in the Tower. Let us be lead within thy bosom, Richard, And weigh thee down to ruin, shame, and death; Thy nephews’ souls bid thee despair and die. [To Richmond.] Sleep, Richmond, sleep in peace, and wake in joy; Good angels guard thee from the boar’s annoy. Live, and beget a happy race of kings; Edward’s unhappy sons do bid thee flourish.

Enter the Ghost of Lady Anne, his wife.

GHOST OF ANNE. [To King Richard.] Richard, thy wife, that wretched Anne thy wife, That never slept a quiet hour with thee, Now fills thy sleep with perturbations. Tomorrow in the battle think on me, And fall thy edgeless sword. Despair and die! [To Richmond.] Thou quiet soul, sleep thou a quiet sleep; Dream of success and happy victory. Thy adversary’s wife doth pray for thee.

Enter the Ghost of Buckingham.

GHOST OF BUCKINGHAM. [To King Richard.] The first was I that helped thee to the crown; The last was I that felt thy tyranny. O, in the battle think on Buckingham, And die in terror of thy guiltiness. Dream on, dream on of bloody deeds and death. Fainting, despair; despairing, yield thy breath. [To Richmond.] I died for hope ere I could lend thee aid, But cheer thy heart, and be thou not dismayed. God and good angels fight on Richmond’s side; And Richard fall in height of all his pride.

[King Richard starts up out of his dream.]

KING RICHARD. Give me another horse! Bind up my wounds! Have mercy, Jesu!—Soft! I did but dream. O coward conscience, how dost thou afflict me! The lights burn blue; it is now dead midnight. Cold fearful drops stand on my trembling flesh. What do I fear? Myself? There’s none else by. Richard loves Richard, that is, I am I. Is there a murderer here? No. Yes, I am. Then fly. What, from myself? Great reason why, Lest I revenge. What, myself upon myself? Alack, I love myself. Wherefore? For any good That I myself have done unto myself? O, no, alas, I rather hate myself For hateful deeds committed by myself. I am a villain. Yet I lie, I am not. Fool, of thyself speak well. Fool, do not flatter. My conscience hath a thousand several tongues, And every tongue brings in a several tale, And every tale condemns me for a villain. Perjury, perjury, in the highest degree; Murder, stern murder, in the direst degree; All several sins, all used in each degree, Throng to the bar, crying all “Guilty, guilty!” I shall despair. There is no creature loves me, And if I die no soul will pity me. And wherefore should they, since that I myself Find in myself no pity to myself? Methought the souls of all that I had murdered Came to my tent, and everyone did threat Tomorrow’s vengeance on the head of Richard.

KING RICHARD. Zounds! Who’s there?

RATCLIFFE. Ratcliffe, my lord; ’tis I. The early village cock Hath twice done salutation to the morn; Your friends are up and buckle on their armour.

KING RICHARD. O Ratcliffe, I have dreamed a fearful dream! What think’st thou, will our friends prove all true?

RATCLIFFE. No doubt, my lord.

KING RICHARD. O Ratcliffe, I fear, I fear!

RATCLIFFE. Nay, good my lord, be not afraid of shadows.

KING RICHARD. By the apostle Paul, shadows tonight Have struck more terror to the soul of Richard Than can the substance of ten thousand soldiers Armed in proof and led by shallow Richmond. ’Tis not yet near day. Come, go with me. Under our tents I’ll play the eavesdropper, To see if any mean to shrink from me.

[Exeunt Richard and Ratcliffe.]

Enter the Lords to Richmond in his tent.

LORDS. Good morrow, Richmond.

RICHMOND. Cry mercy, lords and watchful gentlemen, That you have ta’en a tardy sluggard here.

LORDS. How have you slept, my lord?

RICHMOND. The sweetest sleep and fairest-boding dreams That ever entered in a drowsy head Have I since your departure had, my lords. Methought their souls whose bodies Richard murdered Came to my tent and cried on victory. I promise you, my heart is very jocund In the remembrance of so fair a dream. How far into the morning is it, lords?

LORDS. Upon the stroke of four.

RICHMOND. Why, then ’tis time to arm and give direction.

His oration to his soldiers.

More than I have said, loving countrymen, The leisure and enforcement of the time Forbids to dwell upon. Yet remember this: God, and our good cause, fight upon our side; The prayers of holy saints and wronged souls, Like high-reared bulwarks, stand before our faces. Richard except, those whom we fight against Had rather have us win than him they follow. For what is he they follow? Truly, gentlemen, A bloody tyrant and a homicide; One raised in blood, and one in blood established; One that made means to come by what he hath, And slaughtered those that were the means to help him; A base foul stone, made precious by the foil Of England’s chair, where he is falsely set; One that hath ever been God’s enemy. Then, if you fight against God’s enemy, God will, in justice, ward you as his soldiers; If you do sweat to put a tyrant down, You sleep in peace, the tyrant being slain; If you do fight against your country’s foes, Your country’s fat shall pay your pains the hire; If you do fight in safeguard of your wives, Your wives shall welcome home the conquerors; If you do free your children from the sword, Your children’s children quits it in your age. Then, in the name of God and all these rights, Advance your standards, draw your willing swords. For me, the ransom of my bold attempt Shall be this cold corpse on the earth’s cold face; But if I thrive, the gain of my attempt The least of you shall share his part thereof. Sound drums and trumpets boldly and cheerfully! God, and Saint George! Richmond and victory!

Enter King Richard, Ratcliffe and Soldiers.

KING RICHARD. What said Northumberland as touching Richmond?

RATCLIFFE. That he was never trained up in arms.

KING RICHARD. He said the truth. And what said Surrey then?

RATCLIFFE. He smiled, and said, “The better for our purpose.”

KING RICHARD. He was in the right, and so indeed it is.

[The clock striketh.]

Tell the clock there. Give me a calendar. Who saw the sun today?

RATCLIFFE. Not I, my lord.

KING RICHARD. Then he disdains to shine, for by the book He should have braved the east an hour ago. A black day will it be to somebody. Ratcliffe!

KING RICHARD. The sun will not be seen today! The sky doth frown and lour upon our army. I would these dewy tears were from the ground. Not shine today? Why, what is that to me More than to Richmond? For the selfsame heaven That frowns on me looks sadly upon him.

Enter Norfolk.

NORFOLK. Arm, arm, my lord. The foe vaunts in the field.

KING RICHARD. Come, bustle, bustle! Caparison my horse. Call up Lord Stanley; bid him bring his power. I will lead forth my soldiers to the plain, And thus my battle shall be ordered: My foreward shall be drawn out all in length, Consisting equally of horse and foot; Our archers shall be placed in the midst. John Duke of Norfolk, Thomas Earl of Surrey, Shall have the leading of this foot and horse. They thus directed, we will follow In the main battle, whose puissance on either side Shall be well winged with our chiefest horse. This, and Saint George to boot! What think’st thou, Norfolk?

NORFOLK. A good direction, warlike sovereign.

[He sheweth him a paper.]

This found I on my tent this morning.

KING RICHARD. [Reads.] “Jockey of Norfolk, be not too bold. For Dickon thy master is bought and sold.” A thing devised by the enemy. Go, gentlemen, every man unto his charge. Let not our babbling dreams affright our souls; Conscience is but a word that cowards use, Devised at first to keep the strong in awe. Our strong arms be our conscience, swords our law. March on. Join bravely. Let us to it pell-mell, If not to heaven, then hand in hand to hell.

His oration to his army.

What shall I say more than I have inferred? Remember whom you are to cope withal, A sort of vagabonds, rascals, and runaways, A scum of Bretons and base lackey peasants, Whom their o’er-cloyed country vomits forth To desperate adventures and assured destruction. You sleeping safe, they bring to you unrest; You having lands, and blessed with beauteous wives, They would restrain the one, distain the other. And who doth lead them but a paltry fellow, Long kept in Brittany at our mother’s cost? A milksop, one that never in his life Felt so much cold as over-shoes in snow? Let’s whip these stragglers o’er the seas again, Lash hence these overweening rags of France, These famished beggars, weary of their lives, Who, but for dreaming on this fond exploit, For want of means, poor rats, had hanged themselves. If we be conquered, let men conquer us, And not these bastard Bretons, whom our fathers Have in their own land beaten, bobbed, and thumped, And in record left them the heirs of shame. Shall these enjoy our lands? Lie with our wives, Ravish our daughters?

Hark, I hear their drum. Fight, gentlemen of England! Fight, bold yeomen! Draw, archers, draw your arrows to the head! Spur your proud horses hard, and ride in blood! Amaze the welkin with your broken staves!

What says Lord Stanley? Will he bring his power?

MESSENGER. My lord, he doth deny to come.

KING RICHARD. Off with his son George’s head!

NORFOLK. My lord, the enemy is past the marsh. After the battle let George Stanley die.

KING RICHARD. A thousand hearts are great within my bosom. Advance our standards! Set upon our foes! Our ancient word of courage, fair Saint George, Inspire us with the spleen of fiery dragons! Upon them! Victory sits on our helms.

SCENE IV. Another part of the Field

Alarum. Excursions. Enter Norfolk and Soldiers; to him Catesby.

CATESBY. Rescue, my lord of Norfolk, rescue, rescue! The King enacts more wonders than a man, Daring an opposite to every danger. His horse is slain, and all on foot he fights, Seeking for Richmond in the throat of death. Rescue, fair lord, or else the day is lost!

[Exeunt Norfolk and Soldiers.]

Alarum. Enter King Richard.

KING RICHARD. A horse! A horse! My kingdom for a horse!

CATESBY. Withdraw, my lord; I’ll help you to a horse.

KING RICHARD. Slave, I have set my life upon a cast, And I will stand the hazard of the die. I think there be six Richmonds in the field; Five have I slain today instead of him. A horse! A horse! My kingdom for a horse!

Alarum. Enter King Richard and Richmond. They fight. Richard is slain. Then retreat being sounded. Richmond exits, and Richard’s body is carried off. Flourish. Enter Richmond, Stanley Earl of Derby, bearing the crown, with other Lords and Soldiers.

RICHMOND. God and your arms be praised, victorious friends! The day is ours, the bloody dog is dead.

STANLEY. Courageous Richmond, well hast thou acquit thee! Lo, here, this long-usurped royalty From the dead temples of this bloody wretch Have I plucked off, to grace thy brows withal. Wear it, enjoy it, and make much of it.

RICHMOND. Great God of heaven, say Amen to all! But tell me, is young George Stanley living?

STANLEY. He is, my lord, and safe in Leicester town, Whither, if it please you, we may now withdraw us.

RICHMOND. What men of name are slain on either side?

STANLEY. John, Duke of Norfolk, Walter, Lord Ferrers, Sir Robert Brakenbury, and Sir William Brandon.

RICHMOND. Inter their bodies as becomes their births. Proclaim a pardon to the soldiers fled That in submission will return to us. And then, as we have ta’en the sacrament, We will unite the white rose and the red. Smile heaven upon this fair conjunction, That long have frowned upon their enmity. What traitor hears me and says not Amen? England hath long been mad, and scarred herself: The brother blindly shed the brother’s blood; The father rashly slaughtered his own son; The son, compelled, been butcher to the sire. All this divided York and Lancaster, Divided in their dire division. O, now let Richmond and Elizabeth, The true succeeders of each royal house, By God’s fair ordinance conjoin together, And let their heirs, God, if Thy will be so, Enrich the time to come with smoothed-faced peace, With smiling plenty, and fair prosperous days. Abate the edge of traitors, gracious Lord, That would reduce these bloody days again, And make poor England weep in streams of blood. Let them not live to taste this land’s increase, That would with treason wound this fair land’s peace. Now civil wounds are stopped, peace lives again. That she may long live here, God say Amen.

THE TRAGEDY OF ROMEO AND JULIET

THE PROLOGUE.

ACT I Scene I. A public place. Scene II. A Street. Scene III. Room in Capulet’s House. Scene IV. A Street. Scene V. A Hall in Capulet’s House.

ACT II CHORUS. Scene I. An open place adjoining Capulet’s Garden. Scene II. Capulet’s Garden. Scene III. Friar Lawrence’s Cell. Scene IV. A Street. Scene V. Capulet’s Garden. Scene VI. Friar Lawrence’s Cell.

ACT III Scene I. A public Place. Scene II. A Room in Capulet’s House. Scene III. Friar Lawrence’s cell. Scene IV. A Room in Capulet’s House. Scene V. An open Gallery to Juliet’s Chamber, overlooking the Garden.

ACT IV Scene I. Friar Lawrence’s Cell. Scene II. Hall in Capulet’s House. Scene III. Juliet’s Chamber. Scene IV. Hall in Capulet’s House. Scene V. Juliet’s Chamber; Juliet on the bed.

ACT V Scene I. Mantua. A Street. Scene II. Friar Lawrence’s Cell. Scene III. A churchyard; in it a Monument belonging to the Capulets.

ESCALUS, Prince of Verona. MERCUTIO, kinsman to the Prince, and friend to Romeo. PARIS, a young Nobleman, kinsman to the Prince. Page to Paris.

MONTAGUE, head of a Veronese family at feud with the Capulets. LADY MONTAGUE, wife to Montague. ROMEO, son to Montague. BENVOLIO, nephew to Montague, and friend to Romeo. ABRAM, servant to Montague. BALTHASAR, servant to Romeo.

CAPULET, head of a Veronese family at feud with the Montagues. LADY CAPULET, wife to Capulet. JULIET, daughter to Capulet. TYBALT, nephew to Lady Capulet. CAPULET’S COUSIN, an old man. NURSE to Juliet. PETER, servant to Juliet’s Nurse. SAMPSON, servant to Capulet. GREGORY, servant to Capulet. Servants.

FRIAR LAWRENCE, a Franciscan. FRIAR JOHN, of the same Order. An Apothecary. CHORUS. Three Musicians. An Officer. Citizens of Verona; several Men and Women, relations to both houses; Maskers, Guards, Watchmen and Attendants.

SCENE. During the greater part of the Play in Verona; once, in the Fifth Act, at Mantua.

THE PROLOGUE

CHORUS. Two households, both alike in dignity, In fair Verona, where we lay our scene, From ancient grudge break to new mutiny, Where civil blood makes civil hands unclean. From forth the fatal loins of these two foes A pair of star-cross’d lovers take their life; Whose misadventur’d piteous overthrows Doth with their death bury their parents’ strife. The fearful passage of their death-mark’d love, And the continuance of their parents’ rage, Which, but their children’s end, nought could remove, Is now the two hours’ traffic of our stage; The which, if you with patient ears attend, What here shall miss, our toil shall strive to mend.

SCENE I. A public place.

Enter Sampson and Gregory armed with swords and bucklers.

SAMPSON. Gregory, on my word, we’ll not carry coals.

GREGORY. No, for then we should be colliers.

SAMPSON. I mean, if we be in choler, we’ll draw.

GREGORY. Ay, while you live, draw your neck out o’ the collar.

SAMPSON. I strike quickly, being moved.

GREGORY. But thou art not quickly moved to strike.

SAMPSON. A dog of the house of Montague moves me.

GREGORY. To move is to stir; and to be valiant is to stand: therefore, if thou art moved, thou runn’st away.

SAMPSON. A dog of that house shall move me to stand. I will take the wall of any man or maid of Montague’s.

GREGORY. That shows thee a weak slave, for the weakest goes to the wall.

SAMPSON. True, and therefore women, being the weaker vessels, are ever thrust to the wall: therefore I will push Montague’s men from the wall, and thrust his maids to the wall.

GREGORY. The quarrel is between our masters and us their men.

SAMPSON. ’Tis all one, I will show myself a tyrant: when I have fought with the men I will be civil with the maids, I will cut off their heads.

GREGORY. The heads of the maids?

SAMPSON. Ay, the heads of the maids, or their maidenheads; take it in what sense thou wilt.

GREGORY. They must take it in sense that feel it.

SAMPSON. Me they shall feel while I am able to stand: and ’tis known I am a pretty piece of flesh.

GREGORY. ’Tis well thou art not fish; if thou hadst, thou hadst been poor John. Draw thy tool; here comes of the house of Montagues.

Enter Abram and Balthasar.

SAMPSON. My naked weapon is out: quarrel, I will back thee.

GREGORY. How? Turn thy back and run?

SAMPSON. Fear me not.

GREGORY. No, marry; I fear thee!

SAMPSON. Let us take the law of our sides; let them begin.

GREGORY. I will frown as I pass by, and let them take it as they list.

SAMPSON. Nay, as they dare. I will bite my thumb at them, which is disgrace to them if they bear it.

ABRAM. Do you bite your thumb at us, sir?

SAMPSON. I do bite my thumb, sir.

SAMPSON. Is the law of our side if I say ay?

GREGORY. No.

SAMPSON. No sir, I do not bite my thumb at you, sir; but I bite my thumb, sir.

GREGORY. Do you quarrel, sir?

ABRAM. Quarrel, sir? No, sir.

SAMPSON. But if you do, sir, I am for you. I serve as good a man as you.

ABRAM. No better.

SAMPSON. Well, sir.

Enter Benvolio.

GREGORY. Say better; here comes one of my master’s kinsmen.

SAMPSON. Yes, better, sir.

ABRAM. You lie.

SAMPSON. Draw, if you be men. Gregory, remember thy washing blow.

BENVOLIO. Part, fools! put up your swords, you know not what you do.

[Beats down their swords.]

Enter Tybalt.

TYBALT. What, art thou drawn among these heartless hinds? Turn thee Benvolio, look upon thy death.

BENVOLIO. I do but keep the peace, put up thy sword, Or manage it to part these men with me.

TYBALT. What, drawn, and talk of peace? I hate the word As I hate hell, all Montagues, and thee: Have at thee, coward.

Enter three or four Citizens with clubs.

FIRST CITIZEN. Clubs, bills and partisans! Strike! Beat them down! Down with the Capulets! Down with the Montagues!

Enter Capulet in his gown, and Lady Capulet.

CAPULET. What noise is this? Give me my long sword, ho!

LADY CAPULET. A crutch, a crutch! Why call you for a sword?

CAPULET. My sword, I say! Old Montague is come, And flourishes his blade in spite of me.

Enter Montague and his Lady Montague.

MONTAGUE. Thou villain Capulet! Hold me not, let me go.

LADY MONTAGUE. Thou shalt not stir one foot to seek a foe.

Enter Prince Escalus, with Attendants.

PRINCE. Rebellious subjects, enemies to peace, Profaners of this neighbour-stained steel,— Will they not hear? What, ho! You men, you beasts, That quench the fire of your pernicious rage With purple fountains issuing from your veins, On pain of torture, from those bloody hands Throw your mistemper’d weapons to the ground And hear the sentence of your moved prince. Three civil brawls, bred of an airy word, By thee, old Capulet, and Montague, Have thrice disturb’d the quiet of our streets, And made Verona’s ancient citizens Cast by their grave beseeming ornaments, To wield old partisans, in hands as old, Canker’d with peace, to part your canker’d hate. If ever you disturb our streets again, Your lives shall pay the forfeit of the peace. For this time all the rest depart away: You, Capulet, shall go along with me, And Montague, come you this afternoon, To know our farther pleasure in this case, To old Free-town, our common judgement-place. Once more, on pain of death, all men depart.

[Exeunt Prince and Attendants; Capulet, Lady Capulet, Tybalt, Citizens and Servants.]

MONTAGUE. Who set this ancient quarrel new abroach? Speak, nephew, were you by when it began?

BENVOLIO. Here were the servants of your adversary And yours, close fighting ere I did approach. I drew to part them, in the instant came The fiery Tybalt, with his sword prepar’d, Which, as he breath’d defiance to my ears, He swung about his head, and cut the winds, Who nothing hurt withal, hiss’d him in scorn. While we were interchanging thrusts and blows Came more and more, and fought on part and part, Till the Prince came, who parted either part.

LADY MONTAGUE. O where is Romeo, saw you him today? Right glad I am he was not at this fray.

BENVOLIO. Madam, an hour before the worshipp’d sun Peer’d forth the golden window of the east, A troubled mind drave me to walk abroad, Where underneath the grove of sycamore That westward rooteth from this city side, So early walking did I see your son. Towards him I made, but he was ware of me, And stole into the covert of the wood. I, measuring his affections by my own, Which then most sought where most might not be found, Being one too many by my weary self, Pursu’d my humour, not pursuing his, And gladly shunn’d who gladly fled from me.

MONTAGUE. Many a morning hath he there been seen, With tears augmenting the fresh morning’s dew, Adding to clouds more clouds with his deep sighs; But all so soon as the all-cheering sun Should in the farthest east begin to draw The shady curtains from Aurora’s bed, Away from light steals home my heavy son, And private in his chamber pens himself, Shuts up his windows, locks fair daylight out And makes himself an artificial night. Black and portentous must this humour prove, Unless good counsel may the cause remove.

BENVOLIO. My noble uncle, do you know the cause?

MONTAGUE. I neither know it nor can learn of him.

BENVOLIO. Have you importun’d him by any means?

MONTAGUE. Both by myself and many other friends; But he, his own affections’ counsellor, Is to himself—I will not say how true— But to himself so secret and so close, So far from sounding and discovery, As is the bud bit with an envious worm Ere he can spread his sweet leaves to the air, Or dedicate his beauty to the sun. Could we but learn from whence his sorrows grow, We would as willingly give cure as know.

Enter Romeo.

BENVOLIO. See, where he comes. So please you step aside; I’ll know his grievance or be much denied.

MONTAGUE. I would thou wert so happy by thy stay To hear true shrift. Come, madam, let’s away,

[Exeunt Montague and Lady Montague.]

BENVOLIO. Good morrow, cousin.

ROMEO. Is the day so young?

BENVOLIO. But new struck nine.

ROMEO. Ay me, sad hours seem long. Was that my father that went hence so fast?

BENVOLIO. It was. What sadness lengthens Romeo’s hours?

ROMEO. Not having that which, having, makes them short.

BENVOLIO. In love?

ROMEO. Out.

BENVOLIO. Of love?

ROMEO. Out of her favour where I am in love.

BENVOLIO. Alas that love so gentle in his view, Should be so tyrannous and rough in proof.

ROMEO. Alas that love, whose view is muffled still, Should, without eyes, see pathways to his will! Where shall we dine? O me! What fray was here? Yet tell me not, for I have heard it all. Here’s much to do with hate, but more with love: Why, then, O brawling love! O loving hate! O anything, of nothing first create! O heavy lightness! serious vanity! Misshapen chaos of well-seeming forms! Feather of lead, bright smoke, cold fire, sick health! Still-waking sleep, that is not what it is! This love feel I, that feel no love in this. Dost thou not laugh?

BENVOLIO. No coz, I rather weep.

ROMEO. Good heart, at what?

BENVOLIO. At thy good heart’s oppression.

ROMEO. Why such is love’s transgression. Griefs of mine own lie heavy in my breast, Which thou wilt propagate to have it prest With more of thine. This love that thou hast shown Doth add more grief to too much of mine own. Love is a smoke made with the fume of sighs; Being purg’d, a fire sparkling in lovers’ eyes; Being vex’d, a sea nourish’d with lovers’ tears: What is it else? A madness most discreet, A choking gall, and a preserving sweet. Farewell, my coz.

BENVOLIO. Soft! I will go along: And if you leave me so, you do me wrong.

ROMEO. Tut! I have lost myself; I am not here. This is not Romeo, he’s some other where.

BENVOLIO. Tell me in sadness who is that you love?

ROMEO. What, shall I groan and tell thee?

BENVOLIO. Groan! Why, no; but sadly tell me who.

ROMEO. Bid a sick man in sadness make his will, A word ill urg’d to one that is so ill. In sadness, cousin, I do love a woman.

BENVOLIO. I aim’d so near when I suppos’d you lov’d.

ROMEO. A right good markman, and she’s fair I love.

BENVOLIO. A right fair mark, fair coz, is soonest hit.

ROMEO. Well, in that hit you miss: she’ll not be hit With Cupid’s arrow, she hath Dian’s wit; And in strong proof of chastity well arm’d, From love’s weak childish bow she lives uncharm’d. She will not stay the siege of loving terms Nor bide th’encounter of assailing eyes, Nor ope her lap to saint-seducing gold: O she’s rich in beauty, only poor That when she dies, with beauty dies her store.

BENVOLIO. Then she hath sworn that she will still live chaste?

ROMEO. She hath, and in that sparing makes huge waste; For beauty starv’d with her severity, Cuts beauty off from all posterity. She is too fair, too wise; wisely too fair, To merit bliss by making me despair. She hath forsworn to love, and in that vow Do I live dead, that live to tell it now.

BENVOLIO. Be rul’d by me, forget to think of her.

ROMEO. O teach me how I should forget to think.

BENVOLIO. By giving liberty unto thine eyes; Examine other beauties.

ROMEO. ’Tis the way To call hers, exquisite, in question more. These happy masks that kiss fair ladies’ brows, Being black, puts us in mind they hide the fair; He that is strucken blind cannot forget The precious treasure of his eyesight lost. Show me a mistress that is passing fair, What doth her beauty serve but as a note Where I may read who pass’d that passing fair? Farewell, thou canst not teach me to forget.

BENVOLIO. I’ll pay that doctrine, or else die in debt.

SCENE II. A Street.

Enter Capulet, Paris and Servant.

CAPULET. But Montague is bound as well as I, In penalty alike; and ’tis not hard, I think, For men so old as we to keep the peace.

PARIS. Of honourable reckoning are you both, And pity ’tis you liv’d at odds so long. But now my lord, what say you to my suit?

CAPULET. But saying o’er what I have said before. My child is yet a stranger in the world, She hath not seen the change of fourteen years; Let two more summers wither in their pride Ere we may think her ripe to be a bride.

PARIS. Younger than she are happy mothers made.

CAPULET. And too soon marr’d are those so early made. The earth hath swallowed all my hopes but she, She is the hopeful lady of my earth: But woo her, gentle Paris, get her heart, My will to her consent is but a part; And she agree, within her scope of choice Lies my consent and fair according voice. This night I hold an old accustom’d feast, Whereto I have invited many a guest, Such as I love, and you among the store, One more, most welcome, makes my number more. At my poor house look to behold this night Earth-treading stars that make dark heaven light: Such comfort as do lusty young men feel When well apparell’d April on the heel Of limping winter treads, even such delight Among fresh female buds shall you this night Inherit at my house. Hear all, all see, And like her most whose merit most shall be: Which, on more view of many, mine, being one, May stand in number, though in reckoning none. Come, go with me. Go, sirrah, trudge about Through fair Verona; find those persons out Whose names are written there, [gives a paper] and to them say, My house and welcome on their pleasure stay.

[Exeunt Capulet and Paris.]

SERVANT. Find them out whose names are written here! It is written that the shoemaker should meddle with his yard and the tailor with his last, the fisher with his pencil, and the painter with his nets; but I am sent to find those persons whose names are here writ, and can never find what names the writing person hath here writ. I must to the learned. In good time!

Enter Benvolio and Romeo.

BENVOLIO. Tut, man, one fire burns out another’s burning, One pain is lessen’d by another’s anguish; Turn giddy, and be holp by backward turning; One desperate grief cures with another’s languish: Take thou some new infection to thy eye, And the rank poison of the old will die.

ROMEO. Your plantain leaf is excellent for that.

BENVOLIO. For what, I pray thee?

ROMEO. For your broken shin.

BENVOLIO. Why, Romeo, art thou mad?

ROMEO. Not mad, but bound more than a madman is: Shut up in prison, kept without my food, Whipp’d and tormented and—God-den, good fellow.

SERVANT. God gi’ go-den. I pray, sir, can you read?

ROMEO. Ay, mine own fortune in my misery.

SERVANT. Perhaps you have learned it without book. But I pray, can you read anything you see?

ROMEO. Ay, If I know the letters and the language.

SERVANT. Ye say honestly, rest you merry!

ROMEO. Stay, fellow; I can read.

[He reads the letter.]

Signior Martino and his wife and daughters; County Anselmo and his beauteous sisters; The lady widow of Utruvio; Signior Placentio and his lovely nieces; Mercutio and his brother Valentine; Mine uncle Capulet, his wife, and daughters; My fair niece Rosaline and Livia; Signior Valentio and his cousin Tybalt; Lucio and the lively Helena.

A fair assembly. [Gives back the paper] Whither should they come?

SERVANT. Up.

ROMEO. Whither to supper?

SERVANT. To our house.

ROMEO. Whose house?

SERVANT. My master’s.

ROMEO. Indeed I should have ask’d you that before.

SERVANT. Now I’ll tell you without asking. My master is the great rich Capulet, and if you be not of the house of Montagues, I pray come and crush a cup of wine. Rest you merry.

BENVOLIO. At this same ancient feast of Capulet’s Sups the fair Rosaline whom thou so lov’st; With all the admired beauties of Verona. Go thither and with unattainted eye, Compare her face with some that I shall show, And I will make thee think thy swan a crow.

ROMEO. When the devout religion of mine eye Maintains such falsehood, then turn tears to fire; And these who, often drown’d, could never die, Transparent heretics, be burnt for liars. One fairer than my love? The all-seeing sun Ne’er saw her match since first the world begun.

BENVOLIO. Tut, you saw her fair, none else being by, Herself pois’d with herself in either eye: But in that crystal scales let there be weigh’d Your lady’s love against some other maid That I will show you shining at this feast, And she shall scant show well that now shows best.

ROMEO. I’ll go along, no such sight to be shown, But to rejoice in splendour of my own.

SCENE III. Room in Capulet’s House.

Enter Lady Capulet and Nurse.

LADY CAPULET. Nurse, where’s my daughter? Call her forth to me.

NURSE. Now, by my maidenhead, at twelve year old, I bade her come. What, lamb! What ladybird! God forbid! Where’s this girl? What, Juliet!

JULIET. How now, who calls?

NURSE. Your mother.

JULIET. Madam, I am here. What is your will?

LADY CAPULET. This is the matter. Nurse, give leave awhile, We must talk in secret. Nurse, come back again, I have remember’d me, thou’s hear our counsel. Thou knowest my daughter’s of a pretty age.

NURSE. Faith, I can tell her age unto an hour.

LADY CAPULET. She’s not fourteen.

NURSE. I’ll lay fourteen of my teeth, And yet, to my teen be it spoken, I have but four, She is not fourteen. How long is it now To Lammas-tide?

LADY CAPULET. A fortnight and odd days.

NURSE. Even or odd, of all days in the year, Come Lammas Eve at night shall she be fourteen. Susan and she,—God rest all Christian souls!— Were of an age. Well, Susan is with God; She was too good for me. But as I said, On Lammas Eve at night shall she be fourteen; That shall she, marry; I remember it well. ’Tis since the earthquake now eleven years; And she was wean’d,—I never shall forget it—, Of all the days of the year, upon that day: For I had then laid wormwood to my dug, Sitting in the sun under the dovehouse wall; My lord and you were then at Mantua: Nay, I do bear a brain. But as I said, When it did taste the wormwood on the nipple Of my dug and felt it bitter, pretty fool, To see it tetchy, and fall out with the dug! Shake, quoth the dovehouse: ’twas no need, I trow, To bid me trudge. And since that time it is eleven years; For then she could stand alone; nay, by th’rood She could have run and waddled all about; For even the day before she broke her brow, And then my husband,—God be with his soul! A was a merry man,—took up the child: ‘Yea,’ quoth he, ‘dost thou fall upon thy face? Thou wilt fall backward when thou hast more wit; Wilt thou not, Jule?’ and, by my holidame, The pretty wretch left crying, and said ‘Ay’. To see now how a jest shall come about. I warrant, and I should live a thousand years, I never should forget it. ‘Wilt thou not, Jule?’ quoth he; And, pretty fool, it stinted, and said ‘Ay.’

LADY CAPULET. Enough of this; I pray thee hold thy peace.

NURSE. Yes, madam, yet I cannot choose but laugh, To think it should leave crying, and say ‘Ay’; And yet I warrant it had upon it brow A bump as big as a young cockerel’s stone; A perilous knock, and it cried bitterly. ‘Yea,’ quoth my husband, ‘fall’st upon thy face? Thou wilt fall backward when thou comest to age; Wilt thou not, Jule?’ it stinted, and said ‘Ay’.

JULIET. And stint thou too, I pray thee, Nurse, say I.

NURSE. Peace, I have done. God mark thee to his grace Thou wast the prettiest babe that e’er I nurs’d: And I might live to see thee married once, I have my wish.

LADY CAPULET. Marry, that marry is the very theme I came to talk of. Tell me, daughter Juliet, How stands your disposition to be married?

JULIET. It is an honour that I dream not of.

NURSE. An honour! Were not I thine only nurse, I would say thou hadst suck’d wisdom from thy teat.

LADY CAPULET. Well, think of marriage now: younger than you, Here in Verona, ladies of esteem, Are made already mothers. By my count I was your mother much upon these years That you are now a maid. Thus, then, in brief; The valiant Paris seeks you for his love.

NURSE. A man, young lady! Lady, such a man As all the world—why he’s a man of wax.

LADY CAPULET. Verona’s summer hath not such a flower.

NURSE. Nay, he’s a flower, in faith a very flower.

LADY CAPULET. What say you, can you love the gentleman? This night you shall behold him at our feast; Read o’er the volume of young Paris’ face, And find delight writ there with beauty’s pen. Examine every married lineament, And see how one another lends content; And what obscur’d in this fair volume lies, Find written in the margent of his eyes. This precious book of love, this unbound lover, To beautify him, only lacks a cover: The fish lives in the sea; and ’tis much pride For fair without the fair within to hide. That book in many’s eyes doth share the glory, That in gold clasps locks in the golden story; So shall you share all that he doth possess, By having him, making yourself no less.

NURSE. No less, nay bigger. Women grow by men.

LADY CAPULET. Speak briefly, can you like of Paris’ love?

JULIET. I’ll look to like, if looking liking move: But no more deep will I endart mine eye Than your consent gives strength to make it fly.

SERVANT. Madam, the guests are come, supper served up, you called, my young lady asked for, the Nurse cursed in the pantry, and everything in extremity. I must hence to wait, I beseech you follow straight.

LADY CAPULET. We follow thee.

Juliet, the County stays.

NURSE. Go, girl, seek happy nights to happy days.

SCENE IV. A Street.

Enter Romeo, Mercutio, Benvolio, with five or six Maskers; Torch-bearers and others.

ROMEO. What, shall this speech be spoke for our excuse? Or shall we on without apology?

BENVOLIO. The date is out of such prolixity: We’ll have no Cupid hoodwink’d with a scarf, Bearing a Tartar’s painted bow of lath, Scaring the ladies like a crow-keeper; Nor no without-book prologue, faintly spoke After the prompter, for our entrance: But let them measure us by what they will, We’ll measure them a measure, and be gone.

ROMEO. Give me a torch, I am not for this ambling; Being but heavy I will bear the light.

MERCUTIO. Nay, gentle Romeo, we must have you dance.

ROMEO. Not I, believe me, you have dancing shoes, With nimble soles, I have a soul of lead So stakes me to the ground I cannot move.

MERCUTIO. You are a lover, borrow Cupid’s wings, And soar with them above a common bound.

ROMEO. I am too sore enpierced with his shaft To soar with his light feathers, and so bound, I cannot bound a pitch above dull woe. Under love’s heavy burden do I sink.

MERCUTIO. And, to sink in it, should you burden love; Too great oppression for a tender thing.

ROMEO. Is love a tender thing? It is too rough, Too rude, too boisterous; and it pricks like thorn.

MERCUTIO. If love be rough with you, be rough with love; Prick love for pricking, and you beat love down. Give me a case to put my visage in: [Putting on a mask.] A visor for a visor. What care I What curious eye doth quote deformities? Here are the beetle-brows shall blush for me.

BENVOLIO. Come, knock and enter; and no sooner in But every man betake him to his legs.

ROMEO. A torch for me: let wantons, light of heart, Tickle the senseless rushes with their heels; For I am proverb’d with a grandsire phrase, I’ll be a candle-holder and look on, The game was ne’er so fair, and I am done.

MERCUTIO. Tut, dun’s the mouse, the constable’s own word: If thou art dun, we’ll draw thee from the mire Or save your reverence love, wherein thou stickest Up to the ears. Come, we burn daylight, ho.

ROMEO. Nay, that’s not so.

MERCUTIO. I mean sir, in delay We waste our lights in vain, light lights by day. Take our good meaning, for our judgment sits Five times in that ere once in our five wits.

ROMEO. And we mean well in going to this mask; But ’tis no wit to go.

MERCUTIO. Why, may one ask?

ROMEO. I dreamt a dream tonight.

MERCUTIO. And so did I.

ROMEO. Well what was yours?

MERCUTIO. That dreamers often lie.

ROMEO. In bed asleep, while they do dream things true.

MERCUTIO. O, then, I see Queen Mab hath been with you. She is the fairies’ midwife, and she comes In shape no bigger than an agate-stone On the fore-finger of an alderman, Drawn with a team of little atomies Over men’s noses as they lie asleep: Her waggon-spokes made of long spinners’ legs; The cover, of the wings of grasshoppers; Her traces, of the smallest spider’s web; The collars, of the moonshine’s watery beams; Her whip of cricket’s bone; the lash, of film; Her waggoner, a small grey-coated gnat, Not half so big as a round little worm Prick’d from the lazy finger of a maid: Her chariot is an empty hazelnut, Made by the joiner squirrel or old grub, Time out o’ mind the fairies’ coachmakers. And in this state she gallops night by night Through lovers’ brains, and then they dream of love; O’er courtiers’ knees, that dream on curtsies straight; O’er lawyers’ fingers, who straight dream on fees; O’er ladies’ lips, who straight on kisses dream, Which oft the angry Mab with blisters plagues, Because their breaths with sweetmeats tainted are: Sometime she gallops o’er a courtier’s nose, And then dreams he of smelling out a suit; And sometime comes she with a tithe-pig’s tail, Tickling a parson’s nose as a lies asleep, Then dreams he of another benefice: Sometime she driveth o’er a soldier’s neck, And then dreams he of cutting foreign throats, Of breaches, ambuscados, Spanish blades, Of healths five fathom deep; and then anon Drums in his ear, at which he starts and wakes; And, being thus frighted, swears a prayer or two, And sleeps again. This is that very Mab That plats the manes of horses in the night; And bakes the elf-locks in foul sluttish hairs, Which, once untangled, much misfortune bodes: This is the hag, when maids lie on their backs, That presses them, and learns them first to bear, Making them women of good carriage: This is she,—

ROMEO. Peace, peace, Mercutio, peace, Thou talk’st of nothing.

MERCUTIO. True, I talk of dreams, Which are the children of an idle brain, Begot of nothing but vain fantasy, Which is as thin of substance as the air, And more inconstant than the wind, who woos Even now the frozen bosom of the north, And, being anger’d, puffs away from thence, Turning his side to the dew-dropping south.

BENVOLIO. This wind you talk of blows us from ourselves: Supper is done, and we shall come too late.

ROMEO. I fear too early: for my mind misgives Some consequence yet hanging in the stars, Shall bitterly begin his fearful date With this night’s revels; and expire the term Of a despised life, clos’d in my breast By some vile forfeit of untimely death. But he that hath the steerage of my course Direct my suit. On, lusty gentlemen!

BENVOLIO. Strike, drum.

SCENE V. A Hall in Capulet’s House.

Musicians waiting. Enter Servants.

FIRST SERVANT. Where’s Potpan, that he helps not to take away? He shift a trencher! He scrape a trencher!

SECOND SERVANT. When good manners shall lie all in one or two men’s hands, and they unwash’d too, ’tis a foul thing.

FIRST SERVANT. Away with the join-stools, remove the court-cupboard, look to the plate. Good thou, save me a piece of marchpane; and as thou loves me, let the porter let in Susan Grindstone and Nell. Antony and Potpan!

SECOND SERVANT. Ay, boy, ready.

FIRST SERVANT. You are looked for and called for, asked for and sought for, in the great chamber.

SECOND SERVANT. We cannot be here and there too. Cheerly, boys. Be brisk awhile, and the longer liver take all.

Enter Capulet, &c. with the Guests and Gentlewomen to the Maskers.

CAPULET. Welcome, gentlemen, ladies that have their toes Unplagu’d with corns will have a bout with you. Ah my mistresses, which of you all Will now deny to dance? She that makes dainty, She I’ll swear hath corns. Am I come near ye now? Welcome, gentlemen! I have seen the day That I have worn a visor, and could tell A whispering tale in a fair lady’s ear, Such as would please; ’tis gone, ’tis gone, ’tis gone, You are welcome, gentlemen! Come, musicians, play. A hall, a hall, give room! And foot it, girls.

[Music plays, and they dance.]

More light, you knaves; and turn the tables up, And quench the fire, the room is grown too hot. Ah sirrah, this unlook’d-for sport comes well. Nay sit, nay sit, good cousin Capulet, For you and I are past our dancing days; How long is’t now since last yourself and I Were in a mask?

CAPULET’S COUSIN. By’r Lady, thirty years.

CAPULET. What, man, ’tis not so much, ’tis not so much: ’Tis since the nuptial of Lucentio, Come Pentecost as quickly as it will, Some five and twenty years; and then we mask’d.

CAPULET’S COUSIN. ’Tis more, ’tis more, his son is elder, sir; His son is thirty.

CAPULET. Will you tell me that? His son was but a ward two years ago.

ROMEO. What lady is that, which doth enrich the hand Of yonder knight?

SERVANT. I know not, sir.

ROMEO. O, she doth teach the torches to burn bright! It seems she hangs upon the cheek of night As a rich jewel in an Ethiop’s ear; Beauty too rich for use, for earth too dear! So shows a snowy dove trooping with crows As yonder lady o’er her fellows shows. The measure done, I’ll watch her place of stand, And touching hers, make blessed my rude hand. Did my heart love till now? Forswear it, sight! For I ne’er saw true beauty till this night.

TYBALT. This by his voice, should be a Montague. Fetch me my rapier, boy. What, dares the slave Come hither, cover’d with an antic face, To fleer and scorn at our solemnity? Now by the stock and honour of my kin, To strike him dead I hold it not a sin.

CAPULET. Why how now, kinsman! Wherefore storm you so?

TYBALT. Uncle, this is a Montague, our foe; A villain that is hither come in spite, To scorn at our solemnity this night.

CAPULET. Young Romeo, is it?

TYBALT. ’Tis he, that villain Romeo.

CAPULET. Content thee, gentle coz, let him alone, A bears him like a portly gentleman; And, to say truth, Verona brags of him To be a virtuous and well-govern’d youth. I would not for the wealth of all the town Here in my house do him disparagement. Therefore be patient, take no note of him, It is my will; the which if thou respect, Show a fair presence and put off these frowns, An ill-beseeming semblance for a feast.

TYBALT. It fits when such a villain is a guest: I’ll not endure him.

CAPULET. He shall be endur’d. What, goodman boy! I say he shall, go to; Am I the master here, or you? Go to. You’ll not endure him! God shall mend my soul, You’ll make a mutiny among my guests! You will set cock-a-hoop, you’ll be the man!

TYBALT. Why, uncle, ’tis a shame.

CAPULET. Go to, go to! You are a saucy boy. Is’t so, indeed? This trick may chance to scathe you, I know what. You must contrary me! Marry, ’tis time. Well said, my hearts!—You are a princox; go: Be quiet, or—More light, more light!—For shame! I’ll make you quiet. What, cheerly, my hearts.

TYBALT. Patience perforce with wilful choler meeting Makes my flesh tremble in their different greeting. I will withdraw: but this intrusion shall, Now seeming sweet, convert to bitter gall.

ROMEO. [To Juliet.] If I profane with my unworthiest hand This holy shrine, the gentle sin is this, My lips, two blushing pilgrims, ready stand To smooth that rough touch with a tender kiss.

JULIET. Good pilgrim, you do wrong your hand too much, Which mannerly devotion shows in this; For saints have hands that pilgrims’ hands do touch, And palm to palm is holy palmers’ kiss.

ROMEO. Have not saints lips, and holy palmers too?

JULIET. Ay, pilgrim, lips that they must use in prayer.

ROMEO. O, then, dear saint, let lips do what hands do: They pray, grant thou, lest faith turn to despair.

JULIET. Saints do not move, though grant for prayers’ sake.

ROMEO. Then move not while my prayer’s effect I take. Thus from my lips, by thine my sin is purg’d. [Kissing her.]

JULIET. Then have my lips the sin that they have took.

ROMEO. Sin from my lips? O trespass sweetly urg’d! Give me my sin again.

JULIET. You kiss by the book.

NURSE. Madam, your mother craves a word with you.

ROMEO. What is her mother?

NURSE. Marry, bachelor, Her mother is the lady of the house, And a good lady, and a wise and virtuous. I nurs’d her daughter that you talk’d withal. I tell you, he that can lay hold of her Shall have the chinks.

ROMEO. Is she a Capulet? O dear account! My life is my foe’s debt.

BENVOLIO. Away, be gone; the sport is at the best.

ROMEO. Ay, so I fear; the more is my unrest.

CAPULET. Nay, gentlemen, prepare not to be gone, We have a trifling foolish banquet towards. Is it e’en so? Why then, I thank you all; I thank you, honest gentlemen; good night. More torches here! Come on then, let’s to bed. Ah, sirrah, by my fay, it waxes late, I’ll to my rest.

[Exeunt all but Juliet and Nurse.]

JULIET. Come hither, Nurse. What is yond gentleman?

NURSE. The son and heir of old Tiberio.

JULIET. What’s he that now is going out of door?

NURSE. Marry, that I think be young Petruchio.

JULIET. What’s he that follows here, that would not dance?

NURSE. I know not.

JULIET. Go ask his name. If he be married, My grave is like to be my wedding bed.

NURSE. His name is Romeo, and a Montague, The only son of your great enemy.

JULIET. My only love sprung from my only hate! Too early seen unknown, and known too late! Prodigious birth of love it is to me, That I must love a loathed enemy.

NURSE. What’s this? What’s this?

JULIET. A rhyme I learn’d even now Of one I danc’d withal.

[One calls within, ‘Juliet’.]

NURSE. Anon, anon! Come let’s away, the strangers all are gone.

CHORUS. Now old desire doth in his deathbed lie, And young affection gapes to be his heir; That fair for which love groan’d for and would die, With tender Juliet match’d, is now not fair. Now Romeo is belov’d, and loves again, Alike bewitched by the charm of looks; But to his foe suppos’d he must complain, And she steal love’s sweet bait from fearful hooks: Being held a foe, he may not have access To breathe such vows as lovers use to swear; And she as much in love, her means much less To meet her new beloved anywhere. But passion lends them power, time means, to meet, Tempering extremities with extreme sweet.

SCENE I. An open place adjoining Capulet’s Garden.

ROMEO. Can I go forward when my heart is here? Turn back, dull earth, and find thy centre out.

[He climbs the wall and leaps down within it.]

Enter Benvolio and Mercutio.

BENVOLIO. Romeo! My cousin Romeo! Romeo!

MERCUTIO. He is wise, And on my life hath stol’n him home to bed.

BENVOLIO. He ran this way, and leap’d this orchard wall: Call, good Mercutio.

MERCUTIO. Nay, I’ll conjure too. Romeo! Humours! Madman! Passion! Lover! Appear thou in the likeness of a sigh, Speak but one rhyme, and I am satisfied; Cry but ‘Ah me!’ Pronounce but Love and dove; Speak to my gossip Venus one fair word, One nickname for her purblind son and heir, Young Abraham Cupid, he that shot so trim When King Cophetua lov’d the beggar-maid. He heareth not, he stirreth not, he moveth not; The ape is dead, and I must conjure him. I conjure thee by Rosaline’s bright eyes, By her high forehead and her scarlet lip, By her fine foot, straight leg, and quivering thigh, And the demesnes that there adjacent lie, That in thy likeness thou appear to us.

BENVOLIO. An if he hear thee, thou wilt anger him.

MERCUTIO. This cannot anger him. ’Twould anger him To raise a spirit in his mistress’ circle, Of some strange nature, letting it there stand Till she had laid it, and conjur’d it down; That were some spite. My invocation Is fair and honest, and, in his mistress’ name, I conjure only but to raise up him.

BENVOLIO. Come, he hath hid himself among these trees To be consorted with the humorous night. Blind is his love, and best befits the dark.

MERCUTIO. If love be blind, love cannot hit the mark. Now will he sit under a medlar tree, And wish his mistress were that kind of fruit As maids call medlars when they laugh alone. O Romeo, that she were, O that she were An open-arse and thou a poperin pear! Romeo, good night. I’ll to my truckle-bed. This field-bed is too cold for me to sleep. Come, shall we go?

BENVOLIO. Go then; for ’tis in vain To seek him here that means not to be found.

SCENE II. Capulet’s Garden.

ROMEO. He jests at scars that never felt a wound.

Juliet appears above at a window.

But soft, what light through yonder window breaks? It is the east, and Juliet is the sun! Arise fair sun and kill the envious moon, Who is already sick and pale with grief, That thou her maid art far more fair than she. Be not her maid since she is envious; Her vestal livery is but sick and green, And none but fools do wear it; cast it off. It is my lady, O it is my love! O, that she knew she were! She speaks, yet she says nothing. What of that? Her eye discourses, I will answer it. I am too bold, ’tis not to me she speaks. Two of the fairest stars in all the heaven, Having some business, do entreat her eyes To twinkle in their spheres till they return. What if her eyes were there, they in her head? The brightness of her cheek would shame those stars, As daylight doth a lamp; her eyes in heaven Would through the airy region stream so bright That birds would sing and think it were not night. See how she leans her cheek upon her hand. O that I were a glove upon that hand, That I might touch that cheek.

JULIET. Ay me.

ROMEO. She speaks. O speak again bright angel, for thou art As glorious to this night, being o’er my head, As is a winged messenger of heaven Unto the white-upturned wondering eyes Of mortals that fall back to gaze on him When he bestrides the lazy-puffing clouds And sails upon the bosom of the air.

JULIET. O Romeo, Romeo, wherefore art thou Romeo? Deny thy father and refuse thy name. Or if thou wilt not, be but sworn my love, And I’ll no longer be a Capulet.

ROMEO. [Aside.] Shall I hear more, or shall I speak at this?

JULIET. ’Tis but thy name that is my enemy; Thou art thyself, though not a Montague. What’s Montague? It is nor hand nor foot, Nor arm, nor face, nor any other part Belonging to a man. O be some other name. What’s in a name? That which we call a rose By any other name would smell as sweet; So Romeo would, were he not Romeo call’d, Retain that dear perfection which he owes Without that title. Romeo, doff thy name, And for thy name, which is no part of thee, Take all myself.

ROMEO. I take thee at thy word. Call me but love, and I’ll be new baptis’d; Henceforth I never will be Romeo.

JULIET. What man art thou that, thus bescreen’d in night So stumblest on my counsel?

ROMEO. By a name I know not how to tell thee who I am: My name, dear saint, is hateful to myself, Because it is an enemy to thee. Had I it written, I would tear the word.

JULIET. My ears have yet not drunk a hundred words Of thy tongue’s utterance, yet I know the sound. Art thou not Romeo, and a Montague?

ROMEO. Neither, fair maid, if either thee dislike.

JULIET. How cam’st thou hither, tell me, and wherefore? The orchard walls are high and hard to climb, And the place death, considering who thou art, If any of my kinsmen find thee here.

ROMEO. With love’s light wings did I o’erperch these walls, For stony limits cannot hold love out, And what love can do, that dares love attempt: Therefore thy kinsmen are no stop to me.

JULIET. If they do see thee, they will murder thee.

ROMEO. Alack, there lies more peril in thine eye Than twenty of their swords. Look thou but sweet, And I am proof against their enmity.

JULIET. I would not for the world they saw thee here.

ROMEO. I have night’s cloak to hide me from their eyes, And but thou love me, let them find me here. My life were better ended by their hate Than death prorogued, wanting of thy love.

JULIET. By whose direction found’st thou out this place?

ROMEO. By love, that first did prompt me to enquire; He lent me counsel, and I lent him eyes. I am no pilot; yet wert thou as far As that vast shore wash’d with the farthest sea, I should adventure for such merchandise.

JULIET. Thou knowest the mask of night is on my face, Else would a maiden blush bepaint my cheek For that which thou hast heard me speak tonight. Fain would I dwell on form, fain, fain deny What I have spoke; but farewell compliment. Dost thou love me? I know thou wilt say Ay, And I will take thy word. Yet, if thou swear’st, Thou mayst prove false. At lovers’ perjuries, They say Jove laughs. O gentle Romeo, If thou dost love, pronounce it faithfully. Or if thou thinkest I am too quickly won, I’ll frown and be perverse, and say thee nay, So thou wilt woo. But else, not for the world. In truth, fair Montague, I am too fond; And therefore thou mayst think my ’haviour light: But trust me, gentleman, I’ll prove more true Than those that have more cunning to be strange. I should have been more strange, I must confess, But that thou overheard’st, ere I was ’ware, My true-love passion; therefore pardon me, And not impute this yielding to light love, Which the dark night hath so discovered.

ROMEO. Lady, by yonder blessed moon I vow, That tips with silver all these fruit-tree tops,—

JULIET. O swear not by the moon, th’inconstant moon, That monthly changes in her circled orb, Lest that thy love prove likewise variable.

ROMEO. What shall I swear by?

JULIET. Do not swear at all. Or if thou wilt, swear by thy gracious self, Which is the god of my idolatry, And I’ll believe thee.

ROMEO. If my heart’s dear love,—

JULIET. Well, do not swear. Although I joy in thee, I have no joy of this contract tonight; It is too rash, too unadvis’d, too sudden, Too like the lightning, which doth cease to be Ere one can say “It lightens.” Sweet, good night. This bud of love, by summer’s ripening breath, May prove a beauteous flower when next we meet. Good night, good night. As sweet repose and rest Come to thy heart as that within my breast.

ROMEO. O wilt thou leave me so unsatisfied?

JULIET. What satisfaction canst thou have tonight?

ROMEO. Th’exchange of thy love’s faithful vow for mine.

JULIET. I gave thee mine before thou didst request it; And yet I would it were to give again.

ROMEO. Would’st thou withdraw it? For what purpose, love?

JULIET. But to be frank and give it thee again. And yet I wish but for the thing I have; My bounty is as boundless as the sea, My love as deep; the more I give to thee, The more I have, for both are infinite. I hear some noise within. Dear love, adieu. [Nurse calls within.] Anon, good Nurse!—Sweet Montague be true. Stay but a little, I will come again.

ROMEO. O blessed, blessed night. I am afeard, Being in night, all this is but a dream, Too flattering sweet to be substantial.

Enter Juliet above.

JULIET. Three words, dear Romeo, and good night indeed. If that thy bent of love be honourable, Thy purpose marriage, send me word tomorrow, By one that I’ll procure to come to thee, Where and what time thou wilt perform the rite, And all my fortunes at thy foot I’ll lay And follow thee my lord throughout the world.

NURSE. [Within.] Madam.

JULIET. I come, anon.— But if thou meanest not well, I do beseech thee,—

JULIET. By and by I come— To cease thy strife and leave me to my grief. Tomorrow will I send.

ROMEO. So thrive my soul,—

JULIET. A thousand times good night.

ROMEO. A thousand times the worse, to want thy light. Love goes toward love as schoolboys from their books, But love from love, towards school with heavy looks.

[Retiring slowly.]

Re-enter Juliet, above.

JULIET. Hist! Romeo, hist! O for a falconer’s voice To lure this tassel-gentle back again. Bondage is hoarse and may not speak aloud, Else would I tear the cave where Echo lies, And make her airy tongue more hoarse than mine With repetition of my Romeo’s name.

ROMEO. It is my soul that calls upon my name. How silver-sweet sound lovers’ tongues by night, Like softest music to attending ears.

JULIET. Romeo.

ROMEO. My nyas?

JULIET. What o’clock tomorrow Shall I send to thee?

ROMEO. By the hour of nine.

JULIET. I will not fail. ’Tis twenty years till then. I have forgot why I did call thee back.

ROMEO. Let me stand here till thou remember it.

JULIET. I shall forget, to have thee still stand there, Remembering how I love thy company.

ROMEO. And I’ll still stay, to have thee still forget, Forgetting any other home but this.

JULIET. ’Tis almost morning; I would have thee gone, And yet no farther than a wanton’s bird, That lets it hop a little from her hand, Like a poor prisoner in his twisted gyves, And with a silk thread plucks it back again, So loving-jealous of his liberty.

ROMEO. I would I were thy bird.

JULIET. Sweet, so would I: Yet I should kill thee with much cherishing. Good night, good night. Parting is such sweet sorrow That I shall say good night till it be morrow.

ROMEO. Sleep dwell upon thine eyes, peace in thy breast. Would I were sleep and peace, so sweet to rest. Hence will I to my ghostly Sire’s cell, His help to crave and my dear hap to tell.

SCENE III. Friar Lawrence’s Cell.

Enter Friar Lawrence with a basket.

FRIAR LAWRENCE. The grey-ey’d morn smiles on the frowning night, Chequering the eastern clouds with streaks of light; And fleckled darkness like a drunkard reels From forth day’s pathway, made by Titan’s fiery wheels Now, ere the sun advance his burning eye, The day to cheer, and night’s dank dew to dry, I must upfill this osier cage of ours With baleful weeds and precious-juiced flowers. The earth that’s nature’s mother, is her tomb; What is her burying grave, that is her womb: And from her womb children of divers kind We sucking on her natural bosom find. Many for many virtues excellent, None but for some, and yet all different. O, mickle is the powerful grace that lies In plants, herbs, stones, and their true qualities. For naught so vile that on the earth doth live But to the earth some special good doth give; Nor aught so good but, strain’d from that fair use, Revolts from true birth, stumbling on abuse. Virtue itself turns vice being misapplied, And vice sometime’s by action dignified.

Within the infant rind of this weak flower Poison hath residence, and medicine power: For this, being smelt, with that part cheers each part; Being tasted, slays all senses with the heart. Two such opposed kings encamp them still In man as well as herbs,—grace and rude will; And where the worser is predominant, Full soon the canker death eats up that plant.

ROMEO. Good morrow, father.

FRIAR LAWRENCE. Benedicite! What early tongue so sweet saluteth me? Young son, it argues a distemper’d head So soon to bid good morrow to thy bed. Care keeps his watch in every old man’s eye, And where care lodges sleep will never lie; But where unbruised youth with unstuff’d brain Doth couch his limbs, there golden sleep doth reign. Therefore thy earliness doth me assure Thou art uprous’d with some distemperature; Or if not so, then here I hit it right, Our Romeo hath not been in bed tonight.

ROMEO. That last is true; the sweeter rest was mine.

FRIAR LAWRENCE. God pardon sin. Wast thou with Rosaline?

ROMEO. With Rosaline, my ghostly father? No. I have forgot that name, and that name’s woe.

FRIAR LAWRENCE. That’s my good son. But where hast thou been then?

ROMEO. I’ll tell thee ere thou ask it me again. I have been feasting with mine enemy, Where on a sudden one hath wounded me That’s by me wounded. Both our remedies Within thy help and holy physic lies. I bear no hatred, blessed man; for lo, My intercession likewise steads my foe.

FRIAR LAWRENCE. Be plain, good son, and homely in thy drift; Riddling confession finds but riddling shrift.

ROMEO. Then plainly know my heart’s dear love is set On the fair daughter of rich Capulet. As mine on hers, so hers is set on mine; And all combin’d, save what thou must combine By holy marriage. When, and where, and how We met, we woo’d, and made exchange of vow, I’ll tell thee as we pass; but this I pray, That thou consent to marry us today.

FRIAR LAWRENCE. Holy Saint Francis! What a change is here! Is Rosaline, that thou didst love so dear, So soon forsaken? Young men’s love then lies Not truly in their hearts, but in their eyes. Jesu Maria, what a deal of brine Hath wash’d thy sallow cheeks for Rosaline! How much salt water thrown away in waste, To season love, that of it doth not taste. The sun not yet thy sighs from heaven clears, Thy old groans yet ring in mine ancient ears. Lo here upon thy cheek the stain doth sit Of an old tear that is not wash’d off yet. If ere thou wast thyself, and these woes thine, Thou and these woes were all for Rosaline, And art thou chang’d? Pronounce this sentence then, Women may fall, when there’s no strength in men.

ROMEO. Thou chidd’st me oft for loving Rosaline.

FRIAR LAWRENCE. For doting, not for loving, pupil mine.

ROMEO. And bad’st me bury love.

FRIAR LAWRENCE. Not in a grave To lay one in, another out to have.

ROMEO. I pray thee chide me not, her I love now Doth grace for grace and love for love allow. The other did not so.

FRIAR LAWRENCE. O, she knew well Thy love did read by rote, that could not spell. But come young waverer, come go with me, In one respect I’ll thy assistant be; For this alliance may so happy prove, To turn your households’ rancour to pure love.

ROMEO. O let us hence; I stand on sudden haste.

FRIAR LAWRENCE. Wisely and slow; they stumble that run fast.

MERCUTIO. Where the devil should this Romeo be? Came he not home tonight?

BENVOLIO. Not to his father’s; I spoke with his man.

MERCUTIO. Why, that same pale hard-hearted wench, that Rosaline, torments him so that he will sure run mad.

BENVOLIO. Tybalt, the kinsman to old Capulet, hath sent a letter to his father’s house.

MERCUTIO. A challenge, on my life.

BENVOLIO. Romeo will answer it.

MERCUTIO. Any man that can write may answer a letter.

BENVOLIO. Nay, he will answer the letter’s master, how he dares, being dared.

MERCUTIO. Alas poor Romeo, he is already dead, stabbed with a white wench’s black eye; run through the ear with a love song, the very pin of his heart cleft with the blind bow-boy’s butt-shaft. And is he a man to encounter Tybalt?

BENVOLIO. Why, what is Tybalt?

MERCUTIO. More than Prince of cats. O, he’s the courageous captain of compliments. He fights as you sing prick-song, keeps time, distance, and proportion. He rests his minim rest, one, two, and the third in your bosom: the very butcher of a silk button, a duellist, a duellist; a gentleman of the very first house, of the first and second cause. Ah, the immortal passado, the punto reverso, the hay.

BENVOLIO. The what?

MERCUTIO. The pox of such antic lisping, affecting phantasies; these new tuners of accent. By Jesu, a very good blade, a very tall man, a very good whore. Why, is not this a lamentable thing, grandsire, that we should be thus afflicted with these strange flies, these fashion-mongers, these pardon-me’s, who stand so much on the new form that they cannot sit at ease on the old bench? O their bones, their bones!

BENVOLIO. Here comes Romeo, here comes Romeo!

MERCUTIO. Without his roe, like a dried herring. O flesh, flesh, how art thou fishified! Now is he for the numbers that Petrarch flowed in. Laura, to his lady, was but a kitchen wench,—marry, she had a better love to berhyme her: Dido a dowdy; Cleopatra a gypsy; Helen and Hero hildings and harlots; Thisbe a grey eye or so, but not to the purpose. Signior Romeo, bonjour! There’s a French salutation to your French slop. You gave us the counterfeit fairly last night.

ROMEO. Good morrow to you both. What counterfeit did I give you?

MERCUTIO. The slip sir, the slip; can you not conceive?

ROMEO. Pardon, good Mercutio, my business was great, and in such a case as mine a man may strain courtesy.

MERCUTIO. That’s as much as to say, such a case as yours constrains a man to bow in the hams.

ROMEO. Meaning, to curtsy.

MERCUTIO. Thou hast most kindly hit it.

ROMEO. A most courteous exposition.

MERCUTIO. Nay, I am the very pink of courtesy.

ROMEO. Pink for flower.

MERCUTIO. Right.

ROMEO. Why, then is my pump well flowered.

MERCUTIO. Sure wit, follow me this jest now, till thou hast worn out thy pump, that when the single sole of it is worn, the jest may remain after the wearing, solely singular.

ROMEO. O single-soled jest, solely singular for the singleness!

MERCUTIO. Come between us, good Benvolio; my wits faint.

ROMEO. Swits and spurs, swits and spurs; or I’ll cry a match.

MERCUTIO. Nay, if thy wits run the wild-goose chase, I am done. For thou hast more of the wild-goose in one of thy wits, than I am sure, I have in my whole five. Was I with you there for the goose?

ROMEO. Thou wast never with me for anything, when thou wast not there for the goose.

MERCUTIO. I will bite thee by the ear for that jest.

ROMEO. Nay, good goose, bite not.

MERCUTIO. Thy wit is a very bitter sweeting, it is a most sharp sauce.

ROMEO. And is it not then well served in to a sweet goose?

MERCUTIO. O here’s a wit of cheveril, that stretches from an inch narrow to an ell broad.

ROMEO. I stretch it out for that word broad, which added to the goose, proves thee far and wide a broad goose.

MERCUTIO. Why, is not this better now than groaning for love? Now art thou sociable, now art thou Romeo; now art thou what thou art, by art as well as by nature. For this drivelling love is like a great natural, that runs lolling up and down to hide his bauble in a hole.

BENVOLIO. Stop there, stop there.

MERCUTIO. Thou desirest me to stop in my tale against the hair.

BENVOLIO. Thou wouldst else have made thy tale large.

MERCUTIO. O, thou art deceived; I would have made it short, for I was come to the whole depth of my tale, and meant indeed to occupy the argument no longer.

Enter Nurse and Peter.

ROMEO. Here’s goodly gear! A sail, a sail!

MERCUTIO. Two, two; a shirt and a smock.

NURSE. Peter!

PETER. Anon.

NURSE. My fan, Peter.

MERCUTIO. Good Peter, to hide her face; for her fan’s the fairer face.

NURSE. God ye good morrow, gentlemen.

MERCUTIO. God ye good-den, fair gentlewoman.

NURSE. Is it good-den?

MERCUTIO. ’Tis no less, I tell ye; for the bawdy hand of the dial is now upon the prick of noon.

NURSE. Out upon you! What a man are you?

ROMEO. One, gentlewoman, that God hath made for himself to mar.

NURSE. By my troth, it is well said; for himself to mar, quoth a? Gentlemen, can any of you tell me where I may find the young Romeo?

ROMEO. I can tell you: but young Romeo will be older when you have found him than he was when you sought him. I am the youngest of that name, for fault of a worse.

NURSE. You say well.

MERCUTIO. Yea, is the worst well? Very well took, i’faith; wisely, wisely.

NURSE. If you be he, sir, I desire some confidence with you.

BENVOLIO. She will endite him to some supper.

MERCUTIO. A bawd, a bawd, a bawd! So ho!

ROMEO. What hast thou found?

MERCUTIO. No hare, sir; unless a hare, sir, in a lenten pie, that is something stale and hoar ere it be spent. [Sings.] An old hare hoar, And an old hare hoar, Is very good meat in Lent; But a hare that is hoar Is too much for a score When it hoars ere it be spent. Romeo, will you come to your father’s? We’ll to dinner thither.

ROMEO. I will follow you.

MERCUTIO. Farewell, ancient lady; farewell, lady, lady, lady.

[Exeunt Mercutio and Benvolio.]

NURSE. I pray you, sir, what saucy merchant was this that was so full of his ropery?

ROMEO. A gentleman, Nurse, that loves to hear himself talk, and will speak more in a minute than he will stand to in a month.

NURSE. And a speak anything against me, I’ll take him down, and a were lustier than he is, and twenty such Jacks. And if I cannot, I’ll find those that shall. Scurvy knave! I am none of his flirt-gills; I am none of his skains-mates.—And thou must stand by too and suffer every knave to use me at his pleasure!

PETER. I saw no man use you at his pleasure; if I had, my weapon should quickly have been out. I warrant you, I dare draw as soon as another man, if I see occasion in a good quarrel, and the law on my side.

NURSE. Now, afore God, I am so vexed that every part about me quivers. Scurvy knave. Pray you, sir, a word: and as I told you, my young lady bid me enquire you out; what she bade me say, I will keep to myself. But first let me tell ye, if ye should lead her in a fool’s paradise, as they say, it were a very gross kind of behaviour, as they say; for the gentlewoman is young. And therefore, if you should deal double with her, truly it were an ill thing to be offered to any gentlewoman, and very weak dealing.

ROMEO. Nurse, commend me to thy lady and mistress. I protest unto thee,—

NURSE. Good heart, and i’faith I will tell her as much. Lord, Lord, she will be a joyful woman.

ROMEO. What wilt thou tell her, Nurse? Thou dost not mark me.

NURSE. I will tell her, sir, that you do protest, which, as I take it, is a gentlemanlike offer.

ROMEO. Bid her devise Some means to come to shrift this afternoon, And there she shall at Friar Lawrence’ cell Be shriv’d and married. Here is for thy pains.

NURSE. No truly, sir; not a penny.

ROMEO. Go to; I say you shall.

NURSE. This afternoon, sir? Well, she shall be there.

ROMEO. And stay, good Nurse, behind the abbey wall. Within this hour my man shall be with thee, And bring thee cords made like a tackled stair, Which to the high topgallant of my joy Must be my convoy in the secret night. Farewell, be trusty, and I’ll quit thy pains; Farewell; commend me to thy mistress.

NURSE. Now God in heaven bless thee. Hark you, sir.

ROMEO. What say’st thou, my dear Nurse?

NURSE. Is your man secret? Did you ne’er hear say, Two may keep counsel, putting one away?

ROMEO. I warrant thee my man’s as true as steel.

NURSE. Well, sir, my mistress is the sweetest lady. Lord, Lord! When ’twas a little prating thing,—O, there is a nobleman in town, one Paris, that would fain lay knife aboard; but she, good soul, had as lief see a toad, a very toad, as see him. I anger her sometimes, and tell her that Paris is the properer man, but I’ll warrant you, when I say so, she looks as pale as any clout in the versal world. Doth not rosemary and Romeo begin both with a letter?

ROMEO. Ay, Nurse; what of that? Both with an R.

NURSE. Ah, mocker! That’s the dog’s name. R is for the—no, I know it begins with some other letter, and she hath the prettiest sententious of it, of you and rosemary, that it would do you good to hear it.

ROMEO. Commend me to thy lady.

NURSE. Ay, a thousand times. Peter!

[Exit Romeo.]

NURSE. Before and apace.

SCENE V. Capulet’s Garden.

JULIET. The clock struck nine when I did send the Nurse, In half an hour she promised to return. Perchance she cannot meet him. That’s not so. O, she is lame. Love’s heralds should be thoughts, Which ten times faster glides than the sun’s beams, Driving back shadows over lowering hills: Therefore do nimble-pinion’d doves draw love, And therefore hath the wind-swift Cupid wings. Now is the sun upon the highmost hill Of this day’s journey, and from nine till twelve Is three long hours, yet she is not come. Had she affections and warm youthful blood, She’d be as swift in motion as a ball; My words would bandy her to my sweet love, And his to me. But old folks, many feign as they were dead; Unwieldy, slow, heavy and pale as lead.

O God, she comes. O honey Nurse, what news? Hast thou met with him? Send thy man away.

NURSE. Peter, stay at the gate.

[Exit Peter.]

JULIET. Now, good sweet Nurse,—O Lord, why look’st thou sad? Though news be sad, yet tell them merrily; If good, thou sham’st the music of sweet news By playing it to me with so sour a face.

NURSE. I am aweary, give me leave awhile; Fie, how my bones ache! What a jaunt have I had!

JULIET. I would thou hadst my bones, and I thy news: Nay come, I pray thee speak; good, good Nurse, speak.

NURSE. Jesu, what haste? Can you not stay a while? Do you not see that I am out of breath?

JULIET. How art thou out of breath, when thou hast breath To say to me that thou art out of breath? The excuse that thou dost make in this delay Is longer than the tale thou dost excuse. Is thy news good or bad? Answer to that; Say either, and I’ll stay the circumstance. Let me be satisfied, is’t good or bad?

NURSE. Well, you have made a simple choice; you know not how to choose a man. Romeo? No, not he. Though his face be better than any man’s, yet his leg excels all men’s, and for a hand and a foot, and a body, though they be not to be talked on, yet they are past compare. He is not the flower of courtesy, but I’ll warrant him as gentle as a lamb. Go thy ways, wench, serve God. What, have you dined at home?

JULIET. No, no. But all this did I know before. What says he of our marriage? What of that?

NURSE. Lord, how my head aches! What a head have I! It beats as it would fall in twenty pieces. My back o’ t’other side,—O my back, my back! Beshrew your heart for sending me about To catch my death with jauncing up and down.

JULIET. I’faith, I am sorry that thou art not well. Sweet, sweet, sweet Nurse, tell me, what says my love?

NURSE. Your love says like an honest gentleman, And a courteous, and a kind, and a handsome, And I warrant a virtuous,—Where is your mother?

JULIET. Where is my mother? Why, she is within. Where should she be? How oddly thou repliest. ‘Your love says, like an honest gentleman, ‘Where is your mother?’

NURSE. O God’s lady dear, Are you so hot? Marry, come up, I trow. Is this the poultice for my aching bones? Henceforward do your messages yourself.

JULIET. Here’s such a coil. Come, what says Romeo?

NURSE. Have you got leave to go to shrift today?

JULIET. I have.

NURSE. Then hie you hence to Friar Lawrence’ cell; There stays a husband to make you a wife. Now comes the wanton blood up in your cheeks, They’ll be in scarlet straight at any news. Hie you to church. I must another way, To fetch a ladder by the which your love Must climb a bird’s nest soon when it is dark. I am the drudge, and toil in your delight; But you shall bear the burden soon at night. Go. I’ll to dinner; hie you to the cell.

JULIET. Hie to high fortune! Honest Nurse, farewell.

SCENE VI. Friar Lawrence’s Cell.

Enter Friar Lawrence and Romeo.

FRIAR LAWRENCE. So smile the heavens upon this holy act That after-hours with sorrow chide us not.

ROMEO. Amen, amen, but come what sorrow can, It cannot countervail the exchange of joy That one short minute gives me in her sight. Do thou but close our hands with holy words, Then love-devouring death do what he dare, It is enough I may but call her mine.

FRIAR LAWRENCE. These violent delights have violent ends, And in their triumph die; like fire and powder, Which as they kiss consume. The sweetest honey Is loathsome in his own deliciousness, And in the taste confounds the appetite. Therefore love moderately: long love doth so; Too swift arrives as tardy as too slow.

Here comes the lady. O, so light a foot Will ne’er wear out the everlasting flint. A lover may bestride the gossamers That idles in the wanton summer air And yet not fall; so light is vanity.

JULIET. Good even to my ghostly confessor.

FRIAR LAWRENCE. Romeo shall thank thee, daughter, for us both.

JULIET. As much to him, else is his thanks too much.

ROMEO. Ah, Juliet, if the measure of thy joy Be heap’d like mine, and that thy skill be more To blazon it, then sweeten with thy breath This neighbour air, and let rich music’s tongue Unfold the imagin’d happiness that both Receive in either by this dear encounter.

JULIET. Conceit more rich in matter than in words, Brags of his substance, not of ornament. They are but beggars that can count their worth; But my true love is grown to such excess, I cannot sum up sum of half my wealth.

FRIAR LAWRENCE. Come, come with me, and we will make short work, For, by your leaves, you shall not stay alone Till holy church incorporate two in one.

SCENE I. A public Place.

Enter Mercutio, Benvolio, Page and Servants.

BENVOLIO. I pray thee, good Mercutio, let’s retire: The day is hot, the Capulets abroad, And if we meet, we shall not scape a brawl, For now these hot days, is the mad blood stirring.

MERCUTIO. Thou art like one of these fellows that, when he enters the confines of a tavern, claps me his sword upon the table, and says ‘God send me no need of thee!’ and by the operation of the second cup draws him on the drawer, when indeed there is no need.

BENVOLIO. Am I like such a fellow?

MERCUTIO. Come, come, thou art as hot a Jack in thy mood as any in Italy; and as soon moved to be moody, and as soon moody to be moved.

BENVOLIO. And what to?

MERCUTIO. Nay, an there were two such, we should have none shortly, for one would kill the other. Thou? Why, thou wilt quarrel with a man that hath a hair more or a hair less in his beard than thou hast. Thou wilt quarrel with a man for cracking nuts, having no other reason but because thou hast hazel eyes. What eye but such an eye would spy out such a quarrel? Thy head is as full of quarrels as an egg is full of meat, and yet thy head hath been beaten as addle as an egg for quarrelling. Thou hast quarrelled with a man for coughing in the street, because he hath wakened thy dog that hath lain asleep in the sun. Didst thou not fall out with a tailor for wearing his new doublet before Easter? with another for tying his new shoes with an old riband? And yet thou wilt tutor me from quarrelling!

BENVOLIO. And I were so apt to quarrel as thou art, any man should buy the fee simple of my life for an hour and a quarter.

MERCUTIO. The fee simple! O simple!

Enter Tybalt and others.

BENVOLIO. By my head, here comes the Capulets.

MERCUTIO. By my heel, I care not.

TYBALT. Follow me close, for I will speak to them. Gentlemen, good-den: a word with one of you.

MERCUTIO. And but one word with one of us? Couple it with something; make it a word and a blow.

TYBALT. You shall find me apt enough to that, sir, and you will give me occasion.

MERCUTIO. Could you not take some occasion without giving?

TYBALT. Mercutio, thou consortest with Romeo.

MERCUTIO. Consort? What, dost thou make us minstrels? And thou make minstrels of us, look to hear nothing but discords. Here’s my fiddlestick, here’s that shall make you dance. Zounds, consort!

BENVOLIO. We talk here in the public haunt of men. Either withdraw unto some private place, And reason coldly of your grievances, Or else depart; here all eyes gaze on us.

MERCUTIO. Men’s eyes were made to look, and let them gaze. I will not budge for no man’s pleasure, I.

TYBALT. Well, peace be with you, sir, here comes my man.

MERCUTIO. But I’ll be hanged, sir, if he wear your livery. Marry, go before to field, he’ll be your follower; Your worship in that sense may call him man.

TYBALT. Romeo, the love I bear thee can afford No better term than this: Thou art a villain.

ROMEO. Tybalt, the reason that I have to love thee Doth much excuse the appertaining rage To such a greeting. Villain am I none; Therefore farewell; I see thou know’st me not.

TYBALT. Boy, this shall not excuse the injuries That thou hast done me, therefore turn and draw.

ROMEO. I do protest I never injur’d thee, But love thee better than thou canst devise Till thou shalt know the reason of my love. And so good Capulet, which name I tender As dearly as mine own, be satisfied.

MERCUTIO. O calm, dishonourable, vile submission! [Draws.] Alla stoccata carries it away. Tybalt, you rat-catcher, will you walk?

TYBALT. What wouldst thou have with me?

MERCUTIO. Good King of Cats, nothing but one of your nine lives; that I mean to make bold withal, and, as you shall use me hereafter, dry-beat the rest of the eight. Will you pluck your sword out of his pilcher by the ears? Make haste, lest mine be about your ears ere it be out.

TYBALT. [Drawing.] I am for you.

ROMEO. Gentle Mercutio, put thy rapier up.

MERCUTIO. Come, sir, your passado.

ROMEO. Draw, Benvolio; beat down their weapons. Gentlemen, for shame, forbear this outrage, Tybalt, Mercutio, the Prince expressly hath Forbid this bandying in Verona streets. Hold, Tybalt! Good Mercutio!

[Exeunt Tybalt with his Partizans.]

MERCUTIO. I am hurt. A plague o’ both your houses. I am sped. Is he gone, and hath nothing?

BENVOLIO. What, art thou hurt?

MERCUTIO. Ay, ay, a scratch, a scratch. Marry, ’tis enough. Where is my page? Go villain, fetch a surgeon.

ROMEO. Courage, man; the hurt cannot be much.

MERCUTIO. No, ’tis not so deep as a well, nor so wide as a church door, but ’tis enough, ’twill serve. Ask for me tomorrow, and you shall find me a grave man. I am peppered, I warrant, for this world. A plague o’ both your houses. Zounds, a dog, a rat, a mouse, a cat, to scratch a man to death. A braggart, a rogue, a villain, that fights by the book of arithmetic!—Why the devil came you between us? I was hurt under your arm.

ROMEO. I thought all for the best.

MERCUTIO. Help me into some house, Benvolio, Or I shall faint. A plague o’ both your houses. They have made worms’ meat of me. I have it, and soundly too. Your houses!

ROMEO. This gentleman, the Prince’s near ally, My very friend, hath got his mortal hurt In my behalf; my reputation stain’d With Tybalt’s slander,—Tybalt, that an hour Hath been my cousin. O sweet Juliet, Thy beauty hath made me effeminate And in my temper soften’d valour’s steel.

Re-enter Benvolio.

BENVOLIO. O Romeo, Romeo, brave Mercutio’s dead, That gallant spirit hath aspir’d the clouds, Which too untimely here did scorn the earth.

ROMEO. This day’s black fate on mo days doth depend; This but begins the woe others must end.

Re-enter Tybalt.

BENVOLIO. Here comes the furious Tybalt back again.

ROMEO. Again in triumph, and Mercutio slain? Away to heaven respective lenity, And fire-ey’d fury be my conduct now! Now, Tybalt, take the ‘villain’ back again That late thou gav’st me, for Mercutio’s soul Is but a little way above our heads, Staying for thine to keep him company. Either thou or I, or both, must go with him.

TYBALT. Thou wretched boy, that didst consort him here, Shalt with him hence.

ROMEO. This shall determine that.

[They fight; Tybalt falls.]

BENVOLIO. Romeo, away, be gone! The citizens are up, and Tybalt slain. Stand not amaz’d. The Prince will doom thee death If thou art taken. Hence, be gone, away!

ROMEO. O, I am fortune’s fool!

BENVOLIO. Why dost thou stay?

Enter Citizens.

FIRST CITIZEN. Which way ran he that kill’d Mercutio? Tybalt, that murderer, which way ran he?

BENVOLIO. There lies that Tybalt.

FIRST CITIZEN. Up, sir, go with me. I charge thee in the Prince’s name obey.

Enter Prince, attended; Montague, Capulet, their Wives and others.

PRINCE. Where are the vile beginners of this fray?

BENVOLIO. O noble Prince, I can discover all The unlucky manage of this fatal brawl. There lies the man, slain by young Romeo, That slew thy kinsman, brave Mercutio.

LADY CAPULET. Tybalt, my cousin! O my brother’s child! O Prince! O husband! O, the blood is spill’d Of my dear kinsman! Prince, as thou art true, For blood of ours shed blood of Montague. O cousin, cousin.

PRINCE. Benvolio, who began this bloody fray?

BENVOLIO. Tybalt, here slain, whom Romeo’s hand did slay; Romeo, that spoke him fair, bid him bethink How nice the quarrel was, and urg’d withal Your high displeasure. All this uttered With gentle breath, calm look, knees humbly bow’d Could not take truce with the unruly spleen Of Tybalt, deaf to peace, but that he tilts With piercing steel at bold Mercutio’s breast, Who, all as hot, turns deadly point to point, And, with a martial scorn, with one hand beats Cold death aside, and with the other sends It back to Tybalt, whose dexterity Retorts it. Romeo he cries aloud, ‘Hold, friends! Friends, part!’ and swifter than his tongue, His agile arm beats down their fatal points, And ’twixt them rushes; underneath whose arm An envious thrust from Tybalt hit the life Of stout Mercutio, and then Tybalt fled. But by and by comes back to Romeo, Who had but newly entertain’d revenge, And to’t they go like lightning; for, ere I Could draw to part them was stout Tybalt slain; And as he fell did Romeo turn and fly. This is the truth, or let Benvolio die.

LADY CAPULET. He is a kinsman to the Montague. Affection makes him false, he speaks not true. Some twenty of them fought in this black strife, And all those twenty could but kill one life. I beg for justice, which thou, Prince, must give; Romeo slew Tybalt, Romeo must not live.

PRINCE. Romeo slew him, he slew Mercutio. Who now the price of his dear blood doth owe?

MONTAGUE. Not Romeo, Prince, he was Mercutio’s friend; His fault concludes but what the law should end, The life of Tybalt.

PRINCE. And for that offence Immediately we do exile him hence. I have an interest in your hate’s proceeding, My blood for your rude brawls doth lie a-bleeding. But I’ll amerce you with so strong a fine That you shall all repent the loss of mine. I will be deaf to pleading and excuses; Nor tears nor prayers shall purchase out abuses. Therefore use none. Let Romeo hence in haste, Else, when he is found, that hour is his last. Bear hence this body, and attend our will. Mercy but murders, pardoning those that kill.

SCENE II. A Room in Capulet’s House.

JULIET. Gallop apace, you fiery-footed steeds, Towards Phoebus’ lodging. Such a waggoner As Phaeton would whip you to the west And bring in cloudy night immediately. Spread thy close curtain, love-performing night, That runaway’s eyes may wink, and Romeo Leap to these arms, untalk’d of and unseen. Lovers can see to do their amorous rites By their own beauties: or, if love be blind, It best agrees with night. Come, civil night, Thou sober-suited matron, all in black, And learn me how to lose a winning match, Play’d for a pair of stainless maidenhoods. Hood my unmann’d blood, bating in my cheeks, With thy black mantle, till strange love, grow bold, Think true love acted simple modesty. Come, night, come Romeo; come, thou day in night; For thou wilt lie upon the wings of night Whiter than new snow upon a raven’s back. Come gentle night, come loving black-brow’d night, Give me my Romeo, and when I shall die, Take him and cut him out in little stars, And he will make the face of heaven so fine That all the world will be in love with night, And pay no worship to the garish sun. O, I have bought the mansion of a love, But not possess’d it; and though I am sold, Not yet enjoy’d. So tedious is this day As is the night before some festival To an impatient child that hath new robes And may not wear them. O, here comes my Nurse, And she brings news, and every tongue that speaks But Romeo’s name speaks heavenly eloquence.

Enter Nurse, with cords.

Now, Nurse, what news? What hast thou there? The cords that Romeo bid thee fetch?

NURSE. Ay, ay, the cords.

[Throws them down.]

JULIET. Ay me, what news? Why dost thou wring thy hands?

NURSE. Ah, well-a-day, he’s dead, he’s dead, he’s dead! We are undone, lady, we are undone. Alack the day, he’s gone, he’s kill’d, he’s dead.

JULIET. Can heaven be so envious?

NURSE. Romeo can, Though heaven cannot. O Romeo, Romeo. Who ever would have thought it? Romeo!

JULIET. What devil art thou, that dost torment me thus? This torture should be roar’d in dismal hell. Hath Romeo slain himself? Say thou but Ay, And that bare vowel I shall poison more Than the death-darting eye of cockatrice. I am not I if there be such an I; Or those eyes shut that make thee answer Ay. If he be slain, say Ay; or if not, No. Brief sounds determine of my weal or woe.

NURSE. I saw the wound, I saw it with mine eyes, God save the mark!—here on his manly breast. A piteous corse, a bloody piteous corse; Pale, pale as ashes, all bedaub’d in blood, All in gore-blood. I swounded at the sight.

JULIET. O, break, my heart. Poor bankrout, break at once. To prison, eyes; ne’er look on liberty. Vile earth to earth resign; end motion here, And thou and Romeo press one heavy bier.

NURSE. O Tybalt, Tybalt, the best friend I had. O courteous Tybalt, honest gentleman! That ever I should live to see thee dead.

JULIET. What storm is this that blows so contrary? Is Romeo slaughter’d and is Tybalt dead? My dearest cousin, and my dearer lord? Then dreadful trumpet sound the general doom, For who is living, if those two are gone?

NURSE. Tybalt is gone, and Romeo banished, Romeo that kill’d him, he is banished.

JULIET. O God! Did Romeo’s hand shed Tybalt’s blood?

NURSE. It did, it did; alas the day, it did.

JULIET. O serpent heart, hid with a flowering face! Did ever dragon keep so fair a cave? Beautiful tyrant, fiend angelical, Dove-feather’d raven, wolvish-ravening lamb! Despised substance of divinest show! Just opposite to what thou justly seem’st, A damned saint, an honourable villain! O nature, what hadst thou to do in hell When thou didst bower the spirit of a fiend In mortal paradise of such sweet flesh? Was ever book containing such vile matter So fairly bound? O, that deceit should dwell In such a gorgeous palace.

NURSE. There’s no trust, No faith, no honesty in men. All perjur’d, All forsworn, all naught, all dissemblers. Ah, where’s my man? Give me some aqua vitae. These griefs, these woes, these sorrows make me old. Shame come to Romeo.

JULIET. Blister’d be thy tongue For such a wish! He was not born to shame. Upon his brow shame is asham’d to sit; For ’tis a throne where honour may be crown’d Sole monarch of the universal earth. O, what a beast was I to chide at him!

NURSE. Will you speak well of him that kill’d your cousin?

JULIET. Shall I speak ill of him that is my husband? Ah, poor my lord, what tongue shall smooth thy name, When I thy three-hours’ wife have mangled it? But wherefore, villain, didst thou kill my cousin? That villain cousin would have kill’d my husband. Back, foolish tears, back to your native spring, Your tributary drops belong to woe, Which you mistaking offer up to joy. My husband lives, that Tybalt would have slain, And Tybalt’s dead, that would have slain my husband. All this is comfort; wherefore weep I then? Some word there was, worser than Tybalt’s death, That murder’d me. I would forget it fain, But O, it presses to my memory Like damned guilty deeds to sinners’ minds. Tybalt is dead, and Romeo banished. That ‘banished,’ that one word ‘banished,’ Hath slain ten thousand Tybalts. Tybalt’s death Was woe enough, if it had ended there. Or if sour woe delights in fellowship, And needly will be rank’d with other griefs, Why follow’d not, when she said Tybalt’s dead, Thy father or thy mother, nay or both, Which modern lamentation might have mov’d? But with a rear-ward following Tybalt’s death, ‘Romeo is banished’—to speak that word Is father, mother, Tybalt, Romeo, Juliet, All slain, all dead. Romeo is banished, There is no end, no limit, measure, bound, In that word’s death, no words can that woe sound. Where is my father and my mother, Nurse?

NURSE. Weeping and wailing over Tybalt’s corse. Will you go to them? I will bring you thither.

JULIET. Wash they his wounds with tears. Mine shall be spent, When theirs are dry, for Romeo’s banishment. Take up those cords. Poor ropes, you are beguil’d, Both you and I; for Romeo is exil’d. He made you for a highway to my bed, But I, a maid, die maiden-widowed. Come cords, come Nurse, I’ll to my wedding bed, And death, not Romeo, take my maidenhead.

NURSE. Hie to your chamber. I’ll find Romeo To comfort you. I wot well where he is. Hark ye, your Romeo will be here at night. I’ll to him, he is hid at Lawrence’ cell.

JULIET. O find him, give this ring to my true knight, And bid him come to take his last farewell.

SCENE III. Friar Lawrence’s cell.

Enter Friar Lawrence.

FRIAR LAWRENCE. Romeo, come forth; come forth, thou fearful man. Affliction is enanmour’d of thy parts And thou art wedded to calamity.

ROMEO. Father, what news? What is the Prince’s doom? What sorrow craves acquaintance at my hand, That I yet know not?

FRIAR LAWRENCE. Too familiar Is my dear son with such sour company. I bring thee tidings of the Prince’s doom.

ROMEO. What less than doomsday is the Prince’s doom?

FRIAR LAWRENCE. A gentler judgment vanish’d from his lips, Not body’s death, but body’s banishment.

ROMEO. Ha, banishment? Be merciful, say death; For exile hath more terror in his look, Much more than death. Do not say banishment.

FRIAR LAWRENCE. Hence from Verona art thou banished. Be patient, for the world is broad and wide.

ROMEO. There is no world without Verona walls, But purgatory, torture, hell itself. Hence banished is banish’d from the world, And world’s exile is death. Then banished Is death misterm’d. Calling death banished, Thou cutt’st my head off with a golden axe, And smilest upon the stroke that murders me.

FRIAR LAWRENCE. O deadly sin, O rude unthankfulness! Thy fault our law calls death, but the kind Prince, Taking thy part, hath brush’d aside the law, And turn’d that black word death to banishment. This is dear mercy, and thou see’st it not.

ROMEO. ’Tis torture, and not mercy. Heaven is here Where Juliet lives, and every cat and dog, And little mouse, every unworthy thing, Live here in heaven and may look on her, But Romeo may not. More validity, More honourable state, more courtship lives In carrion flies than Romeo. They may seize On the white wonder of dear Juliet’s hand, And steal immortal blessing from her lips, Who, even in pure and vestal modesty Still blush, as thinking their own kisses sin. But Romeo may not, he is banished. This may flies do, when I from this must fly. They are free men but I am banished. And say’st thou yet that exile is not death? Hadst thou no poison mix’d, no sharp-ground knife, No sudden mean of death, though ne’er so mean, But banished to kill me? Banished? O Friar, the damned use that word in hell. Howling attends it. How hast thou the heart, Being a divine, a ghostly confessor, A sin-absolver, and my friend profess’d, To mangle me with that word banished?

FRIAR LAWRENCE. Thou fond mad man, hear me speak a little,

ROMEO. O, thou wilt speak again of banishment.

FRIAR LAWRENCE. I’ll give thee armour to keep off that word, Adversity’s sweet milk, philosophy, To comfort thee, though thou art banished.

ROMEO. Yet banished? Hang up philosophy. Unless philosophy can make a Juliet, Displant a town, reverse a Prince’s doom, It helps not, it prevails not, talk no more.

FRIAR LAWRENCE. O, then I see that mad men have no ears.

ROMEO. How should they, when that wise men have no eyes?

FRIAR LAWRENCE. Let me dispute with thee of thy estate.

ROMEO. Thou canst not speak of that thou dost not feel. Wert thou as young as I, Juliet thy love, An hour but married, Tybalt murdered, Doting like me, and like me banished, Then mightst thou speak, then mightst thou tear thy hair, And fall upon the ground as I do now, Taking the measure of an unmade grave.

FRIAR LAWRENCE. Arise; one knocks. Good Romeo, hide thyself.

ROMEO. Not I, unless the breath of heartsick groans Mist-like infold me from the search of eyes.

FRIAR LAWRENCE. Hark, how they knock!—Who’s there?—Romeo, arise, Thou wilt be taken.—Stay awhile.—Stand up.

Run to my study.—By-and-by.—God’s will, What simpleness is this.—I come, I come.

Who knocks so hard? Whence come you, what’s your will?

NURSE. [Within.] Let me come in, and you shall know my errand. I come from Lady Juliet.

FRIAR LAWRENCE. Welcome then.

Enter Nurse.

NURSE. O holy Friar, O, tell me, holy Friar, Where is my lady’s lord, where’s Romeo?

FRIAR LAWRENCE. There on the ground, with his own tears made drunk.

NURSE. O, he is even in my mistress’ case. Just in her case! O woeful sympathy! Piteous predicament. Even so lies she, Blubbering and weeping, weeping and blubbering. Stand up, stand up; stand, and you be a man. For Juliet’s sake, for her sake, rise and stand. Why should you fall into so deep an O?

ROMEO. Nurse.

NURSE. Ah sir, ah sir, death’s the end of all.

ROMEO. Spakest thou of Juliet? How is it with her? Doth not she think me an old murderer, Now I have stain’d the childhood of our joy With blood remov’d but little from her own? Where is she? And how doth she? And what says My conceal’d lady to our cancell’d love?

NURSE. O, she says nothing, sir, but weeps and weeps; And now falls on her bed, and then starts up, And Tybalt calls, and then on Romeo cries, And then down falls again.

ROMEO. As if that name, Shot from the deadly level of a gun, Did murder her, as that name’s cursed hand Murder’d her kinsman. O, tell me, Friar, tell me, In what vile part of this anatomy Doth my name lodge? Tell me, that I may sack The hateful mansion.

FRIAR LAWRENCE. Hold thy desperate hand. Art thou a man? Thy form cries out thou art. Thy tears are womanish, thy wild acts denote The unreasonable fury of a beast. Unseemly woman in a seeming man, And ill-beseeming beast in seeming both! Thou hast amaz’d me. By my holy order, I thought thy disposition better temper’d. Hast thou slain Tybalt? Wilt thou slay thyself? And slay thy lady, that in thy life lives, By doing damned hate upon thyself? Why rail’st thou on thy birth, the heaven and earth? Since birth, and heaven and earth, all three do meet In thee at once; which thou at once wouldst lose. Fie, fie, thou sham’st thy shape, thy love, thy wit, Which, like a usurer, abound’st in all, And usest none in that true use indeed Which should bedeck thy shape, thy love, thy wit. Thy noble shape is but a form of wax, Digressing from the valour of a man; Thy dear love sworn but hollow perjury, Killing that love which thou hast vow’d to cherish; Thy wit, that ornament to shape and love, Misshapen in the conduct of them both, Like powder in a skilless soldier’s flask, Is set afire by thine own ignorance, And thou dismember’d with thine own defence. What, rouse thee, man. Thy Juliet is alive, For whose dear sake thou wast but lately dead. There art thou happy. Tybalt would kill thee, But thou slew’st Tybalt; there art thou happy. The law that threaten’d death becomes thy friend, And turns it to exile; there art thou happy. A pack of blessings light upon thy back; Happiness courts thee in her best array; But like a misshaped and sullen wench, Thou putt’st up thy Fortune and thy love. Take heed, take heed, for such die miserable. Go, get thee to thy love as was decreed, Ascend her chamber, hence and comfort her. But look thou stay not till the watch be set, For then thou canst not pass to Mantua; Where thou shalt live till we can find a time To blaze your marriage, reconcile your friends, Beg pardon of the Prince, and call thee back With twenty hundred thousand times more joy Than thou went’st forth in lamentation. Go before, Nurse. Commend me to thy lady, And bid her hasten all the house to bed, Which heavy sorrow makes them apt unto. Romeo is coming.

NURSE. O Lord, I could have stay’d here all the night To hear good counsel. O, what learning is! My lord, I’ll tell my lady you will come.

ROMEO. Do so, and bid my sweet prepare to chide.

NURSE. Here sir, a ring she bid me give you, sir. Hie you, make haste, for it grows very late.

ROMEO. How well my comfort is reviv’d by this.

FRIAR LAWRENCE. Go hence, good night, and here stands all your state: Either be gone before the watch be set, Or by the break of day disguis’d from hence. Sojourn in Mantua. I’ll find out your man, And he shall signify from time to time Every good hap to you that chances here. Give me thy hand; ’tis late; farewell; good night.

ROMEO. But that a joy past joy calls out on me, It were a grief so brief to part with thee. Farewell.

SCENE IV. A Room in Capulet’s House.

Enter Capulet, Lady Capulet and Paris.

CAPULET. Things have fallen out, sir, so unluckily That we have had no time to move our daughter. Look you, she lov’d her kinsman Tybalt dearly, And so did I. Well, we were born to die. ’Tis very late; she’ll not come down tonight. I promise you, but for your company, I would have been abed an hour ago.

PARIS. These times of woe afford no tune to woo. Madam, good night. Commend me to your daughter.

LADY CAPULET. I will, and know her mind early tomorrow; Tonight she’s mew’d up to her heaviness.

CAPULET. Sir Paris, I will make a desperate tender Of my child’s love. I think she will be rul’d In all respects by me; nay more, I doubt it not. Wife, go you to her ere you go to bed, Acquaint her here of my son Paris’ love, And bid her, mark you me, on Wednesday next, But, soft, what day is this?

PARIS. Monday, my lord.

CAPULET. Monday! Ha, ha! Well, Wednesday is too soon, A Thursday let it be; a Thursday, tell her, She shall be married to this noble earl. Will you be ready? Do you like this haste? We’ll keep no great ado,—a friend or two, For, hark you, Tybalt being slain so late, It may be thought we held him carelessly, Being our kinsman, if we revel much. Therefore we’ll have some half a dozen friends, And there an end. But what say you to Thursday?

PARIS. My lord, I would that Thursday were tomorrow.

CAPULET. Well, get you gone. A Thursday be it then. Go you to Juliet ere you go to bed, Prepare her, wife, against this wedding day. Farewell, my lord.—Light to my chamber, ho! Afore me, it is so very very late that we May call it early by and by. Good night.

SCENE V. An open Gallery to Juliet’s Chamber, overlooking the Garden.

Enter Romeo and Juliet.

JULIET. Wilt thou be gone? It is not yet near day. It was the nightingale, and not the lark, That pierc’d the fearful hollow of thine ear; Nightly she sings on yond pomegranate tree. Believe me, love, it was the nightingale.

ROMEO. It was the lark, the herald of the morn, No nightingale. Look, love, what envious streaks Do lace the severing clouds in yonder east. Night’s candles are burnt out, and jocund day Stands tiptoe on the misty mountain tops. I must be gone and live, or stay and die.

JULIET. Yond light is not daylight, I know it, I. It is some meteor that the sun exhales To be to thee this night a torchbearer And light thee on thy way to Mantua. Therefore stay yet, thou need’st not to be gone.

ROMEO. Let me be ta’en, let me be put to death, I am content, so thou wilt have it so. I’ll say yon grey is not the morning’s eye, ’Tis but the pale reflex of Cynthia’s brow. Nor that is not the lark whose notes do beat The vaulty heaven so high above our heads. I have more care to stay than will to go. Come, death, and welcome. Juliet wills it so. How is’t, my soul? Let’s talk. It is not day.

JULIET. It is, it is! Hie hence, be gone, away. It is the lark that sings so out of tune, Straining harsh discords and unpleasing sharps. Some say the lark makes sweet division; This doth not so, for she divideth us. Some say the lark and loathed toad change eyes. O, now I would they had chang’d voices too, Since arm from arm that voice doth us affray, Hunting thee hence with hunt’s-up to the day. O now be gone, more light and light it grows.

ROMEO. More light and light, more dark and dark our woes.

NURSE. Madam.

JULIET. Nurse?

NURSE. Your lady mother is coming to your chamber. The day is broke, be wary, look about.

JULIET. Then, window, let day in, and let life out.

ROMEO. Farewell, farewell, one kiss, and I’ll descend.

JULIET. Art thou gone so? Love, lord, ay husband, friend, I must hear from thee every day in the hour, For in a minute there are many days. O, by this count I shall be much in years Ere I again behold my Romeo.

ROMEO. Farewell! I will omit no opportunity That may convey my greetings, love, to thee.

JULIET. O thinkest thou we shall ever meet again?

ROMEO. I doubt it not, and all these woes shall serve For sweet discourses in our time to come.

JULIET. O God! I have an ill-divining soul! Methinks I see thee, now thou art so low, As one dead in the bottom of a tomb. Either my eyesight fails, or thou look’st pale.

ROMEO. And trust me, love, in my eye so do you. Dry sorrow drinks our blood. Adieu, adieu.

[Exit below.]

JULIET. O Fortune, Fortune! All men call thee fickle, If thou art fickle, what dost thou with him That is renown’d for faith? Be fickle, Fortune; For then, I hope thou wilt not keep him long But send him back.

LADY CAPULET. [Within.] Ho, daughter, are you up?

JULIET. Who is’t that calls? Is it my lady mother? Is she not down so late, or up so early? What unaccustom’d cause procures her hither?

Enter Lady Capulet.

LADY CAPULET. Why, how now, Juliet?

JULIET. Madam, I am not well.

LADY CAPULET. Evermore weeping for your cousin’s death? What, wilt thou wash him from his grave with tears? And if thou couldst, thou couldst not make him live. Therefore have done: some grief shows much of love, But much of grief shows still some want of wit.

JULIET. Yet let me weep for such a feeling loss.

LADY CAPULET. So shall you feel the loss, but not the friend Which you weep for.

JULIET. Feeling so the loss, I cannot choose but ever weep the friend.

LADY CAPULET. Well, girl, thou weep’st not so much for his death As that the villain lives which slaughter’d him.

JULIET. What villain, madam?

LADY CAPULET. That same villain Romeo.

JULIET. Villain and he be many miles asunder. God pardon him. I do, with all my heart. And yet no man like he doth grieve my heart.

LADY CAPULET. That is because the traitor murderer lives.

JULIET. Ay madam, from the reach of these my hands. Would none but I might venge my cousin’s death.

LADY CAPULET. We will have vengeance for it, fear thou not. Then weep no more. I’ll send to one in Mantua, Where that same banish’d runagate doth live, Shall give him such an unaccustom’d dram That he shall soon keep Tybalt company: And then I hope thou wilt be satisfied.

JULIET. Indeed I never shall be satisfied With Romeo till I behold him—dead— Is my poor heart so for a kinsman vex’d. Madam, if you could find out but a man To bear a poison, I would temper it, That Romeo should upon receipt thereof, Soon sleep in quiet. O, how my heart abhors To hear him nam’d, and cannot come to him, To wreak the love I bore my cousin Upon his body that hath slaughter’d him.

LADY CAPULET. Find thou the means, and I’ll find such a man. But now I’ll tell thee joyful tidings, girl.

JULIET. And joy comes well in such a needy time. What are they, I beseech your ladyship?

LADY CAPULET. Well, well, thou hast a careful father, child; One who to put thee from thy heaviness, Hath sorted out a sudden day of joy, That thou expects not, nor I look’d not for.

JULIET. Madam, in happy time, what day is that?

LADY CAPULET. Marry, my child, early next Thursday morn The gallant, young, and noble gentleman, The County Paris, at Saint Peter’s Church, Shall happily make thee there a joyful bride.

JULIET. Now by Saint Peter’s Church, and Peter too, He shall not make me there a joyful bride. I wonder at this haste, that I must wed Ere he that should be husband comes to woo. I pray you tell my lord and father, madam, I will not marry yet; and when I do, I swear It shall be Romeo, whom you know I hate, Rather than Paris. These are news indeed.

LADY CAPULET. Here comes your father, tell him so yourself, And see how he will take it at your hands.

Enter Capulet and Nurse.

CAPULET. When the sun sets, the air doth drizzle dew; But for the sunset of my brother’s son It rains downright. How now? A conduit, girl? What, still in tears? Evermore showering? In one little body Thou counterfeits a bark, a sea, a wind. For still thy eyes, which I may call the sea, Do ebb and flow with tears; the bark thy body is, Sailing in this salt flood, the winds, thy sighs, Who raging with thy tears and they with them, Without a sudden calm will overset Thy tempest-tossed body. How now, wife? Have you deliver’d to her our decree?

LADY CAPULET. Ay, sir; but she will none, she gives you thanks. I would the fool were married to her grave.

CAPULET. Soft. Take me with you, take me with you, wife. How, will she none? Doth she not give us thanks? Is she not proud? Doth she not count her blest, Unworthy as she is, that we have wrought So worthy a gentleman to be her bridegroom?

JULIET. Not proud you have, but thankful that you have. Proud can I never be of what I hate; But thankful even for hate that is meant love.

CAPULET. How now, how now, chopp’d logic? What is this? Proud, and, I thank you, and I thank you not; And yet not proud. Mistress minion you, Thank me no thankings, nor proud me no prouds, But fettle your fine joints ’gainst Thursday next To go with Paris to Saint Peter’s Church, Or I will drag thee on a hurdle thither. Out, you green-sickness carrion! Out, you baggage! You tallow-face!

LADY CAPULET. Fie, fie! What, are you mad?

JULIET. Good father, I beseech you on my knees, Hear me with patience but to speak a word.

CAPULET. Hang thee young baggage, disobedient wretch! I tell thee what,—get thee to church a Thursday, Or never after look me in the face. Speak not, reply not, do not answer me. My fingers itch. Wife, we scarce thought us blest That God had lent us but this only child; But now I see this one is one too much, And that we have a curse in having her. Out on her, hilding.

NURSE. God in heaven bless her. You are to blame, my lord, to rate her so.

CAPULET. And why, my lady wisdom? Hold your tongue, Good prudence; smatter with your gossips, go.

NURSE. I speak no treason.

CAPULET. O God ye good-en!

NURSE. May not one speak?

CAPULET. Peace, you mumbling fool! Utter your gravity o’er a gossip’s bowl, For here we need it not.

LADY CAPULET. You are too hot.

CAPULET. God’s bread, it makes me mad! Day, night, hour, ride, time, work, play, Alone, in company, still my care hath been To have her match’d, and having now provided A gentleman of noble parentage, Of fair demesnes, youthful, and nobly allied, Stuff’d, as they say, with honourable parts, Proportion’d as one’s thought would wish a man, And then to have a wretched puling fool, A whining mammet, in her fortune’s tender, To answer, ‘I’ll not wed, I cannot love, I am too young, I pray you pardon me.’ But, and you will not wed, I’ll pardon you. Graze where you will, you shall not house with me. Look to’t, think on’t, I do not use to jest. Thursday is near; lay hand on heart, advise. And you be mine, I’ll give you to my friend; And you be not, hang, beg, starve, die in the streets, For by my soul, I’ll ne’er acknowledge thee, Nor what is mine shall never do thee good. Trust to’t, bethink you, I’ll not be forsworn.

JULIET. Is there no pity sitting in the clouds, That sees into the bottom of my grief? O sweet my mother, cast me not away, Delay this marriage for a month, a week, Or, if you do not, make the bridal bed In that dim monument where Tybalt lies.

LADY CAPULET. Talk not to me, for I’ll not speak a word. Do as thou wilt, for I have done with thee.

JULIET. O God! O Nurse, how shall this be prevented? My husband is on earth, my faith in heaven. How shall that faith return again to earth, Unless that husband send it me from heaven By leaving earth? Comfort me, counsel me. Alack, alack, that heaven should practise stratagems Upon so soft a subject as myself. What say’st thou? Hast thou not a word of joy? Some comfort, Nurse.

NURSE. Faith, here it is. Romeo is banished; and all the world to nothing That he dares ne’er come back to challenge you. Or if he do, it needs must be by stealth. Then, since the case so stands as now it doth, I think it best you married with the County. O, he’s a lovely gentleman. Romeo’s a dishclout to him. An eagle, madam, Hath not so green, so quick, so fair an eye As Paris hath. Beshrew my very heart, I think you are happy in this second match, For it excels your first: or if it did not, Your first is dead, or ’twere as good he were, As living here and you no use of him.

JULIET. Speakest thou from thy heart?

NURSE. And from my soul too, Or else beshrew them both.

JULIET. Amen.

NURSE. What?

JULIET. Well, thou hast comforted me marvellous much. Go in, and tell my lady I am gone, Having displeas’d my father, to Lawrence’ cell, To make confession and to be absolv’d.

NURSE. Marry, I will; and this is wisely done.

JULIET. Ancient damnation! O most wicked fiend! Is it more sin to wish me thus forsworn, Or to dispraise my lord with that same tongue Which she hath prais’d him with above compare So many thousand times? Go, counsellor. Thou and my bosom henceforth shall be twain. I’ll to the Friar to know his remedy. If all else fail, myself have power to die.

SCENE I. Friar Lawrence’s Cell.

Enter Friar Lawrence and Paris.

FRIAR LAWRENCE. On Thursday, sir? The time is very short.

PARIS. My father Capulet will have it so; And I am nothing slow to slack his haste.

FRIAR LAWRENCE. You say you do not know the lady’s mind. Uneven is the course; I like it not.

PARIS. Immoderately she weeps for Tybalt’s death, And therefore have I little talk’d of love; For Venus smiles not in a house of tears. Now, sir, her father counts it dangerous That she do give her sorrow so much sway; And in his wisdom, hastes our marriage, To stop the inundation of her tears, Which, too much minded by herself alone, May be put from her by society. Now do you know the reason of this haste.

FRIAR LAWRENCE. [Aside.] I would I knew not why it should be slow’d.— Look, sir, here comes the lady toward my cell.

PARIS. Happily met, my lady and my wife!

JULIET. That may be, sir, when I may be a wife.

PARIS. That may be, must be, love, on Thursday next.

JULIET. What must be shall be.

FRIAR LAWRENCE. That’s a certain text.

PARIS. Come you to make confession to this father?

JULIET. To answer that, I should confess to you.

PARIS. Do not deny to him that you love me.

JULIET. I will confess to you that I love him.

PARIS. So will ye, I am sure, that you love me.

JULIET. If I do so, it will be of more price, Being spoke behind your back than to your face.

PARIS. Poor soul, thy face is much abus’d with tears.

JULIET. The tears have got small victory by that; For it was bad enough before their spite.

PARIS. Thou wrong’st it more than tears with that report.

JULIET. That is no slander, sir, which is a truth, And what I spake, I spake it to my face.

PARIS. Thy face is mine, and thou hast slander’d it.

JULIET. It may be so, for it is not mine own. Are you at leisure, holy father, now, Or shall I come to you at evening mass?

FRIAR LAWRENCE. My leisure serves me, pensive daughter, now.— My lord, we must entreat the time alone.

PARIS. God shield I should disturb devotion!— Juliet, on Thursday early will I rouse ye, Till then, adieu; and keep this holy kiss.

JULIET. O shut the door, and when thou hast done so, Come weep with me, past hope, past cure, past help!

FRIAR LAWRENCE. O Juliet, I already know thy grief; It strains me past the compass of my wits. I hear thou must, and nothing may prorogue it, On Thursday next be married to this County.

JULIET. Tell me not, Friar, that thou hear’st of this, Unless thou tell me how I may prevent it. If in thy wisdom, thou canst give no help, Do thou but call my resolution wise, And with this knife I’ll help it presently. God join’d my heart and Romeo’s, thou our hands; And ere this hand, by thee to Romeo’s seal’d, Shall be the label to another deed, Or my true heart with treacherous revolt Turn to another, this shall slay them both. Therefore, out of thy long-experienc’d time, Give me some present counsel, or behold ’Twixt my extremes and me this bloody knife Shall play the empire, arbitrating that Which the commission of thy years and art Could to no issue of true honour bring. Be not so long to speak. I long to die, If what thou speak’st speak not of remedy.

FRIAR LAWRENCE. Hold, daughter. I do spy a kind of hope, Which craves as desperate an execution As that is desperate which we would prevent. If, rather than to marry County Paris Thou hast the strength of will to slay thyself, Then is it likely thou wilt undertake A thing like death to chide away this shame, That cop’st with death himself to scape from it. And if thou dar’st, I’ll give thee remedy.

JULIET. O, bid me leap, rather than marry Paris, From off the battlements of yonder tower, Or walk in thievish ways, or bid me lurk Where serpents are. Chain me with roaring bears; Or hide me nightly in a charnel-house, O’er-cover’d quite with dead men’s rattling bones, With reeky shanks and yellow chapless skulls. Or bid me go into a new-made grave, And hide me with a dead man in his shroud; Things that, to hear them told, have made me tremble, And I will do it without fear or doubt, To live an unstain’d wife to my sweet love.

FRIAR LAWRENCE. Hold then. Go home, be merry, give consent To marry Paris. Wednesday is tomorrow; Tomorrow night look that thou lie alone, Let not thy Nurse lie with thee in thy chamber. Take thou this vial, being then in bed, And this distilled liquor drink thou off, When presently through all thy veins shall run A cold and drowsy humour; for no pulse Shall keep his native progress, but surcease. No warmth, no breath shall testify thou livest, The roses in thy lips and cheeks shall fade To paly ashes; thy eyes’ windows fall, Like death when he shuts up the day of life. Each part depriv’d of supple government, Shall stiff and stark and cold appear like death. And in this borrow’d likeness of shrunk death Thou shalt continue two and forty hours, And then awake as from a pleasant sleep. Now when the bridegroom in the morning comes To rouse thee from thy bed, there art thou dead. Then as the manner of our country is, In thy best robes, uncover’d, on the bier, Thou shalt be borne to that same ancient vault Where all the kindred of the Capulets lie. In the meantime, against thou shalt awake, Shall Romeo by my letters know our drift, And hither shall he come, and he and I Will watch thy waking, and that very night Shall Romeo bear thee hence to Mantua. And this shall free thee from this present shame, If no inconstant toy nor womanish fear Abate thy valour in the acting it.

JULIET. Give me, give me! O tell not me of fear!

FRIAR LAWRENCE. Hold; get you gone, be strong and prosperous In this resolve. I’ll send a friar with speed To Mantua, with my letters to thy lord.

JULIET. Love give me strength, and strength shall help afford. Farewell, dear father.

SCENE II. Hall in Capulet’s House.

Enter Capulet, Lady Capulet, Nurse and Servants.

CAPULET. So many guests invite as here are writ.

[Exit first Servant.]

Sirrah, go hire me twenty cunning cooks.

SECOND SERVANT. You shall have none ill, sir; for I’ll try if they can lick their fingers.

CAPULET. How canst thou try them so?

SECOND SERVANT. Marry, sir, ’tis an ill cook that cannot lick his own fingers; therefore he that cannot lick his fingers goes not with me.

CAPULET. Go, begone.

[Exit second Servant.]

We shall be much unfurnish’d for this time. What, is my daughter gone to Friar Lawrence?

NURSE. Ay, forsooth.

CAPULET. Well, he may chance to do some good on her. A peevish self-will’d harlotry it is.

NURSE. See where she comes from shrift with merry look.

CAPULET. How now, my headstrong. Where have you been gadding?

JULIET. Where I have learnt me to repent the sin Of disobedient opposition To you and your behests; and am enjoin’d By holy Lawrence to fall prostrate here, To beg your pardon. Pardon, I beseech you. Henceforward I am ever rul’d by you.

CAPULET. Send for the County, go tell him of this. I’ll have this knot knit up tomorrow morning.

JULIET. I met the youthful lord at Lawrence’ cell, And gave him what becomed love I might, Not stepping o’er the bounds of modesty.

CAPULET. Why, I am glad on’t. This is well. Stand up. This is as’t should be. Let me see the County. Ay, marry. Go, I say, and fetch him hither. Now afore God, this reverend holy Friar, All our whole city is much bound to him.

JULIET. Nurse, will you go with me into my closet, To help me sort such needful ornaments As you think fit to furnish me tomorrow?

LADY CAPULET. No, not till Thursday. There is time enough.

CAPULET. Go, Nurse, go with her. We’ll to church tomorrow.

[Exeunt Juliet and Nurse.]

LADY CAPULET. We shall be short in our provision, ’Tis now near night.

CAPULET. Tush, I will stir about, And all things shall be well, I warrant thee, wife. Go thou to Juliet, help to deck up her. I’ll not to bed tonight, let me alone. I’ll play the housewife for this once.—What, ho!— They are all forth: well, I will walk myself To County Paris, to prepare him up Against tomorrow. My heart is wondrous light Since this same wayward girl is so reclaim’d.

SCENE III. Juliet’s Chamber.

Enter Juliet and Nurse.

JULIET. Ay, those attires are best. But, gentle Nurse, I pray thee leave me to myself tonight; For I have need of many orisons To move the heavens to smile upon my state, Which, well thou know’st, is cross and full of sin.

LADY CAPULET. What, are you busy, ho? Need you my help?

JULIET. No, madam; we have cull’d such necessaries As are behoveful for our state tomorrow. So please you, let me now be left alone, And let the nurse this night sit up with you, For I am sure you have your hands full all In this so sudden business.

LADY CAPULET. Good night. Get thee to bed and rest, for thou hast need.

[Exeunt Lady Capulet and Nurse.]

JULIET. Farewell. God knows when we shall meet again. I have a faint cold fear thrills through my veins That almost freezes up the heat of life. I’ll call them back again to comfort me. Nurse!—What should she do here? My dismal scene I needs must act alone. Come, vial. What if this mixture do not work at all? Shall I be married then tomorrow morning? No, No! This shall forbid it. Lie thou there.

[Laying down her dagger.]

What if it be a poison, which the Friar Subtly hath minister’d to have me dead, Lest in this marriage he should be dishonour’d, Because he married me before to Romeo? I fear it is. And yet methinks it should not, For he hath still been tried a holy man. How if, when I am laid into the tomb, I wake before the time that Romeo Come to redeem me? There’s a fearful point! Shall I not then be stifled in the vault, To whose foul mouth no healthsome air breathes in, And there die strangled ere my Romeo comes? Or, if I live, is it not very like, The horrible conceit of death and night, Together with the terror of the place, As in a vault, an ancient receptacle, Where for this many hundred years the bones Of all my buried ancestors are pack’d, Where bloody Tybalt, yet but green in earth, Lies festering in his shroud; where, as they say, At some hours in the night spirits resort— Alack, alack, is it not like that I, So early waking, what with loathsome smells, And shrieks like mandrakes torn out of the earth, That living mortals, hearing them, run mad. O, if I wake, shall I not be distraught, Environed with all these hideous fears, And madly play with my forefathers’ joints? And pluck the mangled Tybalt from his shroud? And, in this rage, with some great kinsman’s bone, As with a club, dash out my desperate brains? O look, methinks I see my cousin’s ghost Seeking out Romeo that did spit his body Upon a rapier’s point. Stay, Tybalt, stay! Romeo, Romeo, Romeo, here’s drink! I drink to thee.

[Throws herself on the bed.]

SCENE IV. Hall in Capulet’s House.

LADY CAPULET. Hold, take these keys and fetch more spices, Nurse.

NURSE. They call for dates and quinces in the pastry.

Enter Capulet.

CAPULET. Come, stir, stir, stir! The second cock hath crow’d, The curfew bell hath rung, ’tis three o’clock. Look to the bak’d meats, good Angelica; Spare not for cost.

NURSE. Go, you cot-quean, go, Get you to bed; faith, you’ll be sick tomorrow For this night’s watching.

CAPULET. No, not a whit. What! I have watch’d ere now All night for lesser cause, and ne’er been sick.

LADY CAPULET. Ay, you have been a mouse-hunt in your time; But I will watch you from such watching now.

CAPULET. A jealous-hood, a jealous-hood!

Enter Servants, with spits, logs and baskets.

Now, fellow, what’s there?

FIRST SERVANT. Things for the cook, sir; but I know not what.

CAPULET. Make haste, make haste.

[Exit First Servant.]

—Sirrah, fetch drier logs. Call Peter, he will show thee where they are.

SECOND SERVANT. I have a head, sir, that will find out logs And never trouble Peter for the matter.

CAPULET. Mass and well said; a merry whoreson, ha. Thou shalt be loggerhead.—Good faith, ’tis day. The County will be here with music straight, For so he said he would. I hear him near.

[Play music.]

Nurse! Wife! What, ho! What, Nurse, I say!

Re-enter Nurse.

Go waken Juliet, go and trim her up. I’ll go and chat with Paris. Hie, make haste, Make haste; the bridegroom he is come already. Make haste I say.

SCENE V. Juliet’s Chamber; Juliet on the bed.

NURSE. Mistress! What, mistress! Juliet! Fast, I warrant her, she. Why, lamb, why, lady, fie, you slug-abed! Why, love, I say! Madam! Sweetheart! Why, bride! What, not a word? You take your pennyworths now. Sleep for a week; for the next night, I warrant, The County Paris hath set up his rest That you shall rest but little. God forgive me! Marry and amen. How sound is she asleep! I needs must wake her. Madam, madam, madam! Ay, let the County take you in your bed, He’ll fright you up, i’faith. Will it not be? What, dress’d, and in your clothes, and down again? I must needs wake you. Lady! Lady! Lady! Alas, alas! Help, help! My lady’s dead! O, well-a-day that ever I was born. Some aqua vitae, ho! My lord! My lady!

LADY CAPULET. What noise is here?

NURSE. O lamentable day!

LADY CAPULET. What is the matter?

NURSE. Look, look! O heavy day!

LADY CAPULET. O me, O me! My child, my only life. Revive, look up, or I will die with thee. Help, help! Call help.

CAPULET. For shame, bring Juliet forth, her lord is come.

NURSE. She’s dead, deceas’d, she’s dead; alack the day!

LADY CAPULET. Alack the day, she’s dead, she’s dead, she’s dead!

CAPULET. Ha! Let me see her. Out alas! She’s cold, Her blood is settled and her joints are stiff. Life and these lips have long been separated. Death lies on her like an untimely frost Upon the sweetest flower of all the field.

LADY CAPULET. O woful time!

CAPULET. Death, that hath ta’en her hence to make me wail, Ties up my tongue and will not let me speak.

Enter Friar Lawrence and Paris with Musicians.

FRIAR LAWRENCE. Come, is the bride ready to go to church?

CAPULET. Ready to go, but never to return. O son, the night before thy wedding day Hath death lain with thy bride. There she lies, Flower as she was, deflowered by him. Death is my son-in-law, death is my heir; My daughter he hath wedded. I will die And leave him all; life, living, all is death’s.

PARIS. Have I thought long to see this morning’s face, And doth it give me such a sight as this?

LADY CAPULET. Accurs’d, unhappy, wretched, hateful day. Most miserable hour that e’er time saw In lasting labour of his pilgrimage. But one, poor one, one poor and loving child, But one thing to rejoice and solace in, And cruel death hath catch’d it from my sight.

NURSE. O woe! O woeful, woeful, woeful day. Most lamentable day, most woeful day That ever, ever, I did yet behold! O day, O day, O day, O hateful day. Never was seen so black a day as this. O woeful day, O woeful day.

PARIS. Beguil’d, divorced, wronged, spited, slain. Most detestable death, by thee beguil’d, By cruel, cruel thee quite overthrown. O love! O life! Not life, but love in death!

CAPULET. Despis’d, distressed, hated, martyr’d, kill’d. Uncomfortable time, why cam’st thou now To murder, murder our solemnity? O child! O child! My soul, and not my child, Dead art thou. Alack, my child is dead, And with my child my joys are buried.

FRIAR LAWRENCE. Peace, ho, for shame. Confusion’s cure lives not In these confusions. Heaven and yourself Had part in this fair maid, now heaven hath all, And all the better is it for the maid. Your part in her you could not keep from death, But heaven keeps his part in eternal life. The most you sought was her promotion, For ’twas your heaven she should be advanc’d, And weep ye now, seeing she is advanc’d Above the clouds, as high as heaven itself? O, in this love, you love your child so ill That you run mad, seeing that she is well. She’s not well married that lives married long, But she’s best married that dies married young. Dry up your tears, and stick your rosemary On this fair corse, and, as the custom is, And in her best array bear her to church; For though fond nature bids us all lament, Yet nature’s tears are reason’s merriment.

CAPULET. All things that we ordained festival Turn from their office to black funeral: Our instruments to melancholy bells, Our wedding cheer to a sad burial feast; Our solemn hymns to sullen dirges change; Our bridal flowers serve for a buried corse, And all things change them to the contrary.

FRIAR LAWRENCE. Sir, go you in, and, madam, go with him, And go, Sir Paris, everyone prepare To follow this fair corse unto her grave. The heavens do lower upon you for some ill; Move them no more by crossing their high will.

[Exeunt Capulet, Lady Capulet, Paris and Friar.]

FIRST MUSICIAN. Faith, we may put up our pipes and be gone.

NURSE. Honest good fellows, ah, put up, put up, For well you know this is a pitiful case.

FIRST MUSICIAN. Ay, by my troth, the case may be amended.

[Exit Nurse.]

Enter Peter.

PETER. Musicians, O, musicians, ‘Heart’s ease,’ ‘Heart’s ease’, O, and you will have me live, play ‘Heart’s ease.’

FIRST MUSICIAN. Why ‘Heart’s ease’?

PETER. O musicians, because my heart itself plays ‘My heart is full’. O play me some merry dump to comfort me.

FIRST MUSICIAN. Not a dump we, ’tis no time to play now.

PETER. You will not then?

FIRST MUSICIAN. No.

PETER. I will then give it you soundly.

FIRST MUSICIAN. What will you give us?

PETER. No money, on my faith, but the gleek! I will give you the minstrel.

FIRST MUSICIAN. Then will I give you the serving-creature.

PETER. Then will I lay the serving-creature’s dagger on your pate. I will carry no crotchets. I’ll re you, I’ll fa you. Do you note me?

FIRST MUSICIAN. And you re us and fa us, you note us.

SECOND MUSICIAN. Pray you put up your dagger, and put out your wit.

PETER. Then have at you with my wit. I will dry-beat you with an iron wit, and put up my iron dagger. Answer me like men. ‘When griping griefs the heart doth wound, And doleful dumps the mind oppress, Then music with her silver sound’— Why ‘silver sound’? Why ‘music with her silver sound’? What say you, Simon Catling?

FIRST MUSICIAN. Marry, sir, because silver hath a sweet sound.

PETER. Prates. What say you, Hugh Rebeck?

SECOND MUSICIAN. I say ‘silver sound’ because musicians sound for silver.

PETER. Prates too! What say you, James Soundpost?

THIRD MUSICIAN. Faith, I know not what to say.

PETER. O, I cry you mercy, you are the singer. I will say for you. It is ‘music with her silver sound’ because musicians have no gold for sounding. ‘Then music with her silver sound With speedy help doth lend redress.’

FIRST MUSICIAN. What a pestilent knave is this same!

SECOND MUSICIAN. Hang him, Jack. Come, we’ll in here, tarry for the mourners, and stay dinner.

SCENE I. Mantua. A Street.

ROMEO. If I may trust the flattering eye of sleep, My dreams presage some joyful news at hand. My bosom’s lord sits lightly in his throne; And all this day an unaccustom’d spirit Lifts me above the ground with cheerful thoughts. I dreamt my lady came and found me dead,— Strange dream, that gives a dead man leave to think!— And breath’d such life with kisses in my lips, That I reviv’d, and was an emperor. Ah me, how sweet is love itself possess’d, When but love’s shadows are so rich in joy.

Enter Balthasar.

News from Verona! How now, Balthasar? Dost thou not bring me letters from the Friar? How doth my lady? Is my father well? How fares my Juliet? That I ask again; For nothing can be ill if she be well.

BALTHASAR. Then she is well, and nothing can be ill. Her body sleeps in Capel’s monument, And her immortal part with angels lives. I saw her laid low in her kindred’s vault, And presently took post to tell it you. O pardon me for bringing these ill news, Since you did leave it for my office, sir.

ROMEO. Is it even so? Then I defy you, stars! Thou know’st my lodging. Get me ink and paper, And hire post-horses. I will hence tonight.

BALTHASAR. I do beseech you sir, have patience. Your looks are pale and wild, and do import Some misadventure.

ROMEO. Tush, thou art deceiv’d. Leave me, and do the thing I bid thee do. Hast thou no letters to me from the Friar?

BALTHASAR. No, my good lord.

ROMEO. No matter. Get thee gone, And hire those horses. I’ll be with thee straight.

[Exit Balthasar.]

Well, Juliet, I will lie with thee tonight. Let’s see for means. O mischief thou art swift To enter in the thoughts of desperate men. I do remember an apothecary,— And hereabouts he dwells,—which late I noted In tatter’d weeds, with overwhelming brows, Culling of simples, meagre were his looks, Sharp misery had worn him to the bones; And in his needy shop a tortoise hung, An alligator stuff’d, and other skins Of ill-shaped fishes; and about his shelves A beggarly account of empty boxes, Green earthen pots, bladders, and musty seeds, Remnants of packthread, and old cakes of roses Were thinly scatter’d, to make up a show. Noting this penury, to myself I said, And if a man did need a poison now, Whose sale is present death in Mantua, Here lives a caitiff wretch would sell it him. O, this same thought did but forerun my need, And this same needy man must sell it me. As I remember, this should be the house. Being holiday, the beggar’s shop is shut. What, ho! Apothecary!

Enter Apothecary.

APOTHECARY. Who calls so loud?

ROMEO. Come hither, man. I see that thou art poor. Hold, there is forty ducats. Let me have A dram of poison, such soon-speeding gear As will disperse itself through all the veins, That the life-weary taker may fall dead, And that the trunk may be discharg’d of breath As violently as hasty powder fir’d Doth hurry from the fatal cannon’s womb.

APOTHECARY. Such mortal drugs I have, but Mantua’s law Is death to any he that utters them.

ROMEO. Art thou so bare and full of wretchedness, And fear’st to die? Famine is in thy cheeks, Need and oppression starveth in thine eyes, Contempt and beggary hangs upon thy back. The world is not thy friend, nor the world’s law; The world affords no law to make thee rich; Then be not poor, but break it and take this.

APOTHECARY. My poverty, but not my will consents.

ROMEO. I pay thy poverty, and not thy will.

APOTHECARY. Put this in any liquid thing you will And drink it off; and, if you had the strength Of twenty men, it would despatch you straight.

ROMEO. There is thy gold, worse poison to men’s souls, Doing more murder in this loathsome world Than these poor compounds that thou mayst not sell. I sell thee poison, thou hast sold me none. Farewell, buy food, and get thyself in flesh. Come, cordial and not poison, go with me To Juliet’s grave, for there must I use thee.

SCENE II. Friar Lawrence’s Cell.

Enter Friar John.

FRIAR JOHN. Holy Franciscan Friar! Brother, ho!

FRIAR LAWRENCE. This same should be the voice of Friar John. Welcome from Mantua. What says Romeo? Or, if his mind be writ, give me his letter.

FRIAR JOHN. Going to find a barefoot brother out, One of our order, to associate me, Here in this city visiting the sick, And finding him, the searchers of the town, Suspecting that we both were in a house Where the infectious pestilence did reign, Seal’d up the doors, and would not let us forth, So that my speed to Mantua there was stay’d.

FRIAR LAWRENCE. Who bare my letter then to Romeo?

FRIAR JOHN. I could not send it,—here it is again,— Nor get a messenger to bring it thee, So fearful were they of infection.

FRIAR LAWRENCE. Unhappy fortune! By my brotherhood, The letter was not nice, but full of charge, Of dear import, and the neglecting it May do much danger. Friar John, go hence, Get me an iron crow and bring it straight Unto my cell.

FRIAR JOHN. Brother, I’ll go and bring it thee.

FRIAR LAWRENCE. Now must I to the monument alone. Within this three hours will fair Juliet wake. She will beshrew me much that Romeo Hath had no notice of these accidents; But I will write again to Mantua, And keep her at my cell till Romeo come. Poor living corse, clos’d in a dead man’s tomb.

SCENE III. A churchyard; in it a Monument belonging to the Capulets.

Enter Paris, and his Page bearing flowers and a torch.

PARIS. Give me thy torch, boy. Hence and stand aloof. Yet put it out, for I would not be seen. Under yond yew tree lay thee all along, Holding thy ear close to the hollow ground; So shall no foot upon the churchyard tread, Being loose, unfirm, with digging up of graves, But thou shalt hear it. Whistle then to me, As signal that thou hear’st something approach. Give me those flowers. Do as I bid thee, go.

PAGE. [Aside.] I am almost afraid to stand alone Here in the churchyard; yet I will adventure.

PARIS. Sweet flower, with flowers thy bridal bed I strew. O woe, thy canopy is dust and stones, Which with sweet water nightly I will dew, Or wanting that, with tears distill’d by moans. The obsequies that I for thee will keep, Nightly shall be to strew thy grave and weep.

[The Page whistles.]

The boy gives warning something doth approach. What cursed foot wanders this way tonight, To cross my obsequies and true love’s rite? What, with a torch! Muffle me, night, awhile.

Enter Romeo and Balthasar with a torch, mattock, &c.

ROMEO. Give me that mattock and the wrenching iron. Hold, take this letter; early in the morning See thou deliver it to my lord and father. Give me the light; upon thy life I charge thee, Whate’er thou hear’st or seest, stand all aloof And do not interrupt me in my course. Why I descend into this bed of death Is partly to behold my lady’s face, But chiefly to take thence from her dead finger A precious ring, a ring that I must use In dear employment. Therefore hence, be gone. But if thou jealous dost return to pry In what I further shall intend to do, By heaven I will tear thee joint by joint, And strew this hungry churchyard with thy limbs. The time and my intents are savage-wild; More fierce and more inexorable far Than empty tigers or the roaring sea.

BALTHASAR. I will be gone, sir, and not trouble you.

ROMEO. So shalt thou show me friendship. Take thou that. Live, and be prosperous, and farewell, good fellow.

BALTHASAR. For all this same, I’ll hide me hereabout. His looks I fear, and his intents I doubt.

[Retires]

ROMEO. Thou detestable maw, thou womb of death, Gorg’d with the dearest morsel of the earth, Thus I enforce thy rotten jaws to open,

[Breaking open the door of the monument.]

And in despite, I’ll cram thee with more food.

PARIS. This is that banish’d haughty Montague That murder’d my love’s cousin,—with which grief, It is supposed, the fair creature died,— And here is come to do some villainous shame To the dead bodies. I will apprehend him.

[Advances.]

Stop thy unhallow’d toil, vile Montague. Can vengeance be pursu’d further than death? Condemned villain, I do apprehend thee. Obey, and go with me, for thou must die.

ROMEO. I must indeed; and therefore came I hither. Good gentle youth, tempt not a desperate man. Fly hence and leave me. Think upon these gone; Let them affright thee. I beseech thee, youth, Put not another sin upon my head By urging me to fury. O be gone. By heaven I love thee better than myself; For I come hither arm’d against myself. Stay not, be gone, live, and hereafter say, A madman’s mercy bid thee run away.

PARIS. I do defy thy conjuration, And apprehend thee for a felon here.

ROMEO. Wilt thou provoke me? Then have at thee, boy!

PAGE. O lord, they fight! I will go call the watch.

PARIS. O, I am slain! [Falls.] If thou be merciful, Open the tomb, lay me with Juliet.

ROMEO. In faith, I will. Let me peruse this face. Mercutio’s kinsman, noble County Paris! What said my man, when my betossed soul Did not attend him as we rode? I think He told me Paris should have married Juliet. Said he not so? Or did I dream it so? Or am I mad, hearing him talk of Juliet, To think it was so? O, give me thy hand, One writ with me in sour misfortune’s book. I’ll bury thee in a triumphant grave. A grave? O no, a lantern, slaught’red youth, For here lies Juliet, and her beauty makes This vault a feasting presence full of light. Death, lie thou there, by a dead man interr’d.

[Laying Paris in the monument.]

How oft when men are at the point of death Have they been merry! Which their keepers call A lightning before death. O, how may I Call this a lightning? O my love, my wife, Death that hath suck’d the honey of thy breath, Hath had no power yet upon thy beauty. Thou art not conquer’d. Beauty’s ensign yet Is crimson in thy lips and in thy cheeks, And death’s pale flag is not advanced there. Tybalt, liest thou there in thy bloody sheet? O, what more favour can I do to thee Than with that hand that cut thy youth in twain To sunder his that was thine enemy? Forgive me, cousin. Ah, dear Juliet, Why art thou yet so fair? Shall I believe That unsubstantial death is amorous; And that the lean abhorred monster keeps Thee here in dark to be his paramour? For fear of that I still will stay with thee, And never from this palace of dim night Depart again. Here, here will I remain With worms that are thy chambermaids. O, here Will I set up my everlasting rest; And shake the yoke of inauspicious stars From this world-wearied flesh. Eyes, look your last. Arms, take your last embrace! And, lips, O you The doors of breath, seal with a righteous kiss A dateless bargain to engrossing death. Come, bitter conduct, come, unsavoury guide. Thou desperate pilot, now at once run on The dashing rocks thy sea-sick weary bark. Here’s to my love! [Drinks.] O true apothecary! Thy drugs are quick. Thus with a kiss I die.

Enter, at the other end of the Churchyard, Friar Lawrence, with a lantern, crow, and spade.

FRIAR LAWRENCE. Saint Francis be my speed. How oft tonight Have my old feet stumbled at graves? Who’s there? Who is it that consorts, so late, the dead?

BALTHASAR. Here’s one, a friend, and one that knows you well.

FRIAR LAWRENCE. Bliss be upon you. Tell me, good my friend, What torch is yond that vainly lends his light To grubs and eyeless skulls? As I discern, It burneth in the Capels’ monument.

BALTHASAR. It doth so, holy sir, and there’s my master, One that you love.

FRIAR LAWRENCE. Who is it?

BALTHASAR. Romeo.

FRIAR LAWRENCE. How long hath he been there?

BALTHASAR. Full half an hour.

FRIAR LAWRENCE. Go with me to the vault.

BALTHASAR. I dare not, sir; My master knows not but I am gone hence, And fearfully did menace me with death If I did stay to look on his intents.

FRIAR LAWRENCE. Stay then, I’ll go alone. Fear comes upon me. O, much I fear some ill unlucky thing.

BALTHASAR. As I did sleep under this yew tree here, I dreamt my master and another fought, And that my master slew him.

FRIAR LAWRENCE. Romeo! [Advances.] Alack, alack, what blood is this which stains The stony entrance of this sepulchre? What mean these masterless and gory swords To lie discolour’d by this place of peace?

[Enters the monument.]

Romeo! O, pale! Who else? What, Paris too? And steep’d in blood? Ah what an unkind hour Is guilty of this lamentable chance? The lady stirs.

[Juliet wakes and stirs.]

JULIET. O comfortable Friar, where is my lord? I do remember well where I should be, And there I am. Where is my Romeo?

[Noise within.]

FRIAR LAWRENCE. I hear some noise. Lady, come from that nest Of death, contagion, and unnatural sleep. A greater power than we can contradict Hath thwarted our intents. Come, come away. Thy husband in thy bosom there lies dead; And Paris too. Come, I’ll dispose of thee Among a sisterhood of holy nuns. Stay not to question, for the watch is coming. Come, go, good Juliet. I dare no longer stay.

JULIET. Go, get thee hence, for I will not away.

[Exit Friar Lawrence.]

What’s here? A cup clos’d in my true love’s hand? Poison, I see, hath been his timeless end. O churl. Drink all, and left no friendly drop To help me after? I will kiss thy lips. Haply some poison yet doth hang on them, To make me die with a restorative.

[Kisses him.]

Thy lips are warm!

FIRST WATCH. [Within.] Lead, boy. Which way?

JULIET. Yea, noise? Then I’ll be brief. O happy dagger.

[Snatching Romeo’s dagger.]

This is thy sheath. [stabs herself] There rest, and let me die.

[Falls on Romeo’s body and dies.]

Enter Watch with the Page of Paris.

PAGE. This is the place. There, where the torch doth burn.

FIRST WATCH. The ground is bloody. Search about the churchyard. Go, some of you, whoe’er you find attach.

[Exeunt some of the Watch.]

Pitiful sight! Here lies the County slain, And Juliet bleeding, warm, and newly dead, Who here hath lain this two days buried. Go tell the Prince; run to the Capulets. Raise up the Montagues, some others search.

[Exeunt others of the Watch.]

We see the ground whereon these woes do lie, But the true ground of all these piteous woes We cannot without circumstance descry.

Re-enter some of the Watch with Balthasar.

SECOND WATCH. Here’s Romeo’s man. We found him in the churchyard.

FIRST WATCH. Hold him in safety till the Prince come hither.

Re-enter others of the Watch with Friar Lawrence.

THIRD WATCH. Here is a Friar that trembles, sighs, and weeps. We took this mattock and this spade from him As he was coming from this churchyard side.

FIRST WATCH. A great suspicion. Stay the Friar too.

Enter the Prince and Attendants.

PRINCE. What misadventure is so early up, That calls our person from our morning’s rest?

Enter Capulet, Lady Capulet and others.

CAPULET. What should it be that they so shriek abroad?

LADY CAPULET. O the people in the street cry Romeo, Some Juliet, and some Paris, and all run With open outcry toward our monument.

PRINCE. What fear is this which startles in our ears?

FIRST WATCH. Sovereign, here lies the County Paris slain, And Romeo dead, and Juliet, dead before, Warm and new kill’d.

PRINCE. Search, seek, and know how this foul murder comes.

FIRST WATCH. Here is a Friar, and slaughter’d Romeo’s man, With instruments upon them fit to open These dead men’s tombs.

CAPULET. O heaven! O wife, look how our daughter bleeds! This dagger hath mista’en, for lo, his house Is empty on the back of Montague, And it mis-sheathed in my daughter’s bosom.

LADY CAPULET. O me! This sight of death is as a bell That warns my old age to a sepulchre.

Enter Montague and others.

PRINCE. Come, Montague, for thou art early up, To see thy son and heir more early down.

MONTAGUE. Alas, my liege, my wife is dead tonight. Grief of my son’s exile hath stopp’d her breath. What further woe conspires against mine age?

PRINCE. Look, and thou shalt see.

MONTAGUE. O thou untaught! What manners is in this, To press before thy father to a grave?

PRINCE. Seal up the mouth of outrage for a while, Till we can clear these ambiguities, And know their spring, their head, their true descent, And then will I be general of your woes, And lead you even to death. Meantime forbear, And let mischance be slave to patience. Bring forth the parties of suspicion.

FRIAR LAWRENCE. I am the greatest, able to do least, Yet most suspected, as the time and place Doth make against me, of this direful murder. And here I stand, both to impeach and purge Myself condemned and myself excus’d.

PRINCE. Then say at once what thou dost know in this.

FRIAR LAWRENCE. I will be brief, for my short date of breath Is not so long as is a tedious tale. Romeo, there dead, was husband to that Juliet, And she, there dead, that Romeo’s faithful wife. I married them; and their stol’n marriage day Was Tybalt’s doomsday, whose untimely death Banish’d the new-made bridegroom from this city; For whom, and not for Tybalt, Juliet pin’d. You, to remove that siege of grief from her, Betroth’d, and would have married her perforce To County Paris. Then comes she to me, And with wild looks, bid me devise some means To rid her from this second marriage, Or in my cell there would she kill herself. Then gave I her, so tutored by my art, A sleeping potion, which so took effect As I intended, for it wrought on her The form of death. Meantime I writ to Romeo That he should hither come as this dire night To help to take her from her borrow’d grave, Being the time the potion’s force should cease. But he which bore my letter, Friar John, Was stay’d by accident; and yesternight Return’d my letter back. Then all alone At the prefixed hour of her waking Came I to take her from her kindred’s vault, Meaning to keep her closely at my cell Till I conveniently could send to Romeo. But when I came, some minute ere the time Of her awaking, here untimely lay The noble Paris and true Romeo dead. She wakes; and I entreated her come forth And bear this work of heaven with patience. But then a noise did scare me from the tomb; And she, too desperate, would not go with me, But, as it seems, did violence on herself. All this I know; and to the marriage Her Nurse is privy. And if ought in this Miscarried by my fault, let my old life Be sacrific’d, some hour before his time, Unto the rigour of severest law.

PRINCE. We still have known thee for a holy man. Where’s Romeo’s man? What can he say to this?

BALTHASAR. I brought my master news of Juliet’s death, And then in post he came from Mantua To this same place, to this same monument. This letter he early bid me give his father, And threaten’d me with death, going in the vault, If I departed not, and left him there.

PRINCE. Give me the letter, I will look on it. Where is the County’s Page that rais’d the watch? Sirrah, what made your master in this place?

PAGE. He came with flowers to strew his lady’s grave, And bid me stand aloof, and so I did. Anon comes one with light to ope the tomb, And by and by my master drew on him, And then I ran away to call the watch.

PRINCE. This letter doth make good the Friar’s words, Their course of love, the tidings of her death. And here he writes that he did buy a poison Of a poor ’pothecary, and therewithal Came to this vault to die, and lie with Juliet. Where be these enemies? Capulet, Montague, See what a scourge is laid upon your hate, That heaven finds means to kill your joys with love! And I, for winking at your discords too, Have lost a brace of kinsmen. All are punish’d.

CAPULET. O brother Montague, give me thy hand. This is my daughter’s jointure, for no more Can I demand.

MONTAGUE. But I can give thee more, For I will raise her statue in pure gold, That whiles Verona by that name is known, There shall no figure at such rate be set As that of true and faithful Juliet.

CAPULET. As rich shall Romeo’s by his lady’s lie, Poor sacrifices of our enmity.

PRINCE. A glooming peace this morning with it brings; The sun for sorrow will not show his head. Go hence, to have more talk of these sad things. Some shall be pardon’d, and some punished, For never was a story of more woe Than this of Juliet and her Romeo.

THE TAMING OF THE SHREW

INDUCTION Scene I. Before an alehouse on a heath. Scene II. A bedchamber in the Lord’s house.

ACT I Scene I. Padua. A public place. Scene II. Padua. Before Hortensio’s house.

ACT II Scene I. Padua. A room in Baptista’s house.

ACT III Scene I. Padua. A room in Baptista’s house. Scene II. The same. Before Baptista’s house.

ACT IV Scene I. A hall in Petruchio’s country house. Scene II. Padua. Before Baptista’s house. Scene III. A room in Petruchio’s house. Scene IV. Before Baptista’s house. Scene V. A public road.

ACT V Scene I. Padua. Before Lucentio’s house. Scene II. A room in Lucentio’s house.

Persons in the Induction A LORD CHRISTOPHER SLY, a tinker HOSTESS PAGE PLAYERS HUNTSMEN SERVANTS

BAPTISTA MINOLA, a rich gentleman of Padua VINCENTIO, an old gentleman of Pisa LUCENTIO, son to Vincentio; in love with Bianca PETRUCHIO, a gentleman of Verona; suitor to Katherina

Suitors to Bianca GREMIO HORTENSIO

Servants to Lucentio TRANIO BIONDELLO

Servants to Petruchio GRUMIO CURTIS

PEDANT, set up to personate Vincentio

Daughters to Baptista KATHERINA, the shrew BIANCA

WIDOW

Tailor, Haberdasher, and Servants attending on Baptista and Petruchio

SCENE: Sometimes in Padua, and sometimes in Petruchio’s house in the country.

SCENE I. Before an alehouse on a heath.

Enter Hostess and Sly

SLY. I’ll pheeze you, in faith.

HOSTESS. A pair of stocks, you rogue!

SLY. Y’are a baggage; the Slys are no rogues; look in the chronicles: we came in with Richard Conqueror. Therefore, paucas pallabris; let the world slide. Sessa!

HOSTESS. You will not pay for the glasses you have burst?

SLY. No, not a denier. Go by, Saint Jeronimy, go to thy cold bed and warm thee.

HOSTESS. I know my remedy; I must go fetch the third-borough.

[Exit]

SLY. Third, or fourth, or fifth borough, I’ll answer him by law. I’ll not budge an inch, boy: let him come, and kindly.

[Lies down on the ground, and falls asleep.]

Horns winded. Enter a Lord from hunting, with Huntsmen and Servants.

LORD. Huntsman, I charge thee, tender well my hounds; Brach Merriman, the poor cur is emboss’d, And couple Clowder with the deep-mouth’d brach. Saw’st thou not, boy, how Silver made it good At the hedge-corner, in the coldest fault? I would not lose the dog for twenty pound.

FIRST HUNTSMAN. Why, Bellman is as good as he, my lord; He cried upon it at the merest loss, And twice today pick’d out the dullest scent; Trust me, I take him for the better dog.

LORD. Thou art a fool: if Echo were as fleet, I would esteem him worth a dozen such. But sup them well, and look unto them all; Tomorrow I intend to hunt again.

FIRST HUNTSMAN. I will, my lord.

LORD. [Sees Sly.] What’s here? One dead, or drunk? See, doth he breathe?

SECOND HUNTSMAN. He breathes, my lord. Were he not warm’d with ale, This were a bed but cold to sleep so soundly.

LORD. O monstrous beast! how like a swine he lies! Grim death, how foul and loathsome is thine image! Sirs, I will practise on this drunken man. What think you, if he were convey’d to bed, Wrapp’d in sweet clothes, rings put upon his fingers, A most delicious banquet by his bed, And brave attendants near him when he wakes, Would not the beggar then forget himself?

FIRST HUNTSMAN. Believe me, lord, I think he cannot choose.

SECOND HUNTSMAN. It would seem strange unto him when he wak’d.

LORD. Even as a flattering dream or worthless fancy. Then take him up, and manage well the jest. Carry him gently to my fairest chamber, And hang it round with all my wanton pictures; Balm his foul head in warm distilled waters, And burn sweet wood to make the lodging sweet. Procure me music ready when he wakes, To make a dulcet and a heavenly sound; And if he chance to speak, be ready straight, And with a low submissive reverence Say ‘What is it your honour will command?’ Let one attend him with a silver basin Full of rose-water and bestrew’d with flowers; Another bear the ewer, the third a diaper, And say ‘Will’t please your lordship cool your hands?’ Someone be ready with a costly suit, And ask him what apparel he will wear; Another tell him of his hounds and horse, And that his lady mourns at his disease. Persuade him that he hath been lunatic; And, when he says he is—say that he dreams, For he is nothing but a mighty lord. This do, and do it kindly, gentle sirs; It will be pastime passing excellent, If it be husbanded with modesty.

FIRST HUNTSMAN. My lord, I warrant you we will play our part, As he shall think by our true diligence, He is no less than what we say he is.

LORD. Take him up gently, and to bed with him, And each one to his office when he wakes.

[Sly is borne out. A trumpet sounds.]

Sirrah, go see what trumpet ’tis that sounds.

Belike some noble gentleman that means, Travelling some journey, to repose him here.

Re-enter Servant.

How now! who is it?

SERVANT. An it please your honour, players That offer service to your lordship.

LORD. Bid them come near.

Enter Players.

Now, fellows, you are welcome.

PLAYERS. We thank your honour.

LORD. Do you intend to stay with me tonight?

PLAYER. So please your lordship to accept our duty.

LORD. With all my heart. This fellow I remember Since once he play’d a farmer’s eldest son; ’Twas where you woo’d the gentlewoman so well. I have forgot your name; but, sure, that part Was aptly fitted and naturally perform’d.

PLAYER. I think ’twas Soto that your honour means.

LORD. ’Tis very true; thou didst it excellent. Well, you are come to me in happy time, The rather for I have some sport in hand Wherein your cunning can assist me much. There is a lord will hear you play tonight; But I am doubtful of your modesties, Lest, over-eying of his odd behaviour,— For yet his honour never heard a play,— You break into some merry passion And so offend him; for I tell you, sirs, If you should smile, he grows impatient.

PLAYER. Fear not, my lord; we can contain ourselves, Were he the veriest antick in the world.

LORD. Go, sirrah, take them to the buttery, And give them friendly welcome everyone: Let them want nothing that my house affords.

[Exit one with the Players.]

Sirrah, go you to Barthol’mew my page, And see him dress’d in all suits like a lady; That done, conduct him to the drunkard’s chamber, And call him ‘madam,’ do him obeisance. Tell him from me—as he will win my love,— He bear himself with honourable action, Such as he hath observ’d in noble ladies Unto their lords, by them accomplished; Such duty to the drunkard let him do, With soft low tongue and lowly courtesy, And say ‘What is’t your honour will command, Wherein your lady and your humble wife May show her duty and make known her love?’ And then with kind embracements, tempting kisses, And with declining head into his bosom, Bid him shed tears, as being overjoy’d To see her noble lord restor’d to health, Who for this seven years hath esteemed him No better than a poor and loathsome beggar. And if the boy have not a woman’s gift To rain a shower of commanded tears, An onion will do well for such a shift, Which, in a napkin being close convey’d, Shall in despite enforce a watery eye. See this dispatch’d with all the haste thou canst; Anon I’ll give thee more instructions.

I know the boy will well usurp the grace, Voice, gait, and action of a gentlewoman; I long to hear him call the drunkard husband; And how my men will stay themselves from laughter When they do homage to this simple peasant. I’ll in to counsel them; haply my presence May well abate the over-merry spleen, Which otherwise would grow into extremes.

SCENE II. A bedchamber in the Lord’s house.

Sly is discovered in a rich nightgown, with Attendants: some with apparel, basin, ewer, and other appurtenances; and Lord, dressed like a servant.

SLY. For God’s sake! a pot of small ale.

FIRST SERVANT. Will’t please your lordship drink a cup of sack?

SECOND SERVANT. Will’t please your honour taste of these conserves?

THIRD SERVANT. What raiment will your honour wear today?

SLY. I am Christophero Sly; call not me honour nor lordship. I ne’er drank sack in my life; and if you give me any conserves, give me conserves of beef. Ne’er ask me what raiment I’ll wear, for I have no more doublets than backs, no more stockings than legs, nor no more shoes than feet: nay, sometime more feet than shoes, or such shoes as my toes look through the over-leather.

LORD. Heaven cease this idle humour in your honour! O, that a mighty man of such descent, Of such possessions, and so high esteem, Should be infused with so foul a spirit!

SLY. What! would you make me mad? Am not I Christopher Sly, old Sly’s son of Burton-heath; by birth a pedlar, by education a cardmaker, by transmutation a bear-herd, and now by present profession a tinker? Ask Marian Hacket, the fat ale-wife of Wincot, if she know me not: if she say I am not fourteen pence on the score for sheer ale, score me up for the lyingest knave in Christendom. What! I am not bestraught. Here’s—

THIRD SERVANT. O! this it is that makes your lady mourn.

SECOND SERVANT. O! this is it that makes your servants droop.

LORD. Hence comes it that your kindred shuns your house, As beaten hence by your strange lunacy. O noble lord, bethink thee of thy birth, Call home thy ancient thoughts from banishment, And banish hence these abject lowly dreams. Look how thy servants do attend on thee, Each in his office ready at thy beck: Wilt thou have music? Hark! Apollo plays,

And twenty caged nightingales do sing: Or wilt thou sleep? We’ll have thee to a couch Softer and sweeter than the lustful bed On purpose trimm’d up for Semiramis. Say thou wilt walk: we will bestrew the ground: Or wilt thou ride? Thy horses shall be trapp’d, Their harness studded all with gold and pearl. Dost thou love hawking? Thou hast hawks will soar Above the morning lark: or wilt thou hunt? Thy hounds shall make the welkin answer them And fetch shrill echoes from the hollow earth.

FIRST SERVANT. Say thou wilt course; thy greyhounds are as swift As breathed stags; ay, fleeter than the roe.

SECOND SERVANT. Dost thou love pictures? We will fetch thee straight Adonis painted by a running brook, And Cytherea all in sedges hid, Which seem to move and wanton with her breath Even as the waving sedges play with wind.

LORD. We’ll show thee Io as she was a maid And how she was beguiled and surpris’d, As lively painted as the deed was done.

THIRD SERVANT. Or Daphne roaming through a thorny wood, Scratching her legs, that one shall swear she bleeds And at that sight shall sad Apollo weep, So workmanly the blood and tears are drawn.

LORD. Thou art a lord, and nothing but a lord: Thou hast a lady far more beautiful Than any woman in this waning age.

FIRST SERVANT. And, till the tears that she hath shed for thee Like envious floods o’er-run her lovely face, She was the fairest creature in the world; And yet she is inferior to none.

SLY. Am I a lord? and have I such a lady? Or do I dream? Or have I dream’d till now? I do not sleep: I see, I hear, I speak; I smell sweet savours, and I feel soft things: Upon my life, I am a lord indeed; And not a tinker, nor Christophero Sly. Well, bring our lady hither to our sight; And once again, a pot o’ the smallest ale.

SECOND SERVANT. Will’t please your mightiness to wash your hands?

[Servants present a ewer, basin and napkin.]

O, how we joy to see your wit restor’d! O, that once more you knew but what you are! These fifteen years you have been in a dream, Or, when you wak’d, so wak’d as if you slept.

SLY. These fifteen years! by my fay, a goodly nap. But did I never speak of all that time?

FIRST SERVANT. O! yes, my lord, but very idle words; For though you lay here in this goodly chamber, Yet would you say ye were beaten out of door, And rail upon the hostess of the house, And say you would present her at the leet, Because she brought stone jugs and no seal’d quarts. Sometimes you would call out for Cicely Hacket.

SLY. Ay, the woman’s maid of the house.

THIRD SERVANT. Why, sir, you know no house nor no such maid, Nor no such men as you have reckon’d up, As Stephen Sly, and old John Naps of Greece, And Peter Turph, and Henry Pimpernell; And twenty more such names and men as these, Which never were, nor no man ever saw.

SLY. Now, Lord be thanked for my good amends!

Enter the Page, as a lady, with Attendants.

SLY. I thank thee; thou shalt not lose by it.

PAGE. How fares my noble lord?

SLY. Marry, I fare well; for here is cheer enough. Where is my wife?

PAGE. Here, noble lord: what is thy will with her?

SLY. Are you my wife, and will not call me husband? My men should call me lord: I am your goodman.

PAGE. My husband and my lord, my lord and husband; I am your wife in all obedience.

SLY. I know it well. What must I call her?

LORD. Madam.

SLY. Alice madam, or Joan madam?

LORD. Madam, and nothing else; so lords call ladies.

SLY. Madam wife, they say that I have dream’d And slept above some fifteen year or more.

PAGE. Ay, and the time seems thirty unto me, Being all this time abandon’d from your bed.

SLY. ’Tis much. Servants, leave me and her alone. Madam, undress you, and come now to bed.

PAGE. Thrice noble lord, let me entreat of you To pardon me yet for a night or two; Or, if not so, until the sun be set: For your physicians have expressly charg’d, In peril to incur your former malady, That I should yet absent me from your bed: I hope this reason stands for my excuse.

SLY. Ay, it stands so that I may hardly tarry so long; but I would be loath to fall into my dreams again: I will therefore tarry in despite of the flesh and the blood.

MESSENGER. Your honour’s players, hearing your amendment, Are come to play a pleasant comedy; For so your doctors hold it very meet, Seeing too much sadness hath congeal’d 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.

SLY. Marry, I will; let them play it. Is not a commonty a Christmas gambold or a tumbling-trick?

PAGE. No, my good lord; it is more pleasing stuff.

SLY. What! household stuff?

PAGE. It is a kind of history.

SLY. Well, we’ll see’t. Come, madam wife, sit by my side and let the world slip: we shall ne’er be younger.

SCENE I. Padua. A public place.

Flourish. Enter Lucentio and Tranio.

LUCENTIO. Tranio, since for the great desire I had To see fair Padua, nursery of arts, I am arriv’d for fruitful Lombardy, The pleasant garden of great Italy, And by my father’s love and leave am arm’d With his good will and thy good company, My trusty servant well approv’d in all, Here let us breathe, and haply institute A course of learning and ingenious studies. Pisa, renowned for grave citizens, Gave me my being and my father first, A merchant of great traffic through the world, Vincentio, come of the Bentivolii. Vincentio’s son, brought up in Florence, It shall become to serve all hopes conceiv’d, To deck his fortune with his virtuous deeds: And therefore, Tranio, for the time I study, Virtue and that part of philosophy Will I apply that treats of happiness By virtue specially to be achiev’d. Tell me thy mind; for I have Pisa left And am to Padua come as he that leaves A shallow plash to plunge him in the deep, And with satiety seeks to quench his thirst.

TRANIO. Mi perdonato, gentle master mine; I am in all affected as yourself; Glad that you thus continue your resolve To suck the sweets of sweet philosophy. Only, good master, while we do admire This virtue and this moral discipline, Let’s be no stoics nor no stocks, I pray; Or so devote to Aristotle’s checks As Ovid be an outcast quite abjur’d. Balk logic with acquaintance that you have, And practise rhetoric in your common talk; Music and poesy use to quicken you; The mathematics and the metaphysics, Fall to them as you find your stomach serves you: No profit grows where is no pleasure ta’en; In brief, sir, study what you most affect.

LUCENTIO. Gramercies, Tranio, well dost thou advise. If, Biondello, thou wert come ashore, We could at once put us in readiness, And take a lodging fit to entertain Such friends as time in Padua shall beget. But stay awhile; what company is this?

TRANIO. Master, some show to welcome us to town.

[Lucentio and Tranio stand aside.]

Enter Baptista, Katherina, Bianca, Gremio and Hortensio.

BAPTISTA. Gentlemen, importune me no farther, For how I firmly am resolv’d you know; That is, not to bestow my youngest daughter Before I have a husband for the elder. If either of you both love Katherina, Because I know you well and love you well, Leave shall you have to court her at your pleasure.

GREMIO. To cart her rather: she’s too rough for me. There, there, Hortensio, will you any wife?

KATHERINA. [To Baptista] I pray you, sir, is it your will To make a stale of me amongst these mates?

HORTENSIO. Mates, maid! How mean you that? No mates for you, Unless you were of gentler, milder mould.

KATHERINA. I’ faith, sir, you shall never need to fear; I wis it is not half way to her heart; But if it were, doubt not her care should be To comb your noddle with a three-legg’d stool, And paint your face, and use you like a fool.

HORTENSIO. From all such devils, good Lord deliver us!

GREMIO. And me, too, good Lord!

TRANIO. Husht, master! Here’s some good pastime toward: That wench is stark mad or wonderful froward.

LUCENTIO. But in the other’s silence do I see Maid’s mild behaviour and sobriety. Peace, Tranio!

TRANIO. Well said, master; mum! and gaze your fill.

BAPTISTA. Gentlemen, that I may soon make good What I have said,—Bianca, get you in: And let it not displease thee, good Bianca, For I will love thee ne’er the less, my girl.

KATHERINA. A pretty peat! it is best put finger in the eye, and she knew why.

BIANCA. Sister, content you in my discontent. Sir, to your pleasure humbly I subscribe: My books and instruments shall be my company, On them to look, and practise by myself.

LUCENTIO. Hark, Tranio! thou mayst hear Minerva speak.

HORTENSIO. Signior Baptista, will you be so strange? Sorry am I that our good will effects Bianca’s grief.

GREMIO. Why will you mew her up, Signior Baptista, for this fiend of hell, And make her bear the penance of her tongue?

BAPTISTA. Gentlemen, content ye; I am resolv’d. Go in, Bianca.

[Exit Bianca.]

And for I know she taketh most delight In music, instruments, and poetry, Schoolmasters will I keep within my house Fit to instruct her youth. If you, Hortensio, Or, Signior Gremio, you, know any such, Prefer them hither; for to cunning men I will be very kind, and liberal To mine own children in good bringing up; And so, farewell. Katherina, you may stay; For I have more to commune with Bianca.

KATHERINA. Why, and I trust I may go too, may I not? What! shall I be appointed hours, as though, belike, I knew not what to take and what to leave? Ha!

GREMIO. You may go to the devil’s dam: your gifts are so good here’s none will hold you. Their love is not so great, Hortensio, but we may blow our nails together, and fast it fairly out; our cake’s dough on both sides. Farewell: yet, for the love I bear my sweet Bianca, if I can by any means light on a fit man to teach her that wherein she delights, I will wish him to her father.

HORTENSIO. So will I, Signior Gremio: but a word, I pray. Though the nature of our quarrel yet never brooked parle, know now, upon advice, it toucheth us both,—that we may yet again have access to our fair mistress, and be happy rivals in Bianca’s love,—to labour and effect one thing specially.

GREMIO. What’s that, I pray?

HORTENSIO. Marry, sir, to get a husband for her sister.

GREMIO. A husband! a devil.

HORTENSIO. I say, a husband.

GREMIO. I say, a devil. Thinkest thou, Hortensio, though her father be very rich, any man is so very a fool to be married to hell?

HORTENSIO. Tush, Gremio! Though it pass your patience and mine to endure her loud alarums, why, man, there be good fellows in the world, and a man could light on them, would take her with all faults, and money enough.

GREMIO. I cannot tell; but I had as lief take her dowry with this condition: to be whipp’d at the high cross every morning.

HORTENSIO. Faith, as you say, there’s small choice in rotten apples. But come; since this bar in law makes us friends, it shall be so far forth friendly maintained, till by helping Baptista’s eldest daughter to a husband, we set his youngest free for a husband, and then have to’t afresh. Sweet Bianca! Happy man be his dole! He that runs fastest gets the ring. How say you, Signior Gremio?

GREMIO. I am agreed; and would I had given him the best horse in Padua to begin his wooing, that would thoroughly woo her, wed her, and bed her, and rid the house of her. Come on.

[Exeunt Gremio and Hortensio.]

TRANIO. I pray, sir, tell me, is it possible That love should of a sudden take such hold?

LUCENTIO. O Tranio! till I found it to be true, I never thought it possible or likely; But see, while idly I stood looking on, I found the effect of love in idleness; And now in plainness do confess to thee, That art to me as secret and as dear As Anna to the Queen of Carthage was, Tranio, I burn, I pine, I perish, Tranio, If I achieve not this young modest girl. Counsel me, Tranio, for I know thou canst: Assist me, Tranio, for I know thou wilt.

TRANIO. Master, it is no time to chide you now; Affection is not rated from the heart: If love have touch’d you, nought remains but so: Redime te captum quam queas minimo.

LUCENTIO. Gramercies, lad; go forward; this contents; The rest will comfort, for thy counsel’s sound.

TRANIO. Master, you look’d so longly on the maid. Perhaps you mark’d not what’s the pith of all.

LUCENTIO. O, yes, I saw sweet beauty in her face, Such as the daughter of Agenor had, That made great Jove to humble him to her hand, When with his knees he kiss’d the Cretan strand.

TRANIO. Saw you no more? mark’d you not how her sister Began to scold and raise up such a storm That mortal ears might hardly endure the din?

LUCENTIO. Tranio, I saw her coral lips to move, And with her breath she did perfume the air; Sacred and sweet was all I saw in her.

TRANIO. Nay, then, ’tis time to stir him from his trance. I pray, awake, sir: if you love the maid, Bend thoughts and wits to achieve her. Thus it stands: Her elder sister is so curst and shrewd, That till the father rid his hands of her, Master, your love must live a maid at home; And therefore has he closely mew’d her up, Because she will not be annoy’d with suitors.

LUCENTIO. Ah, Tranio, what a cruel father’s he! But art thou not advis’d he took some care To get her cunning schoolmasters to instruct her?

TRANIO. Ay, marry, am I, sir, and now ’tis plotted.

LUCENTIO. I have it, Tranio.

TRANIO. Master, for my hand, Both our inventions meet and jump in one.

LUCENTIO. Tell me thine first.

TRANIO. You will be schoolmaster, And undertake the teaching of the maid: That’s your device.

LUCENTIO. It is: may it be done?

TRANIO. Not possible; for who shall bear your part And be in Padua here Vincentio’s son; Keep house and ply his book, welcome his friends; Visit his countrymen, and banquet them?

LUCENTIO. Basta, content thee, for I have it full. We have not yet been seen in any house, Nor can we be distinguish’d by our faces For man or master: then it follows thus: Thou shalt be master, Tranio, in my stead, Keep house and port and servants, as I should; I will some other be; some Florentine, Some Neapolitan, or meaner man of Pisa. ’Tis hatch’d, and shall be so: Tranio, at once Uncase thee; take my colour’d hat and cloak. When Biondello comes, he waits on thee; But I will charm him first to keep his tongue.

[They exchange habits]

TRANIO. So had you need. In brief, sir, sith it your pleasure is, And I am tied to be obedient; For so your father charg’d me at our parting, ‘Be serviceable to my son,’ quoth he, Although I think ’twas in another sense: I am content to be Lucentio, Because so well I love Lucentio.

LUCENTIO. Tranio, be so, because Lucentio loves; And let me be a slave, to achieve that maid Whose sudden sight hath thrall’d my wounded eye.

Enter Biondello.

Here comes the rogue. Sirrah, where have you been?

BIONDELLO. Where have I been? Nay, how now! where are you? Master, has my fellow Tranio stol’n your clothes? Or you stol’n his? or both? Pray, what’s the news?

LUCENTIO. Sirrah, come hither: ’tis no time to jest, And therefore frame your manners to the time. Your fellow Tranio here, to save my life, Puts my apparel and my count’nance on, And I for my escape have put on his; For in a quarrel since I came ashore I kill’d a man, and fear I was descried. Wait you on him, I charge you, as becomes, While I make way from hence to save my life. You understand me?

BIONDELLO. I, sir! Ne’er a whit.

LUCENTIO. And not a jot of Tranio in your mouth: Tranio is changed to Lucentio.

BIONDELLO. The better for him: would I were so too!

TRANIO. So could I, faith, boy, to have the next wish after, That Lucentio indeed had Baptista’s youngest daughter. But, sirrah, not for my sake but your master’s, I advise You use your manners discreetly in all kind of companies: When I am alone, why, then I am Tranio; But in all places else your master, Lucentio.

LUCENTIO. Tranio, let’s go. One thing more rests, that thyself execute, To make one among these wooers: if thou ask me why, Sufficeth my reasons are both good and weighty.

[The Presenters above speak.]

FIRST SERVANT. My lord, you nod; you do not mind the play.

SLY. Yes, by Saint Anne, I do. A good matter, surely: comes there any more of it?

PAGE. My lord, ’tis but begun.

SLY. ’Tis a very excellent piece of work, madam lady: would ’twere done!

[They sit and mark.]

SCENE II. Padua. Before Hortensio’s house.

Enter Petruchio and his man Grumio.

PETRUCHIO. Verona, for a while I take my leave, To see my friends in Padua; but of all My best beloved and approved friend, Hortensio; and I trow this is his house. Here, sirrah Grumio, knock, I say.

GRUMIO. Knock, sir? Whom should I knock? Is there any man has rebused your worship?

PETRUCHIO. Villain, I say, knock me here soundly.

GRUMIO. Knock you here, sir? Why, sir, what am I, sir, that I should knock you here, sir?

PETRUCHIO. Villain, I say, knock me at this gate; And rap me well, or I’ll knock your knave’s pate.

GRUMIO. My master is grown quarrelsome. I should knock you first, And then I know after who comes by the worst.

PETRUCHIO. Will it not be? Faith, sirrah, and you’ll not knock, I’ll ring it; I’ll try how you can sol, fa, and sing it.

[He wrings Grumio by the ears.]

GRUMIO. Help, masters, help! my master is mad.

PETRUCHIO. Now, knock when I bid you, sirrah villain!

Enter Hortensio.

HORTENSIO. How now! what’s the matter? My old friend Grumio! and my good friend Petruchio! How do you all at Verona?

PETRUCHIO. Signior Hortensio, come you to part the fray? Con tutto il cuore ben trovato, may I say.

HORTENSIO. Alla nostra casa ben venuto; molto honorato signor mio Petruchio. Rise, Grumio, rise: we will compound this quarrel.

GRUMIO. Nay, ’tis no matter, sir, what he ’leges in Latin. If this be not a lawful cause for me to leave his service, look you, sir, he bid me knock him and rap him soundly, sir: well, was it fit for a servant to use his master so; being, perhaps, for aught I see, two-and-thirty, a pip out? Whom would to God I had well knock’d at first, then had not Grumio come by the worst.

PETRUCHIO. A senseless villain! Good Hortensio, I bade the rascal knock upon your gate, And could not get him for my heart to do it.

GRUMIO. Knock at the gate! O heavens! Spake you not these words plain: ‘Sirrah knock me here, rap me here, knock me well, and knock me soundly’? And come you now with ‘knocking at the gate’?

PETRUCHIO. Sirrah, be gone, or talk not, I advise you.

HORTENSIO. Petruchio, patience; I am Grumio’s pledge; Why, this’s a heavy chance ’twixt him and you, Your ancient, trusty, pleasant servant Grumio. And tell me now, sweet friend, what happy gale Blows you to Padua here from old Verona?

PETRUCHIO. Such wind as scatters young men through the world To seek their fortunes farther than at home, Where small experience grows. But in a few, Signior Hortensio, thus it stands with me: Antonio, my father, is deceas’d, And I have thrust myself into this maze, Haply to wive and thrive as best I may; Crowns in my purse I have, and goods at home, And so am come abroad to see the world.

HORTENSIO. Petruchio, shall I then come roundly to thee And wish thee to a shrewd ill-favour’d wife? Thou’dst thank me but a little for my counsel; And yet I’ll promise thee she shall be rich, And very rich: but th’art too much my friend, And I’ll not wish thee to her.

PETRUCHIO. Signior Hortensio, ’twixt such friends as we Few words suffice; and therefore, if thou know One rich enough to be Petruchio’s wife, As wealth is burden of my wooing dance, Be she as foul as was Florentius’ love, As old as Sibyl, and as curst and shrewd As Socrates’ Xanthippe or a worse, She moves me not, or not removes, at least, Affection’s edge in me, were she as rough As are the swelling Adriatic seas: I come to wive it wealthily in Padua; If wealthily, then happily in Padua.

GRUMIO. Nay, look you, sir, he tells you flatly what his mind is: why, give him gold enough and marry him to a puppet or an aglet-baby; or an old trot with ne’er a tooth in her head, though she have as many diseases as two-and-fifty horses: why, nothing comes amiss, so money comes withal.

HORTENSIO. Petruchio, since we are stepp’d thus far in, I will continue that I broach’d in jest. I can, Petruchio, help thee to a wife With wealth enough, and young and beauteous; Brought up as best becomes a gentlewoman: Her only fault,—and that is faults enough,— Is, that she is intolerable curst, And shrewd and froward, so beyond all measure, That, were my state far worser than it is, I would not wed her for a mine of gold.

PETRUCHIO. Hortensio, peace! thou know’st not gold’s effect: Tell me her father’s name, and ’tis enough; For I will board her, though she chide as loud As thunder when the clouds in autumn crack.

HORTENSIO. Her father is Baptista Minola, An affable and courteous gentleman; Her name is Katherina Minola, Renown’d in Padua for her scolding tongue.

PETRUCHIO. I know her father, though I know not her; And he knew my deceased father well. I will not sleep, Hortensio, till I see her; And therefore let me be thus bold with you, To give you over at this first encounter, Unless you will accompany me thither.

GRUMIO. I pray you, sir, let him go while the humour lasts. O’ my word, and she knew him as well as I do, she would think scolding would do little good upon him. She may perhaps call him half a score knaves or so; why, that’s nothing; and he begin once, he’ll rail in his rope-tricks. I’ll tell you what, sir, and she stand him but a little, he will throw a figure in her face, and so disfigure her with it that she shall have no more eyes to see withal than a cat. You know him not, sir.

HORTENSIO. Tarry, Petruchio, I must go with thee, For in Baptista’s keep my treasure is: He hath the jewel of my life in hold, His youngest daughter, beautiful Bianca, And her withholds from me and other more, Suitors to her and rivals in my love; Supposing it a thing impossible, For those defects I have before rehears’d, That ever Katherina will be woo’d: Therefore this order hath Baptista ta’en, That none shall have access unto Bianca Till Katherine the curst have got a husband.

GRUMIO. Katherine the curst! A title for a maid of all titles the worst.

HORTENSIO. Now shall my friend Petruchio do me grace, And offer me disguis’d in sober robes, To old Baptista as a schoolmaster Well seen in music, to instruct Bianca; That so I may, by this device at least Have leave and leisure to make love to her, And unsuspected court her by herself.

GRUMIO. Here’s no knavery! See, to beguile the old folks, how the young folks lay their heads together!

Enter Gremio and Lucentio disguised, with books under his arm.

Master, master, look about you: who goes there, ha?

HORTENSIO. Peace, Grumio! It is the rival of my love. Petruchio, stand by awhile.

GRUMIO. A proper stripling, and an amorous!

GREMIO. O! very well; I have perus’d the note. Hark you, sir; I’ll have them very fairly bound: All books of love, see that at any hand, And see you read no other lectures to her. You understand me. Over and beside Signior Baptista’s liberality, I’ll mend it with a largess. Take your papers too, And let me have them very well perfum’d; For she is sweeter than perfume itself To whom they go to. What will you read to her?

LUCENTIO. Whate’er I read to her, I’ll plead for you, As for my patron, stand you so assur’d, As firmly as yourself were still in place; Yea, and perhaps with more successful words Than you, unless you were a scholar, sir.

GREMIO. O! this learning, what a thing it is.

GRUMIO. O! this woodcock, what an ass it is.

PETRUCHIO. Peace, sirrah!

HORTENSIO. Grumio, mum! God save you, Signior Gremio!

GREMIO. And you are well met, Signior Hortensio. Trow you whither I am going? To Baptista Minola. I promis’d to enquire carefully About a schoolmaster for the fair Bianca; And by good fortune I have lighted well On this young man; for learning and behaviour Fit for her turn, well read in poetry And other books, good ones, I warrant ye.

HORTENSIO. ’Tis well; and I have met a gentleman Hath promis’d me to help me to another, A fine musician to instruct our mistress: So shall I no whit be behind in duty To fair Bianca, so belov’d of me.

GREMIO. Belov’d of me, and that my deeds shall prove.

GRUMIO. [Aside.] And that his bags shall prove.

HORTENSIO. Gremio, ’tis now no time to vent our love: Listen to me, and if you speak me fair, I’ll tell you news indifferent good for either. Here is a gentleman whom by chance I met, Upon agreement from us to his liking, Will undertake to woo curst Katherine; Yea, and to marry her, if her dowry please.

GREMIO. So said, so done, is well. Hortensio, have you told him all her faults?

PETRUCHIO. I know she is an irksome brawling scold; If that be all, masters, I hear no harm.

GREMIO. No, say’st me so, friend? What countryman?

PETRUCHIO. Born in Verona, old Antonio’s son. My father dead, my fortune lives for me; And I do hope good days and long to see.

GREMIO. O sir, such a life, with such a wife, were strange! But if you have a stomach, to’t a God’s name; You shall have me assisting you in all. But will you woo this wild-cat?

PETRUCHIO. Will I live?

GRUMIO. Will he woo her? Ay, or I’ll hang her.

PETRUCHIO. Why came I hither but to that intent? Think you a little din can daunt mine ears? Have I not in my time heard lions roar? Have I not heard the sea, puff’d up with winds, Rage like an angry boar chafed with sweat? Have I not heard great ordnance in the field, And heaven’s artillery thunder in the skies? Have I not in a pitched battle heard Loud ’larums, neighing steeds, and trumpets’ clang? And do you tell me of a woman’s tongue, That gives not half so great a blow to hear As will a chestnut in a farmer’s fire? Tush, tush! fear boys with bugs.

GRUMIO. [Aside] For he fears none.

GREMIO. Hortensio, hark: This gentleman is happily arriv’d, My mind presumes, for his own good and yours.

HORTENSIO. I promis’d we would be contributors, And bear his charge of wooing, whatsoe’er.

GREMIO. And so we will, provided that he win her.

GRUMIO. I would I were as sure of a good dinner.

Enter Tranio brave, and Biondello.

TRANIO. Gentlemen, God save you! If I may be bold, Tell me, I beseech you, which is the readiest way To the house of Signior Baptista Minola?

BIONDELLO. He that has the two fair daughters; is’t he you mean?

TRANIO. Even he, Biondello!

GREMIO. Hark you, sir, you mean not her to—

TRANIO. Perhaps him and her, sir; what have you to do?

PETRUCHIO. Not her that chides, sir, at any hand, I pray.

TRANIO. I love no chiders, sir. Biondello, let’s away.

LUCENTIO. [Aside] Well begun, Tranio.

HORTENSIO. Sir, a word ere you go. Are you a suitor to the maid you talk of, yea or no?

TRANIO. And if I be, sir, is it any offence?

GREMIO. No; if without more words you will get you hence.

TRANIO. Why, sir, I pray, are not the streets as free For me as for you?

GREMIO. But so is not she.

TRANIO. For what reason, I beseech you?

GREMIO. For this reason, if you’ll know, That she’s the choice love of Signior Gremio.

HORTENSIO. That she’s the chosen of Signior Hortensio.

TRANIO. Softly, my masters! If you be gentlemen, Do me this right; hear me with patience. Baptista is a noble gentleman, To whom my father is not all unknown; And were his daughter fairer than she is, She may more suitors have, and me for one. Fair Leda’s daughter had a thousand wooers; Then well one more may fair Bianca have; And so she shall: Lucentio shall make one, Though Paris came in hope to speed alone.

GREMIO. What, this gentleman will out-talk us all.

LUCENTIO. Sir, give him head; I know he’ll prove a jade.

PETRUCHIO. Hortensio, to what end are all these words?

HORTENSIO. Sir, let me be so bold as ask you, Did you yet ever see Baptista’s daughter?

TRANIO. No, sir, but hear I do that he hath two, The one as famous for a scolding tongue As is the other for beauteous modesty.

PETRUCHIO. Sir, sir, the first’s for me; let her go by.

GREMIO. Yea, leave that labour to great Hercules, And let it be more than Alcides’ twelve.

PETRUCHIO. Sir, understand you this of me, in sooth: The youngest daughter, whom you hearken for, Her father keeps from all access of suitors, And will not promise her to any man Until the elder sister first be wed; The younger then is free, and not before.

TRANIO. If it be so, sir, that you are the man Must stead us all, and me amongst the rest; And if you break the ice, and do this feat, Achieve the elder, set the younger free For our access, whose hap shall be to have her Will not so graceless be to be ingrate.

HORTENSIO. Sir, you say well, and well you do conceive; And since you do profess to be a suitor, You must, as we do, gratify this gentleman, To whom we all rest generally beholding.

TRANIO. Sir, I shall not be slack; in sign whereof, Please ye we may contrive this afternoon, And quaff carouses to our mistress’ health; And do as adversaries do in law, Strive mightily, but eat and drink as friends.

GRUMIO, BIONDELLO. O excellent motion! Fellows, let’s be gone.

HORTENSIO. The motion’s good indeed, and be it so:— Petruchio, I shall be your ben venuto.

SCENE I. Padua. A room in Baptista’s house.

Enter Katherina and Bianca.

BIANCA. Good sister, wrong me not, nor wrong yourself, To make a bondmaid and a slave of me; That I disdain; but for these other gawds, Unbind my hands, I’ll pull them off myself, Yea, all my raiment, to my petticoat; Or what you will command me will I do, So well I know my duty to my elders.

KATHERINA. Of all thy suitors here I charge thee tell Whom thou lov’st best: see thou dissemble not.

BIANCA. Believe me, sister, of all the men alive I never yet beheld that special face Which I could fancy more than any other.

KATHERINA. Minion, thou liest. Is’t not Hortensio?

BIANCA. If you affect him, sister, here I swear I’ll plead for you myself but you shall have him.

KATHERINA. O! then, belike, you fancy riches more: You will have Gremio to keep you fair.

BIANCA. Is it for him you do envy me so? Nay, then you jest; and now I well perceive You have but jested with me all this while: I prithee, sister Kate, untie my hands.

KATHERINA. If that be jest, then all the rest was so.

[Strikes her.]

Enter Baptista.

BAPTISTA. Why, how now, dame! Whence grows this insolence? Bianca, stand aside. Poor girl! she weeps. Go ply thy needle; meddle not with her. For shame, thou hilding of a devilish spirit, Why dost thou wrong her that did ne’er wrong thee? When did she cross thee with a bitter word?

KATHERINA. Her silence flouts me, and I’ll be reveng’d.

[Flies after Bianca.]

BAPTISTA. What! in my sight? Bianca, get thee in.

KATHERINA. What! will you not suffer me? Nay, now I see She is your treasure, she must have a husband; I must dance bare-foot on her wedding-day, And, for your love to her, lead apes in hell. Talk not to me: I will go sit and weep Till I can find occasion of revenge.

BAPTISTA. Was ever gentleman thus griev’d as I? But who comes here?

Enter Gremio, with Lucentio in the habit of a mean man; Petruchio, with Hortensio as a musician; and Tranio, with Biondello bearing a lute and books.

GREMIO. Good morrow, neighbour Baptista.

BAPTISTA. Good morrow, neighbour Gremio. God save you, gentlemen!

PETRUCHIO. And you, good sir! Pray, have you not a daughter Call’d Katherina, fair and virtuous?

BAPTISTA. I have a daughter, sir, call’d Katherina.

GREMIO. You are too blunt: go to it orderly.

PETRUCHIO. You wrong me, Signior Gremio: give me leave. I am a gentleman of Verona, sir, That, hearing of her beauty and her wit, Her affability and bashful modesty, Her wondrous qualities and mild behaviour, Am bold to show myself a forward guest Within your house, to make mine eye the witness Of that report which I so oft have heard. And, for an entrance to my entertainment, I do present you with a man of mine,

[Presenting Hortensio.]

Cunning in music and the mathematics, To instruct her fully in those sciences, Whereof I know she is not ignorant. Accept of him, or else you do me wrong: His name is Licio, born in Mantua.

BAPTISTA. Y’are welcome, sir, and he for your good sake; But for my daughter Katherine, this I know, She is not for your turn, the more my grief.

PETRUCHIO. I see you do not mean to part with her; Or else you like not of my company.

BAPTISTA. Mistake me not; I speak but as I find. Whence are you, sir? What may I call your name?

PETRUCHIO. Petruchio is my name, Antonio’s son; A man well known throughout all Italy.

BAPTISTA. I know him well: you are welcome for his sake.

GREMIO. Saving your tale, Petruchio, I pray, Let us, that are poor petitioners, speak too. Backare! you are marvellous forward.

PETRUCHIO. O, pardon me, Signior Gremio; I would fain be doing.

GREMIO. I doubt it not, sir; but you will curse your wooing. Neighbour, this is a gift very grateful, I am sure of it. To express the like kindness, myself, that have been more kindly beholding to you than any, freely give unto you this young scholar,

[Presenting Lucentio.]

that has been long studying at Rheims; as cunning in Greek, Latin, and other languages, as the other in music and mathematics. His name is Cambio; pray accept his service.

BAPTISTA. A thousand thanks, Signior Gremio; welcome, good Cambio. [To Tranio.] But, gentle sir, methinks you walk like a stranger. May I be so bold to know the cause of your coming?

TRANIO. Pardon me, sir, the boldness is mine own, That, being a stranger in this city here, Do make myself a suitor to your daughter, Unto Bianca, fair and virtuous. Nor is your firm resolve unknown to me, In the preferment of the eldest sister. This liberty is all that I request, That, upon knowledge of my parentage, I may have welcome ’mongst the rest that woo, And free access and favour as the rest: And, toward the education of your daughters, I here bestow a simple instrument, And this small packet of Greek and Latin books: If you accept them, then their worth is great.

BAPTISTA. Lucentio is your name, of whence, I pray?

TRANIO. Of Pisa, sir; son to Vincentio.

BAPTISTA. A mighty man of Pisa: by report I know him well: you are very welcome, sir. [To Hortensio.] Take you the lute, [To Lucentio.] and you the set of books; You shall go see your pupils presently. Holla, within!

Sirrah, lead these gentlemen To my daughters, and tell them both These are their tutors: bid them use them well.

[Exeunt Servant with Hortensio, Lucentio and Biondello.]

We will go walk a little in the orchard, And then to dinner. You are passing welcome, And so I pray you all to think yourselves.

PETRUCHIO. Signior Baptista, my business asketh haste, And every day I cannot come to woo. You knew my father well, and in him me, Left solely heir to all his lands and goods, Which I have bettered rather than decreas’d: Then tell me, if I get your daughter’s love, What dowry shall I have with her to wife?

BAPTISTA. After my death, the one half of my lands, And in possession twenty thousand crowns.

PETRUCHIO. And, for that dowry, I’ll assure her of Her widowhood, be it that she survive me, In all my lands and leases whatsoever. Let specialities be therefore drawn between us, That covenants may be kept on either hand.

BAPTISTA. Ay, when the special thing is well obtain’d, That is, her love; for that is all in all.

PETRUCHIO. Why, that is nothing; for I tell you, father, I am as peremptory as she proud-minded; And where two raging fires meet together, They do consume the thing that feeds their fury: Though little fire grows great with little wind, Yet extreme gusts will blow out fire and all; So I to her, and so she yields to me; For I am rough and woo not like a babe.

BAPTISTA. Well mayst thou woo, and happy be thy speed! But be thou arm’d for some unhappy words.

PETRUCHIO. Ay, to the proof, as mountains are for winds, That shake not though they blow perpetually.

Re-enter Hortensio, with his head broke.

BAPTISTA. How now, my friend! Why dost thou look so pale?

HORTENSIO. For fear, I promise you, if I look pale.

BAPTISTA. What, will my daughter prove a good musician?

HORTENSIO. I think she’ll sooner prove a soldier: Iron may hold with her, but never lutes.

BAPTISTA. Why, then thou canst not break her to the lute?

HORTENSIO. Why, no; for she hath broke the lute to me. I did but tell her she mistook her frets, And bow’d her hand to teach her fingering; When, with a most impatient devilish spirit, ‘Frets, call you these?’ quoth she ‘I’ll fume with them’; And with that word she struck me on the head, And through the instrument my pate made way; And there I stood amazed for a while, As on a pillory, looking through the lute; While she did call me rascal fiddler, And twangling Jack, with twenty such vile terms, As had she studied to misuse me so.

PETRUCHIO. Now, by the world, it is a lusty wench! I love her ten times more than e’er I did: O! how I long to have some chat with her!

BAPTISTA. [To Hortensio.] Well, go with me, and be not so discomfited; Proceed in practice with my younger daughter; She’s apt to learn, and thankful for good turns. Signior Petruchio, will you go with us, Or shall I send my daughter Kate to you?

PETRUCHIO. I pray you do.

[Exeunt Baptista, Gremio, Tranio and Hortensio.]

I will attend her here, And woo her with some spirit when she comes. Say that she rail; why, then I’ll tell her plain She sings as sweetly as a nightingale: Say that she frown; I’ll say she looks as clear As morning roses newly wash’d with dew: Say she be mute, and will not speak a word; Then I’ll commend her volubility, And say she uttereth piercing eloquence: If she do bid me pack, I’ll give her thanks, As though she bid me stay by her a week: If she deny to wed, I’ll crave the day When I shall ask the banns, and when be married. But here she comes; and now, Petruchio, speak.

Enter Katherina.

Good morrow, Kate; for that’s your name, I hear.

KATHERINA. Well have you heard, but something hard of hearing: They call me Katherine that do talk of me.

PETRUCHIO. You lie, in faith, for you are call’d plain Kate, And bonny Kate, and sometimes Kate the curst; But, Kate, the prettiest Kate in Christendom, Kate of Kate Hall, my super-dainty Kate, For dainties are all Kates, and therefore, Kate, Take this of me, Kate of my consolation; Hearing thy mildness prais’d in every town, Thy virtues spoke of, and thy beauty sounded,— Yet not so deeply as to thee belongs,— Myself am mov’d to woo thee for my wife.

KATHERINA. Mov’d! in good time: let him that mov’d you hither Remove you hence. I knew you at the first, You were a moveable.

PETRUCHIO. Why, what’s a moveable?

KATHERINA. A joint-stool.

PETRUCHIO. Thou hast hit it: come, sit on me.

KATHERINA. Asses are made to bear, and so are you.

PETRUCHIO. Women are made to bear, and so are you.

KATHERINA. No such jade as bear you, if me you mean.

PETRUCHIO. Alas! good Kate, I will not burden thee; For, knowing thee to be but young and light,—

KATHERINA. Too light for such a swain as you to catch; And yet as heavy as my weight should be.

PETRUCHIO. Should be! should buz!

KATHERINA. Well ta’en, and like a buzzard.

PETRUCHIO. O, slow-wing’d turtle! shall a buzzard take thee?

KATHERINA. Ay, for a turtle, as he takes a buzzard.

PETRUCHIO. Come, come, you wasp; i’ faith, you are too angry.

KATHERINA. If I be waspish, best beware my sting.

PETRUCHIO. My remedy is then to pluck it out.

KATHERINA. Ay, if the fool could find it where it lies.

PETRUCHIO. Who knows not where a wasp does wear his sting? In his tail.

KATHERINA. In his tongue.

PETRUCHIO. Whose tongue?

KATHERINA. Yours, if you talk of tales; and so farewell.

PETRUCHIO. What! with my tongue in your tail? Nay, come again, Good Kate; I am a gentleman.

KATHERINA. That I’ll try.

PETRUCHIO. I swear I’ll cuff you if you strike again.

KATHERINA. So may you lose your arms: If you strike me, you are no gentleman; And if no gentleman, why then no arms.

PETRUCHIO. A herald, Kate? O! put me in thy books.

KATHERINA. What is your crest? a coxcomb?

PETRUCHIO. A combless cock, so Kate will be my hen.

KATHERINA. No cock of mine; you crow too like a craven.

PETRUCHIO. Nay, come, Kate, come; you must not look so sour.

KATHERINA. It is my fashion when I see a crab.

PETRUCHIO. Why, here’s no crab, and therefore look not sour.

KATHERINA. There is, there is.

PETRUCHIO. Then show it me.

KATHERINA. Had I a glass I would.

PETRUCHIO. What, you mean my face?

KATHERINA. Well aim’d of such a young one.

PETRUCHIO. Now, by Saint George, I am too young for you.

KATHERINA. Yet you are wither’d.

PETRUCHIO. ’Tis with cares.

KATHERINA. I care not.

PETRUCHIO. Nay, hear you, Kate: in sooth, you ’scape not so.

KATHERINA. I chafe you, if I tarry; let me go.

PETRUCHIO. No, not a whit; I find you passing gentle. ’Twas told me you were rough, and coy, and sullen, And now I find report a very liar; For thou art pleasant, gamesome, passing courteous, But slow in speech, yet sweet as spring-time flowers. Thou canst not frown, thou canst not look askance, Nor bite the lip, as angry wenches will, Nor hast thou pleasure to be cross in talk; But thou with mildness entertain’st thy wooers; With gentle conference, soft and affable. Why does the world report that Kate doth limp? O sland’rous world! Kate like the hazel-twig Is straight and slender, and as brown in hue As hazel-nuts, and sweeter than the kernels. O! let me see thee walk: thou dost not halt.

KATHERINA. Go, fool, and whom thou keep’st command.

PETRUCHIO. Did ever Dian so become a grove As Kate this chamber with her princely gait? O! be thou Dian, and let her be Kate, And then let Kate be chaste, and Dian sportful!

KATHERINA. Where did you study all this goodly speech?

PETRUCHIO. It is extempore, from my mother-wit.

KATHERINA. A witty mother! witless else her son.

PETRUCHIO. Am I not wise?

KATHERINA. Yes; keep you warm.

PETRUCHIO. Marry, so I mean, sweet Katherine, in thy bed; And therefore, setting all this chat aside, Thus in plain terms: your father hath consented That you shall be my wife your dowry ’greed on; And will you, nill you, I will marry you. Now, Kate, I am a husband for your turn; For, by this light, whereby I see thy beauty,— Thy beauty that doth make me like thee well,— Thou must be married to no man but me; For I am he am born to tame you, Kate, And bring you from a wild Kate to a Kate Conformable as other household Kates.

Re-enter Baptista, Gremio and Tranio.

Here comes your father. Never make denial; I must and will have Katherine to my wife.

BAPTISTA. Now, Signior Petruchio, how speed you with my daughter?

PETRUCHIO. How but well, sir? how but well? It were impossible I should speed amiss.

BAPTISTA. Why, how now, daughter Katherine, in your dumps?

KATHERINA. Call you me daughter? Now I promise you You have show’d a tender fatherly regard To wish me wed to one half lunatic, A mad-cap ruffian and a swearing Jack, That thinks with oaths to face the matter out.

PETRUCHIO. Father, ’tis thus: yourself and all the world That talk’d of her have talk’d amiss of her: If she be curst, it is for policy, For she’s not froward, but modest as the dove; She is not hot, but temperate as the morn; For patience she will prove a second Grissel, And Roman Lucrece for her chastity; And to conclude, we have ’greed so well together That upon Sunday is the wedding-day.

KATHERINA. I’ll see thee hang’d on Sunday first.

GREMIO. Hark, Petruchio; she says she’ll see thee hang’d first.

TRANIO. Is this your speeding? Nay, then good-night our part!

PETRUCHIO. Be patient, gentlemen. I choose her for myself; If she and I be pleas’d, what’s that to you? ’Tis bargain’d ’twixt us twain, being alone, That she shall still be curst in company. I tell you, ’tis incredible to believe How much she loves me: O! the kindest Kate She hung about my neck, and kiss on kiss She vied so fast, protesting oath on oath, That in a twink she won me to her love. O! you are novices: ’tis a world to see, How tame, when men and women are alone, A meacock wretch can make the curstest shrew. Give me thy hand, Kate; I will unto Venice, To buy apparel ’gainst the wedding-day. Provide the feast, father, and bid the guests; I will be sure my Katherine shall be fine.

BAPTISTA. I know not what to say; but give me your hands. God send you joy, Petruchio! ’Tis a match.

GREMIO, TRANIO. Amen, say we; we will be witnesses.

PETRUCHIO. Father, and wife, and gentlemen, adieu. I will to Venice; Sunday comes apace; We will have rings and things, and fine array; And kiss me, Kate; we will be married o’ Sunday.

[Exeunt Petruchio and Katherina, severally.]

GREMIO. Was ever match clapp’d up so suddenly?

BAPTISTA. Faith, gentlemen, now I play a merchant’s part, And venture madly on a desperate mart.

TRANIO. ’Twas a commodity lay fretting by you; ’Twill bring you gain, or perish on the seas.

BAPTISTA. The gain I seek is, quiet in the match.

GREMIO. No doubt but he hath got a quiet catch. But now, Baptista, to your younger daughter: Now is the day we long have looked for; I am your neighbour, and was suitor first.

TRANIO. And I am one that love Bianca more Than words can witness or your thoughts can guess.

GREMIO. Youngling, thou canst not love so dear as I.

TRANIO. Greybeard, thy love doth freeze.

GREMIO. But thine doth fry. Skipper, stand back; ’tis age that nourisheth.

TRANIO. But youth in ladies’ eyes that flourisheth.

BAPTISTA. Content you, gentlemen; I’ll compound this strife: ’Tis deeds must win the prize, and he of both That can assure my daughter greatest dower Shall have my Bianca’s love. Say, Signior Gremio, what can you assure her?

GREMIO. First, as you know, my house within the city Is richly furnished with plate and gold: Basins and ewers to lave her dainty hands; My hangings all of Tyrian tapestry; In ivory coffers I have stuff’d my crowns; In cypress chests my arras counterpoints, Costly apparel, tents, and canopies, Fine linen, Turkey cushions boss’d with pearl, Valance of Venice gold in needlework; Pewter and brass, and all things that belong To house or housekeeping: then, at my farm I have a hundred milch-kine to the pail, Six score fat oxen standing in my stalls, And all things answerable to this portion. Myself am struck in years, I must confess; And if I die tomorrow this is hers, If whilst I live she will be only mine.

TRANIO. That ‘only’ came well in. Sir, list to me: I am my father’s heir and only son; If I may have your daughter to my wife, I’ll leave her houses three or four as good Within rich Pisa’s walls as anyone Old Signior Gremio has in Padua; Besides two thousand ducats by the year Of fruitful land, all which shall be her jointure. What, have I pinch’d you, Signior Gremio?

GREMIO. Two thousand ducats by the year of land! My land amounts not to so much in all: That she shall have, besides an argosy That now is lying in Marseilles’ road. What, have I chok’d you with an argosy?

TRANIO. Gremio, ’tis known my father hath no less Than three great argosies, besides two galliasses, And twelve tight galleys; these I will assure her, And twice as much, whate’er thou offer’st next.

GREMIO. Nay, I have offer’d all; I have no more; And she can have no more than all I have; If you like me, she shall have me and mine.

TRANIO. Why, then the maid is mine from all the world, By your firm promise; Gremio is out-vied.

BAPTISTA. I must confess your offer is the best; And let your father make her the assurance, She is your own; else, you must pardon me; If you should die before him, where’s her dower?

TRANIO. That’s but a cavil; he is old, I young.

GREMIO. And may not young men die as well as old?

BAPTISTA. Well, gentlemen, I am thus resolv’d. On Sunday next, you know, My daughter Katherine is to be married; Now, on the Sunday following, shall Bianca Be bride to you, if you make this assurance; If not, to Signior Gremio. And so I take my leave, and thank you both.

GREMIO. Adieu, good neighbour.

[Exit Baptista.]

Now, I fear thee not: Sirrah young gamester, your father were a fool To give thee all, and in his waning age Set foot under thy table. Tut! a toy! An old Italian fox is not so kind, my boy.

TRANIO. A vengeance on your crafty wither’d hide! Yet I have fac’d it with a card of ten. ’Tis in my head to do my master good: I see no reason but suppos’d Lucentio Must get a father, call’d suppos’d Vincentio; And that’s a wonder: fathers commonly Do get their children; but in this case of wooing A child shall get a sire, if I fail not of my cunning.

Enter Lucentio, Hortensio and Bianca.

LUCENTIO. Fiddler, forbear; you grow too forward, sir. Have you so soon forgot the entertainment Her sister Katherine welcome’d you withal?

HORTENSIO. But, wrangling pedant, this is The patroness of heavenly harmony: Then give me leave to have prerogative; And when in music we have spent an hour, Your lecture shall have leisure for as much.

LUCENTIO. Preposterous ass, that never read so far To know the cause why music was ordain’d! Was it not to refresh the mind of man After his studies or his usual pain? Then give me leave to read philosophy, And while I pause serve in your harmony.

HORTENSIO. Sirrah, I will not bear these braves of thine.

BIANCA. Why, gentlemen, you do me double wrong, To strive for that which resteth in my choice. I am no breeching scholar in the schools, I’ll not be tied to hours nor ’pointed times, But learn my lessons as I please myself. And, to cut off all strife, here sit we down; Take you your instrument, play you the whiles; His lecture will be done ere you have tun’d.

HORTENSIO. You’ll leave his lecture when I am in tune?

LUCENTIO. That will be never: tune your instrument.

BIANCA. Where left we last?

LUCENTIO. Here, madam:— Hic ibat Simois; hic est Sigeia tellus; Hic steterat Priami regia celsa senis.

BIANCA. Construe them.

LUCENTIO. Hic ibat, as I told you before, Simois, I am Lucentio, hic est, son unto Vincentio of Pisa, Sigeia tellus, disguised thus to get your love, Hic steterat, and that Lucentio that comes a-wooing, Priami, is my man Tranio, regia, bearing my port, celsa senis, that we might beguile the old pantaloon.

HORTENSIO. [Returning.] Madam, my instrument’s in tune.

BIANCA. Let’s hear.—

[Hortensio plays.]

O fie! the treble jars.

LUCENTIO. Spit in the hole, man, and tune again.

BIANCA. Now let me see if I can construe it: Hic ibat Simois, I know you not; hic est Sigeia tellus, I trust you not; Hic steterat Priami, take heed he hear us not; regia, presume not; celsa senis, despair not.

HORTENSIO. Madam, ’tis now in tune.

LUCENTIO. All but the base.

HORTENSIO. The base is right; ’tis the base knave that jars. [Aside] How fiery and forward our pedant is! Now, for my life, the knave doth court my love: Pedascule, I’ll watch you better yet.

BIANCA. In time I may believe, yet I mistrust.

LUCENTIO. Mistrust it not; for sure, Æacides Was Ajax, call’d so from his grandfather.

BIANCA. I must believe my master; else, I promise you, I should be arguing still upon that doubt; But let it rest. Now, Licio, to you. Good master, take it not unkindly, pray, That I have been thus pleasant with you both.

HORTENSIO. [To Lucentio] You may go walk and give me leave a while; My lessons make no music in three parts.

LUCENTIO. Are you so formal, sir? Well, I must wait, [Aside] And watch withal; for, but I be deceiv’d, Our fine musician groweth amorous.

HORTENSIO. Madam, before you touch the instrument, To learn the order of my fingering, I must begin with rudiments of art; To teach you gamut in a briefer sort, More pleasant, pithy, and effectual, Than hath been taught by any of my trade: And there it is in writing, fairly drawn.

BIANCA. Why, I am past my gamut long ago.

HORTENSIO. Yet read the gamut of Hortensio.

BIANCA. Gamut I am, the ground of all accord, A re, to plead Hortensio’s passion; B mi, Bianca, take him for thy lord, C fa ut, that loves with all affection: D sol re, one clef, two notes have I E la mi, show pity or I die. Call you this gamut? Tut, I like it not: Old fashions please me best; I am not so nice, To change true rules for odd inventions.

SERVANT. Mistress, your father prays you leave your books, And help to dress your sister’s chamber up: You know tomorrow is the wedding-day.

BIANCA. Farewell, sweet masters, both: I must be gone.

[Exeunt Bianca and Servant.]

LUCENTIO. Faith, mistress, then I have no cause to stay.

HORTENSIO. But I have cause to pry into this pedant: Methinks he looks as though he were in love. Yet if thy thoughts, Bianca, be so humble To cast thy wand’ring eyes on every stale, Seize thee that list: if once I find thee ranging, Hortensio will be quit with thee by changing.

SCENE II. The same. Before Baptista’s house.

Enter Baptista, Gremio, Tranio, Katherina, Bianca, Lucentio and Attendants.

BAPTISTA. [To Tranio.] Signior Lucentio, this is the ’pointed day That Katherine and Petruchio should be married, And yet we hear not of our son-in-law. What will be said? What mockery will it be To want the bridegroom when the priest attends To speak the ceremonial rites of marriage! What says Lucentio to this shame of ours?

KATHERINA. No shame but mine; I must, forsooth, be forc’d To give my hand, oppos’d against my heart, Unto a mad-brain rudesby, full of spleen; Who woo’d in haste and means to wed at leisure. I told you, I, he was a frantic fool, Hiding his bitter jests in blunt behaviour; And to be noted for a merry man, He’ll woo a thousand, ’point the day of marriage, Make friends, invite, and proclaim the banns; Yet never means to wed where he hath woo’d. Now must the world point at poor Katherine, And say ‘Lo! there is mad Petruchio’s wife, If it would please him come and marry her.’

TRANIO. Patience, good Katherine, and Baptista too. Upon my life, Petruchio means but well, Whatever fortune stays him from his word: Though he be blunt, I know him passing wise; Though he be merry, yet withal he’s honest.

KATHERINA. Would Katherine had never seen him though!

[Exit weeping, followed by Bianca and others.]

BAPTISTA. Go, girl, I cannot blame thee now to weep, For such an injury would vex a very saint; Much more a shrew of thy impatient humour.

Master, master! News! old news, and such news as you never heard of!

BAPTISTA. Is it new and old too? How may that be?

BIONDELLO. Why, is it not news to hear of Petruchio’s coming?

BAPTISTA. Is he come?

BIONDELLO. Why, no, sir.

BAPTISTA. What then?

BIONDELLO. He is coming.

BAPTISTA. When will he be here?

BIONDELLO. When he stands where I am and sees you there.

TRANIO. But say, what to thine old news?

BIONDELLO. Why, Petruchio is coming, in a new hat and an old jerkin; a pair of old breeches thrice turned; a pair of boots that have been candle-cases, one buckled, another laced; an old rusty sword ta’en out of the town armoury, with a broken hilt, and chapeless; with two broken points: his horse hipped with an old mothy saddle and stirrups of no kindred; besides, possessed with the glanders and like to mose in the chine; troubled with the lampass, infected with the fashions, full of windgalls, sped with spavins, rayed with the yellows, past cure of the fives, stark spoiled with the staggers, begnawn with the bots, swayed in the back and shoulder-shotten; near-legged before, and with a half-checked bit, and a head-stall of sheep’s leather, which, being restrained to keep him from stumbling, hath been often burst, and now repaired with knots; one girth six times pieced, and a woman’s crupper of velure, which hath two letters for her name fairly set down in studs, and here and there pieced with pack-thread.

BAPTISTA. Who comes with him?

BIONDELLO. O, sir! his lackey, for all the world caparisoned like the horse; with a linen stock on one leg and a kersey boot-hose on the other, gartered with a red and blue list; an old hat, and the humour of forty fancies prick’d in’t for a feather: a monster, a very monster in apparel, and not like a Christian footboy or a gentleman’s lackey.

TRANIO. ’Tis some odd humour pricks him to this fashion; Yet oftentimes he goes but mean-apparell’d.

BAPTISTA. I am glad he’s come, howsoe’er he comes.

BIONDELLO. Why, sir, he comes not.

BAPTISTA. Didst thou not say he comes?

BIONDELLO. Who? that Petruchio came?

BAPTISTA. Ay, that Petruchio came.

BIONDELLO. No, sir; I say his horse comes, with him on his back.

BAPTISTA. Why, that’s all one.

BIONDELLO. Nay, by Saint Jamy, I hold you a penny, A horse and a man Is more than one, And yet not many.

Enter Petruchio and Grumio.

PETRUCHIO. Come, where be these gallants? Who is at home?

BAPTISTA. You are welcome, sir.

PETRUCHIO. And yet I come not well.

BAPTISTA. And yet you halt not.

TRANIO. Not so well apparell’d as I wish you were.

PETRUCHIO. Were it better, I should rush in thus. But where is Kate? Where is my lovely bride? How does my father? Gentles, methinks you frown; And wherefore gaze this goodly company, As if they saw some wondrous monument, Some comet or unusual prodigy?

BAPTISTA. Why, sir, you know this is your wedding-day: First were we sad, fearing you would not come; Now sadder, that you come so unprovided. Fie! doff this habit, shame to your estate, An eye-sore to our solemn festival.

TRANIO. And tell us what occasion of import Hath all so long detain’d you from your wife, And sent you hither so unlike yourself?

PETRUCHIO. Tedious it were to tell, and harsh to hear; Sufficeth I am come to keep my word, Though in some part enforced to digress; Which at more leisure I will so excuse As you shall well be satisfied withal. But where is Kate? I stay too long from her; The morning wears, ’tis time we were at church.

TRANIO. See not your bride in these unreverent robes; Go to my chamber, put on clothes of mine.

PETRUCHIO. Not I, believe me: thus I’ll visit her.

BAPTISTA. But thus, I trust, you will not marry her.

PETRUCHIO. Good sooth, even thus; therefore ha’ done with words; To me she’s married, not unto my clothes. Could I repair what she will wear in me As I can change these poor accoutrements, ’Twere well for Kate and better for myself. But what a fool am I to chat with you When I should bid good morrow to my bride, And seal the title with a lovely kiss!

[Exeunt Petruchio, Grumio and Biondello.]

TRANIO. He hath some meaning in his mad attire. We will persuade him, be it possible, To put on better ere he go to church.

BAPTISTA. I’ll after him and see the event of this.

[Exeunt Baptista, Gremio and Attendants.]

TRANIO. But, sir, to love concerneth us to add Her father’s liking; which to bring to pass, As I before imparted to your worship, I am to get a man,—whate’er he be It skills not much; we’ll fit him to our turn,— And he shall be Vincentio of Pisa, And make assurance here in Padua, Of greater sums than I have promised. So shall you quietly enjoy your hope, And marry sweet Bianca with consent.

LUCENTIO. Were it not that my fellow schoolmaster Doth watch Bianca’s steps so narrowly, ’Twere good, methinks, to steal our marriage; Which once perform’d, let all the world say no, I’ll keep mine own despite of all the world.

TRANIO. That by degrees we mean to look into, And watch our vantage in this business. We’ll over-reach the greybeard, Gremio, The narrow-prying father, Minola, The quaint musician, amorous Licio; All for my master’s sake, Lucentio.

Re-enter Gremio.

Signior Gremio, came you from the church?

GREMIO. As willingly as e’er I came from school.

TRANIO. And is the bride and bridegroom coming home?

GREMIO. A bridegroom, say you? ’Tis a groom indeed, A grumbling groom, and that the girl shall find.

TRANIO. Curster than she? Why, ’tis impossible.

GREMIO. Why, he’s a devil, a devil, a very fiend.

TRANIO. Why, she’s a devil, a devil, the devil’s dam.

GREMIO. Tut! she’s a lamb, a dove, a fool, to him. I’ll tell you, Sir Lucentio: when the priest Should ask if Katherine should be his wife, ’Ay, by gogs-wouns’ quoth he, and swore so loud That, all amaz’d, the priest let fall the book; And as he stoop’d again to take it up, The mad-brain’d bridegroom took him such a cuff That down fell priest and book, and book and priest: ‘Now take them up,’ quoth he ‘if any list.’

TRANIO. What said the wench, when he rose again?

GREMIO. Trembled and shook, for why, he stamp’d and swore As if the vicar meant to cozen him. But after many ceremonies done, He calls for wine: ‘A health!’ quoth he, as if He had been abroad, carousing to his mates After a storm; quaff’d off the muscadel, And threw the sops all in the sexton’s face, Having no other reason But that his beard grew thin and hungerly And seem’d to ask him sops as he was drinking. This done, he took the bride about the neck, And kiss’d her lips with such a clamorous smack That at the parting all the church did echo. And I, seeing this, came thence for very shame; And after me, I know, the rout is coming. Such a mad marriage never was before. Hark, hark! I hear the minstrels play.

Enter Petruchio, Katherina, Bianca, Baptista, Hortensio, Grumio and Train.

PETRUCHIO. Gentlemen and friends, I thank you for your pains: I know you think to dine with me today, And have prepar’d great store of wedding cheer But so it is, my haste doth call me hence, And therefore here I mean to take my leave.

BAPTISTA. Is’t possible you will away tonight?

PETRUCHIO. I must away today before night come. Make it no wonder: if you knew my business, You would entreat me rather go than stay. And, honest company, I thank you all, That have beheld me give away myself To this most patient, sweet, and virtuous wife. Dine with my father, drink a health to me. For I must hence; and farewell to you all.

TRANIO. Let us entreat you stay till after dinner.

PETRUCHIO. It may not be.

GREMIO. Let me entreat you.

PETRUCHIO. It cannot be.

KATHERINA. Let me entreat you.

PETRUCHIO. I am content.

KATHERINA. Are you content to stay?

PETRUCHIO. I am content you shall entreat me stay; But yet not stay, entreat me how you can.

KATHERINA. Now, if you love me, stay.

PETRUCHIO. Grumio, my horse!

GRUMIO. Ay, sir, they be ready; the oats have eaten the horses.

KATHERINA. Nay, then, Do what thou canst, I will not go today; No, nor tomorrow, not till I please myself. The door is open, sir; there lies your way; You may be jogging whiles your boots are green; For me, I’ll not be gone till I please myself. ’Tis like you’ll prove a jolly surly groom That take it on you at the first so roundly.

PETRUCHIO. O Kate! content thee: prithee be not angry.

KATHERINA. I will be angry: what hast thou to do? Father, be quiet; he shall stay my leisure.

GREMIO. Ay, marry, sir, now it begins to work.

KATHERINA. Gentlemen, forward to the bridal dinner: I see a woman may be made a fool, If she had not a spirit to resist.

PETRUCHIO. They shall go forward, Kate, at thy command. Obey the bride, you that attend on her; Go to the feast, revel and domineer, Carouse full measure to her maidenhead, Be mad and merry, or go hang yourselves: But for my bonny Kate, she must with me. Nay, look not big, nor stamp, nor stare, nor fret; I will be master of what is mine own. She is my goods, my chattels; she is my house, My household stuff, my field, my barn, My horse, my ox, my ass, my anything; And here she stands, touch her whoever dare; I’ll bring mine action on the proudest he That stops my way in Padua. Grumio, Draw forth thy weapon; we are beset with thieves; Rescue thy mistress, if thou be a man. Fear not, sweet wench; they shall not touch thee, Kate; I’ll buckler thee against a million.

[Exeunt Petruchio, Katherina and Grumio.]

BAPTISTA. Nay, let them go, a couple of quiet ones.

GREMIO. Went they not quickly, I should die with laughing.

TRANIO. Of all mad matches, never was the like.

LUCENTIO. Mistress, what’s your opinion of your sister?

BIANCA. That, being mad herself, she’s madly mated.

GREMIO. I warrant him, Petruchio is Kated.

BAPTISTA. Neighbours and friends, though bride and bridegroom wants For to supply the places at the table, You know there wants no junkets at the feast. Lucentio, you shall supply the bridegroom’s place; And let Bianca take her sister’s room.

TRANIO. Shall sweet Bianca practise how to bride it?

BAPTISTA. She shall, Lucentio. Come, gentlemen, let’s go.

SCENE I. A hall in Petruchio’s country house.

Enter Grumio.

GRUMIO. Fie, fie on all tired jades, on all mad masters, and all foul ways! Was ever man so beaten? Was ever man so ray’d? Was ever man so weary? I am sent before to make a fire, and they are coming after to warm them. Now, were not I a little pot and soon hot, my very lips might freeze to my teeth, my tongue to the roof of my mouth, my heart in my belly, ere I should come by a fire to thaw me. But I with blowing the fire shall warm myself; for, considering the weather, a taller man than I will take cold. Holla, ho! Curtis!

Enter Curtis.

CURTIS. Who is that calls so coldly?

GRUMIO. A piece of ice: if thou doubt it, thou mayst slide from my shoulder to my heel with no greater a run but my head and my neck. A fire, good Curtis.

CURTIS. Is my master and his wife coming, Grumio?

GRUMIO. O, ay! Curtis, ay; and therefore fire, fire; cast on no water.

CURTIS. Is she so hot a shrew as she’s reported?

GRUMIO. She was, good Curtis, before this frost; but thou knowest winter tames man, woman, and beast; for it hath tamed my old master, and my new mistress, and myself, fellow Curtis.

CURTIS. Away, you three-inch fool! I am no beast.

GRUMIO. Am I but three inches? Why, thy horn is a foot; and so long am I at the least. But wilt thou make a fire, or shall I complain on thee to our mistress, whose hand,—she being now at hand,— thou shalt soon feel, to thy cold comfort, for being slow in thy hot office?

CURTIS. I prithee, good Grumio, tell me, how goes the world?

GRUMIO. A cold world, Curtis, in every office but thine; and therefore fire. Do thy duty, and have thy duty, for my master and mistress are almost frozen to death.

CURTIS. There’s fire ready; and therefore, good Grumio, the news.

GRUMIO. Why, ‘Jack boy! ho, boy!’ and as much news as wilt thou.

CURTIS. Come, you are so full of cony-catching.

GRUMIO. Why, therefore, fire; for I have caught extreme cold. Where’s the cook? Is supper ready, the house trimmed, rushes strewed, cobwebs swept, the servingmen in their new fustian, their white stockings, and every officer his wedding-garment on? Be the Jacks fair within, the Jills fair without, and carpets laid, and everything in order?

CURTIS. All ready; and therefore, I pray thee, news.

GRUMIO. First, know my horse is tired; my master and mistress fallen out.

CURTIS. How?

GRUMIO. Out of their saddles into the dirt; and thereby hangs a tale.

CURTIS. Let’s ha’t, good Grumio.

GRUMIO. Lend thine ear.

CURTIS. Here.

GRUMIO. [Striking him.] There.

CURTIS. This ’tis to feel a tale, not to hear a tale.

GRUMIO. And therefore ’tis called a sensible tale; and this cuff was but to knock at your ear and beseech listening. Now I begin: Imprimis, we came down a foul hill, my master riding behind my mistress,—

CURTIS. Both of one horse?

GRUMIO. What’s that to thee?

CURTIS. Why, a horse.

GRUMIO. Tell thou the tale: but hadst thou not crossed me, thou shouldst have heard how her horse fell, and she under her horse; thou shouldst have heard in how miry a place, how she was bemoiled; how he left her with the horse upon her; how he beat me because her horse stumbled; how she waded through the dirt to pluck him off me: how he swore; how she prayed, that never prayed before; how I cried; how the horses ran away; how her bridle was burst; how I lost my crupper; with many things of worthy memory, which now shall die in oblivion, and thou return unexperienced to thy grave.

CURTIS. By this reckoning he is more shrew than she.

GRUMIO. Ay; and that thou and the proudest of you all shall find when he comes home. But what talk I of this? Call forth Nathaniel, Joseph, Nicholas, Philip, Walter, Sugarsop, and the rest; let their heads be sleekly combed, their blue coats brush’d and their garters of an indifferent knit; let them curtsy with their left legs, and not presume to touch a hair of my master’s horse-tail till they kiss their hands. Are they all ready?

CURTIS. They are.

GRUMIO. Call them forth.

CURTIS. Do you hear? ho! You must meet my master to countenance my mistress.

GRUMIO. Why, she hath a face of her own.

CURTIS. Who knows not that?

GRUMIO. Thou, it seems, that calls for company to countenance her.

CURTIS. I call them forth to credit her.

GRUMIO. Why, she comes to borrow nothing of them.

Enter four or five Servants.

NATHANIEL. Welcome home, Grumio!

PHILIP. How now, Grumio!

JOSEPH. What, Grumio!

NICHOLAS. Fellow Grumio!

NATHANIEL. How now, old lad!

GRUMIO. Welcome, you; how now, you; what, you; fellow, you; and thus much for greeting. Now, my spruce companions, is all ready, and all things neat?

NATHANIEL. All things is ready. How near is our master?

GRUMIO. E’en at hand, alighted by this; and therefore be not,— Cock’s passion, silence! I hear my master.

Enter Petruchio and Katherina.

PETRUCHIO. Where be these knaves? What! no man at door To hold my stirrup nor to take my horse? Where is Nathaniel, Gregory, Philip?—

ALL SERVANTS. Here, here, sir; here, sir.

PETRUCHIO. Here, sir! here, sir! here, sir! here, sir! You logger-headed and unpolish’d grooms! What, no attendance? no regard? no duty? Where is the foolish knave I sent before?

GRUMIO. Here, sir; as foolish as I was before.

PETRUCHIO. You peasant swain! you whoreson malt-horse drudge! Did I not bid thee meet me in the park, And bring along these rascal knaves with thee?

GRUMIO. Nathaniel’s coat, sir, was not fully made, And Gabriel’s pumps were all unpink’d i’ the heel; There was no link to colour Peter’s hat, And Walter’s dagger was not come from sheathing; There was none fine but Adam, Ralph, and Gregory; The rest were ragged, old, and beggarly; Yet, as they are, here are they come to meet you.

PETRUCHIO. Go, rascals, go and fetch my supper in.

Where is the life that late I led? Where are those—? Sit down, Kate, and welcome. Food, food, food, food!

Re-enter Servants with supper.

Why, when, I say?—Nay, good sweet Kate, be merry.— Off with my boots, you rogues! you villains! when? It was the friar of orders grey, As he forth walked on his way: Out, you rogue! you pluck my foot awry:

Take that, and mend the plucking off the other. Be merry, Kate. Some water, here; what, ho! Where’s my spaniel Troilus? Sirrah, get you hence And bid my cousin Ferdinand come hither:

One, Kate, that you must kiss and be acquainted with. Where are my slippers? Shall I have some water? Come, Kate, and wash, and welcome heartily.—

[Servant lets the ewer fall. Petruchio strikes him.]

You whoreson villain! will you let it fall?

KATHERINA. Patience, I pray you; ’twas a fault unwilling.

PETRUCHIO. A whoreson, beetle-headed, flap-ear’d knave! Come, Kate, sit down; I know you have a stomach. Will you give thanks, sweet Kate, or else shall I?— What’s this? Mutton?

FIRST SERVANT. Ay.

PETRUCHIO. Who brought it?

PETER. I.

PETRUCHIO. ’Tis burnt; and so is all the meat. What dogs are these! Where is the rascal cook? How durst you, villains, bring it from the dresser, And serve it thus to me that love it not?

[Throws the meat, etc., at them.]

There, take it to you, trenchers, cups, and all. You heedless joltheads and unmanner’d slaves! What! do you grumble? I’ll be with you straight.

KATHERINA. I pray you, husband, be not so disquiet; The meat was well, if you were so contented.

PETRUCHIO. I tell thee, Kate, ’twas burnt and dried away, And I expressly am forbid to touch it; For it engenders choler, planteth anger; And better ’twere that both of us did fast, Since, of ourselves, ourselves are choleric, Than feed it with such over-roasted flesh. Be patient; tomorrow ’t shall be mended. And for this night we’ll fast for company: Come, I will bring thee to thy bridal chamber.

[Exeunt Petruchio, Katherina and Curtis.]

NATHANIEL. Peter, didst ever see the like?

PETER. He kills her in her own humour.

Re-enter Curtis.

GRUMIO. Where is he?

CURTIS. In her chamber, making a sermon of continency to her; And rails, and swears, and rates, that she, poor soul, Knows not which way to stand, to look, to speak, And sits as one new risen from a dream. Away, away! for he is coming hither.

Re-enter Petruchio.

PETRUCHIO. Thus have I politicly begun my reign, And ’tis my hope to end successfully. My falcon now is sharp and passing empty. And till she stoop she must not be full-gorg’d, For then she never looks upon her lure. Another way I have to man my haggard, To make her come, and know her keeper’s call, That is, to watch her, as we watch these kites That bate and beat, and will not be obedient. She eat no meat today, nor none shall eat; Last night she slept not, nor tonight she shall not; As with the meat, some undeserved fault I’ll find about the making of the bed; And here I’ll fling the pillow, there the bolster, This way the coverlet, another way the sheets; Ay, and amid this hurly I intend That all is done in reverend care of her; And, in conclusion, she shall watch all night: And if she chance to nod I’ll rail and brawl, And with the clamour keep her still awake. This is a way to kill a wife with kindness; And thus I’ll curb her mad and headstrong humour. He that knows better how to tame a shrew, Now let him speak; ’tis charity to show.

SCENE II. Padua. Before Baptista’s house.

Enter Tranio and Hortensio.

TRANIO. Is ’t possible, friend Licio, that Mistress Bianca Doth fancy any other but Lucentio? I tell you, sir, she bears me fair in hand.

HORTENSIO. Sir, to satisfy you in what I have said, Stand by and mark the manner of his teaching.

[They stand aside.]

Enter Bianca and Lucentio.

LUCENTIO. Now, mistress, profit you in what you read?

BIANCA. What, master, read you? First resolve me that.

LUCENTIO. I read that I profess, The Art to Love.

BIANCA. And may you prove, sir, master of your art!

LUCENTIO. While you, sweet dear, prove mistress of my heart.

HORTENSIO. Quick proceeders, marry! Now tell me, I pray, You that durst swear that your Mistress Bianca Lov’d none in the world so well as Lucentio.

TRANIO. O despiteful love! unconstant womankind! I tell thee, Licio, this is wonderful.

HORTENSIO. Mistake no more; I am not Licio. Nor a musician as I seem to be; But one that scorn to live in this disguise For such a one as leaves a gentleman And makes a god of such a cullion: Know, sir, that I am call’d Hortensio.

TRANIO. Signior Hortensio, I have often heard Of your entire affection to Bianca; And since mine eyes are witness of her lightness, I will with you, if you be so contented, Forswear Bianca and her love for ever.

HORTENSIO. See, how they kiss and court! Signior Lucentio, Here is my hand, and here I firmly vow Never to woo her more, but do forswear her, As one unworthy all the former favours That I have fondly flatter’d her withal.

TRANIO. And here I take the like unfeigned oath, Never to marry with her though she would entreat; Fie on her! See how beastly she doth court him!

HORTENSIO. Would all the world but he had quite forsworn! For me, that I may surely keep mine oath, I will be married to a wealthy widow Ere three days pass, which hath as long lov’d me As I have lov’d this proud disdainful haggard. And so farewell, Signior Lucentio. Kindness in women, not their beauteous looks, Shall win my love; and so I take my leave, In resolution as I swore before.

[Exit Hortensio. Lucentio and Bianca advance.]

TRANIO. Mistress Bianca, bless you with such grace As ’longeth to a lover’s blessed case! Nay, I have ta’en you napping, gentle love, And have forsworn you with Hortensio.

BIANCA. Tranio, you jest; but have you both forsworn me?

TRANIO. Mistress, we have.

LUCENTIO. Then we are rid of Licio.

TRANIO. I’ faith, he’ll have a lusty widow now, That shall be woo’d and wedded in a day.

BIANCA. God give him joy!

TRANIO. Ay, and he’ll tame her.

BIANCA. He says so, Tranio.

TRANIO. Faith, he is gone unto the taming-school.

BIANCA. The taming-school! What, is there such a place?

TRANIO. Ay, mistress; and Petruchio is the master, That teacheth tricks eleven and twenty long, To tame a shrew and charm her chattering tongue.

Enter Biondello, running.

BIONDELLO. O master, master! I have watch’d so long That I am dog-weary; but at last I spied An ancient angel coming down the hill Will serve the turn.

TRANIO. What is he, Biondello?

BIONDELLO. Master, a mercatante or a pedant, I know not what; but formal in apparel, In gait and countenance surely like a father.

LUCENTIO. And what of him, Tranio?

TRANIO. If he be credulous and trust my tale, I’ll make him glad to seem Vincentio, And give assurance to Baptista Minola, As if he were the right Vincentio. Take in your love, and then let me alone.

[Exeunt Lucentio and Bianca.]

Enter a Pedant.

PEDANT. God save you, sir!

TRANIO. And you, sir! you are welcome. Travel you far on, or are you at the farthest?

PEDANT. Sir, at the farthest for a week or two; But then up farther, and as far as Rome; And so to Tripoli, if God lend me life.

TRANIO. What countryman, I pray?

PEDANT. Of Mantua.

TRANIO. Of Mantua, sir? Marry, God forbid, And come to Padua, careless of your life!

PEDANT. My life, sir! How, I pray? for that goes hard.

TRANIO. ’Tis death for anyone in Mantua To come to Padua. Know you not the cause? Your ships are stay’d at Venice; and the Duke,— For private quarrel ’twixt your Duke and him,— Hath publish’d and proclaim’d it openly. ’Tis marvel, but that you are but newly come You might have heard it else proclaim’d about.

PEDANT. Alas, sir! it is worse for me than so; For I have bills for money by exchange From Florence, and must here deliver them.

TRANIO. Well, sir, to do you courtesy, This will I do, and this I will advise you: First, tell me, have you ever been at Pisa?

PEDANT. Ay, sir, in Pisa have I often been, Pisa renowned for grave citizens.

TRANIO. Among them know you one Vincentio?

PEDANT. I know him not, but I have heard of him, A merchant of incomparable wealth.

TRANIO. He is my father, sir; and, sooth to say, In countenance somewhat doth resemble you.

BIONDELLO. [Aside.] As much as an apple doth an oyster, and all one.

TRANIO. To save your life in this extremity, This favour will I do you for his sake; And think it not the worst of all your fortunes That you are like to Sir Vincentio. His name and credit shall you undertake, And in my house you shall be friendly lodg’d; Look that you take upon you as you should! You understand me, sir; so shall you stay Till you have done your business in the city. If this be courtesy, sir, accept of it.

PEDANT. O, sir, I do; and will repute you ever The patron of my life and liberty.

TRANIO. Then go with me to make the matter good. This, by the way, I let you understand: My father is here look’d for every day To pass assurance of a dower in marriage ’Twixt me and one Baptista’s daughter here: In all these circumstances I’ll instruct you. Go with me to clothe you as becomes you.

SCENE III. A room in Petruchio’s house.

Enter Katherina and Grumio.

GRUMIO. No, no, forsooth; I dare not for my life.

KATHERINA. The more my wrong, the more his spite appears. What, did he marry me to famish me? Beggars that come unto my father’s door Upon entreaty have a present alms; If not, elsewhere they meet with charity; But I, who never knew how to entreat, Nor never needed that I should entreat, Am starv’d for meat, giddy for lack of sleep; With oaths kept waking, and with brawling fed. And that which spites me more than all these wants, He does it under name of perfect love; As who should say, if I should sleep or eat ’Twere deadly sickness, or else present death. I prithee go and get me some repast; I care not what, so it be wholesome food.

GRUMIO. What say you to a neat’s foot?

KATHERINA. ’Tis passing good; I prithee let me have it.

GRUMIO. I fear it is too choleric a meat. How say you to a fat tripe finely broil’d?

KATHERINA. I like it well; good Grumio, fetch it me.

GRUMIO. I cannot tell; I fear ’tis choleric. What say you to a piece of beef and mustard?

KATHERINA. A dish that I do love to feed upon.

GRUMIO. Ay, but the mustard is too hot a little.

KATHERINA. Why then the beef, and let the mustard rest.

GRUMIO. Nay, then I will not: you shall have the mustard, Or else you get no beef of Grumio.

KATHERINA. Then both, or one, or anything thou wilt.

GRUMIO. Why then the mustard without the beef.

KATHERINA. Go, get thee gone, thou false deluding slave,

That feed’st me with the very name of meat. Sorrow on thee and all the pack of you That triumph thus upon my misery! Go, get thee gone, I say.

Enter Petruchio with a dish of meat; and Hortensio.

PETRUCHIO. How fares my Kate? What, sweeting, all amort?

HORTENSIO. Mistress, what cheer?

KATHERINA. Faith, as cold as can be.

PETRUCHIO. Pluck up thy spirits; look cheerfully upon me. Here, love; thou seest how diligent I am, To dress thy meat myself, and bring it thee:

[Sets the dish on a table.]

I am sure, sweet Kate, this kindness merits thanks. What! not a word? Nay, then thou lov’st it not, And all my pains is sorted to no proof. Here, take away this dish.

KATHERINA. I pray you, let it stand.

PETRUCHIO. The poorest service is repaid with thanks; And so shall mine, before you touch the meat.

KATHERINA. I thank you, sir.

HORTENSIO. Signior Petruchio, fie! you are to blame. Come, Mistress Kate, I’ll bear you company.

PETRUCHIO. [Aside.] Eat it up all, Hortensio, if thou lovest me. Much good do it unto thy gentle heart! Kate, eat apace: and now, my honey love, Will we return unto thy father’s house And revel it as bravely as the best, With silken coats and caps, and golden rings, With ruffs and cuffs and farthingales and things; With scarfs and fans and double change of bravery, With amber bracelets, beads, and all this knavery. What! hast thou din’d? The tailor stays thy leisure, To deck thy body with his ruffling treasure.

Enter Tailor.

Come, tailor, let us see these ornaments; Lay forth the gown.—

Enter Haberdasher.

What news with you, sir?

HABERDASHER. Here is the cap your worship did bespeak.

PETRUCHIO. Why, this was moulded on a porringer; A velvet dish: fie, fie! ’tis lewd and filthy: Why, ’tis a cockle or a walnut-shell, A knack, a toy, a trick, a baby’s cap: Away with it! come, let me have a bigger.

KATHERINA. I’ll have no bigger; this doth fit the time, And gentlewomen wear such caps as these.

PETRUCHIO. When you are gentle, you shall have one too, And not till then.

HORTENSIO. [Aside] That will not be in haste.

KATHERINA. Why, sir, I trust I may have leave to speak; And speak I will. I am no child, no babe. Your betters have endur’d me say my mind, And if you cannot, best you stop your ears. My tongue will tell the anger of my heart, Or else my heart, concealing it, will break; And rather than it shall, I will be free Even to the uttermost, as I please, in words.

PETRUCHIO. Why, thou say’st true; it is a paltry cap, A custard-coffin, a bauble, a silken pie; I love thee well in that thou lik’st it not.

KATHERINA. Love me or love me not, I like the cap; And it I will have, or I will have none.

[Exit Haberdasher.]

PETRUCHIO. Thy gown? Why, ay: come, tailor, let us see’t. O mercy, God! what masquing stuff is here? What’s this? A sleeve? ’Tis like a demi-cannon. What, up and down, carv’d like an apple tart? Here’s snip and nip and cut and slish and slash, Like to a censer in a barber’s shop. Why, what i’ devil’s name, tailor, call’st thou this?

HORTENSIO. [Aside] I see she’s like to have neither cap nor gown.

TAILOR. You bid me make it orderly and well, According to the fashion and the time.

PETRUCHIO. Marry, and did; but if you be remember’d, I did not bid you mar it to the time. Go, hop me over every kennel home, For you shall hop without my custom, sir. I’ll none of it: hence! make your best of it.

KATHERINA. I never saw a better fashion’d gown, More quaint, more pleasing, nor more commendable; Belike you mean to make a puppet of me.

PETRUCHIO. Why, true; he means to make a puppet of thee.

TAILOR. She says your worship means to make a puppet of her.

PETRUCHIO. O monstrous arrogance! Thou liest, thou thread, Thou thimble, Thou yard, three-quarters, half-yard, quarter, nail! Thou flea, thou nit, thou winter-cricket thou! Brav’d in mine own house with a skein of thread! Away! thou rag, thou quantity, thou remnant, Or I shall so be-mete thee with thy yard As thou shalt think on prating whilst thou liv’st! I tell thee, I, that thou hast marr’d her gown.

TAILOR. Your worship is deceiv’d: the gown is made Just as my master had direction. Grumio gave order how it should be done.

GRUMIO. I gave him no order; I gave him the stuff.

TAILOR. But how did you desire it should be made?

GRUMIO. Marry, sir, with needle and thread.

TAILOR. But did you not request to have it cut?

GRUMIO. Thou hast faced many things.

TAILOR. I have.

GRUMIO. Face not me. Thou hast braved many men; brave not me: I will neither be fac’d nor brav’d. I say unto thee, I bid thy master cut out the gown; but I did not bid him cut it to pieces: ergo, thou liest.

TAILOR. Why, here is the note of the fashion to testify.

PETRUCHIO. Read it.

GRUMIO. The note lies in ’s throat, if he say I said so.

TAILOR. ’Imprimis, a loose-bodied gown.’

GRUMIO. Master, if ever I said loose-bodied gown, sew me in the skirts of it and beat me to death with a bottom of brown thread; I said, a gown.

PETRUCHIO. Proceed.

TAILOR. ‘With a small compassed cape.’

GRUMIO. I confess the cape.

TAILOR. ‘With a trunk sleeve.’

GRUMIO. I confess two sleeves.

TAILOR. ‘The sleeves curiously cut.’

PETRUCHIO. Ay, there’s the villainy.

GRUMIO. Error i’ the bill, sir; error i’ the bill. I commanded the sleeves should be cut out, and sew’d up again; and that I’ll prove upon thee, though thy little finger be armed in a thimble.

TAILOR. This is true that I say; and I had thee in place where thou shouldst know it.

GRUMIO. I am for thee straight; take thou the bill, give me thy mete-yard, and spare not me.

HORTENSIO. God-a-mercy, Grumio! Then he shall have no odds.

PETRUCHIO. Well, sir, in brief, the gown is not for me.

GRUMIO. You are i’ the right, sir; ’tis for my mistress.

PETRUCHIO. Go, take it up unto thy master’s use.

GRUMIO. Villain, not for thy life! Take up my mistress’ gown for thy master’s use!

PETRUCHIO. Why, sir, what’s your conceit in that?

GRUMIO. O, sir, the conceit is deeper than you think for. Take up my mistress’ gown to his master’s use! O fie, fie, fie!

PETRUCHIO. [Aside] Hortensio, say thou wilt see the tailor paid. [To Tailor.] Go take it hence; be gone, and say no more.

HORTENSIO. [Aside to Tailor.] Tailor, I’ll pay thee for thy gown tomorrow; Take no unkindness of his hasty words. Away, I say! commend me to thy master.

[Exit Tailor.]

PETRUCHIO. Well, come, my Kate; we will unto your father’s Even in these honest mean habiliments. Our purses shall be proud, our garments poor For ’tis the mind that makes the body rich; And as the sun breaks through the darkest clouds, So honour peereth in the meanest habit. What, is the jay more precious than the lark Because his feathers are more beautiful? Or is the adder better than the eel Because his painted skin contents the eye? O no, good Kate; neither art thou the worse For this poor furniture and mean array. If thou account’st it shame, lay it on me; And therefore frolic; we will hence forthwith, To feast and sport us at thy father’s house. Go call my men, and let us straight to him; And bring our horses unto Long-lane end; There will we mount, and thither walk on foot. Let’s see; I think ’tis now some seven o’clock, And well we may come there by dinner-time.

KATHERINA. I dare assure you, sir, ’tis almost two, And ’twill be supper-time ere you come there.

PETRUCHIO. It shall be seven ere I go to horse. Look what I speak, or do, or think to do, You are still crossing it. Sirs, let ’t alone: I will not go today; and ere I do, It shall be what o’clock I say it is.

HORTENSIO. Why, so this gallant will command the sun.

SCENE IV. Padua. Before Baptista’s house.

Enter Tranio and the Pedant dressed like Vincentio

TRANIO. Sir, this is the house; please it you that I call?

PEDANT. Ay, what else? and, but I be deceived, Signior Baptista may remember me, Near twenty years ago in Genoa, Where we were lodgers at the Pegasus.

TRANIO. ’Tis well; and hold your own, in any case, With such austerity as ’longeth to a father.

PEDANT. I warrant you. But, sir, here comes your boy; ’Twere good he were school’d.

TRANIO. Fear you not him. Sirrah Biondello, Now do your duty throughly, I advise you. Imagine ’twere the right Vincentio.

BIONDELLO. Tut! fear not me.

TRANIO. But hast thou done thy errand to Baptista?

BIONDELLO. I told him that your father was at Venice, And that you look’d for him this day in Padua.

TRANIO. Th’art a tall fellow; hold thee that to drink. Here comes Baptista. Set your countenance, sir.

Enter Baptista and Lucentio.

Signior Baptista, you are happily met. [To the Pedant] Sir, this is the gentleman I told you of; I pray you stand good father to me now; Give me Bianca for my patrimony.

PEDANT. Soft, son! Sir, by your leave: having come to Padua To gather in some debts, my son Lucentio Made me acquainted with a weighty cause Of love between your daughter and himself: And,—for the good report I hear of you, And for the love he beareth to your daughter, And she to him,—to stay him not too long, I am content, in a good father’s care, To have him match’d; and, if you please to like No worse than I, upon some agreement Me shall you find ready and willing With one consent to have her so bestow’d; For curious I cannot be with you, Signior Baptista, of whom I hear so well.

BAPTISTA. Sir, pardon me in what I have to say. Your plainness and your shortness please me well. Right true it is your son Lucentio here Doth love my daughter, and she loveth him, Or both dissemble deeply their affections; And therefore, if you say no more than this, That like a father you will deal with him, And pass my daughter a sufficient dower, The match is made, and all is done: Your son shall have my daughter with consent.

TRANIO. I thank you, sir. Where then do you know best We be affied, and such assurance ta’en As shall with either part’s agreement stand?

BAPTISTA. Not in my house, Lucentio, for you know Pitchers have ears, and I have many servants; Besides, old Gremio is hearkening still, And happily we might be interrupted.

TRANIO. Then at my lodging, and it like you: There doth my father lie; and there this night We’ll pass the business privately and well. Send for your daughter by your servant here; My boy shall fetch the scrivener presently. The worst is this, that at so slender warning You are like to have a thin and slender pittance.

BAPTISTA. It likes me well. Cambio, hie you home, And bid Bianca make her ready straight; And, if you will, tell what hath happened: Lucentio’s father is arriv’d in Padua, And how she’s like to be Lucentio’s wife.

LUCENTIO. I pray the gods she may, with all my heart!

TRANIO. Dally not with the gods, but get thee gone. Signior Baptista, shall I lead the way? Welcome! One mess is like to be your cheer; Come, sir; we will better it in Pisa.

BAPTISTA. I follow you.

[Exeunt Tranio, Pedant and Baptista.]

BIONDELLO. Cambio!

LUCENTIO. What say’st thou, Biondello?

BIONDELLO. You saw my master wink and laugh upon you?

LUCENTIO. Biondello, what of that?

BIONDELLO. Faith, nothing; but has left me here behind to expound the meaning or moral of his signs and tokens.

LUCENTIO. I pray thee moralize them.

BIONDELLO. Then thus: Baptista is safe, talking with the deceiving father of a deceitful son.

LUCENTIO. And what of him?

BIONDELLO. His daughter is to be brought by you to the supper.

LUCENTIO. And then?

BIONDELLO. The old priest at Saint Luke’s church is at your command at all hours.

LUCENTIO. And what of all this?

BIONDELLO. I cannot tell, except they are busied about a counterfeit assurance. Take your assurance of her, cum privilegio ad imprimendum solum; to the church! take the priest, clerk, and some sufficient honest witnesses. If this be not that you look for, I have more to say, But bid Bianca farewell for ever and a day.

LUCENTIO. Hear’st thou, Biondello?

BIONDELLO. I cannot tarry: I knew a wench married in an afternoon as she went to the garden for parsley to stuff a rabbit; and so may you, sir; and so adieu, sir. My master hath appointed me to go to Saint Luke’s to bid the priest be ready to come against you come with your appendix.

LUCENTIO. I may, and will, if she be so contented. She will be pleas’d; then wherefore should I doubt? Hap what hap may, I’ll roundly go about her; It shall go hard if Cambio go without her:

SCENE V. A public road.

Enter Petruchio, Katherina, Hortensio and Servants.

PETRUCHIO. Come on, i’ God’s name; once more toward our father’s. Good Lord, how bright and goodly shines the moon!

KATHERINA. The moon! The sun; it is not moonlight now.

PETRUCHIO. I say it is the moon that shines so bright.

KATHERINA. I know it is the sun that shines so bright.

PETRUCHIO. Now by my mother’s son, and that’s myself, It shall be moon, or star, or what I list, Or ere I journey to your father’s house. Go on and fetch our horses back again. Evermore cross’d and cross’d; nothing but cross’d!

HORTENSIO. Say as he says, or we shall never go.

KATHERINA. Forward, I pray, since we have come so far, And be it moon, or sun, or what you please; And if you please to call it a rush-candle, Henceforth I vow it shall be so for me.

PETRUCHIO. I say it is the moon.

KATHERINA. I know it is the moon.

PETRUCHIO. Nay, then you lie; it is the blessed sun.

KATHERINA. Then, God be bless’d, it is the blessed sun; But sun it is not when you say it is not, And the moon changes even as your mind. What you will have it nam’d, even that it is, And so it shall be so for Katherine.

HORTENSIO. Petruchio, go thy ways; the field is won.

PETRUCHIO. Well, forward, forward! thus the bowl should run, And not unluckily against the bias. But, soft! Company is coming here.

Enter Vincentio, in a travelling dress.

[To Vincentio] Good morrow, gentle mistress; where away? Tell me, sweet Kate, and tell me truly too, Hast thou beheld a fresher gentlewoman? Such war of white and red within her cheeks! What stars do spangle heaven with such beauty As those two eyes become that heavenly face? Fair lovely maid, once more good day to thee. Sweet Kate, embrace her for her beauty’s sake.

HORTENSIO. A will make the man mad, to make a woman of him.

KATHERINA. Young budding virgin, fair and fresh and sweet, Whither away, or where is thy abode? Happy the parents of so fair a child; Happier the man whom favourable stars Allot thee for his lovely bedfellow.

PETRUCHIO. Why, how now, Kate! I hope thou art not mad: This is a man, old, wrinkled, faded, wither’d, And not a maiden, as thou sayst he is.

KATHERINA. Pardon, old father, my mistaking eyes, That have been so bedazzled with the sun That everything I look on seemeth green: Now I perceive thou art a reverend father; Pardon, I pray thee, for my mad mistaking.

PETRUCHIO. Do, good old grandsire, and withal make known Which way thou travellest: if along with us, We shall be joyful of thy company.

VINCENTIO. Fair sir, and you my merry mistress, That with your strange encounter much amaz’d me, My name is called Vincentio; my dwelling Pisa; And bound I am to Padua, there to visit A son of mine, which long I have not seen.

PETRUCHIO. What is his name?

VINCENTIO. Lucentio, gentle sir.

PETRUCHIO. Happily met; the happier for thy son. And now by law, as well as reverend age, I may entitle thee my loving father: The sister to my wife, this gentlewoman, Thy son by this hath married. Wonder not, Nor be not griev’d: she is of good esteem, Her dowry wealthy, and of worthy birth; Beside, so qualified as may beseem The spouse of any noble gentleman. Let me embrace with old Vincentio; And wander we to see thy honest son, Who will of thy arrival be full joyous.

VINCENTIO. But is this true? or is it else your pleasure, Like pleasant travellers, to break a jest Upon the company you overtake?

HORTENSIO. I do assure thee, father, so it is.

PETRUCHIO. Come, go along, and see the truth hereof; For our first merriment hath made thee jealous.

[Exeunt all but Hortensio.]

HORTENSIO. Well, Petruchio, this has put me in heart. Have to my widow! and if she be froward, Then hast thou taught Hortensio to be untoward.

SCENE I. Padua. Before Lucentio’s house.

Enter on one side Biondello, Lucentio and Bianca; Gremio walking on other side.

BIONDELLO. Softly and swiftly, sir, for the priest is ready.

LUCENTIO. I fly, Biondello; but they may chance to need thee at home, therefore leave us.

BIONDELLO. Nay, faith, I’ll see the church o’ your back; and then come back to my master’s as soon as I can.

[Exeunt Lucentio, Bianca and Biondello.]

GREMIO. I marvel Cambio comes not all this while.

Enter Petruchio, Katherina, Vincentio and Attendants.

PETRUCHIO. Sir, here’s the door; this is Lucentio’s house: My father’s bears more toward the market-place; Thither must I, and here I leave you, sir.

VINCENTIO. You shall not choose but drink before you go. I think I shall command your welcome here, And by all likelihood some cheer is toward.

GREMIO. They’re busy within; you were best knock louder.

Enter Pedant above, at a window.

PEDANT. What’s he that knocks as he would beat down the gate?

VINCENTIO. Is Signior Lucentio within, sir?

PEDANT. He’s within, sir, but not to be spoken withal.

VINCENTIO. What if a man bring him a hundred pound or two to make merry withal?

PEDANT. Keep your hundred pounds to yourself: he shall need none so long as I live.

PETRUCHIO. Nay, I told you your son was well beloved in Padua. Do you hear, sir? To leave frivolous circumstances, I pray you tell Signior Lucentio that his father is come from Pisa, and is here at the door to speak with him.

PEDANT. Thou liest: his father is come from Padua, and here looking out at the window.

VINCENTIO. Art thou his father?

PEDANT. Ay, sir; so his mother says, if I may believe her.

PETRUCHIO. [To Vincentio] Why, how now, gentleman! why, this is flat knavery to take upon you another man’s name.

PEDANT. Lay hands on the villain: I believe a means to cozen somebody in this city under my countenance.

Re-enter Biondello.

BIONDELLO. I have seen them in the church together: God send ’em good shipping! But who is here? Mine old master, Vincentio! Now we are undone and brought to nothing.

VINCENTIO. [Seeing Biondello.] Come hither, crack-hemp.

BIONDELLO. I hope I may choose, sir.

VINCENTIO. Come hither, you rogue. What, have you forgot me?

BIONDELLO. Forgot you! No, sir: I could not forget you, for I never saw you before in all my life.

VINCENTIO. What, you notorious villain! didst thou never see thy master’s father, Vincentio?

BIONDELLO. What, my old worshipful old master? Yes, marry, sir; see where he looks out of the window.

VINCENTIO. Is’t so, indeed?

[He beats Biondello.]

BIONDELLO. Help, help, help! here’s a madman will murder me.

PEDANT. Help, son! help, Signior Baptista!

[Exit from the window.]

PETRUCHIO. Prithee, Kate, let’s stand aside and see the end of this controversy.

Re-enter Pedant, below; Baptista, Tranio and Servants.

TRANIO. Sir, what are you that offer to beat my servant?

VINCENTIO. What am I, sir! nay, what are you, sir? O immortal gods! O fine villain! A silken doublet, a velvet hose, a scarlet cloak, and a copatain hat! O, I am undone! I am undone! While I play the good husband at home, my son and my servant spend all at the university.

TRANIO. How now! what’s the matter?

BAPTISTA. What, is the man lunatic?

TRANIO. Sir, you seem a sober ancient gentleman by your habit, but your words show you a madman. Why, sir, what ’cerns it you if I wear pearl and gold? I thank my good father, I am able to maintain it.

VINCENTIO. Thy father! O villain! he is a sailmaker in Bergamo.

BAPTISTA. You mistake, sir; you mistake, sir. Pray, what do you think is his name?

VINCENTIO. His name! As if I knew not his name! I have brought him up ever since he was three years old, and his name is Tranio.

PEDANT. Away, away, mad ass! His name is Lucentio; and he is mine only son, and heir to the lands of me, Signior Vincentio.

VINCENTIO. Lucentio! O, he hath murdered his master! Lay hold on him, I charge you, in the Duke’s name. O, my son, my son! Tell me, thou villain, where is my son, Lucentio?

TRANIO. Call forth an officer.

Enter one with an Officer.

Carry this mad knave to the gaol. Father Baptista, I charge you see that he be forthcoming.

VINCENTIO. Carry me to the gaol!

GREMIO. Stay, officer; he shall not go to prison.

BAPTISTA. Talk not, Signior Gremio; I say he shall go to prison.

GREMIO. Take heed, Signior Baptista, lest you be cony-catched in this business; I dare swear this is the right Vincentio.

PEDANT. Swear if thou darest.

GREMIO. Nay, I dare not swear it.

TRANIO. Then thou wert best say that I am not Lucentio.

GREMIO. Yes, I know thee to be Signior Lucentio.

BAPTISTA. Away with the dotard! to the gaol with him!

VINCENTIO. Thus strangers may be haled and abus’d: O monstrous villain!

Re-enter Biondello, with Lucentio and Bianca.

BIONDELLO. O! we are spoiled; and yonder he is: deny him, forswear him, or else we are all undone.

LUCENTIO. [Kneeling.] Pardon, sweet father.

VINCENTIO. Lives my sweetest son?

[Biondello, Tranio and Pedant run out.]

BIANCA. [Kneeling.] Pardon, dear father.

BAPTISTA. How hast thou offended? Where is Lucentio?

LUCENTIO. Here’s Lucentio, Right son to the right Vincentio; That have by marriage made thy daughter mine, While counterfeit supposes blear’d thine eyne.

GREMIO. Here ’s packing, with a witness, to deceive us all!

VINCENTIO. Where is that damned villain, Tranio, That fac’d and brav’d me in this matter so?

BAPTISTA. Why, tell me, is not this my Cambio?

BIANCA. Cambio is chang’d into Lucentio.

LUCENTIO. Love wrought these miracles. Bianca’s love Made me exchange my state with Tranio, While he did bear my countenance in the town; And happily I have arriv’d at the last Unto the wished haven of my bliss. What Tranio did, myself enforc’d him to; Then pardon him, sweet father, for my sake.

VINCENTIO. I’ll slit the villain’s nose that would have sent me to the gaol.

BAPTISTA. [To Lucentio.] But do you hear, sir? Have you married my daughter without asking my good will?

VINCENTIO. Fear not, Baptista; we will content you, go to: but I will in, to be revenged for this villainy.

BAPTISTA. And I to sound the depth of this knavery.

LUCENTIO. Look not pale, Bianca; thy father will not frown.

GREMIO. My cake is dough, but I’ll in among the rest; Out of hope of all but my share of the feast.

Petruchio and Katherina advance.

KATHERINA. Husband, let’s follow to see the end of this ado.

PETRUCHIO. First kiss me, Kate, and we will.

KATHERINA. What! in the midst of the street?

PETRUCHIO. What! art thou ashamed of me?

KATHERINA. No, sir; God forbid; but ashamed to kiss.

PETRUCHIO. Why, then, let’s home again. Come, sirrah, let’s away.

KATHERINA. Nay, I will give thee a kiss: now pray thee, love, stay.

PETRUCHIO. Is not this well? Come, my sweet Kate: Better once than never, for never too late.

SCENE II. A room in Lucentio’s house.

Enter Baptista, Vincentio, Gremio, the Pedant, Lucentio, Bianca, Petruchio, Katherina, Hortensio and Widow. Tranio, Biondello and Grumio and Others, attending.

LUCENTIO. At last, though long, our jarring notes agree: And time it is when raging war is done, To smile at ’scapes and perils overblown. My fair Bianca, bid my father welcome, While I with self-same kindness welcome thine. Brother Petruchio, sister Katherina, And thou, Hortensio, with thy loving widow, Feast with the best, and welcome to my house: My banquet is to close our stomachs up, After our great good cheer. Pray you, sit down; For now we sit to chat as well as eat.

[They sit at table.]

PETRUCHIO. Nothing but sit and sit, and eat and eat!

BAPTISTA. Padua affords this kindness, son Petruchio.

PETRUCHIO. Padua affords nothing but what is kind.

HORTENSIO. For both our sakes I would that word were true.

PETRUCHIO. Now, for my life, Hortensio fears his widow.

WIDOW. Then never trust me if I be afeard.

PETRUCHIO. You are very sensible, and yet you miss my sense: I mean Hortensio is afeard of you.

WIDOW. He that is giddy thinks the world turns round.

PETRUCHIO. Roundly replied.

KATHERINA. Mistress, how mean you that?

WIDOW. Thus I conceive by him.

PETRUCHIO. Conceives by me! How likes Hortensio that?

HORTENSIO. My widow says thus she conceives her tale.

PETRUCHIO. Very well mended. Kiss him for that, good widow.

KATHERINA. ’He that is giddy thinks the world turns round’: I pray you tell me what you meant by that.

WIDOW. Your husband, being troubled with a shrew, Measures my husband’s sorrow by his woe; And now you know my meaning.

KATHERINA. A very mean meaning.

WIDOW. Right, I mean you.

KATHERINA. And I am mean, indeed, respecting you.

PETRUCHIO. To her, Kate!

HORTENSIO. To her, widow!

PETRUCHIO. A hundred marks, my Kate does put her down.

HORTENSIO. That’s my office.

PETRUCHIO. Spoke like an officer: ha’ to thee, lad.

[Drinks to Hortensio.]

BAPTISTA. How likes Gremio these quick-witted folks?

GREMIO. Believe me, sir, they butt together well.

BIANCA. Head and butt! An hasty-witted body Would say your head and butt were head and horn.

VINCENTIO. Ay, mistress bride, hath that awaken’d you?

BIANCA. Ay, but not frighted me; therefore I’ll sleep again.

PETRUCHIO. Nay, that you shall not; since you have begun, Have at you for a bitter jest or two.

BIANCA. Am I your bird? I mean to shift my bush, And then pursue me as you draw your bow. You are welcome all.

[Exeunt Bianca, Katherina and Widow.]

PETRUCHIO. She hath prevented me. Here, Signior Tranio; This bird you aim’d at, though you hit her not: Therefore a health to all that shot and miss’d.

TRANIO. O, sir! Lucentio slipp’d me like his greyhound, Which runs himself, and catches for his master.

PETRUCHIO. A good swift simile, but something currish.

TRANIO. ’Tis well, sir, that you hunted for yourself: ’Tis thought your deer does hold you at a bay.

BAPTISTA. O ho, Petruchio! Tranio hits you now.

LUCENTIO. I thank thee for that gird, good Tranio.

HORTENSIO. Confess, confess; hath he not hit you here?

PETRUCHIO. A has a little gall’d me, I confess; And as the jest did glance away from me, ’Tis ten to one it maim’d you two outright.

BAPTISTA. Now, in good sadness, son Petruchio, I think thou hast the veriest shrew of all.

PETRUCHIO. Well, I say no; and therefore, for assurance, Let’s each one send unto his wife, And he whose wife is most obedient, To come at first when he doth send for her, Shall win the wager which we will propose.

HORTENSIO. Content. What’s the wager?

LUCENTIO. Twenty crowns.

PETRUCHIO. Twenty crowns! I’ll venture so much of my hawk or hound, But twenty times so much upon my wife.

LUCENTIO. A hundred then.

HORTENSIO. Content.

PETRUCHIO. A match! ’tis done.

HORTENSIO. Who shall begin?

LUCENTIO. That will I. Go, Biondello, bid your mistress come to me.

BIONDELLO. I go.

BAPTISTA. Son, I’ll be your half, Bianca comes.

LUCENTIO. I’ll have no halves; I’ll bear it all myself.

BIONDELLO. Sir, my mistress sends you word That she is busy and she cannot come.

PETRUCHIO. How! She’s busy, and she cannot come! Is that an answer?

GREMIO. Ay, and a kind one too: Pray God, sir, your wife send you not a worse.

PETRUCHIO. I hope better.

HORTENSIO. Sirrah Biondello, go and entreat my wife To come to me forthwith.

[Exit Biondello.]

PETRUCHIO. O, ho! entreat her! Nay, then she must needs come.

HORTENSIO. I am afraid, sir, Do what you can, yours will not be entreated.

Now, where’s my wife?

BIONDELLO. She says you have some goodly jest in hand: She will not come; she bids you come to her.

PETRUCHIO. Worse and worse; she will not come! O vile, Intolerable, not to be endur’d! Sirrah Grumio, go to your mistress, Say I command her come to me.

[Exit Grumio.]

HORTENSIO. I know her answer.

PETRUCHIO. What?

HORTENSIO. She will not.

PETRUCHIO. The fouler fortune mine, and there an end.

Re-enter Katherina.

BAPTISTA. Now, by my holidame, here comes Katherina!

KATHERINA. What is your will sir, that you send for me?

PETRUCHIO. Where is your sister, and Hortensio’s wife?

KATHERINA. They sit conferring by the parlour fire.

PETRUCHIO. Go fetch them hither; if they deny to come, Swinge me them soundly forth unto their husbands. Away, I say, and bring them hither straight.

[Exit Katherina.]

LUCENTIO. Here is a wonder, if you talk of a wonder.

HORTENSIO. And so it is. I wonder what it bodes.

PETRUCHIO. Marry, peace it bodes, and love, and quiet life, An awful rule, and right supremacy; And, to be short, what not that’s sweet and happy.

BAPTISTA. Now fair befall thee, good Petruchio! The wager thou hast won; and I will add Unto their losses twenty thousand crowns; Another dowry to another daughter, For she is chang’d, as she had never been.

PETRUCHIO. Nay, I will win my wager better yet, And show more sign of her obedience, Her new-built virtue and obedience. See where she comes, and brings your froward wives As prisoners to her womanly persuasion.

Re-enter Katherina with Bianca and Widow.

Katherine, that cap of yours becomes you not: Off with that bauble, throw it underfoot.

[Katherina pulls off her cap and throws it down.]

WIDOW. Lord, let me never have a cause to sigh Till I be brought to such a silly pass!

BIANCA. Fie! what a foolish duty call you this?

LUCENTIO. I would your duty were as foolish too; The wisdom of your duty, fair Bianca, Hath cost me a hundred crowns since supper-time!

BIANCA. The more fool you for laying on my duty.

PETRUCHIO. Katherine, I charge thee, tell these headstrong women What duty they do owe their lords and husbands.

WIDOW. Come, come, you’re mocking; we will have no telling.

PETRUCHIO. Come on, I say; and first begin with her.

WIDOW. She shall not.

PETRUCHIO. I say she shall: and first begin with her.

KATHERINA. Fie, fie! unknit that threatening unkind brow, And dart not scornful glances from those eyes To wound thy lord, thy king, thy governor: It blots thy beauty as frosts do bite the meads, Confounds thy fame as whirlwinds shake fair buds, And in no sense is meet or amiable. A woman mov’d is like a fountain troubled, Muddy, ill-seeming, thick, bereft of beauty; And while it is so, none so dry or thirsty Will deign to sip or touch one drop of it. Thy husband is thy lord, thy life, thy keeper, Thy head, thy sovereign; one that cares for thee, And for thy maintenance commits his body To painful labour both by sea and land, To watch the night in storms, the day in cold, Whilst thou liest warm at home, secure and safe; And craves no other tribute at thy hands But love, fair looks, and true obedience; Too little payment for so great a debt. Such duty as the subject owes the prince, Even such a woman oweth to her husband; And when she is froward, peevish, sullen, sour, And not obedient to his honest will, What is she but a foul contending rebel And graceless traitor to her loving lord?— I am asham’d that women are so simple To offer war where they should kneel for peace, Or seek for rule, supremacy, and sway, When they are bound to serve, love, and obey. Why are our bodies soft and weak and smooth, Unapt to toil and trouble in the world, But that our soft conditions and our hearts Should well agree with our external parts? Come, come, you froward and unable worms! My mind hath been as big as one of yours, My heart as great, my reason haply more, To bandy word for word and frown for frown; But now I see our lances are but straws, Our strength as weak, our weakness past compare, That seeming to be most which we indeed least are. Then vail your stomachs, for it is no boot, And place your hands below your husband’s foot: In token of which duty, if he please, My hand is ready; may it do him ease.

PETRUCHIO. Why, there’s a wench! Come on, and kiss me, Kate.

LUCENTIO. Well, go thy ways, old lad, for thou shalt ha’t.

VINCENTIO. ’Tis a good hearing when children are toward.

LUCENTIO. But a harsh hearing when women are froward.

PETRUCHIO. Come, Kate, we’ll to bed. We three are married, but you two are sped. ’Twas I won the wager, [To Lucentio.] though you hit the white; And being a winner, God give you good night!

[Exeunt Petruchio and Katherina.]

HORTENSIO. Now go thy ways; thou hast tam’d a curst shrew.

LUCENTIO. ’Tis a wonder, by your leave, she will be tam’d so.

THE TEMPEST

ACT I Scene I. On a ship at sea; a tempestuous noise of thunder and lightning heard. Scene II. The Island. Before the cell of Prospero.

ACT II Scene I. Another part of the island. Scene II. Another part of the island.

ACT III Scene I. Before Prospero’s cell. Scene II. Another part of the island. Scene III. Another part of the island.

ACT IV Scene I. Before Prospero’s cell.

ACT V Scene I. Before the cell of Prospero. Epilogue.

ALONSO, King of Naples SEBASTIAN, his brother PROSPERO, the right Duke of Milan ANTONIO, his brother, the usurping Duke of Milan FERDINAND, Son to the King of Naples GONZALO, an honest old counsellor ADRIAN, Lord FRANCISCO, Lord CALIBAN, a savage and deformed slave TRINCULO, a jester STEPHANO, a drunken butler MASTER OF A SHIP BOATSWAIN MARINERS

MIRANDA, daughter to Prospero

ARIEL, an airy Spirit

IRIS, presented by Spirits CERES, presented by Spirits JUNO, presented by Spirits NYMPHS, presented by Spirits REAPERS, presented by Spirits

Other Spirits attending on Prospero

SCENE: The sea, with a Ship; afterwards an Island.

SCENE I. On a ship at sea; a tempestuous noise of thunder and lightning heard.

Enter a Shipmaster and a Boatswain severally.

MASTER. Boatswain!

BOATSWAIN. Here, master: what cheer?

MASTER. Good! Speak to the mariners: fall to ’t yarely, or we run ourselves aground: bestir, bestir.

Enter Mariners.

BOATSWAIN. Heigh, my hearts! cheerly, cheerly, my hearts! yare, yare! Take in the topsail. Tend to th’ master’s whistle. Blow till thou burst thy wind, if room enough.

Enter Alonso, Sebastian, Antonio, Ferdinand, Gonzalo and others.

ALONSO. Good boatswain, have care. Where’s the master? Play the men.

BOATSWAIN. I pray now, keep below.

ANTONIO. Where is the master, boson?

BOATSWAIN. Do you not hear him? You mar our labour: keep your cabins: you do assist the storm.

GONZALO. Nay, good, be patient.

BOATSWAIN. When the sea is. Hence! What cares these roarers for the name of king? To cabin! silence! Trouble us not.

GONZALO. Good, yet remember whom thou hast aboard.

BOATSWAIN. None that I more love than myself. You are a counsellor: if you can command these elements to silence, and work the peace of the present, we will not hand a rope more. Use your authority: if you cannot, give thanks you have lived so long, and make yourself ready in your cabin for the mischance of the hour, if it so hap.—Cheerly, good hearts!—Out of our way, I say.

GONZALO. I have great comfort from this fellow. Methinks he hath no drowning mark upon him. His complexion is perfect gallows. Stand fast, good Fate, to his hanging! Make the rope of his destiny our cable, for our own doth little advantage! If he be not born to be hang’d, our case is miserable.

Re-enter Boatswain.

BOATSWAIN. Down with the topmast! yare! lower, lower! Bring her to try wi’ th’ maincourse.

[A cry within.]

A plague upon this howling! They are louder than the weather or our office.

Enter Sebastian, Antonio and Gonzalo.

Yet again! What do you here? Shall we give o’er, and drown? Have you a mind to sink?

SEBASTIAN. A pox o’ your throat, you bawling, blasphemous, incharitable dog!

BOATSWAIN. Work you, then.

ANTONIO. Hang, cur, hang, you whoreson, insolent noisemaker! We are less afraid to be drowned than thou art.

GONZALO. I’ll warrant him for drowning, though the ship were no stronger than a nutshell, and as leaky as an unstanched wench.

BOATSWAIN. Lay her a-hold, a-hold! Set her two courses: off to sea again: lay her off.

Enter Mariners, wet.

MARINERS. All lost! to prayers, to prayers! all lost!

BOATSWAIN. What, must our mouths be cold?

GONZALO. The King and Prince at prayers! Let’s assist them, For our case is as theirs.

SEBASTIAN. I am out of patience.

ANTONIO. We are merely cheated of our lives by drunkards. This wide-chapp’d rascal—would thou might’st lie drowning The washing of ten tides!

GONZALO. He’ll be hang’d yet, Though every drop of water swear against it, And gape at wid’st to glut him.

A confused noise within: “Mercy on us!”— “We split, we split!”—“Farewell, my wife and children!”— “Farewell, brother!”—“We split, we split, we split!”

ANTONIO. Let’s all sink wi’ th’ King.

SEBASTIAN. Let’s take leave of him.

GONZALO. Now would I give a thousand furlongs of sea for an acre of barren ground. Long heath, brown furze, anything. The wills above be done! but I would fain die a dry death.

SCENE II. The Island. Before the cell of Prospero.

Enter Prospero and Miranda.

MIRANDA. If by your art, my dearest father, you have Put the wild waters in this roar, allay them. The sky, it seems, would pour down stinking pitch, But that the sea, mounting to th’ welkin’s cheek, Dashes the fire out. O! I have suffered With those that I saw suffer! A brave vessel, Who had, no doubt, some noble creature in her, Dash’d all to pieces. O, the cry did knock Against my very heart. Poor souls, they perish’d. Had I been any god of power, I would Have sunk the sea within the earth, or ere It should the good ship so have swallow’d and The fraughting souls within her.

PROSPERO. Be collected: No more amazement: tell your piteous heart There’s no harm done.

MIRANDA. O, woe the day!

PROSPERO. No harm. I have done nothing but in care of thee, Of thee, my dear one, thee, my daughter, who Art ignorant of what thou art, nought knowing Of whence I am, nor that I am more better Than Prospero, master of a full poor cell, And thy no greater father.

MIRANDA. More to know Did never meddle with my thoughts.

PROSPERO. ’Tis time I should inform thee farther. Lend thy hand, And pluck my magic garment from me.—So:

[Lays down his mantle.]

Lie there my art. Wipe thou thine eyes; have comfort. The direful spectacle of the wrack, which touch’d The very virtue of compassion in thee, I have with such provision in mine art So safely ordered that there is no soul— No, not so much perdition as an hair Betid to any creature in the vessel Which thou heard’st cry, which thou saw’st sink. Sit down; For thou must now know farther.

MIRANDA. You have often Begun to tell me what I am, but stopp’d, And left me to a bootless inquisition, Concluding “Stay; not yet.”

PROSPERO. The hour’s now come, The very minute bids thee ope thine ear; Obey, and be attentive. Canst thou remember A time before we came unto this cell? I do not think thou canst, for then thou wast not Out three years old.

MIRANDA. Certainly, sir, I can.

PROSPERO. By what? By any other house, or person? Of anything the image, tell me, that Hath kept with thy remembrance.

MIRANDA. ’Tis far off, And rather like a dream than an assurance That my remembrance warrants. Had I not Four or five women once that tended me?

PROSPERO. Thou hadst, and more, Miranda. But how is it That this lives in thy mind? What seest thou else In the dark backward and abysm of time? If thou rememb’rest aught ere thou cam’st here, How thou cam’st here, thou mayst.

MIRANDA. But that I do not.

PROSPERO. Twelve year since, Miranda, twelve year since, Thy father was the Duke of Milan, and A prince of power.

MIRANDA. Sir, are not you my father?

PROSPERO. Thy mother was a piece of virtue, and She said thou wast my daughter. And thy father Was Duke of Milan, and his only heir And princess, no worse issued.

MIRANDA. O, the heavens! What foul play had we that we came from thence? Or blessed was’t we did?

PROSPERO. Both, both, my girl. By foul play, as thou say’st, were we heav’d thence; But blessedly holp hither.

MIRANDA. O, my heart bleeds To think o’ th’ teen that I have turn’d you to, Which is from my remembrance. Please you, farther.

PROSPERO. My brother and thy uncle, call’d Antonio— I pray thee, mark me, that a brother should Be so perfidious!—he whom next thyself Of all the world I lov’d, and to him put The manage of my state; as at that time Through all the signories it was the first, And Prospero the prime duke, being so reputed In dignity, and for the liberal arts, Without a parallel: those being all my study, The government I cast upon my brother, And to my state grew stranger, being transported And rapt in secret studies. Thy false uncle— Dost thou attend me?

MIRANDA. Sir, most heedfully.

PROSPERO. Being once perfected how to grant suits, How to deny them, who t’ advance, and who To trash for over-topping, new created The creatures that were mine, I say, or chang’d ’em, Or else new form’d ’em: having both the key Of officer and office, set all hearts i’ th’ state To what tune pleas’d his ear: that now he was The ivy which had hid my princely trunk, And suck’d my verdure out on ’t. Thou attend’st not.

MIRANDA. O, good sir! I do.

PROSPERO. I pray thee, mark me. I, thus neglecting worldly ends, all dedicated To closeness and the bettering of my mind With that which, but by being so retir’d, O’er-priz’d all popular rate, in my false brother Awak’d an evil nature; and my trust, Like a good parent, did beget of him A falsehood in its contrary as great As my trust was; which had indeed no limit, A confidence sans bound. He being thus lorded, Not only with what my revenue yielded, But what my power might else exact, like one Who having into truth, by telling of it, Made such a sinner of his memory, To credit his own lie, he did believe He was indeed the Duke; out o’ the substitution, And executing th’ outward face of royalty, With all prerogative. Hence his ambition growing— Dost thou hear?

MIRANDA. Your tale, sir, would cure deafness.

PROSPERO. To have no screen between this part he play’d And him he play’d it for, he needs will be Absolute Milan. Me, poor man, my library Was dukedom large enough: of temporal royalties He thinks me now incapable; confederates, So dry he was for sway, wi’ th’ King of Naples To give him annual tribute, do him homage, Subject his coronet to his crown, and bend The dukedom, yet unbow’d—alas, poor Milan!— To most ignoble stooping.

MIRANDA. O the heavens!

PROSPERO. Mark his condition, and the event; then tell me If this might be a brother.

MIRANDA. I should sin To think but nobly of my grandmother: Good wombs have borne bad sons.

PROSPERO. Now the condition. This King of Naples, being an enemy To me inveterate, hearkens my brother’s suit; Which was, that he, in lieu o’ th’ premises Of homage and I know not how much tribute, Should presently extirpate me and mine Out of the dukedom, and confer fair Milan, With all the honours on my brother: whereon, A treacherous army levied, one midnight Fated to th’ purpose, did Antonio open The gates of Milan; and, i’ th’ dead of darkness, The ministers for th’ purpose hurried thence Me and thy crying self.

MIRANDA. Alack, for pity! I, not rememb’ring how I cried out then, Will cry it o’er again: it is a hint That wrings mine eyes to ’t.

PROSPERO. Hear a little further, And then I’ll bring thee to the present business Which now’s upon us; without the which this story Were most impertinent.

MIRANDA. Wherefore did they not That hour destroy us?

PROSPERO. Well demanded, wench: My tale provokes that question. Dear, they durst not, So dear the love my people bore me, nor set A mark so bloody on the business; but With colours fairer painted their foul ends. In few, they hurried us aboard a bark, Bore us some leagues to sea, where they prepared A rotten carcass of a butt, not rigg’d, Nor tackle, sail, nor mast; the very rats Instinctively have quit it. There they hoist us, To cry to th’ sea, that roar’d to us; to sigh To th’ winds, whose pity, sighing back again, Did us but loving wrong.

MIRANDA. Alack, what trouble Was I then to you!

PROSPERO. O, a cherubin Thou wast that did preserve me. Thou didst smile, Infused with a fortitude from heaven, When I have deck’d the sea with drops full salt, Under my burden groan’d: which rais’d in me An undergoing stomach, to bear up Against what should ensue.

MIRANDA. How came we ashore?

PROSPERO. By Providence divine. Some food we had and some fresh water that A noble Neapolitan, Gonzalo, Out of his charity, who being then appointed Master of this design, did give us, with Rich garments, linens, stuffs, and necessaries, Which since have steaded much: so, of his gentleness, Knowing I lov’d my books, he furnish’d me From mine own library with volumes that I prize above my dukedom.

MIRANDA. Would I might But ever see that man!

PROSPERO. Now I arise. Sit still, and hear the last of our sea-sorrow. Here in this island we arriv’d; and here Have I, thy schoolmaster, made thee more profit Than other princes can, that have more time For vainer hours, and tutors not so careful.

MIRANDA. Heavens thank you for ’t! And now, I pray you, sir, For still ’tis beating in my mind, your reason For raising this sea-storm?

PROSPERO. Know thus far forth. By accident most strange, bountiful Fortune, Now my dear lady, hath mine enemies Brought to this shore; and by my prescience I find my zenith doth depend upon A most auspicious star, whose influence If now I court not but omit, my fortunes Will ever after droop. Here cease more questions; Thou art inclin’d to sleep; ’tis a good dulness, And give it way. I know thou canst not choose.

[Miranda sleeps.]

Come away, servant, come! I am ready now. Approach, my Ariel. Come!

Enter Ariel.

ARIEL. All hail, great master! grave sir, hail! I come To answer thy best pleasure; be’t to fly, To swim, to dive into the fire, to ride On the curl’d clouds, to thy strong bidding task Ariel and all his quality.

PROSPERO. Hast thou, spirit, Perform’d to point the tempest that I bade thee?

ARIEL. To every article. I boarded the King’s ship; now on the beak, Now in the waist, the deck, in every cabin, I flam’d amazement; sometime I’d divide, And burn in many places; on the topmast, The yards, and bowsprit, would I flame distinctly, Then meet and join. Jove’s lightning, the precursors O’ th’ dreadful thunder-claps, more momentary And sight-outrunning were not: the fire and cracks Of sulphurous roaring the most mighty Neptune Seem to besiege and make his bold waves tremble, Yea, his dread trident shake.

PROSPERO. My brave spirit! Who was so firm, so constant, that this coil Would not infect his reason?

ARIEL. Not a soul But felt a fever of the mad, and play’d Some tricks of desperation. All but mariners Plunged in the foaming brine and quit the vessel, Then all afire with me: the King’s son, Ferdinand, With hair up-staring—then like reeds, not hair— Was the first man that leapt; cried “Hell is empty, And all the devils are here.”

PROSPERO. Why, that’s my spirit! But was not this nigh shore?

ARIEL. Close by, my master.

PROSPERO. But are they, Ariel, safe?

ARIEL. Not a hair perish’d; On their sustaining garments not a blemish, But fresher than before: and, as thou bad’st me, In troops I have dispers’d them ’bout the isle. The King’s son have I landed by himself, Whom I left cooling of the air with sighs In an odd angle of the isle, and sitting, His arms in this sad knot.

PROSPERO. Of the King’s ship The mariners, say how thou hast dispos’d, And all the rest o’ th’ fleet?

ARIEL. Safely in harbour Is the King’s ship; in the deep nook, where once Thou call’dst me up at midnight to fetch dew From the still-vex’d Bermoothes; there she’s hid: The mariners all under hatches stowed; Who, with a charm join’d to their suff’red labour, I have left asleep: and for the rest o’ th’ fleet, Which I dispers’d, they all have met again, And are upon the Mediterranean flote Bound sadly home for Naples, Supposing that they saw the King’s ship wrack’d, And his great person perish.

PROSPERO. Ariel, thy charge Exactly is perform’d; but there’s more work. What is the time o’ th’ day?

ARIEL. Past the mid season.

PROSPERO. At least two glasses. The time ’twixt six and now Must by us both be spent most preciously.

ARIEL. Is there more toil? Since thou dost give me pains, Let me remember thee what thou hast promis’d, Which is not yet perform’d me.

PROSPERO. How now! moody? What is’t thou canst demand?

ARIEL. My liberty.

PROSPERO. Before the time be out? No more!

ARIEL. I prithee, Remember I have done thee worthy service; Told thee no lies, made no mistakings, serv’d Without or grudge or grumblings: thou didst promise To bate me a full year.

PROSPERO. Dost thou forget From what a torment I did free thee?

ARIEL. No.

PROSPERO. Thou dost, and think’st it much to tread the ooze Of the salt deep, To run upon the sharp wind of the north, To do me business in the veins o’ th’ earth When it is bak’d with frost.

ARIEL. I do not, sir.

PROSPERO. Thou liest, malignant thing! Hast thou forgot The foul witch Sycorax, who with age and envy Was grown into a hoop? Hast thou forgot her?

ARIEL. No, sir.

PROSPERO. Thou hast. Where was she born? Speak; tell me.

ARIEL. Sir, in Argier.

PROSPERO. O, was she so? I must Once in a month recount what thou hast been, Which thou forget’st. This damn’d witch Sycorax, For mischiefs manifold, and sorceries terrible To enter human hearing, from Argier, Thou know’st, was banish’d: for one thing she did They would not take her life. Is not this true?

ARIEL. Ay, sir.

PROSPERO. This blue-ey’d hag was hither brought with child, And here was left by th’ sailors. Thou, my slave, As thou report’st thyself, wast then her servant; And, for thou wast a spirit too delicate To act her earthy and abhorr’d commands, Refusing her grand hests, she did confine thee, By help of her more potent ministers, And in her most unmitigable rage, Into a cloven pine; within which rift Imprison’d, thou didst painfully remain A dozen years; within which space she died, And left thee there, where thou didst vent thy groans As fast as mill-wheels strike. Then was this island— Save for the son that she did litter here, A freckl’d whelp, hag-born—not honour’d with A human shape.

ARIEL. Yes, Caliban her son.

PROSPERO. Dull thing, I say so; he, that Caliban, Whom now I keep in service. Thou best know’st What torment I did find thee in; thy groans Did make wolves howl, and penetrate the breasts Of ever-angry bears: it was a torment To lay upon the damn’d, which Sycorax Could not again undo; it was mine art, When I arriv’d and heard thee, that made gape The pine, and let thee out.

ARIEL. I thank thee, master.

PROSPERO. If thou more murmur’st, I will rend an oak And peg thee in his knotty entrails till Thou hast howl’d away twelve winters.

ARIEL. Pardon, master: I will be correspondent to command, And do my spriting gently.

PROSPERO. Do so; and after two days I will discharge thee.

ARIEL. That’s my noble master! What shall I do? Say what? What shall I do?

PROSPERO. Go make thyself like a nymph o’ th’ sea. Be subject To no sight but thine and mine; invisible To every eyeball else. Go, take this shape, And hither come in ’t. Go, hence with diligence!

[Exit Ariel.]

Awake, dear heart, awake! thou hast slept well; Awake!

MIRANDA. [Waking.] The strangeness of your story put Heaviness in me.

PROSPERO. Shake it off. Come on; We’ll visit Caliban my slave, who never Yields us kind answer.

MIRANDA. ’Tis a villain, sir, I do not love to look on.

PROSPERO. But as ’tis, We cannot miss him: he does make our fire, Fetch in our wood; and serves in offices That profit us. What ho! slave! Caliban! Thou earth, thou! Speak.

CALIBAN. [Within.] There’s wood enough within.

PROSPERO. Come forth, I say; there’s other business for thee. Come, thou tortoise! when?

Re-enter Ariel like a water-nymph.

Fine apparition! My quaint Ariel, Hark in thine ear.

ARIEL. My lord, it shall be done.

PROSPERO. Thou poisonous slave, got by the devil himself Upon thy wicked dam, come forth!

Enter Caliban.

CALIBAN. As wicked dew as e’er my mother brush’d With raven’s feather from unwholesome fen Drop on you both! A south-west blow on ye, And blister you all o’er!

PROSPERO. For this, be sure, tonight thou shalt have cramps, Side-stitches that shall pen thy breath up; urchins Shall forth at vast of night that they may work All exercise on thee. Thou shalt be pinch’d As thick as honeycomb, each pinch more stinging Than bees that made them.

CALIBAN. I must eat my dinner. This island’s mine, by Sycorax my mother, Which thou tak’st from me. When thou cam’st first, Thou strok’st me and made much of me; wouldst give me Water with berries in ’t; and teach me how To name the bigger light, and how the less, That burn by day and night: and then I lov’d thee, And show’d thee all the qualities o’ th’ isle, The fresh springs, brine-pits, barren place, and fertile. Curs’d be I that did so! All the charms Of Sycorax, toads, beetles, bats, light on you! For I am all the subjects that you have, Which first was mine own King; and here you sty me In this hard rock, whiles you do keep from me The rest o’ th’ island.

PROSPERO. Thou most lying slave, Whom stripes may move, not kindness! I have us’d thee, Filth as thou art, with human care, and lodg’d thee In mine own cell, till thou didst seek to violate The honour of my child.

CALIBAN. Oh ho! Oh ho! Would ’t had been done! Thou didst prevent me; I had peopled else This isle with Calibans.

PROSPERO. Abhorred slave, Which any print of goodness wilt not take, Being capable of all ill! I pitied thee, Took pains to make thee speak, taught thee each hour One thing or other: when thou didst not, savage, Know thine own meaning, but wouldst gabble like A thing most brutish, I endow’d thy purposes With words that made them known. But thy vile race, Though thou didst learn, had that in ’t which good natures Could not abide to be with; therefore wast thou Deservedly confin’d into this rock, Who hadst deserv’d more than a prison.

CALIBAN. You taught me language, and my profit on ’t Is, I know how to curse. The red plague rid you, For learning me your language!

PROSPERO. Hag-seed, hence! Fetch us in fuel; and be quick, thou ’rt best, To answer other business. Shrug’st thou, malice? If thou neglect’st, or dost unwillingly What I command, I’ll rack thee with old cramps, Fill all thy bones with aches, make thee roar, That beasts shall tremble at thy din.

CALIBAN. No, pray thee. [Aside.] I must obey. His art is of such power, It would control my dam’s god, Setebos, And make a vassal of him.

PROSPERO. So, slave, hence!

[Exit Caliban.]

Re-enter Ariel, playing and singing; Ferdinand following.

ARIEL’S SONG.

Come unto these yellow sands, And then take hands: Curtsied when you have, and kiss’d The wild waves whist. Foot it featly here and there, And sweet sprites bear The burden. Hark, hark! Burden dispersedly. Bow-wow. The watch dogs bark. [Burden dispersedly.] Bow-wow. Hark, hark! I hear The strain of strutting chanticleer Cry cock-a-diddle-dow.

FERDINAND. Where should this music be? i’ th’ air or th’ earth? It sounds no more; and sure it waits upon Some god o’ th’ island. Sitting on a bank, Weeping again the King my father’s wrack, This music crept by me upon the waters, Allaying both their fury and my passion With its sweet air: thence I have follow’d it, Or it hath drawn me rather,—but ’tis gone. No, it begins again.

ARIEL. [Sings.] Full fathom five thy father lies. Of his bones are coral made. Those are pearls that were his eyes. Nothing of him that doth fade But doth suffer a sea-change Into something rich and strange. Sea-nymphs hourly ring his knell: Burden: Ding-dong. Hark! now I hear them: ding-dong, bell.

FERDINAND. The ditty does remember my drown’d father. This is no mortal business, nor no sound That the earth owes:—I hear it now above me.

PROSPERO. The fringed curtains of thine eye advance, And say what thou seest yond.

MIRANDA. What is’t? a spirit? Lord, how it looks about! Believe me, sir, It carries a brave form. But ’tis a spirit.

PROSPERO. No, wench; it eats and sleeps and hath such senses As we have, such. This gallant which thou seest Was in the wrack; and, but he’s something stain’d With grief,—that’s beauty’s canker,—thou mightst call him A goodly person: he hath lost his fellows And strays about to find ’em.

MIRANDA. I might call him A thing divine; for nothing natural I ever saw so noble.

PROSPERO. [Aside.] It goes on, I see, As my soul prompts it. Spirit, fine spirit! I’ll free thee Within two days for this.

FERDINAND. Most sure, the goddess On whom these airs attend! Vouchsafe, my prayer May know if you remain upon this island; And that you will some good instruction give How I may bear me here: my prime request, Which I do last pronounce, is, O you wonder! If you be maid or no?

MIRANDA. No wonder, sir; But certainly a maid.

FERDINAND. My language! Heavens! I am the best of them that speak this speech, Were I but where ’tis spoken.

PROSPERO. How! the best? What wert thou, if the King of Naples heard thee?

FERDINAND. A single thing, as I am now, that wonders To hear thee speak of Naples. He does hear me; And that he does I weep: myself am Naples, Who with mine eyes, never since at ebb, beheld The King my father wrack’d.

MIRANDA. Alack, for mercy!

FERDINAND. Yes, faith, and all his lords, the Duke of Milan, And his brave son being twain.

PROSPERO. [Aside.] The Duke of Milan And his more braver daughter could control thee, If now ’twere fit to do’t. At the first sight They have changed eyes. Delicate Ariel, I’ll set thee free for this. [To Ferdinand.] A word, good sir. I fear you have done yourself some wrong: a word.

MIRANDA. Why speaks my father so ungently? This Is the third man that e’er I saw; the first That e’er I sigh’d for. Pity move my father To be inclin’d my way!

FERDINAND. O! if a virgin, And your affection not gone forth, I’ll make you The Queen of Naples.

PROSPERO. Soft, sir; one word more. [Aside.] They are both in either’s powers. But this swift business I must uneasy make, lest too light winning Make the prize light. [To Ferdinand.] One word more. I charge thee That thou attend me. Thou dost here usurp The name thou ow’st not; and hast put thyself Upon this island as a spy, to win it From me, the lord on ’t.

FERDINAND. No, as I am a man.

MIRANDA. There’s nothing ill can dwell in such a temple: If the ill spirit have so fair a house, Good things will strive to dwell with ’t.

PROSPERO. [To Ferdinand.] Follow me.— [To Miranda.] Speak not you for him; he’s a traitor. [To Ferdinand.] Come; I’ll manacle thy neck and feet together: Sea-water shalt thou drink; thy food shall be The fresh-brook mussels, wither’d roots, and husks Wherein the acorn cradled. Follow.

FERDINAND. No; I will resist such entertainment till Mine enemy has more power.

[He draws, and is charmed from moving.]

MIRANDA. O dear father! Make not too rash a trial of him, for He’s gentle, and not fearful.

PROSPERO. What! I say, My foot my tutor? Put thy sword up, traitor; Who mak’st a show, but dar’st not strike, thy conscience Is so possess’d with guilt: come from thy ward, For I can here disarm thee with this stick And make thy weapon drop.

MIRANDA. Beseech you, father!

PROSPERO. Hence! Hang not on my garments.

MIRANDA. Sir, have pity; I’ll be his surety.

PROSPERO. Silence! One word more Shall make me chide thee, if not hate thee. What! An advocate for an impostor? hush! Thou think’st there is no more such shapes as he, Having seen but him and Caliban: foolish wench! To th’ most of men this is a Caliban, And they to him are angels.

MIRANDA. My affections Are then most humble; I have no ambition To see a goodlier man.

PROSPERO. [To Ferdinand.] Come on; obey: Thy nerves are in their infancy again, And have no vigour in them.

FERDINAND. So they are: My spirits, as in a dream, are all bound up. My father’s loss, the weakness which I feel, The wrack of all my friends, nor this man’s threats, To whom I am subdued, are but light to me, Might I but through my prison once a day Behold this maid: all corners else o’ th’ earth Let liberty make use of; space enough Have I in such a prison.

PROSPERO. [Aside.] It works. [To Ferdinand.] Come on. Thou hast done well, fine Ariel! [To Ferdinand.] Follow me. [To Ariel.] Hark what thou else shalt do me.

MIRANDA. Be of comfort; My father’s of a better nature, sir, Than he appears by speech: this is unwonted Which now came from him.

PROSPERO. Thou shalt be as free As mountain winds; but then exactly do All points of my command.

ARIEL. To th’ syllable.

PROSPERO. [To Ferdinand.] Come, follow. Speak not for him.

SCENE I. Another part of the island.

Enter Alonso, Sebastian, Antonio, Gonzalo, Adrian, Francisco and others.

GONZALO. Beseech you, sir, be merry; you have cause, So have we all, of joy; for our escape Is much beyond our loss. Our hint of woe Is common; every day, some sailor’s wife, The masters of some merchant and the merchant, Have just our theme of woe; but for the miracle, I mean our preservation, few in millions Can speak like us: then wisely, good sir, weigh Our sorrow with our comfort.

ALONSO. Prithee, peace.

SEBASTIAN. He receives comfort like cold porridge.

ANTONIO. The visitor will not give him o’er so.

SEBASTIAN. Look, he’s winding up the watch of his wit; by and by it will strike.

GONZALO. Sir,—

SEBASTIAN. One: tell.

GONZALO. When every grief is entertain’d that’s offer’d, Comes to the entertainer—

SEBASTIAN. A dollar.

GONZALO. Dolour comes to him, indeed: you have spoken truer than you purposed.

SEBASTIAN. You have taken it wiselier than I meant you should.

GONZALO. Therefore, my lord,—

ANTONIO. Fie, what a spendthrift is he of his tongue!

ALONSO. I prithee, spare.

GONZALO. Well, I have done: but yet—

SEBASTIAN. He will be talking.

ANTONIO. Which, of he or Adrian, for a good wager, first begins to crow?

SEBASTIAN. The old cock.

ANTONIO. The cockerel.

SEBASTIAN. Done. The wager?

ANTONIO. A laughter.

SEBASTIAN. A match!

ADRIAN. Though this island seem to be desert,—

ANTONIO. Ha, ha, ha!

SEBASTIAN. So. You’re paid.

ADRIAN. Uninhabitable, and almost inaccessible,—

SEBASTIAN. Yet—

ADRIAN. Yet—

ANTONIO. He could not miss ’t.

ADRIAN. It must needs be of subtle, tender, and delicate temperance.

ANTONIO. Temperance was a delicate wench.

SEBASTIAN. Ay, and a subtle; as he most learnedly delivered.

ADRIAN. The air breathes upon us here most sweetly.

SEBASTIAN. As if it had lungs, and rotten ones.

ANTONIO. Or, as ’twere perfum’d by a fen.

GONZALO. Here is everything advantageous to life.

ANTONIO. True; save means to live.

SEBASTIAN. Of that there’s none, or little.

GONZALO. How lush and lusty the grass looks! how green!

ANTONIO. The ground indeed is tawny.

SEBASTIAN. With an eye of green in’t.

ANTONIO. He misses not much.

SEBASTIAN. No; he doth but mistake the truth totally.

GONZALO. But the rarity of it is,—which is indeed almost beyond credit,—

SEBASTIAN. As many vouch’d rarities are.

GONZALO. That our garments, being, as they were, drenched in the sea, hold notwithstanding their freshness and glosses, being rather new-dyed than stained with salt water.

ANTONIO. If but one of his pockets could speak, would it not say he lies?

SEBASTIAN. Ay, or very falsely pocket up his report.

GONZALO. Methinks our garments are now as fresh as when we put them on first in Afric, at the marriage of the King’s fair daughter Claribel to the King of Tunis.

SEBASTIAN. ’Twas a sweet marriage, and we prosper well in our return.

ADRIAN. Tunis was never graced before with such a paragon to their Queen.

GONZALO. Not since widow Dido’s time.

ANTONIO. Widow! a pox o’ that! How came that widow in? Widow Dido!

SEBASTIAN. What if he had said, widower Aeneas too? Good Lord, how you take it!

ADRIAN. Widow Dido said you? You make me study of that; she was of Carthage, not of Tunis.

GONZALO. This Tunis, sir, was Carthage.

ADRIAN. Carthage?

GONZALO. I assure you, Carthage.

ANTONIO. His word is more than the miraculous harp.

SEBASTIAN. He hath rais’d the wall, and houses too.

ANTONIO. What impossible matter will he make easy next?

SEBASTIAN. I think he will carry this island home in his pocket, and give it his son for an apple.

ANTONIO. And, sowing the kernels of it in the sea, bring forth more islands.

ALONSO. Ay.

ANTONIO. Why, in good time.

GONZALO. [To Alonso.] Sir, we were talking that our garments seem now as fresh as when we were at Tunis at the marriage of your daughter, who is now Queen.

ANTONIO. And the rarest that e’er came there.

SEBASTIAN. Bate, I beseech you, widow Dido.

ANTONIO. O! widow Dido; ay, widow Dido.

GONZALO. Is not, sir, my doublet as fresh as the first day I wore it? I mean, in a sort.

ANTONIO. That sort was well fish’d for.

GONZALO. When I wore it at your daughter’s marriage?

ALONSO. You cram these words into mine ears against The stomach of my sense. Would I had never Married my daughter there! for, coming thence, My son is lost; and, in my rate, she too, Who is so far from Italy removed, I ne’er again shall see her. O thou mine heir Of Naples and of Milan, what strange fish Hath made his meal on thee?

FRANCISCO. Sir, he may live: I saw him beat the surges under him, And ride upon their backs. He trod the water, Whose enmity he flung aside, and breasted The surge most swoln that met him. His bold head ’Bove the contentious waves he kept, and oared Himself with his good arms in lusty stroke To th’ shore, that o’er his wave-worn basis bowed, As stooping to relieve him. I not doubt He came alive to land.

ALONSO. No, no, he’s gone.

SEBASTIAN. Sir, you may thank yourself for this great loss, That would not bless our Europe with your daughter, But rather lose her to an African; Where she, at least, is banish’d from your eye, Who hath cause to wet the grief on ’t.

SEBASTIAN. You were kneel’d to, and importun’d otherwise By all of us; and the fair soul herself Weigh’d between loathness and obedience at Which end o’ th’ beam should bow. We have lost your son, I fear, for ever: Milan and Naples have More widows in them of this business’ making, Than we bring men to comfort them. The fault’s your own.

ALONSO. So is the dear’st o’ th’ loss.

GONZALO. My lord Sebastian, The truth you speak doth lack some gentleness And time to speak it in. You rub the sore, When you should bring the plaster.

SEBASTIAN. Very well.

ANTONIO. And most chirurgeonly.

GONZALO. It is foul weather in us all, good sir, When you are cloudy.

SEBASTIAN. Foul weather?

ANTONIO. Very foul.

GONZALO. Had I plantation of this isle, my lord,—

ANTONIO. He’d sow ’t with nettle-seed.

SEBASTIAN. Or docks, or mallows.

GONZALO. And were the King on’t, what would I do?

SEBASTIAN. ’Scape being drunk for want of wine.

GONZALO. I’ th’ commonwealth I would by contraries Execute all things; for no kind of traffic Would I admit; no name of magistrate; Letters should not be known; riches, poverty, And use of service, none; contract, succession, Bourn, bound of land, tilth, vineyard, none; No use of metal, corn, or wine, or oil; No occupation; all men idle, all; And women too, but innocent and pure; No sovereignty,—

SEBASTIAN. Yet he would be King on’t.

ANTONIO. The latter end of his commonwealth forgets the beginning.

GONZALO. All things in common nature should produce Without sweat or endeavour; treason, felony, Sword, pike, knife, gun, or need of any engine, Would I not have; but nature should bring forth, Of it own kind, all foison, all abundance, To feed my innocent people.

SEBASTIAN. No marrying ’mong his subjects?

ANTONIO. None, man; all idle; whores and knaves.

GONZALO. I would with such perfection govern, sir, T’ excel the Golden Age.

SEBASTIAN. Save his Majesty!

ANTONIO. Long live Gonzalo!

GONZALO. And,—do you mark me, sir?

ALONSO. Prithee, no more: thou dost talk nothing to me.

GONZALO. I do well believe your highness; and did it to minister occasion to these gentlemen, who are of such sensible and nimble lungs that they always use to laugh at nothing.

ANTONIO. ’Twas you we laughed at.

GONZALO. Who in this kind of merry fooling am nothing to you. So you may continue, and laugh at nothing still.

ANTONIO. What a blow was there given!

SEBASTIAN. An it had not fallen flat-long.

GONZALO. You are gentlemen of brave mettle. You would lift the moon out of her sphere, if she would continue in it five weeks without changing.

Enter Ariel, invisible, playing solemn music.

SEBASTIAN. We would so, and then go a-bat-fowling.

ANTONIO. Nay, good my lord, be not angry.

GONZALO. No, I warrant you; I will not adventure my discretion so weakly. Will you laugh me asleep, for I am very heavy?

ANTONIO. Go sleep, and hear us.

[All sleep but Alonso, Sebastian and Antonio.]

ALONSO. What, all so soon asleep! I wish mine eyes Would, with themselves, shut up my thoughts: I find They are inclin’d to do so.

SEBASTIAN. Please you, sir, Do not omit the heavy offer of it: It seldom visits sorrow; when it doth, It is a comforter.

ANTONIO. We two, my lord, Will guard your person while you take your rest, And watch your safety.

ALONSO. Thank you. Wondrous heavy!

[Alonso sleeps. Exit Ariel.]

SEBASTIAN. What a strange drowsiness possesses them!

ANTONIO. It is the quality o’ th’ climate.

SEBASTIAN. Why Doth it not then our eyelids sink? I find not Myself dispos’d to sleep.

ANTONIO. Nor I. My spirits are nimble. They fell together all, as by consent; They dropp’d, as by a thunder-stroke. What might, Worthy Sebastian? O, what might?—No more. And yet methinks I see it in thy face, What thou shouldst be. Th’ occasion speaks thee; and My strong imagination sees a crown Dropping upon thy head.

SEBASTIAN. What, art thou waking?

ANTONIO. Do you not hear me speak?

SEBASTIAN. I do; and surely It is a sleepy language, and thou speak’st Out of thy sleep. What is it thou didst say? This is a strange repose, to be asleep With eyes wide open; standing, speaking, moving, And yet so fast asleep.

ANTONIO. Noble Sebastian, Thou let’st thy fortune sleep—die rather; wink’st Whiles thou art waking.

SEBASTIAN. Thou dost snore distinctly: There’s meaning in thy snores.

ANTONIO. I am more serious than my custom; you Must be so too, if heed me; which to do Trebles thee o’er.

SEBASTIAN. Well, I am standing water.

ANTONIO. I’ll teach you how to flow.

SEBASTIAN. Do so: to ebb, Hereditary sloth instructs me.

ANTONIO. O, If you but knew how you the purpose cherish Whiles thus you mock it! how, in stripping it, You more invest it! Ebbing men indeed, Most often, do so near the bottom run By their own fear or sloth.

SEBASTIAN. Prithee, say on: The setting of thine eye and cheek proclaim A matter from thee, and a birth, indeed Which throes thee much to yield.

ANTONIO. Thus, sir: Although this lord of weak remembrance, this Who shall be of as little memory When he is earth’d, hath here almost persuaded,— For he’s a spirit of persuasion, only Professes to persuade,—the King his son’s alive, ’Tis as impossible that he’s undrown’d As he that sleeps here swims.

SEBASTIAN. I have no hope That he’s undrown’d.

ANTONIO. O, out of that “no hope” What great hope have you! No hope that way is Another way so high a hope, that even Ambition cannot pierce a wink beyond, But doubts discovery there. Will you grant with me That Ferdinand is drown’d?

SEBASTIAN. He’s gone.

ANTONIO. Then tell me, Who’s the next heir of Naples?

SEBASTIAN. Claribel.

ANTONIO. She that is Queen of Tunis; she that dwells Ten leagues beyond man’s life; she that from Naples Can have no note, unless the sun were post— The Man i’ th’ Moon’s too slow—till newborn chins Be rough and razorable; she that from whom We all were sea-swallow’d, though some cast again, And by that destiny, to perform an act Whereof what’s past is prologue, what to come In yours and my discharge.

SEBASTIAN. What stuff is this! How say you? ’Tis true, my brother’s daughter’s Queen of Tunis; So is she heir of Naples; ’twixt which regions There is some space.

ANTONIO. A space whose ev’ry cubit Seems to cry out “How shall that Claribel Measure us back to Naples? Keep in Tunis, And let Sebastian wake.” Say this were death That now hath seiz’d them; why, they were no worse Than now they are. There be that can rule Naples As well as he that sleeps; lords that can prate As amply and unnecessarily As this Gonzalo. I myself could make A chough of as deep chat. O, that you bore The mind that I do! What a sleep were this For your advancement! Do you understand me?

SEBASTIAN. Methinks I do.

ANTONIO. And how does your content Tender your own good fortune?

SEBASTIAN. I remember You did supplant your brother Prospero.

ANTONIO. True. And look how well my garments sit upon me; Much feater than before; my brother’s servants Were then my fellows; now they are my men.

SEBASTIAN. But, for your conscience.

ANTONIO. Ay, sir; where lies that? If ’twere a kibe, ’Twould put me to my slipper: but I feel not This deity in my bosom: twenty consciences That stand ’twixt me and Milan, candied be they And melt ere they molest! Here lies your brother, No better than the earth he lies upon, If he were that which now he’s like, that’s dead; Whom I, with this obedient steel, three inches of it, Can lay to bed for ever; whiles you, doing thus, To the perpetual wink for aye might put This ancient morsel, this Sir Prudence, who Should not upbraid our course. For all the rest, They’ll take suggestion as a cat laps milk. They’ll tell the clock to any business that We say befits the hour.

SEBASTIAN. Thy case, dear friend, Shall be my precedent: as thou got’st Milan, I’ll come by Naples. Draw thy sword: one stroke Shall free thee from the tribute which thou payest, And I the King shall love thee.

ANTONIO. Draw together, And when I rear my hand, do you the like, To fall it on Gonzalo.

SEBASTIAN. O, but one word.

Music. Re-enter Ariel, invisible.

ARIEL. My master through his art foresees the danger That you, his friend, are in; and sends me forth— For else his project dies—to keep them living.

[Sings in Gonzalo’s ear.] While you here do snoring lie, Open-ey’d conspiracy His time doth take. If of life you keep a care, Shake off slumber, and beware. Awake! awake!

ANTONIO. Then let us both be sudden.

GONZALO. Now, good angels Preserve the King!

[They wake.]

ALONSO. Why, how now! Ho, awake! Why are you drawn? Wherefore this ghastly looking?

GONZALO. What’s the matter?

SEBASTIAN. Whiles we stood here securing your repose, Even now, we heard a hollow burst of bellowing Like bulls, or rather lions; did ’t not wake you? It struck mine ear most terribly.

ALONSO. I heard nothing.

ANTONIO. O! ’twas a din to fright a monster’s ear, To make an earthquake. Sure, it was the roar Of a whole herd of lions.

ALONSO. Heard you this, Gonzalo?

GONZALO. Upon mine honour, sir, I heard a humming, And that a strange one too, which did awake me. I shak’d you, sir, and cried; as mine eyes open’d, I saw their weapons drawn:—there was a noise, That’s verily. ’Tis best we stand upon our guard, Or that we quit this place: let’s draw our weapons.

ALONSO. Lead off this ground, and let’s make further search For my poor son.

GONZALO. Heavens keep him from these beasts! For he is, sure, i’ th’ island.

ALONSO. Lead away.

[Exit with the others.]

ARIEL. Prospero my lord shall know what I have done: So, King, go safely on to seek thy son.

SCENE II. Another part of the island.

Enter Caliban with a burden of wood. A noise of thunder heard.

CALIBAN. All the infections that the sun sucks up From bogs, fens, flats, on Prosper fall, and make him By inch-meal a disease! His spirits hear me, And yet I needs must curse. But they’ll nor pinch, Fright me with urchin-shows, pitch me i’ the mire, Nor lead me, like a firebrand, in the dark Out of my way, unless he bid ’em; but For every trifle are they set upon me, Sometime like apes that mow and chatter at me, And after bite me; then like hedgehogs which Lie tumbling in my barefoot way, and mount Their pricks at my footfall; sometime am I All wound with adders, who with cloven tongues Do hiss me into madness.

Enter Trinculo.

Lo, now, lo! Here comes a spirit of his, and to torment me For bringing wood in slowly. I’ll fall flat; Perchance he will not mind me.

TRINCULO. Here’s neither bush nor shrub to bear off any weather at all, and another storm brewing; I hear it sing i’ th’ wind. Yond same black cloud, yond huge one, looks like a foul bombard that would shed his liquor. If it should thunder as it did before, I know not where to hide my head: yond same cloud cannot choose but fall by pailfuls. What have we here? a man or a fish? dead or alive? A fish: he smells like a fish; a very ancient and fish-like smell; a kind of not of the newest Poor-John. A strange fish! Were I in England now, as once I was, and had but this fish painted, not a holiday fool there but would give a piece of silver: there would this monster make a man; any strange beast there makes a man. When they will not give a doit to relieve a lame beggar, they will lay out ten to see a dead Indian. Legg’d like a man, and his fins like arms! Warm, o’ my troth! I do now let loose my opinion, hold it no longer: this is no fish, but an islander, that hath lately suffered by thunderbolt. [Thunder.] Alas, the storm is come again! My best way is to creep under his gaberdine; there is no other shelter hereabout: misery acquaints a man with strange bed-fellows. I will here shroud till the dregs of the storm be past.

Enter Stephano singing; a bottle in his hand.

STEPHANO. I shall no more to sea, to sea, Here shall I die ashore—

This is a very scurvy tune to sing at a man’s funeral. Well, here’s my comfort.

The master, the swabber, the boatswain, and I, The gunner, and his mate, Lov’d Mall, Meg, and Marian, and Margery, But none of us car’d for Kate: For she had a tongue with a tang, Would cry to a sailor “Go hang!” She lov’d not the savour of tar nor of pitch, Yet a tailor might scratch her where’er she did itch. Then to sea, boys, and let her go hang.

This is a scurvy tune too: but here’s my comfort.

CALIBAN. Do not torment me: O!

STEPHANO. What’s the matter? Have we devils here? Do you put tricks upon ’s with savages and men of Ind? Ha? I have not scap’d drowning, to be afeard now of your four legs; for it hath been said, As proper a man as ever went on four legs cannot make him give ground; and it shall be said so again, while Stephano breathes at’ nostrils.

CALIBAN. The spirit torments me: O!

STEPHANO. This is some monster of the isle with four legs, who hath got, as I take it, an ague. Where the devil should he learn our language? I will give him some relief, if it be but for that. If I can recover him and keep him tame, and get to Naples with him, he’s a present for any emperor that ever trod on neat’s-leather.

CALIBAN. Do not torment me, prithee; I’ll bring my wood home faster.

STEPHANO. He’s in his fit now, and does not talk after the wisest. He shall taste of my bottle: if he have never drunk wine afore, it will go near to remove his fit. If I can recover him, and keep him tame, I will not take too much for him. He shall pay for him that hath him, and that soundly.

CALIBAN. Thou dost me yet but little hurt; thou wilt anon, I know it by thy trembling: now Prosper works upon thee.

STEPHANO. Come on your ways. Open your mouth; here is that which will give language to you, cat. Open your mouth. This will shake your shaking, I can tell you, and that soundly. [gives Caliban a drink] You cannot tell who’s your friend: open your chaps again.

TRINCULO. I should know that voice: it should be—but he is drowned; and these are devils. O, defend me!

STEPHANO. Four legs and two voices; a most delicate monster! His forward voice now is to speak well of his friend; his backward voice is to utter foul speeches and to detract. If all the wine in my bottle will recover him, I will help his ague. Come. Amen! I will pour some in thy other mouth.

TRINCULO. Stephano!

STEPHANO. Doth thy other mouth call me? Mercy! mercy! This is a devil, and no monster: I will leave him; I have no long spoon.

TRINCULO. Stephano! If thou beest Stephano, touch me, and speak to me; for I am Trinculo—be not afeared—thy good friend Trinculo.

STEPHANO. If thou beest Trinculo, come forth. I’ll pull thee by the lesser legs: if any be Trinculo’s legs, these are they. Thou art very Trinculo indeed! How cam’st thou to be the siege of this moon-calf? Can he vent Trinculos?

TRINCULO. I took him to be kill’d with a thunderstroke. But art thou not drown’d, Stephano? I hope now thou are not drown’d. Is the storm overblown? I hid me under the dead moon-calf’s gaberdine for fear of the storm. And art thou living, Stephano? O Stephano, two Neapolitans scap’d!

STEPHANO. Prithee, do not turn me about. My stomach is not constant.

CALIBAN. [Aside.] These be fine things, an if they be not sprites. That’s a brave god, and bears celestial liquor. I will kneel to him.

STEPHANO. How didst thou scape? How cam’st thou hither? Swear by this bottle how thou cam’st hither—I escaped upon a butt of sack, which the sailors heaved o’erboard, by this bottle! which I made of the bark of a tree with mine own hands, since I was cast ashore.

CALIBAN. I’ll swear upon that bottle to be thy true subject, for the liquor is not earthly.

STEPHANO. Here. Swear then how thou escapedst.

TRINCULO. Swum ashore, man, like a duck: I can swim like a duck, I’ll be sworn.

STEPHANO. Here, kiss the book. Though thou canst swim like a duck, thou art made like a goose.

TRINCULO. O Stephano, hast any more of this?

STEPHANO. The whole butt, man: my cellar is in a rock by th’ seaside, where my wine is hid. How now, moon-calf! How does thine ague?

CALIBAN. Hast thou not dropped from heaven?

STEPHANO. Out o’ the moon, I do assure thee: I was the Man in the Moon, when time was.

CALIBAN. I have seen thee in her, and I do adore thee. My mistress showed me thee, and thy dog, and thy bush.

STEPHANO. Come, swear to that. Kiss the book. I will furnish it anon with new contents. Swear.

TRINCULO. By this good light, this is a very shallow monster. I afeard of him? A very weak monster. The Man i’ the Moon! A most poor credulous monster! Well drawn, monster, in good sooth!

CALIBAN. I’ll show thee every fertile inch o’ the island; and I will kiss thy foot. I prithee, be my god.

TRINCULO. By this light, a most perfidious and drunken monster. When ’s god’s asleep, he’ll rob his bottle.

CALIBAN. I’ll kiss thy foot. I’ll swear myself thy subject.

STEPHANO. Come on, then; down, and swear.

TRINCULO. I shall laugh myself to death at this puppy-headed monster. A most scurvy monster! I could find in my heart to beat him,—

STEPHANO. Come, kiss.

TRINCULO. But that the poor monster’s in drink. An abominable monster!

CALIBAN. I’ll show thee the best springs; I’ll pluck thee berries; I’ll fish for thee, and get thee wood enough. A plague upon the tyrant that I serve! I’ll bear him no more sticks, but follow thee, Thou wondrous man.

TRINCULO. A most ridiculous monster, to make a wonder of a poor drunkard!

CALIBAN. I prithee, let me bring thee where crabs grow; And I with my long nails will dig thee pig-nuts; Show thee a jay’s nest, and instruct thee how To snare the nimble marmoset; I’ll bring thee To clustering filberts, and sometimes I’ll get thee Young scamels from the rock. Wilt thou go with me?

STEPHANO. I prithee now, lead the way without any more talking. Trinculo, the King and all our company else being drowned, we will inherit here. Here, bear my bottle. Fellow Trinculo, we’ll fill him by and by again.

CALIBAN. [Sings drunkenly.] Farewell, master; farewell, farewell!

TRINCULO. A howling monster, a drunken monster.

CALIBAN. No more dams I’ll make for fish; Nor fetch in firing At requiring, Nor scrape trenchering, nor wash dish; ’Ban ’Ban, Cacaliban, Has a new master—Get a new man. Freedom, high-day! high-day, freedom! freedom, high-day, freedom!

STEPHANO. O brave monster! lead the way.

SCENE I. Before Prospero’s cell.

Enter Ferdinand bearing a log.

FERDINAND. There be some sports are painful, and their labour Delight in them sets off: some kinds of baseness Are nobly undergone; and most poor matters Point to rich ends. This my mean task Would be as heavy to me as odious, but The mistress which I serve quickens what’s dead, And makes my labours pleasures: O, she is Ten times more gentle than her father’s crabbed, And he’s compos’d of harshness. I must remove Some thousands of these logs, and pile them up, Upon a sore injunction: my sweet mistress Weeps when she sees me work, and says such baseness Had never like executor. I forget: But these sweet thoughts do even refresh my labours, Most busy, least when I do it.

Enter Miranda and Prospero behind.

MIRANDA. Alas now, pray you, Work not so hard: I would the lightning had Burnt up those logs that you are enjoin’d to pile! Pray, set it down and rest you. When this burns, ’Twill weep for having wearied you. My father Is hard at study; pray, now, rest yourself: He’s safe for these three hours.

FERDINAND. O most dear mistress, The sun will set, before I shall discharge What I must strive to do.

MIRANDA. If you’ll sit down, I’ll bear your logs the while. Pray give me that; I’ll carry it to the pile.

FERDINAND. No, precious creature; I had rather crack my sinews, break my back, Than you should such dishonour undergo, While I sit lazy by.

MIRANDA. It would become me As well as it does you: and I should do it With much more ease; for my good will is to it, And yours it is against.

PROSPERO. [Aside.] Poor worm! thou art infected. This visitation shows it.

MIRANDA. You look wearily.

FERDINAND. No, noble mistress; ’tis fresh morning with me When you are by at night. I do beseech you— Chiefly that I might set it in my prayers— What is your name?

MIRANDA. Miranda—O my father! I have broke your hest to say so.

FERDINAND. Admir’d Miranda! Indeed, the top of admiration; worth What’s dearest to the world! Full many a lady I have ey’d with best regard, and many a time Th’ harmony of their tongues hath into bondage Brought my too diligent ear: for several virtues Have I lik’d several women; never any With so full soul but some defect in her Did quarrel with the noblest grace she ow’d, And put it to the foil: but you, O you, So perfect and so peerless, are created Of every creature’s best.

MIRANDA. I do not know One of my sex; no woman’s face remember, Save, from my glass, mine own; nor have I seen More that I may call men than you, good friend, And my dear father: how features are abroad, I am skilless of; but, by my modesty, The jewel in my dower, I would not wish Any companion in the world but you; Nor can imagination form a shape, Besides yourself, to like of. But I prattle Something too wildly, and my father’s precepts I therein do forget.

FERDINAND. I am, in my condition, A prince, Miranda; I do think, a King; I would not so!—and would no more endure This wooden slavery than to suffer The flesh-fly blow my mouth. Hear my soul speak: The very instant that I saw you, did My heart fly to your service; there resides, To make me slave to it; and for your sake Am I this patient log-man.

MIRANDA. Do you love me?

FERDINAND. O heaven, O earth, bear witness to this sound, And crown what I profess with kind event, If I speak true; if hollowly, invert What best is boded me to mischief! I, Beyond all limit of what else i’ the world, Do love, prize, honour you.

MIRANDA. I am a fool To weep at what I am glad of.

PROSPERO. [Aside.] Fair encounter Of two most rare affections! Heavens rain grace On that which breeds between ’em!

FERDINAND. Wherefore weep you?

MIRANDA. At mine unworthiness, that dare not offer What I desire to give; and much less take What I shall die to want. But this is trifling; And all the more it seeks to hide itself, The bigger bulk it shows. Hence, bashful cunning! And prompt me, plain and holy innocence! I am your wife if you will marry me; If not, I’ll die your maid: to be your fellow You may deny me; but I’ll be your servant, Whether you will or no.

FERDINAND. My mistress, dearest; And I thus humble ever.

MIRANDA. My husband, then?

FERDINAND. Ay, with a heart as willing As bondage e’er of freedom: here’s my hand.

MIRANDA. And mine, with my heart in ’t: and now farewell Till half an hour hence.

FERDINAND. A thousand thousand!

[Exeunt Ferdinand and Miranda severally.]

PROSPERO. So glad of this as they, I cannot be, Who are surpris’d withal; but my rejoicing At nothing can be more. I’ll to my book; For yet, ere supper time, must I perform Much business appertaining.

Enter Caliban with a bottle, Stephano and Trinculo.

STEPHANO. Tell not me:—when the butt is out we will drink water; not a drop before: therefore bear up, and board ’em. Servant-monster, drink to me.

TRINCULO. Servant-monster! The folly of this island! They say there’s but five upon this isle; we are three of them; if th’ other two be brained like us, the state totters.

STEPHANO. Drink, servant-monster, when I bid thee: thy eyes are almost set in thy head.

TRINCULO. Where should they be set else? He were a brave monster indeed, if they were set in his tail.

STEPHANO. My man-monster hath drown’d his tongue in sack: for my part, the sea cannot drown me; I swam, ere I could recover the shore, five-and-thirty leagues, off and on, by this light. Thou shalt be my lieutenant, monster, or my standard.

TRINCULO. Your lieutenant, if you list; he’s no standard.

STEPHANO. We’ll not run, Monsieur monster.

TRINCULO. Nor go neither. But you’ll lie like dogs, and yet say nothing neither.

STEPHANO. Moon-calf, speak once in thy life, if thou beest a good moon-calf.

CALIBAN. How does thy honour? Let me lick thy shoe. I’ll not serve him, he is not valiant.

TRINCULO. Thou liest, most ignorant monster: I am in case to justle a constable. Why, thou deboshed fish thou, was there ever man a coward that hath drunk so much sack as I today? Wilt thou tell a monstrous lie, being but half a fish and half a monster?

CALIBAN. Lo, how he mocks me! wilt thou let him, my lord?

TRINCULO. “Lord” quoth he! That a monster should be such a natural!

CALIBAN. Lo, lo again! bite him to death, I prithee.

STEPHANO. Trinculo, keep a good tongue in your head: if you prove a mutineer, the next tree! The poor monster’s my subject, and he shall not suffer indignity.

CALIBAN. I thank my noble lord. Wilt thou be pleas’d to hearken once again to the suit I made to thee?

STEPHANO. Marry. will I. Kneel and repeat it. I will stand, and so shall Trinculo.

Enter Ariel, invisible.

CALIBAN. As I told thee before, I am subject to a tyrant, a sorcerer, that by his cunning hath cheated me of the island.

ARIEL. Thou liest.

CALIBAN. Thou liest, thou jesting monkey, thou; I would my valiant master would destroy thee; I do not lie.

STEPHANO. Trinculo, if you trouble him any more in his tale, by this hand, I will supplant some of your teeth.

TRINCULO. Why, I said nothing.

STEPHANO. Mum, then, and no more. Proceed.

CALIBAN. I say, by sorcery he got this isle; From me he got it. If thy greatness will, Revenge it on him,—for I know thou dar’st; But this thing dare not,—

STEPHANO. That’s most certain.

CALIBAN. Thou shalt be lord of it and I’ll serve thee.

STEPHANO. How now shall this be compassed? Canst thou bring me to the party?

CALIBAN. Yea, yea, my lord: I’ll yield him thee asleep, Where thou mayst knock a nail into his head.

ARIEL. Thou liest. Thou canst not.

CALIBAN. What a pied ninny’s this! Thou scurvy patch! I do beseech thy greatness, give him blows, And take his bottle from him: when that’s gone He shall drink nought but brine; for I’ll not show him Where the quick freshes are.

STEPHANO. Trinculo, run into no further danger: interrupt the monster one word further, and by this hand, I’ll turn my mercy out o’ doors, and make a stock-fish of thee.

TRINCULO. Why, what did I? I did nothing. I’ll go farther off.

STEPHANO. Didst thou not say he lied?

STEPHANO. Do I so? Take thou that.

[Strikes Trinculo.]

As you like this, give me the lie another time.

TRINCULO. I did not give the lie. Out o’ your wits and hearing too? A pox o’ your bottle! this can sack and drinking do. A murrain on your monster, and the devil take your fingers!

CALIBAN. Ha, ha, ha!

STEPHANO. Now, forward with your tale.—Prithee stand further off.

CALIBAN. Beat him enough: after a little time, I’ll beat him too.

STEPHANO. Stand farther.—Come, proceed.

CALIBAN. Why, as I told thee, ’tis a custom with him I’ th’ afternoon to sleep: there thou mayst brain him, Having first seiz’d his books; or with a log Batter his skull, or paunch him with a stake, Or cut his wezand with thy knife. Remember First to possess his books; for without them He’s but a sot, as I am, nor hath not One spirit to command: they all do hate him As rootedly as I. Burn but his books. He has brave utensils,—for so he calls them,— Which, when he has a house, he’ll deck withal. And that most deeply to consider is The beauty of his daughter; he himself Calls her a nonpareil: I never saw a woman But only Sycorax my dam and she; But she as far surpasseth Sycorax As great’st does least.

STEPHANO. Is it so brave a lass?

CALIBAN. Ay, lord, she will become thy bed, I warrant, And bring thee forth brave brood.

STEPHANO. Monster, I will kill this man. His daughter and I will be king and queen,—save our graces!—and Trinculo and thyself shall be viceroys. Dost thou like the plot, Trinculo?

TRINCULO. Excellent.

STEPHANO. Give me thy hand: I am sorry I beat thee; but while thou liv’st, keep a good tongue in thy head.

CALIBAN. Within this half hour will he be asleep. Wilt thou destroy him then?

STEPHANO. Ay, on mine honour.

ARIEL. This will I tell my master.

CALIBAN. Thou mak’st me merry. I am full of pleasure. Let us be jocund: will you troll the catch You taught me but while-ere?

STEPHANO. At thy request, monster, I will do reason, any reason. Come on, Trinculo, let us sing.

Flout ’em and cout ’em, and scout ’em and flout ’em: Thought is free.

CALIBAN. That’s not the tune.

[Ariel plays the tune on a tabor and pipe.]

STEPHANO. What is this same?

TRINCULO. This is the tune of our catch, played by the picture of Nobody.

STEPHANO. If thou beest a man, show thyself in thy likeness: if thou beest a devil, take ’t as thou list.

TRINCULO. O, forgive me my sins!

STEPHANO. He that dies pays all debts: I defy thee. Mercy upon us!

CALIBAN. Art thou afeard?

STEPHANO. No, monster, not I.

CALIBAN. Be not afeard. The isle is full of noises, Sounds, and sweet airs, that give delight, and hurt not. Sometimes a thousand twangling instruments Will hum about mine ears; and sometimes voices, That, if I then had wak’d after long sleep, Will make me sleep again: and then, in dreaming, The clouds methought would open and show riches Ready to drop upon me; that, when I wak’d, I cried to dream again.

STEPHANO. This will prove a brave kingdom to me, where I shall have my music for nothing.

CALIBAN. When Prospero is destroyed.

STEPHANO. That shall be by and by: I remember the story.

TRINCULO. The sound is going away. Let’s follow it, and after do our work.

STEPHANO. Lead, monster: we’ll follow. I would I could see this taborer! he lays it on. Wilt come?

TRINCULO. I’ll follow, Stephano.

SCENE III. Another part of the island.

Enter Alonso, Sebastian, Antonio, Gonzalo, Adrian, Francisco, &c.

GONZALO. By ’r lakin, I can go no further, sir; My old bones ache: here’s a maze trod, indeed, Through forth-rights and meanders! By your patience, I needs must rest me.

ALONSO. Old lord, I cannot blame thee, Who am myself attach’d with weariness To th’ dulling of my spirits: sit down, and rest. Even here I will put off my hope, and keep it No longer for my flatterer: he is drown’d Whom thus we stray to find; and the sea mocks Our frustrate search on land. Well, let him go.

ANTONIO. [Aside to Sebastian.] I am right glad that he’s so out of hope. Do not, for one repulse, forgo the purpose That you resolv’d to effect.

SEBASTIAN. [Aside to Antonio.] The next advantage Will we take throughly.

ANTONIO. [Aside to Sebastian.] Let it be tonight; For, now they are oppress’d with travel, they Will not, nor cannot, use such vigilance As when they are fresh.

SEBASTIAN. [Aside to Antonio.] I say, tonight: no more.

Solemn and strange music: and Prospero above, invisible. Enter several strange Shapes, bringing in a banquet: they dance about it with gentle actions of salutation; and inviting the King &c., to eat, they depart.

ALONSO. What harmony is this? My good friends, hark!

GONZALO. Marvellous sweet music!

ALONSO. Give us kind keepers, heavens! What were these?

SEBASTIAN. A living drollery. Now I will believe That there are unicorns; that in Arabia There is one tree, the phoenix’ throne; one phoenix At this hour reigning there.

ANTONIO. I’ll believe both; And what does else want credit, come to me, And I’ll be sworn ’tis true: travellers ne’er did lie, Though fools at home condemn them.

GONZALO. If in Naples I should report this now, would they believe me? If I should say, I saw such islanders,— For, certes, these are people of the island,— Who, though, they are of monstrous shape, yet, note, Their manners are more gentle, kind, than of Our human generation you shall find Many, nay, almost any.

PROSPERO. [Aside.] Honest lord, Thou hast said well; for some of you there present Are worse than devils.

ALONSO. I cannot too much muse Such shapes, such gesture, and such sound, expressing— Although they want the use of tongue—a kind Of excellent dumb discourse.

PROSPERO. [Aside.] Praise in departing.

FRANCISCO. They vanish’d strangely.

SEBASTIAN. No matter, since They have left their viands behind; for we have stomachs.— Will’t please you taste of what is here?

ALONSO. Not I.

GONZALO. Faith, sir, you need not fear. When we were boys, Who would believe that there were mountaineers Dewlapp’d like bulls, whose throats had hanging at ’em Wallets of flesh? Or that there were such men Whose heads stood in their breasts? which now we find Each putter-out of five for one will bring us Good warrant of.

ALONSO. I will stand to, and feed, Although my last, no matter, since I feel The best is past. Brother, my lord the duke, Stand to, and do as we.

Thunder and lightning. Enter Ariel like a Harpy; claps his wings upon the table; and, with a quaint device, the banquet vanishes.

ARIEL. You are three men of sin, whom Destiny, That hath to instrument this lower world And what is in’t,—the never-surfeited sea Hath caused to belch up you; and on this island Where man doth not inhabit; you ’mongst men Being most unfit to live. I have made you mad; And even with such-like valour men hang and drown Their proper selves.

[Seeing Alonso, Sebastian &c., draw their swords.]

You fools! I and my fellows Are ministers of Fate: the elements Of whom your swords are temper’d may as well Wound the loud winds, or with bemock’d-at stabs Kill the still-closing waters, as diminish One dowle that’s in my plume. My fellow-ministers Are like invulnerable. If you could hurt, Your swords are now too massy for your strengths, And will not be uplifted. But, remember— For that’s my business to you,—that you three From Milan did supplant good Prospero; Expos’d unto the sea, which hath requit it, Him and his innocent child: for which foul deed The powers, delaying, not forgetting, have Incens’d the seas and shores, yea, all the creatures, Against your peace. Thee of thy son, Alonso, They have bereft; and do pronounce, by me Ling’ring perdition,—worse than any death Can be at once,—shall step by step attend You and your ways; whose wraths to guard you from— Which here, in this most desolate isle, else falls Upon your heads,—is nothing but heart-sorrow, And a clear life ensuing.

[He vanishes in thunder: then, to soft music, enter the Shapes again, and dance, with mocks and mows, and carry out the table.]

PROSPERO. [Aside.] Bravely the figure of this Harpy hast thou Perform’d, my Ariel; a grace it had, devouring. Of my instruction hast thou nothing bated In what thou hadst to say: so, with good life And observation strange, my meaner ministers Their several kinds have done. My high charms work, And these mine enemies are all knit up In their distractions; they now are in my power; And in these fits I leave them, while I visit Young Ferdinand,—whom they suppose is drown’d,— And his and mine lov’d darling.

GONZALO. I’ the name of something holy, sir, why stand you In this strange stare?

ALONSO. O, it is monstrous! monstrous! Methought the billows spoke, and told me of it; The winds did sing it to me; and the thunder, That deep and dreadful organ-pipe, pronounc’d The name of Prosper: it did bass my trespass. Therefore my son i’ th’ ooze is bedded; and I’ll seek him deeper than e’er plummet sounded, And with him there lie mudded.

SEBASTIAN. But one fiend at a time, I’ll fight their legions o’er.

ANTONIO. I’ll be thy second.

[Exeunt Sebastian and Antonio.]

GONZALO. All three of them are desperate: their great guilt, Like poison given to work a great time after, Now ’gins to bite the spirits. I do beseech you That are of suppler joints, follow them swiftly And hinder them from what this ecstasy May now provoke them to.

ADRIAN. Follow, I pray you.

Enter Prospero, Ferdinand and Miranda.

PROSPERO. If I have too austerely punish’d you, Your compensation makes amends: for I Have given you here a third of mine own life, Or that for which I live; who once again I tender to thy hand: all thy vexations Were but my trials of thy love, and thou Hast strangely stood the test: here, afore Heaven, I ratify this my rich gift. O Ferdinand, Do not smile at me that I boast her off, For thou shalt find she will outstrip all praise, And make it halt behind her.

FERDINAND. I do believe it Against an oracle.

PROSPERO. Then, as my gift and thine own acquisition Worthily purchas’d, take my daughter: but If thou dost break her virgin knot before All sanctimonious ceremonies may With full and holy rite be minister’d, No sweet aspersion shall the heavens let fall To make this contract grow; but barren hate, Sour-ey’d disdain, and discord shall bestrew The union of your bed with weeds so loathly That you shall hate it both: therefore take heed, As Hymen’s lamps shall light you.

FERDINAND. As I hope For quiet days, fair issue, and long life, With such love as ’tis now, the murkiest den, The most opportune place, the strong’st suggestion Our worser genius can, shall never melt Mine honour into lust, to take away The edge of that day’s celebration, When I shall think, or Phoebus’ steeds are founder’d, Or Night kept chain’d below.

PROSPERO. Fairly spoke: Sit, then, and talk with her, she is thine own. What, Ariel! my industrious servant, Ariel!

ARIEL. What would my potent master? here I am.

PROSPERO. Thou and thy meaner fellows your last service Did worthily perform; and I must use you In such another trick. Go bring the rabble, O’er whom I give thee power, here to this place. Incite them to quick motion; for I must Bestow upon the eyes of this young couple Some vanity of mine art: it is my promise, And they expect it from me.

ARIEL. Presently?

PROSPERO. Ay, with a twink.

ARIEL. Before you can say “Come” and “Go,” And breathe twice, and cry “so, so,” Each one, tripping on his toe, Will be here with mop and mow. Do you love me, master? no?

PROSPERO. Dearly, my delicate Ariel. Do not approach Till thou dost hear me call.

ARIEL. Well, I conceive.

PROSPERO. Look thou be true; do not give dalliance Too much the rein: the strongest oaths are straw To th’ fire i’ the blood: be more abstemious, Or else good night your vow!

FERDINAND. I warrant you, sir; The white cold virgin snow upon my heart Abates the ardour of my liver.

PROSPERO. Well. Now come, my Ariel! bring a corollary, Rather than want a spirit: appear, and pertly. No tongue! all eyes! be silent.

[Soft music.]

A Masque. Enter Iris.

IRIS. Ceres, most bounteous lady, thy rich leas Of wheat, rye, barley, vetches, oats, and peas; Thy turfy mountains, where live nibbling sheep, And flat meads thatch’d with stover, them to keep; Thy banks with pioned and twilled brims, Which spongy April at thy hest betrims, To make cold nymphs chaste crowns; and thy broom groves, Whose shadow the dismissed bachelor loves, Being lass-lorn; thy pole-clipt vineyard; And thy sea-marge, sterile and rocky-hard, Where thou thyself dost air: the Queen o’ th’ sky, Whose wat’ry arch and messenger am I, Bids thee leave these; and with her sovereign grace, Here on this grass-plot, in this very place, To come and sport; her peacocks fly amain: Approach, rich Ceres, her to entertain.

Enter Ceres.

CERES. Hail, many-colour’d messenger, that ne’er Dost disobey the wife of Jupiter; Who with thy saffron wings upon my flowers Diffusest honey drops, refreshing showers; And with each end of thy blue bow dost crown My bosky acres and my unshrubb’d down, Rich scarf to my proud earth; why hath thy queen Summon’d me hither to this short-grass’d green?

IRIS. A contract of true love to celebrate, And some donation freely to estate On the blest lovers.

CERES. Tell me, heavenly bow, If Venus or her son, as thou dost know, Do now attend the queen? Since they did plot The means that dusky Dis my daughter got, Her and her blind boy’s scandal’d company I have forsworn.

IRIS. Of her society Be not afraid. I met her deity Cutting the clouds towards Paphos, and her son Dove-drawn with her. Here thought they to have done Some wanton charm upon this man and maid, Whose vows are, that no bed-right shall be paid Till Hymen’s torch be lighted; but in vain. Mars’s hot minion is return’d again; Her waspish-headed son has broke his arrows, Swears he will shoot no more, but play with sparrows, And be a boy right out.

CERES. Highest queen of State, Great Juno comes; I know her by her gait.

Enter Juno.

JUNO. How does my bounteous sister? Go with me To bless this twain, that they may prosperous be, And honour’d in their issue.

[They sing.]

JUNO. Honour, riches, marriage-blessing, Long continuance, and increasing, Hourly joys be still upon you! Juno sings her blessings on you.

CERES. Earth’s increase, foison plenty, Barns and garners never empty; Vines with clust’ring bunches growing; Plants with goodly burden bowing; Spring come to you at the farthest In the very end of harvest! Scarcity and want shall shun you; Ceres’ blessing so is on you.

FERDINAND. This is a most majestic vision, and Harmonious charmingly. May I be bold To think these spirits?

PROSPERO. Spirits, which by mine art I have from their confines call’d to enact My present fancies.

FERDINAND. Let me live here ever. So rare a wonder’d father and a wise, Makes this place Paradise.

[Juno and Ceres whisper, and send Iris on employment.]

PROSPERO. Sweet now, silence! Juno and Ceres whisper seriously, There’s something else to do: hush, and be mute, Or else our spell is marr’d.

IRIS. You nymphs, call’d Naiads, of the windring brooks, With your sedg’d crowns and ever-harmless looks, Leave your crisp channels, and on this green land Answer your summons; Juno does command. Come, temperate nymphs, and help to celebrate A contract of true love. Be not too late.

Enter certain Nymphs.

You sun-burn’d sicklemen, of August weary, Come hither from the furrow, and be merry: Make holiday: your rye-straw hats put on, And these fresh nymphs encounter every one In country footing.

Enter certain Reapers, properly habited: they join with the Nymphs in a graceful dance; towards the end whereof Prospero starts suddenly, and speaks; after which, to a strange, hollow, and confused noise, they heavily vanish.

PROSPERO. [Aside.] I had forgot that foul conspiracy Of the beast Caliban and his confederates Against my life: the minute of their plot Is almost come. [To the Spirits.] Well done! avoid; no more!

FERDINAND. This is strange: your father’s in some passion That works him strongly.

MIRANDA. Never till this day Saw I him touch’d with anger so distemper’d.

PROSPERO. You do look, my son, in a mov’d sort, As if you were dismay’d: be cheerful, sir: Our revels now are ended. These our actors, As I foretold you, were all spirits and Are melted into air, into thin air: And, like the baseless fabric of this vision, The cloud-capp’d towers, the gorgeous palaces, The solemn temples, the great globe itself, Yea, all which it inherit, shall dissolve, And, like this insubstantial pageant faded, Leave not a rack behind. We are such stuff As dreams are made on, and our little life Is rounded with a sleep. Sir, I am vex’d: Bear with my weakness; my old brain is troubled. Be not disturb’d with my infirmity. If you be pleas’d, retire into my cell And there repose: a turn or two I’ll walk, To still my beating mind.

FERDINAND, MIRANDA. We wish your peace.

PROSPERO. Come, with a thought. I thank thee, Ariel. Come!

ARIEL. Thy thoughts I cleave to. What’s thy pleasure?

PROSPERO. Spirit, We must prepare to meet with Caliban.

ARIEL. Ay, my commander. When I presented Ceres, I thought to have told thee of it; but I fear’d Lest I might anger thee.

PROSPERO. Say again, where didst thou leave these varlets?

ARIEL. I told you, sir, they were red-hot with drinking; So full of valour that they smote the air For breathing in their faces; beat the ground For kissing of their feet; yet always bending Towards their project. Then I beat my tabor; At which, like unback’d colts, they prick’d their ears, Advanc’d their eyelids, lifted up their noses As they smelt music: so I charm’d their ears, That calf-like they my lowing follow’d through Tooth’d briers, sharp furzes, pricking goss, and thorns, Which enter’d their frail shins: at last I left them I’ th’ filthy-mantled pool beyond your cell, There dancing up to th’ chins, that the foul lake O’erstunk their feet.

PROSPERO. This was well done, my bird. Thy shape invisible retain thou still: The trumpery in my house, go bring it hither For stale to catch these thieves.

ARIEL. I go, I go.

PROSPERO. A devil, a born devil, on whose nature Nurture can never stick; on whom my pains, Humanely taken, all, all lost, quite lost; And as with age his body uglier grows, So his mind cankers. I will plague them all, Even to roaring.

Re-enter Ariel, loaden with glistering apparel, &c.

Come, hang them on this line.

Prospero and Ariel remain invisible. Enter Caliban, Stephano and Trinculo all wet.

CALIBAN. Pray you, tread softly, that the blind mole may not Hear a foot fall: we now are near his cell.

STEPHANO. Monster, your fairy, which you say is a harmless fairy, has done little better than played the Jack with us.

TRINCULO. Monster, I do smell all horse-piss; at which my nose is in great indignation.

STEPHANO. So is mine. Do you hear, monster? If I should take a displeasure against you, look you,—

TRINCULO. Thou wert but a lost monster.

CALIBAN. Good my lord, give me thy favour still. Be patient, for the prize I’ll bring thee to Shall hoodwink this mischance: therefore speak softly. All’s hush’d as midnight yet.

TRINCULO. Ay, but to lose our bottles in the pool!

STEPHANO. There is not only disgrace and dishonour in that, monster, but an infinite loss.

TRINCULO. That’s more to me than my wetting: yet this is your harmless fairy, monster.

STEPHANO. I will fetch off my bottle, though I be o’er ears for my labour.

CALIBAN. Prithee, my King, be quiet. Seest thou here, This is the mouth o’ th’ cell: no noise, and enter. Do that good mischief which may make this island Thine own for ever, and I, thy Caliban, For aye thy foot-licker.

STEPHANO. Give me thy hand. I do begin to have bloody thoughts.

TRINCULO. O King Stephano! O peer! O worthy Stephano! Look what a wardrobe here is for thee!

CALIBAN. Let it alone, thou fool; it is but trash.

TRINCULO. O, ho, monster! we know what belongs to a frippery. O King Stephano!

STEPHANO. Put off that gown, Trinculo; by this hand, I’ll have that gown.

TRINCULO. Thy Grace shall have it.

CALIBAN. The dropsy drown this fool! What do you mean To dote thus on such luggage? Let’t alone, And do the murder first. If he awake, From toe to crown he’ll fill our skins with pinches, Make us strange stuff.

STEPHANO. Be you quiet, monster. Mistress line, is not this my jerkin? Now is the jerkin under the line: now, jerkin, you are like to lose your hair, and prove a bald jerkin.

TRINCULO. Do, do: we steal by line and level, an’t like your Grace.

STEPHANO. I thank thee for that jest. Here’s a garment for ’t: wit shall not go unrewarded while I am King of this country. “Steal by line and level,” is an excellent pass of pate. There’s another garment for ’t.

TRINCULO. Monster, come, put some lime upon your fingers, and away with the rest.

CALIBAN. I will have none on’t. We shall lose our time, And all be turn’d to barnacles, or to apes With foreheads villainous low.

STEPHANO. Monster, lay-to your fingers: help to bear this away where my hogshead of wine is, or I’ll turn you out of my kingdom. Go to, carry this.

TRINCULO. And this.

STEPHANO. Ay, and this.

A noise of hunters heard. Enter divers Spirits, in shape of dogs and hounds, and hunt them about; Prospero and Ariel setting them on.

PROSPERO. Hey, Mountain, hey!

ARIEL. Silver! there it goes, Silver!

PROSPERO. Fury, Fury! There, Tyrant, there! hark, hark!

[Caliban, Stephano and Trinculo are driven out.]

Go, charge my goblins that they grind their joints With dry convulsions; shorten up their sinews With aged cramps, and more pinch-spotted make them Than pard, or cat o’ mountain.

ARIEL. Hark, they roar.

PROSPERO. Let them be hunted soundly. At this hour Lies at my mercy all mine enemies. Shortly shall all my labours end, and thou Shalt have the air at freedom. For a little Follow, and do me service.

SCENE I. Before the cell of Prospero.

Enter Prospero in his magic robes, and Ariel.

PROSPERO. Now does my project gather to a head: My charms crack not; my spirits obey, and time Goes upright with his carriage. How’s the day?

ARIEL. On the sixth hour; at which time, my lord, You said our work should cease.

PROSPERO. I did say so, When first I rais’d the tempest. Say, my spirit, How fares the King and ’s followers?

ARIEL. Confin’d together In the same fashion as you gave in charge, Just as you left them; all prisoners, sir, In the line grove which weather-fends your cell; They cannot budge till your release. The King, His brother, and yours, abide all three distracted, And the remainder mourning over them, Brimful of sorrow and dismay; but chiefly Him you term’d, sir, “the good old lord, Gonzalo”. His tears run down his beard, like winter’s drops From eaves of reeds; your charm so strongly works ’em, That if you now beheld them, your affections Would become tender.

PROSPERO. Dost thou think so, spirit?

ARIEL. Mine would, sir, were I human.

PROSPERO. And mine shall. Hast thou, which art but air, a touch, a feeling Of their afflictions, and shall not myself, One of their kind, that relish all as sharply Passion as they, be kindlier mov’d than thou art? Though with their high wrongs I am struck to th’ quick, Yet with my nobler reason ’gainst my fury Do I take part: the rarer action is In virtue than in vengeance: they being penitent, The sole drift of my purpose doth extend Not a frown further. Go release them, Ariel. My charms I’ll break, their senses I’ll restore, And they shall be themselves.

ARIEL. I’ll fetch them, sir.

PROSPERO. Ye elves of hills, brooks, standing lakes, and groves; And ye that on the sands with printless foot Do chase the ebbing Neptune, and do fly him When he comes back; you demi-puppets that By moonshine do the green sour ringlets make, Whereof the ewe not bites; and you whose pastime Is to make midnight mushrooms, that rejoice To hear the solemn curfew; by whose aid, Weak masters though ye be, I have bedimm’d The noontide sun, call’d forth the mutinous winds, And ’twixt the green sea and the azur’d vault Set roaring war: to the dread rattling thunder Have I given fire, and rifted Jove’s stout oak With his own bolt; the strong-bas’d promontory Have I made shake, and by the spurs pluck’d up The pine and cedar: graves at my command Have wak’d their sleepers, op’d, and let ’em forth By my so potent art. But this rough magic I here abjure; and, when I have requir’d Some heavenly music,—which even now I do,— To work mine end upon their senses that This airy charm is for, I’ll break my staff, Bury it certain fathoms in the earth, And deeper than did ever plummet sound I’ll drown my book.

Re-enter Ariel: after him, Alonso with a frantic gesture, attended by Gonzalo, Sebastian and Antonio in like manner, attended by Adrian and Francisco: they all enter the circle which Prospero had made, and there stand charmed; which Prospero observing, speaks.

A solemn air, and the best comforter To an unsettled fancy, cure thy brains, Now useless, boil’d within thy skull! There stand, For you are spell-stopp’d. Holy Gonzalo, honourable man, Mine eyes, e’en sociable to the show of thine, Fall fellowly drops. The charm dissolves apace; And as the morning steals upon the night, Melting the darkness, so their rising senses Begin to chase the ignorant fumes that mantle Their clearer reason. O good Gonzalo! My true preserver, and a loyal sir To him thou follow’st, I will pay thy graces Home, both in word and deed. Most cruelly Didst thou, Alonso, use me and my daughter: Thy brother was a furtherer in the act. Thou art pinch’d for ’t now, Sebastian. Flesh and blood, You, brother mine, that entertain’d ambition, Expell’d remorse and nature, who, with Sebastian,— Whose inward pinches therefore are most strong, Would here have kill’d your King; I do forgive thee, Unnatural though thou art. Their understanding Begins to swell, and the approaching tide Will shortly fill the reasonable shores That now lie foul and muddy. Not one of them That yet looks on me, or would know me. Ariel, Fetch me the hat and rapier in my cell.

I will discase me, and myself present As I was sometime Milan. Quickly, spirit; Thou shalt ere long be free.

Ariel re-enters, singing, and helps to attire Prospero.

ARIEL Where the bee sucks, there suck I: In a cowslip’s bell I lie; There I couch when owls do cry. On the bat’s back I do fly After summer merrily. Merrily, merrily shall I live now Under the blossom that hangs on the bough.

PROSPERO. Why, that’s my dainty Ariel! I shall miss thee; But yet thou shalt have freedom; so, so, so. To the King’s ship, invisible as thou art: There shalt thou find the mariners asleep Under the hatches; the master and the boatswain Being awake, enforce them to this place, And presently, I prithee.

ARIEL. I drink the air before me, and return Or ere your pulse twice beat.

GONZALO. All torment, trouble, wonder and amazement Inhabits here. Some heavenly power guide us Out of this fearful country!

PROSPERO. Behold, sir King, The wronged Duke of Milan, Prospero. For more assurance that a living prince Does now speak to thee, I embrace thy body; And to thee and thy company I bid A hearty welcome.

ALONSO. Whe’er thou be’st he or no, Or some enchanted trifle to abuse me, As late I have been, I not know: thy pulse Beats, as of flesh and blood; and, since I saw thee, Th’ affliction of my mind amends, with which, I fear, a madness held me: this must crave, An if this be at all, a most strange story. Thy dukedom I resign, and do entreat Thou pardon me my wrongs. But how should Prospero Be living and be here?

PROSPERO. First, noble friend, Let me embrace thine age, whose honour cannot Be measur’d or confin’d.

GONZALO. Whether this be Or be not, I’ll not swear.

PROSPERO. You do yet taste Some subtleties o’ the isle, that will not let you Believe things certain. Welcome, my friends all. [Aside to Sebastian and Antonio.] But you, my brace of lords, were I so minded, I here could pluck his highness’ frown upon you, And justify you traitors: at this time I will tell no tales.

SEBASTIAN. [Aside.] The devil speaks in him.

PROSPERO. No. For you, most wicked sir, whom to call brother Would even infect my mouth, I do forgive Thy rankest fault, all of them; and require My dukedom of thee, which perforce I know Thou must restore.

ALONSO. If thou beest Prospero, Give us particulars of thy preservation; How thou hast met us here, whom three hours since Were wrack’d upon this shore; where I have lost,— How sharp the point of this remembrance is!— My dear son Ferdinand.

PROSPERO. I am woe for ’t, sir.

ALONSO. Irreparable is the loss, and patience Says it is past her cure.

PROSPERO. I rather think You have not sought her help, of whose soft grace, For the like loss I have her sovereign aid, And rest myself content.

ALONSO. You the like loss!

PROSPERO. As great to me, as late; and, supportable To make the dear loss, have I means much weaker Than you may call to comfort you, for I Have lost my daughter.

ALONSO. A daughter? O heavens, that they were living both in Naples, The King and Queen there! That they were, I wish Myself were mudded in that oozy bed Where my son lies. When did you lose your daughter?

PROSPERO. In this last tempest. I perceive, these lords At this encounter do so much admire That they devour their reason, and scarce think Their eyes do offices of truth, their words Are natural breath; but, howsoe’er you have Been justled from your senses, know for certain That I am Prospero, and that very duke Which was thrust forth of Milan; who most strangely Upon this shore, where you were wrack’d, was landed To be the lord on’t. No more yet of this; For ’tis a chronicle of day by day, Not a relation for a breakfast nor Befitting this first meeting. Welcome, sir. This cell’s my court: here have I few attendants, And subjects none abroad: pray you, look in. My dukedom since you have given me again, I will requite you with as good a thing; At least bring forth a wonder, to content ye As much as me my dukedom.

Here Prospero discovers Ferdinand and Miranda playing at chess.

MIRANDA. Sweet lord, you play me false.

FERDINAND. No, my dearest love, I would not for the world.

MIRANDA. Yes, for a score of kingdoms you should wrangle, And I would call it fair play.

ALONSO. If this prove A vision of the island, one dear son Shall I twice lose.

SEBASTIAN. A most high miracle!

FERDINAND. Though the seas threaten, they are merciful. I have curs’d them without cause.

[Kneels to Alonso.]

ALONSO. Now all the blessings Of a glad father compass thee about! Arise, and say how thou cam’st here.

MIRANDA. O, wonder! How many goodly creatures are there here! How beauteous mankind is! O brave new world That has such people in ’t!

PROSPERO. ’Tis new to thee.

ALONSO. What is this maid, with whom thou wast at play? Your eld’st acquaintance cannot be three hours: Is she the goddess that hath sever’d us, And brought us thus together?

FERDINAND. Sir, she is mortal; But by immortal Providence she’s mine. I chose her when I could not ask my father For his advice, nor thought I had one. She Is daughter to this famous Duke of Milan, Of whom so often I have heard renown, But never saw before; of whom I have Receiv’d a second life; and second father This lady makes him to me.

ALONSO. I am hers: But, O, how oddly will it sound that I Must ask my child forgiveness!

PROSPERO. There, sir, stop: Let us not burden our remembrances with A heaviness that’s gone.

GONZALO. I have inly wept, Or should have spoke ere this. Look down, you gods, And on this couple drop a blessed crown; For it is you that have chalk’d forth the way Which brought us hither.

ALONSO. I say, Amen, Gonzalo!

GONZALO. Was Milan thrust from Milan, that his issue Should become Kings of Naples? O, rejoice Beyond a common joy, and set it down With gold on lasting pillars: in one voyage Did Claribel her husband find at Tunis, And Ferdinand, her brother, found a wife Where he himself was lost; Prospero his dukedom In a poor isle; and all of us ourselves, When no man was his own.

ALONSO. [To Ferdinand and Miranda.] Give me your hands: Let grief and sorrow still embrace his heart That doth not wish you joy!

GONZALO. Be it so. Amen!

Re-enter Ariel with the Master and Boatswain amazedly following.

O look, sir, look, sir! Here are more of us. I prophesied, if a gallows were on land, This fellow could not drown. Now, blasphemy, That swear’st grace o’erboard, not an oath on shore? Hast thou no mouth by land? What is the news?

BOATSWAIN. The best news is that we have safely found Our King and company. The next, our ship,— Which but three glasses since, we gave out split, Is tight and yare, and bravely rigg’d as when We first put out to sea.

ARIEL. [Aside to Prospero.] Sir, all this service Have I done since I went.

PROSPERO. [Aside to Ariel.] My tricksy spirit!

ALONSO. These are not natural events; they strengthen From strange to stranger. Say, how came you hither?

BOATSWAIN. If I did think, sir, I were well awake, I’d strive to tell you. We were dead of sleep, And,—how, we know not,—all clapp’d under hatches, Where, but even now, with strange and several noises Of roaring, shrieking, howling, jingling chains, And mo diversity of sounds, all horrible, We were awak’d; straightway, at liberty: Where we, in all her trim, freshly beheld Our royal, good, and gallant ship; our master Cap’ring to eye her. On a trice, so please you, Even in a dream, were we divided from them, And were brought moping hither.

ARIEL. [Aside to Prospero.] Was’t well done?

PROSPERO. [Aside to Ariel.] Bravely, my diligence. Thou shalt be free.

ALONSO. This is as strange a maze as e’er men trod; And there is in this business more than nature Was ever conduct of: some oracle Must rectify our knowledge.

PROSPERO. Sir, my liege, Do not infest your mind with beating on The strangeness of this business. At pick’d leisure, Which shall be shortly, single I’ll resolve you, Which to you shall seem probable, of every These happen’d accidents; till when, be cheerful And think of each thing well. [Aside to Ariel.] Come hither, spirit; Set Caliban and his companions free; Untie the spell.

How fares my gracious sir? There are yet missing of your company Some few odd lads that you remember not.

Re-enter Ariel driving in Caliban, Stephano and Trinculo in their stolen apparel.

STEPHANO. Every man shift for all the rest, and let no man take care for himself, for all is but fortune.—Coragio! bully-monster, coragio!

TRINCULO. If these be true spies which I wear in my head, here’s a goodly sight.

CALIBAN. O Setebos, these be brave spirits indeed. How fine my master is! I am afraid He will chastise me.

SEBASTIAN. Ha, ha! What things are these, my lord Antonio? Will money buy them?

ANTONIO. Very like; one of them Is a plain fish, and, no doubt, marketable.

PROSPERO. Mark but the badges of these men, my lords, Then say if they be true. This mis-shapen knave, His mother was a witch; and one so strong That could control the moon, make flows and ebbs, And deal in her command without her power. These three have robb’d me; and this demi-devil, For he’s a bastard one, had plotted with them To take my life. Two of these fellows you Must know and own; this thing of darkness I Acknowledge mine.

CALIBAN. I shall be pinch’d to death.

ALONSO. Is not this Stephano, my drunken butler?

SEBASTIAN. He is drunk now: where had he wine?

ALONSO. And Trinculo is reeling-ripe: where should they Find this grand liquor that hath gilded ’em? How cam’st thou in this pickle?

TRINCULO. I have been in such a pickle since I saw you last that, I fear me, will never out of my bones. I shall not fear fly-blowing.

SEBASTIAN. Why, how now, Stephano!

STEPHANO. O! touch me not. I am not Stephano, but a cramp.

PROSPERO. You’d be King o’ the isle, sirrah?

STEPHANO. I should have been a sore one, then.

ALONSO. This is as strange a thing as e’er I look’d on.

[Pointing to Caliban.]

PROSPERO. He is as disproportioned in his manners As in his shape. Go, sirrah, to my cell; Take with you your companions. As you look To have my pardon, trim it handsomely.

CALIBAN. Ay, that I will; and I’ll be wise hereafter, And seek for grace. What a thrice-double ass Was I, to take this drunkard for a god, And worship this dull fool!

PROSPERO. Go to; away!

ALONSO. Hence, and bestow your luggage where you found it.

SEBASTIAN. Or stole it, rather.

[Exeunt Caliban, Stephano and Trinculo.]

PROSPERO. Sir, I invite your Highness and your train To my poor cell, where you shall take your rest For this one night; which, part of it, I’ll waste With such discourse as, I not doubt, shall make it Go quick away: the story of my life And the particular accidents gone by Since I came to this isle: and in the morn I’ll bring you to your ship, and so to Naples, Where I have hope to see the nuptial Of these our dear-belov’d solemnized; And thence retire me to my Milan, where Every third thought shall be my grave.

ALONSO. I long To hear the story of your life, which must Take the ear strangely.

PROSPERO. I’ll deliver all; And promise you calm seas, auspicious gales, And sail so expeditious that shall catch Your royal fleet far off. [Aside to Ariel.] My Ariel, chick, That is thy charge: then to the elements Be free, and fare thou well! Please you, draw near.

PROSPERO. Now my charms are all o’erthrown, And what strength I have’s mine own, Which is most faint. Now ’tis true, I must be here confin’d by you, Or sent to Naples. Let me not, Since I have my dukedom got, And pardon’d the deceiver, dwell In this bare island by your spell, But release me from my bands With the help of your good hands. Gentle breath of yours my sails Must fill, or else my project fails, Which was to please. Now I want Spirits to enforce, art to enchant; And my ending is despair, Unless I be reliev’d by prayer, Which pierces so that it assaults Mercy itself, and frees all faults. As you from crimes would pardon’d be, Let your indulgence set me free.

THE LIFE OF TIMON OF ATHENS

ACT I Scene I. Athens. A hall in Timon’s house Scene II. The Same. A room of state in Timon’s house

ACT II Scene I. Athens. A room in a senator’s house Scene II. The same. A hall in Timon’s house

ACT III Scene I. Athens. A room in Lucullus’ house Scene II. A public place Scene III. The same. A room in Sempronius’ house Scene IV. A hall in Timon’s house Scene V. The same. The senate house Scene VI. A room of state in Timon’s house

ACT IV Scene I. Without the walls of Athens Scene II. Athens. A room in Timon’s house Scene III. Woods and caves near the sea-shore

ACT V Scene I. The woods. Before Timon’s cave Scene III. The same Scene III. Before the walls of Athens Scene IV. The woods. Timon’s cave, and a rude tomb seen Scene V. Before the walls of Athens

TIMON, a noble Athenian FLAVIUS, steward to Timon FLAMINIUS, servant to Timon LUCILIUS, servant to Timon SERVILIUS, servant to Timon

APEMANTUS, a churlish philosopher ALCIBIADES, an Athenian captain PHRYNIA, mistress to Alcibiades TIMANDRA, mistress to Alcibiades

LUCIUS, friend of Timon LUCULLUS, friend of Timon SEMPRONIUS, friend of Timon VENTIDIUS, friend of Timon

CAPHIS, servant of Timon’s creditors SERVANT of Isidore Two SERVANTS of Varro TITUS, servant of Timon’s creditors HORTENSIUS, servant of Timon’s creditors LUCIUS, servant of Timon’s creditors PHILOTUS, servant of Timon’s creditors

LORDS and SENATORS of Athens Three STRANGERS, one called HOSTILIUS An OLD ATHENIAN POET PAINTER JEWELLER MERCHANT A FOOL A PAGE

CUPID and Amazons in the Masque

BANDITTI

Officers, Soldiers, Servants, Thieves, Messengers and Attendants

SCENE. Athens, and the neighbouring woods

SCENE I. Athens. A hall in Timon’s house

Enter Poet, Painter, Jeweller and Merchant at several doors.

POET. Good day, sir.

PAINTER. I am glad you’re well.

POET. I have not seen you long. How goes the world?

PAINTER. It wears, sir, as it grows.

POET. Ay, that’s well known. But what particular rarity? What strange, Which manifold record not matches? See, Magic of bounty, all these spirits thy power Hath conjured to attend! I know the merchant.

PAINTER. I know them both. Th’ other’s a jeweller.

MERCHANT. O, ’tis a worthy lord!

JEWELLER. Nay, that’s most fixed.

MERCHANT. A most incomparable man, breathed, as it were, To an untirable and continuate goodness. He passes.

JEWELLER. I have a jewel here—

MERCHANT. O, pray let’s see’t. For the Lord Timon, sir?

JEWELLER. If he will touch the estimate. But for that—

POET. When we for recompense have praised the vile, It stains the glory in that happy verse Which aptly sings the good.

MERCHANT. [Looking at the jewel.] ’Tis a good form.

JEWELLER. And rich. Here is a water, look ye.

PAINTER. You are rapt, sir, in some work, some dedication To the great lord.

POET. A thing slipped idly from me. Our poesy is as a gum which oozes From whence ’tis nourished. The fire i’ th’ flint Shows not till it be struck; our gentle flame Provokes itself and, like the current, flies Each bound it chases. What have you there?

PAINTER. A picture, sir. When comes your book forth?

POET. Upon the heels of my presentment, sir. Let’s see your piece.

PAINTER. ’Tis a good piece.

POET. So ’tis. This comes off well and excellent.

PAINTER. Indifferent.

POET. Admirable! How this grace Speaks his own standing! What a mental power This eye shoots forth! How big imagination Moves in this lip! To th’ dumbness of the gesture One might interpret.

PAINTER. It is a pretty mocking of the life. Here is a touch. Is’t good?

POET. I’ll say of it, It tutors nature. Artificial strife Lives in these touches livelier than life.

Enter certain Senators, who pass over the stage.

PAINTER. How this lord is followed!

POET. The senators of Athens, happy men!

PAINTER. Look, more!

POET. You see this confluence, this great flood of visitors. I have in this rough work shaped out a man Whom this beneath world doth embrace and hug With amplest entertainment. My free drift Halts not particularly, but moves itself In a wide sea of wax. No levelled malice Infects one comma in the course I hold, But flies an eagle flight, bold and forth on, Leaving no tract behind.

PAINTER. How shall I understand you?

POET. I will unbolt to you. You see how all conditions, how all minds, As well of glib and slipp’ry creatures as Of grave and austere quality, tender down Their services to Lord Timon. His large fortune, Upon his good and gracious nature hanging, Subdues and properties to his love and tendance All sorts of hearts; yea, from the glass-faced flatterer To Apemantus, that few things loves better Than to abhor himself; even he drops down The knee before him and returns in peace Most rich in Timon’s nod.

PAINTER. I saw them speak together.

POET. Sir, I have upon a high and pleasant hill Feigned Fortune to be throned. The base o’ th’ mount Is ranked with all deserts, all kind of natures That labour on the bosom of this sphere To propagate their states. Amongst them all Whose eyes are on this sovereign lady fixed, One do I personate of Lord Timon’s frame, Whom Fortune with her ivory hand wafts to her, Whose present grace to present slaves and servants Translates his rivals.

PAINTER. ’Tis conceived to scope. This throne, this Fortune, and this hill, methinks, With one man beckoned from the rest below, Bowing his head against the steepy mount To climb his happiness, would be well expressed In our condition.

POET. Nay, sir, but hear me on. All those which were his fellows but of late, Some better than his value, on the moment Follow his strides, his lobbies fill with tendance, Rain sacrificial whisperings in his ear, Make sacred even his stirrup, and through him Drink the free air.

PAINTER. Ay, marry, what of these?

POET. When Fortune in her shift and change of mood Spurns down her late beloved, all his dependants, Which laboured after him to the mountain’s top Even on their knees and hands, let him slip down, Not one accompanying his declining foot.

PAINTER. ’Tis common. A thousand moral paintings I can show That shall demonstrate these quick blows of Fortune’s More pregnantly than words. Yet you do well To show Lord Timon that mean eyes have seen The foot above the head.

Trumpets sound. Enter Lord Timon, addressing himself courteously to every suitor. He is accompanied by a Messenger; Lucilius and other servants follow.

TIMON. Imprisoned is he, say you?

MESSENGER. Ay, my good lord. Five talents is his debt, His means most short, his creditors most strait. Your honourable letter he desires To those have shut him up, which, failing, Periods his comfort.

TIMON. Noble Ventidius. Well, I am not of that feather to shake off My friend when he must need me. I do know him A gentleman that well deserves a help, Which he shall have. I’ll pay the debt and free him.

MESSENGER. Your lordship ever binds him.

TIMON. Commend me to him, I will send his ransom; And, being enfranchised, bid him come to me. ’Tis not enough to help the feeble up, But to support him after. Fare you well.

MESSENGER. All happiness to your honour.

Enter an Old Athenian.

OLD ATHENIAN. Lord Timon, hear me speak.

TIMON. Freely, good father.

OLD ATHENIAN. Thou hast a servant named Lucilius.

TIMON. I have so. What of him?

OLD ATHENIAN. Most noble Timon, call the man before thee.

TIMON. Attends he here or no? Lucilius!

LUCILIUS. Here, at your lordship’s service.

OLD ATHENIAN. This fellow here, Lord Timon, this thy creature, By night frequents my house. I am a man That from my first have been inclined to thrift, And my estate deserves an heir more raised Than one which holds a trencher.

TIMON. Well, what further?

OLD ATHENIAN. One only daughter have I, no kin else, On whom I may confer what I have got. The maid is fair, o’ th’ youngest for a bride, And I have bred her at my dearest cost In qualities of the best. This man of thine Attempts her love. I prithee, noble lord, Join with me to forbid him her resort; Myself have spoke in vain.

TIMON. The man is honest.

OLD ATHENIAN. Therefore he will be, Timon. His honesty rewards him in itself; It must not bear my daughter.

TIMON. Does she love him?

OLD ATHENIAN. She is young and apt. Our own precedent passions do instruct us What levity’s in youth.

TIMON. [To Lucilius.] Love you the maid?

LUCILIUS. Ay, my good lord, and she accepts of it.

OLD ATHENIAN. If in her marriage my consent be missing, I call the gods to witness, I will choose Mine heir from forth the beggars of the world And dispossess her all.

TIMON. How shall she be endowed, If she be mated with an equal husband?

OLD ATHENIAN. Three talents on the present; in future, all.

TIMON. This gentleman of mine hath served me long. To build his fortune I will strain a little, For ’tis a bond in men. Give him thy daughter. What you bestow, in him I’ll counterpoise, And make him weigh with her.

OLD ATHENIAN. Most noble lord, Pawn me to this your honour, she is his.

TIMON. My hand to thee; mine honour on my promise.

LUCILIUS. Humbly I thank your lordship. Never may That state or fortune fall into my keeping Which is not owed to you.

[Exeunt Lucilius and Old Athenian.]

POET. [Presenting his poem.] Vouchsafe my labour, and long live your lordship.

TIMON. I thank you, you shall hear from me anon. Go not away.—What have you there, my friend?

PAINTER. A piece of painting, which I do beseech Your lordship to accept.

TIMON. Painting is welcome. The painting is almost the natural man, For since dishonour traffics with man’s nature, He is but outside; these pencilled figures are Even such as they give out. I like your work, And you shall find I like it. Wait attendance Till you hear further from me.

PAINTER. The gods preserve you.

TIMON. Well fare you, gentleman. Give me your hand. We must needs dine together. Sir, your jewel Hath suffered under praise.

JEWELLER. What, my lord, dispraise?

TIMON. A mere satiety of commendations. If I should pay you for ’t as ’tis extolled, It would unclew me quite.

JEWELLER. My lord, ’tis rated As those which sell would give. But you well know Things of like value, differing in the owners, Are prized by their masters. Believe’t, dear lord, You mend the jewel by the wearing it.

TIMON. Well mocked.

MERCHANT. No, my good lord, he speaks the common tongue, Which all men speak with him.

Enter Apemantus.

TIMON. Look who comes here. Will you be chid?

JEWELLER. We’ll bear, with your lordship.

MERCHANT. He’ll spare none.

TIMON. Good morrow to thee, gentle Apemantus.

APEMANTUS. Till I be gentle, stay thou for thy good morrow— When thou art Timon’s dog, and these knaves honest.

TIMON. Why dost thou call them knaves? Thou know’st them not.

APEMANTUS. Are they not Athenians?

TIMON. Yes.

APEMANTUS. Then I repent not.

JEWELLER. You know me, Apemantus?

APEMANTUS. Thou know’st I do, I called thee by thy name.

TIMON. Thou art proud, Apemantus.

APEMANTUS. Of nothing so much as that I am not like Timon.

TIMON. Whither art going?

APEMANTUS. To knock out an honest Athenian’s brains.

TIMON. That’s a deed thou’lt die for.

APEMANTUS. Right, if doing nothing be death by th’ law.

TIMON. How lik’st thou this picture, Apemantus?

APEMANTUS. The best, for the innocence.

TIMON. Wrought he not well that painted it?

APEMANTUS. He wrought better that made the painter, and yet he’s but a filthy piece of work.

PAINTER. You’re a dog.

APEMANTUS. Thy mother’s of my generation. What’s she, if I be a dog?

TIMON. Wilt dine with me, Apemantus?

APEMANTUS. No, I eat not lords.

TIMON. An thou shouldst, thou’dst anger ladies.

APEMANTUS. O, they eat lords. So they come by great bellies.

TIMON. That’s a lascivious apprehension.

APEMANTUS. So thou apprehend’st it, take it for thy labour.

TIMON. How dost thou like this jewel, Apemantus?

APEMANTUS. Not so well as plain-dealing, which will not cost a man a doit.

TIMON. What dost thou think ’tis worth?

APEMANTUS. Not worth my thinking. How now, poet?

POET. How now, philosopher?

APEMANTUS. Thou liest.

POET. Art not one?

APEMANTUS. Yes.

POET. Then I lie not.

APEMANTUS. Art not a poet?

POET. Yes.

APEMANTUS. Then thou liest. Look in thy last work, where thou hast feigned him a worthy fellow.

POET. That’s not feigned, he is so.

APEMANTUS. Yes, he is worthy of thee, and to pay thee for thy labour. He that loves to be flattered is worthy o’ th’ flatterer. Heavens, that I were a lord!

TIMON. What wouldst do then, Apemantus?

APEMANTUS. E’en as Apemantus does now, hate a lord with my heart.

TIMON. What, thyself?

APEMANTUS. Ay.

TIMON. Wherefore?

APEMANTUS. That I had no angry wit to be a lord. Art not thou a merchant?

MERCHANT. Ay, Apemantus.

APEMANTUS. Traffic confound thee, if the gods will not.

MERCHANT. If traffic do it, the gods do it.

APEMANTUS. Traffic’s thy god, and thy god confound thee!

Trumpet sounds. Enter a Messenger.

TIMON. What trumpet’s that?

MESSENGER. ’Tis Alcibiades, and some twenty horse, All of companionship.

TIMON. Pray entertain them, give them guide to us.

You must needs dine with me. Go not you hence Till I have thanked you; when dinner’s done, Show me this piece. I am joyful of your sights.

Enter Alcibiades with his company.

Most welcome, sir.

[They bow to each other.]

APEMANTUS. [Aside.] So, so, there! Aches contract and starve your supple joints! That there should be small love amongst these sweet knaves, And all this courtesy! The strain of man’s bred out Into baboon and monkey.

ALCIBIADES. Sir, you have saved my longing, and I feed Most hungerly on your sight.

TIMON. Right welcome, sir! Ere we depart we’ll share a bounteous time In different pleasures. Pray you, let us in.

[Exeunt all but Apemantus.]

Enter two Lords.

FIRST LORD. What time o’ day is’t, Apemantus?

APEMANTUS. Time to be honest.

FIRST LORD. That time serves still.

APEMANTUS. The more accursed thou, that still omitt’st it.

SECOND LORD. Thou art going to Lord Timon’s feast?

APEMANTUS. Ay, to see meat fill knaves and wine heat fools.

SECOND LORD. Fare thee well, fare thee well.

APEMANTUS. Thou art a fool to bid me farewell twice.

SECOND LORD. Why, Apemantus?

APEMANTUS. Shouldst have kept one to thyself, for I mean to give thee none.

FIRST LORD. Hang thyself!

APEMANTUS. No, I will do nothing at thy bidding. Make thy requests to thy friend.

SECOND LORD. Away, unpeaceable dog, or I’ll spurn thee hence.

APEMANTUS. I will fly, like a dog, the heels o’ th’ ass.

FIRST LORD. He’s opposite to humanity. Come, shall we in And taste Lord Timon’s bounty? He outgoes The very heart of kindness.

SECOND LORD. He pours it out; Plutus, the god of gold, Is but his steward. No meed but he repays Sevenfold above itself, no gift to him But breeds the giver a return exceeding All use of quittance.

FIRST LORD. The noblest mind he carries That ever governed man.

SECOND LORD. Long may he live in fortunes. Shall we in?

FIRST LORD. I’ll keep you company.

SCENE II. The Same. A room of state in Timon’s house

Hautboys playing loud music. A great banquet served in, Flavius and others attending; and then enter Lord Timon, the Senators, the Athenian Lords, Alcibiades, and Ventidius, which Timon redeemded from prison. Then comes, dropping after all, Apemantus, discontentedly, like himself.

VENTIDIUS. Most honoured Timon, It hath pleased the gods to remember my father’s age And call him to long peace. He is gone happy and has left me rich. Then, as in grateful virtue I am bound To your free heart, I do return those talents, Doubled with thanks and service, from whose help I derived liberty.

TIMON. O, by no means, Honest Ventidius. You mistake my love. I gave it freely ever, and there’s none Can truly say he gives if he receives. If our betters play at that game, we must not dare To imitate them; faults that are rich are fair.

VENTIDIUS. A noble spirit!

TIMON. Nay, my lords, ceremony was but devised at first To set a gloss on faint deeds, hollow welcomes, Recanting goodness, sorry ere ’tis shown; But where there is true friendship there needs none. Pray, sit, more welcome are ye to my fortunes Than my fortunes to me.

[They sit.]

FIRST LORD. My lord, we always have confessed it.

APEMANTUS. Ho, ho, confessed it? Hanged it, have you not?

TIMON. O Apemantus, you are welcome.

APEMANTUS. No, You shall not make me welcome. I come to have thee thrust me out of doors.

TIMON. Fie, thou’rt a churl, ye’ve got a humour there Does not become a man; ’tis much to blame. They say, my lords, ira furor brevis est, But yond man is ever angry. Go, let him have a table by himself, For he does neither affect company, Nor is he fit for it indeed.

APEMANTUS. Let me stay at thine apperil, Timon. I come to observe; I give thee warning on’t.

TIMON. I take no heed of thee. Thou’rt an Athenian, therefore, welcome. I myself would have no power; prithee; let my meat make thee silent.

APEMANTUS. I scorn thy meat, ’twould choke me, for I should ne’er flatter thee. O you gods, what a number of men eats Timon, and he sees ’em not! It grieves me to see so many dip their meat in one man’s blood; and all the madness is, he cheers them up too. I wonder men dare trust themselves with men. Methinks they should invite them without knives. Good for their meat, and safer for their lives. There’s much example for ’t. The fellow that sits next him, now parts bread with him, pledges the breath of him in a divided draft, is the readiest man to kill him. ’T has been proved. If I were a huge man, I should fear to drink at meals, Lest they should spy my wind-pipe’s dangerous notes. Great men should drink with harness on their throats.

TIMON. My lord, in heart, and let the health go round.

SECOND LORD. Let it flow this way, my good lord.

APEMANTUS. Flow this way? A brave fellow! He keeps his tides well. Those healths will make thee and thy state look ill, Timon. Here’s that which is too weak to be a sinner, Honest water, which ne’er left man i’ the mire. This and my food are equals, there’s no odds. Feasts are too proud to give thanks to the gods.

Apemantus’ grace

Immortal gods, I crave no pelf, I pray for no man but myself. Grant I may never prove so fond To trust man on his oath or bond, Or a harlot for her weeping, Or a dog that seems a-sleeping, Or a keeper with my freedom, Or my friends if I should need ’em. Amen. So fall to’t. Rich men sin, and I eat root.

[He eats and drinks.]

Much good dich thy good heart, Apemantus!

TIMON. Captain Alcibiades, your heart’s in the field now.

ALCIBIADES. My heart is ever at your service, my lord.

TIMON. You had rather be at a breakfast of enemies than a dinner of friends.

ALCIBIADES. So they were bleeding new, my lord, there’s no meat like ’em. I could wish my best friend at such a feast.

APEMANTUS. Would all those flatterers were thine enemies then, that then thou mightst kill ’em, and bid me to ’em.

FIRST LORD. Might we but have that happiness, my lord, that you would once use our hearts, whereby we might express some part of our zeals, we should think ourselves for ever perfect.

TIMON. O, no doubt, my good friends, but the gods themselves have provided that I shall have much help from you. How had you been my friends else? Why have you that charitable title from thousands, did not you chiefly belong to my heart? I have told more of you to myself than you can with modesty speak in your own behalf. And thus far I confirm you. O you gods, think I, what need we have any friends if we should ne’er have need of ’em? They were the most needless creatures living, should we ne’er have use for ’em, and would most resemble sweet instruments hung up in cases, that keep their sounds to themselves. Why, I have often wished myself poorer that I might come nearer to you. We are born to do benefits, and what better or properer can we call our own than the riches of our friends? O, what a precious comfort ’tis to have so many, like brothers, commanding one another’s fortunes. O joy’s e’en made away ere’t can be born! Mine eyes cannot hold out water, methinks. To forget their faults, I drink to you.

APEMANTUS. Thou weep’st to make them drink, Timon.

SECOND LORD. Joy had the like conception in our eyes And, at that instant like a babe sprung up.

APEMANTUS. Ho, ho! I laugh to think that babe a bastard.

THIRD LORD. I promise you, my lord, you moved me much.

APEMANTUS. Much!

TIMON. What means that trump?

SERVANT. Please you, my lord, there are certain ladies most desirous of admittance.

TIMON. Ladies? What are their wills?

SERVANT. There comes with them a forerunner, my lord, which bears that office, to signify their pleasures.

TIMON. I pray, let them be admitted.

Enter Cupid.

CUPID. Hail to thee, worthy Timon, and to all That of his bounties taste! The five best senses Acknowledge thee their patron and come freely To gratulate thy plenteous bosom. There Taste, touch, all, pleased from thy table rise; They only now come but to feast thine eyes.

TIMON. They’re welcome all, let ’em have kind admittance. Music, make their welcome!

FIRST LORD. You see, my lord, how ample you’re beloved.

Music. Enter a masque of Ladies as Amazons, with lutes in their hands, dancing and playing.

APEMANTUS. Hoy-day! What a sweep of vanity comes this way. They dance? They are madwomen. Like madness is the glory of this life, As this pomp shows to a little oil and root. We make ourselves fools to disport ourselves, And spend our flatteries to drink those men Upon whose age we void it up again With poisonous spite and envy. Who lives that’s not depraved or depraves? Who dies that bears not one spurn to their graves Of their friend’s gift? I should fear those that dance before me now Would one day stamp upon me. ’T has been done. Men shut their doors against a setting sun.

[The Lords rise from table, with much adoring of Timon, and to show their loves each singles out an Amazon, and all dance, men with women, a lofty strain or two to the hautboys, and cease.]

TIMON. You have done our pleasures much grace, fair ladies, Set a fair fashion on our entertainment, Which was not half so beautiful and kind. You have added worth unto ’t and lustre, And entertained me with mine own device. I am to thank you for ’t.

FIRST LADY. My lord, you take us even at the best.

APEMANTUS. Faith, for the worst is filthy and would not hold taking, I doubt me.

TIMON. Ladies, there is an idle banquet attends you, Please you to dispose yourselves.

ALL LADIES. Most thankfully, my lord.

[Exeunt Cupid and Ladies.]

TIMON. Flavius!

FLAVIUS. My lord?

TIMON. The little casket bring me hither.

FLAVIUS. Yes, my lord. [Aside.] More jewels yet? There is no crossing him in ’s humour; Else I should tell him well, i’ faith, I should, When all’s spent, he’d be crossed then, an he could. ’Tis pity bounty had not eyes behind, That man might ne’er be wretched for his mind.

FIRST LORD. Where be our men?

SERVANT. Here, my lord, in readiness.

SECOND LORD. Our horses!

Enter Flavius with the casket.

TIMON. O, my friends, I have one word To say to you. Look you, my good lord, I must entreat you, honour me so much As to advance this jewel. Accept it and wear it, Kind my lord.

FIRST LORD. I am so far already in your gifts—

ALL. So are we all.

SERVANT. My lord, there are certain nobles of the Senate Newly alighted and come to visit you.

TIMON. They are fairly welcome.

FLAVIUS. I beseech your honour, Vouchsafe me a word. It does concern you near.

TIMON. Near? Why then, another time I’ll hear thee. I prithee let’s be provided to show them entertainment.

FLAVIUS. [Aside.] I scarce know how.

Enter another Servant.

SECOND SERVANT. May it please your honour, Lord Lucius, Out of his free love, hath presented to you Four milk-white horses, trapped in silver.

TIMON. I shall accept them fairly; let the presents Be worthily entertained.

Enter a third Servant.

THIRD SERVANT. Please you, my lord, that honourable gentleman, Lord Lucullus, entreats your company tomorrow to hunt with him and has sent your honour two brace of greyhounds.

TIMON. I’ll hunt with him; and let them be received, Not without fair reward.

FLAVIUS. [Aside.] What will this come to? He commands us to provide, and give great gifts, And all out of an empty coffer; Nor will he know his purse or yield me this: To show him what a beggar his heart is, Being of no power to make his wishes good. His promises fly so beyond his state That what he speaks is all in debt; he owes For every word. He is so kind that he now Pays interest for ’t; his land’s put to their books. Well, would I were gently put out of office Before I were forced out. Happier is he that has no friend to feed Than such that do e’en enemies exceed. I bleed inwardly for my lord.

TIMON. You do yourselves much wrong, You bate too much of your own merits. Here, my lord, a trifle of our love.

SECOND LORD. With more than common thanks I will receive it.

THIRD LORD. O, he’s the very soul of bounty!

TIMON. And now I remember, my lord, you gave good words the other day of a bay courser I rode on. ’Tis yours because you liked it.

THIRD LORD. O, I beseech you, pardon me, my lord, in that.

TIMON. You may take my word, my lord. I know no man Can justly praise but what he does affect. I weigh my friend’s affection with mine own. I’ll tell you true, I’ll call to you.

ALL LORDS. O, none so welcome!

TIMON. I take all and your several visitations So kind to heart, ’tis not enough to give; Methinks I could deal kingdoms to my friends, And ne’er be weary. Alcibiades, Thou art a soldier, therefore seldom rich. It comes in charity to thee, for all thy living Is ’mongst the dead, and all the lands thou hast Lie in a pitched field.

ALCIBIADES. Ay, defiled land, my lord.

FIRST LORD. We are so virtuously bound—

TIMON. And so am I to you.

SECOND LORD. So infinitely endeared—

TIMON. All to you. Lights, more lights!

FIRST LORD. The best of happiness, honour, and fortunes keep with you, Lord Timon.

TIMON. Ready for his friends.

[Exeunt all but Apemantus and Timon.]

APEMANTUS. What a coil’s here! Serving of becks and jutting out of bums! I doubt whether their legs be worth the sums That are given for ’em. Friendship’s full of dregs. Methinks false hearts should never have sound legs. Thus honest fools lay out their wealth on curtsies.

TIMON. Now, Apemantus, if thou wert not sullen, I would be good to thee.

APEMANTUS. No, I’ll nothing, for if I should be bribed too, there would be none left to rail upon thee, and then thou wouldst sin the faster. Thou giv’st so long, Timon, I fear me thou wilt give away thyself in paper shortly. What needs these feasts, pomps, and vainglories?

TIMON. Nay, an you begin to rail on society once, I am sworn not to give regard to you. Farewell, and come with better music.

APEMANTUS. So. Thou wilt not hear me now, thou shalt not then. I’ll lock thy heaven from thee. O, that men’s ears should be To counsel deaf, but not to flattery!

SCENE I. Athens. A room in a senator’s house

Enter a Senator with papers.

SENATOR. And late five thousand. To Varro and to Isidore He owes nine thousand, besides my former sum, Which makes it five-and-twenty. Still in motion Of raging waste! It cannot hold; it will not. If I want gold, steal but a beggar’s dog And give it Timon, why, the dog coins gold. If I would sell my horse, and buy twenty more Better than he, why, give my horse to Timon— Ask nothing, give it him—it foals me straight, And able horses. No porter at his gate, But rather one that smiles and still invites All that pass by. It cannot hold; no reason Can sound his state in safety. Caphis, ho! Caphis, I say!

Enter Caphis.

CAPHIS. Here, sir, what is your pleasure?

SENATOR. Get on your cloak and haste you to Lord Timon. Importune him for my moneys; be not ceased With slight denial, nor then silenced when “Commend me to your master”, and the cap Plays in the right hand, thus; but tell him, My uses cry to me, I must serve my turn Out of mine own, his days and times are past, And my reliances on his fracted dates Have smit my credit. I love and honour him, But must not break my back to heal his finger. Immediate are my needs, and my relief Must not be tossed and turned to me in words, But find supply immediate. Get you gone. Put on a most importunate aspect, A visage of demand, for I do fear When every feather sticks in his own wing, Lord Timon will be left a naked gull, Which flashes now a phoenix. Get you gone.

CAPHIS. I go, sir.

SENATOR. Take the bonds along with you, And have the dates in. Come.

CAPHIS. I will, sir.

SENATOR. Go.

SCENE II. The same. A hall in Timon’s house

Enter Flavius with many bills in his hand.

FLAVIUS. No care, no stop, so senseless of expense, That he will neither know how to maintain it Nor cease his flow of riot. Takes no account How things go from him, nor resumes no care Of what is to continue. Never mind Was to be so unwise, to be so kind. What shall be done? He will not hear till feel. I must be round with him, now he comes from hunting. Fie, fie, fie, fie!

Enter Caphis and the Servants of Isidore and Varro.

CAPHIS. Good even, Varro. What, you come for money?

VARRO’S SERVANT. Is’t not your business too?

CAPHIS. It is. And yours too, Isidore?

ISIDORE’S SERVANT. It is so.

CAPHIS. Would we were all discharged!

VARRO’S SERVANT. I fear it.

CAPHIS. Here comes the lord.

Enter Timon and his train with Alcibiades

TIMON. So soon as dinner’s done, we’ll forth again, My Alcibiades. With me? What is your will?

CAPHIS. My lord, here is a note of certain dues.

TIMON. Dues? Whence are you?

CAPHIS. Of Athens here, my lord.

TIMON. Go to my steward.

CAPHIS. Please it your lordship, he hath put me off To the succession of new days this month. My master is awaked by great occasion To call upon his own and humbly prays you That with your other noble parts you’ll suit In giving him his right.

TIMON. Mine honest friend, I prithee but repair to me next morning.

CAPHIS. Nay, good my lord—

TIMON. Contain thyself, good friend.

VARRO’S SERVANT. One Varro’s servant, my good lord—

ISIDORE’S SERVANT. From Isidore. He humbly prays your speedy payment.

CAPHIS. If you did know, my lord, my master’s wants—

VARRO’S SERVANT. ’Twas due on forfeiture, my lord, six weeks and past.

ISIDORE’S SERVANT. Your steward puts me off, my lord, and I Am sent expressly to your lordship.

TIMON. Give me breath. I do beseech you, good my lords, keep on, I’ll wait upon you instantly.

[Exeunt Alcibiades and Timon’s train.]

[To Flavius.] Come hither. Pray you, How goes the world, that I am thus encountered With clamorous demands of debt, broken bonds, And the detention of long-since-due debts Against my honour?

FLAVIUS. Please you, gentlemen, The time is unagreeable to this business. Your importunacy cease till after dinner, That I may make his lordship understand Wherefore you are not paid.

TIMON. Do so, my friends. See them well entertained.

FLAVIUS. Pray, draw near.

Enter Apemantus and Fool.

CAPHIS. Stay, stay, here comes the fool with Apemantus. Let’s ha’ some sport with ’em.

VARRO’S SERVANT. Hang him, he’ll abuse us.

ISIDORE’S SERVANT. A plague upon him, dog!

VARRO’S SERVANT. How dost, fool?

APEMANTUS. Dost dialogue with thy shadow?

VARRO’S SERVANT. I speak not to thee.

APEMANTUS. No, ’tis to thyself. [To the Fool.] Come away.

ISIDORE’S SERVANT. [To Varro’s servant.] There’s the fool hangs on your back already.

APEMANTUS. No, thou stand’st single; thou’rt not on him yet.

CAPHIS. Where’s the fool now?

APEMANTUS. He last asked the question. Poor rogues and usurers’ men, bawds between gold and want.

ALL SERVANTS. What are we, Apemantus?

APEMANTUS. Asses.

ALL SERVANTS. Why?

APEMANTUS. That you ask me what you are, and do not know yourselves. Speak to ’em, fool.

FOOL. How do you, gentlemen?

ALL SERVANTS. Gramercies, good fool. How does your mistress?

FOOL. She’s e’en setting on water to scald such chickens as you are. Would we could see you at Corinth!

APEMANTUS. Good, gramercy.

FOOL. Look you, here comes my mistress’ page.

PAGE. [To the Fool.] Why, how now, captain? What do you in this wise company? How dost thou, Apemantus?

APEMANTUS. Would I had a rod in my mouth, that I might answer thee profitably.

PAGE. Prithee, Apemantus, read me the superscription of these letters. I know not which is which.

APEMANTUS. Canst not read?

PAGE. No.

APEMANTUS. There will little learning die, then, that day thou art hanged. This is to Lord Timon, this to Alcibiades. Go, thou wast born a bastard, and thou’lt die a bawd.

PAGE. Thou wast whelped a dog, and thou shalt famish a dog’s death. Answer not; I am gone.

APEMANTUS. E’en so thou outrunn’st grace. Fool, I will go with you to Lord Timon’s.

FOOL. Will you leave me there?

APEMANTUS. If Timon stay at home.—You three serve three usurers?

ALL SERVANTS. Ay, would they served us!

APEMANTUS. So would I—as good a trick as ever hangman served thief.

FOOL. Are you three usurers’ men?

ALL SERVANTS. Ay, fool.

FOOL. I think no usurer but has a fool to his servant. My mistress is one, and I am her fool. When men come to borrow of your masters, they approach sadly and go away merry, but they enter my mistress’s house merrily and go away sadly. The reason of this?

VARRO’S SERVANT. I could render one.

APEMANTUS. Do it then, that we may account thee a whoremaster and a knave, which notwithstanding, thou shalt be no less esteemed.

VARRO’S SERVANT. What is a whoremaster, fool?

FOOL. A fool in good clothes, and something like thee. ’Tis a spirit; sometime ’t appears like a lord, sometime like a lawyer, sometime like a philosopher, with two stones more than’s artificial one. He is very often like a knight; and generally, in all shapes that man goes up and down in from fourscore to thirteen, this spirit walks in.

VARRO’S SERVANT. Thou art not altogether a fool.

FOOL. Nor thou altogether a wise man. As much foolery as I have, so much wit thou lack’st.

APEMANTUS. That answer might have become Apemantus.

VARRO’S SERVANT. Aside, aside, here comes Lord Timon.

Enter Timon and Flavius.

APEMANTUS. Come with me, fool, come.

FOOL. I do not always follow lover, elder brother, and woman; sometime the philosopher.

[Exeunt Apemantus and Fool.]

FLAVIUS. Pray you walk near. I’ll speak with you anon.

TIMON. You make me marvel wherefore ere this time Had you not fully laid my state before me, That I might so have rated my expense As I had leave of means.

FLAVIUS. You would not hear me, At many leisures I proposed.

TIMON. Go to. Perchance some single vantages you took When my indisposition put you back, And that unaptness made your minister Thus to excuse yourself.

FLAVIUS. O my good lord, At many times I brought in my accounts, Laid them before you; you would throw them off And say you found them in mine honesty. When for some trifling present you have bid me Return so much, I have shook my head and wept, Yea, ’gainst th’ authority of manners, prayed you To hold your hand more close. I did endure Not seldom nor no slight checks, when I have Prompted you in the ebb of your estate And your great flow of debts. My loved lord, Though you hear now, too late, yet now’s a time. The greatest of your having lacks a half To pay your present debts.

TIMON. Let all my land be sold.

FLAVIUS. ’Tis all engaged, some forfeited and gone, And what remains will hardly stop the mouth Of present dues; the future comes apace. What shall defend the interim? And at length How goes our reckoning?

TIMON. To Lacedaemon did my land extend.

FLAVIUS. O my good lord, the world is but a word; Were it all yours to give it in a breath, How quickly were it gone!

TIMON. You tell me true.

FLAVIUS. If you suspect my husbandry or falsehood, Call me before th’ exactest auditors And set me on the proof. So the gods bless me, When all our offices have been oppressed With riotous feeders, when our vaults have wept With drunken spilth of wine, when every room Hath blazed with lights and brayed with minstrelsy, I have retired me to a wasteful cock And set mine eyes at flow.

TIMON. Prithee, no more.

FLAVIUS. Heavens, have I said, the bounty of this lord! How many prodigal bits have slaves and peasants This night englutted? Who is not Timon’s? What heart, head, sword, force, means, but is Lord Timon’s? Great Timon, noble, worthy, royal Timon! Ah, when the means are gone that buy this praise, The breath is gone whereof this praise is made. Feast-won, fast-lost; one cloud of winter showers, These flies are couched.

TIMON. Come, sermon me no further. No villainous bounty yet hath passed my heart; Unwisely, not ignobly, have I given. Why dost thou weep? Canst thou the conscience lack To think I shall lack friends? Secure thy heart. If I would broach the vessels of my love And try the argument of hearts by borrowing, Men and men’s fortunes could I frankly use As I can bid thee speak.

FLAVIUS. Assurance bless your thoughts!

TIMON. And in some sort these wants of mine are crowned, That I account them blessings. For by these Shall I try friends. You shall perceive how you Mistake my fortunes. I am wealthy in my friends. Within there! Flaminius! Servilius!

Enter Flaminius, Servilius and a third Servant.

SERVANTS. My lord, my lord.

TIMON. I will dispatch you severally. [To Servilius.] You to Lord Lucius; [To Flaminius.] to Lord Lucullus you, I hunted with his honour today; [To the third Servant.] you to Sempronius. Commend me to their loves; and I am proud, say, that my occasions have found time to use ’em toward a supply of money. Let the request be fifty talents.

FLAMINIUS. As you have said, my lord.

FLAVIUS. [Aside.] Lord Lucius and Lucullus? Humh!

TIMON. Go you, sir, to the senators, Of whom, even to the state’s best health, I have Deserved this hearing, Bid ’em send o’ th’ instant A thousand talents to me.

FLAVIUS. I have been bold— For that I knew it the most general way— To them to use your signet and your name, But they do shake their heads, and I am here No richer in return.

TIMON. Is’t true? Can’t be?

FLAVIUS. They answer in a joint and corporate voice That now they are at fall, want treasure, cannot Do what they would, are sorry. You are honourable, But yet they could have wished—they know not— Something hath been amiss—a noble nature May catch a wrench—would all were well—’tis pity. And so, intending other serious matters, After distasteful looks and these hard fractions, With certain half-caps and cold-moving nods They froze me into silence.

TIMON. You gods, reward them! Prithee, man, look cheerly. These old fellows Have their ingratitude in them hereditary. Their blood is caked, ’tis cold, it seldom flows; ’Tis lack of kindly warmth they are not kind; And nature, as it grows again toward earth, Is fashioned for the journey, dull and heavy. Go to Ventidius. Prithee, be not sad, Thou art true and honest, ingenuously I speak, No blame belongs to thee. Ventidius lately Buried his father, by whose death he’s stepped Into a great estate. When he was poor, Imprisoned and in scarcity of friends, I cleared him with five talents. Greet him from me, Bid him suppose some good necessity Touches his friend, which craves to be remembered With those five talents. That had, give’t these fellows To whom ’tis instant due. Ne’er speak, or think That Timon’s fortunes ’mong his friends can sink.

FLAVIUS. I would I could not think it. That thought is bounty’s foe; Being free itself, it thinks all others so.

SCENE I. Athens. A room in Lucullus’ house

Flaminius waiting to speak with Lucullus from his master.

Enter a Servant to him.

SERVANT. I have told my lord of you; he is coming down to you.

FLAMINIUS. I thank you, sir.

Enter Lucullus.

SERVANT. Here’s my lord.

LUCULLUS. [Aside.] One of Lord Timon’s men? A gift, I warrant. Why, this hits right. I dreamt of a silver basin and ewer tonight.—Flaminius, honest Flaminius, you are very respectively welcome, sir. Fill me some wine.

And how does that honourable, complete, free-hearted gentleman of Athens, thy very bountiful good lord and master?

FLAMINIUS. His health is well, sir.

LUCULLUS. I am right glad that his health is well, sir. And what hast thou there under thy cloak, pretty Flaminius?

FLAMINIUS. Faith, nothing but an empty box, sir, which in my lord’s behalf I come to entreat your honour to supply; who, having great and instant occasion to use fifty talents, hath sent to your lordship to furnish him, nothing doubting your present assistance therein.

LUCULLUS. La, la, la, la! Nothing doubting, says he? Alas, good lord! A noble gentleman ’tis, if he would not keep so good a house. Many a time and often I ha’ dined with him, and told him on’t, and come again to supper to him of purpose to have him spend less, and yet he would embrace no counsel, take no warning by my coming. Every man has his fault, and honesty is his. I ha’ told him on’t, but I could ne’er get him from ’t.

Enter Servant with wine.

SERVANT. Please your lordship, here is the wine.

LUCULLUS. Flaminius, I have noted thee always wise. Here’s to thee.

FLAMINIUS. Your lordship speaks your pleasure.

LUCULLUS. I have observed thee always for a towardly prompt spirit, give thee thy due, and one that knows what belongs to reason, and canst use the time well, if the time use thee well. Good parts in thee. [To Servant.] Get you gone, sirrah.—

Draw nearer, honest Flaminius. Thy lord’s a bountiful gentleman, but thou art wise and thou know’st well enough, although thou com’st to me, that this is no time to lend money, especially upon bare friendship without security. Here’s three solidares for thee. Good boy, wink at me, and say thou saw’st me not. Fare thee well.

FLAMINIUS. Is’t possible the world should so much differ, And we alive that lived? Fly, damned baseness, To him that worships thee.

[Throws the money back.]

LUCULLUS. Ha! Now I see thou art a fool and fit for thy master.

FLAMINIUS. May these add to the number that may scald thee! Let molten coin be thy damnation, Thou disease of a friend, and not himself! Has friendship such a faint and milky heart It turns in less than two nights? O you gods, I feel my master’s passion. This slave Unto his honour has my lord’s meat in him. Why should it thrive and turn to nutriment When he is turned to poison? O, may diseases only work upon’t, And when he’s sick to death, let not that part of nature Which my lord paid for be of any power To expel sickness, but prolong his hour.

Enter Lucius with three Strangers.

LUCIUS. Who, the Lord Timon? He is my very good friend and an honourable gentleman.

FIRST STRANGER. We know him for no less, though we are but strangers to him. But I can tell you one thing, my lord, and which I hear from common rumours: now Lord Timon’s happy hours are done and past, and his estate shrinks from him.

LUCIUS. Fie, no, do not believe it; he cannot want for money.

SECOND STRANGER. But believe you this, my lord, that, not long ago one of his men was with the Lord Lucullus to borrow so many talents, nay, urged extremely for’t, and showed what necessity belonged to’t, and yet was denied.

LUCIUS. How?

SECOND STRANGER. I tell you, denied, my lord.

LUCIUS. What a strange case was that! Now, before the gods, I am ashamed on’t. Denied that honourable man? There was very little honour showed in’t. For my own part, I must needs confess, I have received some small kindnesses from him, as money, plate, jewels, and such like trifles, nothing comparing to his; yet had he mistook him, and sent to me, I should ne’er have denied his occasion so many talents.

Enter Servilius.

SERVILIUS. See, by good hap, yonder’s my lord; I have sweat to see his honour. [To Lucius.] My honoured lord!

LUCIUS. Servilius? You are kindly met, sir. Fare thee well. Commend me to thy honourable virtuous lord, my very exquisite friend.

SERVILIUS. May it please your honour, my lord hath sent—

LUCIUS. Ha! What has he sent? I am so much endeared to that lord; he’s ever sending. How shall I thank him, thinkest thou? And what has he sent now?

SERVILIUS. Has only sent his present occasion now, my lord, requesting your lordship to supply his instant use with so many talents.

LUCIUS. I know his lordship is but merry with me; He cannot want fifty-five hundred talents.

SERVILIUS. But in the meantime he wants less, my lord. If his occasion were not virtuous, I should not urge it half so faithfully.

LUCIUS. Dost thou speak seriously, Servilius?

SERVILIUS. Upon my soul, ’tis true, sir.

LUCIUS. What a wicked beast was I to disfurnish myself against such a good time, when I might ha’ shown myself honourable! How unluckily it happened that I should purchase the day before for a little part, and undo a great deal of honour! Servilius, now before the gods, I am not able to do—the more beast, I say—I was sending to use Lord Timon myself, these gentlemen can witness; but I would not for the wealth of Athens I had done it now. Commend me bountifully to his good lordship, and I hope his honour will conceive the fairest of me, because I have no power to be kind. And tell him this from me: I count it one of my greatest afflictions, say, that I cannot pleasure such an honourable gentleman. Good Servilius, will you befriend me so far as to use mine own words to him?

SERVILIUS. Yes, sir, I shall.

LUCIUS. I’ll look you out a good turn, Servilius.

[Exit Servilius.]

True, as you said, Timon is shrunk indeed, And he that’s once denied will hardly speed.

FIRST STRANGER. Do you observe this, Hostilius?

SECOND STRANGER. Ay, too well.

FIRST STRANGER. Why, this is the world’s soul, and just of the same piece Is every flatterer’s spirit. Who can call him his friend That dips in the same dish? For, in my knowing, Timon has been this lord’s father And kept his credit with his purse, Supported his estate, nay, Timon’s money Has paid his men their wages. He ne’er drinks But Timon’s silver treads upon his lip, And yet—O, see the monstrousness of man When he looks out in an ungrateful shape— He does deny him, in respect of his, What charitable men afford to beggars.

THIRD STRANGER. Religion groans at it.

FIRST STRANGER. For mine own part, I never tasted Timon in my life, Nor came any of his bounties over me To mark me for his friend. Yet I protest, For his right noble mind, illustrious virtue, And honourable carriage, Had his necessity made use of me, I would have put my wealth into donation, And the best half should have returned to him, So much I love his heart. But I perceive Men must learn now with pity to dispense, For policy sits above conscience.

SCENE III. The same. A room in Sempronius’ house

Enter a Third Servant of Timon’s with Sempronius, another of Timon’s friends.

SEMPRONIUS. Must he needs trouble me in’t? Hum! ’Bove all others? He might have tried Lord Lucius or Lucullus; And now Ventidius is wealthy too, Whom he redeemed from prison. All these Owe their estates unto him.

SERVANT. My lord, They have all been touched and found base metal, For they have all denied him.

SEMPRONIUS. How? Have they denied him? Has Ventidius and Lucullus denied him And does he send to me? Three? Humh! It shows but little love or judgment in him. Must I be his last refuge? His friends, like physicians, Thrive, give him over. Must I take th’ cure upon me? Has much disgraced me in’t. I’m angry at him, That might have known my place. I see no sense for’t But his occasions might have wooed me first; For, in my conscience, I was the first man That e’er received gift from him. And does he think so backwardly of me now That I’ll requite it last? No. So it may prove an argument of laughter To th’ rest, and I ’mongst lords be thought a fool. I’d rather than the worth of thrice the sum Had sent to me first, but for my mind’s sake; I’d such a courage to do him good. But now return, And with their faint reply this answer join: Who bates mine honour shall not know my coin.

SERVANT. Excellent! Your lordship’s a goodly villain. The devil knew not what he did when he made man politic; he crossed himself by’t, and I cannot think but, in the end the villainies of man will set him clear. How fairly this lord strives to appear foul! Takes virtuous copies to be wicked, like those that under hot ardent zeal would set whole realms on fire. Of such a nature is his politic love. This was my lord’s best hope, now all are fled Save only the gods. Now his friends are dead, Doors that were ne’er acquainted with their wards Many a bounteous year must be employed Now to guard sure their master. And this is all a liberal course allows, Who cannot keep his wealth must keep his house.

SCENE IV. A hall in Timon’s house

Enter two of Varro’s Servants meeting Titus and Hortensius and then Lucius, all Servants of Timon’s creditors, to wait for his coming out.

FIRST VARRO’S SERVANT. Well met, good morrow, Titus and Hortensius.

TITUS. The like to you, kind Varro.

HORTENSIUS. Lucius! What, do we meet together?

LUCIUS. Ay, and I think One business does command us all; For mine is money.

TITUS. So is theirs and ours.

Enter Philotus.

LUCIUS. And, sir, Philotus too!

PHILOTUS. Good day at once.

LUCIUS. Welcome, good brother. What do you think the hour?

PHILOTUS. Labouring for nine.

LUCIUS. So much?

PHILOTUS. Is not my lord seen yet?

LUCIUS. Not yet.

PHILOTUS. I wonder on’t, he was wont to shine at seven.

LUCIUS. Ay, but the days are waxed shorter with him. You must consider that a prodigal course Is like the sun’s, but not like his recoverable. I fear ’tis deepest winter in Lord Timon’s purse: That is, one may reach deep enough, and yet Find little.

PHILOTUS. I am of your fear for that.

TITUS. I’ll show you how t’ observe a strange event. Your lord sends now for money?

HORTENSIUS. Most true, he does.

TITUS. And he wears jewels now of Timon’s gift, For which I wait for money.

HORTENSIUS. It is against my heart.

LUCIUS. Mark how strange it shows, Timon in this should pay more than he owes, And e’en as if your lord should wear rich jewels And send for money for ’em.

HORTENSIUS. I’m weary of this charge, the gods can witness. I know my lord hath spent of Timon’s wealth, And now ingratitude makes it worse than stealth.

FIRST VARRO’S SERVANT. Yes, mine’s three thousand crowns. What’s yours?

LUCIUS. Five thousand mine.

FIRST VARRO’S SERVANT. ’Tis much deep, and it should seem by th’ sum Your master’s confidence was above mine, Else surely his had equalled.

Enter Flaminius.

TITUS. One of Lord Timon’s men.

LUCIUS. Flaminius? Sir, a word. Pray, is my lord ready to come forth?

FLAMINIUS. No, indeed he is not.

TITUS. We attend his lordship; pray, signify so much.

FLAMINIUS. I need not tell him that, he knows you are too diligent.

[Exit Flaminius.]

Enter Flavius in a cloak, muffled.

LUCIUS. Ha, is not that his steward muffled so? He goes away in a cloud. Call him, call him.

TITUS. Do you hear, sir?

SECOND VARRO’S SERVANT. By your leave, sir.

FLAVIUS. What do you ask of me, my friend?

TITUS. We wait for certain money here, sir.

FLAVIUS. Ay, If money were as certain as your waiting, ’Twere sure enough. Why then preferred you not your sums and bills When your false masters eat of my lord’s meat? Then they could smile and fawn upon his debts, And take down th’ interest into their gluttonous maws. You do yourselves but wrong to stir me up, Let me pass quietly. Believe’t, my lord and I have made an end, I have no more to reckon, he to spend.

LUCIUS. Ay, but this answer will not serve.

FLAVIUS. If ’twill not serve, ’tis not so base as you, For you serve knaves.

FIRST VARRO’S SERVANT. How? What does his cashiered worship mutter?

SECOND VARRO’S SERVANT. No matter what, he’s poor, and that’s revenge enough. Who can speak broader than he that has no house to put his head in? Such may rail against great buildings.

TITUS. O, here’s Servilius; now we shall know some answer.

SERVILIUS. If I might beseech you, gentlemen, to repair some other hour, I should derive much from’t. For take’t of my soul, my lord leans wondrously to discontent. His comfortable temper has forsook him, he’s much out of health and keeps his chamber.

LUCIUS. Many do keep their chambers are not sick. And if it be so far beyond his health, Methinks he should the sooner pay his debts And make a clear way to the gods.

SERVILIUS. Good gods!

TITUS. We cannot take this for answer, sir.

FLAMINIUS. [Within.] Servilius, help! My lord, my lord!

Enter Timon in a rage.

TIMON. What, are my doors opposed against my passage? Have I been ever free, and must my house Be my retentive enemy, my jail? The place which I have feasted, does it now, Like all mankind, show me an iron heart?

LUCIUS. Put in now, Titus.

TITUS. My lord, here is my bill.

LUCIUS. Here’s mine.

HORTENSIUS. And mine, my lord.

BOTH VARRO’S SERVANTS. And ours, my lord.

PHILOTUS. All our bills.

TIMON. Knock me down with ’em! Cleave me to the girdle.

LUCIUS. Alas, my lord—

TIMON. Cut my heart in sums!

TITUS. Mine, fifty talents.

TIMON. Tell out my blood.

LUCIUS. Five thousand crowns, my lord.

TIMON. Five thousand drops pays that. What yours, and yours?

FIRST VARRO’S SERVANT. My lord—

SECOND VARRO’S SERVANT. My lord—

TIMON. Tear me, take me, and the gods fall upon you!

HORTENSIUS. Faith, I perceive our masters may throw their caps at their money. These debts may well be called desperate ones, for a madman owes ’em.

TIMON. They have e’en put my breath from me, the slaves. Creditors? Devils!

FLAVIUS. My dear lord—

TIMON. What if it should be so?

FLAVIUS. My lord—

TIMON. I’ll have it so.—My steward!

FLAVIUS. Here, my lord.

TIMON. So fitly? Go, bid all my friends again, Lucius, Lucullus, and Sempronius, all. I’ll once more feast the rascals.

FLAVIUS. O my lord, You only speak from your distracted soul; There is not so much left to furnish out A moderate table.

TIMON. Be it not in thy care. Go, I charge thee, invite them all. Let in the tide Of knaves once more. My cook and I’ll provide.

SCENE V. The same. The senate house

Enter three Senators at one door, Alcibiades meeting them, with Attendants.

FIRST SENATOR. My lord, you have my voice to ’t. The fault’s Bloody. ’Tis necessary he should die. Nothing emboldens sin so much as mercy.

SECOND SENATOR. Most true, the law shall bruise ’em.

ALCIBIADES. Honour, health, and compassion to the senate!

FIRST SENATOR. Now, captain?

ALCIBIADES. I am a humble suitor to your virtues, For pity is the virtue of the law, And none but tyrants use it cruelly. It pleases time and fortune to lie heavy Upon a friend of mine, who in hot blood Hath stepped into the law, which is past depth To those that without heed do plunge into’t. He is a man, setting his fate aside, Of comely virtues, Nor did he soil the fact with cowardice— An honour in him which buys out his fault— But with a noble fury and fair spirit, Seeing his reputation touched to death, He did oppose his foe; And with such sober and unnoted passion He did behave his anger, ere ’twas spent, As if he had but proved an argument.

FIRST SENATOR. You undergo too strict a paradox, Striving to make an ugly deed look fair. Your words have took such pains as if they laboured To bring manslaughter into form and set quarrelling Upon the head of valour, which indeed Is valour misbegot and came into the world When sects and factions were newly born. He’s truly valiant that can wisely suffer The worst that man can breathe, and make his wrongs His outsides to wear them like his raiment, carelessly, And ne’er prefer his injuries to his heart, To bring it into danger. If wrongs be evils and enforce us kill, What folly ’tis to hazard life for ill!

ALCIBIADES. My lord—

FIRST SENATOR. You cannot make gross sins look clear. To revenge is no valour, but to bear.

ALCIBIADES. My lords, then, under favour, pardon me If I speak like a captain. Why do fond men expose themselves to battle And not endure all threats? Sleep upon’t, And let the foes quietly cut their throats Without repugnancy? If there be Such valour in the bearing, what make we Abroad? Why, then, women are more valiant That stay at home, if bearing carry it, And the ass more captain than the lion, the felon Loaden with irons wiser than the judge, If wisdom be in suffering. O my lords, As you are great, be pitifully good. Who cannot condemn rashness in cold blood? To kill, I grant, is sin’s extremest gust, But in defence, by mercy, ’tis most just. To be in anger is impiety, But who is man that is not angry? Weigh but the crime with this.

SECOND SENATOR. You breathe in vain.

ALCIBIADES. In vain? His service done At Lacedaemon and Byzantium Were a sufficient briber for his life.

FIRST SENATOR. What’s that?

ALCIBIADES. Why, I say, my lords, has done fair service And slain in fight many of your enemies. How full of valour did he bear himself In the last conflict, and made plenteous wounds!

SECOND SENATOR. He has made too much plenty with ’em. He’s a sworn rioter. He has a sin That often drowns him and takes his valour prisoner. If there were no foes, that were enough To overcome him. In that beastly fury, He has been known to commit outrages And cherish factions. ’Tis inferred to us His days are foul and his drink dangerous.

FIRST SENATOR. He dies.

ALCIBIADES. Hard fate! He might have died in war. My lords, if not for any parts in him, Though his right arm might purchase his own time And be in debt to none, yet, more to move you, Take my deserts to his and join ’em both. And, for I know your reverend ages love Security, I’ll pawn my victories, all My honour, to you upon his good returns. If by this crime he owes the law his life, Why, let the war receive’t in valiant gore, For law is strict, and war is nothing more.

FIRST SENATOR. We are for law. He dies. Urge it no more, On height of our displeasure. Friend or brother, He forfeits his own blood that spills another.

ALCIBIADES. Must it be so? It must not be. My lords, I do beseech you, know me.

SECOND SENATOR. How?

ALCIBIADES. Call me to your remembrances.

THIRD SENATOR. What?

ALCIBIADES. I cannot think but your age has forgot me, It could not else be I should prove so base To sue and be denied such common grace. My wounds ache at you.

FIRST SENATOR. Do you dare our anger? ’Tis in few words, but spacious in effect: We banish thee for ever.

ALCIBIADES. Banish me? Banish your dotage, banish usury, That makes the Senate ugly.

FIRST SENATOR. If, after two days’ shine, Athens contain thee, Attend our weightier judgment. And, not to swell our spirit, He shall be executed presently.

[Exeunt Senators.]

ALCIBIADES. Now the gods keep you old enough, that you may live Only in bone, that none may look on you! I’m worse than mad. I have kept back their foes While they have told their money and let out Their coin upon large interest, I myself Rich only in large hurts. All those for this? Is this the balsam that the usuring senate Pours into captains’ wounds? Banishment. It comes not ill. I hate not to be banished. It is a cause worthy my spleen and fury, That I may strike at Athens. I’ll cheer up My discontented troops and lay for hearts. ’Tis honour with most lands to be at odds. Soldiers should brook as little wrongs as gods.

SCENE VI. A room of state in Timon’s house

Music. Enter divers Friends at several doors.

FIRST FRIEND. The good time of day to you, sir.

SECOND FRIEND. I also wish it to you. I think this honourable lord did but try us this other day.

FIRST FRIEND. Upon that were my thoughts tiring when we encountered. I hope it is not so low with him as he made it seem in the trial of his several friends.

SECOND FRIEND. It should not be, by the persuasion of his new feasting.

FIRST FRIEND. I should think so. He hath sent me an earnest inviting, which many my near occasions did urge me to put off; but he hath conjured me beyond them, and I must needs appear.

SECOND FRIEND. In like manner was I in debt to my importunate business, but he would not hear my excuse. I am sorry, when he sent to borrow of me, that my provision was out.

FIRST FRIEND. I am sick of that grief too, as I understand how all things go.

SECOND FRIEND. Every man here’s so. What would he have borrowed you?

FIRST FRIEND. A thousand pieces.

SECOND FRIEND. A thousand pieces!

FIRST FRIEND. What of you?

SECOND FRIEND. He sent to me, sir—here he comes.

Enter Timon and Attendants.

TIMON. With all my heart, gentlemen both! And how fare you?

FIRST FRIEND. Ever at the best, hearing well of your lordship.

SECOND FRIEND. The swallow follows not summer more willing than we your lordship.

TIMON. [Aside.] Nor more willingly leaves winter, such summer birds are men. Gentlemen, our dinner will not recompense this long stay. Feast your ears with the music awhile, if they will fare so harshly o’ th’ trumpet’s sound; we shall to’t presently.

FIRST FRIEND. I hope it remains not unkindly with your lordship that I returned you an empty messenger.

TIMON. O, sir, let it not trouble you.

SECOND FRIEND. My noble lord—

TIMON. Ah, my good friend, what cheer?

SECOND FRIEND. My most honourable lord, I am e’en sick of shame that when your lordship this other day sent to me I was so unfortunate a beggar.

TIMON. Think not on’t, sir.

SECOND FRIEND. If you had sent but two hours before—

TIMON. Let it not cumber your better remembrance.

[The banquet brought in.]

Come, bring in all together.

SECOND FRIEND. All covered dishes!

FIRST FRIEND. Royal cheer, I warrant you.

THIRD FRIEND. Doubt not that, if money and the season can yield it.

FIRST FRIEND. How do you? What’s the news?

THIRD FRIEND. Alcibiades is banished. Hear you of it?

FIRST AND SECOND FRIENDS. Alcibiades banished?

THIRD FRIEND. ’Tis so, be sure of it.

FIRST FRIEND. How, how?

SECOND FRIEND. I pray you, upon what?

TIMON. My worthy friends, will you draw near?

THIRD FRIEND. I’ll tell you more anon. Here’s a noble feast toward.

SECOND FRIEND. This is the old man still.

THIRD FRIEND. Will’t hold, will’t hold?

SECOND FRIEND. It does, but time will—and so—

THIRD FRIEND. I do conceive.

TIMON. Each man to his stool with that spur as he would to the lip of his mistress. Your diet shall be in all places alike. Make not a city feast of it, to let the meat cool ere we can agree upon the first place. Sit, sit. The gods require our thanks: You great benefactors, sprinkle our society with thankfulness. For your own gifts make yourselves praised, but reserve still to give, lest your deities be despised. Lend to each man enough, that one need not lend to another; for, were your godheads to borrow of men, men would forsake the gods. Make the meat be beloved more than the man that gives it. Let no assembly of twenty be without a score of villains. If there sit twelve women at the table, let a dozen of them be as they are. The rest of your foes, O gods, the senators of Athens, together with the common lag of people, what is amiss in them, you gods, make suitable for destruction. For these my present friends, as they are to me nothing, so in nothing bless them, and to nothing are they welcome. Uncover, dogs, and lap.

[The dishes are uncovered and prove to be full of lukewarm water.]

SOME SPEAK. What does his lordship mean?

SOME OTHER. I know not.

TIMON. May you a better feast never behold, You knot of mouth-friends! Smoke and lukewarm water Is your perfection. This is Timon’s last, Who, stuck and spangled with your flatteries, Washes it off and sprinkles in your faces Your reeking villainy.

[Throws water in their faces.]

Live loathed, and long, Most smiling, smooth, detested parasites, Courteous destroyers, affable wolves, meek bears, You fools of fortune, trencher-friends, time’s flies, Cap-and-knee slaves, vapours, and minute-jacks! Of man and beast the infinite malady Crust you quite o’er! [They stand.] What, dost thou go? Soft! Take thy physic first; thou too, and thou! Stay, I will lend thee money, borrow none.

[He attacks them and forces them out.]

What, all in motion? Henceforth be no feast Whereat a villain’s not a welcome guest. Burn, house! Sink Athens! Henceforth hated be Of Timon man and all humanity!

Enter Timon’s Friends, the Senators with other Lords.

FIRST FRIEND. How now, my lords?

SECOND FRIEND. Know you the quality of Lord Timon’s fury?

THIRD FRIEND. Push! Did you see my cap?

FOURTH FRIEND. I have lost my gown.

FIRST FRIEND. He’s but a mad lord, and nought but humours sways him. He gave me a jewel th’ other day, and now he has beat it out of my hat. Did you see my jewel?

THIRD FRIEND. Did you see my cap?

SECOND FRIEND. Here ’tis.

FOURTH FRIEND. Here lies my gown.

FIRST FRIEND. Let’s make no stay.

SECOND FRIEND. Lord Timon’s mad.

THIRD FRIEND. I feel’t upon my bones.

FOURTH FRIEND. One day he gives us diamonds, next day stones.

SCENE I. Without the walls of Athens

Enter Timon.

TIMON. Let me look back upon thee. O thou wall That girdles in those wolves, dive in the earth And fence not Athens! Matrons, turn incontinent! Obedience fail in children! Slaves and fools, Pluck the grave wrinkled senate from the bench And minister in their steads! To general filths Convert, o’ th’ instant, green virginity, Do’t in your parents’ eyes! Bankrupts, hold fast; Rather than render back, out with your knives And cut your trusters’ throats! Bound servants, steal! Large-handed robbers your grave masters are, And pill by law. Maid, to thy master’s bed, Thy mistress is o’ th’ brothel. Son of sixteen, Pluck the lined crutch from thy old limping sire, With it beat out his brains! Piety and fear, Religion to the gods, peace, justice, truth, Domestic awe, night-rest and neighbourhood, Instruction, manners, mysteries and trades, Degrees, observances, customs and laws, Decline to your confounding contraries, And let confusion live! Plagues incident to men, Your potent and infectious fevers heap On Athens, ripe for stroke! Thou cold sciatica, Cripple our senators, that their limbs may halt As lamely as their manners! Lust and liberty, Creep in the minds and marrows of our youth, That ’gainst the stream of virtue they may strive And drown themselves in riot! Itches, blains, Sow all th’ Athenian bosoms, and their crop Be general leprosy! Breath infect breath, That their society, as their friendship, may Be merely poison! Nothing I’ll bear from thee But nakedness, thou detestable town! Take thou that too, with multiplying bans! Timon will to the woods, where he shall find Th’ unkindest beast more kinder than mankind. The gods confound—hear me, you good gods all!— Th’ Athenians both within and out that wall, And grant, as Timon grows, his hate may grow To the whole race of mankind, high and low! Amen.

SCENE II. Athens. A room in Timon’s house

Enter Flavius with two or three Servants.

FIRST SERVANT. Hear you, Master Steward, where’s our master? Are we undone, cast off, nothing remaining?

FLAVIUS. Alack, my fellows, what should I say to you? Let me be recorded by the righteous gods, I am as poor as you.

FIRST SERVANT. Such a house broke? So noble a master fall’n? All gone, and not One friend to take his fortune by the arm And go along with him?

SECOND SERVANT. As we do turn our backs From our companion, thrown into his grave, So his familiars to his buried fortunes Slink all away, leave their false vows with him, Like empty purses picked; and his poor self, A dedicated beggar to the air, With his disease of all-shunned poverty, Walks, like contempt, alone.—More of our fellows.

Enter other Servants.

FLAVIUS. All broken implements of a ruined house.

THIRD SERVANT. Yet do our hearts wear Timon’s livery. That see I by our faces. We are fellows still, Serving alike in sorrow. Leaked is our bark, And we, poor mates, stand on the dying deck, Hearing the surges threat. We must all part Into this sea of air.

FLAVIUS. Good fellows all, The latest of my wealth I’ll share amongst you. Wherever we shall meet, for Timon’s sake Let’s yet be fellows. Let’s shake our heads and say, As ’twere a knell unto our master’s fortune, “We have seen better days.” Let each take some.

[Offering them money.]

Nay, put out all your hands. Not one word more. Thus part we rich in sorrow, parting poor.

[They embrace and part several ways.]

O, the fierce wretchedness that glory brings us! Who would not wish to be from wealth exempt, Since riches point to misery and contempt? Who would be so mocked with glory, or to live But in a dream of friendship, To have his pomp and all what state compounds But only painted, like his varnished friends? Poor honest lord, brought low by his own heart, Undone by goodness! Strange, unusual blood When man’s worst sin is he does too much good! Who then dares to be half so kind again? For bounty, that makes gods, does still mar men. My dearest lord, blessed to be most accursed, Rich only to be wretched, thy great fortunes Are made thy chief afflictions. Alas, kind lord, He’s flung in rage from this ingrateful seat Of monstrous friends; Nor has he with him to supply his life, Or that which can command it. I’ll follow and inquire him out. I’ll ever serve his mind with my best will. Whilst I have gold, I’ll be his steward still.

SCENE III. Woods and caves near the sea-shore

Enter Timon in the woods.

TIMON. O blessed breeding sun, draw from the earth Rotten humidity, below thy sister’s orb Infect the air! Twinned brothers of one womb, Whose procreation, residence and birth Scarce is dividant, touch them with several fortunes, The greater scorns the lesser. Not nature, To whom all sores lay siege, can bear great fortune But by contempt of nature. Raise me this beggar, and deny’t that lord; The senator shall bear contempt hereditary, The beggar native honour. It is the pasture lards the rother’s sides, The want that makes him lean. Who dares, who dares In purity of manhood stand upright And say, “This man’s a flatterer”? If one be, So are they all, for every grece of fortune Is smoothed by that below. The learned pate Ducks to the golden fool. All’s obliquy. There’s nothing level in our cursed natures But direct villainy. Therefore be abhorred All feasts, societies, and throngs of men! His semblable, yea, himself, Timon disdains. Destruction fang mankind! Earth, yield me roots!

[Digs in the earth.]

Who seeks for better of thee, sauce his palate With thy most operant poison! What is here? Gold? Yellow, glittering, precious gold? No, gods, I am no idle votarist. Roots, you clear heavens! Thus much of this will make Black white, foul fair, wrong right, Base noble, old young, coward valiant. Ha, you gods, why this? What this, you gods? Why, this Will lug your priests and servants from your sides, Pluck stout men’s pillows from below their heads. This yellow slave Will knit and break religions, bless th’ accursed, Make the hoar leprosy adored, place thieves And give them title, knee, and approbation With senators on the bench. This is it That makes the wappened widow wed again; She whom the spittle-house and ulcerous sores Would cast the gorge at, this embalms and spices To th’ April day again. Come, damned earth, Thou common whore of mankind, that puts odds Among the rout of nations, I will make thee Do thy right nature.

[March afar off.]

Ha? A drum? Thou’rt quick, But yet I’ll bury thee. Thou’lt go, strong thief, When gouty keepers of thee cannot stand. Nay, stay thou out for earnest.

[Keeping some gold.]

Enter Alcibiades with drum and fife, in warlike manner, and Phrynia and Timandra.

ALCIBIADES. What art thou there? Speak.

TIMON. A beast, as thou art. The canker gnaw thy heart For showing me again the eyes of man!

ALCIBIADES. What is thy name? Is man so hateful to thee That art thyself a man?

TIMON. I am Misanthropos and hate mankind. For thy part, I do wish thou wert a dog, That I might love thee something.

ALCIBIADES. I know thee well, But in thy fortunes am unlearned and strange.

TIMON. I know thee too, and more than that I know thee I not desire to know. Follow thy drum, With man’s blood paint the ground gules, gules. Religious canons, civil laws are cruel, Then what should war be? This fell whore of thine Hath in her more destruction than thy sword, For all her cherubin look.

PHRYNIA. Thy lips rot off!

TIMON. I will not kiss thee, then the rot returns To thine own lips again.

ALCIBIADES. How came the noble Timon to this change?

TIMON. As the moon does, by wanting light to give. But then renew I could not like the moon; There were no suns to borrow of.

ALCIBIADES. Noble Timon, What friendship may I do thee?

TIMON. None, but to maintain my opinion.

ALCIBIADES. What is it, Timon?

TIMON. Promise me friendship, but perform none. If thou wilt not promise, the gods plague thee, for thou art a man. If thou dost perform, confound thee, for thou art a man.

ALCIBIADES. I have heard in some sort of thy miseries.

TIMON. Thou saw’st them when I had prosperity.

ALCIBIADES. I see them now; then was a blessed time.

TIMON. As thine is now, held with a brace of harlots.

TIMANDRA. Is this th’ Athenian minion whom the world Voiced so regardfully?

TIMON. Art thou Timandra?

TIMANDRA. Yes.

TIMON. Be a whore still, they love thee not that use thee; Give them diseases, leaving with thee their lust. Make use of thy salt hours. Season the slaves For tubs and baths, bring down rose-cheeked youth To the tub-fast and the diet.

TIMANDRA. Hang thee, monster!

ALCIBIADES. Pardon him, sweet Timandra, for his wits Are drowned and lost in his calamities. I have but little gold of late, brave Timon, The want whereof doth daily make revolt In my penurious band. I have heard and grieved How cursed Athens, mindless of thy worth, Forgetting thy great deeds when neighbour states, But for thy sword and fortune, trod upon them—

TIMON. I prithee, beat thy drum and get thee gone.

ALCIBIADES. I am thy friend and pity thee, dear Timon.

TIMON. How dost thou pity him whom thou dost trouble? I had rather be alone.

ALCIBIADES. Why, fare thee well. Here is some gold for thee.

TIMON. Keep it, I cannot eat it.

ALCIBIADES. When I have laid proud Athens on a heap—

TIMON. Warr’st thou ’gainst Athens?

ALCIBIADES. Ay, Timon, and have cause.

TIMON. The gods confound them all in thy conquest, And thee after, when thou hast conquered!

ALCIBIADES. Why me, Timon?

TIMON. That by killing of villains Thou wast born to conquer my country. Put up thy gold. Go on, here’s gold, go on. Be as a planetary plague when Jove Will o’er some high-viced city hang his poison In the sick air. Let not thy sword skip one. Pity not honoured age for his white beard; He is an usurer. Strike me the counterfeit matron; It is her habit only that is honest, Herself’s a bawd. Let not the virgin’s cheek Make soft thy trenchant sword, for those milk paps That through the window-bars bore at men’s eyes, Are not within the leaf of pity writ, But set them down horrible traitors. Spare not the babe, Whose dimpled smiles from fools exhaust their mercy; Think it a bastard whom the oracle Hath doubtfully pronounced thy throat shall cut, And mince it sans remorse. Swear against objects; Put armour on thine ears and on thine eyes, Whose proof nor yells of mothers, maids, nor babes, Nor sight of priests in holy vestments bleeding, Shall pierce a jot. There’s gold to pay thy soldiers. Make large confusion and, thy fury spent, Confounded be thyself! Speak not, be gone.

ALCIBIADES. Hast thou gold yet? I’ll take the gold thou giv’st me, Not all thy counsel.

TIMON. Dost thou or dost thou not, heaven’s curse upon thee!

PHRYNIA AND TIMANDRA. Give us some gold, good Timon. Hast thou more?

TIMON. Enough to make a whore forswear her trade, And to make whores a bawd. Hold up, you sluts, Your aprons mountant. You are not oathable, Although I know you’ll swear—terribly swear Into strong shudders and to heavenly agues Th’ immortal gods that hear you. Spare your oaths, I’ll trust to your conditions. Be whores still, And he whose pious breath seeks to convert you, Be strong in whore, allure him, burn him up; Let your close fire predominate his smoke, And be no turncoats. Yet may your pains six months, Be quite contrary. And thatch your poor thin roofs With burdens of the dead—some that were hanged, No matter; wear them, betray with them. Whore still, Paint till a horse may mire upon your face. A pox of wrinkles!

PHRYNIA AND TIMANDRA. Well, more gold. What then? Believe’t that we’ll do anything for gold.

TIMON. Consumptions sow In hollow bones of man; strike their sharp shins, And mar men’s spurring. Crack the lawyer’s voice, That he may never more false title plead Nor sound his quillets shrilly. Hoar the flamen, That scolds against the quality of flesh And not believes himself. Down with the nose, Down with it flat, take the bridge quite away Of him that, his particular to foresee, Smells from the general weal. Make curled-pate ruffians bald, And let the unscarred braggarts of the war Derive some pain from you. Plague all, That your activity may defeat and quell The source of all erection. There’s more gold. Do you damn others, and let this damn you, And ditches grave you all!

PHRYNIA AND TIMANDRA. More counsel with more money, bounteous Timon.

TIMON. More whore, more mischief first! I have given you earnest.

ALCIBIADES. Strike up the drum towards Athens. Farewell, Timon. If I thrive well, I’ll visit thee again.

TIMON. If I hope well, I’ll never see thee more.

ALCIBIADES. I never did thee harm.

TIMON. Yes, thou spok’st well of me.

ALCIBIADES. Call’st thou that harm?

TIMON. Men daily find it. Get thee away, and take Thy beagles with thee.

ALCIBIADES. We but offend him. Strike.

[Drum beats. Exeunt all but Timon.]

TIMON. That nature, being sick of man’s unkindness, Should yet be hungry! [He digs.] Common mother, thou, Whose womb unmeasurable and infinite breast Teems and feeds all; whose selfsame mettle Whereof thy proud child, arrogant man, is puffed, Engenders the black toad and adder blue, The gilded newt and eyeless venomed worm, With all the abhorred births below crisp heaven Whereon Hyperion’s quickening fire doth shine: Yield him who all thy human sons doth hate, From forth thy plenteous bosom, one poor root! Ensear thy fertile and conceptious womb, Let it no more bring out ingrateful man. Go great with tigers, dragons, wolves, and bears; Teem with new monsters, whom thy upward face Hath to the marbled mansion all above Never presented. O, a root, dear thanks! Dry up thy marrows, vines and plough-torn leas, Whereof ingrateful man, with liquorish draughts And morsels unctuous greases his pure mind, That from it all consideration slips—

More man? Plague, plague!

APEMANTUS. I was directed hither. Men report Thou dost affect my manners and dost use them.

TIMON. ’Tis, then, because thou dost not keep a dog Whom I would imitate. Consumption catch thee!

APEMANTUS. This is in thee a nature but infected, A poor unmanly melancholy sprung From change of fortune. Why this spade, this place? This slave-like habit and these looks of care? Thy flatterers yet wear silk, drink wine, lie soft, Hug their diseased perfumes, and have forgot That ever Timon was. Shame not these woods By putting on the cunning of a carper. Be thou a flatterer now, and seek to thrive By that which has undone thee. Hinge thy knee And let his very breath whom thou’lt observe Blow off thy cap; praise his most vicious strain, And call it excellent. Thou wast told thus; Thou gav’st thine ears, like tapsters that bade welcome, To knaves and all approachers. ’Tis most just That thou turn rascal; had’st thou wealth again, Rascals should have’t. Do not assume my likeness.

TIMON. Were I like thee, I’d throw away myself.

APEMANTUS. Thou hast cast away thyself, being like thyself A madman so long, now a fool. What, think’st That the bleak air, thy boisterous chamberlain, Will put thy shirt on warm? Will these mossed trees, That have outlived the eagle, page thy heels And skip when thou point’st out? Will the cold brook, Candied with ice, caudle thy morning taste To cure thy o’ernight’s surfeit? Call the creatures Whose naked natures live in all the spite Of wreakful heaven, whose bare unhoused trunks, To the conflicting elements exposed, Answer mere nature, bid them flatter thee. O, thou shalt find—

TIMON. A fool of thee. Depart.

APEMANTUS. I love thee better now than e’er I did.

TIMON. I hate thee worse.

APEMANTUS. Why?

TIMON. Thou flatter’st misery.

APEMANTUS. I flatter not, but say thou art a caitiff.

TIMON. Why dost thou seek me out?

APEMANTUS. To vex thee.

TIMON. Always a villain’s office or a fool’s. Dost please thyself in’t?

TIMON. What, a knave too?

APEMANTUS. If thou didst put this sour cold habit on To castigate thy pride, ’twere well; but thou Dost it enforcedly. Thou’dst courtier be again Wert thou not beggar. Willing misery Outlives incertain pomp, is crowned before; The one is filling still, never complete, The other, at high wish. Best state, contentless, Hath a distracted and most wretched being, Worse than the worst, content. Thou shouldst desire to die, being miserable.

TIMON. Not by his breath that is more miserable. Thou art a slave whom Fortune’s tender arm With favour never clasped, but bred a dog. Hadst thou, like us from our first swath, proceeded The sweet degrees that this brief world affords To such as may the passive drugs of it Freely command, thou wouldst have plunged thyself In general riot, melted down thy youth In different beds of lust and never learned The icy precepts of respect, but followed The sugared game before thee. But myself— Who had the world as my confectionary, The mouths, the tongues, the eyes and hearts of men At duty, more than I could frame employment, That numberless upon me stuck as leaves Do on the oak, have with one winter’s brush Fell from their boughs and left me open, bare For every storm that blows—I to bear this, That never knew but better, is some burden. Thy nature did commence in sufferance, time Hath made thee hard in’t. Why shouldst thou hate men? They never flattered thee. What hast thou given? If thou wilt curse, thy father, that poor rag, Must be thy subject, who in spite put stuff To some she-beggar and compounded thee Poor rogue hereditary. Hence, be gone! If thou hadst not been born the worst of men, Thou hadst been a knave and flatterer.

APEMANTUS. Art thou proud yet?

TIMON. Ay, that I am not thee.

APEMANTUS. I, that I was no prodigal.

TIMON. I, that I am one now. Were all the wealth I have shut up in thee, I’d give thee leave to hang it. Get thee gone. That the whole life of Athens were in this! Thus would I eat it.

[Eats a root.]

APEMANTUS. Here, I will mend thy feast.

TIMON. First mend my company, take away thyself.

APEMANTUS. So I shall mend mine own, by th’ lack of thine.

TIMON. ’Tis not well mended so, it is but botched. If not, I would it were.

APEMANTUS. What wouldst thou have to Athens?

TIMON. Thee thither in a whirlwind. If thou wilt, Tell them there I have gold. Look, so I have.

APEMANTUS. Here is no use for gold.

TIMON. The best and truest, For here it sleeps and does no hired harm.

APEMANTUS. Where liest a-nights, Timon?

TIMON. Under that’s above me. Where feed’st thou a-days, Apemantus?

APEMANTUS. Where my stomach finds meat, or rather where I eat it.

TIMON. Would poison were obedient and knew my mind!

APEMANTUS. Where wouldst thou send it?

TIMON. To sauce thy dishes.

APEMANTUS. The middle of humanity thou never knewest, but the extremity of both ends. When thou wast in thy gilt and thy perfume, they mocked thee for too much curiosity; in thy rags thou know’st none, but art despised for the contrary. There’s a medlar for thee. Eat it.

TIMON. On what I hate I feed not.

APEMANTUS. Dost hate a medlar?

TIMON. Ay, though it look like thee.

APEMANTUS. An thou’dst hated medlars sooner, thou shouldst have loved thyself better now. What man didst thou ever know unthrift that was beloved after his means?

TIMON. Who, without those means thou talk’st of, didst thou ever know beloved?

APEMANTUS. Myself.

TIMON. I understand thee. Thou hadst some means to keep a dog.

APEMANTUS. What things in the world canst thou nearest compare to thy flatterers?

TIMON. Women nearest; but men—men are the things themselves. What wouldst thou do with the world, Apemantus, if it lay in thy power?

APEMANTUS. Give it the beasts, to be rid of the men.

TIMON. Wouldst thou have thyself fall in the confusion of men and remain a beast with the beasts?

APEMANTUS. Ay, Timon.

TIMON. A beastly ambition, which the gods grant thee t’ attain to. If thou wert the lion, the fox would beguile thee; if thou wert the lamb, the fox would eat thee; if thou wert the fox, the lion would suspect thee when peradventure thou wert accused by the ass; if thou wert the ass, thy dulness would torment thee, and still thou lived’st but as a breakfast to the wolf; if thou wert the wolf, thy greediness would afflict thee, and oft thou shouldst hazard thy life for thy dinner. Wert thou the unicorn, pride and wrath would confound thee and make thine own self the conquest of thy fury; wert thou a bear, thou wouldst be killed by the horse; wert thou a horse, thou wouldst be seized by the leopard; wert thou a leopard, thou wert germane to the lion, and the spots of thy kindred were jurors on thy life. All thy safety were remotion, and thy defence absence. What beast couldst thou be that were not subject to a beast? And what beast art thou already that seest not thy loss in transformation!

APEMANTUS. If thou couldst please me with speaking to me, thou mightst have hit upon it here. The commonwealth of Athens is become a forest of beasts.

TIMON. How has the ass broke the wall, that thou art out of the city?

APEMANTUS. Yonder comes a poet and a painter. The plague of company light upon thee! I will fear to catch it, and give way. When I know not what else to do, I’ll see thee again.

TIMON. When there is nothing living but thee, thou shalt be welcome. I had rather be a beggar’s dog than Apemantus.

APEMANTUS. Thou art the cap of all the fools alive.

TIMON. Would thou wert clean enough to spit upon!

APEMANTUS. A plague on thee! Thou art too bad to curse.

TIMON. All villains that do stand by thee are pure.

APEMANTUS. There is no leprosy but what thou speak’st.

TIMON. If I name thee, I’ll beat thee, but I should infect my hands.

APEMANTUS. I would my tongue could rot them off!

TIMON. Away, thou issue of a mangy dog! Choler does kill me that thou art alive. I swoon to see thee.

APEMANTUS. Would thou wouldst burst!

TIMON. Away, thou tedious rogue! I am sorry I shall lose a stone by thee.

[Throws a stone at him.]

APEMANTUS. Beast!

TIMON. Slave!

APEMANTUS. Toad!

TIMON. Rogue, rogue, rogue! I am sick of this false world, and will love nought But even the mere necessities upon’t. Then, Timon, presently prepare thy grave. Lie where the light foam of the sea may beat Thy gravestone daily. Make thine epitaph, That death in me at others’ lives may laugh. [To the gold.] O thou sweet king-killer and dear divorce ’Twixt natural son and sire; thou bright defiler Of Hymen’s purest bed, thou valiant Mars; Thou ever young, fresh, loved, and delicate wooer, Whose blush doth thaw the consecrated snow That lies on Dian’s lap; thou visible god, That solder’st close impossibilities And mak’st them kiss, that speak’st with every tongue To every purpose! O thou touch of hearts, Think thy slave man rebels, and by thy virtue Set them into confounding odds, that beasts May have the world in empire!

APEMANTUS. Would ’twere so! But not till I am dead. I’ll say thou’st gold; Thou wilt be thronged to shortly.

TIMON. Thronged to?

TIMON. Thy back, I prithee.

APEMANTUS. Live and love thy misery.

TIMON. Long live so, and so die! I am quit.

APEMANTUS. More things like men. Eat, Timon, and abhor them.

[Exit Apemantus.]

Enter Banditti.

FIRST BANDIT. Where should he have this gold? It is some poor fragment, some slender ort of his remainder. The mere want of gold and the falling-from of his friends drove him into this melancholy.

SECOND BANDIT. It is noised he hath a mass of treasure.

THIRD BANDIT. Let us make the assay upon him. If he care not for’t, he will supply us easily; if he covetously reserve it, how shall’s get it?

SECOND BANDIT. True, for he bears it not about him. ’Tis hid.

FIRST BANDIT. Is not this he?

BANDITTI. Where?

SECOND BANDIT. ’Tis his description.

THIRD BANDIT. He; I know him.

BANDITTI. Save thee, Timon!

TIMON. Now, thieves?

BANDITTI. Soldiers, not thieves.

TIMON. Both too, and women’s sons.

BANDITTI. We are not thieves, but men that much do want.

TIMON. Your greatest want is, you want much of meat. Why should you want? Behold, the earth hath roots, Within this mile break forth a hundred springs, The oaks bear mast, the briars scarlet hips, The bounteous housewife Nature on each bush Lays her full mess before you. Want? Why want?

FIRST BANDIT. We cannot live on grass, on berries, water, As beasts and birds and fishes.

TIMON. Nor on the beasts themselves, the birds, and fishes; You must eat men. Yet thanks I must you con That you are thieves professed, that you work not In holier shapes, for there is boundless theft In limited professions. Rascal thieves, Here’s gold. Go, suck the subtle blood o’ th’ grape Till the high fever seethe your blood to froth, And so scape hanging. Trust not the physician; His antidotes are poison, and he slays More than you rob. Take wealth and lives together, Do villainy, do, since you protest to do’t, Like workmen. I’ll example you with thievery. The sun’s a thief and with his great attraction Robs the vast sea; the moon’s an arrant thief, And her pale fire she snatches from the sun; The sea’s a thief, whose liquid surge resolves The moon into salt tears; the earth’s a thief, That feeds and breeds by a composture stol’n From general excrement. Each thing’s a thief. The laws, your curb and whip, in their rough power Has unchecked theft. Love not yourselves; away! Rob one another. There’s more gold. Cut throats, All that you meet are thieves. To Athens go, Break open shops, nothing can you steal But thieves do lose it. Steal no less for this I give you, And gold confound you howsoe’er! Amen.

THIRD BANDIT. Has almost charmed me from my profession by persuading me to it.

FIRST BANDIT. ’Tis in the malice of mankind that he thus advises us, not to have us thrive in our mystery.

SECOND BANDIT. I’ll believe him as an enemy and give over my trade.

FIRST BANDIT. Let us first see peace in Athens. There is no time so miserable but a man may be true.

[Exeunt Banditti.]

Enter Flavius.

FLAVIUS. O you gods! Is yond despised and ruinous man my lord? Full of decay and failing? O monument And wonder of good deeds evilly bestowed! What an alteration of honour has desperate want made! What viler thing upon the earth than friends Who can bring noblest minds to basest ends! How rarely does it meet with this time’s guise, When man was wished to love his enemies! Grant I may ever love, and rather woo Those that would mischief me than those that do! He has caught me in his eye. I will present My honest grief unto him and as my lord Still serve him with my life.—My dearest master!

TIMON. Away! What art thou?

FLAVIUS. Have you forgot me, sir?

TIMON. Why dost ask that? I have forgot all men. Then, if thou grant’st thou’rt a man, I have forgot thee.

FLAVIUS. An honest poor servant of yours.

TIMON. Then I know thee not. I never had honest man about me. I; all I kept were knaves to serve in meat to villains.

FLAVIUS. The gods are witness, Ne’er did poor steward wear a truer grief For his undone lord than mine eyes for you.

TIMON. What, dost thou weep? Come nearer then. I love thee Because thou art a woman and disclaim’st Flinty mankind, whose eyes do never give But thorough lust and laughter. Pity’s sleeping. Strange times that weep with laughing, not with weeping!

FLAVIUS. I beg of you to know me, good my lord, T’ accept my grief, and whilst this poor wealth lasts To entertain me as your steward still.

TIMON. Had I a steward So true, so just, and now so comfortable? It almost turns my dangerous nature mild. Let me behold thy face. Surely this man Was born of woman. Forgive my general and exceptless rashness, You perpetual sober gods! I do proclaim One honest man, mistake me not, but one; No more, I pray, and he’s a steward. How fain would I have hated all mankind, And thou redeem’st thyself. But all, save thee, I fell with curses. Methinks thou art more honest now than wise, For by oppressing and betraying me Thou mightst have sooner got another service; For many so arrive at second masters Upon their first lord’s neck. But tell me true— For I must ever doubt, though ne’er so sure— Is not thy kindness subtle, covetous, A usuring kindness and as rich men deal gifts, Expecting in return twenty for one?

FLAVIUS. No, my most worthy master, in whose breast Doubt and suspect, alas, are placed too late. You should have feared false times when you did feast, Suspect still comes where an estate is least. That which I show, heaven knows, is merely love, Duty and zeal to your unmatched mind, Care of your food and living. And believe it, My most honoured lord, For any benefit that points to me, Either in hope or present, I’d exchange For this one wish, that you had power and wealth To requite me by making rich yourself.

TIMON. Look thee, ’tis so! Thou singly honest man, Here, take. The gods out of my misery Have sent thee treasure. Go, live rich and happy, But thus conditioned: thou shalt build from men; Hate all, curse all, show charity to none, But let the famished flesh slide from the bone Ere thou relieve the beggar; give to dogs What thou deniest to men; let prisons swallow ’em, Debts wither ’em to nothing; be men like blasted woods, And may diseases lick up their false bloods! And so farewell and thrive.

FLAVIUS. O, let me stay And comfort you, my master.

TIMON. If thou hat’st curses, Stay not. Fly whilst thou’rt blest and free. Ne’er see thou man, and let me ne’er see thee.

SCENE I. The woods. Before Timon’s cave

Enter Poet and Painter.

PAINTER. As I took note of the place, it cannot be far where he abides.

POET. What’s to be thought of him? Does the rumour hold for true that he is so full of gold?

PAINTER. Certain. Alcibiades reports it; Phrynia and Timandra had gold of him. He likewise enriched poor straggling soldiers with great quantity. ’Tis said he gave unto his steward a mighty sum.

POET. Then this breaking of his has been but a try for his friends?

PAINTER. Nothing else. You shall see him a palm in Athens again, and flourish with the highest. Therefore ’tis not amiss we tender our loves to him in this supposed distress of his. It will show honestly in us and is very likely to load our purposes with what they travail for, if it be a just and true report that goes of his having.

POET. What have you now to present unto him?

PAINTER. Nothing at this time but my visitation; only I will promise him an excellent piece.

POET. I must serve him so too, tell him of an intent that’s coming toward him.

PAINTER. Good as the best. Promising is the very air o’ th’ time; it opens the eyes of expectation. Performance is ever the duller for his act and, but in the plainer and simpler kind of people, the deed of saying is quite out of use. To promise is most courtly and fashionable; performance is a kind of will or testament which argues a great sickness in his judgment that makes it.

Enter Timon from his cave.

TIMON. [Aside.] Excellent workman! Thou canst not paint a man so bad as is thyself.

POET. I am thinking what I shall say I have provided for him. It must be a personating of himself, a satire against the softness of prosperity, with a discovery of the infinite flatteries that follow youth and opulency.

TIMON. [Aside.] Must thou needs stand for a villain in thine own work? Wilt thou whip thine own faults in other men? Do so, I have gold for thee.

POET. Nay, let’s seek him. Then do we sin against our own estate When we may profit meet and come too late.

PAINTER. True. When the day serves, before black-cornered night, Find what thou want’st by free and offered light. Come.

TIMON. [Aside.] I’ll meet you at the turn. What a god’s gold, That he is worshipped in a baser temple Than where swine feed! ’Tis thou that rigg’st the bark and plough’st the foam, Settlest admired reverence in a slave. To thee be worship, and thy saints for aye Be crowned with plagues, that thee alone obey! Fit I meet them.

[He comes forward.]

POET. Hail, worthy Timon!

PAINTER. Our late noble master!

TIMON. Have I once lived to see two honest men?

POET. Sir, Having often of your open bounty tasted, Hearing you were retired, your friends fall’n off, Whose thankless natures—O abhorred spirits! Not all the whips of heaven are large enough— What, to you, Whose star-like nobleness gave life and influence To their whole being? I am rapt and cannot cover The monstrous bulk of this ingratitude With any size of words.

TIMON. Let it go naked. Men may see’t the better. You that are honest, by being what you are, Make them best seen and known.

PAINTER. He and myself Have travailed in the great shower of your gifts, And sweetly felt it.

TIMON. Ay, you are honest men.

PAINTER. We are hither come to offer you our service.

TIMON. Most honest men! Why, how shall I requite you? Can you eat roots and drink cold water? No?

BOTH. What we can do we’ll do, to do you service.

TIMON. Ye’re honest men. Ye’ve heard that I have gold, I am sure you have. Speak truth, you’re honest men.

PAINTER. So it is said, my noble lord; but therefore Came not my friend nor I.

TIMON. Good honest men! [To Painter.] Thou draw’st a counterfeit Best in all Athens. Thou’rt indeed the best, Thou counterfeit’st most lively.

PAINTER. So so, my lord.

TIMON. E’en so, sir, as I say. [To the Poet.] And for thy fiction, Why, thy verse swells with stuff so fine and smooth That thou art even natural in thine art. But for all this, my honest-natured friends, I must needs say you have a little fault. Marry, ’tis not monstrous in you, neither wish I You take much pains to mend.

BOTH. Beseech your honour To make it known to us.

TIMON. You’ll take it ill.

BOTH. Most thankfully, my lord.

TIMON. Will you indeed?

BOTH. Doubt it not, worthy lord.

TIMON. There’s never a one of you but trusts a knave That mightily deceives you.

BOTH. Do we, my lord?

TIMON. Ay, and you hear him cog, see him dissemble, Know his gross patchery, love him, feed him, Keep in your bosom, yet remain assured That he’s a made-up villain.

PAINTER. I know not such, my lord.

POET. Nor I.

TIMON. Look you, I love you well. I’ll give you gold. Rid me these villains from your companies, Hang them or stab them, drown them in a draught, Confound them by some course, and come to me, I’ll give you gold enough.

BOTH. Name them, my lord, let’s know them.

TIMON. You that way, and you this, but two in company. Each man apart, all single and alone, Yet an arch-villain keeps him company. [To one.] If where thou art, two villians shall not be, Come not near him. [To the other.] If thou wouldst not reside But where one villain is, then him abandon. Hence, pack! There’s gold. You came for gold, ye slaves. [To one.] You have work for me, there’s payment, hence! [To the other.] You are an alchemist; make gold of that. Out, rascal dogs!

[Timon drives them out and then retires to his cave]

Enter Flavius and two Senators.

FLAVIUS. It is vain that you would speak with Timon. For he is set so only to himself That nothing but himself which looks like man Is friendly with him.

FIRST SENATOR. Bring us to his cave. It is our part and promise to th’ Athenians To speak with Timon.

SECOND SENATOR. At all times alike Men are not still the same: ’twas time and griefs That framed him thus. Time, with his fairer hand, Offering the fortunes of his former days, The former man may make him. Bring us to him And chance it as it may.

FLAVIUS. Here is his cave. Peace and content be here! Lord Timon! Timon, Look out and speak to friends. The Athenians By two of their most reverend senate greet thee. Speak to them, noble Timon.

Enter Timon out of his cave.

TIMON. Thou sun that comforts, burn! Speak and be hanged! For each true word, a blister, and each false Be as a cantherizing to the root o’ th’ tongue, Consuming it with speaking.

FIRST SENATOR. Worthy Timon—

TIMON. Of none but such as you, and you of Timon.

FIRST SENATOR. The senators of Athens greet thee, Timon.

TIMON. [Aside.] I thank them and would send them back the plague, Could I but catch it for them.

FIRST SENATOR. O, forget What we are sorry for ourselves in thee. The senators with one consent of love Entreat thee back to Athens, who have thought On special dignities, which vacant lie For thy best use and wearing.

SECOND SENATOR. They confess Toward thee forgetfulness too general gross, Which now the public body, which doth seldom Play the recanter, feeling in itself A lack of Timon’s aid, hath sense withal Of its own fall, restraining aid to Timon, And send forth us to make their sorrowed render, Together with a recompense more fruitful Than their offence can weigh down by the dram, Ay, even such heaps and sums of love and wealth, As shall to thee blot out what wrongs were theirs, And write in thee the figures of their love, Ever to read them thine.

TIMON. You witch me in it, Surprise me to the very brink of tears. Lend me a fool’s heart and a woman’s eyes And I’ll beweep these comforts, worthy senators.

FIRST SENATOR. Therefore so please thee to return with us, And of our Athens, thine and ours, to take The captainship, thou shalt be met with thanks, Allowed with absolute power, and thy good name Live with authority. So soon we shall drive back Of Alcibiades th’ approaches wild, Who like a boar too savage doth root up His country’s peace.

SECOND SENATOR. And shakes his threatening sword Against the walls of Athens.

FIRST SENATOR. Therefore, Timon—

TIMON. Well, sir, I will. Therefore I will, sir, thus: If Alcibiades kill my countrymen, Let Alcibiades know this of Timon, That Timon cares not. But if he sack fair Athens And take our goodly aged men by th’ beards, Giving our holy virgins to the stain Of contumelious, beastly, mad-brained war, Then let him know, and tell him Timon speaks it, In pity of our aged and our youth, I cannot choose but tell him that I care not; And—let him take’t at worst—for their knives care not While you have throats to answer. For myself, There’s not a whittle in th’ unruly camp But I do prize it at my love before The reverend’st throat in Athens. So I leave you To the protection of the prosperous gods, As thieves to keepers.

FLAVIUS. Stay not, all’s in vain.

TIMON. Why, I was writing of my epitaph; It will be seen tomorrow. My long sickness Of health and living now begins to mend And nothing brings me all things. Go, live still, Be Alcibiades your plague, you his, And last so long enough.

FIRST SENATOR. We speak in vain.

TIMON. But yet I love my country and am not One that rejoices in the common wrack, As common bruit doth put it.

FIRST SENATOR. That’s well spoke.

TIMON. Commend me to my loving countrymen.

FIRST SENATOR. These words become your lips as they pass through them.

SECOND SENATOR. And enter in our ears like great triumphers In their applauding gates.

TIMON. Commend me to them, And tell them that to ease them of their griefs, Their fears of hostile strokes, their aches, losses, Their pangs of love, with other incident throes That nature’s fragile vessel doth sustain In life’s uncertain voyage, I will some kindness do them; I’ll teach them to prevent wild Alcibiades’ wrath.

FIRST SENATOR. [Aside.] I like this well, he will return again.

TIMON. I have a tree which grows here in my close That mine own use invites me to cut down, And shortly must I fell it. Tell my friends, Tell Athens, in the sequence of degree From high to low throughout, that whoso please To stop affliction, let him take his haste, Come hither ere my tree hath felt the axe And hang himself. I pray you do my greeting.

FLAVIUS. Trouble him no further; thus you still shall find him.

TIMON. Come not to me again, but say to Athens Timon hath made his everlasting mansion Upon the beached verge of the salt flood, Who once a day with his embossed froth The turbulent surge shall cover; thither come, And let my gravestone be your oracle. Lips, let sour words go by, and language end: What is amiss, plague and infection mend; Graves only be men’s works and death their gain, Sun, hide thy beams, Timon hath done his reign.

[Exit Timon into his cave.]

FIRST SENATOR. His discontents are unremovably Coupled to nature.

SECOND SENATOR. Our hope in him is dead. Let us return And strain what other means is left unto us In our dear peril.

FIRST SENATOR. It requires swift foot.

SCENE III. Before the walls of Athens

Enter two other Senators, with a Messenger.

FIRST SENATOR. Thou hast painfully discovered. Are his files As full as thy report?

MESSENGER. I have spoke the least. Besides, his expedition promises Present approach.

SECOND SENATOR. We stand much hazard if they bring not Timon.

MESSENGER. I met a courier, one mine ancient friend, Whom, though in general part we were opposed, Yet our old love made a particular force And made us speak like friends. This man was riding From Alcibiades to Timon’s cave With letters of entreaty, which imported His fellowship i’ th’ cause against your city, In part for his sake moved.

Enter the other Senators from Timon.

THIRD SENATOR. Here come our brothers.

FIRST SENATOR. No talk of Timon, nothing of him expect. The enemy’s drum is heard, and fearful scouring Doth choke the air with dust. In, and prepare. Ours is the fall, I fear, our foe’s the snare.

SCENE IV. The woods. Timon’s cave, and a rude tomb seen

Enter a Soldier in the woods, seeking Timon.

SOLDIER. By all description this should be the place. Who’s here? Speak, ho! No answer? What is this? Timon is dead, who hath outstretched his span. Some beast read this; there does not live a man. Dead, sure, and this his grave. What’s on this tomb I cannot read. The character I’ll take with wax. Our captain hath in every figure skill, An aged interpreter, though young in days. Before proud Athens he’s set down by this, Whose fall the mark of his ambition is.

SCENE V. Before the walls of Athens

Trumpets sound. Enter Alcibiades with his powers before Athens.

ALCIBIADES. Sound to this coward and lascivious town Our terrible approach.

[A parley sounds.]

The Senators appear upon the walls.

Till now you have gone on and filled the time With all licentious measure, making your wills The scope of justice. Till now myself and such As slept within the shadow of your power Have wandered with our traversed arms, and breathed Our sufferance vainly. Now the time is flush, When crouching marrow, in the bearer strong Cries of itself, “No more!” Now breathless wrong Shall sit and pant in your great chairs of ease, And pursy insolence shall break his wind With fear and horrid flight.

FIRST SENATOR. Noble and young, When thy first griefs were but a mere conceit, Ere thou hadst power or we had cause of fear, We sent to thee to give thy rages balm, To wipe out our ingratitude with loves Above their quantity.

SECOND SENATOR. So did we woo Transformed Timon to our city’s love By humble message and by promised means. We were not all unkind, nor all deserve The common stroke of war.

FIRST SENATOR. These walls of ours Were not erected by their hands from whom You have received your griefs; nor are they such That these great towers, trophies, and schools should fall For private faults in them.

SECOND SENATOR. Nor are they living Who were the motives that you first went out. Shame, that they wanted cunning, in excess Hath broke their hearts. March, noble lord, Into our city with thy banners spread. By decimation and a tithed death, If thy revenges hunger for that food Which nature loathes, take thou the destined tenth, And by the hazard of the spotted die Let die the spotted.

FIRST SENATOR. All have not offended. For those that were, it is not square to take, On those that are, revenge. Crimes, like lands, Are not inherited. Then, dear countryman, Bring in thy ranks but leave without thy rage; Spare thy Athenian cradle and those kin Which in the bluster of thy wrath must fall With those that have offended. Like a shepherd Approach the fold and cull th’ infected forth, But kill not all together.

SECOND SENATOR. What thou wilt, Thou rather shalt enforce it with thy smile Than hew to ’t with thy sword.

FIRST SENATOR. Set but thy foot Against our rampired gates and they shall ope, So thou wilt send thy gentle heart before To say thou’lt enter friendly.

SECOND SENATOR. Throw thy glove, Or any token of thine honour else, That thou wilt use the wars as thy redress And not as our confusion, all thy powers Shall make their harbour in our town till we Have sealed thy full desire.

ALCIBIADES. Then there’s my glove; Descend and open your uncharged ports. Those enemies of Timon’s and mine own Whom you yourselves shall set out for reproof Fall, and no more. And, to atone your fears With my more noble meaning, not a man Shall pass his quarter or offend the stream Of regular justice in your city’s bounds, But shall be remedied to your public laws At heaviest answer.

BOTH. ’Tis most nobly spoken.

ALCIBIADES. Descend, and keep your words.

[The Senators descend.]

SOLDIER. My noble general, Timon is dead, Entombed upon the very hem o’ th’ sea, And on his gravestone this insculpture, which With wax I brought away, whose soft impression Interprets for my poor ignorance.

ALCIBIADES. [Reads the Epitaph.] Here lies a wretched corse, of wretched soul bereft. Seek not my name. A plague consume you, wicked caitiffs left! Here lie I, Timon, who alive all living men did hate. Pass by and curse thy fill, but pass and stay not here thy gait. These well express in thee thy latter spirits. Though thou abhorred’st in us our human griefs, Scorned’st our brains’ flow and those our droplets which From niggard nature fall, yet rich conceit Taught thee to make vast Neptune weep for aye On thy low grave, on faults forgiven. Dead Is noble Timon, of whose memory Hereafter more. Bring me into your city, And I will use the olive with my sword, Make war breed peace, make peace stint war, make each Prescribe to other, as each other’s leech. Let our drums strike.

THE TRAGEDY OF TITUS ANDRONICUS

ACT I Scene I. Rome. Before the Capitol

ACT II Scene I. Rome. Before the palace Scene II. A Forest near Rome; a Lodge seen at a distance. Horns and cry of hounds heard Scene III. A lonely part of the Forest Scene IV. Another part of the Forest

ACT III Scene I. Rome. A street Scene II. Rome. A Room in Titus’s House. A banquet set out

ACT IV Scene I. Rome. Before Titus’s House Scene II. Rome. A Room in the Palace Scene III. Rome. A public Place Scene IV. Rome. Before the Palace

ACT V Scene I. Plains near Rome Scene II. Rome. Before Titus’s House Scene III. Rome. A Pavilion in Titus’s Gardens, with tables, &c.

SATURNINUS, elder son to the late Emperor of Rome, afterwards Emperor BASSIANUS, brother to Saturninus

TITUS ANDRONICUS, a noble Roman, General against the Goths MARCUS ANDRONICUS, Tribune of the People, and brother to Titus

LAVINIA, daughter to Titus Andronicus LUCIUS, son to Titus Andronicus QUINTUS, son to Titus Andronicus MARTIUS, son to Titus Andronicus MUTIUS, son to Titus Andronicus

YOUNG LUCIUS, a boy, son to Lucius PUBLIUS, son to Marcus the Tribune

SEMPRONIUS, kinsman to Titus CAIUS, kinsman to Titus VALENTINE, kinsman to Titus

AEMILIUS, a noble Roman

TAMORA, Queen of the Goths AARON, a Moor, beloved by Tamora ALARBUS, son to Tamora DEMETRIUS, son to Tamora CHIRON, son to Tamora

A CAPTAIN MESSENGER A NURSE, and a black child CLOWN Goths and Romans

Tribunes, Senators, Officers, Soldiers, and Attendants

SCENE: Rome, and the Country near it

SCENE I. Rome. Before the Capitol

Enter the Tribunes and Senators aloft. And then enter Saturninus and his followers at one door, and Bassianus and his followers at the other, with drums and trumpets.

SATURNINUS. Noble patricians, patrons of my right, Defend the justice of my cause with arms; And, countrymen, my loving followers, Plead my successive title with your swords. I am his firstborn son that was the last That wore the imperial diadem of Rome; Then let my father’s honours live in me, Nor wrong mine age with this indignity.

BASSIANUS. Romans, friends, followers, favourers of my right, If ever Bassianus, Caesar’s son, Were gracious in the eyes of royal Rome, Keep then this passage to the Capitol, And suffer not dishonour to approach The imperial seat, to virtue consecrate, To justice, continence, and nobility; But let desert in pure election shine, And, Romans, fight for freedom in your choice.

Enter Marcus Andronicus aloft, holding the crown.

MARCUS. Princes, that strive by factions and by friends Ambitiously for rule and empery, Know that the people of Rome, for whom we stand A special party, have by common voice, In election for the Roman empery, Chosen Andronicus, surnamed Pius For many good and great deserts to Rome. A nobler man, a braver warrior, Lives not this day within the city walls. He by the senate is accited home From weary wars against the barbarous Goths, That with his sons, a terror to our foes, Hath yoked a nation strong, trained up in arms. Ten years are spent since first he undertook This cause of Rome, and chastised with arms Our enemies’ pride. Five times he hath returned Bleeding to Rome, bearing his valiant sons In coffins from the field. And now at last, laden with honour’s spoils, Returns the good Andronicus to Rome, Renowned Titus, flourishing in arms. Let us entreat, by honour of his name Whom worthily you would have now succeed, And in the Capitol and senate’s right, Whom you pretend to honour and adore, That you withdraw you and abate your strength, Dismiss your followers, and, as suitors should, Plead your deserts in peace and humbleness.

SATURNINUS. How fair the tribune speaks to calm my thoughts!

BASSIANUS. Marcus Andronicus, so I do affy In thy uprightness and integrity, And so I love and honour thee and thine, Thy noble brother Titus and his sons, And her to whom my thoughts are humbled all, Gracious Lavinia, Rome’s rich ornament, That I will here dismiss my loving friends, And to my fortunes and the people’s favour Commit my cause in balance to be weighed.

[Exeunt the followers of Bassianus.]

SATURNINUS. Friends, that have been thus forward in my right, I thank you all and here dismiss you all, And to the love and favour of my country Commit myself, my person, and the cause.

[Exeunt the followers of Saturninus.]

Rome, be as just and gracious unto me As I am confident and kind to thee. Open the gates and let me in.

BASSIANUS. Tribunes, and me, a poor competitor.

[Flourish. They go up into the Senate House.]

Enter a Captain.

CAPTAIN. Romans, make way! The good Andronicus, Patron of virtue, Rome’s best champion, Successful in the battles that he fights, With honour and with fortune is returned From where he circumscribed with his sword And brought to yoke the enemies of Rome.

Sound drums and trumpets, and then enter two of Titus’ sons, and then two men bearing a coffin covered with black; then two other sons; then Titus Andronicus; and then Tamora, the Queen of Goths and her sons Alarbus, Chiron and Demetrius with Aaron the Moor, and others as many as can be, then set down the coffin, and Titus speaks.

TITUS. Hail, Rome, victorious in thy mourning weeds! Lo, as the bark that hath discharged her fraught Returns with precious lading to the bay From whence at first she weighed her anchorage, Cometh Andronicus, bound with laurel boughs, To resalute his country with his tears, Tears of true joy for his return to Rome. Thou great defender of this Capitol, Stand gracious to the rites that we intend. Romans, of five-and-twenty valiant sons, Half of the number that King Priam had, Behold the poor remains, alive and dead. These that survive let Rome reward with love; These that I bring unto their latest home, With burial amongst their ancestors. Here Goths have given me leave to sheathe my sword. Titus, unkind, and careless of thine own, Why suffer’st thou thy sons, unburied yet, To hover on the dreadful shore of Styx? Make way to lay them by their brethren.

[They open the tomb.]

There greet in silence, as the dead are wont, And sleep in peace, slain in your country’s wars. O sacred receptacle of my joys, Sweet cell of virtue and nobility, How many sons hast thou of mine in store, That thou wilt never render to me more?

LUCIUS. Give us the proudest prisoner of the Goths, That we may hew his limbs, and on a pile Ad manes fratrum sacrifice his flesh Before this earthy prison of their bones, That so the shadows be not unappeased, Nor we disturbed with prodigies on earth.

TITUS. I give him you, the noblest that survives, The eldest son of this distressed queen.

TAMORA. Stay, Roman brethren! Gracious conqueror, Victorious Titus, rue the tears I shed, A mother’s tears in passion for her son. And if thy sons were ever dear to thee, O, think my son to be as dear to me. Sufficeth not that we are brought to Rome, To beautify thy triumphs and return Captive to thee and to thy Roman yoke; But must my sons be slaughtered in the streets For valiant doings in their country’s cause? O, if to fight for king and commonweal Were piety in thine, it is in these. Andronicus, stain not thy tomb with blood. Wilt thou draw near the nature of the gods? Draw near them then in being merciful. Sweet mercy is nobility’s true badge. Thrice-noble Titus, spare my first-born son.

TITUS. Patient yourself, madam, and pardon me. These are their brethren whom your Goths beheld Alive and dead, and for their brethren slain Religiously they ask a sacrifice. To this your son is marked, and die he must, T’ appease their groaning shadows that are gone.

LUCIUS. Away with him, and make a fire straight, And with our swords, upon a pile of wood, Let’s hew his limbs till they be clean consumed.

[Exeunt Titus’ sons with Alarbus.]

TAMORA. O cruel, irreligious piety!

CHIRON. Was never Scythia half so barbarous!

DEMETRIUS. Oppose not Scythia to ambitious Rome. Alarbus goes to rest, and we survive To tremble under Titus’ threat’ning look. Then, madam, stand resolved, but hope withal The self-same gods that armed the Queen of Troy With opportunity of sharp revenge Upon the Thracian tyrant in his tent May favour Tamora, the queen of Goths, (When Goths were Goths and Tamora was queen) To quit the bloody wrongs upon her foes.

Enter the sons of Andronicus again with bloody swords.

LUCIUS. See, lord and father, how we have performed Our Roman rites. Alarbus’ limbs are lopped, And entrails feed the sacrificing fire, Whose smoke like incense doth perfume the sky. Remaineth naught but to inter our brethren, And with loud ’larums welcome them to Rome.

TITUS. Let it be so; and let Andronicus Make this his latest farewell to their souls.

[Sound trumpets, and lay the coffin in the tomb.]

In peace and honour rest you here, my sons; Rome’s readiest champions, repose you here in rest, Secure from worldly chances and mishaps. Here lurks no treason, here no envy swells, Here grow no damned drugs; here are no storms, No noise, but silence and eternal sleep. In peace and honour rest you here, my sons.

Enter Lavinia.

LAVINIA. In peace and honour live Lord Titus long; My noble lord and father, live in fame. Lo, at this tomb my tributary tears I render for my brethren’s obsequies; And at thy feet I kneel, with tears of joy Shed on this earth for thy return to Rome. O, bless me here with thy victorious hand, Whose fortunes Rome’s best citizens applaud.

TITUS. Kind Rome, that hast thus lovingly reserved The cordial of mine age to glad my heart! Lavinia, live; outlive thy father’s days, And fame’s eternal date, for virtue’s praise.

Enter Marcus Andronicus and Tribunes; re-enter Saturninus, Bassianus and others.

MARCUS. Long live Lord Titus, my beloved brother, Gracious triumpher in the eyes of Rome.

TITUS. Thanks, gentle tribune, noble brother Marcus.

MARCUS. And welcome, nephews, from successful wars, You that survive, and you that sleep in fame. Fair lords, your fortunes are alike in all, That in your country’s service drew your swords; But safer triumph is this funeral pomp That hath aspired to Solon’s happiness And triumphs over chance in honour’s bed. Titus Andronicus, the people of Rome, Whose friend in justice thou hast ever been, Send thee by me, their tribune and their trust, This palliament of white and spotless hue, And name thee in election for the empire With these our late-deceased emperor’s sons. Be candidatus then, and put it on, And help to set a head on headless Rome.

TITUS. A better head her glorious body fits Than his that shakes for age and feebleness. What, should I don this robe and trouble you? Be chosen with proclamations today, Tomorrow yield up rule, resign my life, And set abroad new business for you all? Rome, I have been thy soldier forty years, And led my country’s strength successfully, And buried one and twenty valiant sons, Knighted in field, slain manfully in arms, In right and service of their noble country. Give me a staff of honour for mine age, But not a sceptre to control the world. Upright he held it, lords, that held it last.

MARCUS. Titus, thou shalt obtain and ask the empery.

SATURNINUS. Proud and ambitious tribune, canst thou tell?

TITUS. Patience, Prince Saturninus.

SATURNINUS. Romans, do me right. Patricians, draw your swords, and sheathe them not Till Saturninus be Rome’s emperor. Andronicus, would thou were shipped to hell Rather than rob me of the people’s hearts!

LUCIUS. Proud Saturnine, interrupter of the good That noble-minded Titus means to thee!

TITUS. Content thee, prince; I will restore to thee The people’s hearts, and wean them from themselves.

BASSIANUS. Andronicus, I do not flatter thee, But honour thee, and will do till I die. My faction if thou strengthen with thy friends, I will most thankful be; and thanks to men Of noble minds is honourable meed.

TITUS. People of Rome, and people’s tribunes here, I ask your voices and your suffrages. Will you bestow them friendly on Andronicus?

TRIBUNES. To gratify the good Andronicus, And gratulate his safe return to Rome, The people will accept whom he admits.

TITUS. Tribunes, I thank you; and this suit I make, That you create your emperor’s eldest son, Lord Saturnine; whose virtues will, I hope, Reflect on Rome as Titan’s rays on earth, And ripen justice in this commonweal. Then, if you will elect by my advice, Crown him, and say “Long live our emperor!”

MARCUS. With voices and applause of every sort, Patricians and plebeians, we create Lord Saturninus Rome’s great emperor, And say “Long live our Emperor Saturnine!”

SATURNINUS. Titus Andronicus, for thy favours done To us in our election this day, I give thee thanks in part of thy deserts, And will with deeds requite thy gentleness. And for an onset, Titus, to advance Thy name and honourable family, Lavinia will I make my empress, Rome’s royal mistress, mistress of my heart, And in the sacred Pantheon her espouse. Tell me, Andronicus, doth this motion please thee?

TITUS. It doth, my worthy lord, and in this match I hold me highly honoured of your grace; And here in sight of Rome, to Saturnine, King and commander of our commonweal, The wide world’s emperor, do I consecrate My sword, my chariot, and my prisoners; Presents well worthy Rome’s imperious lord. Receive them then, the tribute that I owe, Mine honour’s ensigns humbled at thy feet.

SATURNINUS. Thanks, noble Titus, father of my life. How proud I am of thee and of thy gifts Rome shall record, and when I do forget The least of these unspeakable deserts, Romans, forget your fealty to me.

TITUS. [To Tamora.] Now, madam, are you prisoner to an emperor; To him that for your honour and your state Will use you nobly and your followers.

SATURNINUS. A goodly lady, trust me, of the hue That I would choose, were I to choose anew. Clear up, fair queen, that cloudy countenance. Though chance of war hath wrought this change of cheer, Thou com’st not to be made a scorn in Rome. Princely shall be thy usage every way. Rest on my word, and let not discontent Daunt all your hopes. Madam, he comforts you Can make you greater than the Queen of Goths. Lavinia, you are not displeased with this?

LAVINIA. Not I, my lord, sith true nobility Warrants these words in princely courtesy.

SATURNINUS. Thanks, sweet Lavinia. Romans, let us go. Ransomless here we set our prisoners free. Proclaim our honours, lords, with trump and drum.

[Flourish. Saturninus and his Guards exit, with Drums and Trumpets. Tribunes and Senators exit aloft.]

BASSIANUS. Lord Titus, by your leave, this maid is mine.

TITUS. How, sir? Are you in earnest then, my lord?

BASSIANUS. Ay, noble Titus; and resolved withal To do myself this reason and this right.

MARCUS. Suum cuique is our Roman justice. This prince in justice seizeth but his own.

LUCIUS. And that he will and shall, if Lucius live.

TITUS. Traitors, avaunt! Where is the emperor’s guard?

Enter Saturninus and his Guards.

Treason, my lord, Lavinia is surprised.

SATURNINUS. Surprised? By whom?

BASSIANUS. By him that justly may Bear his betrothed from all the world away.

[Exeunt Bassianus and Marcus with Lavinia.]

MUTIUS. Brothers, help to convey her hence away, And with my sword I’ll keep this door safe.

[Exeunt Lucius, Quintus and Martius.]

TITUS. Follow, my lord, and I’ll soon bring her back.

[Exeunt Saturninus, Tamora, Demetrius, Chiron, Aaron, and Guards.]

MUTIUS. My lord, you pass not here.

TITUS. What, villain boy, Barr’st me my way in Rome?

[Stabbing Mutius.]

MUTIUS. Help, Lucius, help!

Re-enter Lucius.

LUCIUS. My lord, you are unjust, and more than so, In wrongful quarrel you have slain your son.

TITUS. Nor thou nor he are any sons of mine; My sons would never so dishonour me. Traitor, restore Lavinia to the Emperor.

LUCIUS. Dead, if you will; but not to be his wife, That is another’s lawful promised love.

Enter aloft the Emperor Saturninus with Tamora and her two sons and Aaron the Moor.

SATURNINUS. No, Titus, no; the emperor needs her not, Nor her, nor thee, nor any of thy stock. I’ll trust by leisure him that mocks me once; Thee never, nor thy traitorous haughty sons, Confederates all thus to dishonour me. Was none in Rome to make a stale But Saturnine? Full well, Andronicus, Agree these deeds with that proud brag of thine That said’st I begged the empire at thy hands.

TITUS. O monstrous! What reproachful words are these?

SATURNINUS. But go thy ways; go, give that changing piece To him that flourished for her with his sword. A valiant son-in-law thou shalt enjoy; One fit to bandy with thy lawless sons, To ruffle in the commonwealth of Rome.

TITUS. These words are razors to my wounded heart.

SATURNINUS. And therefore, lovely Tamora, Queen of Goths, That like the stately Phœbe ’mongst her nymphs Dost overshine the gallant’st dames of Rome, If thou be pleased with this my sudden choice, Behold, I choose thee, Tamora, for my bride, And will create thee Empress of Rome. Speak, Queen of Goths, dost thou applaud my choice? And here I swear by all the Roman gods, Sith priest and holy water are so near, And tapers burn so bright, and everything In readiness for Hymenæus stand, I will not re-salute the streets of Rome, Or climb my palace, till from forth this place I lead espoused my bride along with me.

TAMORA. And here in sight of heaven to Rome I swear, If Saturnine advance the Queen of Goths, She will a handmaid be to his desires, A loving nurse, a mother to his youth.

SATURNINUS. Ascend, fair queen, Pantheon. Lords, accompany Your noble emperor and his lovely bride, Sent by the heavens for Prince Saturnine, Whose wisdom hath her fortune conquered. There shall we consummate our spousal rites.

[Exeunt all but Titus.]

TITUS. I am not bid to wait upon this bride. Titus, when wert thou wont to walk alone, Dishonoured thus, and challenged of wrongs?

Re-enter Marcus, Lucius, Quintus and Martius.

MARCUS. O Titus, see, O, see what thou hast done! In a bad quarrel slain a virtuous son.

TITUS. No, foolish tribune, no; no son of mine, Nor thou, nor these, confederates in the deed That hath dishonoured all our family. Unworthy brother and unworthy sons!

LUCIUS. But let us give him burial, as becomes; Give Mutius burial with our brethren.

TITUS. Traitors, away! He rests not in this tomb. This monument five hundred years hath stood, Which I have sumptuously re-edified. Here none but soldiers and Rome’s servitors Repose in fame; none basely slain in brawls. Bury him where you can, he comes not here.

MARCUS. My lord, this is impiety in you. My nephew Mutius’ deeds do plead for him; He must be buried with his brethren.

MARTIUS. And shall, or him we will accompany.

TITUS. “And shall”? What villain was it spake that word?

QUINTUS. He that would vouch it in any place but here.

TITUS. What, would you bury him in my despite?

MARCUS. No, noble Titus, but entreat of thee To pardon Mutius and to bury him.

TITUS. Marcus, even thou hast struck upon my crest, And with these boys mine honour thou hast wounded. My foes I do repute you every one; So trouble me no more, but get you gone.

QUINTUS. He is not with himself; let us withdraw.

MARTIUS. Not I, till Mutius’ bones be buried.

[Marcus and the sons of Titus kneel.]

MARCUS. Brother, for in that name doth nature plead,—

QUINTUS. Father, and in that name doth nature speak,—

TITUS. Speak thou no more, if all the rest will speed.

MARCUS. Renowned Titus, more than half my soul,—

LUCIUS. Dear father, soul and substance of us all,—

MARCUS. Suffer thy brother Marcus to inter His noble nephew here in virtue’s nest, That died in honour and Lavinia’s cause. Thou art a Roman; be not barbarous. The Greeks upon advice did bury Ajax, That slew himself; and wise Laertes’ son Did graciously plead for his funerals. Let not young Mutius, then, that was thy joy, Be barred his entrance here.

TITUS. Rise, Marcus, rise. The dismall’st day is this that e’er I saw, To be dishonoured by my sons in Rome! Well, bury him, and bury me the next.

[They put Mutius in the tomb.]

LUCIUS. There lie thy bones, sweet Mutius, with thy friends, Till we with trophies do adorn thy tomb.

ALL. [Kneeling.] No man shed tears for noble Mutius; He lives in fame that died in virtue’s cause.

MARCUS. My lord, to step out of these dreary dumps, How comes it that the subtle Queen of Goths Is of a sudden thus advanced in Rome?

TITUS. I know not, Marcus, but I know it is. Whether by device or no, the heavens can tell. Is she not then beholding to the man That brought her for this high good turn so far? Yes, and will nobly him remunerate.

Flourish. Enter the Emperor Saturninus, Tamora and her two sons, with Aaron the Moor. Drums and Trumpets, at one door. Enter at the other door Bassianus and Lavinia with others.

SATURNINUS. So, Bassianus, you have played your prize. God give you joy, sir, of your gallant bride.

BASSIANUS. And you of yours, my lord. I say no more, Nor wish no less; and so I take my leave.

SATURNINUS. Traitor, if Rome have law or we have power, Thou and thy faction shall repent this rape.

BASSIANUS. Rape call you it, my lord, to seize my own, My true betrothed love, and now my wife? But let the laws of Rome determine all; Meanwhile am I possessed of that is mine.

SATURNINUS. ’Tis good, sir. You are very short with us; But if we live, we’ll be as sharp with you.

BASSIANUS. My lord, what I have done, as best I may, Answer I must, and shall do with my life. Only thus much I give your grace to know: By all the duties that I owe to Rome, This noble gentleman, Lord Titus here, Is in opinion and in honour wronged, That, in the rescue of Lavinia, With his own hand did slay his youngest son, In zeal to you, and highly moved to wrath To be controlled in that he frankly gave. Receive him then to favour, Saturnine, That hath expressed himself in all his deeds A father and a friend to thee and Rome.

TITUS. Prince Bassianus, leave to plead my deeds. ’Tis thou, and those, that have dishonoured me. Rome and the righteous heavens be my judge How I have loved and honoured Saturnine.

TAMORA. My worthy lord, if ever Tamora Were gracious in those princely eyes of thine, Then hear me speak indifferently for all; And at my suit, sweet, pardon what is past.

SATURNINUS. What, madam, be dishonoured openly, And basely put it up without revenge?

TAMORA. Not so, my lord; the gods of Rome forfend I should be author to dishonour you! But on mine honour dare I undertake For good Lord Titus’ innocence in all, Whose fury not dissembled speaks his griefs. Then at my suit look graciously on him; Lose not so noble a friend on vain suppose, Nor with sour looks afflict his gentle heart. [Aside.] My lord, be ruled by me, be won at last; Dissemble all your griefs and discontents. You are but newly planted in your throne; Lest, then, the people, and patricians too, Upon a just survey take Titus’ part, And so supplant you for ingratitude, Which Rome reputes to be a heinous sin, Yield at entreats, and then let me alone. I’ll find a day to massacre them all, And raze their faction and their family, The cruel father and his traitorous sons, To whom I sued for my dear son’s life; And make them know what ’tis to let a queen Kneel in the streets and beg for grace in vain. [Aloud.] Come, come, sweet emperor; come, Andronicus; Take up this good old man, and cheer the heart That dies in tempest of thy angry frown.

SATURNINUS. Rise, Titus, rise; my empress hath prevailed.

TITUS. I thank your majesty and her, my lord. These words, these looks, infuse new life in me.

TAMORA. Titus, I am incorporate in Rome, A Roman now adopted happily, And must advise the emperor for his good. This day all quarrels die, Andronicus; And let it be mine honour, good my lord, That I have reconciled your friends and you. For you, Prince Bassianus, I have passed My word and promise to the emperor That you will be more mild and tractable. And fear not, lords, and you, Lavinia. By my advice, all humbled on your knees, You shall ask pardon of his majesty.

LUCIUS. We do, and vow to heaven and to his highness That what we did was mildly as we might, Tend’ring our sister’s honour and our own.

MARCUS. That on mine honour here do I protest.

SATURNINUS. Away, and talk not; trouble us no more.

TAMORA. Nay, nay, sweet emperor, we must all be friends. The tribune and his nephews kneel for grace; I will not be denied. Sweet heart, look back.

SATURNINUS. Marcus, for thy sake, and thy brother’s here, And at my lovely Tamora’s entreats, I do remit these young men’s heinous faults. Stand up. Lavinia, though you left me like a churl, I found a friend, and sure as death I swore I would not part a bachelor from the priest. Come, if the emperor’s court can feast two brides, You are my guest, Lavinia, and your friends. This day shall be a love-day, Tamora.

TITUS. Tomorrow, an it please your majesty To hunt the panther and the hart with me, With horn and hound we’ll give your grace bonjour.

SATURNINUS. Be it so, Titus, and gramercy too.

[Sound trumpets. Exeunt all but Aaron.]

SCENE I. Rome. Before the palace

Aaron alone.

AARON. Now climbeth Tamora Olympus’ top, Safe out of Fortune’s shot, and sits aloft, Secure of thunder’s crack or lightning’s flash, Advanced above pale envy’s threat’ning reach. As when the golden sun salutes the morn, And, having gilt the ocean with his beams, Gallops the zodiac in his glistening coach, And overlooks the highest-peering hills; So Tamora. Upon her wit doth earthly honour wait, And virtue stoops and trembles at her frown. Then, Aaron, arm thy heart and fit thy thoughts To mount aloft with thy imperial mistress, And mount her pitch, whom thou in triumph long Hast prisoner held, fett’red in amorous chains, And faster bound to Aaron’s charming eyes Than is Prometheus tied to Caucasus. Away with slavish weeds and servile thoughts! I will be bright, and shine in pearl and gold, To wait upon this new-made empress. To wait, said I? To wanton with this queen, This goddess, this Semiramis, this nymph, This siren, that will charm Rome’s Saturnine, And see his shipwrack and his commonweal’s. Holla! What storm is this?

Enter Chiron and Demetrius braving.

DEMETRIUS. Chiron, thy years wants wit, thy wit wants edge And manners, to intrude where I am graced, And may, for aught thou knowest, affected be.

CHIRON. Demetrius, thou dost overween in all, And so in this, to bear me down with braves. ’Tis not the difference of a year or two Makes me less gracious or thee more fortunate. I am as able and as fit as thou To serve and to deserve my mistress’ grace; And that my sword upon thee shall approve, And plead my passions for Lavinia’s love.

AARON. [Aside.] Clubs, clubs! These lovers will not keep the peace.

DEMETRIUS. Why, boy, although our mother, unadvised, Gave you a dancing-rapier by your side, Are you so desperate grown to threat your friends? Go to; have your lath glued within your sheath Till you know better how to handle it.

CHIRON. Meanwhile, sir, with the little skill I have, Full well shalt thou perceive how much I dare.

DEMETRIUS. Ay, boy, grow ye so brave?

AARON. Why, how now, lords! So near the emperor’s palace dare ye draw, And maintain such a quarrel openly? Full well I wot the ground of all this grudge. I would not for a million of gold The cause were known to them it most concerns; Nor would your noble mother for much more Be so dishonoured in the court of Rome. For shame, put up.

DEMETRIUS. Not I, till I have sheathed My rapier in his bosom, and withal Thrust those reproachful speeches down his throat That he hath breathed in my dishonour here.

CHIRON. For that I am prepared and full resolved, Foul-spoken coward, that thund’rest with thy tongue, And with thy weapon nothing dar’st perform.

AARON. Away, I say! Now, by the gods that warlike Goths adore, This pretty brabble will undo us all. Why, lords, and think you not how dangerous It is to jet upon a prince’s right? What, is Lavinia then become so loose, Or Bassianus so degenerate, That for her love such quarrels may be broached Without controlment, justice, or revenge? Young lords, beware! And should the empress know This discord’s ground, the music would not please.

CHIRON. I care not, I, knew she and all the world. I love Lavinia more than all the world.

DEMETRIUS. Youngling, learn thou to make some meaner choice. Lavina is thine elder brother’s hope.

AARON. Why, are ye mad? Or know ye not in Rome How furious and impatient they be, And cannot brook competitors in love? I tell you, lords, you do but plot your deaths By this device.

CHIRON. Aaron, a thousand deaths Would I propose to achieve her whom I love.

AARON. To achieve her! How?

DEMETRIUS. Why makes thou it so strange? She is a woman, therefore may be wooed; She is a woman, therefore may be won; She is Lavinia, therefore must be loved. What, man, more water glideth by the mill Than wots the miller of; and easy it is Of a cut loaf to steal a shive, we know. Though Bassianus be the emperor’s brother, Better than he have worn Vulcan’s badge.

AARON. [Aside.] Ay, and as good as Saturninus may.

DEMETRIUS. Then why should he despair that knows to court it With words, fair looks, and liberality? What, hast not thou full often struck a doe, And borne her cleanly by the keeper’s nose?

AARON. Why, then, it seems some certain snatch or so Would serve your turns.

CHIRON. Ay, so the turn were served.

DEMETRIUS. Aaron, thou hast hit it.

AARON. Would you had hit it too! Then should not we be tired with this ado. Why, hark ye, hark ye, and are you such fools To square for this? Would it offend you then That both should speed?

CHIRON. Faith, not me.

DEMETRIUS. Nor me, so I were one.

AARON. For shame, be friends, and join for that you jar. ’Tis policy and stratagem must do That you affect; and so must you resolve That what you cannot as you would achieve, You must perforce accomplish as you may. Take this of me: Lucrece was not more chaste Than this Lavinia, Bassianus’ love. A speedier course than ling’ring languishment Must we pursue, and I have found the path. My lords, a solemn hunting is in hand; There will the lovely Roman ladies troop. The forest walks are wide and spacious, And many unfrequented plots there are Fitted by kind for rape and villainy. Single you thither, then, this dainty doe, And strike her home by force, if not by words. This way, or not at all, stand you in hope. Come, come, our empress, with her sacred wit To villainy and vengeance consecrate, Will we acquaint with all what we intend; And she shall file our engines with advice That will not suffer you to square yourselves, But to your wishes’ height advance you both. The emperor’s court is like the house of Fame, The palace full of tongues, of eyes and ears; The woods are ruthless, dreadful, deaf, and dull. There speak and strike, brave boys, and take your turns; There serve your lust, shadowed from heaven’s eye, And revel in Lavinia’s treasury.

CHIRON. Thy counsel, lad, smells of no cowardice.

DEMETRIUS. Sit fas aut nefas, till I find the stream To cool this heat, a charm to calm these fits, Per Stygia, per manes vehor.

SCENE II. A Forest near Rome; a Lodge seen at a distance. Horns and cry of hounds heard

Enter Titus Andronicus and his three sons, and Marcus, making a noise with hounds and horns.

TITUS. The hunt is up, the morn is bright and grey, The fields are fragrant, and the woods are green. Uncouple here, and let us make a bay, And wake the emperor and his lovely bride, And rouse the prince, and ring a hunter’s peal, That all the court may echo with the noise. Sons, let it be your charge, as it is ours, To attend the emperor’s person carefully. I have been troubled in my sleep this night, But dawning day new comfort hath inspired.

Here a cry of hounds, and wind horns in a peal. Then enter Saturninus, Tamora, Bassianus, Lavinia, Chiron, Demetrius, and their Attendants.

Many good morrows to your majesty; Madam, to you as many and as good. I promised your grace a hunter’s peal.

SATURNINUS. And you have rung it lustily, my lords; Somewhat too early for new-married ladies.

BASSIANUS. Lavinia, how say you?

LAVINIA. I say no; I have been broad awake two hours and more.

SATURNINUS. Come on then; horse and chariots let us have, And to our sport. [To Tamora.] Madam, now shall ye see Our Roman hunting.

MARCUS. I have dogs, my lord, Will rouse the proudest panther in the chase, And climb the highest promontory top.

TITUS. And I have horse will follow where the game Makes way, and run like swallows o’er the plain.

DEMETRIUS. Chiron, we hunt not, we, with horse nor hound, But hope to pluck a dainty doe to ground.

SCENE III. A lonely part of the Forest

Enter Aaron, alone, carrying a bag of gold.

AARON. He that had wit would think that I had none, To bury so much gold under a tree, And never after to inherit it. Let him that thinks of me so abjectly Know that this gold must coin a stratagem, Which, cunningly effected, will beget A very excellent piece of villainy. And so repose, sweet gold, for their unrest That have their alms out of the empress’ chest.

[He hides the bag.]

Enter Tamora alone to the Moor.

TAMORA. My lovely Aaron, wherefore look’st thou sad When everything doth make a gleeful boast? The birds chant melody on every bush, The snakes lie rolled in the cheerful sun, The green leaves quiver with the cooling wind, And make a chequered shadow on the ground. Under their sweet shade, Aaron, let us sit, And whilst the babbling echo mocks the hounds, Replying shrilly to the well-tuned horns, As if a double hunt were heard at once, Let us sit down and mark their yelping noise; And after conflict such as was supposed The wand’ring prince and Dido once enjoyed, When with a happy storm they were surprised, And curtained with a counsel-keeping cave, We may, each wreathed in the other’s arms, Our pastimes done, possess a golden slumber, Whiles hounds and horns and sweet melodious birds Be unto us as is a nurse’s song Of lullaby to bring her babe asleep.

AARON. Madam, though Venus govern your desires, Saturn is dominator over mine. What signifies my deadly-standing eye, My silence and my cloudy melancholy, My fleece of woolly hair that now uncurls Even as an adder when she doth unroll To do some fatal execution? No, madam, these are no venereal signs. Vengeance is in my heart, death in my hand, Blood and revenge are hammering in my head. Hark, Tamora, the empress of my soul, Which never hopes more heaven than rests in thee, This is the day of doom for Bassianus; His Philomel must lose her tongue today, Thy sons make pillage of her chastity, And wash their hands in Bassianus’ blood. Seest thou this letter? Take it up, I pray thee, And give the king this fatal-plotted scroll. Now question me no more; we are espied; Here comes a parcel of our hopeful booty, Which dreads not yet their lives’ destruction.

Enter Bassianus and Lavinia.

TAMORA. Ah, my sweet Moor, sweeter to me than life!

AARON. No more, great empress. Bassianus comes. Be cross with him; and I’ll go fetch thy sons To back thy quarrels, whatsoe’er they be.

BASSIANUS. Who have we here? Rome’s royal empress, Unfurnished of her well-beseeming troop? Or is it Dian, habited like her, Who hath abandoned her holy groves To see the general hunting in this forest?

TAMORA. Saucy controller of my private steps! Had I the power that some say Dian had, Thy temples should be planted presently With horns, as was Actaeon’s; and the hounds Should drive upon thy new-transformed limbs, Unmannerly intruder as thou art.

LAVINIA. Under your patience, gentle empress, ’Tis thought you have a goodly gift in horning, And to be doubted that your Moor and you Are singled forth to try experiments. Jove shield your husband from his hounds today! ’Tis pity they should take him for a stag.

BASSIANUS. Believe me, queen, your swarthy Cimmerian Doth make your honour of his body’s hue, Spotted, detested, and abominable. Why are you sequestered from all your train, Dismounted from your snow-white goodly steed, And wandered hither to an obscure plot, Accompanied but with a barbarous Moor, If foul desire had not conducted you?

LAVINIA. And, being intercepted in your sport, Great reason that my noble lord be rated For sauciness. I pray you, let us hence, And let her joy her raven-coloured love; This valley fits the purpose passing well.

BASSIANUS. The king my brother shall have notice of this.

LAVINIA. Ay, for these slips have made him noted long. Good king, to be so mightily abused!

TAMORA. Why, I have patience to endure all this.

Enter Chiron and Demetrius.

DEMETRIUS. How now, dear sovereign, and our gracious mother! Why doth your highness look so pale and wan?

TAMORA. Have I not reason, think you, to look pale? These two have ticed me hither to this place, A barren detested vale you see it is; The trees, though summer, yet forlorn and lean, Overcome with moss and baleful mistletoe. Here never shines the sun, here nothing breeds, Unless the nightly owl or fatal raven. And when they showed me this abhorred pit, They told me, here, at dead time of the night, A thousand fiends, a thousand hissing snakes, Ten thousand swelling toads, as many urchins, Would make such fearful and confused cries As any mortal body hearing it Should straight fall mad, or else die suddenly. No sooner had they told this hellish tale But straight they told me they would bind me here Unto the body of a dismal yew, And leave me to this miserable death. And then they called me foul adulteress, Lascivious Goth, and all the bitterest terms That ever ear did hear to such effect. And had you not by wondrous fortune come, This vengeance on me had they executed. Revenge it, as you love your mother’s life, Or be ye not henceforth called my children.

DEMETRIUS. This is a witness that I am thy son.

[Stabs Bassianus.]

CHIRON. And this for me, struck home to show my strength.

[Also stabs Bassianus, who dies.]

LAVINIA. Ay, come, Semiramis, nay, barbarous Tamora, For no name fits thy nature but thy own!

TAMORA. Give me thy poniard; you shall know, my boys, Your mother’s hand shall right your mother’s wrong.

DEMETRIUS. Stay, madam, here is more belongs to her. First thrash the corn, then after burn the straw. This minion stood upon her chastity, Upon her nuptial vow, her loyalty, And with that painted hope braves your mightiness; And shall she carry this unto her grave?

CHIRON. And if she do, I would I were an eunuch. Drag hence her husband to some secret hole, And make his dead trunk pillow to our lust.

TAMORA. But when ye have the honey ye desire, Let not this wasp outlive, us both to sting.

CHIRON. I warrant you, madam, we will make that sure. Come, mistress, now perforce we will enjoy That nice-preserved honesty of yours.

LAVINIA. O Tamora, thou bearest a woman’s face,—

TAMORA. I will not hear her speak; away with her!

LAVINIA. Sweet lords, entreat her hear me but a word.

DEMETRIUS. Listen, fair madam: let it be your glory To see her tears; but be your heart to them As unrelenting flint to drops of rain.

LAVINIA. When did the tiger’s young ones teach the dam? O, do not learn her wrath; she taught it thee; The milk thou suck’st from her did turn to marble; Even at thy teat thou hadst thy tyranny. Yet every mother breeds not sons alike. [To Chiron.] Do thou entreat her show a woman’s pity.

CHIRON. What, wouldst thou have me prove myself a bastard?

LAVINIA. ’Tis true the raven doth not hatch a lark. Yet have I heard—O, could I find it now!— The lion, moved with pity, did endure To have his princely paws pared all away. Some say that ravens foster forlorn children, The whilst their own birds famish in their nests. O, be to me, though thy hard heart say no, Nothing so kind, but something pitiful.

TAMORA. I know not what it means; away with her!

LAVINIA. O, let me teach thee! For my father’s sake, That gave thee life when well he might have slain thee, Be not obdurate, open thy deaf ears.

TAMORA. Hadst thou in person ne’er offended me, Even for his sake am I pitiless. Remember, boys, I poured forth tears in vain To save your brother from the sacrifice, But fierce Andronicus would not relent. Therefore away with her, and use her as you will; The worse to her, the better loved of me.

LAVINIA. O Tamora, be called a gentle queen, And with thine own hands kill me in this place! For ’tis not life that I have begged so long; Poor I was slain when Bassianus died.

TAMORA. What begg’st thou, then? Fond woman, let me go.

LAVINIA. ’Tis present death I beg; and one thing more That womanhood denies my tongue to tell. O, keep me from their worse than killing lust, And tumble me into some loathsome pit, Where never man’s eye may behold my body. Do this, and be a charitable murderer.

TAMORA. So should I rob my sweet sons of their fee. No, let them satisfy their lust on thee.

DEMETRIUS. Away, for thou hast stayed us here too long.

LAVINIA. No grace, no womanhood? Ah, beastly creature, The blot and enemy to our general name! Confusion fall—

CHIRON. Nay, then I’ll stop your mouth. Bring thou her husband. This is the hole where Aaron bid us hide him.

[They put Bassianus’s body in the pit and exit, carrying off Lavinia.]

TAMORA. Farewell, my sons. See that you make her sure. Ne’er let my heart know merry cheer indeed Till all the Andronici be made away. Now will I hence to seek my lovely Moor, And let my spleenful sons this trull deflower.

Enter Aaron with two of Titus’ sons, Quintus and Martius.

AARON. Come on, my lords, the better foot before. Straight will I bring you to the loathsome pit Where I espied the panther fast asleep.

QUINTUS. My sight is very dull, whate’er it bodes.

MARTIUS. And mine, I promise you. Were it not for shame, Well could I leave our sport to sleep awhile.

[He falls into the pit.]

QUINTUS. What, art thou fallen? What subtle hole is this, Whose mouth is covered with rude-growing briers, Upon whose leaves are drops of new-shed blood As fresh as morning dew distilled on flowers? A very fatal place it seems to me. Speak, brother, hast thou hurt thee with the fall?

MARTIUS. O brother, with the dismall’st object hurt That ever eye with sight made heart lament!

AARON. [Aside.] Now will I fetch the king to find them here, That he thereby may have a likely guess How these were they that made away his brother.

MARTIUS. Why dost not comfort me, and help me out From this unhallowed and blood-stained hole?

QUINTUS. I am surprised with an uncouth fear; A chilling sweat o’er-runs my trembling joints. My heart suspects more than mine eye can see.

MARTIUS. To prove thou hast a true-divining heart, Aaron and thou look down into this den, And see a fearful sight of blood and death.

QUINTUS. Aaron is gone, and my compassionate heart Will not permit mine eyes once to behold The thing whereat it trembles by surmise. O, tell me who it is; for ne’er till now Was I a child to fear I know not what.

MARTIUS. Lord Bassianus lies berayed in blood, All on a heap, like to a slaughtered lamb, In this detested, dark, blood-drinking pit.

QUINTUS. If it be dark, how dost thou know ’tis he?

MARTIUS. Upon his bloody finger he doth wear A precious ring that lightens all the hole, Which, like a taper in some monument, Doth shine upon the dead man’s earthy cheeks, And shows the ragged entrails of the pit. So pale did shine the moon on Pyramus When he by night lay bathed in maiden blood. O brother, help me with thy fainting hand, If fear hath made thee faint, as me it hath, Out of this fell devouring receptacle, As hateful as Cocytus’ misty mouth.

QUINTUS. Reach me thy hand, that I may help thee out, Or, wanting strength to do thee so much good, I may be plucked into the swallowing womb Of this deep pit, poor Bassianus’ grave. I have no strength to pluck thee to the brink.

MARTIUS. Nor I no strength to climb without thy help.

QUINTUS. Thy hand once more; I will not loose again, Till thou art here aloft, or I below. Thou canst not come to me. I come to thee.

[Falls in.]

Enter the Emperor Saturninus and Aaron the Moor.

SATURNINUS. Along with me! I’ll see what hole is here, And what he is that now is leapt into it. Say, who art thou that lately didst descend Into this gaping hollow of the earth?

MARTIUS. The unhappy sons of old Andronicus, Brought hither in a most unlucky hour, To find thy brother Bassianus dead.

SATURNINUS. My brother dead! I know thou dost but jest. He and his lady both are at the lodge Upon the north side of this pleasant chase; ’Tis not an hour since I left them there.

MARTIUS. We know not where you left them all alive; But, out, alas, here have we found him dead.

Enter Tamora, Titus Andronicus and Lucius.

TAMORA. Where is my lord the king?

SATURNINUS. Here, Tamora; though grieved with killing grief.

TAMORA. Where is thy brother Bassianus?

SATURNINUS. Now to the bottom dost thou search my wound. Poor Bassianus here lies murdered.

TAMORA. Then all too late I bring this fatal writ, The complot of this timeless tragedy; And wonder greatly that man’s face can fold In pleasing smiles such murderous tyranny.

[She giveth Saturnine a letter.]

SATURNINUS. [Reads.] An if we miss to meet him handsomely, Sweet huntsman, Bassianus ’tis we mean, Do thou so much as dig the grave for him; Thou know’st our meaning. Look for thy reward Among the nettles at the elder-tree Which overshades the mouth of that same pit Where we decreed to bury Bassianus. Do this, and purchase us thy lasting friends. O Tamora, was ever heard the like? This is the pit, and this the elder-tree. Look, sirs, if you can find the huntsman out That should have murdered Bassianus here.

AARON. My gracious lord, here is the bag of gold.

[Showing it.]

SATURNINUS. [To Titus.] Two of thy whelps, fell curs of bloody kind, Have here bereft my brother of his life. Sirs, drag them from the pit unto the prison. There let them bide until we have devised Some never-heard-of torturing pain for them.

TAMORA. What, are they in this pit? O wondrous thing! How easily murder is discovered!

TITUS. High emperor, upon my feeble knee I beg this boon, with tears not lightly shed, That this fell fault of my accursed sons, Accursed if the fault be proved in them—

SATURNINUS. If it be proved! You see it is apparent. Who found this letter? Tamora, was it you?

TAMORA. Andronicus himself did take it up.

TITUS. I did, my lord, yet let me be their bail; For by my fathers’ reverend tomb I vow They shall be ready at your highness’ will To answer their suspicion with their lives.

SATURNINUS. Thou shalt not bail them. See thou follow me. Some bring the murdered body, some the murderers. Let them not speak a word; the guilt is plain; For, by my soul, were there worse end than death, That end upon them should be executed.

TAMORA. Andronicus, I will entreat the king. Fear not thy sons; they shall do well enough.

TITUS. Come, Lucius, come; stay not to talk with them.

[Exeunt severally. Attendants bearing the body.]

Enter the empress’ sons, Demetrius and Chiron with Lavinia, her hands cut off, and her tongue cut out, and ravished.

DEMETRIUS. So, now go tell, an if thy tongue can speak, Who ’twas that cut thy tongue and ravished thee.

CHIRON. Write down thy mind, bewray thy meaning so, An if thy stumps will let thee play the scribe.

DEMETRIUS. See how with signs and tokens she can scrowl.

CHIRON. Go home, call for sweet water, wash thy hands.

DEMETRIUS. She hath no tongue to call, nor hands to wash; And so let’s leave her to her silent walks.

CHIRON. An ’twere my cause, I should go hang myself.

DEMETRIUS. If thou hadst hands to help thee knit the cord.

[Exeunt Chiron and Demetrius.]

Enter Marcus, from hunting.

MARCUS. Who is this? My niece, that flies away so fast? Cousin, a word; where is your husband? If I do dream, would all my wealth would wake me! If I do wake, some planet strike me down, That I may slumber an eternal sleep! Speak, gentle niece, what stern ungentle hands Hath lopped and hewed and made thy body bare Of her two branches, those sweet ornaments Whose circling shadows kings have sought to sleep in, And might not gain so great a happiness As half thy love? Why dost not speak to me? Alas, a crimson river of warm blood, Like to a bubbling fountain stirred with wind, Doth rise and fall between thy rosed lips, Coming and going with thy honey breath. But sure some Tereus hath deflowered thee, And, lest thou shouldst detect him, cut thy tongue. Ah, now thou turn’st away thy face for shame, And notwithstanding all this loss of blood, As from a conduit with three issuing spouts, Yet do thy cheeks look red as Titan’s face Blushing to be encountered with a cloud. Shall I speak for thee, shall I say ’tis so? O, that I knew thy heart, and knew the beast, That I might rail at him to ease my mind. Sorrow concealed, like an oven stopped, Doth burn the heart to cinders where it is. Fair Philomela, why she but lost her tongue, And in a tedious sampler sewed her mind; But, lovely niece, that mean is cut from thee; A craftier Tereus, cousin, hast thou met, And he hath cut those pretty fingers off That could have better sewed than Philomel. O, had the monster seen those lily hands Tremble like aspen leaves upon a lute, And make the silken strings delight to kiss them, He would not then have touched them for his life. Or had he heard the heavenly harmony Which that sweet tongue hath made, He would have dropped his knife, and fell asleep, As Cerberus at the Thracian poet’s feet. Come, let us go, and make thy father blind, For such a sight will blind a father’s eye. One hour’s storm will drown the fragrant meads; What will whole months of tears thy father’s eyes? Do not draw back, for we will mourn with thee. O, could our mourning ease thy misery!

Enter the Judges and Senators, with Titus’ two sons Quintus and Martius bound, passing on the stage to the place of execution, and Titus going before, pleading.

TITUS. Hear me, grave fathers; noble tribunes, stay! For pity of mine age, whose youth was spent In dangerous wars whilst you securely slept; For all my blood in Rome’s great quarrel shed, For all the frosty nights that I have watched, And for these bitter tears, which now you see Filling the aged wrinkles in my cheeks, Be pitiful to my condemned sons, Whose souls are not corrupted as ’tis thought. For two and twenty sons I never wept, Because they died in honour’s lofty bed.

[Andronicus lieth down, and the Judges pass by him.]

[Exeunt with the prisoners as Titus continues speaking.]

For these, tribunes, in the dust I write My heart’s deep languor and my soul’s sad tears. Let my tears staunch the earth’s dry appetite; My sons’ sweet blood will make it shame and blush. O earth, I will befriend thee more with rain That shall distil from these two ancient urns, Than youthful April shall with all his showers. In summer’s drought I’ll drop upon thee still; In winter with warm tears I’ll melt the snow, And keep eternal spring-time on thy face, So thou refuse to drink my dear sons’ blood.

Enter Lucius with his weapon drawn.

O reverend tribunes! O gentle aged men! Unbind my sons, reverse the doom of death; And let me say, that never wept before, My tears are now prevailing orators.

LUCIUS. O noble father, you lament in vain. The tribunes hear you not, no man is by; And you recount your sorrows to a stone.

TITUS. Ah, Lucius, for thy brothers let me plead. Grave tribunes, once more I entreat of you—

LUCIUS. My gracious lord, no tribune hears you speak.

TITUS. Why, ’tis no matter, man. If they did hear, They would not mark me; if they did mark, They would not pity me, yet plead I must, And bootless unto them. Therefore I tell my sorrows to the stones, Who, though they cannot answer my distress, Yet in some sort they are better than the tribunes, For that they will not intercept my tale. When I do weep, they humbly at my feet Receive my tears, and seem to weep with me; And were they but attired in grave weeds, Rome could afford no tribunes like to these. A stone is soft as wax, tribunes more hard than stones; A stone is silent, and offendeth not, And tribunes with their tongues doom men to death. But wherefore stand’st thou with thy weapon drawn?

LUCIUS. To rescue my two brothers from their death; For which attempt the judges have pronounced My everlasting doom of banishment.

TITUS. O happy man, they have befriended thee. Why, foolish Lucius, dost thou not perceive That Rome is but a wilderness of tigers? Tigers must prey, and Rome affords no prey But me and mine. How happy art thou then, From these devourers to be banished! But who comes with our brother Marcus here?

Enter Marcus with Lavinia.

MARCUS. Titus, prepare thy aged eyes to weep; Or if not so, thy noble heart to break. I bring consuming sorrow to thine age.

TITUS. Will it consume me? Let me see it then.

MARCUS. This was thy daughter.

TITUS. Why, Marcus, so she is.

LUCIUS. Ay me, this object kills me!

TITUS. Faint-hearted boy, arise, and look upon her. Speak, Lavinia, what accursed hand Hath made thee handless in thy father’s sight? What fool hath added water to the sea, Or brought a faggot to bright-burning Troy? My grief was at the height before thou cam’st, And now like Nilus it disdaineth bounds. Give me a sword, I’ll chop off my hands too; For they have fought for Rome, and all in vain; And they have nursed this woe in feeding life; In bootless prayer have they been held up, And they have served me to effectless use. Now all the service I require of them Is that the one will help to cut the other. ’Tis well, Lavinia, that thou hast no hands, For hands to do Rome service is but vain.

LUCIUS. Speak, gentle sister, who hath martyred thee?

MARCUS. O, that delightful engine of her thoughts, That blabbed them with such pleasing eloquence, Is torn from forth that pretty hollow cage, Where, like a sweet melodious bird, it sung Sweet varied notes, enchanting every ear.

LUCIUS. O, say thou for her, who hath done this deed?

MARCUS. O, thus I found her straying in the park, Seeking to hide herself, as doth the deer That hath received some unrecuring wound.

TITUS. It was my dear, and he that wounded her Hath hurt me more than had he killed me dead. For now I stand as one upon a rock, Environed with a wilderness of sea, Who marks the waxing tide grow wave by wave, Expecting ever when some envious surge Will in his brinish bowels swallow him. This way to death my wretched sons are gone; Here stands my other son, a banished man, And here my brother, weeping at my woes. But that which gives my soul the greatest spurn Is dear Lavinia, dearer than my soul. Had I but seen thy picture in this plight It would have madded me. What shall I do Now I behold thy lively body so? Thou hast no hands to wipe away thy tears, Nor tongue to tell me who hath martyred thee. Thy husband he is dead, and for his death Thy brothers are condemned, and dead by this. Look, Marcus! Ah, son Lucius, look on her! When I did name her brothers, then fresh tears Stood on her cheeks, as doth the honey-dew Upon a gathered lily almost withered.

MARCUS. Perchance she weeps because they killed her husband; Perchance because she knows them innocent.

TITUS. If they did kill thy husband, then be joyful, Because the law hath ta’en revenge on them. No, no, they would not do so foul a deed; Witness the sorrow that their sister makes. Gentle Lavinia, let me kiss thy lips, Or make some sign how I may do thee ease. Shall thy good uncle, and thy brother Lucius, And thou, and I, sit round about some fountain, Looking all downwards to behold our cheeks How they are stained, like meadows yet not dry, With miry slime left on them by a flood? And in the fountain shall we gaze so long Till the fresh taste be taken from that clearness, And made a brine-pit with our bitter tears? Or shall we cut away our hands like thine? Or shall we bite our tongues, and in dumb shows Pass the remainder of our hateful days? What shall we do? Let us that have our tongues Plot some device of further misery, To make us wondered at in time to come.

LUCIUS. Sweet father, cease your tears; for at your grief See how my wretched sister sobs and weeps.

MARCUS. Patience, dear niece. Good Titus, dry thine eyes.

TITUS. Ah, Marcus, Marcus! Brother, well I wot Thy napkin cannot drink a tear of mine, For thou, poor man, hast drowned it with thine own.

LUCIUS. Ah, my Lavinia, I will wipe thy cheeks.

TITUS. Mark, Marcus, mark! I understand her signs. Had she a tongue to speak, now would she say That to her brother which I said to thee. His napkin, with his true tears all bewet, Can do no service on her sorrowful cheeks. O, what a sympathy of woe is this, As far from help as limbo is from bliss.

Enter Aaron the Moor, alone.

AARON. Titus Andronicus, my lord the emperor Sends thee this word, that, if thou love thy sons, Let Marcus, Lucius, or thyself, old Titus, Or any one of you, chop off your hand And send it to the king; he for the same Will send thee hither both thy sons alive, And that shall be the ransom for their fault.

TITUS. O gracious emperor! O gentle Aaron! Did ever raven sing so like a lark That gives sweet tidings of the sun’s uprise? With all my heart I’ll send the emperor my hand. Good Aaron, wilt thou help to chop it off?

LUCIUS. Stay, father, for that noble hand of thine, That hath thrown down so many enemies, Shall not be sent. My hand will serve the turn. My youth can better spare my blood than you; And therefore mine shall save my brothers’ lives.

MARCUS. Which of your hands hath not defended Rome, And reared aloft the bloody battle-axe, Writing destruction on the enemy’s castle? O, none of both but are of high desert. My hand hath been but idle; let it serve To ransom my two nephews from their death; Then have I kept it to a worthy end.

AARON. Nay, come, agree whose hand shall go along, For fear they die before their pardon come.

MARCUS. My hand shall go.

LUCIUS. By heaven, it shall not go!

TITUS. Sirs, strive no more. Such withered herbs as these Are meet for plucking up, and therefore mine.

LUCIUS. Sweet father, if I shall be thought thy son, Let me redeem my brothers both from death.

MARCUS. And for our father’s sake and mother’s care, Now let me show a brother’s love to thee.

TITUS. Agree between you; I will spare my hand.

LUCIUS. Then I’ll go fetch an axe.

MARCUS. But I will use the axe.

[Exeunt Lucius and Marcus.]

TITUS. Come hither, Aaron; I’ll deceive them both. Lend me thy hand, and I will give thee mine.

AARON. [Aside.] If that be called deceit, I will be honest, And never whilst I live deceive men so. But I’ll deceive you in another sort, And that you’ll say ere half an hour pass.

[He cuts off Titus’s hand.]

Enter Lucius and Marcus again.

TITUS. Now stay your strife. What shall be is dispatched. Good Aaron, give his majesty my hand. Tell him it was a hand that warded him From thousand dangers, bid him bury it; More hath it merited, that let it have. As for my sons, say I account of them As jewels purchased at an easy price; And yet dear too, because I bought mine own.

AARON. I go, Andronicus; and for thy hand Look by and by to have thy sons with thee. [Aside.] Their heads, I mean. O, how this villainy Doth fat me with the very thoughts of it! Let fools do good, and fair men call for grace, Aaron will have his soul black like his face.

TITUS. O, here I lift this one hand up to heaven, And bow this feeble ruin to the earth. If any power pities wretched tears, To that I call! [To Lavinia.] What, wouldst thou kneel with me? Do, then, dear heart; for heaven shall hear our prayers, Or with our sighs we’ll breathe the welkin dim, And stain the sun with fog, as sometime clouds When they do hug him in their melting bosoms.

MARCUS. O brother, speak with possibility, And do not break into these deep extremes.

TITUS. Is not my sorrow deep, having no bottom? Then be my passions bottomless with them.

MARCUS. But yet let reason govern thy lament.

TITUS. If there were reason for these miseries, Then into limits could I bind my woes. When heaven doth weep, doth not the earth o’erflow? If the winds rage, doth not the sea wax mad, Threatening the welkin with his big-swol’n face? And wilt thou have a reason for this coil? I am the sea. Hark how her sighs doth flow! She is the weeping welkin, I the earth. Then must my sea be moved with her sighs; Then must my earth with her continual tears Become a deluge, overflowed and drowned; For why my bowels cannot hide her woes, But like a drunkard must I vomit them. Then give me leave, for losers will have leave To ease their stomachs with their bitter tongues.

Enter a Messenger with two heads and a hand.

MESSENGER. Worthy Andronicus, ill art thou repaid For that good hand thou sent’st the emperor. Here are the heads of thy two noble sons, And here’s thy hand, in scorn to thee sent back. Thy grief their sports, thy resolution mocked; That woe is me to think upon thy woes, More than remembrance of my father’s death.

MARCUS. Now let hot Etna cool in Sicily, And be my heart an ever-burning hell! These miseries are more than may be borne. To weep with them that weep doth ease some deal, But sorrow flouted at is double death.

LUCIUS. Ah, that this sight should make so deep a wound, And yet detested life not shrink thereat! That ever death should let life bear his name, Where life hath no more interest but to breathe!

[Lavinia kisses Titus.]

MARCUS. Alas, poor heart, that kiss is comfortless As frozen water to a starved snake.

TITUS. When will this fearful slumber have an end?

MARCUS. Now farewell, flattery; die, Andronicus; Thou dost not slumber. See thy two sons’ heads, Thy warlike hand, thy mangled daughter here; Thy other banished son with this dear sight Struck pale and bloodless; and thy brother, I, Even like a stony image, cold and numb. Ah, now no more will I control thy griefs. Rent off thy silver hair, thy other hand Gnawing with thy teeth; and be this dismal sight The closing up of our most wretched eyes. Now is a time to storm; why art thou still?

TITUS. Ha, ha, ha!

MARCUS. Why dost thou laugh? It fits not with this hour.

TITUS. Why, I have not another tear to shed. Besides, this sorrow is an enemy, And would usurp upon my watery eyes, And make them blind with tributary tears. Then which way shall I find Revenge’s cave? For these two heads do seem to speak to me, And threat me I shall never come to bliss Till all these mischiefs be returned again Even in their throats that have committed them. Come, let me see what task I have to do. You heavy people, circle me about, That I may turn me to each one of you, And swear unto my soul to right your wrongs. The vow is made. Come, brother, take a head; And in this hand the other will I bear. And, Lavinia, thou shalt be employed in these arms. Bear thou my hand, sweet wench, between thy teeth. As for thee, boy, go, get thee from my sight; Thou art an exile, and thou must not stay. Hie to the Goths, and raise an army there. And if you love me, as I think you do, Let’s kiss and part, for we have much to do.

[Exeunt Titus, Marcus and Lavinia.]

LUCIUS. Farewell, Andronicus, my noble father, The woefull’st man that ever lived in Rome. Farewell, proud Rome, till Lucius come again; He loves his pledges dearer than his life. Farewell, Lavinia, my noble sister; O, would thou wert as thou tofore hast been! But now nor Lucius nor Lavinia lives But in oblivion and hateful griefs. If Lucius live, he will requite your wrongs, And make proud Saturnine and his empress Beg at the gates, like Tarquin and his queen. Now will I to the Goths, and raise a power To be revenged on Rome and Saturnine.

SCENE II. Rome. A Room in Titus’s House. A banquet set out

Enter Titus Andronicus, Marcus, Lavinia and the boy Young Lucius.

TITUS. So so; now sit; and look you eat no more Than will preserve just so much strength in us As will revenge these bitter woes of ours. Marcus, unknit that sorrow-wreathen knot. Thy niece and I, poor creatures, want our hands, And cannot passionate our tenfold grief With folded arms. This poor right hand of mine Is left to tyrannize upon my breast; Who when my heart, all mad with misery, Beats in this hollow prison of my flesh, Then thus I thump it down. Thou map of woe, that thus dost talk in signs, When thy poor heart beats with outrageous beating, Thou canst not strike it thus to make it still. Wound it with sighing, girl, kill it with groans; Or get some little knife between thy teeth, And just against thy heart make thou a hole, That all the tears that thy poor eyes let fall May run into that sink, and, soaking in, Drown the lamenting fool in sea-salt tears.

MARCUS. Fie, brother, fie! Teach her not thus to lay Such violent hands upon her tender life.

TITUS. How now! Has sorrow made thee dote already? Why, Marcus, no man should be mad but I. What violent hands can she lay on her life? Ah, wherefore dost thou urge the name of hands, To bid Æneas tell the tale twice o’er How Troy was burnt and he made miserable? O, handle not the theme, to talk of hands, Lest we remember still that we have none. Fie, fie, how frantically I square my talk, As if we should forget we had no hands, If Marcus did not name the word of hands! Come, let’s fall to; and, gentle girl, eat this. Here is no drink! Hark, Marcus, what she says; I can interpret all her martyred signs. She says she drinks no other drink but tears, Brewed with her sorrow, meshed upon her cheeks. Speechless complainer, I will learn thy thought; In thy dumb action will I be as perfect As begging hermits in their holy prayers. Thou shalt not sigh, nor hold thy stumps to heaven, Nor wink, nor nod, nor kneel, nor make a sign, But I of these will wrest an alphabet, And by still practice learn to know thy meaning.

YOUNG LUCIUS. Good grandsire, leave these bitter deep laments. Make my aunt merry with some pleasing tale.

MARCUS. Alas, the tender boy, in passion moved, Doth weep to see his grandsire’s heaviness.

TITUS. Peace, tender sapling; thou art made of tears, And tears will quickly melt thy life away.

[Marcus strikes the dish with a knife.]

What dost thou strike at, Marcus, with thy knife?

MARCUS. At that that I have killed, my lord, a fly.

TITUS. Out on thee, murderer! Thou kill’st my heart; Mine eyes are cloyed with view of tyranny; A deed of death done on the innocent Becomes not Titus’ brother. Get thee gone; I see thou art not for my company.

MARCUS. Alas, my lord, I have but killed a fly.

TITUS. “But”? How if that fly had a father and mother? How would he hang his slender gilded wings And buzz lamenting doings in the air! Poor harmless fly, That with his pretty buzzing melody, Came here to make us merry, and thou hast killed him.

MARCUS. Pardon me, sir; ’twas a black ill-favoured fly, Like to the empress’ Moor; therefore I killed him.

TITUS. O, O, O! Then pardon me for reprehending thee, For thou hast done a charitable deed. Give me thy knife, I will insult on him, Flattering myself as if it were the Moor Come hither purposely to poison me. There’s for thyself, and that’s for Tamora. Ah, sirrah! Yet, I think, we are not brought so low But that between us we can kill a fly That comes in likeness of a coal-black Moor.

MARCUS. Alas, poor man, grief has so wrought on him, He takes false shadows for true substances.

TITUS. Come, take away. Lavinia, go with me. I’ll to thy closet, and go read with thee Sad stories chanced in the times of old. Come, boy, and go with me. Thy sight is young, And thou shalt read when mine begin to dazzle.

SCENE I. Rome. Before Titus’s House

Enter Young Lucius and Lavinia running after him, and the boy flies from her with his books under his arm. Enter Titus and Marcus.

YOUNG LUCIUS. Help, grandsire, help! My aunt Lavinia Follows me everywhere, I know not why. Good uncle Marcus, see how swift she comes! Alas, sweet aunt, I know not what you mean.

MARCUS. Stand by me, Lucius. Do not fear thine aunt.

TITUS. She loves thee, boy, too well to do thee harm.

YOUNG LUCIUS Ay, when my father was in Rome she did.

MARCUS. What means my niece Lavinia by these signs?

TITUS. Fear her not, Lucius. Somewhat doth she mean. See, Lucius, see how much she makes of thee. Somewhither would she have thee go with her. Ah, boy, Cornelia never with more care Read to her sons than she hath read to thee Sweet poetry and Tully’s Orator.

MARCUS. Canst thou not guess wherefore she plies thee thus?

YOUNG LUCIUS. My lord, I know not, I, nor can I guess, Unless some fit or frenzy do possess her; For I have heard my grandsire say full oft, Extremity of griefs would make men mad; And I have read that Hecuba of Troy Ran mad for sorrow. That made me to fear, Although, my lord, I know my noble aunt Loves me as dear as e’er my mother did, And would not, but in fury, fright my youth; Which made me down to throw my books, and fly, Causeless, perhaps. But pardon me, sweet aunt. And, madam, if my uncle Marcus go, I will most willingly attend your ladyship.

MARCUS. Lucius, I will.

[Lavinia turns over with her stumps the books which Lucius has let fall.]

TITUS. How now, Lavinia? Marcus, what means this? Some book there is that she desires to see. Which is it, girl, of these? Open them, boy. But thou art deeper read and better skilled. Come and take choice of all my library, And so beguile thy sorrow, till the heavens Reveal the damned contriver of this deed. Why lifts she up her arms in sequence thus?

MARCUS. I think she means that there were more than one Confederate in the fact. Ay, more there was, Or else to heaven she heaves them for revenge.

TITUS. Lucius, what book is that she tosseth so?

YOUNG LUCIUS. Grandsire, ’tis Ovid’s Metamorphosis. My mother gave it me.

MARCUS. For love of her that’s gone, Perhaps, she culled it from among the rest.

TITUS. Soft! So busily she turns the leaves! Help her! What would she find? Lavinia, shall I read? This is the tragic tale of Philomel, And treats of Tereus’ treason and his rape; And rape, I fear, was root of thy annoy.

MARCUS. See, brother, see! Note how she quotes the leaves.

TITUS. Lavinia, wert thou thus surprised, sweet girl, Ravished and wronged, as Philomela was, Forced in the ruthless, vast, and gloomy woods? See, see! Ay, such a place there is where we did hunt,— O, had we never, never hunted there!— Patterned by that the poet here describes, By nature made for murders and for rapes.

MARCUS. O, why should nature build so foul a den, Unless the gods delight in tragedies?

TITUS. Give signs, sweet girl, for here are none but friends, What Roman lord it was durst do the deed. Or slunk not Saturnine, as Tarquin erst, That left the camp to sin in Lucrece’ bed?

MARCUS. Sit down, sweet niece. Brother, sit down by me. Apollo, Pallas, Jove, or Mercury, Inspire me, that I may this treason find! My lord, look here. Look here, Lavinia. This sandy plot is plain; guide, if thou canst, This after me. I have writ my name

[He writes his name with his staff and guides it with feet and mouth.]

Without the help of any hand at all. Cursed be that heart that forced us to this shift! Write thou, good niece, and here display at last What God will have discovered for revenge. Heaven guide thy pen to print thy sorrows plain, That we may know the traitors and the truth!

[She takes the staff in her mouth, and guides it with her stumps and writes.]

O, do ye read, my lord, what she hath writ?

TITUS. “Stuprum. Chiron. Demetrius.”

MARCUS. What, what! The lustful sons of Tamora Performers of this heinous bloody deed?

TITUS. Magni Dominator poli, Tam lentus audis scelera, tam lentus vides?

MARCUS. O, calm thee, gentle lord, although I know There is enough written upon this earth To stir a mutiny in the mildest thoughts And arm the minds of infants to exclaims. My lord, kneel down with me; Lavinia, kneel; And kneel, sweet boy, the Roman Hector’s hope; And swear with me, as, with the woeful fere And father of that chaste dishonoured dame, Lord Junius Brutus sware for Lucrece’ rape, That we will prosecute, by good advice Mortal revenge upon these traitorous Goths, And see their blood, or die with this reproach.

TITUS. ’Tis sure enough, an you knew how. But if you hunt these bear-whelps, then beware; The dam will wake, and if she wind you once. She’s with the lion deeply still in league, And lulls him whilst she playeth on her back, And when he sleeps will she do what she list. You are a young huntsman, Marcus; let alone; And come, I will go get a leaf of brass, And with a gad of steel will write these words, And lay it by. The angry northern wind Will blow these sands like Sibyl’s leaves abroad, And where’s our lesson, then? Boy, what say you?

YOUNG LUCIUS. I say, my lord, that if I were a man, Their mother’s bedchamber should not be safe For these base bondmen to the yoke of Rome.

MARCUS. Ay, that’s my boy! Thy father hath full oft For his ungrateful country done the like.

YOUNG LUCIUS. And, uncle, so will I, an if I live.

TITUS. Come, go with me into mine armoury. Lucius, I’ll fit thee; and withal, my boy, Shall carry from me to the empress’ sons Presents that I intend to send them both. Come, come; thou’lt do my message, wilt thou not?

YOUNG LUCIUS. Ay, with my dagger in their bosoms, grandsire.

TITUS. No, boy, not so. I’ll teach thee another course. Lavinia, come. Marcus, look to my house. Lucius and I’ll go brave it at the court; Ay, marry, will we, sir; and we’ll be waited on.

[Exeunt Titus, Lavinia and Young Lucius.]

MARCUS. O heavens, can you hear a good man groan And not relent, or not compassion him? Marcus, attend him in his ecstasy, That hath more scars of sorrow in his heart Than foemen’s marks upon his battered shield, But yet so just that he will not revenge. Revenge ye heavens for old Andronicus!

SCENE II. Rome. A Room in the Palace

Enter Aaron, Chiron and Demetrius at one door, and at the other door Young Lucius and another, with a bundle of weapons and verses writ upon them.

CHIRON. Demetrius, here’s the son of Lucius; He hath some message to deliver us.

AARON. Ay, some mad message from his mad grandfather.

YOUNG LUCIUS. My lords, with all the humbleness I may, I greet your honours from Andronicus; [Aside.] And pray the Roman gods confound you both.

DEMETRIUS. Gramercy, lovely Lucius. What’s the news?

YOUNG LUCIUS. [Aside.] That you are both deciphered, that’s the news, For villains marked with rape. [Aloud.] May it please you, My grandsire, well advised, hath sent by me The goodliest weapons of his armoury To gratify your honourable youth, The hope of Rome; for so he bid me say; And so I do, and with his gifts present Your lordships, that, whenever you have need, You may be armed and appointed well. And so I leave you both, [Aside.] like bloody villains.

[Exeunt Young Lucius and Attendant.]

DEMETRIUS. What’s here? A scroll; and written round about? Let’s see: [Reads.] Integer vitae, scelerisque purus, Non eget Mauri iaculis, nec arcu.

CHIRON. O, ’tis a verse in Horace; I know it well. I read it in the grammar long ago.

AARON. Ay, just; a verse in Horace; right, you have it. [Aside.] Now, what a thing it is to be an ass! Here’s no sound jest! The old man hath found their guilt, And sends them weapons wrapped about with lines, That wound, beyond their feeling, to the quick. But were our witty empress well afoot, She would applaud Andronicus’ conceit. But let her rest in her unrest awhile.— And now, young lords, was’t not a happy star Led us to Rome, strangers, and more than so, Captives, to be advanced to this height? It did me good before the palace gate To brave the tribune in his brother’s hearing.

DEMETRIUS. But me more good to see so great a lord Basely insinuate and send us gifts.

AARON. Had he not reason, Lord Demetrius? Did you not use his daughter very friendly?

DEMETRIUS. I would we had a thousand Roman dames At such a bay, by turn to serve our lust.

CHIRON. A charitable wish, and full of love.

AARON. Here lacks but your mother for to say amen.

CHIRON. And that would she for twenty thousand more.

DEMETRIUS. Come, let us go and pray to all the gods For our beloved mother in her pains.

AARON. [Aside.] Pray to the devils; the gods have given us over.

DEMETRIUS. Why do the emperor’s trumpets flourish thus?

CHIRON. Belike for joy the emperor hath a son.

DEMETRIUS. Soft, who comes here?

Enter Nurse with a blackamoor Child in her arms.

NURSE. Good morrow, lords. O, tell me, did you see Aaron the Moor?

AARON. Well, more or less, or ne’er a whit at all, Here Aaron is; and what with Aaron now?

NURSE. O gentle Aaron, we are all undone! Now help, or woe betide thee evermore!

AARON. Why, what a caterwauling dost thou keep! What dost thou wrap and fumble in thy arms?

NURSE. O, that which I would hide from heaven’s eye, Our empress’ shame and stately Rome’s disgrace. She is delivered, lords, she is delivered.

AARON. To whom?

NURSE. I mean, she’s brought a-bed.

AARON. Well, God give her good rest! What hath he sent her?

NURSE. A devil.

AARON. Why, then she is the devil’s dam. A joyful issue.

NURSE. A joyless, dismal, black, and sorrowful issue. Here is the babe, as loathsome as a toad Amongst the fair-faced breeders of our clime. The empress sends it thee, thy stamp, thy seal, And bids thee christen it with thy dagger’s point.

AARON. Zounds, ye whore, is black so base a hue? Sweet blowse, you are a beauteous blossom sure.

DEMETRIUS. Villain, what hast thou done?

AARON. That which thou canst not undo.

CHIRON. Thou hast undone our mother.

AARON. Villain, I have done thy mother.

DEMETRIUS. And therein, hellish dog, thou hast undone her. Woe to her chance, and damned her loathed choice! Accursed the offspring of so foul a fiend!

CHIRON. It shall not live.

AARON. It shall not die.

NURSE. Aaron, it must; the mother wills it so.

AARON. What, must it, nurse? Then let no man but I Do execution on my flesh and blood.

DEMETRIUS. I’ll broach the tadpole on my rapier’s point. Nurse, give it me; my sword shall soon dispatch it.

AARON. Sooner this sword shall plough thy bowels up.

[Taking the baby.]

Stay, murderous villains, will you kill your brother? Now, by the burning tapers of the sky That shone so brightly when this boy was got, He dies upon my scimitar’s sharp point That touches this my first-born son and heir. I tell you, younglings, not Enceladus, With all his threatening band of Typhon’s brood, Nor great Alcides, nor the god of war, Shall seize this prey out of his father’s hands. What, what, ye sanguine, shallow-hearted boys! Ye white-limed walls, ye alehouse-painted signs! Coal-black is better than another hue In that it scorns to bear another hue; For all the water in the ocean Can never turn the swan’s black legs to white, Although she lave them hourly in the flood. Tell the empress from me, I am of age To keep mine own, excuse it how she can.

DEMETRIUS. Wilt thou betray thy noble mistress thus?

AARON. My mistress is my mistress; this my self; The vigour and the picture of my youth. This before all the world do I prefer; This maugre all the world will I keep safe, Or some of you shall smoke for it in Rome.

DEMETRIUS. By this our mother is for ever shamed.

CHIRON. Rome will despise her for this foul escape.

NURSE. The emperor in his rage will doom her death.

CHIRON. I blush to think upon this ignomy.

AARON. Why, there’s the privilege your beauty bears. Fie, treacherous hue, that will betray with blushing The close enacts and counsels of thy heart! Here’s a young lad framed of another leer. Look how the black slave smiles upon the father, As who should say “Old lad, I am thine own.” He is your brother, lords, sensibly fed Of that self blood that first gave life to you; And from your womb where you imprisoned were He is enfranchised and come to light. Nay, he is your brother by the surer side, Although my seal be stamped in his face.

NURSE. Aaron, what shall I say unto the empress?

DEMETRIUS. Advise thee, Aaron, what is to be done, And we will all subscribe to thy advice. Save thou the child, so we may all be safe.

AARON. Then sit we down, and let us all consult. My son and I will have the wind of you. Keep there. Now talk at pleasure of your safety.

DEMETRIUS. How many women saw this child of his?

AARON. Why, so, brave lords! When we join in league, I am a lamb; but if you brave the Moor, The chafed boar, the mountain lioness, The ocean swells not so as Aaron storms. But say again, how many saw the child?

NURSE. Cornelia the midwife and myself, And no one else but the delivered empress.

AARON. The empress, the midwife, and yourself. Two may keep counsel when the third’s away. Go to the empress; tell her this I said.

[He kills her.]

“Wheak, wheak!” So cries a pig prepared to the spit.

DEMETRIUS. What mean’st thou, Aaron? Wherefore didst thou this?

AARON. O Lord, sir, ’tis a deed of policy. Shall she live to betray this guilt of ours, A long-tongued babbling gossip? No, lords, no. And now be it known to you my full intent. Not far, one Muliteus lives, my countryman; His wife but yesternight was brought to bed. His child is like to her, fair as you are. Go pack with him, and give the mother gold, And tell them both the circumstance of all, And how by this their child shall be advanced, And be received for the emperor’s heir, And substituted in the place of mine, To calm this tempest whirling in the court; And let the emperor dandle him for his own. Hark ye, lords; ye see I have given her physic,

[Indicating the Nurse.]

And you must needs bestow her funeral; The fields are near, and you are gallant grooms. This done, see that you take no longer days, But send the midwife presently to me. The midwife and the nurse well made away, Then let the ladies tattle what they please.

CHIRON. Aaron, I see thou wilt not trust the air With secrets.

DEMETRIUS. For this care of Tamora, Herself and hers are highly bound to thee.

[Exeunt Demetrius and Chiron, carrying the Nurse’s body.]

AARON. Now to the Goths, as swift as swallow flies, There to dispose this treasure in mine arms, And secretly to greet the empress’ friends. Come on, you thick-lipped slave, I’ll bear you hence; For it is you that puts us to our shifts. I’ll make you feed on berries and on roots, And feed on curds and whey, and suck the goat, And cabin in a cave, and bring you up To be a warrior and command a camp.

SCENE III. Rome. A public Place

Enter Titus, old Marcus, his son Publius, Young Lucius, and other gentlemen with bows, and Titus bears the arrows with letters on the ends of them.

TITUS. Come, Marcus, come. Kinsmen, this is the way. Sir boy, let me see your archery. Look ye draw home enough, and ’tis there straight. Terras Astraea reliquit. Be you remembered, Marcus, she’s gone, she’s fled. Sirs, take you to your tools. You, cousins, shall Go sound the ocean and cast your nets; Happily you may catch her in the sea; Yet there’s as little justice as at land. No; Publius and Sempronius, you must do it; ’Tis you must dig with mattock and with spade, And pierce the inmost centre of the earth. Then, when you come to Pluto’s region, I pray you, deliver him this petition; Tell him it is for justice and for aid, And that it comes from old Andronicus, Shaken with sorrows in ungrateful Rome. Ah, Rome! Well, well, I made thee miserable What time I threw the people’s suffrages On him that thus doth tyrannize o’er me. Go, get you gone; and pray be careful all, And leave you not a man-of-war unsearched. This wicked emperor may have shipped her hence; And, kinsmen, then we may go pipe for justice.

MARCUS. O Publius, is not this a heavy case, To see thy noble uncle thus distract?

PUBLIUS. Therefore, my lords, it highly us concerns By day and night to attend him carefully, And feed his humour kindly as we may, Till time beget some careful remedy.

MARCUS. Kinsmen, his sorrows are past remedy, But . . . . Join with the Goths, and with revengeful war Take wreak on Rome for this ingratitude, And vengeance on the traitor Saturnine.

TITUS. Publius, how now? How now, my masters? What, have you met with her?

PUBLIUS. No, my good lord; but Pluto sends you word, If you will have Revenge from hell, you shall. Marry, for Justice, she is so employed, He thinks, with Jove in heaven, or somewhere else, So that perforce you must needs stay a time.

TITUS. He doth me wrong to feed me with delays. I’ll dive into the burning lake below, And pull her out of Acheron by the heels. Marcus, we are but shrubs, no cedars we, No big-boned men framed of the Cyclops’ size; But metal, Marcus, steel to the very back, Yet wrung with wrongs more than our backs can bear; And sith there’s no justice in earth nor hell, We will solicit heaven and move the gods To send down Justice for to wreak our wrongs. Come, to this gear. You are a good archer, Marcus.

[He gives them the arrows.]

“Ad Jovem,” that’s for you; here, “Ad Apollinem”; “Ad Martem,” that’s for myself; Here, boy, “to Pallas”; here, “to Mercury”; “To Saturn,” Caius, not to Saturnine; You were as good to shoot against the wind. To it, boy.—Marcus, loose when I bid.— Of my word, I have written to effect; There’s not a god left unsolicited.

MARCUS. Kinsmen, shoot all your shafts into the court. We will afflict the emperor in his pride.

TITUS. Now, masters, draw. [They shoot.] O, well said, Lucius! Good boy, in Virgo’s lap! Give it Pallas.

MARCUS. My lord, I aim a mile beyond the moon. Your letter is with Jupiter by this.

TITUS. Ha! ha! Publius, Publius, what hast thou done? See, see, thou hast shot off one of Taurus’ horns.

MARCUS. This was the sport, my lord; when Publius shot, The Bull, being galled, gave Aries such a knock That down fell both the Ram’s horns in the court; And who should find them but the empress’ villain? She laughed, and told the Moor he should not choose But give them to his master for a present.

TITUS. Why, there it goes. God give his lordship joy!

Enter the Clown with a basket and two pigeons in it.

News, news from heaven! Marcus, the post is come. Sirrah, what tidings? Have you any letters? Shall I have justice? What says Jupiter?

CLOWN. Ho, the gibbet-maker? He says that he hath taken them down again, for the man must not be hanged till the next week.

TITUS. But what says Jupiter, I ask thee?

CLOWN. Alas, sir, I know not Jubiter; I never drank with him in all my life.

TITUS. Why, villain, art not thou the carrier?

CLOWN. Ay, of my pigeons, sir; nothing else.

TITUS. Why, didst thou not come from heaven?

CLOWN. From heaven? Alas, sir, I never came there. God forbid I should be so bold to press to heaven in my young days. Why, I am going with my pigeons to the tribunal plebs, to take up a matter of brawl betwixt my uncle and one of the emperal’s men.

MARCUS. Why, sir, that is as fit as can be to serve for your oration; and let him deliver the pigeons to the emperor from you.

TITUS. Tell me, can you deliver an oration to the emperor with a grace?

CLOWN. Nay, truly, sir, I could never say grace in all my life.

TITUS. Sirrah, come hither. Make no more ado, But give your pigeons to the emperor. By me thou shalt have justice at his hands. Hold, hold; meanwhile here’s money for thy charges. Give me pen and ink. Sirrah, can you with a grace deliver up a supplication?

CLOWN. Ay, sir.

TITUS. Then here is a supplication for you. And when you come to him, at the first approach you must kneel; then kiss his foot; then deliver up your pigeons; and then look for your reward. I’ll be at hand, sir; see you do it bravely.

CLOWN. I warrant you, sir; let me alone.

TITUS. Sirrah, hast thou a knife? Come let me see it. Here, Marcus, fold it in the oration; For thou hast made it like a humble suppliant. And when thou hast given it to the emperor, Knock at my door, and tell me what he says.

CLOWN. God be with you, sir; I will.

TITUS. Come, Marcus, let us go. Publius, follow me.

SCENE IV. Rome. Before the Palace

Enter Emperor Saturninus and Empress Tamora and her two sons Chiron and Demetrius, with Attendants. The Emperor brings the arrows in his hand that Titus shot at him.

SATURNINUS. Why, lords, what wrongs are these! Was ever seen An emperor in Rome thus overborne, Troubled, confronted thus; and, for the extent Of legal justice, used in such contempt? My lords, you know, as know the mightful gods, However these disturbers of our peace Buzz in the people’s ears, there naught hath passed But even with law against the wilful sons Of old Andronicus. And what an if His sorrows have so overwhelmed his wits? Shall we be thus afflicted in his wreaks, His fits, his frenzy, and his bitterness? And now he writes to heaven for his redress! See, here’s “to Jove,” and this “to Mercury,” This “to Apollo,” this to the god of war. Sweet scrolls to fly about the streets of Rome! What’s this but libelling against the senate, And blazoning our injustice everywhere? A goodly humour, is it not, my lords? As who would say, in Rome no justice were. But if I live, his feigned ecstasies Shall be no shelter to these outrages; But he and his shall know that justice lives In Saturninus’ health; whom, if she sleep, He’ll so awake as he in fury shall Cut off the proud’st conspirator that lives.

TAMORA. My gracious lord, my lovely Saturnine, Lord of my life, commander of my thoughts, Calm thee, and bear the faults of Titus’ age, Th’ effects of sorrow for his valiant sons, Whose loss hath pierced him deep and scarred his heart; And rather comfort his distressed plight Than prosecute the meanest or the best For these contempts. [Aside.] Why, thus it shall become High-witted Tamora to gloze with all. But, Titus, I have touched thee to the quick; Thy life-blood out, if Aaron now be wise, Then is all safe, the anchor in the port.

How now, good fellow, wouldst thou speak with us?

CLOWN. Yes, forsooth, an your mistresship be emperial.

TAMORA. Empress I am, but yonder sits the emperor.

CLOWN. ’Tis he. God and Saint Stephen give you good e’en. I have brought you a letter and a couple of pigeons here.

[Saturninus reads the letter.]

SATURNINUS. Go take him away, and hang him presently.

CLOWN. How much money must I have?

TAMORA. Come, sirrah, you must be hanged.

CLOWN. Hanged! by’r Lady, then I have brought up a neck to a fair end.

[Exit guarded.]

SATURNINUS. Despiteful and intolerable wrongs! Shall I endure this monstrous villainy? I know from whence this same device proceeds. May this be borne as if his traitorous sons, That died by law for murder of our brother, Have by my means been butchered wrongfully? Go, drag the villain hither by the hair; Nor age nor honour shall shape privilege. For this proud mock I’ll be thy slaughterman, Sly frantic wretch, that holp’st to make me great, In hope thyself should govern Rome and me.

Enter Aemilius.

What news with thee, Aemilius?

AEMILIUS. Arm, my lord! Rome never had more cause. The Goths have gathered head, and with a power Of high-resolved men, bent to the spoil, They hither march amain, under conduct Of Lucius, son to old Andronicus; Who threats, in course of this revenge, to do As much as ever Coriolanus did.

SATURNINUS. Is warlike Lucius general of the Goths? These tidings nip me, and I hang the head As flowers with frost, or grass beat down with storms. Ay, now begins our sorrows to approach. ’Tis he the common people love so much; Myself hath often overheard them say, When I have walked like a private man, That Lucius’ banishment was wrongfully, And they have wished that Lucius were their emperor.

TAMORA. Why should you fear? Is not your city strong?

SATURNINUS. Ay, but the citizens favour Lucius, And will revolt from me to succour him.

TAMORA. King, be thy thoughts imperious like thy name. Is the sun dimmed, that gnats do fly in it? The eagle suffers little birds to sing, And is not careful what they mean thereby, Knowing that with the shadow of his wings He can at pleasure stint their melody; Even so mayest thou the giddy men of Rome. Then cheer thy spirit; for know, thou emperor, I will enchant the old Andronicus With words more sweet, and yet more dangerous, Than baits to fish or honey-stalks to sheep, Whenas the one is wounded with the bait, The other rotted with delicious feed.

SATURNINUS. But he will not entreat his son for us.

TAMORA. If Tamora entreat him, then he will, For I can smooth and fill his aged ears With golden promises, that, were his heart Almost impregnable, his old ears deaf, Yet should both ear and heart obey my tongue. [to Aemilius] Go thou before, be our ambassador. Say that the emperor requests a parley Of warlike Lucius, and appoint the meeting Even at his father’s house, the old Andronicus.

SATURNINUS. Aemilius, do this message honourably, And if he stand on hostage for his safety, Bid him demand what pledge will please him best.

AEMILIUS. Your bidding shall I do effectually.

TAMORA. Now will I to that old Andronicus, And temper him with all the art I have, To pluck proud Lucius from the warlike Goths. And now, sweet emperor, be blithe again, And bury all thy fear in my devices.

SATURNINUS. Then go successantly, and plead to him.

SCENE I. Plains near Rome

Enter Lucius with an army of Goths, with drums and soldiers.

LUCIUS. Approved warriors and my faithful friends, I have received letters from great Rome Which signifies what hate they bear their emperor And how desirous of our sight they are. Therefore, great lords, be, as your titles witness, Imperious, and impatient of your wrongs; And wherein Rome hath done you any scath, Let him make treble satisfaction.

FIRST GOTH. Brave slip, sprung from the great Andronicus, Whose name was once our terror, now our comfort, Whose high exploits and honourable deeds Ingrateful Rome requites with foul contempt, Be bold in us. We’ll follow where thou lead’st, Like stinging bees in hottest summer’s day Led by their master to the flowered fields, And be avenged on cursed Tamora.

GOTHS. And as he saith, so say we all with him.

LUCIUS. I humbly thank him, and I thank you all. But who comes here, led by a lusty Goth?

Enter a Goth, leading of Aaron with his Child in his arms.

SECOND GOTH. Renowned Lucius, from our troops I strayed To gaze upon a ruinous monastery; And as I earnestly did fix mine eye Upon the wasted building, suddenly I heard a child cry underneath a wall. I made unto the noise, when soon I heard The crying babe controlled with this discourse: “Peace, tawny slave, half me and half thy dame! Did not thy hue bewray whose brat thou art, Had nature lent thee but thy mother’s look, Villain, thou mightst have been an emperor. But where the bull and cow are both milk-white, They never do beget a coal-black calf. Peace, villain, peace!” even thus he rates the babe, “For I must bear thee to a trusty Goth, Who, when he knows thou art the empress’ babe, Will hold thee dearly for thy mother’s sake.” With this, my weapon drawn, I rushed upon him, Surprised him suddenly, and brought him hither To use as you think needful of the man.

LUCIUS. O worthy Goth, this is the incarnate devil That robbed Andronicus of his good hand; This is the pearl that pleased your empress’ eye; And here’s the base fruit of her burning lust. Say, wall-eyed slave, whither wouldst thou convey This growing image of thy fiend-like face? Why dost not speak? What, deaf? Not a word? A halter, soldiers, hang him on this tree, And by his side his fruit of bastardy.

AARON. Touch not the boy, he is of royal blood.

LUCIUS. Too like the sire for ever being good. First hang the child, that he may see it sprawl, A sight to vex the father’s soul withal. Get me a ladder.

[A ladder is brought, which Aaron is made to ascend.]

AARON. Lucius, save the child; And bear it from me to the empress. If thou do this, I’ll show thee wondrous things That highly may advantage thee to hear. If thou wilt not, befall what may befall, I’ll speak no more but “Vengeance rot you all!”

LUCIUS. Say on, and if it please me which thou speak’st, Thy child shall live, and I will see it nourished.

AARON. And if it please thee? Why, assure thee, Lucius, ’Twill vex thy soul to hear what I shall speak; For I must talk of murders, rapes, and massacres, Acts of black night, abominable deeds, Complots of mischief, treason, villainies, Ruthful to hear, yet piteously performed. And this shall all be buried in my death, Unless thou swear to me my child shall live.

LUCIUS. Tell on thy mind; I say thy child shall live.

AARON. Swear that he shall, and then I will begin.

LUCIUS. Who should I swear by? Thou believ’st no god. That granted, how canst thou believe an oath?

AARON. What if I do not? As indeed I do not; Yet, for I know thou art religious, And hast a thing within thee called conscience, With twenty popish tricks and ceremonies Which I have seen thee careful to observe, Therefore I urge thy oath; for that I know An idiot holds his bauble for a god, And keeps the oath which by that god he swears, To that I’ll urge him. Therefore thou shalt vow By that same god, what god soe’er it be That thou adorest and hast in reverence, To save my boy, to nourish and bring him up; Or else I will discover naught to thee.

LUCIUS. Even by my god I swear to thee I will.

AARON. First know thou, I begot him on the empress.

LUCIUS. O most insatiate and luxurious woman!

AARON. Tut, Lucius, this was but a deed of charity To that which thou shalt hear of me anon. ’Twas her two sons that murdered Bassianus; They cut thy sister’s tongue, and ravished her, And cut her hands, and trimmed her as thou sawest.

LUCIUS. O detestable villain, call’st thou that trimming?

AARON. Why, she was washed, and cut, and trimmed; and ’twas Trim sport for them which had the doing of it.

LUCIUS. O barbarous beastly villains, like thyself!

AARON. Indeed, I was their tutor to instruct them. That codding spirit had they from their mother, As sure a card as ever won the set; That bloody mind I think they learned of me, As true a dog as ever fought at head. Well, let my deeds be witness of my worth. I trained thy brethren to that guileful hole Where the dead corpse of Bassianus lay. I wrote the letter that thy father found, And hid the gold within that letter mentioned, Confederate with the queen and her two sons. And what not done, that thou hast cause to rue, Wherein I had no stroke of mischief in’t? I played the cheater for thy father’s hand, And, when I had it, drew myself apart, And almost broke my heart with extreme laughter. I pried me through the crevice of a wall When, for his hand, he had his two sons’ heads; Beheld his tears, and laughed so heartily That both mine eyes were rainy like to his. And when I told the empress of this sport, She sounded almost at my pleasing tale, And for my tidings gave me twenty kisses.

GOTH. What, canst thou say all this and never blush?

AARON. Ay, like a black dog, as the saying is.

LUCIUS. Art thou not sorry for these heinous deeds?

AARON. Ay, that I had not done a thousand more. Even now I curse the day, and yet, I think, Few come within the compass of my curse, Wherein I did not some notorious ill, As kill a man, or else devise his death; Ravish a maid, or plot the way to do it; Accuse some innocent, and forswear myself; Set deadly enmity between two friends; Make poor men’s cattle break their necks; Set fire on barns and haystalks in the night, And bid the owners quench them with their tears. Oft have I digged up dead men from their graves, And set them upright at their dear friends’ door, Even when their sorrows almost was forgot, And on their skins, as on the bark of trees, Have with my knife carved in Roman letters, “Let not your sorrow die, though I am dead.” But I have done a thousand dreadful things As willingly as one would kill a fly, And nothing grieves me heartily indeed But that I cannot do ten thousand more.

LUCIUS. Bring down the devil, for he must not die So sweet a death as hanging presently.

AARON. If there be devils, would I were a devil, To live and burn in everlasting fire, So I might have your company in hell But to torment you with my bitter tongue!

LUCIUS. Sirs, stop his mouth, and let him speak no more.

GOTH. My lord, there is a messenger from Rome Desires to be admitted to your presence.

LUCIUS. Let him come near. Welcome, Aemilius. What’s the news from Rome?

AEMILIUS. Lord Lucius, and you princes of the Goths, The Roman emperor greets you all by me; And, for he understands you are in arms, He craves a parley at your father’s house, Willing you to demand your hostages, And they shall be immediately delivered.

FIRST GOTH. What says our general?

LUCIUS. Aemilius, let the emperor give his pledges Unto my father and my uncle Marcus, And we will come. March away.

SCENE II. Rome. Before Titus’s House

Enter Tamora and her two sons, disguised.

TAMORA. Thus, in this strange and sad habiliment, I will encounter with Andronicus, And say I am Revenge, sent from below To join with him and right his heinous wrongs. Knock at his study, where they say he keeps To ruminate strange plots of dire revenge; Tell him Revenge is come to join with him And work confusion on his enemies.

[They knock.]

Titus above opens his study door.

TITUS. Who doth molest my contemplation? Is it your trick to make me ope the door, That so my sad decrees may fly away And all my study be to no effect? You are deceived; for what I mean to do See here in bloody lines I have set down; And what is written shall be executed.

TAMORA. Titus, I am come to talk with thee.

TITUS. No, not a word; how can I grace my talk, Wanting a hand to give it action? Thou hast the odds of me; therefore no more.

TAMORA. If thou didst know me, thou wouldst talk with me.

TITUS. I am not mad; I know thee well enough. Witness this wretched stump, witness these crimson lines; Witness these trenches made by grief and care; Witness the tiring day and heavy night; Witness all sorrow that I know thee well For our proud empress, mighty Tamora. Is not thy coming for my other hand?

TAMORA. Know thou, sad man, I am not Tamora; She is thy enemy, and I thy friend. I am Revenge, sent from th’ infernal kingdom To ease the gnawing vulture of thy mind By working wreakful vengeance on thy foes. Come down and welcome me to this world’s light; Confer with me of murder and of death. There’s not a hollow cave or lurking-place, No vast obscurity or misty vale, Where bloody murder or detested rape Can couch for fear but I will find them out, And in their ears tell them my dreadful name, Revenge, which makes the foul offender quake.

TITUS. Art thou Revenge? And art thou sent to me To be a torment to mine enemies?

TAMORA. I am; therefore come down and welcome me.

TITUS. Do me some service ere I come to thee. Lo, by thy side where Rape and Murder stands; Now give some surance that thou art Revenge: Stab them, or tear them on thy chariot wheels, And then I’ll come and be thy waggoner, And whirl along with thee about the globe. Provide thee two proper palfreys, black as jet, To hale thy vengeful waggon swift away, And find out murderers in their guilty caves. And when thy car is loaden with their heads, I will dismount, and by the waggon-wheel Trot like a servile footman all day long, Even from Hyperion’s rising in the east Until his very downfall in the sea. And day by day I’ll do this heavy task, So thou destroy Rapine and Murder there.

TAMORA. These are my ministers, and come with me.

TITUS. Are they thy ministers? What are they called?

TAMORA. Rapine and Murder; therefore called so ’Cause they take vengeance of such kind of men.

TITUS. Good Lord, how like the empress’ sons they are, And you the empress! But we worldly men Have miserable, mad, mistaking eyes. O sweet Revenge, now do I come to thee; And, if one arm’s embracement will content thee, I will embrace thee in it by and by.

[He exits above.]

TAMORA. This closing with him fits his lunacy. Whate’er I forge to feed his brain-sick humours, Do you uphold and maintain in your speeches, For now he firmly takes me for Revenge; And, being credulous in this mad thought, I’ll make him send for Lucius his son; And whilst I at a banquet hold him sure, I’ll find some cunning practice out of hand To scatter and disperse the giddy Goths, Or, at the least, make them his enemies. See, here he comes, and I must ply my theme.

Enter Titus.

TITUS. Long have I been forlorn, and all for thee. Welcome, dread Fury, to my woeful house. Rapine and Murder, you are welcome too. How like the empress and her sons you are! Well are you fitted, had you but a Moor. Could not all hell afford you such a devil? For well I wot the empress never wags But in her company there is a Moor; And, would you represent our queen aright, It were convenient you had such a devil. But welcome as you are. What shall we do?

TAMORA. What wouldst thou have us do, Andronicus?

DEMETRIUS. Show me a murderer, I’ll deal with him.

CHIRON. Show me a villain that hath done a rape, And I am sent to be revenged on him.

TAMORA. Show me a thousand that hath done thee wrong, And I will be revenged on them all.

TITUS. Look round about the wicked streets of Rome, And when thou find’st a man that’s like thyself, Good Murder, stab him; he’s a murderer. Go thou with him; and when it is thy hap To find another that is like to thee, Good Rapine, stab him; he is a ravisher. Go thou with them; and in the emperor’s court There is a queen, attended by a Moor; Well shalt thou know her by thine own proportion, For up and down she doth resemble thee. I pray thee, do on them some violent death; They have been violent to me and mine.

TAMORA. Well hast thou lessoned us; this shall we do. But would it please thee, good Andronicus, To send for Lucius, thy thrice-valiant son, Who leads towards Rome a band of warlike Goths, And bid him come and banquet at thy house? When he is here, even at thy solemn feast, I will bring in the empress and her sons, The emperor himself, and all thy foes, And at thy mercy shall they stoop and kneel, And on them shalt thou ease thy angry heart. What says Andronicus to this device?

TITUS. Marcus, my brother, ’tis sad Titus calls.

Enter Marcus.

Go, gentle Marcus, to thy nephew Lucius; Thou shalt inquire him out among the Goths. Bid him repair to me and bring with him Some of the chiefest princes of the Goths; Bid him encamp his soldiers where they are. Tell him the emperor and the empress too Feast at my house, and he shall feast with them. This do thou for my love; and so let him, As he regards his aged father’s life.

MARCUS. This will I do, and soon return again.

TAMORA. Now will I hence about thy business, And take my ministers along with me.

TITUS. Nay, nay, let Rape and Murder stay with me, Or else I’ll call my brother back again And cleave to no revenge but Lucius.

TAMORA. [Aside to them.] What say you, boys? Will you abide with him, Whiles I go tell my lord the emperor How I have governed our determined jest? Yield to his humour, smooth and speak him fair, And tarry with him till I come again.

TITUS. [Aside.] I knew them all, though they suppose me mad, And will o’erreach them in their own devices, A pair of cursed hell-hounds and their dam.

DEMETRIUS. Madam, depart at pleasure; leave us here.

TAMORA. Farewell, Andronicus. Revenge now goes To lay a complot to betray thy foes.

TITUS. I know thou dost; and, sweet Revenge, farewell.

[Exit Tamora.]

CHIRON. Tell us, old man, how shall we be employed?

TITUS. Tut, I have work enough for you to do. Publius, come hither, Caius, and Valentine.

Enter Publius and others.

PUBLIUS. What is your will?

TITUS. Know you these two?

PUBLIUS. The empress’ sons, I take them, Chiron, Demetrius.

TITUS. Fie, Publius, fie, thou art too much deceived. The one is Murder, and Rape is the other’s name; And therefore bind them, gentle Publius. Caius and Valentine, lay hands on them. Oft have you heard me wish for such an hour, And now I find it. Therefore bind them sure, And stop their mouths if they begin to cry.

[Exit Titus.]

CHIRON. Villains, forbear! We are the empress’ sons.

PUBLIUS. And therefore do we what we are commanded. Stop close their mouths, let them not speak a word. Is he sure bound? Look that you bind them fast.

Enter Titus Andronicus with a knife, and Lavinia with a basin.

TITUS. Come, come, Lavinia; look, thy foes are bound. Sirs, stop their mouths, let them not speak to me, But let them hear what fearful words I utter. O villains, Chiron and Demetrius! Here stands the spring whom you have stained with mud, This goodly summer with your winter mixed. You killed her husband, and for that vile fault Two of her brothers were condemned to death, My hand cut off and made a merry jest, Both her sweet hands, her tongue, and that more dear Than hands or tongue, her spotless chastity, Inhuman traitors, you constrained and forced. What would you say if I should let you speak? Villains, for shame you could not beg for grace. Hark, wretches, how I mean to martyr you. This one hand yet is left to cut your throats, Whiles that Lavinia ’tween her stumps doth hold The basin that receives your guilty blood. You know your mother means to feast with me, And calls herself Revenge, and thinks me mad. Hark, villains! I will grind your bones to dust, And with your blood and it I’ll make a paste, And of the paste a coffin I will rear, And make two pasties of your shameful heads, And bid that strumpet, your unhallowed dam, Like to the earth swallow her own increase. This is the feast that I have bid her to, And this the banquet she shall surfeit on; For worse than Philomel you used my daughter, And worse than Procne I will be revenged. And now prepare your throats.—Lavinia, come Receive the blood.

[He cuts their throats.]

And when that they are dead, Let me go grind their bones to powder small, And with this hateful liquor temper it, And in that paste let their vile heads be baked. Come, come, be everyone officious To make this banquet, which I wish may prove More stern and bloody than the Centaurs’ feast. So, now bring them in, for I’ll play the cook, And see them ready against their mother comes.

[Exeunt, carrying the dead bodies.]

SCENE III. Rome. A Pavilion in Titus’s Gardens, with tables, &c.

Enter Lucius, Marcus and the Goths, with Aaron, prisoner.

LUCIUS. Uncle Marcus, since ’tis my father’s mind That I repair to Rome, I am content.

FIRST GOTH. And ours with thine, befall what fortune will.

LUCIUS. Good uncle, take you in this barbarous Moor, This ravenous tiger, this accursed devil; Let him receive no sust’nance, fetter him, Till he be brought unto the empress’ face For testimony of her foul proceedings. And see the ambush of our friends be strong; I fear the emperor means no good to us.

AARON. Some devil whisper curses in my ear, And prompt me that my tongue may utter forth The venomous malice of my swelling heart!

LUCIUS. Away, inhuman dog, unhallowed slave! Sirs, help our uncle to convey him in.

[Sound trumpets.]

The trumpets show the emperor is at hand.

[Exeunt Goths with Aaron.]

Enter Emperor Saturninus and Empress Tamora with Aemilius, Tribunes and others.

SATURNINUS. What, hath the firmament more suns than one?

LUCIUS. What boots it thee to call thyself a sun?

MARCUS. Rome’s emperor, and nephew, break the parle; These quarrels must be quietly debated. The feast is ready which the careful Titus Hath ordained to an honourable end, For peace, for love, for league, and good to Rome. Please you, therefore, draw nigh and take your places.

SATURNINUS. Marcus, we will.

Trumpets sounding, enter Titus like a cook, placing the dishes, with Young Lucius and others, and Lavinia with a veil over her face.

TITUS. Welcome, my lord; welcome, dread queen; Welcome, ye warlike Goths; welcome, Lucius; And welcome all. Although the cheer be poor, ’Twill fill your stomachs; please you eat of it.

SATURNINUS. Why art thou thus attired, Andronicus?

TITUS. Because I would be sure to have all well To entertain your highness and your empress.

TAMORA. We are beholden to you, good Andronicus.

TITUS. An if your highness knew my heart, you were. My lord the emperor, resolve me this: Was it well done of rash Virginius To slay his daughter with his own right hand, Because she was enforced, stained, and deflowered?

SATURNINUS. It was, Andronicus.

TITUS. Your reason, mighty lord?

SATURNINUS. Because the girl should not survive her shame, And by her presence still renew his sorrows.

TITUS. A reason mighty, strong, and effectual; A pattern, precedent, and lively warrant For me, most wretched, to perform the like. Die, die, Lavinia, and thy shame with thee; And with thy shame thy father’s sorrow die!

[He kills Lavinia.]

SATURNINUS. What hast thou done, unnatural and unkind?

TITUS. Killed her for whom my tears have made me blind. I am as woeful as Virginius was, And have a thousand times more cause than he To do this outrage, and it now is done.

SATURNINUS. What, was she ravished? Tell who did the deed.

TITUS. Will’t please you eat? Will’t please your highness feed?

TAMORA. Why hast thou slain thine only daughter thus?

TITUS. Not I; ’twas Chiron and Demetrius. They ravished her, and cut away her tongue; And they, ’twas they, that did her all this wrong.

SATURNINUS. Go fetch them hither to us presently.

TITUS. Why, there they are, both baked in that pie, Whereof their mother daintily hath fed, Eating the flesh that she herself hath bred. ’Tis true, ’tis true; witness my knife’s sharp point.

[He stabs the Empress.]

SATURNINUS. Die, frantic wretch, for this accursed deed.

[He kills Titus.]

LUCIUS. Can the son’s eye behold his father bleed?

[He kills Saturninus.]

There’s meed for meed, death for a deadly deed.

[A great tumult. Lucius, Marcus, and others go aloft to the upper stage.]

MARCUS. You sad-faced men, people and sons of Rome, By uproar severed, as a flight of fowl Scattered by winds and high tempestuous gusts, O, let me teach you how to knit again This scattered corn into one mutual sheaf, These broken limbs again into one body; Lest Rome herself be bane unto herself, And she whom mighty kingdoms curtsy to, Like a forlorn and desperate castaway, Do shameful execution on herself. But if my frosty signs and chaps of age, Grave witnesses of true experience, Cannot induce you to attend my words, Speak, Rome’s dear friend, [to Lucius] as erst our ancestor, When with his solemn tongue he did discourse To love-sick Dido’s sad attending ear The story of that baleful burning night When subtle Greeks surprised King Priam’s Troy. Tell us what Sinon hath bewitched our ears, Or who hath brought the fatal engine in That gives our Troy, our Rome, the civil wound. My heart is not compact of flint nor steel, Nor can I utter all our bitter grief, But floods of tears will drown my oratory And break my utterance, even in the time When it should move you to attend me most, And force you to commiseration. Here’s Rome’s young captain, let him tell the tale, While I stand by and weep to hear him speak.

LUCIUS. Then, noble auditory, be it known to you That Chiron and the damned Demetrius Were they that murdered our emperor’s brother; And they it were that ravished our sister. For their fell faults our brothers were beheaded, Our father’s tears despised, and basely cozened Of that true hand that fought Rome’s quarrel out And sent her enemies unto the grave. Lastly, myself unkindly banished, The gates shut on me, and turned weeping out, To beg relief among Rome’s enemies; Who drowned their enmity in my true tears, And oped their arms to embrace me as a friend. I am the turned-forth, be it known to you, That have preserved her welfare in my blood And from her bosom took the enemy’s point, Sheathing the steel in my advent’rous body. Alas, you know I am no vaunter, I; My scars can witness, dumb although they are, That my report is just and full of truth. But soft, methinks I do digress too much, Citing my worthless praise. O, pardon me; For when no friends are by, men praise themselves.

MARCUS. Now is my turn to speak. Behold the child. Of this was Tamora delivered, The issue of an irreligious Moor, Chief architect and plotter of these woes. The villain is alive in Titus’ house, And as he is to witness, this is true. Now judge what cause had Titus to revenge These wrongs unspeakable, past patience, Or more than any living man could bear. Now have you heard the truth. What say you, Romans? Have we done aught amiss? Show us wherein, And, from the place where you behold us pleading, The poor remainder of Andronici Will, hand in hand, all headlong hurl ourselves, And on the ragged stones beat forth our souls, And make a mutual closure of our house. Speak, Romans, speak, and if you say we shall, Lo, hand in hand, Lucius and I will fall.

AEMILIUS. Come, come, thou reverend man of Rome, And bring our emperor gently in thy hand, Lucius our emperor; for well I know The common voice do cry it shall be so.

ROMANS. Lucius, all hail, Rome’s royal emperor!

MARCUS. Go, go into old Titus’ sorrowful house, And hither hale that misbelieving Moor To be adjudged some direful slaught’ring death, As punishment for his most wicked life.

[Exeunt Attendants. Lucius and Marcus come down from the upper stage.]

ROMANS. Lucius, all hail, Rome’s gracious governor!

LUCIUS. Thanks, gentle Romans. May I govern so To heal Rome’s harms and wipe away her woe! But, gentle people, give me aim awhile, For nature puts me to a heavy task. Stand all aloof; but, uncle, draw you near To shed obsequious tears upon this trunk.

[He kisses Titus.]

O, take this warm kiss on thy pale cold lips. These sorrowful drops upon thy blood-stained face, The last true duties of thy noble son.

MARCUS. Tear for tear and loving kiss for kiss Thy brother Marcus tenders on thy lips. O, were the sum of these that I should pay Countless and infinite, yet would I pay them.

LUCIUS. Come hither, boy; come, come, and learn of us To melt in showers. Thy grandsire loved thee well. Many a time he danced thee on his knee, Sung thee asleep, his loving breast thy pillow; Many a story hath he told to thee, And bid thee bear his pretty tales in mind And talk of them when he was dead and gone.

MARCUS. How many thousand times hath these poor lips, When they were living, warmed themselves on thine! O, now, sweet boy, give them their latest kiss. Bid him farewell; commit him to the grave. Do them that kindness, and take leave of them.

YOUNG LUCIUS. O grandsire, grandsire, e’en with all my heart Would I were dead, so you did live again! O Lord, I cannot speak to him for weeping; My tears will choke me if I ope my mouth.

Re-enter Attendants with Aaron.

AEMILIUS. You sad Andronici, have done with woes. Give sentence on the execrable wretch That hath been breeder of these dire events.

LUCIUS. Set him breast-deep in earth and famish him; There let him stand and rave and cry for food. If anyone relieves or pities him, For the offence he dies. This is our doom. Some stay to see him fastened in the earth.

AARON. Ah, why should wrath be mute and fury dumb? I am no baby, I, that with base prayers I should repent the evils I have done. Ten thousand worse than ever yet I did Would I perform, if I might have my will. If one good deed in all my life I did, I do repent it from my very soul.

LUCIUS. Some loving friends convey the emperor hence, And give him burial in his father’s grave. My father and Lavinia shall forthwith Be closed in our household’s monument. As for that ravenous tiger, Tamora, No funeral rite, nor man in mournful weed, No mournful bell shall ring her burial; But throw her forth to beasts and birds of prey. Her life was beastly and devoid of pity; And being dead, let birds on her take pity.

TROILUS AND CRESSIDA

Prologue. Scene I. Troy. Before Priam’s palace. Scene II. Troy. A street. Scene III. The Grecian camp. Before Agamemnon’s tent.

ACT II Scene I. The Grecian camp. Scene II. Troy. Priam’s palace. Scene III. The Grecian camp. Before the tent of Achilles.

ACT III Scene I. Troy. Priam’s palace. Scene II. Troy. Pandarus’ orchard. Scene III. The Greek camp.

ACT IV Scene I. Troy. A street. Scene II. Troy. The court of Pandarus’ house. Scene III. Troy. A street before Pandarus’ house. Scene IV. Troy. Pandarus’ house. Scene V. The Grecian camp. Lists set out.

ACT V Scene I. The Grecian camp. Before the tent of Achilles. Scene II. The Grecian camp. Before Calchas’ tent. Scene III. Troy. Before Priam’s palace. Scene IV. The plain between Troy and the Grecian camp. Scene V. Another part of the plain. Scene VI. Another part of the plain. Scene VII. Another part of the plain. Scene VIII. Another part of the plain. Scene IX. Another part of the plain. Scene X. Another part of the plain.

PRIAM, King of Troy

His sons: HECTOR TROILUS PARIS DEIPHOBUS HELENUS MARGARELON, a bastard son of Priam

Trojan commanders: AENEAS ANTENOR

CALCHAS, a Trojan priest, taking part with the Greeks PANDARUS, uncle to Cressida AGAMEMNON, the Greek general MENELAUS, his brother

Greek commanders: ACHILLES AJAX ULYSSES NESTOR DIOMEDES PATROCLUS

THERSITES, a deformed and scurrilous Greek ALEXANDER, servant to Cressida SERVANT to Troilus SERVANT to Paris SERVANT to Diomedes HELEN, wife to Menelaus ANDROMACHE, wife to Hector CASSANDRA, daughter to Priam, a prophetess CRESSIDA, daughter to Calchas

Trojan and Greek Soldiers, and Attendants

SCENE: Troy and the Greek camp before it

PROLOGUE

In Troy, there lies the scene. From isles of Greece The princes orgulous, their high blood chaf’d, Have to the port of Athens sent their ships Fraught with the ministers and instruments Of cruel war. Sixty and nine that wore Their crownets regal from the Athenian bay Put forth toward Phrygia; and their vow is made To ransack Troy, within whose strong immures The ravish’d Helen, Menelaus’ queen, With wanton Paris sleeps—and that’s the quarrel. To Tenedos they come, And the deep-drawing barks do there disgorge Their war-like fraughtage. Now on Dardan plains The fresh and yet unbruised Greeks do pitch Their brave pavilions: Priam’s six-gated city, Dardan, and Tymbria, Ilias, Chetas, Troien, And Antenorides, with massy staples And corresponsive and fulfilling bolts, Stir up the sons of Troy. Now expectation, tickling skittish spirits On one and other side, Trojan and Greek, Sets all on hazard. And hither am I come A prologue arm’d, but not in confidence Of author’s pen or actor’s voice, but suited In like conditions as our argument, To tell you, fair beholders, that our play Leaps o’er the vaunt and firstlings of those broils, Beginning in the middle; starting thence away, To what may be digested in a play. Like or find fault; do as your pleasures are; Now good or bad, ’tis but the chance of war.

SCENE I. Troy. Before Priam’s palace.

Enter Troilus armed, and Pandarus.

TROILUS. Call here my varlet; I’ll unarm again. Why should I war without the walls of Troy That find such cruel battle here within? Each Trojan that is master of his heart, Let him to field; Troilus, alas! hath none.

PANDARUS. Will this gear ne’er be mended?

TROILUS. The Greeks are strong, and skilful to their strength, Fierce to their skill, and to their fierceness valiant; But I am weaker than a woman’s tear, Tamer than sleep, fonder than ignorance, Less valiant than the virgin in the night, And skilless as unpractis’d infancy.

PANDARUS. Well, I have told you enough of this; for my part, I’ll not meddle nor make no farther. He that will have a cake out of the wheat must tarry the grinding.

TROILUS. Have I not tarried?

PANDARUS. Ay, the grinding; but you must tarry the bolting.

PANDARUS. Ay, the bolting; but you must tarry the leavening.

TROILUS. Still have I tarried.

PANDARUS. Ay, to the leavening; but here’s yet in the word ‘hereafter’ the kneading, the making of the cake, the heating of the oven, and the baking; nay, you must stay the cooling too, or you may chance burn your lips.

TROILUS. Patience herself, what goddess e’er she be, Doth lesser blench at suff’rance than I do. At Priam’s royal table do I sit; And when fair Cressid comes into my thoughts, So, traitor! ‘when she comes’! when she is thence?

PANDARUS. Well, she look’d yesternight fairer than ever I saw her look, or any woman else.

TROILUS. I was about to tell thee: when my heart, As wedged with a sigh, would rive in twain, Lest Hector or my father should perceive me, I have, as when the sun doth light a storm, Buried this sigh in wrinkle of a smile. But sorrow that is couch’d in seeming gladness Is like that mirth fate turns to sudden sadness.

PANDARUS. An her hair were not somewhat darker than Helen’s, well, go to, there were no more comparison between the women. But, for my part, she is my kinswoman; I would not, as they term it, praise her, but I would somebody had heard her talk yesterday, as I did. I will not dispraise your sister Cassandra’s wit; but—

TROILUS. O Pandarus! I tell thee, Pandarus, When I do tell thee there my hopes lie drown’d, Reply not in how many fathoms deep They lie indrench’d. I tell thee I am mad In Cressid’s love. Thou answer’st ‘She is fair’; Pour’st in the open ulcer of my heart Her eyes, her hair, her cheek, her gait, her voice, Handlest in thy discourse. O! that her hand, In whose comparison all whites are ink Writing their own reproach; to whose soft seizure The cygnet’s down is harsh, and spirit of sense Hard as the palm of ploughman! This thou tell’st me, As true thou tell’st me, when I say I love her; But, saying thus, instead of oil and balm, Thou lay’st in every gash that love hath given me The knife that made it.

PANDARUS. I speak no more than truth.

TROILUS. Thou dost not speak so much.

PANDARUS. Faith, I’ll not meddle in’t. Let her be as she is: if she be fair, ’tis the better for her; and she be not, she has the mends in her own hands.

TROILUS. Good Pandarus! How now, Pandarus!

PANDARUS. I have had my labour for my travail, ill thought on of her and ill thought on of you; gone between and between, but small thanks for my labour.

TROILUS. What! art thou angry, Pandarus? What! with me?

PANDARUS. Because she’s kin to me, therefore she’s not so fair as Helen. And she were not kin to me, she would be as fair on Friday as Helen is on Sunday. But what care I? I care not and she were a blackamoor; ’tis all one to me.

TROILUS. Say I she is not fair?

PANDARUS. I do not care whether you do or no. She’s a fool to stay behind her father. Let her to the Greeks; and so I’ll tell her the next time I see her. For my part, I’ll meddle nor make no more i’ the matter.

TROILUS. Pandarus—

PANDARUS. Not I.

TROILUS. Sweet Pandarus—

PANDARUS. Pray you, speak no more to me: I will leave all as I found it, and there an end.

[Exit Pandarus. An alarum.]

TROILUS. Peace, you ungracious clamours! Peace, rude sounds! Fools on both sides! Helen must needs be fair, When with your blood you daily paint her thus. I cannot fight upon this argument; It is too starv’d a subject for my sword. But Pandarus, O gods! how do you plague me! I cannot come to Cressid but by Pandar; And he’s as tetchy to be woo’d to woo As she is stubborn-chaste against all suit. Tell me, Apollo, for thy Daphne’s love, What Cressid is, what Pandar, and what we? Her bed is India; there she lies, a pearl; Between our Ilium and where she resides Let it be call’d the wild and wandering flood; Ourself the merchant, and this sailing Pandar Our doubtful hope, our convoy, and our bark.

Alarum. Enter Aeneas.

AENEAS. How now, Prince Troilus! Wherefore not afield?

TROILUS. Because not there. This woman’s answer sorts, For womanish it is to be from thence. What news, Aeneas, from the field today?

AENEAS. That Paris is returned home, and hurt.

TROILUS. By whom, Aeneas?

AENEAS. Troilus, by Menelaus.

TROILUS. Let Paris bleed: ’tis but a scar to scorn; Paris is gor’d with Menelaus’ horn.

AENEAS. Hark what good sport is out of town today!

TROILUS. Better at home, if ‘would I might’ were ‘may.’ But to the sport abroad. Are you bound thither?

AENEAS. In all swift haste.

TROILUS. Come, go we then together.

SCENE II. Troy. A street.

Enter Cressida and her man Alexander.

CRESSIDA. Who were those went by?

ALEXANDER. Queen Hecuba and Helen.

CRESSIDA. And whither go they?

ALEXANDER. Up to the eastern tower, Whose height commands as subject all the vale, To see the battle. Hector, whose patience Is as a virtue fix’d, today was mov’d. He chid Andromache, and struck his armourer; And, like as there were husbandry in war, Before the sun rose he was harness’d light, And to the field goes he; where every flower Did as a prophet weep what it foresaw In Hector’s wrath.

CRESSIDA. What was his cause of anger?

ALEXANDER. The noise goes, this: there is among the Greeks A lord of Trojan blood, nephew to Hector; They call him Ajax.

CRESSIDA. Good; and what of him?

ALEXANDER. They say he is a very man per se And stands alone.

CRESSIDA. So do all men, unless they are drunk, sick, or have no legs.

ALEXANDER. This man, lady, hath robb’d many beasts of their particular additions: he is as valiant as the lion, churlish as the bear, slow as the elephant—a man into whom nature hath so crowded humours that his valour is crush’d into folly, his folly sauced with discretion. There is no man hath a virtue that he hath not a glimpse of, nor any man an attaint but he carries some stain of it; he is melancholy without cause and merry against the hair; he hath the joints of everything; but everything so out of joint that he is a gouty Briareus, many hands and no use, or purblind Argus, all eyes and no sight.

CRESSIDA. But how should this man, that makes me smile, make Hector angry?

ALEXANDER. They say he yesterday cop’d Hector in the battle and struck him down, the disdain and shame whereof hath ever since kept Hector fasting and waking.

Enter Pandarus.

CRESSIDA. Who comes here?

ALEXANDER. Madam, your uncle Pandarus.

CRESSIDA. Hector’s a gallant man.

ALEXANDER. As may be in the world, lady.

PANDARUS. What’s that? What’s that?

CRESSIDA. Good morrow, uncle Pandarus.

PANDARUS. Good morrow, cousin Cressid. What do you talk of?—Good morrow, Alexander.—How do you, cousin? When were you at Ilium?

CRESSIDA. This morning, uncle.

PANDARUS. What were you talking of when I came? Was Hector arm’d and gone ere you came to Ilium? Helen was not up, was she?

CRESSIDA. Hector was gone; but Helen was not up.

PANDARUS. E’en so. Hector was stirring early.

CRESSIDA. That were we talking of, and of his anger.

PANDARUS. Was he angry?

CRESSIDA. So he says here.

PANDARUS. True, he was so; I know the cause too; he’ll lay about him today, I can tell them that. And there’s Troilus will not come far behind him; let them take heed of Troilus, I can tell them that too.

CRESSIDA. What, is he angry too?

PANDARUS. Who, Troilus? Troilus is the better man of the two.

CRESSIDA. O Jupiter! there’s no comparison.

PANDARUS. What, not between Troilus and Hector? Do you know a man if you see him?

CRESSIDA. Ay, if I ever saw him before and knew him.

PANDARUS. Well, I say Troilus is Troilus.

CRESSIDA. Then you say as I say, for I am sure he is not Hector.

PANDARUS. No, nor Hector is not Troilus in some degrees.

CRESSIDA. ’Tis just to each of them: he is himself.

PANDARUS. Himself! Alas, poor Troilus! I would he were!

CRESSIDA. So he is.

PANDARUS. Condition I had gone barefoot to India.

CRESSIDA. He is not Hector.

PANDARUS. Himself! no, he’s not himself. Would a’ were himself! Well, the gods are above; time must friend or end. Well, Troilus, well! I would my heart were in her body! No, Hector is not a better man than Troilus.

CRESSIDA. Excuse me.

PANDARUS. He is elder.

CRESSIDA. Pardon me, pardon me.

PANDARUS. Th’other’s not come to’t; you shall tell me another tale when th’other’s come to’t. Hector shall not have his wit this year.

CRESSIDA. He shall not need it if he have his own.

ANDARUS. Nor his qualities.

CRESSIDA. No matter.

PANDARUS. Nor his beauty.

CRESSIDA. ’Twould not become him: his own’s better.

PANDARUS. You have no judgement, niece. Helen herself swore th’other day that Troilus, for a brown favour, for so ’tis, I must confess—not brown neither—

CRESSIDA. No, but brown.

PANDARUS. Faith, to say truth, brown and not brown.

CRESSIDA. To say the truth, true and not true.

PANDARUS. She prais’d his complexion above Paris.

CRESSIDA. Why, Paris hath colour enough.

PANDARUS. So he has.

CRESSIDA. Then Troilus should have too much. If she prais’d him above, his complexion is higher than his; he having colour enough, and the other higher, is too flaming a praise for a good complexion. I had as lief Helen’s golden tongue had commended Troilus for a copper nose.

PANDARUS. I swear to you I think Helen loves him better than Paris.

CRESSIDA. Then she’s a merry Greek indeed.

PANDARUS. Nay, I am sure she does. She came to him th’other day into the compass’d window—and you know he has not past three or four hairs on his chin—

CRESSIDA. Indeed a tapster’s arithmetic may soon bring his particulars therein to a total.

PANDARUS. Why, he is very young, and yet will he within three pound lift as much as his brother Hector.

CRESSIDA. Is he so young a man and so old a lifter?

PANDARUS. But to prove to you that Helen loves him: she came and puts me her white hand to his cloven chin—

CRESSIDA. Juno have mercy! How came it cloven?

PANDARUS. Why, you know, ’tis dimpled. I think his smiling becomes him better than any man in all Phrygia.

CRESSIDA. O, he smiles valiantly!

PANDARUS. Does he not?

CRESSIDA. O yes, an ’twere a cloud in autumn!

PANDARUS. Why, go to, then! But to prove to you that Helen loves Troilus—

CRESSIDA. Troilus will stand to the proof, if you’ll prove it so.

PANDARUS. Troilus! Why, he esteems her no more than I esteem an addle egg.

CRESSIDA. If you love an addle egg as well as you love an idle head, you would eat chickens i’ th’ shell.

PANDARUS. I cannot choose but laugh to think how she tickled his chin. Indeed, she has a marvell’s white hand, I must needs confess.

CRESSIDA. Without the rack.

PANDARUS. And she takes upon her to spy a white hair on his chin.

CRESSIDA. Alas, poor chin! Many a wart is richer.

PANDARUS. But there was such laughing! Queen Hecuba laugh’d that her eyes ran o’er.

CRESSIDA. With millstones.

PANDARUS. And Cassandra laugh’d.

CRESSIDA. But there was a more temperate fire under the pot of her eyes. Did her eyes run o’er too?

PANDARUS. And Hector laugh’d.

CRESSIDA. At what was all this laughing?

PANDARUS. Marry, at the white hair that Helen spied on Troilus’ chin.

CRESSIDA. And’t had been a green hair I should have laugh’d too.

PANDARUS. They laugh’d not so much at the hair as at his pretty answer.

CRESSIDA. What was his answer?

PANDARUS. Quoth she ‘Here’s but two and fifty hairs on your chin, and one of them is white.’

CRESSIDA. This is her question.

PANDARUS. That’s true; make no question of that. ‘Two and fifty hairs,’ quoth he ‘and one white. That white hair is my father, and all the rest are his sons.’ ‘Jupiter!’ quoth she ‘which of these hairs is Paris my husband?’ ‘The forked one,’ quoth he, ’pluck’t out and give it him.’ But there was such laughing! and Helen so blush’d, and Paris so chaf’d; and all the rest so laugh’d that it pass’d.

CRESSIDA. So let it now; for it has been a great while going by.

PANDARUS. Well, cousin, I told you a thing yesterday; think on’t.

CRESSIDA. So I do.

PANDARUS. I’ll be sworn ’tis true; he will weep you, and ’twere a man born in April.

CRESSIDA. And I’ll spring up in his tears, an ’twere a nettle against May.

[Sound a retreat.]

PANDARUS. Hark! they are coming from the field. Shall we stand up here and see them as they pass toward Ilium? Good niece, do, sweet niece Cressida.

CRESSIDA. At your pleasure.

PANDARUS. Here, here, here’s an excellent place; here we may see most bravely. I’ll tell you them all by their names as they pass by; but mark Troilus above the rest.

[Aeneas passes.]

CRESSIDA. Speak not so loud.

PANDARUS. That’s Aeneas. Is not that a brave man? He’s one of the flowers of Troy, I can tell you. But mark Troilus; you shall see anon.

[Antenor passes.]

CRESSIDA. Who’s that?

PANDARUS. That’s Antenor. He has a shrewd wit, I can tell you; and he’s a man good enough; he’s one o’ th’ soundest judgements in Troy, whosoever, and a proper man of person. When comes Troilus? I’ll show you Troilus anon. If he see me, you shall see him nod at me.

CRESSIDA. Will he give you the nod?

PANDARUS. You shall see.

CRESSIDA. If he do, the rich shall have more.

[Hector passes.]

PANDARUS. That’s Hector, that, that, look you, that; there’s a fellow! Go thy way, Hector! There’s a brave man, niece. O brave Hector! Look how he looks. There’s a countenance! Is’t not a brave man?

CRESSIDA. O, a brave man!

PANDARUS. Is a’ not? It does a man’s heart good. Look you what hacks are on his helmet! Look you yonder, do you see? Look you there. There’s no jesting; there’s laying on; take’t off who will, as they say. There be hacks.

CRESSIDA. Be those with swords?

PANDARUS. Swords! anything, he cares not; and the devil come to him, it’s all one. By God’s lid, it does one’s heart good. Yonder comes Paris, yonder comes Paris.

[Paris passes.]

Look ye yonder, niece; is’t not a gallant man too, is’t not? Why, this is brave now. Who said he came hurt home today? He’s not hurt. Why, this will do Helen’s heart good now, ha! Would I could see Troilus now! You shall see Troilus anon.

[Helenus passes.]

PANDARUS. That’s Helenus. I marvel where Troilus is. That’s Helenus. I think he went not forth today. That’s Helenus.

CRESSIDA. Can Helenus fight, uncle?

PANDARUS. Helenus! no. Yes, he’ll fight indifferent well. I marvel where Troilus is. Hark! do you not hear the people cry ‘Troilus’?—Helenus is a priest.

CRESSIDA. What sneaking fellow comes yonder?

[Troilus passes.]

PANDARUS. Where? yonder? That’s Deiphobus. ’Tis Troilus. There’s a man, niece. Hem! Brave Troilus, the prince of chivalry!

CRESSIDA. Peace, for shame, peace!

PANDARUS. Mark him; note him. O brave Troilus! Look well upon him, niece; look you how his sword is bloodied, and his helm more hack’d than Hector’s; and how he looks, and how he goes! O admirable youth! he never saw three and twenty. Go thy way, Troilus, go thy way. Had I a sister were a grace or a daughter a goddess, he should take his choice. O admirable man! Paris? Paris is dirt to him; and, I warrant, Helen, to change, would give an eye to boot.

CRESSIDA. Here comes more.

[Common soldiers pass.]

PANDARUS. Asses, fools, dolts! chaff and bran, chaff and bran! porridge after meat! I could live and die in the eyes of Troilus. Ne’er look, ne’er look; the eagles are gone. Crows and daws, crows and daws! I had rather be such a man as Troilus than Agamemnon and all Greece.

CRESSIDA. There is amongst the Greeks Achilles, a better man than Troilus.

PANDARUS. Achilles? A drayman, a porter, a very camel!

CRESSIDA. Well, well.

PANDARUS. Well, well! Why, have you any discretion? Have you any eyes? Do you know what a man is? Is not birth, beauty, good shape, discourse, manhood, learning, gentleness, virtue, youth, liberality, and such like, the spice and salt that season a man?

CRESSIDA. Ay, a minc’d man; and then to be bak’d with no date in the pie, for then the man’s date is out.

PANDARUS. You are such a woman! A man knows not at what ward you lie.

CRESSIDA. Upon my back, to defend my belly; upon my wit, to defend my wiles; upon my secrecy, to defend mine honesty; my mask, to defend my beauty; and you, to defend all these; and at all these wards I lie, at a thousand watches.

PANDARUS. Say one of your watches.

CRESSIDA. Nay, I’ll watch you for that; and that’s one of the chiefest of them too. If I cannot ward what I would not have hit, I can watch you for telling how I took the blow; unless it swell past hiding, and then it’s past watching.

PANDARUS. You are such another!

Enter Troilus' Boy.

BOY. Sir, my lord would instantly speak with you.

PANDARUS. Where?

BOY. At your own house; there he unarms him.

PANDARUS. Good boy, tell him I come. [Exit Boy.] I doubt he be hurt. Fare ye well, good niece.

CRESSIDA. Adieu, uncle.

PANDARUS. I will be with you, niece, by and by.

CRESSIDA. To bring, uncle.

PANDARUS. Ay, a token from Troilus.

[Exit Pandarus.]

CRESSIDA. By the same token, you are a bawd. Words, vows, gifts, tears, and love’s full sacrifice, He offers in another’s enterprise; But more in Troilus thousand-fold I see Than in the glass of Pandar’s praise may be, Yet hold I off. Women are angels, wooing: Things won are done; joy’s soul lies in the doing. That she belov’d knows naught that knows not this: Men prize the thing ungain’d more than it is. That she was never yet that ever knew Love got so sweet as when desire did sue; Therefore this maxim out of love I teach: ‘Achievement is command; ungain’d, beseech.’ Then though my heart’s content firm love doth bear, Nothing of that shall from mine eyes appear.

SCENE III. The Grecian camp. Before Agamemnon’s tent.

Sennet. Enter Agamemnon, Nestor, Ulysses, Diomedes, Menelaus and others.

AGAMEMNON. Princes, What grief hath set these jaundies o’er your cheeks? The ample proposition that hope makes In all designs begun on earth below Fails in the promis’d largeness; checks and disasters Grow in the veins of actions highest rear’d, As knots, by the conflux of meeting sap, Infects the sound pine, and diverts his grain Tortive and errant from his course of growth. Nor, princes, is it matter new to us That we come short of our suppose so far That after seven years’ siege yet Troy walls stand; Sith every action that hath gone before, Whereof we have record, trial did draw Bias and thwart, not answering the aim, And that unbodied figure of the thought That gave’t surmised shape. Why then, you princes, Do you with cheeks abash’d behold our works And call them shames, which are, indeed, naught else But the protractive trials of great Jove To find persistive constancy in men; The fineness of which metal is not found In fortune’s love? For then the bold and coward, The wise and fool, the artist and unread, The hard and soft, seem all affin’d and kin. But in the wind and tempest of her frown Distinction, with a broad and powerful fan, Puffing at all, winnows the light away; And what hath mass or matter by itself Lies rich in virtue and unmingled.

NESTOR. With due observance of thy godlike seat, Great Agamemnon, Nestor shall apply Thy latest words. In the reproof of chance Lies the true proof of men. The sea being smooth, How many shallow bauble boats dare sail Upon her patient breast, making their way With those of nobler bulk! But let the ruffian Boreas once enrage The gentle Thetis, and anon behold The strong-ribb’d bark through liquid mountains cut, Bounding between the two moist elements Like Perseus’ horse. Where’s then the saucy boat, Whose weak untimber’d sides but even now Co-rivall’d greatness? Either to harbour fled Or made a toast for Neptune. Even so Doth valour’s show and valour’s worth divide In storms of fortune; for in her ray and brightness The herd hath more annoyance by the breeze Than by the tiger; but when the splitting wind Makes flexible the knees of knotted oaks, And flies fled under shade—why, then the thing of courage, As rous’d with rage, with rage doth sympathise, And with an accent tun’d in self-same key Retorts to chiding fortune.

ULYSSES. Agamemnon, Thou great commander, nerve and bone of Greece, Heart of our numbers, soul and only spirit In whom the tempers and the minds of all Should be shut up—hear what Ulysses speaks. Besides th’applause and approbation The which, [To Agamemnon] most mighty, for thy place and sway, [To Nestor] And, thou most reverend, for thy stretch’d-out life, I give to both your speeches—which were such As Agamemnon and the hand of Greece Should hold up high in brass; and such again As venerable Nestor, hatch’d in silver, Should with a bond of air, strong as the axle-tree On which heaven rides, knit all the Greekish ears To his experienc’d tongue—yet let it please both, Thou great, and wise, to hear Ulysses speak.

AGAMEMNON. Speak, Prince of Ithaca; and be’t of less expect That matter needless, of importless burden, Divide thy lips than we are confident, When rank Thersites opes his mastic jaws, We shall hear music, wit, and oracle.

ULYSSES. Troy, yet upon his basis, had been down, And the great Hector’s sword had lack’d a master, But for these instances: The specialty of rule hath been neglected; And look how many Grecian tents do stand Hollow upon this plain, so many hollow factions. When that the general is not like the hive, To whom the foragers shall all repair, What honey is expected? Degree being vizarded, Th’unworthiest shows as fairly in the mask. The heavens themselves, the planets, and this centre, Observe degree, priority, and place, Insisture, course, proportion, season, form, Office, and custom, in all line of order; And therefore is the glorious planet Sol In noble eminence enthron’d and spher’d Amidst the other, whose med’cinable eye Corrects the influence of evil planets, And posts, like the commandment of a king, Sans check, to good and bad. But when the planets In evil mixture to disorder wander, What plagues and what portents, what mutiny, What raging of the sea, shaking of earth, Commotion in the winds! Frights, changes, horrors, Divert and crack, rend and deracinate, The unity and married calm of states Quite from their fixture! O, when degree is shak’d, Which is the ladder of all high designs, The enterprise is sick! How could communities, Degrees in schools, and brotherhoods in cities, Peaceful commerce from dividable shores, The primogenity and due of birth, Prerogative of age, crowns, sceptres, laurels, But by degree stand in authentic place? Take but degree away, untune that string, And hark what discord follows! Each thing melts In mere oppugnancy: the bounded waters Should lift their bosoms higher than the shores, And make a sop of all this solid globe; Strength should be lord of imbecility, And the rude son should strike his father dead; Force should be right; or, rather, right and wrong— Between whose endless jar justice resides— Should lose their names, and so should justice too. Then everything includes itself in power, Power into will, will into appetite; And appetite, an universal wolf, So doubly seconded with will and power, Must make perforce an universal prey, And last eat up himself. Great Agamemnon, This chaos, when degree is suffocate, Follows the choking. And this neglection of degree it is That by a pace goes backward, with a purpose It hath to climb. The general’s disdain’d By him one step below, he by the next, That next by him beneath; so every step, Exampl’d by the first pace that is sick Of his superior, grows to an envious fever Of pale and bloodless emulation. And ’tis this fever that keeps Troy on foot, Not her own sinews. To end a tale of length, Troy in our weakness stands, not in her strength.

NESTOR. Most wisely hath Ulysses here discover’d The fever whereof all our power is sick.

AGAMEMNON. The nature of the sickness found, Ulysses, What is the remedy?

ULYSSES. The great Achilles, whom opinion crowns The sinew and the forehand of our host, Having his ear full of his airy fame, Grows dainty of his worth, and in his tent Lies mocking our designs; with him Patroclus Upon a lazy bed the livelong day Breaks scurril jests; And with ridiculous and awkward action— Which, slanderer, he imitation calls— He pageants us. Sometime, great Agamemnon, Thy topless deputation he puts on; And like a strutting player whose conceit Lies in his hamstring, and doth think it rich To hear the wooden dialogue and sound ’Twixt his stretch’d footing and the scaffoldage— Such to-be-pitied and o’er-wrested seeming He acts thy greatness in; and when he speaks ’Tis like a chime a-mending; with terms unsquar’d, Which, from the tongue of roaring Typhon dropp’d, Would seem hyperboles. At this fusty stuff The large Achilles, on his press’d bed lolling, From his deep chest laughs out a loud applause; Cries ‘Excellent! ’Tis Agamemnon right! Now play me Nestor; hem, and stroke thy beard, As he being drest to some oration.’ That’s done—as near as the extremest ends Of parallels, as like as Vulcan and his wife; Yet god Achilles still cries ‘Excellent! ’Tis Nestor right. Now play him me, Patroclus, Arming to answer in a night alarm.’ And then, forsooth, the faint defects of age Must be the scene of mirth: to cough and spit And, with a palsy fumbling on his gorget, Shake in and out the rivet. And at this sport Sir Valour dies; cries ‘O, enough, Patroclus; Or give me ribs of steel! I shall split all In pleasure of my spleen.’ And in this fashion All our abilities, gifts, natures, shapes, Severals and generals of grace exact, Achievements, plots, orders, preventions, Excitements to the field or speech for truce, Success or loss, what is or is not, serves As stuff for these two to make paradoxes.

NESTOR. And in the imitation of these twain— Who, as Ulysses says, opinion crowns With an imperial voice—many are infect. Ajax is grown self-will’d and bears his head In such a rein, in full as proud a place As broad Achilles; keeps his tent like him; Makes factious feasts; rails on our state of war Bold as an oracle, and sets Thersites, A slave whose gall coins slanders like a mint, To match us in comparisons with dirt, To weaken and discredit our exposure, How rank soever rounded in with danger.

ULYSSES. They tax our policy and call it cowardice, Count wisdom as no member of the war, Forestall prescience, and esteem no act But that of hand. The still and mental parts That do contrive how many hands shall strike When fitness calls them on, and know, by measure Of their observant toil, the enemies’ weight— Why, this hath not a finger’s dignity: They call this bed-work, mapp’ry, closet-war; So that the ram that batters down the wall, For the great swinge and rudeness of his poise, They place before his hand that made the engine, Or those that with the fineness of their souls By reason guide his execution.

NESTOR. Let this be granted, and Achilles’ horse Makes many Thetis’ sons.

[Tucket.]

AGAMEMNON. What trumpet? Look, Menelaus.

MENELAUS. From Troy.

Enter Aeneas.

AGAMEMNON. What would you fore our tent?

AENEAS. Is this great Agamemnon’s tent, I pray you?

AGAMEMNON. Even this.

AENEAS. May one that is a herald and a prince Do a fair message to his kingly eyes?

AGAMEMNON. With surety stronger than Achilles’ arm Fore all the Greekish heads, which with one voice Call Agamemnon head and general.

AENEAS. Fair leave and large security. How may A stranger to those most imperial looks Know them from eyes of other mortals?

AGAMEMNON. How?

AENEAS. Ay; I ask, that I might waken reverence, And bid the cheek be ready with a blush Modest as morning when she coldly eyes The youthful Phoebus. Which is that god in office, guiding men? Which is the high and mighty Agamemnon?

AGAMEMNON. This Trojan scorns us, or the men of Troy Are ceremonious courtiers.

AENEAS. Courtiers as free, as debonair, unarm’d, As bending angels; that’s their fame in peace. But when they would seem soldiers, they have galls, Good arms, strong joints, true swords; and, Jove’s accord, Nothing so full of heart. But peace, Aeneas, Peace, Trojan; lay thy finger on thy lips. The worthiness of praise distains his worth, If that the prais’d himself bring the praise forth; But what the repining enemy commends, That breath fame blows; that praise, sole pure, transcends.

AGAMEMNON. Sir, you of Troy, call you yourself Aeneas?

AENEAS. Ay, Greek, that is my name.

AGAMEMNON. What’s your affairs, I pray you?

AENEAS. Sir, pardon; ’tis for Agamemnon’s ears.

AGAMEMNON He hears naught privately that comes from Troy.

AENEAS. Nor I from Troy come not to whisper with him; I bring a trumpet to awake his ear, To set his sense on the attentive bent, And then to speak.

AGAMEMNON. Speak frankly as the wind; It is not Agamemnon’s sleeping hour. That thou shalt know, Trojan, he is awake, He tells thee so himself.

AENEAS. Trumpet, blow loud, Send thy brass voice through all these lazy tents; And every Greek of mettle, let him know What Troy means fairly shall be spoke aloud.

[Sound trumpet.]

We have, great Agamemnon, here in Troy A prince called Hector—Priam is his father— Who in this dull and long-continued truce Is resty grown; he bade me take a trumpet And to this purpose speak: Kings, princes, lords! If there be one among the fair’st of Greece That holds his honour higher than his ease, That feeds his praise more than he fears his peril, That knows his valour and knows not his fear, That loves his mistress more than in confession With truant vows to her own lips he loves, And dare avow her beauty and her worth In other arms than hers—to him this challenge. Hector, in view of Trojans and of Greeks, Shall make it good or do his best to do it: He hath a lady wiser, fairer, truer, Than ever Greek did couple in his arms; And will tomorrow with his trumpet call Mid-way between your tents and walls of Troy To rouse a Grecian that is true in love. If any come, Hector shall honour him; If none, he’ll say in Troy, when he retires, The Grecian dames are sunburnt and not worth The splinter of a lance. Even so much.

AGAMEMNON. This shall be told our lovers, Lord Aeneas. If none of them have soul in such a kind, We left them all at home. But we are soldiers; And may that soldier a mere recreant prove That means not, hath not, or is not in love. If then one is, or hath, or means to be, That one meets Hector; if none else, I am he.

NESTOR. Tell him of Nestor, one that was a man When Hector’s grandsire suck’d. He is old now; But if there be not in our Grecian host A noble man that hath one spark of fire To answer for his love, tell him from me I’ll hide my silver beard in a gold beaver, And in my vambrace put this wither’d brawns, And meeting him, will tell him that my lady Was fairer than his grandam, and as chaste As may be in the world. His youth in flood, I’ll prove this troth with my three drops of blood.

AENEAS. Now heavens forfend such scarcity of youth!

ULYSSES. Amen.

AGAMEMNON. Fair Lord Aeneas, let me touch your hand; To our pavilion shall I lead you, sir. Achilles shall have word of this intent; So shall each lord of Greece, from tent to tent. Yourself shall feast with us before you go, And find the welcome of a noble foe.

[Exeunt all but Ulysses and Nestor.]

ULYSSES. Nestor!

NESTOR. What says Ulysses?

ULYSSES. I have a young conception in my brain; Be you my time to bring it to some shape.

NESTOR. What is’t?

ULYSSES. This ’tis: Blunt wedges rive hard knots. The seeded pride That hath to this maturity blown up In rank Achilles must or now be cropp’d Or, shedding, breed a nursery of like evil To overbulk us all.

NESTOR. Well, and how?

ULYSSES. This challenge that the gallant Hector sends, However it is spread in general name, Relates in purpose only to Achilles.

NESTOR. True. The purpose is perspicuous even as substance Whose grossness little characters sum up; And, in the publication, make no strain But that Achilles, were his brain as barren As banks of Libya—though, Apollo knows, ’Tis dry enough—will with great speed of judgement, Ay, with celerity, find Hector’s purpose Pointing on him.

ULYSSES. And wake him to the answer, think you?

NESTOR. Why, ’tis most meet. Who may you else oppose That can from Hector bring those honours off, If not Achilles? Though ’t be a sportful combat, Yet in this trial much opinion dwells For here the Trojans taste our dear’st repute With their fin’st palate; and trust to me, Ulysses, Our imputation shall be oddly pois’d In this vile action; for the success, Although particular, shall give a scantling Of good or bad unto the general; And in such indexes, although small pricks To their subsequent volumes, there is seen The baby figure of the giant mass Of things to come at large. It is suppos’d He that meets Hector issues from our choice; And choice, being mutual act of all our souls, Makes merit her election, and doth boil, As ’twere from forth us all, a man distill’d Out of our virtues; who miscarrying, What heart receives from hence a conquering part, To steel a strong opinion to themselves? Which entertain’d, limbs are his instruments, In no less working than are swords and bows Directive by the limbs.

ULYSSES. Give pardon to my speech. Therefore ’tis meet Achilles meet not Hector. Let us, like merchants, First show foul wares, and think perchance they’ll sell; If not, the lustre of the better shall exceed By showing the worse first. Do not consent That ever Hector and Achilles meet; For both our honour and our shame in this Are dogg’d with two strange followers.

NESTOR. I see them not with my old eyes. What are they?

ULYSSES. What glory our Achilles shares from Hector, Were he not proud, we all should share with him; But he already is too insolent; And it were better parch in Afric sun Than in the pride and salt scorn of his eyes, Should he scape Hector fair. If he were foil’d, Why, then we do our main opinion crush In taint of our best man. No, make a lott’ry; And, by device, let blockish Ajax draw The sort to fight with Hector. Among ourselves Give him allowance for the better man; For that will physic the great Myrmidon, Who broils in loud applause, and make him fall His crest, that prouder than blue Iris bends. If the dull brainless Ajax come safe off, We’ll dress him up in voices; if he fail, Yet go we under our opinion still That we have better men. But, hit or miss, Our project’s life this shape of sense assumes— Ajax employ’d plucks down Achilles’ plumes.

NESTOR. Now, Ulysses, I begin to relish thy advice; And I will give a taste thereof forthwith To Agamemnon. Go we to him straight. Two curs shall tame each other: pride alone Must tarre the mastiffs on, as ’twere their bone.

SCENE I. The Grecian camp.

Enter Ajax and Thersites.

AJAX. Thersites!

THERSITES. Agamemnon—how if he had boils, full, all over, generally?

THERSITES. And those boils did run—say so. Did not the general run then? Were not that a botchy core?

AJAX. Dog!

THERSITES. Then there would come some matter from him; I see none now.

AJAX. Thou bitch-wolf’s son, canst thou not hear? Feel, then.

THERSITES. The plague of Greece upon thee, thou mongrel beef-witted lord!

AJAX. Speak, then, thou unsalted leaven, speak. I will beat thee into handsomeness.

THERSITES. I shall sooner rail thee into wit and holiness; but I think thy horse will sooner con an oration than thou learn a prayer without book. Thou canst strike, canst thou? A red murrain o’ thy jade’s tricks!

AJAX. Toadstool, learn me the proclamation.

THERSITES. Dost thou think I have no sense, thou strikest me thus?

AJAX. The proclamation!

THERSITES. Thou art proclaim’d fool, I think.

AJAX. Do not, porpentine, do not; my fingers itch.

THERSITES. I would thou didst itch from head to foot and I had the scratching of thee; I would make thee the loathsomest scab in Greece. When thou art forth in the incursions, thou strikest as slow as another.

AJAX. I say, the proclamation.

THERSITES. Thou grumblest and railest every hour on Achilles; and thou art as full of envy at his greatness as Cerberus is at Proserpina’s beauty—ay, that thou bark’st at him.

AJAX. Mistress Thersites!

THERSITES. Thou shouldst strike him.

AJAX. Cobloaf!

THERSITES. He would pun thee into shivers with his fist, as a sailor breaks a biscuit.

AJAX. You whoreson cur!

THERSITES. Do, do.

AJAX. Thou stool for a witch!

THERSITES. Ay, do, do; thou sodden-witted lord! Thou hast no more brain than I have in mine elbows; an asinico may tutor thee. You scurvy valiant ass! Thou art here but to thrash Trojans, and thou art bought and sold among those of any wit like a barbarian slave. If thou use to beat me, I will begin at thy heel and tell what thou art by inches, thou thing of no bowels, thou!

AJAX. You dog!

THERSITES. You scurvy lord!

AJAX. You cur!

THERSITES. Mars his idiot! Do, rudeness; do, camel; do, do.

Enter Achilles and Patroclus.

ACHILLES. Why, how now, Ajax! Wherefore do ye thus? How now, Thersites! What’s the matter, man?

THERSITES. You see him there, do you?

ACHILLES. Ay; what’s the matter?

THERSITES. Nay, look upon him.

ACHILLES. So I do. What’s the matter?

THERSITES. Nay, but regard him well.

ACHILLES. Well! why, so I do.

THERSITES. But yet you look not well upon him; for whosomever you take him to be, he is Ajax.

ACHILLES. I know that, fool.

THERSITES. Ay, but that fool knows not himself.

AJAX. Therefore I beat thee.

THERSITES. Lo, lo, lo, lo, what modicums of wit he utters! His evasions have ears thus long. I have bobb’d his brain more than he has beat my bones. I will buy nine sparrows for a penny, and his pia mater is not worth the ninth part of a sparrow. This lord, Achilles—Ajax, who wears his wit in his belly and his guts in his head—I’ll tell you what I say of him.

ACHILLES. What?

THERSITES. I say this Ajax—

[Ajax offers to strike him.]

ACHILLES. Nay, good Ajax.

THERSITES. Has not so much wit—

ACHILLES. Nay, I must hold you.

THERSITES. As will stop the eye of Helen’s needle, for whom he comes to fight.

ACHILLES. Peace, fool.

THERSITES. I would have peace and quietness, but the fool will not— he there; that he; look you there.

AJAX. O thou damned cur! I shall—

ACHILLES. Will you set your wit to a fool’s?

THERSITES. No, I warrant you, the fool’s will shame it.

PATROCLUS. Good words, Thersites.

ACHILLES. What’s the quarrel?

AJAX. I bade the vile owl go learn me the tenour of the proclamation, and he rails upon me.

THERSITES. I serve thee not.

AJAX. Well, go to, go to.

THERSITES. I serve here voluntary.

ACHILLES. Your last service was suff’rance; ’twas not voluntary. No man is beaten voluntary. Ajax was here the voluntary, and you as under an impress.

THERSITES. E’en so; a great deal of your wit too lies in your sinews, or else there be liars. Hector shall have a great catch and knock out either of your brains: a’ were as good crack a fusty nut with no kernel.

ACHILLES. What, with me too, Thersites?

THERSITES. There’s Ulysses and old Nestor—whose wit was mouldy ere your grandsires had nails on their toes—yoke you like draught oxen, and make you plough up the wars.

ACHILLES. What, what?

THERSITES. Yes, good sooth. To Achilles, to Ajax, to—

AJAX. I shall cut out your tongue.

THERSITES. ’Tis no matter; I shall speak as much as thou afterwards.

PATROCLUS. No more words, Thersites; peace!

THERSITES. I will hold my peace when Achilles’ brach bids me, shall I?

ACHILLES. There’s for you, Patroclus.

THERSITES. I will see you hang’d like clotpoles ere I come any more to your tents. I will keep where there is wit stirring, and leave the faction of fools.

PATROCLUS. A good riddance.

ACHILLES. Marry, this, sir, is proclaim’d through all our host, That Hector, by the fifth hour of the sun, Will with a trumpet ’twixt our tents and Troy, Tomorrow morning, call some knight to arms That hath a stomach; and such a one that dare Maintain I know not what; ’tis trash. Farewell.

AJAX. Farewell. Who shall answer him?

ACHILLES. I know not; ’tis put to lott’ry, otherwise, He knew his man.

AJAX. O, meaning you? I will go learn more of it.

SCENE II. Troy. Priam’s palace.

Enter Priam, Hector, Troilus, Paris and Helenus.

PRIAM. After so many hours, lives, speeches spent, Thus once again says Nestor from the Greeks: ‘Deliver Helen, and all damage else— As honour, loss of time, travail, expense, Wounds, friends, and what else dear that is consum’d In hot digestion of this cormorant war— Shall be struck off.’ Hector, what say you to’t?

HECTOR. Though no man lesser fears the Greeks than I, As far as toucheth my particular, Yet, dread Priam, There is no lady of more softer bowels, More spongy to suck in the sense of fear, More ready to cry out ‘Who knows what follows?’ Than Hector is. The wound of peace is surety, Surety secure; but modest doubt is call’d The beacon of the wise, the tent that searches To th’ bottom of the worst. Let Helen go. Since the first sword was drawn about this question, Every tithe soul ’mongst many thousand dismes Hath been as dear as Helen—I mean, of ours. If we have lost so many tenths of ours To guard a thing not ours, nor worth to us, Had it our name, the value of one ten, What merit’s in that reason which denies The yielding of her up?

TROILUS. Fie, fie, my brother! Weigh you the worth and honour of a king, So great as our dread father’s, in a scale Of common ounces? Will you with counters sum The past-proportion of his infinite, And buckle in a waist most fathomless With spans and inches so diminutive As fears and reasons? Fie, for godly shame!

HELENUS. No marvel though you bite so sharp of reasons, You are so empty of them. Should not our father Bear the great sway of his affairs with reason, Because your speech hath none that tells him so?

TROILUS. You are for dreams and slumbers, brother priest; You fur your gloves with reason. Here are your reasons: You know an enemy intends you harm; You know a sword employ’d is perilous, And reason flies the object of all harm. Who marvels, then, when Helenus beholds A Grecian and his sword, if he do set The very wings of reason to his heels And fly like chidden Mercury from Jove, Or like a star disorb’d? Nay, if we talk of reason, Let’s shut our gates and sleep. Manhood and honour Should have hare hearts, would they but fat their thoughts With this cramm’d reason. Reason and respect Make livers pale and lustihood deject.

HECTOR. Brother, she is not worth what she doth cost the keeping.

TROILUS. What’s aught but as ’tis valued?

HECTOR. But value dwells not in particular will: It holds his estimate and dignity As well wherein ’tis precious of itself As in the prizer. ’Tis mad idolatry To make the service greater than the god, And the will dotes that is attributive To what infectiously itself affects, Without some image of th’affected merit.

TROILUS. I take today a wife, and my election Is led on in the conduct of my will; My will enkindled by mine eyes and ears, Two traded pilots ’twixt the dangerous shores Of will and judgement: how may I avoid, Although my will distaste what it elected, The wife I chose? There can be no evasion To blench from this and to stand firm by honour. We turn not back the silks upon the merchant When we have soil’d them; nor the remainder viands We do not throw in unrespective sieve, Because we now are full. It was thought meet Paris should do some vengeance on the Greeks; Your breath with full consent bellied his sails; The seas and winds, old wranglers, took a truce, And did him service. He touch’d the ports desir’d; And for an old aunt whom the Greeks held captive He brought a Grecian queen, whose youth and freshness Wrinkles Apollo’s, and makes stale the morning. Why keep we her? The Grecians keep our aunt. Is she worth keeping? Why, she is a pearl Whose price hath launch’d above a thousand ships, And turn’d crown’d kings to merchants. If you’ll avouch ’twas wisdom Paris went— As you must needs, for you all cried ‘Go, go’— If you’ll confess he brought home worthy prize— As you must needs, for you all clapp’d your hands, And cried ‘Inestimable!’—why do you now The issue of your proper wisdoms rate, And do a deed that never Fortune did— Beggar the estimation which you priz’d Richer than sea and land? O theft most base, That we have stol’n what we do fear to keep! But thieves unworthy of a thing so stol’n That in their country did them that disgrace We fear to warrant in our native place!

CASSANDRA. [Within.] Cry, Trojans, cry.

PRIAM. What noise, what shriek is this?

TROILUS. ’Tis our mad sister; I do know her voice.

CASSANDRA. [Within.] Cry, Trojans.

HECTOR. It is Cassandra.

Enter Cassandra, raving.

CASSANDRA. Cry, Trojans, cry. Lend me ten thousand eyes, And I will fill them with prophetic tears.

HECTOR. Peace, sister, peace.

CASSANDRA. Virgins and boys, mid-age and wrinkled eld, Soft infancy, that nothing canst but cry, Add to my clamours. Let us pay betimes A moiety of that mass of moan to come. Cry, Trojans, cry. Practise your eyes with tears. Troy must not be, nor goodly Ilion stand; Our firebrand brother, Paris, burns us all. Cry, Trojans, cry, A Helen and a woe! Cry, cry. Troy burns, or else let Helen go.

HECTOR. Now, youthful Troilus, do not these high strains Of divination in our sister work Some touches of remorse? Or is your blood So madly hot, that no discourse of reason, Nor fear of bad success in a bad cause, Can qualify the same?

TROILUS. Why, brother Hector, We may not think the justness of each act Such and no other than event doth form it; Nor once deject the courage of our minds Because Cassandra’s mad. Her brain-sick raptures Cannot distaste the goodness of a quarrel Which hath our several honours all engag’d To make it gracious. For my private part, I am no more touch’d than all Priam’s sons; And Jove forbid there should be done amongst us Such things as might offend the weakest spleen To fight for and maintain.

PARIS. Else might the world convince of levity As well my undertakings as your counsels; But I attest the gods, your full consent Gave wings to my propension, and cut off All fears attending on so dire a project. For what, alas, can these my single arms? What propugnation is in one man’s valour To stand the push and enmity of those This quarrel would excite? Yet I protest, Were I alone to pass the difficulties, And had as ample power as I have will, Paris should ne’er retract what he hath done, Nor faint in the pursuit.

PRIAM. Paris, you speak Like one besotted on your sweet delights. You have the honey still, but these the gall; So to be valiant is no praise at all.

PARIS. Sir, I propose not merely to myself The pleasures such a beauty brings with it; But I would have the soil of her fair rape Wip’d off in honourable keeping her. What treason were it to the ransack’d queen, Disgrace to your great worths, and shame to me, Now to deliver her possession up On terms of base compulsion! Can it be, That so degenerate a strain as this Should once set footing in your generous bosoms? There’s not the meanest spirit on our party Without a heart to dare or sword to draw When Helen is defended; nor none so noble Whose life were ill bestow’d or death unfam’d, Where Helen is the subject. Then, I say, Well may we fight for her whom we know well The world’s large spaces cannot parallel.

HECTOR. Paris and Troilus, you have both said well; And on the cause and question now in hand Have gloz’d, but superficially; not much Unlike young men, whom Aristotle thought Unfit to hear moral philosophy. The reasons you allege do more conduce To the hot passion of distemp’red blood Than to make up a free determination ’Twixt right and wrong; for pleasure and revenge Have ears more deaf than adders to the voice Of any true decision. Nature craves All dues be rend’red to their owners. Now, What nearer debt in all humanity Than wife is to the husband? If this law Of nature be corrupted through affection; And that great minds, of partial indulgence To their benumbed wills, resist the same; There is a law in each well-order’d nation To curb those raging appetites that are Most disobedient and refractory. If Helen, then, be wife to Sparta’s king— As it is known she is—these moral laws Of nature and of nations speak aloud To have her back return’d. Thus to persist In doing wrong extenuates not wrong, But makes it much more heavy. Hector’s opinion Is this, in way of truth. Yet, ne’ertheless, My spritely brethren, I propend to you In resolution to keep Helen still; For ’tis a cause that hath no mean dependence Upon our joint and several dignities.

TROILUS. Why, there you touch’d the life of our design. Were it not glory that we more affected Than the performance of our heaving spleens, I would not wish a drop of Trojan blood Spent more in her defence. But, worthy Hector, She is a theme of honour and renown, A spur to valiant and magnanimous deeds, Whose present courage may beat down our foes, And fame in time to come canonize us; For I presume brave Hector would not lose So rich advantage of a promis’d glory As smiles upon the forehead of this action For the wide world’s revenue.

HECTOR. I am yours, You valiant offspring of great Priamus. I have a roisting challenge sent amongst The dull and factious nobles of the Greeks Will strike amazement to their drowsy spirits. I was advertis’d their great general slept, Whilst emulation in the army crept. This, I presume, will wake him.

SCENE III. The Grecian camp. Before the tent of Achilles.

Enter Thersites, solus.

THERSITES. How now, Thersites! What, lost in the labyrinth of thy fury? Shall the elephant Ajax carry it thus? He beats me, and I rail at him. O worthy satisfaction! Would it were otherwise: that I could beat him, whilst he rail’d at me! ‘Sfoot, I’ll learn to conjure and raise devils, but I’ll see some issue of my spiteful execrations. Then there’s Achilles, a rare engineer! If Troy be not taken till these two undermine it, the walls will stand till they fall of themselves. O thou great thunder-darter of Olympus, forget that thou art Jove, the king of gods, and, Mercury, lose all the serpentine craft of thy caduceus, if ye take not that little little less than little wit from them that they have! which short-arm’d ignorance itself knows is so abundant scarce, it will not in circumvention deliver a fly from a spider without drawing their massy irons and cutting the web. After this, the vengeance on the whole camp! or, rather, the Neapolitan bone-ache! for that, methinks, is the curse depending on those that war for a placket. I have said my prayers; and devil Envy say ‘Amen.’ What ho! my Lord Achilles!

Enter Patroclus.

PATROCLUS. Who’s there? Thersites! Good Thersites, come in and rail.

THERSITES. If I could a’ rememb’red a gilt counterfeit, thou wouldst not have slipp’d out of my contemplation; but it is no matter; thyself upon thyself! The common curse of mankind, folly and ignorance, be thine in great revenue! Heaven bless thee from a tutor, and discipline come not near thee! Let thy blood be thy direction till thy death. Then if she that lays thee out says thou art a fair corse, I’ll be sworn and sworn upon’t she never shrouded any but lazars. Amen. Where’s Achilles?

PATROCLUS. What, art thou devout? Wast thou in prayer?

THERSITES. Ay, the heavens hear me!

PATROCLUS. Amen.

Enter Achilles.

ACHILLES. Who’s there?

PATROCLUS. Thersites, my lord.

ACHILLES. Where, where? O, where? Art thou come? Why, my cheese, my digestion, why hast thou not served thyself in to my table so many meals? Come, what’s Agamemnon?

THERSITES. Thy commander, Achilles. Then tell me, Patroclus, what’s Achilles?

PATROCLUS. Thy lord, Thersites. Then tell me, I pray thee, what’s Thersites?

THERSITES. Thy knower, Patroclus. Then tell me, Patroclus, what art thou?

PATROCLUS. Thou must tell that knowest.

ACHILLES. O, tell, tell,

THERSITES. I’ll decline the whole question. Agamemnon commands Achilles; Achilles is my lord; I am Patroclus’ knower; and Patroclus is a fool.

PATROCLUS. You rascal!

THERSITES. Peace, fool! I have not done.

ACHILLES. He is a privileg’d man. Proceed, Thersites.

THERSITES. Agamemnon is a fool; Achilles is a fool; Thersites is a fool; and, as aforesaid, Patroclus is a fool.

ACHILLES. Derive this; come.

THERSITES. Agamemnon is a fool to offer to command Achilles; Achilles is a fool to be commanded of Agamemnon; Thersites is a fool to serve such a fool; and this Patroclus is a fool positive.

PATROCLUS. Why am I a fool?

THERSITES. Make that demand of the Creator. It suffices me thou art. Look you, who comes here?

Enter Agamemnon, Ulysses, Nestor, Diomedes, Ajax and Calchas.

ACHILLES. Come, Patroclus, I’ll speak with nobody. Come in with me, Thersites.

THERSITES. Here is such patchery, such juggling, and such knavery. All the argument is a whore and a cuckold—a good quarrel to draw emulous factions and bleed to death upon. Now the dry serpigo on the subject, and war and lechery confound all!

AGAMEMNON. Where is Achilles?

PATROCLUS. Within his tent; but ill-dispos’d, my lord.

AGAMEMNON. Let it be known to him that we are here. He shent our messengers; and we lay by Our appertainings, visiting of him. Let him be told so; lest, perchance, he think We dare not move the question of our place Or know not what we are.

PATROCLUS. I shall say so to him.

ULYSSES. We saw him at the opening of his tent. He is not sick.

AJAX. Yes, lion-sick, sick of proud heart. You may call it melancholy, if you will favour the man; but, by my head, ’tis pride. But why, why? Let him show us a cause. A word, my lord.

[Takes Agamemnon aside.]

NESTOR. What moves Ajax thus to bay at him?

ULYSSES. Achilles hath inveigled his fool from him.

NESTOR. Who, Thersites?

ULYSSES. He.

NESTOR. Then will Ajax lack matter, if he have lost his argument.

ULYSSES. No; you see he is his argument that has his argument, Achilles.

NESTOR. All the better; their fraction is more our wish than their faction. But it was a strong composure a fool could disunite!

ULYSSES. The amity that wisdom knits not, folly may easily untie.

Re-enter Patroclus.

Here comes Patroclus.

NESTOR. No Achilles with him.

ULYSSES. The elephant hath joints, but none for courtesy; his legs are legs for necessity, not for flexure.

PATROCLUS. Achilles bids me say he is much sorry If any thing more than your sport and pleasure Did move your greatness and this noble state To call upon him; he hopes it is no other But for your health and your digestion sake, An after-dinner’s breath.

AGAMEMNON. Hear you, Patroclus. We are too well acquainted with these answers; But his evasion, wing’d thus swift with scorn, Cannot outfly our apprehensions. Much attribute he hath, and much the reason Why we ascribe it to him. Yet all his virtues, Not virtuously on his own part beheld, Do in our eyes begin to lose their gloss; Yea, like fair fruit in an unwholesome dish, Are like to rot untasted. Go and tell him We come to speak with him; and you shall not sin If you do say we think him over-proud And under-honest, in self-assumption greater Than in the note of judgement; and worthier than himself Here tend the savage strangeness he puts on, Disguise the holy strength of their command, And underwrite in an observing kind His humorous predominance; yea, watch His course and time, his ebbs and flows, as if The passage and whole stream of this commencement Rode on his tide. Go tell him this, and add That if he overhold his price so much We’ll none of him, but let him, like an engine Not portable, lie under this report: Bring action hither; this cannot go to war. A stirring dwarf we do allowance give Before a sleeping giant. Tell him so.

PATROCLUS. I shall, and bring his answer presently.

AGAMEMNON. In second voice we’ll not be satisfied; We come to speak with him. Ulysses, enter you.

[Exit Ulysses.]

AJAX. What is he more than another?

AGAMEMNON. No more than what he thinks he is.

AJAX. Is he so much? Do you not think he thinks himself a better man than I am?

AGAMEMNON. No question.

AJAX. Will you subscribe his thought and say he is?

AGAMEMNON. No, noble Ajax; you are as strong, as valiant, as wise, no less noble, much more gentle, and altogether more tractable.

AJAX. Why should a man be proud? How doth pride grow? I know not what pride is.

AGAMEMNON. Your mind is the clearer, Ajax, and your virtues the fairer. He that is proud eats up himself. Pride is his own glass, his own trumpet, his own chronicle; and whatever praises itself but in the deed devours the deed in the praise.

Re-enter Ulysses.

AJAX. I do hate a proud man as I do hate the engend’ring of toads.

NESTOR. [Aside.] And yet he loves himself: is’t not strange?

ULYSSES. Achilles will not to the field tomorrow.

AGAMEMNON. What’s his excuse?

ULYSSES. He doth rely on none; But carries on the stream of his dispose, Without observance or respect of any, In will peculiar and in self-admission.

AGAMEMNON. Why will he not, upon our fair request, Untent his person and share th’air with us?

ULYSSES. Things small as nothing, for request’s sake only, He makes important; possess’d he is with greatness, And speaks not to himself but with a pride That quarrels at self-breath. Imagin’d worth Holds in his blood such swol’n and hot discourse That ’twixt his mental and his active parts Kingdom’d Achilles in commotion rages, And batters down himself. What should I say? He is so plaguy proud that the death tokens of it Cry ‘No recovery.’

AGAMEMNON. Let Ajax go to him. Dear lord, go you and greet him in his tent. ’Tis said he holds you well; and will be led At your request a little from himself.

ULYSSES. O Agamemnon, let it not be so! We’ll consecrate the steps that Ajax makes When they go from Achilles. Shall the proud lord That bastes his arrogance with his own seam And never suffers matter of the world Enter his thoughts, save such as doth revolve And ruminate himself—shall he be worshipp’d Of that we hold an idol more than he? No, this thrice worthy and right valiant lord Shall not so stale his palm, nobly acquir’d, Nor, by my will, assubjugate his merit, As amply titled as Achilles is, By going to Achilles. That were to enlard his fat-already pride, And add more coals to Cancer when he burns With entertaining great Hyperion. This lord go to him! Jupiter forbid, And say in thunder ‘Achilles go to him.’

NESTOR. [Aside.] O, this is well! He rubs the vein of him.

DIOMEDES. [Aside.] And how his silence drinks up this applause!

AJAX. If I go to him, with my armed fist I’ll pash him o’er the face.

AGAMEMNON. O, no, you shall not go.

AJAX. An a’ be proud with me I’ll pheeze his pride. Let me go to him.

ULYSSES. Not for the worth that hangs upon our quarrel.

AJAX. A paltry, insolent fellow!

NESTOR. [Aside.] How he describes himself!

AJAX. Can he not be sociable?

ULYSSES. [Aside.] The raven chides blackness.

AJAX. I’ll let his humours blood.

AGAMEMNON. [Aside.] He will be the physician that should be the patient.

AJAX. And all men were o’ my mind—

ULYSSES. [Aside.] Wit would be out of fashion.

AJAX. A’ should not bear it so, a’ should eat’s words first. Shall pride carry it?

NESTOR. [Aside.] And ’twould, you’d carry half.

ULYSSES. [Aside.] A’ would have ten shares.

AJAX. I will knead him, I’ll make him supple.

NESTOR. [Aside.] He’s not yet through warm. Force him with praises; pour in, pour in; his ambition is dry.

ULYSSES. [To Agamemnon.] My lord, you feed too much on this dislike.

NESTOR. Our noble general, do not do so.

DIOMEDES. You must prepare to fight without Achilles.

ULYSSES. Why ’tis this naming of him does him harm. Here is a man—but ’tis before his face; I will be silent.

NESTOR. Wherefore should you so? He is not emulous, as Achilles is.

ULYSSES. Know the whole world, he is as valiant.

AJAX. A whoreson dog, that shall palter with us thus! Would he were a Trojan!

NESTOR. What a vice were it in Ajax now—

ULYSSES. If he were proud.

DIOMEDES. Or covetous of praise.

ULYSSES. Ay, or surly borne.

DIOMEDES. Or strange, or self-affected.

ULYSSES. Thank the heavens, lord, thou art of sweet composure. Praise him that gat thee, she that gave thee suck; Fam’d be thy tutor, and thy parts of nature Thrice fam’d beyond, beyond all erudition; But he that disciplin’d thine arms to fight— Let Mars divide eternity in twain And give him half; and, for thy vigour, Bull-bearing Milo his addition yield To sinewy Ajax. I will not praise thy wisdom, Which, like a bourn, a pale, a shore, confines Thy spacious and dilated parts. Here’s Nestor, Instructed by the antiquary times— He must, he is, he cannot but be wise; But pardon, father Nestor, were your days As green as Ajax’ and your brain so temper’d, You should not have the eminence of him, But be as Ajax.

AJAX. Shall I call you father?

NESTOR. Ay, my good son.

DIOMEDES. Be rul’d by him, Lord Ajax.

ULYSSES. There is no tarrying here; the hart Achilles Keeps thicket. Please it our great general To call together all his state of war; Fresh kings are come to Troy. Tomorrow We must with all our main of power stand fast; And here’s a lord—come knights from east to west And cull their flower, Ajax shall cope the best.

AGAMEMNON. Go we to council. Let Achilles sleep. Light boats sail swift, though greater hulks draw deep.

SCENE I. Troy. Priam’s palace.

Music sounds within. Enter Pandarus and a Servant.

PANDARUS. Friend, you—pray you, a word. Do you not follow the young Lord Paris?

SERVANT. Ay, sir, when he goes before me.

PANDARUS. You depend upon him, I mean?

SERVANT. Sir, I do depend upon the Lord.

PANDARUS. You depend upon a notable gentleman; I must needs praise him.

SERVANT. The Lord be praised!

PANDARUS. You know me, do you not?

SERVANT. Faith, sir, superficially.

PANDARUS. Friend, know me better: I am the Lord Pandarus.

SERVANT. I hope I shall know your honour better.

PANDARUS. I do desire it.

SERVANT. You are in the state of grace?

PANDARUS. Grace? Not so, friend; honour and lordship are my titles. What music is this?

SERVANT. I do but partly know, sir; it is music in parts.

PANDARUS. Know you the musicians?

SERVANT. Wholly, sir.

PANDARUS. Who play they to?

SERVANT. To the hearers, sir.

PANDARUS. At whose pleasure, friend?

SERVANT. At mine, sir, and theirs that love music.

PANDARUS. Command, I mean, friend.

SERVANT. Who shall I command, sir?

PANDARUS. Friend, we understand not one another: I am too courtly, and thou art too cunning. At whose request do these men play?

SERVANT. That’s to’t, indeed, sir. Marry, sir, at the request of Paris my lord, who is there in person; with him the mortal Venus, the heart-blood of beauty, love’s invisible soul—

PANDARUS. Who, my cousin, Cressida?

SERVANT. No, sir, Helen. Could not you find out that by her attributes?

PANDARUS. It should seem, fellow, that thou hast not seen the Lady Cressida. I come to speak with Paris from the Prince Troilus; I will make a complimental assault upon him, for my business seethes.

SERVANT. Sodden business! There’s a stew’d phrase indeed!

Enter Paris and Helen, attended.

PANDARUS. Fair be to you, my lord, and to all this fair company! Fair desires, in all fair measure, fairly guide them—especially to you, fair queen! Fair thoughts be your fair pillow.

HELEN. Dear lord, you are full of fair words.

PANDARUS. You speak your fair pleasure, sweet queen. Fair prince, here is good broken music.

PARIS. You have broke it, cousin; and by my life, you shall make it whole again; you shall piece it out with a piece of your performance.

HELEN. He is full of harmony.

PANDARUS. Truly, lady, no.

HELEN. O, sir—

PANDARUS. Rude, in sooth; in good sooth, very rude.

PARIS. Well said, my lord. Well, you say so in fits.

PANDARUS. I have business to my lord, dear queen. My lord, will you vouchsafe me a word?

HELEN. Nay, this shall not hedge us out. We’ll hear you sing, certainly—

PANDARUS. Well sweet queen, you are pleasant with me. But, marry, thus, my lord: my dear lord and most esteemed friend, your brother Troilus—

HELEN. My Lord Pandarus, honey-sweet lord—

PANDARUS. Go to, sweet queen, go to—commends himself most affectionately to you—

HELEN. You shall not bob us out of our melody. If you do, our melancholy upon your head!

PANDARUS. Sweet queen, sweet queen; that’s a sweet queen, i’ faith.

HELEN. And to make a sweet lady sad is a sour offence.

PANDARUS. Nay, that shall not serve your turn; that shall it not, in truth, la. Nay, I care not for such words; no, no.—And, my lord, he desires you that, if the King call for him at supper, you will make his excuse.

HELEN. My Lord Pandarus!

PANDARUS. What says my sweet queen, my very very sweet queen?

PARIS. What exploit’s in hand? Where sups he tonight?

HELEN. Nay, but, my lord—

PANDARUS. What says my sweet queen?—My cousin will fall out with you.

HELEN. You must not know where he sups.

PARIS. I’ll lay my life, with my disposer Cressida.

PANDARUS. No, no, no such matter; you are wide. Come, your disposer is sick.

PARIS. Well, I’ll make’s excuse.

PANDARUS. Ay, good my lord. Why should you say Cressida? No, your poor disposer’s sick.

PARIS. I spy.

PANDARUS. You spy! What do you spy?—Come, give me an instrument. Now, sweet queen.

HELEN. Why, this is kindly done.

PANDARUS. My niece is horribly in love with a thing you have, sweet queen.

HELEN. She shall have it, my lord, if it be not my Lord Paris.

PANDARUS. He? No, she’ll none of him; they two are twain.

HELEN. Falling in, after falling out, may make them three.

PANDARUS. Come, come. I’ll hear no more of this; I’ll sing you a song now.

HELEN. Ay, ay, prithee now. By my troth, sweet lord, thou hast a fine forehead.

PANDARUS. Ay, you may, you may.

HELEN. Let thy song be love. This love will undo us all. O Cupid, Cupid, Cupid!

PANDARUS. Love! Ay, that it shall, i’ faith.

PARIS. Ay, good now, love, love, nothing but love.

PANDARUS. In good troth, it begins so.

Love, love, nothing but love, still love, still more! For, oh, love’s bow Shoots buck and doe; The shaft confounds Not that it wounds, But tickles still the sore. These lovers cry, O ho, they die! Yet that which seems the wound to kill Doth turn O ho! to ha! ha! he! So dying love lives still. O ho! a while, but ha! ha! ha! O ho! groans out for ha! ha! ha!—hey ho!

HELEN. In love, i’ faith, to the very tip of the nose.

PARIS. He eats nothing but doves, love; and that breeds hot blood, and hot blood begets hot thoughts, and hot thoughts beget hot deeds, and hot deeds is love.

PANDARUS. Is this the generation of love: hot blood, hot thoughts, and hot deeds? Why, they are vipers. Is love a generation of vipers? Sweet lord, who’s a-field today?

PARIS. Hector, Deiphobus, Helenus, Antenor, and all the gallantry of Troy. I would fain have arm’d today, but my Nell would not have it so. How chance my brother Troilus went not?

HELEN. He hangs the lip at something. You know all, Lord Pandarus.

PANDARUS. Not I, honey-sweet queen. I long to hear how they spend today. You’ll remember your brother’s excuse?

PARIS. To a hair.

PANDARUS. Farewell, sweet queen.

HELEN. Commend me to your niece.

PANDARUS. I will, sweet queen.

[Exit. Sound a retreat.]

PARIS. They’re come from the field. Let us to Priam’s hall To greet the warriors. Sweet Helen, I must woo you To help unarm our Hector. His stubborn buckles, With these your white enchanting fingers touch’d, Shall more obey than to the edge of steel Or force of Greekish sinews; you shall do more Than all the island kings—disarm great Hector.

HELEN. ’Twill make us proud to be his servant, Paris; Yea, what he shall receive of us in duty Gives us more palm in beauty than we have, Yea, overshines ourself.

PARIS. Sweet, above thought I love thee.

SCENE II. Troy. Pandarus’ orchard.

Enter Pandarus and Troilus’ Boy, meeting.

PANDARUS. How now! Where’s thy master? At my cousin Cressida’s?

BOY. No, sir; he stays for you to conduct him thither.

Enter Troilus.

PANDARUS. O, here he comes. How now, how now?

TROILUS. Sirrah, walk off.

PANDARUS. Have you seen my cousin?

TROILUS. No, Pandarus. I stalk about her door Like a strange soul upon the Stygian banks Staying for waftage. O, be thou my Charon, And give me swift transportance to these fields Where I may wallow in the lily beds Propos’d for the deserver! O gentle Pandar, from Cupid’s shoulder pluck his painted wings, and fly with me to Cressid!

PANDARUS. Walk here i’ th’ orchard, I’ll bring her straight.

TROILUS. I am giddy; expectation whirls me round. Th’imaginary relish is so sweet That it enchants my sense; what will it be When that the wat’ry palate tastes indeed Love’s thrice-repured nectar? Death, I fear me; Sounding destruction; or some joy too fine, Too subtle-potent, tun’d too sharp in sweetness, For the capacity of my ruder powers. I fear it much; and I do fear besides That I shall lose distinction in my joys; As doth a battle, when they charge on heaps The enemy flying.

Re-enter Pandarus.

PANDARUS. She’s making her ready, she’ll come straight; you must be witty now. She does so blush, and fetches her wind so short, as if she were fray’d with a sprite. I’ll fetch her. It is the prettiest villain; she fetches her breath as short as a new-ta’en sparrow.

TROILUS. Even such a passion doth embrace my bosom. My heart beats thicker than a feverous pulse, And all my powers do their bestowing lose, Like vassalage at unawares encount’ring The eye of majesty.

Re-enter Pandarus with Cressida.

PANDARUS. Come, come, what need you blush? Shame’s a baby. Here she is now; swear the oaths now to her that you have sworn to me.—What, are you gone again? You must be watch’d ere you be made tame, must you? Come your ways, come your ways; and you draw backward, we’ll put you i’ th’ fills. Why do you not speak to her? Come, draw this curtain and let’s see your picture. Alas the day, how loath you are to offend daylight! And ’twere dark, you’d close sooner. So, so; rub on, and kiss the mistress. How now, a kiss in fee-farm! Build there, carpenter; the air is sweet. Nay, you shall fight your hearts out ere I part you. The falcon as the tercel, for all the ducks i’ th’ river. Go to, go to.

TROILUS. You have bereft me of all words, lady.

PANDARUS. Words pay no debts, give her deeds; but she’ll bereave you o’ th’ deeds too, if she call your activity in question. What, billing again? Here’s ‘In witness whereof the parties interchangeably.’ Come in, come in; I’ll go get a fire.

CRESSIDA. Will you walk in, my lord?

TROILUS. O Cressid, how often have I wish’d me thus!

CRESSIDA. Wish’d, my lord! The gods grant—O my lord!

TROILUS. What should they grant? What makes this pretty abruption? What too curious dreg espies my sweet lady in the fountain of our love?

CRESSIDA. More dregs than water, if my fears have eyes.

TROILUS. Fears make devils of cherubins; they never see truly.

CRESSIDA. Blind fear, that seeing reason leads, finds safer footing than blind reason stumbling without fear. To fear the worst oft cures the worse.

TROILUS. O, let my lady apprehend no fear! In all Cupid’s pageant there is presented no monster.

CRESSIDA. Nor nothing monstrous neither?

TROILUS. Nothing, but our undertakings when we vow to weep seas, live in fire, eat rocks, tame tigers; thinking it harder for our mistress to devise imposition enough than for us to undergo any difficulty imposed. This is the monstruosity in love, lady, that the will is infinite, and the execution confin’d; that the desire is boundless, and the act a slave to limit.

CRESSIDA. They say all lovers swear more performance than they are able, and yet reserve an ability that they never perform; vowing more than the perfection of ten, and discharging less than the tenth part of one. They that have the voice of lions and the act of hares, are they not monsters?

TROILUS. Are there such? Such are not we. Praise us as we are tasted, allow us as we prove; our head shall go bare till merit crown it. No perfection in reversion shall have a praise in present. We will not name desert before his birth; and, being born, his addition shall be humble. Few words to fair faith: Troilus shall be such to Cressid as what envy can say worst shall be a mock for his truth; and what truth can speak truest not truer than Troilus.

PANDARUS. What, blushing still? Have you not done talking yet?

CRESSIDA. Well, uncle, what folly I commit, I dedicate to you.

PANDARUS. I thank you for that; if my lord get a boy of you, you’ll give him me. Be true to my lord; if he flinch, chide me for it.

TROILUS. You know now your hostages: your uncle’s word and my firm faith.

PANDARUS. Nay, I’ll give my word for her too: our kindred, though they be long ere they are wooed, they are constant being won; they are burs, I can tell you; they’ll stick where they are thrown.

CRESSIDA. Boldness comes to me now and brings me heart. Prince Troilus, I have lov’d you night and day For many weary months.

TROILUS. Why was my Cressid then so hard to win?

CRESSIDA. Hard to seem won; but I was won, my lord, With the first glance that ever—pardon me. If I confess much, you will play the tyrant. I love you now; but till now not so much But I might master it. In faith, I lie; My thoughts were like unbridled children, grown Too headstrong for their mother. See, we fools! Why have I blabb’d? Who shall be true to us, When we are so unsecret to ourselves? But, though I lov’d you well, I woo’d you not; And yet, good faith, I wish’d myself a man, Or that we women had men’s privilege Of speaking first. Sweet, bid me hold my tongue, For in this rapture I shall surely speak The thing I shall repent. See, see, your silence, Cunning in dumbness, from my weakness draws My very soul of counsel. Stop my mouth.

TROILUS. And shall, albeit sweet music issues thence.

PANDARUS. Pretty, i’ faith.

CRESSIDA. My lord, I do beseech you, pardon me; ’Twas not my purpose thus to beg a kiss. I am asham’d. O heavens! what have I done? For this time will I take my leave, my lord.

TROILUS. Your leave, sweet Cressid!

PANDARUS. Leave! And you take leave till tomorrow morning—

CRESSIDA. Pray you, content you.

TROILUS. What offends you, lady?

CRESSIDA. Sir, mine own company.

TROILUS. You cannot shun yourself.

CRESSIDA. Let me go and try. I have a kind of self resides with you; But an unkind self, that itself will leave To be another’s fool. I would be gone. Where is my wit? I know not what I speak.

TROILUS. Well know they what they speak that speak so wisely.

CRESSIDA. Perchance, my lord, I show more craft than love; And fell so roundly to a large confession To angle for your thoughts; but you are wise— Or else you love not; for to be wise and love Exceeds man’s might; that dwells with gods above.

TROILUS. O that I thought it could be in a woman— As, if it can, I will presume in you— To feed for aye her lamp and flames of love; To keep her constancy in plight and youth, Outliving beauty’s outward, with a mind That doth renew swifter than blood decays! Or that persuasion could but thus convince me That my integrity and truth to you Might be affronted with the match and weight Of such a winnowed purity in love. How were I then uplifted! But, alas, I am as true as truth’s simplicity, And simpler than the infancy of truth.

CRESSIDA. In that I’ll war with you.

TROILUS. O virtuous fight, When right with right wars who shall be most right! True swains in love shall in the world to come Approve their truth by Troilus, when their rhymes, Full of protest, of oath, and big compare, Want similes, truth tir’d with iteration— As true as steel, as plantage to the moon, As sun to day, as turtle to her mate, As iron to adamant, as earth to th’ centre— Yet, after all comparisons of truth, As truth’s authentic author to be cited, ‘As true as Troilus’ shall crown up the verse And sanctify the numbers.

CRESSIDA. Prophet may you be! If I be false, or swerve a hair from truth, When time is old and hath forgot itself, When waterdrops have worn the stones of Troy, And blind oblivion swallow’d cities up, And mighty states characterless are grated To dusty nothing—yet let memory From false to false, among false maids in love, Upbraid my falsehood when th’ have said ‘As false As air, as water, wind, or sandy earth, As fox to lamb, or wolf to heifer’s calf, Pard to the hind, or stepdame to her son’— Yea, let them say, to stick the heart of falsehood, ‘As false as Cressid.’

PANDARUS. Go to, a bargain made; seal it, seal it; I’ll be the witness. Here I hold your hand; here my cousin’s. If ever you prove false one to another, since I have taken such pains to bring you together, let all pitiful goers-between be call’d to the world’s end after my name—call them all Pandars; let all constant men be Troiluses, all false women Cressids, and all brokers between Pandars. Say ‘Amen.’

TROILUS. Amen.

CRESSIDA. Amen.

PANDARUS. Amen. Whereupon I will show you a chamber and a bed; which bed, because it shall not speak of your pretty encounters, press it to death. Away!

[Exeunt Troilus and Cressida.]

And Cupid grant all tongue-tied maidens here, Bed, chamber, pander, to provide this gear!

SCENE III. The Greek camp.

Flourish. Enter Agamemnon, Ulysses, Diomedes, Nestor, Ajax, Menelaus and Calchas.

CALCHAS. Now, Princes, for the service I have done, Th’advantage of the time prompts me aloud To call for recompense. Appear it to your mind That, through the sight I bear in things to come, I have abandon’d Troy, left my possession, Incurr’d a traitor’s name, expos’d myself From certain and possess’d conveniences To doubtful fortunes, sequest’ring from me all That time, acquaintance, custom, and condition, Made tame and most familiar to my nature; And here, to do you service, am become As new into the world, strange, unacquainted— I do beseech you, as in way of taste, To give me now a little benefit Out of those many regist’red in promise, Which you say live to come in my behalf.

AGAMEMNON. What wouldst thou of us, Trojan? Make demand.

CALCHAS. You have a Trojan prisoner call’d Antenor, Yesterday took; Troy holds him very dear. Oft have you—often have you thanks therefore— Desir’d my Cressid in right great exchange, Whom Troy hath still denied; but this Antenor, I know, is such a wrest in their affairs That their negotiations all must slack Wanting his manage; and they will almost Give us a prince of blood, a son of Priam, In change of him. Let him be sent, great Princes, And he shall buy my daughter; and her presence Shall quite strike off all service I have done In most accepted pain.

AGAMEMNON. Let Diomedes bear him, And bring us Cressid hither. Calchas shall have What he requests of us. Good Diomed, Furnish you fairly for this interchange; Withal, bring word if Hector will tomorrow Be answer’d in his challenge. Ajax is ready.

DIOMEDES. This shall I undertake; and ’tis a burden Which I am proud to bear.

[Exeunt Diomedes and Calchas.]

[Achilles and Patroclus stand in their tent.]

ULYSSES. Achilles stands i’ th’entrance of his tent. Please it our general pass strangely by him, As if he were forgot; and, Princes all, Lay negligent and loose regard upon him. I will come last. ’Tis like he’ll question me Why such unplausive eyes are bent, why turn’d on him. If so, I have derision med’cinable To use between your strangeness and his pride, Which his own will shall have desire to drink. It may do good. Pride hath no other glass To show itself but pride; for supple knees Feed arrogance and are the proud man’s fees.

AGAMEMNON. We’ll execute your purpose, and put on A form of strangeness as we pass along. So do each lord; and either greet him not, Or else disdainfully, which shall shake him more Than if not look’d on. I will lead the way.

ACHILLES. What comes the general to speak with me? You know my mind. I’ll fight no more ’gainst Troy.

AGAMEMNON. What says Achilles? Would he aught with us?

NESTOR. Would you, my lord, aught with the general?

ACHILLES. No.

NESTOR. Nothing, my lord.

AGAMEMNON. The better.

[Exeunt Agamemnon and Nestor.]

ACHILLES. Good day, good day.

MENELAUS. How do you? How do you?

ACHILLES. What, does the cuckold scorn me?

AJAX. How now, Patroclus?

ACHILLES. Good morrow, Ajax.

AJAX. Ha?

ACHILLES. Good morrow.

AJAX. Ay, and good next day too.

ACHILLES. What mean these fellows? Know they not Achilles?

PATROCLUS. They pass by strangely. They were us’d to bend, To send their smiles before them to Achilles, To come as humbly as they us’d to creep To holy altars.

ACHILLES. What, am I poor of late? ’Tis certain, greatness, once fall’n out with fortune, Must fall out with men too. What the declin’d is, He shall as soon read in the eyes of others As feel in his own fall; for men, like butterflies, Show not their mealy wings but to the summer; And not a man for being simply man Hath any honour, but honour for those honours That are without him, as place, riches, and favour, Prizes of accident, as oft as merit; Which when they fall, as being slippery standers, The love that lean’d on them as slippery too, Doth one pluck down another, and together Die in the fall. But ’tis not so with me: Fortune and I are friends; I do enjoy At ample point all that I did possess Save these men’s looks; who do, methinks, find out Something not worth in me such rich beholding As they have often given. Here is Ulysses. I’ll interrupt his reading. How now, Ulysses!

ULYSSES. Now, great Thetis’ son!

ACHILLES. What are you reading?

ULYSSES. A strange fellow here Writes me that man—how dearly ever parted, How much in having, or without or in— Cannot make boast to have that which he hath, Nor feels not what he owes, but by reflection; As when his virtues shining upon others Heat them, and they retort that heat again To the first giver.

ACHILLES. This is not strange, Ulysses. The beauty that is borne here in the face The bearer knows not, but commends itself To others’ eyes; nor doth the eye itself— That most pure spirit of sense—behold itself, Not going from itself; but eye to eye opposed Salutes each other with each other’s form; For speculation turns not to itself Till it hath travell’d, and is mirror’d there Where it may see itself. This is not strange at all.

ULYSSES. I do not strain at the position— It is familiar—but at the author’s drift; Who, in his circumstance, expressly proves That no man is the lord of anything, Though in and of him there be much consisting, Till he communicate his parts to others; Nor doth he of himself know them for aught Till he behold them formed in the applause Where th’are extended; who, like an arch, reverb’rate The voice again; or, like a gate of steel Fronting the sun, receives and renders back His figure and his heat. I was much rapt in this; And apprehended here immediately Th’unknown Ajax. Heavens, what a man is there! A very horse that has he knows not what! Nature, what things there are Most abject in regard and dear in use! What things again most dear in the esteem And poor in worth! Now shall we see tomorrow— An act that very chance doth throw upon him— Ajax renown’d. O heavens, what some men do, While some men leave to do! How some men creep in skittish Fortune’s hall, Whiles others play the idiots in her eyes! How one man eats into another’s pride, While pride is fasting in his wantonness! To see these Grecian lords!—why, even already They clap the lubber Ajax on the shoulder, As if his foot were on brave Hector’s breast, And great Troy shrieking.

ACHILLES. I do believe it; for they pass’d by me As misers do by beggars, neither gave to me Good word nor look. What, are my deeds forgot?

ULYSSES. Time hath, my lord, a wallet at his back, Wherein he puts alms for oblivion, A great-siz’d monster of ingratitudes. Those scraps are good deeds past, which are devour’d As fast as they are made, forgot as soon As done. Perseverance, dear my lord, Keeps honour bright. To have done is to hang Quite out of fashion, like a rusty mail In monumental mock’ry. Take the instant way; For honour travels in a strait so narrow— Where one but goes abreast. Keep then the path, For emulation hath a thousand sons That one by one pursue; if you give way, Or hedge aside from the direct forthright, Like to an ent’red tide they all rush by And leave you hindmost; Or, like a gallant horse fall’n in first rank, Lie there for pavement to the abject rear, O’er-run and trampled on. Then what they do in present, Though less than yours in past, must o’ertop yours; For Time is like a fashionable host, That slightly shakes his parting guest by th’hand; And with his arms out-stretch’d, as he would fly, Grasps in the comer. The welcome ever smiles, And farewell goes out sighing. O, let not virtue seek Remuneration for the thing it was; For beauty, wit, High birth, vigour of bone, desert in service, Love, friendship, charity, are subjects all To envious and calumniating Time. One touch of nature makes the whole world kin— That all with one consent praise new-born gauds, Though they are made and moulded of things past, And give to dust that is a little gilt More laud than gilt o’er-dusted. The present eye praises the present object. Then marvel not, thou great and complete man, That all the Greeks begin to worship Ajax, Since things in motion sooner catch the eye Than what stirs not. The cry went once on thee, And still it might, and yet it may again, If thou wouldst not entomb thyself alive And case thy reputation in thy tent, Whose glorious deeds but in these fields of late Made emulous missions ’mongst the gods themselves, And drave great Mars to faction.

ACHILLES. Of this my privacy I have strong reasons.

ULYSSES. But ’gainst your privacy The reasons are more potent and heroical. ’Tis known, Achilles, that you are in love With one of Priam’s daughters.

ACHILLES. Ha! known!

ULYSSES. Is that a wonder? The providence that’s in a watchful state Knows almost every grain of Plutus’ gold; Finds bottom in th’uncomprehensive deeps; Keeps place with thought, and almost, like the gods, Do thoughts unveil in their dumb cradles. There is a mystery—with whom relation Durst never meddle—in the soul of state, Which hath an operation more divine Than breath or pen can give expressure to. All the commerce that you have had with Troy As perfectly is ours as yours, my lord; And better would it fit Achilles much To throw down Hector than Polyxena. But it must grieve young Pyrrhus now at home, When fame shall in our island sound her trump, And all the Greekish girls shall tripping sing ‘Great Hector’s sister did Achilles win; But our great Ajax bravely beat down him.’ Farewell, my lord. I as your lover speak. The fool slides o’er the ice that you should break.

PATROCLUS. To this effect, Achilles, have I mov’d you. A woman impudent and mannish grown Is not more loath’d than an effeminate man In time of action. I stand condemn’d for this; They think my little stomach to the war And your great love to me restrains you thus. Sweet, rouse yourself; and the weak wanton Cupid Shall from your neck unloose his amorous fold, And, like a dew-drop from the lion’s mane, Be shook to air.

ACHILLES. Shall Ajax fight with Hector?

PATROCLUS. Ay, and perhaps receive much honour by him.

ACHILLES. I see my reputation is at stake; My fame is shrewdly gor’d.

PATROCLUS. O, then, beware: Those wounds heal ill that men do give themselves; Omission to do what is necessary Seals a commission to a blank of danger; And danger, like an ague, subtly taints Even then when they sit idly in the sun.

ACHILLES. Go call Thersites hither, sweet Patroclus. I’ll send the fool to Ajax, and desire him T’invite the Trojan lords, after the combat, To see us here unarm’d. I have a woman’s longing, An appetite that I am sick withal, To see great Hector in his weeds of peace; To talk with him, and to behold his visage, Even to my full of view.

Enter Thersites.

A labour sav’d!

THERSITES. A wonder!

THERSITES. Ajax goes up and down the field asking for himself.

ACHILLES. How so?

THERSITES. He must fight singly tomorrow with Hector, and is so prophetically proud of an heroical cudgelling that he raves in saying nothing.

ACHILLES. How can that be?

THERSITES. Why, a’ stalks up and down like a peacock—a stride and a stand; ruminates like an hostess that hath no arithmetic but her brain to set down her reckoning, bites his lip with a politic regard, as who should say ‘There were wit in this head, and ’twould out’; and so there is; but it lies as coldly in him as fire in a flint, which will not show without knocking. The man’s undone for ever; for if Hector break not his neck i’ th’ combat, he’ll break’t himself in vainglory. He knows not me. I said ‘Good morrow, Ajax’; and he replies ‘Thanks, Agamemnon.’ What think you of this man that takes me for the general? He’s grown a very land fish, languageless, a monster. A plague of opinion! A man may wear it on both sides, like leather jerkin.

ACHILLES. Thou must be my ambassador to him, Thersites.

THERSITES. Who, I? Why, he’ll answer nobody; he professes not answering. Speaking is for beggars: he wears his tongue in’s arms. I will put on his presence. Let Patroclus make his demands to me, you shall see the pageant of Ajax.

ACHILLES. To him, Patroclus. Tell him I humbly desire the valiant Ajax to invite the most valorous Hector to come unarm’d to my tent; and to procure safe conduct for his person of the magnanimous and most illustrious six-or-seven-times-honour’d Captain General of the Grecian army, Agamemnon. Do this.

PATROCLUS. Jove bless great Ajax!

THERSITES. Hum!

PATROCLUS. I come from the worthy Achilles—

THERSITES. Ha!

PATROCLUS. Who most humbly desires you to invite Hector to his tent—

PATROCLUS. And to procure safe conduct from Agamemnon.

THERSITES. Agamemnon?

PATROCLUS. Ay, my lord.

PATROCLUS. What you say to’t?

THERSITES. God buy you, with all my heart.

PATROCLUS. Your answer, sir.

THERSITES. If tomorrow be a fair day, by eleven of the clock it will go one way or other. Howsoever, he shall pay for me ere he has me.

THERSITES. Fare ye well, with all my heart.

ACHILLES. Why, but he is not in this tune, is he?

THERSITES. No, but out of tune thus. What music will be in him when Hector has knock’d out his brains, I know not; but, I am sure, none; unless the fiddler Apollo get his sinews to make catlings on.

ACHILLES. Come, thou shalt bear a letter to him straight.

THERSITES. Let me bear another to his horse; for that’s the more capable creature.

ACHILLES. My mind is troubled, like a fountain stirr’d; And I myself see not the bottom of it.

[Exeunt Achilles and Patroclus.]

THERSITES. Would the fountain of your mind were clear again, that I might water an ass at it. I had rather be a tick in a sheep than such a valiant ignorance.

SCENE I. Troy. A street.

Enter, at one side, Aeneas and servant with a torch; at another Paris, Deiphobus, Antenor, Diomedes the Grecian, and others, with torches.

PARIS. See, ho! Who is that there?

DEIPHOBUS. It is the Lord Aeneas.

AENEAS. Is the Prince there in person? Had I so good occasion to lie long As you, Prince Paris, nothing but heavenly business Should rob my bed-mate of my company.

DIOMEDES. That’s my mind too. Good morrow, Lord Aeneas.

PARIS. A valiant Greek, Aeneas—take his hand: Witness the process of your speech, wherein You told how Diomed, a whole week by days, Did haunt you in the field.

AENEAS. Health to you, valiant sir, During all question of the gentle truce; But when I meet you arm’d, as black defiance As heart can think or courage execute.

DIOMEDES. The one and other Diomed embraces. Our bloods are now in calm; and so long health! But when contention and occasion meet, By Jove, I’ll play the hunter for thy life With all my force, pursuit, and policy.

AENEAS. And thou shalt hunt a lion that will fly With his face backward. In humane gentleness, Welcome to Troy! Now, by Anchises’ life, Welcome indeed! By Venus’ hand I swear No man alive can love in such a sort The thing he means to kill, more excellently.

DIOMEDES. We sympathise. Jove let Aeneas live, If to my sword his fate be not the glory, A thousand complete courses of the sun! But in mine emulous honour let him die With every joint a wound, and that tomorrow!

AENEAS. We know each other well.

DIOMEDES. We do; and long to know each other worse.

PARIS. This is the most despiteful gentle greeting, The noblest hateful love, that e’er I heard of. What business, lord, so early?

AENEAS. I was sent for to the King; but why, I know not.

PARIS. His purpose meets you: ’twas to bring this Greek To Calchas’ house, and there to render him, For the enfreed Antenor, the fair Cressid. Let’s have your company; or, if you please, Haste there before us. I constantly believe— Or rather call my thought a certain knowledge— My brother Troilus lodges there tonight. Rouse him and give him note of our approach, With the whole quality wherefore; I fear We shall be much unwelcome.

AENEAS. That I assure you: Troilus had rather Troy were borne to Greece Than Cressid borne from Troy.

PARIS. There is no help; The bitter disposition of the time Will have it so. On, lord; we’ll follow you.

AENEAS. Good morrow, all.

[Exit with servant.]

PARIS. And tell me, noble Diomed, faith, tell me true, Even in the soul of sound good-fellowship, Who in your thoughts deserves fair Helen best, Myself, or Menelaus?

DIOMEDES. Both alike: He merits well to have her that doth seek her, Not making any scruple of her soilure, With such a hell of pain and world of charge; And you as well to keep her that defend her, Not palating the taste of her dishonour, With such a costly loss of wealth and friends. He like a puling cuckold would drink up The lees and dregs of a flat tamed piece; You, like a lecher, out of whorish loins Are pleas’d to breed out your inheritors. Both merits pois’d, each weighs nor less nor more, But he as he, the heavier for a whore.

DIOMEDES. She’s bitter to her country. Hear me, Paris: For every false drop in her bawdy veins A Grecian’s life hath sunk; for every scruple Of her contaminated carrion weight A Trojan hath been slain. Since she could speak, She hath not given so many good words breath As for her Greeks and Trojans suff’red death.

PARIS. You are too bitter to your country-woman.

PARIS. Fair Diomed, you do as chapmen do, Dispraise the thing that you desire to buy; But we in silence hold this virtue well, We’ll not commend what we intend to sell. Here lies our way.

SCENE II. Troy. The court of Pandarus’ house.

Enter Troilus and Cressida.

TROILUS. Dear, trouble not yourself; the morn is cold.

CRESSIDA. Then, sweet my lord, I’ll call mine uncle down; He shall unbolt the gates.

TROILUS. Trouble him not; To bed, to bed! Sleep kill those pretty eyes, And give as soft attachment to thy senses As infants empty of all thought!

CRESSIDA. Good morrow, then.

TROILUS. I prithee now, to bed.

CRESSIDA. Are you aweary of me?

TROILUS. O Cressida! but that the busy day, Wak’d by the lark, hath rous’d the ribald crows, And dreaming night will hide our joys no longer, I would not from thee.

CRESSIDA. Night hath been too brief.

TROILUS. Beshrew the witch! with venomous wights she stays As tediously as hell, but flies the grasps of love With wings more momentary-swift than thought. You will catch cold, and curse me.

CRESSIDA. Prithee tarry. You men will never tarry. O foolish Cressid! I might have still held off, And then you would have tarried. Hark! there’s one up.

PANDARUS. [Within.] What’s all the doors open here?

TROILUS. It is your uncle.

CRESSIDA. A pestilence on him! Now will he be mocking. I shall have such a life!

PANDARUS. How now, how now! How go maidenheads? Here, you maid! Where’s my cousin Cressid?

CRESSIDA. Go hang yourself, you naughty mocking uncle. You bring me to do, and then you flout me too.

PANDARUS. To do what? to do what? Let her say what. What have I brought you to do?

CRESSIDA. Come, come, beshrew your heart! You’ll ne’er be good, nor suffer others.

PANDARUS. Ha, ha! Alas, poor wretch! Ah, poor capocchia! Hast not slept tonight? Would he not, a naughty man, let it sleep? A bugbear take him!

CRESSIDA. Did not I tell you? Would he were knock’d i’ th’ head!

[One knocks.]

Who’s that at door? Good uncle, go and see. My lord, come you again into my chamber. You smile and mock me, as if I meant naughtily.

TROILUS. Ha! ha!

CRESSIDA. Come, you are deceiv’d, I think of no such thing.

How earnestly they knock! Pray you come in: I would not for half Troy have you seen here.

PANDARUS. Who’s there? What’s the matter? Will you beat down the door? How now? What’s the matter?

AENEAS. Good morrow, lord, good morrow.

PANDARUS. Who’s there? My lord Aeneas? By my troth, I knew you not. What news with you so early?

AENEAS. Is not Prince Troilus here?

PANDARUS. Here! What should he do here?

AENEAS. Come, he is here, my lord; do not deny him. It doth import him much to speak with me.

PANDARUS. Is he here, say you? It’s more than I know, I’ll be sworn. For my own part, I came in late. What should he do here?

AENEAS. Who, nay then! Come, come, you’ll do him wrong ere you are ware; you’ll be so true to him to be false to him. Do not you know of him, but yet go fetch him hither; go.

Re-enter Troilus.

TROILUS. How now! What’s the matter?

AENEAS. My lord, I scarce have leisure to salute you, My matter is so rash. There is at hand Paris your brother, and Deiphobus, The Grecian Diomed, and our Antenor Deliver’d to us; and for him forthwith, Ere the first sacrifice, within this hour, We must give up to Diomedes’ hand The Lady Cressida.

TROILUS. Is it so concluded?

AENEAS. By Priam and the general state of Troy. They are at hand, and ready to effect it.

TROILUS. How my achievements mock me! I will go meet them; and, my Lord Aeneas, We met by chance; you did not find me here.

AENEAS. Good, good, my lord, the secrets of neighbour Pandar Have not more gift in taciturnity.

[Exeunt Troilus and Aeneas.]

PANDARUS. Is’t possible? No sooner got but lost? The devil take Antenor! The young prince will go mad. A plague upon Antenor! I would they had broke’s neck.

Re-enter Cressida.

CRESSIDA. How now! What’s the matter? Who was here?

PANDARUS. Ah, ah!

CRESSIDA. Why sigh you so profoundly? Where’s my lord? Gone? Tell me, sweet uncle, what’s the matter?

PANDARUS. Would I were as deep under the earth as I am above!

CRESSIDA. O the gods! What’s the matter?

PANDARUS. Pray thee get thee in. Would thou hadst ne’er been born! I knew thou wouldst be his death! O, poor gentleman! A plague upon Antenor!

CRESSIDA. Good uncle, I beseech you, on my knees I beseech you, what’s the matter?

PANDARUS. Thou must be gone, wench, thou must be gone; thou art chang’d for Antenor; thou must to thy father, and be gone from Troilus. ’Twill be his death; ’twill be his bane; he cannot bear it.

CRESSIDA. O you immortal gods! I will not go.

PANDARUS. Thou must.

CRESSIDA. I will not, uncle. I have forgot my father; I know no touch of consanguinity, No kin, no love, no blood, no soul so near me As the sweet Troilus. O you gods divine, Make Cressid’s name the very crown of falsehood, If ever she leave Troilus! Time, force, and death, Do to this body what extremes you can, But the strong base and building of my love Is as the very centre of the earth, Drawing all things to it. I’ll go in and weep—

PANDARUS. Do, do.

CRESSIDA. Tear my bright hair, and scratch my praised cheeks, Crack my clear voice with sobs and break my heart, With sounding ‘Troilus.’ I will not go from Troy.

SCENE III. Troy. A street before Pandarus’ house.

Enter Paris, Troilus, Aeneas, Deiphobus, Antenor and Diomedes.

PARIS. It is great morning; and the hour prefix’d For her delivery to this valiant Greek Comes fast upon. Good my brother Troilus, Tell you the lady what she is to do And haste her to the purpose.

TROILUS. Walk into her house. I’ll bring her to the Grecian presently; And to his hand when I deliver her, Think it an altar, and thy brother Troilus A priest, there off’ring to it his own heart.

PARIS. I know what ’tis to love, And would, as I shall pity, I could help! Please you walk in, my lords?

SCENE IV. Troy. Pandarus’ house.

Enter Pandarus and Cressida.

PANDARUS. Be moderate, be moderate.

CRESSIDA. Why tell you me of moderation? The grief is fine, full, perfect, that I taste, And violenteth in a sense as strong As that which causeth it. How can I moderate it? If I could temporize with my affections Or brew it to a weak and colder palate, The like allayment could I give my grief. My love admits no qualifying dross; No more my grief, in such a precious loss.

PANDARUS. Here, here, here he comes. Ah, sweet ducks!

CRESSIDA. [Embracing him.] O Troilus! Troilus!

PANDARUS. What a pair of spectacles is here! Let me embrace too. ‘O heart,’ as the goodly saying is,—

O heart, heavy heart, Why sigh’st thou without breaking?

where he answers again

Because thou canst not ease thy smart By friendship nor by speaking.

There was never a truer rhyme. Let us cast away nothing, for we may live to have need of such a verse. We see it, we see it. How now, lambs!

TROILUS. Cressid, I love thee in so strain’d a purity That the bless’d gods, as angry with my fancy, More bright in zeal than the devotion which Cold lips blow to their deities, take thee from me.

CRESSIDA. Have the gods envy?

PANDARUS. Ay, ay, ay, ay; ’tis too plain a case.

CRESSIDA. And is it true that I must go from Troy?

TROILUS. A hateful truth.

CRESSIDA. What! and from Troilus too?

TROILUS. From Troy and Troilus.

CRESSIDA. Is’t possible?

TROILUS. And suddenly; where injury of chance Puts back leave-taking, justles roughly by All time of pause, rudely beguiles our lips Of all rejoindure, forcibly prevents Our lock’d embrasures, strangles our dear vows Even in the birth of our own labouring breath. We two, that with so many thousand sighs Did buy each other, must poorly sell ourselves With the rude brevity and discharge of one. Injurious time now with a robber’s haste Crams his rich thiev’ry up, he knows not how. As many farewells as be stars in heaven, With distinct breath and consign’d kisses to them, He fumbles up into a loose adieu, And scants us with a single famish’d kiss, Distasted with the salt of broken tears.

AENEAS. [Within.] My lord, is the lady ready?

TROILUS. Hark! you are call’d. Some say the Genius Cries so to him that instantly must die. Bid them have patience; she shall come anon.

PANDARUS. Where are my tears? Rain, to lay this wind, or my heart will be blown up by my throat!

CRESSIDA. I must then to the Grecians?

TROILUS. No remedy.

CRESSIDA. A woeful Cressid ’mongst the merry Greeks! When shall we see again?

TROILUS. Hear me, my love. Be thou but true of heart.

CRESSIDA. I true? How now! What wicked deem is this?

TROILUS. Nay, we must use expostulation kindly, For it is parting from us. I speak not ‘Be thou true’ as fearing thee, For I will throw my glove to Death himself That there’s no maculation in thy heart; But ‘Be thou true’ say I to fashion in My sequent protestation: be thou true, And I will see thee.

CRESSIDA. O! you shall be expos’d, my lord, to dangers As infinite as imminent! But I’ll be true.

TROILUS. And I’ll grow friend with danger. Wear this sleeve.

CRESSIDA. And you this glove. When shall I see you?

TROILUS. I will corrupt the Grecian sentinels To give thee nightly visitation. But yet be true.

CRESSIDA. O heavens! ‘Be true’ again!

TROILUS. Hear why I speak it, love. The Grecian youths are full of quality; They’re loving, well compos’d, with gifts of nature, Flowing and swelling o’er with arts and exercise. How novelty may move, and parts with person, Alas, a kind of godly jealousy, Which, I beseech you, call a virtuous sin, Makes me afear’d.

CRESSIDA. O heavens! you love me not!

TROILUS. Die I a villain then! In this I do not call your faith in question So mainly as my merit. I cannot sing, Nor heel the high lavolt, nor sweeten talk, Nor play at subtle games; fair virtues all, To which the Grecians are most prompt and pregnant; But I can tell that in each grace of these There lurks a still and dumb-discoursive devil That tempts most cunningly. But be not tempted.

CRESSIDA. Do you think I will?

TROILUS. No. But something may be done that we will not; And sometimes we are devils to ourselves, When we will tempt the frailty of our powers, Presuming on their changeful potency.

AENEAS. [Within.] Nay, good my lord!

TROILUS. Come, kiss; and let us part.

PARIS. [Within.] Brother Troilus!

TROILUS. Good brother, come you hither; And bring Aeneas and the Grecian with you.

CRESSIDA. My lord, will you be true?

TROILUS. Who, I? Alas, it is my vice, my fault! Whiles others fish with craft for great opinion, I with great truth catch mere simplicity; Whilst some with cunning gild their copper crowns, With truth and plainness I do wear mine bare. Fear not my truth: the moral of my wit Is plain and true; there’s all the reach of it.

Enter Aeneas, Paris, Antenor, Deiphobus and Diomedes.

Welcome, Sir Diomed! Here is the lady Which for Antenor we deliver you; At the port, lord, I’ll give her to thy hand, And by the way possess thee what she is. Entreat her fair; and, by my soul, fair Greek, If e’er thou stand at mercy of my sword, Name Cressid, and thy life shall be as safe As Priam is in Ilion.

DIOMEDES. Fair Lady Cressid, So please you, save the thanks this prince expects. The lustre in your eye, heaven in your cheek, Pleads your fair usage; and to Diomed You shall be mistress, and command him wholly.

TROILUS. Grecian, thou dost not use me courteously To shame the zeal of my petition to thee In praising her. I tell thee, lord of Greece, She is as far high-soaring o’er thy praises As thou unworthy to be call’d her servant. I charge thee use her well, even for my charge; For, by the dreadful Pluto, if thou dost not, Though the great bulk Achilles be thy guard, I’ll cut thy throat.

DIOMEDES. O, be not mov’d, Prince Troilus. Let me be privileg’d by my place and message To be a speaker free: when I am hence I’ll answer to my lust. And know you, lord, I’ll nothing do on charge: to her own worth She shall be priz’d. But that you say ‘Be’t so,’ I speak it in my spirit and honour, ‘No.’

TROILUS. Come, to the port. I’ll tell thee, Diomed, This brave shall oft make thee to hide thy head. Lady, give me your hand; and, as we walk, To our own selves bend we our needful talk.

[Exeunt Troilus, Cressida and Diomedes.]

PARIS. Hark! Hector’s trumpet.

AENEAS. How have we spent this morning! The Prince must think me tardy and remiss, That swore to ride before him to the field.

PARIS. ’Tis Troilus’ fault. Come, come to field with him.

DEIPHOBUS. Let us make ready straight.

AENEAS. Yea, with a bridegroom’s fresh alacrity Let us address to tend on Hector’s heels. The glory of our Troy doth this day lie On his fair worth and single chivalry.

SCENE V. The Grecian camp. Lists set out.

Enter Ajax, armed; Agamemnon, Achilles, Patroclus, Menelaus, Ulysses, Nestor and others.

AGAMEMNON. Here art thou in appointment fresh and fair, Anticipating time with starting courage. Give with thy trumpet a loud note to Troy, Thou dreadful Ajax, that the appalled air May pierce the head of the great combatant, And hale him hither.

AJAX. Thou, trumpet, there’s my purse. Now crack thy lungs and split thy brazen pipe; Blow, villain, till thy sphered bias cheek Out-swell the colic of puff’d Aquilon. Come, stretch thy chest, and let thy eyes spout blood: Thou blowest for Hector.

ULYSSES. No trumpet answers.

ACHILLES. ’Tis but early days.

AGAMEMNON. Is not yond Diomed, with Calchas’ daughter?

ULYSSES. ’Tis he, I ken the manner of his gait: He rises on the toe. That spirit of his In aspiration lifts him from the earth.

Enter Diomedes and Cressida.

AGAMEMNON. Is this the Lady Cressid?

DIOMEDES. Even she.

AGAMEMNON. Most dearly welcome to the Greeks, sweet lady.

NESTOR. Our general doth salute you with a kiss.

ULYSSES. Yet is the kindness but particular; ’Twere better she were kiss’d in general.

NESTOR. And very courtly counsel: I’ll begin. So much for Nestor.

ACHILLES. I’ll take that winter from your lips, fair lady. Achilles bids you welcome.

MENELAUS. I had good argument for kissing once.

PATROCLUS. But that’s no argument for kissing now; For thus popp’d Paris in his hardiment, And parted thus you and your argument.

ULYSSES. O deadly gall, and theme of all our scorns! For which we lose our heads to gild his horns.

PATROCLUS. The first was Menelaus’ kiss; this, mine: Patroclus kisses you.

MENELAUS. O, this is trim!

PATROCLUS. Paris and I kiss evermore for him.

MENELAUS. I’ll have my kiss, sir. Lady, by your leave.

CRESSIDA. In kissing, do you render or receive?

PATROCLUS. Both take and give.

CRESSIDA. I’ll make my match to live, The kiss you take is better than you give; Therefore no kiss.

MENELAUS. I’ll give you boot; I’ll give you three for one.

CRESSIDA. You are an odd man; give even or give none.

MENELAUS. An odd man, lady! Every man is odd.

CRESSIDA. No, Paris is not; for you know ’tis true That you are odd, and he is even with you.

MENELAUS. You fillip me o’ th’head.

CRESSIDA. No, I’ll be sworn.

ULYSSES. It were no match, your nail against his horn. May I, sweet lady, beg a kiss of you?

CRESSIDA. You may.

ULYSSES. I do desire it.

CRESSIDA. Why, beg then.

ULYSSES. Why then, for Venus’ sake give me a kiss When Helen is a maid again, and his.

CRESSIDA. I am your debtor; claim it when ’tis due.

ULYSSES. Never’s my day, and then a kiss of you.

DIOMEDES. Lady, a word. I’ll bring you to your father.

[Exit with Cressida.]

NESTOR. A woman of quick sense.

ULYSSES. Fie, fie upon her! There’s language in her eye, her cheek, her lip, Nay, her foot speaks; her wanton spirits look out At every joint and motive of her body. O! these encounterers so glib of tongue That give a coasting welcome ere it comes, And wide unclasp the tables of their thoughts To every tickling reader! Set them down For sluttish spoils of opportunity, And daughters of the game.

[Trumpet within.]

ALL. The Trojans’ trumpet.

AGAMEMNON. Yonder comes the troop.

Enter Hector, armed; Aeneas, Troilus, Paris, Deiphobus and other Trojans, with attendants.

AENEAS. Hail, all you state of Greece! What shall be done To him that victory commands? Or do you purpose A victor shall be known? Will you the knights Shall to the edge of all extremity Pursue each other, or shall be divided By any voice or order of the field? Hector bade ask.

AGAMEMNON. Which way would Hector have it?

AENEAS. He cares not; he’ll obey conditions.

AGAMEMNON. ’Tis done like Hector.

ACHILLES. But securely done, A little proudly, and great deal misprising The knight oppos’d.

AENEAS. If not Achilles, sir, What is your name?

ACHILLES. If not Achilles, nothing.

AENEAS. Therefore Achilles. But whate’er, know this: In the extremity of great and little Valour and pride excel themselves in Hector; The one almost as infinite as all, The other blank as nothing. Weigh him well, And that which looks like pride is courtesy. This Ajax is half made of Hector’s blood; In love whereof half Hector stays at home; Half heart, half hand, half Hector comes to seek This blended knight, half Trojan and half Greek.

ACHILLES. A maiden battle then? O! I perceive you.

Re-enter Diomedes.

AGAMEMNON. Here is Sir Diomed. Go, gentle knight, Stand by our Ajax. As you and Lord Aeneas Consent upon the order of their fight, So be it; either to the uttermost, Or else a breath. The combatants being kin Half stints their strife before their strokes begin.

Ajax and Hector enter the lists.

ULYSSES. They are oppos’d already.

AGAMEMNON. What Trojan is that same that looks so heavy?

ULYSSES. The youngest son of Priam, a true knight; Not yet mature, yet matchless; firm of word; Speaking in deeds and deedless in his tongue; Not soon provok’d, nor being provok’d soon calm’d; His heart and hand both open and both free; For what he has he gives, what thinks he shows, Yet gives he not till judgement guide his bounty, Nor dignifies an impure thought with breath; Manly as Hector, but more dangerous; For Hector in his blaze of wrath subscribes To tender objects, but he in heat of action Is more vindicative than jealous love. They call him Troilus, and on him erect A second hope as fairly built as Hector. Thus says Aeneas, one that knows the youth Even to his inches, and, with private soul, Did in great Ilion thus translate him to me.

[Alarum. Hector and Ajax fight.]

AGAMEMNON. They are in action.

NESTOR. Now, Ajax, hold thine own!

TROILUS. Hector, thou sleep’st; awake thee!

AGAMEMNON. His blows are well dispos’d. There, Ajax!

[Trumpets cease.]

DIOMEDES. You must no more.

AENEAS. Princes, enough, so please you.

AJAX. I am not warm yet; let us fight again.

DIOMEDES. As Hector pleases.

HECTOR. Why, then will I no more. Thou art, great lord, my father’s sister’s son, A cousin-german to great Priam’s seed; The obligation of our blood forbids A gory emulation ’twixt us twain: Were thy commixtion Greek and Trojan so That thou could’st say ‘This hand is Grecian all, And this is Trojan; the sinews of this leg All Greek, and this all Troy; my mother’s blood Runs on the dexter cheek, and this sinister Bounds in my father’s; by Jove multipotent, Thou shouldst not bear from me a Greekish member Wherein my sword had not impressure made Of our rank feud; but the just gods gainsay That any drop thou borrow’dst from thy mother, My sacred aunt, should by my mortal sword Be drained! Let me embrace thee, Ajax. By him that thunders, thou hast lusty arms; Hector would have them fall upon him thus. Cousin, all honour to thee!

AJAX. I thank thee, Hector. Thou art too gentle and too free a man. I came to kill thee, cousin, and bear hence A great addition earned in thy death.

HECTOR. Not Neoptolemus so mirable, On whose bright crest Fame with her loud’st Oyes Cries ‘This is he!’ could promise to himself A thought of added honour torn from Hector.

AENEAS. There is expectance here from both the sides What further you will do.

HECTOR. We’ll answer it: The issue is embracement. Ajax, farewell.

AJAX. If I might in entreaties find success, As seld’ I have the chance, I would desire My famous cousin to our Grecian tents.

DIOMEDES. ’Tis Agamemnon’s wish; and great Achilles Doth long to see unarm’d the valiant Hector.

HECTOR. Aeneas, call my brother Troilus to me, And signify this loving interview To the expecters of our Trojan part; Desire them home. Give me thy hand, my cousin; I will go eat with thee, and see your knights.

Agamemnon and the rest of the Greeks come forward.

AJAX. Great Agamemnon comes to meet us here.

HECTOR. The worthiest of them tell me name by name; But for Achilles, my own searching eyes Shall find him by his large and portly size.

AGAMEMNON. Worthy all arms! as welcome as to one That would be rid of such an enemy. But that’s no welcome. Understand more clear, What’s past and what’s to come is strew’d with husks And formless ruin of oblivion; But in this extant moment, faith and troth, Strain’d purely from all hollow bias-drawing, Bids thee with most divine integrity, From heart of very heart, great Hector, welcome.

HECTOR. I thank thee, most imperious Agamemnon.

AGAMEMNON. [To Troilus.] My well-fam’d lord of Troy, no less to you.

MENELAUS. Let me confirm my princely brother’s greeting. You brace of warlike brothers, welcome hither.

HECTOR. Who must we answer?

AENEAS. The noble Menelaus.

HECTOR. O you, my lord? By Mars his gauntlet, thanks! Mock not that I affect the untraded oath; Your quondam wife swears still by Venus’ glove. She’s well, but bade me not commend her to you.

MENELAUS. Name her not now, sir; she’s a deadly theme.

HECTOR. O, pardon; I offend.

NESTOR. I have, thou gallant Trojan, seen thee oft, Labouring for destiny, make cruel way Through ranks of Greekish youth; and I have seen thee, As hot as Perseus, spur thy Phrygian steed, Despising many forfeits and subduements, When thou hast hung thy advanced sword i’ th’air, Not letting it decline on the declined; That I have said to some my standers-by ‘Lo, Jupiter is yonder, dealing life!’ And I have seen thee pause and take thy breath, When that a ring of Greeks have shrap’d thee in, Like an Olympian wrestling. This have I seen; But this thy countenance, still lock’d in steel, I never saw till now. I knew thy grandsire, And once fought with him. He was a soldier good, But, by great Mars, the captain of us all, Never like thee. O, let an old man embrace thee; And, worthy warrior, welcome to our tents.

AENEAS. ’Tis the old Nestor.

HECTOR. Let me embrace thee, good old chronicle, That hast so long walk’d hand in hand with time. Most reverend Nestor, I am glad to clasp thee.

NESTOR. I would my arms could match thee in contention As they contend with thee in courtesy.

HECTOR. I would they could.

NESTOR. Ha! By this white beard, I’d fight with thee tomorrow. Well, welcome, welcome! I have seen the time.

ULYSSES. I wonder now how yonder city stands, When we have here her base and pillar by us.

HECTOR. I know your favour, Lord Ulysses, well. Ah, sir, there’s many a Greek and Trojan dead, Since first I saw yourself and Diomed In Ilion on your Greekish embassy.

ULYSSES. Sir, I foretold you then what would ensue. My prophecy is but half his journey yet; For yonder walls, that pertly front your town, Yon towers, whose wanton tops do buss the clouds, Must kiss their own feet.

HECTOR. I must not believe you. There they stand yet; and modestly I think The fall of every Phrygian stone will cost A drop of Grecian blood. The end crowns all; And that old common arbitrator, Time, Will one day end it.

ULYSSES. So to him we leave it. Most gentle and most valiant Hector, welcome. After the General, I beseech you next To feast with me and see me at my tent.

ACHILLES. I shall forestall thee, Lord Ulysses, thou! Now, Hector, I have fed mine eyes on thee; I have with exact view perus’d thee, Hector, And quoted joint by joint.

HECTOR. Is this Achilles?

ACHILLES. I am Achilles.

HECTOR. Stand fair, I pray thee; let me look on thee.

ACHILLES. Behold thy fill.

HECTOR. Nay, I have done already.

ACHILLES. Thou art too brief. I will the second time, As I would buy thee, view thee limb by limb.

HECTOR. O, like a book of sport thou’lt read me o’er; But there’s more in me than thou understand’st. Why dost thou so oppress me with thine eye?

ACHILLES. Tell me, you heavens, in which part of his body Shall I destroy him? Whether there, or there, or there? That I may give the local wound a name, And make distinct the very breach whereout Hector’s great spirit flew. Answer me, heavens.

HECTOR. It would discredit the blest gods, proud man, To answer such a question. Stand again. Think’st thou to catch my life so pleasantly As to prenominate in nice conjecture Where thou wilt hit me dead?

ACHILLES. I tell thee yea.

HECTOR. Wert thou an oracle to tell me so, I’d not believe thee. Henceforth guard thee well; For I’ll not kill thee there, nor there, nor there; But, by the forge that stithied Mars his helm, I’ll kill thee everywhere, yea, o’er and o’er. You wisest Grecians, pardon me this brag. His insolence draws folly from my lips; But I’ll endeavour deeds to match these words, Or may I never—

AJAX. Do not chafe thee, cousin; And you, Achilles, let these threats alone Till accident or purpose bring you to’t. You may have every day enough of Hector, If you have stomach. The general state, I fear, Can scarce entreat you to be odd with him.

HECTOR. I pray you let us see you in the field; We have had pelting wars since you refus’d The Grecians’ cause.

ACHILLES. Dost thou entreat me, Hector? Tomorrow do I meet thee, fell as death; Tonight all friends.

HECTOR. Thy hand upon that match.

AGAMEMNON. First, all you peers of Greece, go to my tent; There in the full convive we; afterwards, As Hector’s leisure and your bounties shall Concur together, severally entreat him. Beat loud the tambourines, let the trumpets blow, That this great soldier may his welcome know.

[Exeunt all but Troilus and Ulysses.]

TROILUS. My Lord Ulysses, tell me, I beseech you, In what place of the field doth Calchas keep?

ULYSSES. At Menelaus’ tent, most princely Troilus. There Diomed doth feast with him tonight, Who neither looks upon the heaven nor earth, But gives all gaze and bent of amorous view On the fair Cressid.

TROILUS. Shall I, sweet lord, be bound to you so much, After we part from Agamemnon’s tent, To bring me thither?

ULYSSES. You shall command me, sir. As gentle tell me of what honour was This Cressida in Troy? Had she no lover there That wails her absence?

TROILUS. O, sir, to such as boasting show their scars A mock is due. Will you walk on, my lord? She was belov’d, she lov’d; she is, and doth; But still sweet love is food for fortune’s tooth.

SCENE I. The Grecian camp. Before the tent of Achilles.

ACHILLES. I’ll heat his blood with Greekish wine tonight, Which with my scimitar I’ll cool tomorrow. Patroclus, let us feast him to the height.

PATROCLUS. Here comes Thersites.

ACHILLES. How now, thou core of envy! Thou crusty batch of nature, what’s the news?

THERSITES. Why, thou picture of what thou seemest, and idol of idiot worshippers, here’s a letter for thee.

ACHILLES. From whence, fragment?

THERSITES. Why, thou full dish of fool, from Troy.

PATROCLUS. Who keeps the tent now?

THERSITES. The surgeon’s box or the patient’s wound.

PATROCLUS. Well said, adversity! And what needs these tricks?

THERSITES. Prithee, be silent, boy; I profit not by thy talk; thou art said to be Achilles’ male varlet.

PATROCLUS. Male varlet, you rogue! What’s that?

THERSITES. Why, his masculine whore. Now, the rotten diseases of the south, the guts-griping ruptures, catarrhs, loads o’ gravel in the back, lethargies, cold palsies, raw eyes, dirt-rotten livers, wheezing lungs, bladders full of imposthume, sciaticas, lime-kilns i’ th’ palm, incurable bone-ache, and the rivelled fee-simple of the tetter, take and take again such preposterous discoveries!

PATROCLUS. Why, thou damnable box of envy, thou, what meanest thou to curse thus?

THERSITES. Do I curse thee?

PATROCLUS. Why, no, you ruinous butt; you whoreson indistinguishable cur, no.

THERSITES. No! Why art thou, then, exasperate, thou idle immaterial skein of sleave silk, thou green sarcenet flap for a sore eye, thou tassel of a prodigal’s purse, thou? Ah, how the poor world is pestered with such water-flies, diminutives of nature!

PATROCLUS. Out, gall!

THERSITES. Finch egg!

ACHILLES. My sweet Patroclus, I am thwarted quite From my great purpose in tomorrow’s battle. Here is a letter from Queen Hecuba, A token from her daughter, my fair love, Both taxing me and gaging me to keep An oath that I have sworn. I will not break it. Fall Greeks; fail fame; honour or go or stay; My major vow lies here, this I’ll obey. Come, come, Thersites, help to trim my tent; This night in banqueting must all be spent. Away, Patroclus!

[Exit with Patroclus.]

THERSITES. With too much blood and too little brain these two may run mad; but, if with too much brain and too little blood they do, I’ll be a curer of madmen. Here’s Agamemnon, an honest fellow enough, and one that loves quails, but he has not so much brain as ear-wax; and the goodly transformation of Jupiter there, his brother, the bull, the primitive statue and oblique memorial of cuckolds, a thrifty shoeing-horn in a chain at his brother’s leg, to what form but that he is, should wit larded with malice, and malice forced with wit, turn him to? To an ass, were nothing: he is both ass and ox. To an ox, were nothing: he is both ox and ass. To be a dog, a mule, a cat, a fitchook, a toad, a lizard, an owl, a puttock, or a herring without a roe, I would not care; but to be Menelaus, I would conspire against destiny. Ask me not what I would be, if I were not Thersites; for I care not to be the louse of a lazar, so I were not Menelaus. Hey-day! sprites and fires!

Enter Hector, Troilus, Ajax, Agamemnon, Ulysses, Nestor, Menelaus and Diomedes with lights.

AGAMEMNON. We go wrong, we go wrong.

AJAX. No, yonder ’tis; There, where we see the lights.

HECTOR. I trouble you.

AJAX. No, not a whit.

ULYSSES. Here comes himself to guide you.

Re-enter Achilles.

ACHILLES. Welcome, brave Hector; welcome, Princes all.

AGAMEMNON. So now, fair Prince of Troy, I bid good night; Ajax commands the guard to tend on you.

HECTOR. Thanks, and good night to the Greeks’ general.

MENELAUS. Good night, my lord.

HECTOR. Good night, sweet Lord Menelaus.

THERSITES. Sweet draught! ‘Sweet’ quoth a’! Sweet sink, sweet sewer!

ACHILLES. Good night and welcome, both at once, to those That go or tarry.

AGAMEMNON. Good night.

[Exeunt Agamemnon and Menelaus.]

ACHILLES. Old Nestor tarries; and you too, Diomed, Keep Hector company an hour or two.

DIOMEDES. I cannot, lord; I have important business, The tide whereof is now. Good night, great Hector.

HECTOR. Give me your hand.

ULYSSES. [Aside to Troilus.] Follow his torch; he goes to Calchas’ tent; I’ll keep you company.

TROILUS. Sweet sir, you honour me.

HECTOR. And so, good night.

[Exit Diomedes, Ulysses and Troilus following.]

ACHILLES. Come, come, enter my tent.

[Exeunt all but Thersites.]

THERSITES. That same Diomed’s a false-hearted rogue, a most unjust knave; I will no more trust him when he leers than I will a serpent when he hisses. He will spend his mouth and promise, like Brabbler the hound; but when he performs, astronomers foretell it: it is prodigious, there will come some change; the sun borrows of the moon when Diomed keeps his word. I will rather leave to see Hector than not to dog him. They say he keeps a Trojan drab, and uses the traitor Calchas’ tent. I’ll after. Nothing but lechery! All incontinent varlets!

SCENE II. The Grecian camp. Before Calchas’ tent.

DIOMEDES. What, are you up here, ho! Speak.

CALCHAS. [Within.] Who calls?

DIOMEDES. Diomed. Calchas, I think. Where’s your daughter?

CALCHAS. [Within.] She comes to you.

Enter Troilus and Ulysses, at a distance; after them Thersites.

ULYSSES. Stand where the torch may not discover us.

Enter Cressida.

TROILUS. Cressid comes forth to him.

DIOMEDES. How now, my charge!

CRESSIDA. Now, my sweet guardian! Hark, a word with you.

[Whispers.]

TROILUS. Yea, so familiar?

ULYSSES. She will sing any man at first sight.

THERSITES. And any man may sing her, if he can take her cliff; she’s noted.

DIOMEDES. Will you remember?

CRESSIDA. Remember! Yes.

DIOMEDES. Nay, but do, then; And let your mind be coupled with your words.

TROILUS. What should she remember?

ULYSSES. List!

CRESSIDA. Sweet honey Greek, tempt me no more to folly.

THERSITES. Roguery!

DIOMEDES. Nay, then—

CRESSIDA. I’ll tell you what—

DIOMEDES. Fo, fo! come, tell a pin; you are a forsworn.

CRESSIDA. In faith, I cannot. What would you have me do?

THERSITES. A juggling trick, to be secretly open.

DIOMEDES. What did you swear you would bestow on me?

CRESSIDA. I prithee, do not hold me to mine oath; Bid me do anything but that, sweet Greek.

DIOMEDES. Good night.

TROILUS. Hold, patience!

ULYSSES. How now, Trojan!

CRESSIDA. Diomed!

DIOMEDES. No, no, good night; I’ll be your fool no more.

TROILUS. Thy better must.

CRESSIDA. Hark! a word in your ear.

TROILUS. O plague and madness!

ULYSSES. You are moved, Prince; let us depart, I pray, Lest your displeasure should enlarge itself To wrathful terms. This place is dangerous; The time right deadly; I beseech you, go.

TROILUS. Behold, I pray you.

ULYSSES. Nay, good my lord, go off; You flow to great distraction; come, my lord.

TROILUS. I pray thee stay.

ULYSSES. You have not patience; come.

TROILUS. I pray you, stay; by hell and all hell’s torments, I will not speak a word.

DIOMEDES. And so, good night.

CRESSIDA. Nay, but you part in anger.

TROILUS. Doth that grieve thee? O withered truth!

ULYSSES. How now, my lord?

TROILUS. By Jove, I will be patient.

CRESSIDA. Guardian! Why, Greek!

DIOMEDES. Fo, fo! adieu! you palter.

CRESSIDA. In faith, I do not. Come hither once again.

ULYSSES. You shake, my lord, at something; will you go? You will break out.

TROILUS. She strokes his cheek.

ULYSSES. Come, come.

TROILUS. Nay, stay; by Jove, I will not speak a word: There is between my will and all offences A guard of patience. Stay a little while.

THERSITES. How the devil Luxury, with his fat rump and potato finger, tickles these together! Fry, lechery, fry!

DIOMEDES. But will you, then?

CRESSIDA. In faith, I will, la; never trust me else.

DIOMEDES. Give me some token for the surety of it.

CRESSIDA. I’ll fetch you one.

ULYSSES. You have sworn patience.

TROILUS. Fear me not, my lord; I will not be myself, nor have cognition Of what I feel. I am all patience.

THERSITES. Now the pledge; now, now, now!

CRESSIDA. Here, Diomed, keep this sleeve.

TROILUS. O beauty! where is thy faith?

ULYSSES. My lord!

TROILUS. I will be patient; outwardly I will.

CRESSIDA. You look upon that sleeve; behold it well. He lov’d me—O false wench!—Give’t me again.

DIOMEDES. Whose was’t?

CRESSIDA. It is no matter, now I have’t again. I will not meet with you tomorrow night. I prithee, Diomed, visit me no more.

THERSITES. Now she sharpens. Well said, whetstone.

DIOMEDES. I shall have it.

CRESSIDA. What, this?

DIOMEDES. Ay, that.

CRESSIDA. O all you gods! O pretty, pretty pledge! Thy master now lies thinking on his bed Of thee and me, and sighs, and takes my glove, And gives memorial dainty kisses to it, As I kiss thee. Nay, do not snatch it from me; He that takes that doth take my heart withal.

DIOMEDES. I had your heart before; this follows it.

TROILUS. I did swear patience.

CRESSIDA. You shall not have it, Diomed; faith, you shall not; I’ll give you something else.

DIOMEDES. I will have this. Whose was it?

CRESSIDA. It is no matter.

DIOMEDES. Come, tell me whose it was.

CRESSIDA. ’Twas one’s that lov’d me better than you will. But, now you have it, take it.

DIOMEDES. Whose was it?

CRESSIDA. By all Diana’s waiting women yond, And by herself, I will not tell you whose.

DIOMEDES. Tomorrow will I wear it on my helm, And grieve his spirit that dares not challenge it.

TROILUS. Wert thou the devil and wor’st it on thy horn, It should be challeng’d.

CRESSIDA. Well, well, ’tis done, ’tis past; and yet it is not; I will not keep my word.

DIOMEDES. Why, then farewell; Thou never shalt mock Diomed again.

CRESSIDA. You shall not go. One cannot speak a word But it straight starts you.

DIOMEDES. I do not like this fooling.

THERSITES. Nor I, by Pluto; but that that likes not you Pleases me best.

DIOMEDES. What, shall I come? The hour?

CRESSIDA. Ay, come; O Jove! Do come. I shall be plagu’d.

DIOMEDES. Farewell till then.

CRESSIDA. Good night. I prithee come.

[Exit Diomedes.]

Troilus, farewell! One eye yet looks on thee; But with my heart the other eye doth see. Ah, poor our sex! this fault in us I find, The error of our eye directs our mind. What error leads must err; O, then conclude, Minds sway’d by eyes are full of turpitude.

THERSITES. A proof of strength she could not publish more, Unless she said ‘My mind is now turn’d whore.’

ULYSSES. All’s done, my lord.

TROILUS. It is.

ULYSSES. Why stay we, then?

TROILUS. To make a recordation to my soul Of every syllable that here was spoke. But if I tell how these two did co-act, Shall I not lie in publishing a truth? Sith yet there is a credence in my heart, An esperance so obstinately strong, That doth invert th’attest of eyes and ears; As if those organs had deceptious functions Created only to calumniate. Was Cressid here?

ULYSSES. I cannot conjure, Trojan.

TROILUS. She was not, sure.

ULYSSES. Most sure she was.

TROILUS. Why, my negation hath no taste of madness.

ULYSSES. Nor mine, my lord. Cressid was here but now.

TROILUS. Let it not be believ’d for womanhood. Think, we had mothers; do not give advantage To stubborn critics, apt, without a theme, For depravation, to square the general sex By Cressid’s rule. Rather think this not Cressid.

ULYSSES. What hath she done, Prince, that can soil our mothers?

TROILUS. Nothing at all, unless that this were she.

THERSITES. Will he swagger himself out on’s own eyes?

TROILUS. This she? No; this is Diomed’s Cressida. If beauty have a soul, this is not she; If souls guide vows, if vows be sanctimonies, If sanctimony be the god’s delight, If there be rule in unity itself, This was not she. O madness of discourse, That cause sets up with and against itself! Bi-fold authority! where reason can revolt Without perdition, and loss assume all reason Without revolt: this is, and is not, Cressid. Within my soul there doth conduce a fight Of this strange nature, that a thing inseparate Divides more wider than the sky and earth; And yet the spacious breadth of this division Admits no orifice for a point as subtle As Ariachne’s broken woof to enter. Instance, O instance! strong as Pluto’s gates: Cressid is mine, tied with the bonds of heaven. Instance, O instance! strong as heaven itself: The bonds of heaven are slipp’d, dissolv’d, and loos’d; And with another knot, five-finger-tied, The fractions of her faith, orts of her love, The fragments, scraps, the bits, and greasy relics Of her o’er-eaten faith, are given to Diomed.

ULYSSES. May worthy Troilus be half attach’d With that which here his passion doth express?

TROILUS. Ay, Greek; and that shall be divulged well In characters as red as Mars his heart Inflam’d with Venus. Never did young man fancy With so eternal and so fix’d a soul. Hark, Greek: as much as I do Cressid love, So much by weight hate I her Diomed. That sleeve is mine that he’ll bear on his helm; Were it a casque compos’d by Vulcan’s skill My sword should bite it. Not the dreadful spout Which shipmen do the hurricano call, Constring’d in mass by the almighty sun, Shall dizzy with more clamour Neptune’s ear In his descent than shall my prompted sword Falling on Diomed.

THERSITES. He’ll tickle it for his concupy.

TROILUS. O Cressid! O false Cressid! false, false, false! Let all untruths stand by thy stained name, And they’ll seem glorious.

ULYSSES. O, contain yourself; Your passion draws ears hither.

AENEAS. I have been seeking you this hour, my lord. Hector, by this, is arming him in Troy; Ajax, your guard, stays to conduct you home.

TROILUS. Have with you, Prince. My courteous lord, adieu. Fairwell, revolted fair! and, Diomed, Stand fast, and wear a castle on thy head.

ULYSSES. I’ll bring you to the gates.

TROILUS. Accept distracted thanks.

[Exeunt Troilus, Aeneas and Ulysses.]

THERSITES. Would I could meet that rogue Diomed! I would croak like a raven; I would bode, I would bode. Patroclus will give me anything for the intelligence of this whore; the parrot will not do more for an almond than he for a commodious drab. Lechery, lechery! Still wars and lechery! Nothing else holds fashion. A burning devil take them!

SCENE III. Troy. Before Priam’s palace.

Enter Hector and Andromache.

ANDROMACHE. When was my lord so much ungently temper’d To stop his ears against admonishment? Unarm, unarm, and do not fight today.

HECTOR. You train me to offend you; get you in. By all the everlasting gods, I’ll go.

ANDROMACHE. My dreams will, sure, prove ominous to the day.

HECTOR. No more, I say.

Enter Cassandra.

CASSANDRA. Where is my brother Hector?

ANDROMACHE. Here, sister, arm’d, and bloody in intent. Consort with me in loud and dear petition, Pursue we him on knees; for I have dreamt Of bloody turbulence, and this whole night Hath nothing been but shapes and forms of slaughter.

CASSANDRA. O, ’tis true!

HECTOR. Ho! bid my trumpet sound.

CASSANDRA. No notes of sally, for the heavens, sweet brother!

HECTOR. Be gone, I say. The gods have heard me swear.

CASSANDRA. The gods are deaf to hot and peevish vows; They are polluted off’rings, more abhorr’d Than spotted livers in the sacrifice.

ANDROMACHE. O, be persuaded! Do not count it holy To hurt by being just. It is as lawful, For we would give much, to use violent thefts And rob in the behalf of charity.

CASSANDRA. It is the purpose that makes strong the vow; But vows to every purpose must not hold. Unarm, sweet Hector.

HECTOR. Hold you still, I say. Mine honour keeps the weather of my fate. Life every man holds dear; but the dear man Holds honour far more precious dear than life.

How now, young man! Mean’st thou to fight today?

ANDROMACHE. Cassandra, call my father to persuade.

[Exit Cassandra.]

HECTOR. No, faith, young Troilus; doff thy harness, youth; I am today i’ th’vein of chivalry. Let grow thy sinews till their knots be strong, And tempt not yet the brushes of the war. Unarm thee, go; and doubt thou not, brave boy, I’ll stand today for thee and me and Troy.

TROILUS. Brother, you have a vice of mercy in you, Which better fits a lion than a man.

HECTOR. What vice is that? Good Troilus, chide me for it.

TROILUS. When many times the captive Grecian falls, Even in the fan and wind of your fair sword, You bid them rise and live.

HECTOR. O, ’tis fair play!

TROILUS. Fool’s play, by heaven, Hector.

HECTOR. How now? how now?

TROILUS. For th’ love of all the gods, Let’s leave the hermit Pity with our mother; And when we have our armours buckled on, The venom’d vengeance ride upon our swords, Spur them to ruthful work, rein them from ruth!

HECTOR. Fie, savage, fie!

TROILUS. Hector, then ’tis wars.

HECTOR. Troilus, I would not have you fight today.

TROILUS. Who should withhold me? Not fate, obedience, nor the hand of Mars Beckoning with fiery truncheon my retire; Not Priamus and Hecuba on knees, Their eyes o’er-galled with recourse of tears; Nor you, my brother, with your true sword drawn, Oppos’d to hinder me, should stop my way, But by my ruin.

Re-enter Cassandra with Priam.

CASSANDRA. Lay hold upon him, Priam, hold him fast; He is thy crutch; now if thou lose thy stay, Thou on him leaning, and all Troy on thee, Fall all together.

PRIAM. Come, Hector, come, go back. Thy wife hath dreamt; thy mother hath had visions; Cassandra doth foresee; and I myself Am like a prophet suddenly enrapt To tell thee that this day is ominous. Therefore, come back.

HECTOR. Aeneas is a-field; And I do stand engag’d to many Greeks, Even in the faith of valour, to appear This morning to them.

PRIAM. Ay, but thou shalt not go.

HECTOR. I must not break my faith. You know me dutiful; therefore, dear sir, Let me not shame respect; but give me leave To take that course by your consent and voice Which you do here forbid me, royal Priam.

CASSANDRA. O Priam, yield not to him!

ANDROMACHE. Do not, dear father.

HECTOR. Andromache, I am offended with you. Upon the love you bear me, get you in.

[Exit Andromache.]

TROILUS. This foolish, dreaming, superstitious girl Makes all these bodements.

CASSANDRA. O, farewell, dear Hector! Look how thou diest. Look how thy eye turns pale. Look how thy wounds do bleed at many vents. Hark how Troy roars; how Hecuba cries out; How poor Andromache shrills her dolours forth; Behold distraction, frenzy, and amazement, Like witless antics, one another meet, And all cry, ‘Hector! Hector’s dead! O Hector!’

TROILUS. Away, away!

CASSANDRA. Farewell! yet, soft! Hector, I take my leave. Thou dost thyself and all our Troy deceive.

HECTOR. You are amaz’d, my liege, at her exclaim. Go in, and cheer the town; we’ll forth, and fight, Do deeds worth praise and tell you them at night.

PRIAM. Farewell. The gods with safety stand about thee!

[Exeunt severally Priam and Hector. Alarums.]

TROILUS. They are at it, hark! Proud Diomed, believe, I come to lose my arm or win my sleeve.

PANDARUS. Do you hear, my lord? Do you hear?

TROILUS. What now?

PANDARUS. Here’s a letter come from yond poor girl.

TROILUS. Let me read.

PANDARUS. A whoreson tisick, a whoreson rascally tisick, so troubles me, and the foolish fortune of this girl, and what one thing, what another, that I shall leave you one o’ these days; and I have a rheum in mine eyes too, and such an ache in my bones that unless a man were curs’d I cannot tell what to think on’t. What says she there?

TROILUS. Words, words, mere words, no matter from the heart; Th’effect doth operate another way.

[Tearing the letter.]

Go, wind, to wind, there turn and change together. My love with words and errors still she feeds, But edifies another with her deeds.

SCENE IV. The plain between Troy and the Grecian camp.

Alarums. Excursions. Enter Thersites.

THERSITES. Now they are clapper-clawing one another; I’ll go look on. That dissembling abominable varlet, Diomed, has got that same scurvy doting foolish young knave’s sleeve of Troy there in his helm. I would fain see them meet, that that same young Trojan ass that loves the whore there might send that Greekish whoremasterly villain with the sleeve back to the dissembling luxurious drab of a sleeve-less errand. O’ the other side, the policy of those crafty swearing rascals that stale old mouse-eaten dry cheese, Nestor, and that same dog-fox, Ulysses, is not prov’d worth a blackberry. They set me up, in policy, that mongrel cur, Ajax, against that dog of as bad a kind, Achilles; and now is the cur, Ajax prouder than the cur Achilles, and will not arm today; whereupon the Grecians begin to proclaim barbarism, and policy grows into an ill opinion.

Enter Diomedes, Troilus following.

Soft! here comes sleeve, and t’other.

TROILUS. Fly not; for shouldst thou take the river Styx, I would swim after.

DIOMEDES. Thou dost miscall retire. I do not fly; but advantageous care Withdrew me from the odds of multitude. Have at thee!

THERSITES. Hold thy whore, Grecian; now for thy whore, Trojan! now the sleeve, now the sleeve!

[Exeunt Troilus and Diomedes fighting.]

Enter Hector.

HECTOR. What art thou, Greek? Art thou for Hector’s match? Art thou of blood and honour?

THERSITES. No, no I am a rascal; a scurvy railing knave; a very filthy rogue.

HECTOR. I do believe thee. Live.

THERSITES. God-a-mercy, that thou wilt believe me; but a plague break thy neck for frighting me! What’s become of the wenching rogues? I think they have swallowed one another. I would laugh at that miracle. Yet, in a sort, lechery eats itself. I’ll seek them.

SCENE V. Another part of the plain.

Enter Diomedes and a Servant.

DIOMEDES. Go, go, my servant, take thou Troilus’ horse; Present the fair steed to my lady Cressid. Fellow, commend my service to her beauty; Tell her I have chastis’d the amorous Trojan, And am her knight by proof.

SERVANT. I go, my lord.

Enter Agamemnon.

AGAMEMNON. Renew, renew! The fierce Polydamas Hath beat down Menon; bastard Margarelon Hath Doreus prisoner, And stands colossus-wise, waving his beam, Upon the pashed corses of the kings Epistrophus and Cedius. Polixenes is slain; Amphimacus and Thoas deadly hurt; Patroclus ta’en, or slain; and Palamedes Sore hurt and bruis’d. The dreadful Sagittary Appals our numbers. Haste we, Diomed, To reinforcement, or we perish all.

Enter Nestor.

NESTOR. Go, bear Patroclus’ body to Achilles, And bid the snail-pac’d Ajax arm for shame. There is a thousand Hectors in the field; Now here he fights on Galathe his horse, And there lacks work; anon he’s there afoot, And there they fly or die, like scaled sculls Before the belching whale; then is he yonder, And there the strawy Greeks, ripe for his edge, Fall down before him like the mower’s swath. Here, there, and everywhere, he leaves and takes; Dexterity so obeying appetite That what he will he does, and does so much That proof is call’d impossibility.

Enter Ulysses.

ULYSSES. O, courage, courage, courage, Princes! Great Achilles Is arming, weeping, cursing, vowing vengeance. Patroclus’ wounds have rous’d his drowsy blood, Together with his mangled Myrmidons, That noseless, handless, hack’d and chipp’d, come to him, Crying on Hector. Ajax hath lost a friend And foams at mouth, and he is arm’d and at it, Roaring for Troilus; who hath done today Mad and fantastic execution, Engaging and redeeming of himself With such a careless force and forceless care As if that lust, in very spite of cunning, Bade him win all.

Enter Ajax.

AJAX. Troilus! thou coward Troilus!

DIOMEDES. Ay, there, there.

NESTOR. So, so, we draw together.

ACHILLES. Where is this Hector? Come, come, thou boy-queller, show thy face; Know what it is to meet Achilles angry. Hector! where’s Hector? I will none but Hector.

SCENE VI. Another part of the plain.

AJAX. Troilus, thou coward Troilus, show thy head.

DIOMEDES. Troilus, I say! Where’s Troilus?

AJAX. What wouldst thou?

DIOMEDES. I would correct him.

AJAX. Were I the general, thou shouldst have my office Ere that correction. Troilus, I say! What, Troilus!

TROILUS. O traitor Diomed! Turn thy false face, thou traitor, And pay thy life thou owest me for my horse.

DIOMEDES. Ha! art thou there?

AJAX. I’ll fight with him alone. Stand, Diomed.

DIOMEDES. He is my prize. I will not look upon.

TROILUS. Come, both, you cogging Greeks; have at you both!

[Exeunt fighting.]

HECTOR. Yea, Troilus? O, well fought, my youngest brother!

ACHILLES. Now do I see thee. Ha! have at thee, Hector!

HECTOR. Pause, if thou wilt.

ACHILLES. I do disdain thy courtesy, proud Trojan. Be happy that my arms are out of use; My rest and negligence befriend thee now, But thou anon shalt hear of me again; Till when, go seek thy fortune.

HECTOR. Fare thee well. I would have been much more a fresher man, Had I expected thee.

How now, my brother!

TROILUS. Ajax hath ta’en Aeneas. Shall it be? No, by the flame of yonder glorious heaven, He shall not carry him; I’ll be ta’en too, Or bring him off. Fate, hear me what I say: I reck not though thou end my life today.

Enter one in armour.

HECTOR. Stand, stand, thou Greek; thou art a goodly mark. No? wilt thou not? I like thy armour well; I’ll frush it and unlock the rivets all But I’ll be master of it. Wilt thou not, beast, abide? Why then, fly on; I’ll hunt thee for thy hide.

SCENE VII. Another part of the plain.

Enter Achilles with Myrmidons.

ACHILLES. Come here about me, you my Myrmidons; Mark what I say. Attend me where I wheel; Strike not a stroke, but keep yourselves in breath; And when I have the bloody Hector found, Empale him with your weapons round about; In fellest manner execute your arms. Follow me, sirs, and my proceedings eye. It is decreed Hector the great must die.

Enter Menelaus and Paris, fighting; then Thersites.

THERSITES. The cuckold and the cuckold-maker are at it. Now, bull! Now, dog! ’Loo, Paris, ’loo! now my double-hen’d Spartan! ’loo, Paris, ’loo! The bull has the game. ’Ware horns, ho!

[Exeunt Paris and Menelaus.]

Enter Margarelon.

MARGARELON. Turn, slave, and fight.

THERSITES. What art thou?

MARGARELON. A bastard son of Priam’s.

THERSITES. I am a bastard too; I love bastards. I am a bastard begot, bastard instructed, bastard in mind, bastard in valour, in everything illegitimate. One bear will not bite another, and wherefore should one bastard? Take heed, the quarrel’s most ominous to us: if the son of a whore fight for a whore, he tempts judgement. Farewell, bastard.

MARGARELON. The devil take thee, coward!

SCENE VIII. Another part of the plain.

HECTOR. Most putrified core so fair without, Thy goodly armour thus hath cost thy life. Now is my day’s work done; I’ll take my breath: Rest, sword; thou hast thy fill of blood and death!

[Disarms.]

Enter Achilles and Myrmidons.

ACHILLES. Look, Hector, how the sun begins to set, How ugly night comes breathing at his heels; Even with the vail and dark’ning of the sun, To close the day up, Hector’s life is done.

HECTOR. I am unarm’d; forego this vantage, Greek.

ACHILLES. Strike, fellows, strike; this is the man I seek.

[Hector falls.]

So, Ilion, fall thou next! Now, Troy, sink down; Here lies thy heart, thy sinews, and thy bone. On, Myrmidons, and cry you all amain ‘Achilles hath the mighty Hector slain.’

[A retreat sounded.]

Hark! a retire upon our Grecian part.

MYRMIDON. The Trojan trumpets sound the like, my lord.

ACHILLES. The dragon wing of night o’erspreads the earth And, stickler-like, the armies separates. My half-supp’d sword, that frankly would have fed, Pleas’d with this dainty bait, thus goes to bed.

[Sheathes his sword.]

Come, tie his body to my horse’s tail; Along the field I will the Trojan trail.

SCENE IX. Another part of the plain.

Sound retreat. Shout. Enter Agamemnon, Ajax, Menelaus, Nestor, Diomedes and the rest, marching.

AGAMEMNON. Hark! hark! what shout is this?

NESTOR. Peace, drums!

SOLDIERS. [Within.] Achilles! Achilles! Hector’s slain. Achilles!

DIOMEDES. The bruit is, Hector’s slain, and by Achilles.

AJAX. If it be so, yet bragless let it be; Great Hector was as good a man as he.

AGAMEMNON. March patiently along. Let one be sent To pray Achilles see us at our tent. If in his death the gods have us befriended; Great Troy is ours, and our sharp wars are ended.

SCENE X. Another part of the plain.

Enter Aeneas, Paris, Antenor and Deiphobus.

AENEAS. Stand, ho! yet are we masters of the field. Never go home; here starve we out the night.

TROILUS. Hector is slain.

ALL. Hector! The gods forbid!

TROILUS. He’s dead, and at the murderer’s horse’s tail, In beastly sort, dragg’d through the shameful field. Frown on, you heavens, effect your rage with speed. Sit, gods, upon your thrones, and smile at Troy. I say at once let your brief plagues be mercy, And linger not our sure destructions on.

AENEAS. My lord, you do discomfort all the host.

TROILUS. You understand me not that tell me so. I do not speak of flight, of fear of death, But dare all imminence that gods and men Address their dangers in. Hector is gone. Who shall tell Priam so, or Hecuba? Let him that will a screech-owl aye be call’d Go in to Troy, and say there ‘Hector’s dead.’ There is a word will Priam turn to stone; Make wells and Niobes of the maids and wives, Cold statues of the youth; and, in a word, Scare Troy out of itself. But, march away; Hector is dead; there is no more to say. Stay yet. You vile abominable tents, Thus proudly pight upon our Phrygian plains, Let Titan rise as early as he dare, I’ll through and through you. And, thou great-siz’d coward, No space of earth shall sunder our two hates; I’ll haunt thee like a wicked conscience still, That mouldeth goblins swift as frenzy’s thoughts. Strike a free march to Troy. With comfort go; Hope of revenge shall hide our inward woe.

PANDARUS. But hear you, hear you!

TROILUS. Hence, broker-lackey. Ignominy and shame Pursue thy life, and live aye with thy name!

[Exeunt all but Pandarus.]

PANDARUS. A goodly medicine for my aching bones! O world! world! Thus is the poor agent despis’d! O traitors and bawds, how earnestly are you set a-work, and how ill requited! Why should our endeavour be so lov’d, and the performance so loathed? What verse for it? What instance for it? Let me see—

Full merrily the humble-bee doth sing Till he hath lost his honey and his sting; And being once subdu’d in armed trail, Sweet honey and sweet notes together fail.

Good traders in the flesh, set this in your painted cloths. As many as be here of Pandar’s hall, Your eyes, half out, weep out at Pandar’s fall; Or, if you cannot weep, yet give some groans, Though not for me, yet for your aching bones. Brethren and sisters of the hold-door trade, Some two months hence my will shall here be made. It should be now, but that my fear is this, Some galled goose of Winchester would hiss. Till then I’ll sweat and seek about for eases, And at that time bequeath you my diseases.

TWELFTH NIGHT; OR, WHAT YOU WILL

ACT I Scene I. An Apartment in the Duke’s Palace. Scene II. The sea-coast. Scene III. A Room in Olivia’s House. Scene IV. A Room in the Duke’s Palace. Scene V. A Room in Olivia’s House.

ACT II Scene I. The sea-coast. Scene II. A street. Scene III. A Room in Olivia’s House. Scene IV. A Room in the Duke’s Palace. Scene V. Olivia’s garden.

ACT III Scene I. Olivia’s garden. Scene II. A Room in Olivia’s House. Scene III. A street. Scene IV. Olivia’s garden.

ACT IV Scene I. The Street before Olivia’s House. Scene II. A Room in Olivia’s House. Scene III. Olivia’s Garden.

ACT V Scene I. The Street before Olivia’s House.

ORSINO, Duke of Illyria. VALENTINE, Gentleman attending on the Duke CURIO, Gentleman attending on the Duke VIOLA, in love with the Duke. SEBASTIAN, a young Gentleman, twin brother to Viola. A SEA CAPTAIN, friend to Viola ANTONIO, a Sea Captain, friend to Sebastian. OLIVIA, a rich Countess. MARIA, Olivia’s Woman. SIR TOBY BELCH, Uncle of Olivia. SIR ANDREW AGUECHEEK. MALVOLIO, Steward to Olivia. FABIAN, Servant to Olivia. CLOWN, Servant to Olivia. PRIEST Lords, Sailors, Officers, Musicians, and other Attendants.

SCENE: A City in Illyria; and the Sea-coast near it.

ACT I.

SCENE I. An Apartment in the Duke’s Palace.

Enter Orsino, Duke of Illyria, Curio, and other Lords; Musicians attending.

DUKE. If music be the food of love, play on, Give me excess of it; that, surfeiting, The appetite may sicken and so die. That strain again, it had a dying fall; O, it came o’er my ear like the sweet sound That breathes upon a bank of violets, Stealing and giving odour. Enough; no more; ’Tis not so sweet now as it was before. O spirit of love, how quick and fresh art thou, That notwithstanding thy capacity Receiveth as the sea, nought enters there, Of what validity and pitch soever, But falls into abatement and low price Even in a minute! So full of shapes is fancy, That it alone is high fantastical.

CURIO. Will you go hunt, my lord?

DUKE. What, Curio?

CURIO. The hart.

DUKE. Why so I do, the noblest that I have. O, when mine eyes did see Olivia first, Methought she purg’d the air of pestilence; That instant was I turn’d into a hart, And my desires, like fell and cruel hounds, E’er since pursue me. How now? what news from her?

Enter Valentine.

VALENTINE. So please my lord, I might not be admitted, But from her handmaid do return this answer: The element itself, till seven years’ heat, Shall not behold her face at ample view; But like a cloistress she will veiled walk, And water once a day her chamber round With eye-offending brine: all this to season A brother’s dead love, which she would keep fresh And lasting in her sad remembrance.

DUKE. O, she that hath a heart of that fine frame To pay this debt of love but to a brother, How will she love, when the rich golden shaft Hath kill’d the flock of all affections else That live in her; when liver, brain, and heart, These sovereign thrones, are all supplied and fill’d Her sweet perfections with one self king! Away before me to sweet beds of flowers, Love-thoughts lie rich when canopied with bowers.

SCENE II. The sea-coast.

Enter Viola, a Captain and Sailors.

VIOLA. What country, friends, is this?

CAPTAIN. This is Illyria, lady.

VIOLA. And what should I do in Illyria? My brother he is in Elysium. Perchance he is not drown’d. What think you, sailors?

CAPTAIN. It is perchance that you yourself were sav’d.

VIOLA. O my poor brother! and so perchance may he be.

CAPTAIN. True, madam; and to comfort you with chance, Assure yourself, after our ship did split, When you, and those poor number sav’d with you, Hung on our driving boat, I saw your brother, Most provident in peril, bind himself, (Courage and hope both teaching him the practice) To a strong mast that liv’d upon the sea; Where, like Arion on the dolphin’s back, I saw him hold acquaintance with the waves So long as I could see.

VIOLA. For saying so, there’s gold! Mine own escape unfoldeth to my hope, Whereto thy speech serves for authority, The like of him. Know’st thou this country?

CAPTAIN. Ay, madam, well, for I was bred and born Not three hours’ travel from this very place.

VIOLA. Who governs here?

CAPTAIN. A noble duke, in nature as in name.

VIOLA. What is his name?

CAPTAIN. Orsino.

VIOLA. Orsino! I have heard my father name him. He was a bachelor then.

CAPTAIN. And so is now, or was so very late; For but a month ago I went from hence, And then ’twas fresh in murmur, (as, you know, What great ones do, the less will prattle of) That he did seek the love of fair Olivia.

VIOLA. What’s she?

CAPTAIN. A virtuous maid, the daughter of a count That died some twelvemonth since; then leaving her In the protection of his son, her brother, Who shortly also died; for whose dear love They say, she hath abjur’d the company And sight of men.

VIOLA. O that I served that lady, And might not be delivered to the world, Till I had made mine own occasion mellow, What my estate is.

CAPTAIN. That were hard to compass, Because she will admit no kind of suit, No, not the Duke’s.

VIOLA. There is a fair behaviour in thee, Captain; And though that nature with a beauteous wall Doth oft close in pollution, yet of thee I will believe thou hast a mind that suits With this thy fair and outward character. I pray thee, and I’ll pay thee bounteously, Conceal me what I am, and be my aid For such disguise as haply shall become The form of my intent. I’ll serve this duke; Thou shalt present me as an eunuch to him. It may be worth thy pains; for I can sing, And speak to him in many sorts of music, That will allow me very worth his service. What else may hap, to time I will commit; Only shape thou thy silence to my wit.

CAPTAIN. Be you his eunuch and your mute I’ll be; When my tongue blabs, then let mine eyes not see.

VIOLA. I thank thee. Lead me on.

SCENE III. A Room in Olivia’s House.

Enter Sir Toby and Maria.

SIR TOBY. What a plague means my niece to take the death of her brother thus? I am sure care’s an enemy to life.

MARIA. By my troth, Sir Toby, you must come in earlier o’ nights; your cousin, my lady, takes great exceptions to your ill hours.

SIR TOBY. Why, let her except, before excepted.

MARIA. Ay, but you must confine yourself within the modest limits of order.

SIR TOBY. Confine? I’ll confine myself no finer than I am. These clothes are good enough to drink in, and so be these boots too; and they be not, let them hang themselves in their own straps.

MARIA. That quaffing and drinking will undo you: I heard my lady talk of it yesterday; and of a foolish knight that you brought in one night here to be her wooer.

SIR TOBY. Who? Sir Andrew Aguecheek?

MARIA. Ay, he.

SIR TOBY. He’s as tall a man as any’s in Illyria.

MARIA. What’s that to th’ purpose?

SIR TOBY. Why, he has three thousand ducats a year.

MARIA. Ay, but he’ll have but a year in all these ducats. He’s a very fool, and a prodigal.

SIR TOBY. Fie, that you’ll say so! he plays o’ the viol-de-gamboys, and speaks three or four languages word for word without book, and hath all the good gifts of nature.

MARIA. He hath indeed, almost natural: for, besides that he’s a fool, he’s a great quarreller; and, but that he hath the gift of a coward to allay the gust he hath in quarrelling, ’tis thought among the prudent he would quickly have the gift of a grave.

SIR TOBY. By this hand, they are scoundrels and substractors that say so of him. Who are they?

MARIA. They that add, moreover, he’s drunk nightly in your company.

SIR TOBY. With drinking healths to my niece; I’ll drink to her as long as there is a passage in my throat, and drink in Illyria. He’s a coward and a coystril that will not drink to my niece till his brains turn o’ the toe like a parish top. What, wench! Castiliano vulgo: for here comes Sir Andrew Agueface.

Enter Sir Andrew.

AGUECHEEK. Sir Toby Belch! How now, Sir Toby Belch?

SIR TOBY. Sweet Sir Andrew!

SIR ANDREW. Bless you, fair shrew.

MARIA. And you too, sir.

SIR TOBY. Accost, Sir Andrew, accost.

SIR ANDREW. What’s that?

SIR TOBY. My niece’s chamber-maid.

SIR ANDREW. Good Mistress Accost, I desire better acquaintance.

MARIA. My name is Mary, sir.

SIR ANDREW. Good Mistress Mary Accost,—

SIR TOBY. You mistake, knight: accost is front her, board her, woo her, assail her.

SIR ANDREW. By my troth, I would not undertake her in this company. Is that the meaning of accost?

MARIA. Fare you well, gentlemen.

SIR TOBY. And thou let part so, Sir Andrew, would thou mightst never draw sword again.

SIR ANDREW. And you part so, mistress, I would I might never draw sword again. Fair lady, do you think you have fools in hand?

MARIA. Sir, I have not you by the hand.

SIR ANDREW. Marry, but you shall have, and here’s my hand.

MARIA. Now, sir, thought is free. I pray you, bring your hand to th’ buttery bar and let it drink.

SIR ANDREW. Wherefore, sweetheart? What’s your metaphor?

MARIA. It’s dry, sir.

SIR ANDREW. Why, I think so; I am not such an ass but I can keep my hand dry. But what’s your jest?

MARIA. A dry jest, sir.

SIR ANDREW. Are you full of them?

MARIA. Ay, sir, I have them at my fingers’ ends: marry, now I let go your hand, I am barren.

[Exit Maria.]

SIR TOBY. O knight, thou lack’st a cup of canary: When did I see thee so put down?

SIR ANDREW. Never in your life, I think, unless you see canary put me down. Methinks sometimes I have no more wit than a Christian or an ordinary man has; but I am a great eater of beef, and I believe that does harm to my wit.

SIR TOBY. No question.

SIR ANDREW. And I thought that, I’d forswear it. I’ll ride home tomorrow, Sir Toby.

SIR TOBY. Pourquoy, my dear knight?

SIR ANDREW. What is pourquoy? Do, or not do? I would I had bestowed that time in the tongues that I have in fencing, dancing, and bear-baiting. O, had I but followed the arts!

SIR TOBY. Then hadst thou had an excellent head of hair.

SIR ANDREW. Why, would that have mended my hair?

SIR TOBY. Past question; for thou seest it will not curl by nature.

SIR ANDREW. But it becomes me well enough, does’t not?

SIR TOBY. Excellent, it hangs like flax on a distaff; and I hope to see a huswife take thee between her legs, and spin it off.

SIR ANDREW. Faith, I’ll home tomorrow, Sir Toby; your niece will not be seen, or if she be, it’s four to one she’ll none of me; the Count himself here hard by woos her.

SIR TOBY. She’ll none o’ the Count; she’ll not match above her degree, neither in estate, years, nor wit; I have heard her swear’t. Tut, there’s life in’t, man.

SIR ANDREW. I’ll stay a month longer. I am a fellow o’ the strangest mind i’ the world; I delight in masques and revels sometimes altogether.

SIR TOBY. Art thou good at these kick-shawses, knight?

SIR ANDREW. As any man in Illyria, whatsoever he be, under the degree of my betters; and yet I will not compare with an old man.

SIR TOBY. What is thy excellence in a galliard, knight?

SIR ANDREW. Faith, I can cut a caper.

SIR TOBY. And I can cut the mutton to’t.

SIR ANDREW. And I think I have the back-trick simply as strong as any man in Illyria.

SIR TOBY. Wherefore are these things hid? Wherefore have these gifts a curtain before ’em? Are they like to take dust, like Mistress Mall’s picture? Why dost thou not go to church in a galliard, and come home in a coranto? My very walk should be a jig; I would not so much as make water but in a sink-a-pace. What dost thou mean? Is it a world to hide virtues in? I did think, by the excellent constitution of thy leg, it was formed under the star of a galliard.

SIR ANDREW. Ay, ’tis strong, and it does indifferent well in a dam’d-colour’d stock. Shall we set about some revels?

SIR TOBY. What shall we do else? Were we not born under Taurus?

SIR ANDREW. Taurus? That’s sides and heart.

SIR TOBY. No, sir, it is legs and thighs. Let me see thee caper. Ha, higher: ha, ha, excellent!

SCENE IV. A Room in the Duke’s Palace.

Enter Valentine and Viola in man’s attire.

VALENTINE. If the duke continue these favours towards you, Cesario, you are like to be much advanced; he hath known you but three days, and already you are no stranger.

VIOLA. You either fear his humour or my negligence, that you call in question the continuance of his love. Is he inconstant, sir, in his favours?

VALENTINE. No, believe me.

Enter Duke, Curio and Attendants.

VIOLA. I thank you. Here comes the Count.

DUKE. Who saw Cesario, ho?

VIOLA. On your attendance, my lord, here.

DUKE. Stand you awhile aloof.—Cesario, Thou know’st no less but all; I have unclasp’d To thee the book even of my secret soul. Therefore, good youth, address thy gait unto her, Be not denied access, stand at her doors, And tell them, there thy fixed foot shall grow Till thou have audience.

VIOLA. Sure, my noble lord, If she be so abandon’d to her sorrow As it is spoke, she never will admit me.

DUKE. Be clamorous and leap all civil bounds, Rather than make unprofited return.

VIOLA. Say I do speak with her, my lord, what then?

DUKE. O then unfold the passion of my love, Surprise her with discourse of my dear faith; It shall become thee well to act my woes; She will attend it better in thy youth, Than in a nuncio’s of more grave aspect.

VIOLA. I think not so, my lord.

DUKE. Dear lad, believe it; For they shall yet belie thy happy years, That say thou art a man: Diana’s lip Is not more smooth and rubious; thy small pipe Is as the maiden’s organ, shrill and sound, And all is semblative a woman’s part. I know thy constellation is right apt For this affair. Some four or five attend him: All, if you will; for I myself am best When least in company. Prosper well in this, And thou shalt live as freely as thy lord, To call his fortunes thine.

VIOLA. I’ll do my best To woo your lady. [Aside.] Yet, a barful strife! Whoe’er I woo, myself would be his wife.

SCENE V. A Room in Olivia’s House.

Enter Maria and Clown.

MARIA. Nay; either tell me where thou hast been, or I will not open my lips so wide as a bristle may enter, in way of thy excuse: my lady will hang thee for thy absence.

CLOWN. Let her hang me: he that is well hanged in this world needs to fear no colours.

MARIA. Make that good.

CLOWN. He shall see none to fear.

MARIA. A good lenten answer. I can tell thee where that saying was born, of I fear no colours.

CLOWN. Where, good Mistress Mary?

MARIA. In the wars, and that may you be bold to say in your foolery.

CLOWN. Well, God give them wisdom that have it; and those that are fools, let them use their talents.

MARIA. Yet you will be hanged for being so long absent; or to be turned away; is not that as good as a hanging to you?

CLOWN. Many a good hanging prevents a bad marriage; and for turning away, let summer bear it out.

MARIA. You are resolute then?

CLOWN. Not so, neither, but I am resolved on two points.

MARIA. That if one break, the other will hold; or if both break, your gaskins fall.

CLOWN. Apt, in good faith, very apt! Well, go thy way; if Sir Toby would leave drinking, thou wert as witty a piece of Eve’s flesh as any in Illyria.

MARIA. Peace, you rogue, no more o’ that. Here comes my lady: make your excuse wisely, you were best.

Enter Olivia with Malvolio.

CLOWN. Wit, and’t be thy will, put me into good fooling! Those wits that think they have thee, do very oft prove fools; and I that am sure I lack thee, may pass for a wise man. For what says Quinapalus? Better a witty fool than a foolish wit. God bless thee, lady!

OLIVIA. Take the fool away.

CLOWN. Do you not hear, fellows? Take away the lady.

OLIVIA. Go to, y’are a dry fool; I’ll no more of you. Besides, you grow dishonest.

CLOWN. Two faults, madonna, that drink and good counsel will amend: for give the dry fool drink, then is the fool not dry; bid the dishonest man mend himself, if he mend, he is no longer dishonest; if he cannot, let the botcher mend him. Anything that’s mended is but patched; virtue that transgresses is but patched with sin, and sin that amends is but patched with virtue. If that this simple syllogism will serve, so; if it will not, what remedy? As there is no true cuckold but calamity, so beauty’s a flower. The lady bade take away the fool, therefore, I say again, take her away.

OLIVIA. Sir, I bade them take away you.

CLOWN. Misprision in the highest degree! Lady, cucullus non facit monachum: that’s as much to say, I wear not motley in my brain. Good madonna, give me leave to prove you a fool.

OLIVIA. Can you do it?

CLOWN. Dexteriously, good madonna.

OLIVIA. Make your proof.

CLOWN. I must catechize you for it, madonna. Good my mouse of virtue, answer me.

OLIVIA. Well sir, for want of other idleness, I’ll ’bide your proof.

CLOWN. Good madonna, why mourn’st thou?

OLIVIA. Good fool, for my brother’s death.

CLOWN. I think his soul is in hell, madonna.

OLIVIA. I know his soul is in heaven, fool.

CLOWN. The more fool you, madonna, to mourn for your brother’s soul being in heaven. Take away the fool, gentlemen.

OLIVIA. What think you of this fool, Malvolio? doth he not mend?

MALVOLIO. Yes; and shall do, till the pangs of death shake him. Infirmity, that decays the wise, doth ever make the better fool.

CLOWN. God send you, sir, a speedy infirmity, for the better increasing your folly! Sir Toby will be sworn that I am no fox; but he will not pass his word for twopence that you are no fool.

OLIVIA. How say you to that, Malvolio?

MALVOLIO. I marvel your ladyship takes delight in such a barren rascal; I saw him put down the other day with an ordinary fool, that has no more brain than a stone. Look you now, he’s out of his guard already; unless you laugh and minister occasion to him, he is gagged. I protest I take these wise men, that crow so at these set kind of fools, no better than the fools’ zanies.

OLIVIA. O, you are sick of self-love, Malvolio, and taste with a distempered appetite. To be generous, guiltless, and of free disposition, is to take those things for bird-bolts that you deem cannon bullets. There is no slander in an allowed fool, though he do nothing but rail; nor no railing in a known discreet man, though he do nothing but reprove.

CLOWN. Now Mercury endue thee with leasing, for thou speak’st well of fools!

Enter Maria.

MARIA. Madam, there is at the gate a young gentleman much desires to speak with you.

OLIVIA. From the Count Orsino, is it?

MARIA. I know not, madam; ’tis a fair young man, and well attended.

OLIVIA. Who of my people hold him in delay?

MARIA. Sir Toby, madam, your kinsman.

OLIVIA. Fetch him off, I pray you; he speaks nothing but madman. Fie on him!

Go you, Malvolio. If it be a suit from the Count, I am sick, or not at home. What you will, to dismiss it.

[Exit Malvolio.]

Now you see, sir, how your fooling grows old, and people dislike it.

CLOWN. Thou hast spoke for us, madonna, as if thy eldest son should be a fool: whose skull Jove cram with brains, for here he comes, one of thy kin has a most weak pia mater.

Enter Sir Toby.

OLIVIA. By mine honour, half drunk. What is he at the gate, cousin?

SIR TOBY. A gentleman.

OLIVIA. A gentleman? What gentleman?

SIR TOBY. ’Tis a gentleman here. A plague o’ these pickle-herrings! How now, sot?

CLOWN. Good Sir Toby.

OLIVIA. Cousin, cousin, how have you come so early by this lethargy?

SIR TOBY. Lechery! I defy lechery. There’s one at the gate.

OLIVIA. Ay, marry, what is he?

SIR TOBY. Let him be the devil an he will, I care not: give me faith, say I. Well, it’s all one.

OLIVIA. What’s a drunken man like, fool?

CLOWN. Like a drowned man, a fool, and a madman: one draught above heat makes him a fool, the second mads him, and a third drowns him.

OLIVIA. Go thou and seek the coroner, and let him sit o’ my coz; for he’s in the third degree of drink; he’s drowned. Go, look after him.

CLOWN. He is but mad yet, madonna; and the fool shall look to the madman.

Enter Malvolio.

MALVOLIO. Madam, yond young fellow swears he will speak with you. I told him you were sick; he takes on him to understand so much, and therefore comes to speak with you. I told him you were asleep; he seems to have a foreknowledge of that too, and therefore comes to speak with you. What is to be said to him, lady? He’s fortified against any denial.

OLIVIA. Tell him, he shall not speak with me.

MALVOLIO. Has been told so; and he says he’ll stand at your door like a sheriff’s post, and be the supporter of a bench, but he’ll speak with you.

OLIVIA. What kind o’ man is he?

MALVOLIO. Why, of mankind.

OLIVIA. What manner of man?

MALVOLIO. Of very ill manner; he’ll speak with you, will you or no.

OLIVIA. Of what personage and years is he?

MALVOLIO. Not yet old enough for a man, nor young enough for a boy; as a squash is before ’tis a peascod, or a codling, when ’tis almost an apple. ’Tis with him in standing water, between boy and man. He is very well-favoured, and he speaks very shrewishly. One would think his mother’s milk were scarce out of him.

OLIVIA. Let him approach. Call in my gentlewoman.

MALVOLIO. Gentlewoman, my lady calls.

OLIVIA. Give me my veil; come, throw it o’er my face. We’ll once more hear Orsino’s embassy.

Enter Viola.

VIOLA. The honourable lady of the house, which is she?

OLIVIA. Speak to me; I shall answer for her. Your will?

VIOLA. Most radiant, exquisite, and unmatchable beauty,—I pray you, tell me if this be the lady of the house, for I never saw her. I would be loath to cast away my speech; for besides that it is excellently well penned, I have taken great pains to con it. Good beauties, let me sustain no scorn; I am very comptible, even to the least sinister usage.

OLIVIA. Whence came you, sir?

VIOLA. I can say little more than I have studied, and that question’s out of my part. Good gentle one, give me modest assurance, if you be the lady of the house, that I may proceed in my speech.

OLIVIA. Are you a comedian?

VIOLA. No, my profound heart: and yet, by the very fangs of malice I swear, I am not that I play. Are you the lady of the house?

OLIVIA. If I do not usurp myself, I am.

VIOLA. Most certain, if you are she, you do usurp yourself; for what is yours to bestow is not yours to reserve. But this is from my commission. I will on with my speech in your praise, and then show you the heart of my message.

OLIVIA. Come to what is important in’t: I forgive you the praise.

VIOLA. Alas, I took great pains to study it, and ’tis poetical.

OLIVIA. It is the more like to be feigned; I pray you keep it in. I heard you were saucy at my gates; and allowed your approach, rather to wonder at you than to hear you. If you be mad, be gone; if you have reason, be brief: ’tis not that time of moon with me to make one in so skipping a dialogue.

MARIA. Will you hoist sail, sir? Here lies your way.

VIOLA. No, good swabber, I am to hull here a little longer. Some mollification for your giant, sweet lady. Tell me your mind. I am a messenger.

OLIVIA. Sure, you have some hideous matter to deliver, when the courtesy of it is so fearful. Speak your office.

VIOLA. It alone concerns your ear. I bring no overture of war, no taxation of homage; I hold the olive in my hand: my words are as full of peace as matter.

OLIVIA. Yet you began rudely. What are you? What would you?

VIOLA. The rudeness that hath appeared in me have I learned from my entertainment. What I am and what I would are as secret as maidenhead: to your ears, divinity; to any other’s, profanation.

OLIVIA. Give us the place alone: we will hear this divinity.

Now, sir, what is your text?

VIOLA. Most sweet lady—

OLIVIA. A comfortable doctrine, and much may be said of it. Where lies your text?

VIOLA. In Orsino’s bosom.

OLIVIA. In his bosom? In what chapter of his bosom?

VIOLA. To answer by the method, in the first of his heart.

OLIVIA. O, I have read it; it is heresy. Have you no more to say?

VIOLA. Good madam, let me see your face.

OLIVIA. Have you any commission from your lord to negotiate with my face? You are now out of your text: but we will draw the curtain and show you the picture. [Unveiling.] Look you, sir, such a one I was this present. Is’t not well done?

VIOLA. Excellently done, if God did all.

OLIVIA. ’Tis in grain, sir; ’twill endure wind and weather.

VIOLA. ’Tis beauty truly blent, whose red and white Nature’s own sweet and cunning hand laid on. Lady, you are the cruel’st she alive If you will lead these graces to the grave, And leave the world no copy.

OLIVIA. O, sir, I will not be so hard-hearted; I will give out divers schedules of my beauty. It shall be inventoried and every particle and utensil labelled to my will: as, item, two lips indifferent red; item, two grey eyes with lids to them; item, one neck, one chin, and so forth. Were you sent hither to praise me?

VIOLA. I see you what you are, you are too proud; But, if you were the devil, you are fair. My lord and master loves you. O, such love Could be but recompens’d though you were crown’d The nonpareil of beauty!

OLIVIA. How does he love me?

VIOLA. With adorations, fertile tears, With groans that thunder love, with sighs of fire.

OLIVIA. Your lord does know my mind, I cannot love him: Yet I suppose him virtuous, know him noble, Of great estate, of fresh and stainless youth; In voices well divulg’d, free, learn’d, and valiant, And in dimension and the shape of nature, A gracious person. But yet I cannot love him. He might have took his answer long ago.

VIOLA. If I did love you in my master’s flame, With such a suff’ring, such a deadly life, In your denial I would find no sense, I would not understand it.

OLIVIA. Why, what would you?

VIOLA. Make me a willow cabin at your gate, And call upon my soul within the house; Write loyal cantons of contemned love, And sing them loud even in the dead of night; Hallow your name to the reverberate hills, And make the babbling gossip of the air Cry out Olivia! O, you should not rest Between the elements of air and earth, But you should pity me.

OLIVIA. You might do much. What is your parentage?

VIOLA. Above my fortunes, yet my state is well: I am a gentleman.

OLIVIA. Get you to your lord; I cannot love him: let him send no more, Unless, perchance, you come to me again, To tell me how he takes it. Fare you well: I thank you for your pains: spend this for me.

VIOLA. I am no fee’d post, lady; keep your purse; My master, not myself, lacks recompense. Love make his heart of flint that you shall love, And let your fervour like my master’s be Plac’d in contempt. Farewell, fair cruelty.

OLIVIA. What is your parentage? ‘Above my fortunes, yet my state is well: I am a gentleman.’ I’ll be sworn thou art; Thy tongue, thy face, thy limbs, actions, and spirit, Do give thee five-fold blazon. Not too fast: soft, soft! Unless the master were the man. How now? Even so quickly may one catch the plague? Methinks I feel this youth’s perfections With an invisible and subtle stealth To creep in at mine eyes. Well, let it be. What ho, Malvolio!

MALVOLIO. Here, madam, at your service.

OLIVIA. Run after that same peevish messenger The County’s man: he left this ring behind him, Would I or not; tell him, I’ll none of it. Desire him not to flatter with his lord, Nor hold him up with hopes; I am not for him. If that the youth will come this way tomorrow, I’ll give him reasons for’t. Hie thee, Malvolio.

MALVOLIO. Madam, I will.

OLIVIA. I do I know not what, and fear to find Mine eye too great a flatterer for my mind. Fate, show thy force, ourselves we do not owe. What is decreed must be; and be this so!

SCENE I. The sea-coast.

Enter Antonio and Sebastian.

ANTONIO. Will you stay no longer? Nor will you not that I go with you?

SEBASTIAN. By your patience, no; my stars shine darkly over me; the malignancy of my fate might perhaps distemper yours; therefore I shall crave of you your leave that I may bear my evils alone. It were a bad recompense for your love, to lay any of them on you.

ANTONIO. Let me know of you whither you are bound.

SEBASTIAN. No, sooth, sir; my determinate voyage is mere extravagancy. But I perceive in you so excellent a touch of modesty, that you will not extort from me what I am willing to keep in. Therefore it charges me in manners the rather to express myself. You must know of me then, Antonio, my name is Sebastian, which I called Roderigo; my father was that Sebastian of Messaline whom I know you have heard of. He left behind him myself and a sister, both born in an hour. If the heavens had been pleased, would we had so ended! But you, sir, altered that, for some hour before you took me from the breach of the sea was my sister drowned.

ANTONIO. Alas the day!

SEBASTIAN. A lady, sir, though it was said she much resembled me, was yet of many accounted beautiful. But though I could not with such estimable wonder overfar believe that, yet thus far I will boldly publish her, she bore a mind that envy could not but call fair. She is drowned already, sir, with salt water, though I seem to drown her remembrance again with more.

ANTONIO. Pardon me, sir, your bad entertainment.

SEBASTIAN. O good Antonio, forgive me your trouble.

ANTONIO. If you will not murder me for my love, let me be your servant.

SEBASTIAN. If you will not undo what you have done, that is, kill him whom you have recovered, desire it not. Fare ye well at once; my bosom is full of kindness, and I am yet so near the manners of my mother, that upon the least occasion more, mine eyes will tell tales of me. I am bound to the Count Orsino’s court: farewell.

ANTONIO. The gentleness of all the gods go with thee! I have many enemies in Orsino’s court, Else would I very shortly see thee there: But come what may, I do adore thee so, That danger shall seem sport, and I will go.

Enter Viola; Malvolio at several doors.

MALVOLIO. Were you not even now with the Countess Olivia?

VIOLA. Even now, sir; on a moderate pace I have since arrived but hither.

MALVOLIO. She returns this ring to you, sir; you might have saved me my pains, to have taken it away yourself. She adds, moreover, that you should put your lord into a desperate assurance she will none of him. And one thing more, that you be never so hardy to come again in his affairs, unless it be to report your lord’s taking of this. Receive it so.

VIOLA. She took the ring of me: I’ll none of it.

MALVOLIO. Come sir, you peevishly threw it to her; and her will is it should be so returned. If it be worth stooping for, there it lies in your eye; if not, be it his that finds it.

VIOLA. I left no ring with her; what means this lady? Fortune forbid my outside have not charm’d her! She made good view of me, indeed, so much, That methought her eyes had lost her tongue, For she did speak in starts distractedly. She loves me, sure, the cunning of her passion Invites me in this churlish messenger. None of my lord’s ring? Why, he sent her none. I am the man; if it be so, as ’tis, Poor lady, she were better love a dream. Disguise, I see thou art a wickedness Wherein the pregnant enemy does much. How easy is it for the proper false In women’s waxen hearts to set their forms! Alas, our frailty is the cause, not we, For such as we are made of, such we be. How will this fadge? My master loves her dearly, And I, poor monster, fond as much on him, And she, mistaken, seems to dote on me. What will become of this? As I am man, My state is desperate for my master’s love; As I am woman (now alas the day!) What thriftless sighs shall poor Olivia breathe! O time, thou must untangle this, not I, It is too hard a knot for me t’untie!

Enter Sir Toby and Sir Andrew.

SIR TOBY. Approach, Sir Andrew; not to be abed after midnight, is to be up betimes; and diluculo surgere, thou know’st.

SIR ANDREW. Nay, by my troth, I know not; but I know to be up late is to be up late.

SIR TOBY. A false conclusion; I hate it as an unfilled can. To be up after midnight, and to go to bed then is early: so that to go to bed after midnight is to go to bed betimes. Does not our lives consist of the four elements?

SIR ANDREW. Faith, so they say, but I think it rather consists of eating and drinking.

SIR TOBY. Th’art a scholar; let us therefore eat and drink. Marian, I say! a stoup of wine.

SIR ANDREW. Here comes the fool, i’ faith.

CLOWN. How now, my hearts? Did you never see the picture of “we three”?

SIR TOBY. Welcome, ass. Now let’s have a catch.

SIR ANDREW. By my troth, the fool has an excellent breast. I had rather than forty shillings I had such a leg, and so sweet a breath to sing, as the fool has. In sooth, thou wast in very gracious fooling last night when thou spok’st of Pigrogromitus, of the Vapians passing the equinoctial of Queubus; ’twas very good, i’ faith. I sent thee sixpence for thy leman. Hadst it?

CLOWN. I did impeticos thy gratillity; for Malvolio’s nose is no whipstock. My lady has a white hand, and the Myrmidons are no bottle-ale houses.

SIR ANDREW. Excellent! Why, this is the best fooling, when all is done. Now, a song.

SIR TOBY. Come on, there is sixpence for you. Let’s have a song.

SIR ANDREW. There’s a testril of me too: if one knight give a—

CLOWN. Would you have a love-song, or a song of good life?

SIR TOBY. A love-song, a love-song.

SIR ANDREW. Ay, ay. I care not for good life.

CLOWN. [sings.] O mistress mine, where are you roaming? O stay and hear, your true love’s coming, That can sing both high and low. Trip no further, pretty sweeting. Journeys end in lovers meeting, Every wise man’s son doth know.

SIR ANDREW. Excellent good, i’ faith.

SIR TOBY. Good, good.

CLOWN. What is love? ’Tis not hereafter, Present mirth hath present laughter. What’s to come is still unsure. In delay there lies no plenty, Then come kiss me, sweet and twenty. Youth’s a stuff will not endure.

SIR ANDREW. A mellifluous voice, as I am true knight.

SIR TOBY. A contagious breath.

SIR ANDREW. Very sweet and contagious, i’ faith.

SIR TOBY. To hear by the nose, it is dulcet in contagion. But shall we make the welkin dance indeed? Shall we rouse the night-owl in a catch that will draw three souls out of one weaver? Shall we do that?

SIR ANDREW. And you love me, let’s do’t: I am dog at a catch.

CLOWN. By’r lady, sir, and some dogs will catch well.

SIR ANDREW. Most certain. Let our catch be, “Thou knave.”

CLOWN. “Hold thy peace, thou knave” knight? I shall be constrain’d in’t to call thee knave, knight.

SIR ANDREW. ’Tis not the first time I have constrained one to call me knave. Begin, fool; it begins “Hold thy peace.”

CLOWN. I shall never begin if I hold my peace.

SIR ANDREW. Good, i’ faith! Come, begin.

[Catch sung.]

MARIA. What a caterwauling do you keep here! If my lady have not called up her steward Malvolio, and bid him turn you out of doors, never trust me.

SIR TOBY. My lady’s a Cataian, we are politicians, Malvolio’s a Peg-a-Ramsey, and [Sings.] Three merry men be we. Am not I consanguineous? Am I not of her blood? Tilly-vally! “Lady”! There dwelt a man in Babylon, Lady, Lady.

CLOWN. Beshrew me, the knight’s in admirable fooling.

SIR ANDREW. Ay, he does well enough if he be disposed, and so do I too; he does it with a better grace, but I do it more natural.

SIR TOBY. [Sings.] O’ the twelfth day of December—

MARIA. For the love o’ God, peace!

MALVOLIO. My masters, are you mad? Or what are you? Have you no wit, manners, nor honesty, but to gabble like tinkers at this time of night? Do ye make an ale-house of my lady’s house, that ye squeak out your coziers’ catches without any mitigation or remorse of voice? Is there no respect of place, persons, nor time, in you?

SIR TOBY. We did keep time, sir, in our catches. Sneck up!

MALVOLIO. Sir Toby, I must be round with you. My lady bade me tell you that, though she harbours you as her kinsman she’s nothing allied to your disorders. If you can separate yourself and your misdemeanours, you are welcome to the house; if not, and it would please you to take leave of her, she is very willing to bid you farewell.

SIR TOBY. [Sings.] Farewell, dear heart, since I must needs be gone.

MARIA. Nay, good Sir Toby.

CLOWN. [Sings.] His eyes do show his days are almost done.

MALVOLIO. Is’t even so?

SIR TOBY. [Sings.] But I will never die.

CLOWN. [Sings.] Sir Toby, there you lie.

MALVOLIO. This is much credit to you.

SIR TOBY. [Sings.] Shall I bid him go?

CLOWN. [Sings.] What and if you do?

SIR TOBY. [Sings.] Shall I bid him go, and spare not?

CLOWN. [Sings.] O, no, no, no, no, you dare not.

SIR TOBY. Out o’ tune? sir, ye lie. Art any more than a steward? Dost thou think, because thou art virtuous, there shall be no more cakes and ale?

CLOWN. Yes, by Saint Anne, and ginger shall be hot i’ the mouth too.

SIR TOBY. Th’art i’ the right. Go, sir, rub your chain with crumbs. A stoup of wine, Maria!

MALVOLIO. Mistress Mary, if you prized my lady’s favour at anything more than contempt, you would not give means for this uncivil rule; she shall know of it, by this hand.

MARIA. Go shake your ears.

SIR ANDREW. ’Twere as good a deed as to drink when a man’s a-hungry, to challenge him the field, and then to break promise with him and make a fool of him.

SIR TOBY. Do’t, knight. I’ll write thee a challenge; or I’ll deliver thy indignation to him by word of mouth.

MARIA. Sweet Sir Toby, be patient for tonight. Since the youth of the Count’s was today with my lady, she is much out of quiet. For Monsieur Malvolio, let me alone with him. If I do not gull him into a nayword, and make him a common recreation, do not think I have wit enough to lie straight in my bed. I know I can do it.

SIR TOBY. Possess us, possess us, tell us something of him.

MARIA. Marry, sir, sometimes he is a kind of Puritan.

SIR ANDREW. O, if I thought that, I’d beat him like a dog.

SIR TOBY. What, for being a Puritan? Thy exquisite reason, dear knight?

SIR ANDREW. I have no exquisite reason for’t, but I have reason good enough.

MARIA. The devil a Puritan that he is, or anything constantly but a time-pleaser, an affectioned ass that cons state without book and utters it by great swarths; the best persuaded of himself, so crammed (as he thinks) with excellencies, that it is his grounds of faith that all that look on him love him. And on that vice in him will my revenge find notable cause to work.

SIR TOBY. What wilt thou do?

MARIA. I will drop in his way some obscure epistles of love, wherein by the colour of his beard, the shape of his leg, the manner of his gait, the expressure of his eye, forehead, and complexion, he shall find himself most feelingly personated. I can write very like my lady your niece; on a forgotten matter we can hardly make distinction of our hands.

SIR TOBY. Excellent! I smell a device.

SIR ANDREW. I have’t in my nose too.

SIR TOBY. He shall think, by the letters that thou wilt drop, that they come from my niece, and that she is in love with him.

MARIA. My purpose is indeed a horse of that colour.

SIR ANDREW. And your horse now would make him an ass.

MARIA. Ass, I doubt not.

SIR ANDREW. O ’twill be admirable!

MARIA. Sport royal, I warrant you. I know my physic will work with him. I will plant you two, and let the fool make a third, where he shall find the letter. Observe his construction of it. For this night, to bed, and dream on the event. Farewell.

SIR TOBY. Good night, Penthesilea.

SIR ANDREW. Before me, she’s a good wench.

SIR TOBY. She’s a beagle true bred, and one that adores me. What o’ that?

SIR ANDREW. I was adored once too.

SIR TOBY. Let’s to bed, knight. Thou hadst need send for more money.

SIR ANDREW. If I cannot recover your niece, I am a foul way out.

SIR TOBY. Send for money, knight; if thou hast her not i’ th’ end, call me cut.

SIR ANDREW. If I do not, never trust me, take it how you will.

SIR TOBY. Come, come, I’ll go burn some sack, ’tis too late to go to bed now. Come, knight, come, knight.

Enter Duke, Viola, Curio and others.

DUKE. Give me some music. Now, good morrow, friends. Now, good Cesario, but that piece of song, That old and antique song we heard last night; Methought it did relieve my passion much, More than light airs and recollected terms Of these most brisk and giddy-paced times. Come, but one verse.

CURIO. He is not here, so please your lordship, that should sing it.

DUKE. Who was it?

CURIO. Feste, the jester, my lord, a fool that the Lady Olivia’s father took much delight in. He is about the house.

DUKE. Seek him out, and play the tune the while.

[Exit Curio. Music plays.]

Come hither, boy. If ever thou shalt love, In the sweet pangs of it remember me: For such as I am, all true lovers are, Unstaid and skittish in all motions else, Save in the constant image of the creature That is belov’d. How dost thou like this tune?

VIOLA. It gives a very echo to the seat Where love is throned.

DUKE. Thou dost speak masterly. My life upon’t, young though thou art, thine eye Hath stayed upon some favour that it loves. Hath it not, boy?

VIOLA. A little, by your favour.

DUKE. What kind of woman is’t?

VIOLA. Of your complexion.

DUKE. She is not worth thee, then. What years, i’ faith?

VIOLA. About your years, my lord.

DUKE. Too old, by heaven! Let still the woman take An elder than herself; so wears she to him, So sways she level in her husband’s heart. For, boy, however we do praise ourselves, Our fancies are more giddy and unfirm, More longing, wavering, sooner lost and worn, Than women’s are.

VIOLA. I think it well, my lord.

DUKE. Then let thy love be younger than thyself, Or thy affection cannot hold the bent: For women are as roses, whose fair flower Being once display’d, doth fall that very hour.

VIOLA. And so they are: alas, that they are so; To die, even when they to perfection grow!

Enter Curio and Clown.

DUKE. O, fellow, come, the song we had last night. Mark it, Cesario, it is old and plain; The spinsters and the knitters in the sun, And the free maids, that weave their thread with bones Do use to chant it: it is silly sooth, And dallies with the innocence of love Like the old age.

CLOWN. Are you ready, sir?

DUKE. Ay; prithee, sing.

The Clown’s song.

Come away, come away, death. And in sad cypress let me be laid. Fly away, fly away, breath; I am slain by a fair cruel maid. My shroud of white, stuck all with yew, O, prepare it! My part of death no one so true Did share it.

Not a flower, not a flower sweet, On my black coffin let there be strown: Not a friend, not a friend greet My poor corpse where my bones shall be thrown: A thousand thousand sighs to save, Lay me, O, where Sad true lover never find my grave, To weep there.

DUKE. There’s for thy pains.

CLOWN. No pains, sir; I take pleasure in singing, sir.

DUKE. I’ll pay thy pleasure, then.

CLOWN. Truly sir, and pleasure will be paid one time or another.

DUKE. Give me now leave to leave thee.

CLOWN. Now the melancholy god protect thee, and the tailor make thy doublet of changeable taffeta, for thy mind is a very opal. I would have men of such constancy put to sea, that their business might be everything, and their intent everywhere, for that’s it that always makes a good voyage of nothing. Farewell.

DUKE. Let all the rest give place.

[Exeunt Curio and Attendants.]

Once more, Cesario, Get thee to yond same sovereign cruelty. Tell her my love, more noble than the world, Prizes not quantity of dirty lands; The parts that fortune hath bestow’d upon her, Tell her I hold as giddily as fortune; But ’tis that miracle and queen of gems That nature pranks her in attracts my soul.

VIOLA. But if she cannot love you, sir?

DUKE. I cannot be so answer’d.

VIOLA. Sooth, but you must. Say that some lady, as perhaps there is, Hath for your love as great a pang of heart As you have for Olivia: you cannot love her; You tell her so. Must she not then be answer’d?

DUKE. There is no woman’s sides Can bide the beating of so strong a passion As love doth give my heart: no woman’s heart So big, to hold so much; they lack retention. Alas, their love may be called appetite, No motion of the liver, but the palate, That suffer surfeit, cloyment, and revolt; But mine is all as hungry as the sea, And can digest as much. Make no compare Between that love a woman can bear me And that I owe Olivia.

VIOLA. Ay, but I know—

DUKE. What dost thou know?

VIOLA. Too well what love women to men may owe. In faith, they are as true of heart as we. My father had a daughter loved a man, As it might be perhaps, were I a woman, I should your lordship.

DUKE. And what’s her history?

VIOLA. A blank, my lord. She never told her love, But let concealment, like a worm i’ th’ bud, Feed on her damask cheek: she pined in thought, And with a green and yellow melancholy She sat like patience on a monument, Smiling at grief. Was not this love, indeed? We men may say more, swear more, but indeed, Our shows are more than will; for still we prove Much in our vows, but little in our love.

DUKE. But died thy sister of her love, my boy?

VIOLA. I am all the daughters of my father’s house, And all the brothers too: and yet I know not. Sir, shall I to this lady?

DUKE. Ay, that’s the theme. To her in haste. Give her this jewel; say My love can give no place, bide no denay.

SCENE V. Olivia’s garden.

Enter Sir Toby, Sir Andrew and Fabian.

SIR TOBY. Come thy ways, Signior Fabian.

FABIAN. Nay, I’ll come. If I lose a scruple of this sport, let me be boiled to death with melancholy.

SIR TOBY. Wouldst thou not be glad to have the niggardly rascally sheep-biter come by some notable shame?

FABIAN. I would exult, man. You know he brought me out o’ favour with my lady about a bear-baiting here.

SIR TOBY. To anger him we’ll have the bear again, and we will fool him black and blue, shall we not, Sir Andrew?

SIR ANDREW. And we do not, it is pity of our lives.

SIR TOBY. Here comes the little villain. How now, my metal of India?

MARIA. Get ye all three into the box-tree. Malvolio’s coming down this walk; he has been yonder i’ the sun practising behaviour to his own shadow this half hour: observe him, for the love of mockery; for I know this letter will make a contemplative idiot of him. Close, in the name of jesting! [The men hide themselves.] Lie thou there; [Throws down a letter] for here comes the trout that must be caught with tickling.

MALVOLIO. ’Tis but fortune, all is fortune. Maria once told me she did affect me, and I have heard herself come thus near, that should she fancy, it should be one of my complexion. Besides, she uses me with a more exalted respect than anyone else that follows her. What should I think on’t?

SIR TOBY. Here’s an overweening rogue!

FABIAN. O, peace! Contemplation makes a rare turkey-cock of him; how he jets under his advanced plumes!

SIR ANDREW. ’Slight, I could so beat the rogue!

SIR TOBY. Peace, I say.

MALVOLIO. To be Count Malvolio.

SIR TOBY. Ah, rogue!

SIR ANDREW. Pistol him, pistol him.

SIR TOBY. Peace, peace.

MALVOLIO. There is example for’t. The lady of the Strachy married the yeoman of the wardrobe.

SIR ANDREW. Fie on him, Jezebel!

FABIAN. O, peace! now he’s deeply in; look how imagination blows him.

MALVOLIO. Having been three months married to her, sitting in my state—

SIR TOBY. O for a stone-bow to hit him in the eye!

MALVOLIO. Calling my officers about me, in my branched velvet gown; having come from a day-bed, where I have left Olivia sleeping.

SIR TOBY. Fire and brimstone!

FABIAN. O, peace, peace.

MALVOLIO. And then to have the humour of state; and after a demure travel of regard, telling them I know my place as I would they should do theirs, to ask for my kinsman Toby.

SIR TOBY. Bolts and shackles!

FABIAN. O, peace, peace, peace! Now, now.

MALVOLIO. Seven of my people, with an obedient start, make out for him. I frown the while, and perchance wind up my watch, or play with some rich jewel. Toby approaches; curtsies there to me—

SIR TOBY. Shall this fellow live?

FABIAN. Though our silence be drawn from us with cars, yet peace!

MALVOLIO. I extend my hand to him thus, quenching my familiar smile with an austere regard of control—

SIR TOBY. And does not Toby take you a blow o’ the lips then?

MALVOLIO. Saying ‘Cousin Toby, my fortunes having cast me on your niece, give me this prerogative of speech—’

SIR TOBY. What, what?

MALVOLIO. ‘You must amend your drunkenness.’

SIR TOBY. Out, scab!

FABIAN. Nay, patience, or we break the sinews of our plot.

MALVOLIO. ‘Besides, you waste the treasure of your time with a foolish knight—’

SIR ANDREW. That’s me, I warrant you.

MALVOLIO. ‘One Sir Andrew.’

SIR ANDREW. I knew ’twas I, for many do call me fool.

MALVOLIO. [Taking up the letter.] What employment have we here?

FABIAN. Now is the woodcock near the gin.

SIR TOBY. O, peace! And the spirit of humours intimate reading aloud to him!

MALVOLIO. By my life, this is my lady’s hand: these be her very C’s, her U’s, and her T’s, and thus makes she her great P’s. It is in contempt of question, her hand.

SIR ANDREW. Her C’s, her U’s, and her T’s. Why that?

MALVOLIO. [Reads.] To the unknown beloved, this, and my good wishes. Her very phrases! By your leave, wax. Soft! and the impressure her Lucrece, with which she uses to seal: ’tis my lady. To whom should this be?

FABIAN. This wins him, liver and all.

MALVOLIO. [Reads.] Jove knows I love, But who? Lips, do not move, No man must know.

‘No man must know.’ What follows? The numbers alter’d! ‘No man must know.’—If this should be thee, Malvolio?

SIR TOBY. Marry, hang thee, brock!

MALVOLIO. I may command where I adore, But silence, like a Lucrece knife, With bloodless stroke my heart doth gore; M.O.A.I. doth sway my life.

FABIAN. A fustian riddle!

SIR TOBY. Excellent wench, say I.

MALVOLIO. ‘M.O.A.I. doth sway my life.’—Nay, but first let me see, let me see, let me see.

FABIAN. What dish o’ poison has she dressed him!

SIR TOBY. And with what wing the staniel checks at it!

MALVOLIO. ‘I may command where I adore.’ Why, she may command me: I serve her, she is my lady. Why, this is evident to any formal capacity. There is no obstruction in this. And the end—what should that alphabetical position portend? If I could make that resemble something in me! Softly! ‘M.O.A.I.’—

SIR TOBY. O, ay, make up that:—he is now at a cold scent.

FABIAN. Sowter will cry upon’t for all this, though it be as rank as a fox.

MALVOLIO. ‘M’—Malvolio; ‘M!’ Why, that begins my name!

FABIAN. Did not I say he would work it out? The cur is excellent at faults.

MALVOLIO. ‘M’—But then there is no consonancy in the sequel; that suffers under probation: ‘A’ should follow, but ‘O’ does.

FABIAN. And ‘O’ shall end, I hope.

SIR TOBY. Ay, or I’ll cudgel him, and make him cry ‘O!’

MALVOLIO. And then ‘I’ comes behind.

FABIAN. Ay, and you had any eye behind you, you might see more detraction at your heels than fortunes before you.

MALVOLIO. ‘M.O.A.I.’ This simulation is not as the former: and yet, to crush this a little, it would bow to me, for every one of these letters are in my name. Soft, here follows prose. [Reads.] If this fall into thy hand, revolve. In my stars I am above thee, but be not afraid of greatness. Some are born great, some achieve greatness, and some have greatness thrust upon ’em. Thy fates open their hands, let thy blood and spirit embrace them. And, to inure thyself to what thou art like to be, cast thy humble slough and appear fresh. Be opposite with a kinsman, surly with servants. Let thy tongue tang arguments of state; put thyself into the trick of singularity. She thus advises thee that sighs for thee. Remember who commended thy yellow stockings, and wished to see thee ever cross-gartered. I say, remember. Go to, thou art made, if thou desir’st to be so. If not, let me see thee a steward still, the fellow of servants, and not worthy to touch Fortune’s fingers. Farewell. She that would alter services with thee, The Fortunate Unhappy.

Daylight and champian discovers not more! This is open. I will be proud, I will read politic authors, I will baffle Sir Toby, I will wash off gross acquaintance, I will be point-device, the very man. I do not now fool myself, to let imagination jade me; for every reason excites to this, that my lady loves me. She did commend my yellow stockings of late, she did praise my leg being cross-gartered, and in this she manifests herself to my love, and with a kind of injunction, drives me to these habits of her liking. I thank my stars, I am happy. I will be strange, stout, in yellow stockings, and cross-gartered, even with the swiftness of putting on. Jove and my stars be praised!—Here is yet a postscript. [Reads.] Thou canst not choose but know who I am. If thou entertain’st my love, let it appear in thy smiling; thy smiles become thee well. Therefore in my presence still smile, dear my sweet, I prithee. Jove, I thank thee. I will smile, I will do everything that thou wilt have me.

FABIAN. I will not give my part of this sport for a pension of thousands to be paid from the Sophy.

SIR TOBY. I could marry this wench for this device.

SIR ANDREW. So could I too.

SIR TOBY. And ask no other dowry with her but such another jest.

SIR ANDREW. Nor I neither.

FABIAN. Here comes my noble gull-catcher.

SIR TOBY. Wilt thou set thy foot o’ my neck?

SIR ANDREW. Or o’ mine either?

SIR TOBY. Shall I play my freedom at tray-trip, and become thy bond-slave?

SIR ANDREW. I’ faith, or I either?

SIR TOBY. Why, thou hast put him in such a dream, that when the image of it leaves him he must run mad.

MARIA. Nay, but say true, does it work upon him?

SIR TOBY. Like aqua-vitae with a midwife.

MARIA. If you will then see the fruits of the sport, mark his first approach before my lady: he will come to her in yellow stockings, and ’tis a colour she abhors, and cross-gartered, a fashion she detests; and he will smile upon her, which will now be so unsuitable to her disposition, being addicted to a melancholy as she is, that it cannot but turn him into a notable contempt. If you will see it, follow me.

SIR TOBY. To the gates of Tartar, thou most excellent devil of wit!

SIR ANDREW. I’ll make one too.

SCENE I. Olivia’s garden.

Enter Viola and Clown with a tabor.

VIOLA. Save thee, friend, and thy music. Dost thou live by thy tabor?

CLOWN. No, sir, I live by the church.

VIOLA. Art thou a churchman?

CLOWN. No such matter, sir. I do live by the church, for I do live at my house, and my house doth stand by the church.

VIOLA. So thou mayst say the king lies by a beggar, if a beggar dwell near him; or the church stands by thy tabor, if thy tabor stand by the church.

CLOWN. You have said, sir. To see this age! A sentence is but a chev’ril glove to a good wit. How quickly the wrong side may be turned outward!

VIOLA. Nay, that’s certain; they that dally nicely with words may quickly make them wanton.

CLOWN. I would, therefore, my sister had had no name, sir.

VIOLA. Why, man?

CLOWN. Why, sir, her name’s a word; and to dally with that word might make my sister wanton. But indeed, words are very rascals, since bonds disgraced them.

VIOLA. Thy reason, man?

CLOWN. Troth, sir, I can yield you none without words, and words are grown so false, I am loath to prove reason with them.

VIOLA. I warrant thou art a merry fellow, and car’st for nothing.

CLOWN. Not so, sir, I do care for something. But in my conscience, sir, I do not care for you. If that be to care for nothing, sir, I would it would make you invisible.

VIOLA. Art not thou the Lady Olivia’s fool?

CLOWN. No, indeed, sir; the Lady Olivia has no folly. She will keep no fool, sir, till she be married, and fools are as like husbands as pilchards are to herrings, the husband’s the bigger. I am indeed not her fool, but her corrupter of words.

VIOLA. I saw thee late at the Count Orsino’s.

CLOWN. Foolery, sir, does walk about the orb like the sun; it shines everywhere. I would be sorry, sir, but the fool should be as oft with your master as with my mistress. I think I saw your wisdom there.

VIOLA. Nay, and thou pass upon me, I’ll no more with thee. Hold, there’s expenses for thee.

CLOWN. Now Jove, in his next commodity of hair, send thee a beard!

VIOLA. By my troth, I’ll tell thee, I am almost sick for one, though I would not have it grow on my chin. Is thy lady within?

CLOWN. Would not a pair of these have bred, sir?

VIOLA. Yes, being kept together, and put to use.

CLOWN. I would play Lord Pandarus of Phrygia, sir, to bring a Cressida to this Troilus.

VIOLA. I understand you, sir; ’tis well begged.

CLOWN. The matter, I hope, is not great, sir, begging but a beggar: Cressida was a beggar. My lady is within, sir. I will conster to them whence you come; who you are and what you would are out of my welkin. I might say “element”, but the word is overworn.

VIOLA. This fellow is wise enough to play the fool, And to do that well, craves a kind of wit: He must observe their mood on whom he jests, The quality of persons, and the time, And like the haggard, check at every feather That comes before his eye. This is a practice As full of labour as a wise man’s art: For folly, that he wisely shows, is fit; But wise men, folly-fall’n, quite taint their wit.

SIR TOBY. Save you, gentleman.

VIOLA. And you, sir.

SIR ANDREW. Dieu vous garde, monsieur.

VIOLA. Et vous aussi; votre serviteur.

SIR ANDREW. I hope, sir, you are, and I am yours.

SIR TOBY. Will you encounter the house? My niece is desirous you should enter, if your trade be to her.

VIOLA. I am bound to your niece, sir, I mean, she is the list of my voyage.

SIR TOBY. Taste your legs, sir, put them to motion.

VIOLA. My legs do better understand me, sir, than I understand what you mean by bidding me taste my legs.

SIR TOBY. I mean, to go, sir, to enter.

VIOLA. I will answer you with gait and entrance: but we are prevented.

Enter Olivia and Maria.

Most excellent accomplished lady, the heavens rain odours on you!

SIR ANDREW. That youth’s a rare courtier. ‘Rain odours,’ well.

VIOLA. My matter hath no voice, lady, but to your own most pregnant and vouchsafed ear.

SIR ANDREW. ‘Odours,’ ‘pregnant,’ and ‘vouchsafed.’—I’ll get ’em all three ready.

OLIVIA. Let the garden door be shut, and leave me to my hearing.

[Exeunt Sir Toby, Sir Andrew and Maria.]

Give me your hand, sir.

VIOLA. My duty, madam, and most humble service.

OLIVIA. What is your name?

VIOLA. Cesario is your servant’s name, fair princess.

OLIVIA. My servant, sir! ’Twas never merry world, Since lowly feigning was call’d compliment: Y’are servant to the Count Orsino, youth.

VIOLA. And he is yours, and his must needs be yours. Your servant’s servant is your servant, madam.

OLIVIA. For him, I think not on him: for his thoughts, Would they were blanks rather than fill’d with me!

VIOLA. Madam, I come to whet your gentle thoughts On his behalf.

OLIVIA. O, by your leave, I pray you. I bade you never speak again of him. But would you undertake another suit, I had rather hear you to solicit that Than music from the spheres.

VIOLA. Dear lady—

OLIVIA. Give me leave, beseech you. I did send, After the last enchantment you did here, A ring in chase of you. So did I abuse Myself, my servant, and, I fear me, you. Under your hard construction must I sit; To force that on you in a shameful cunning, Which you knew none of yours. What might you think? Have you not set mine honour at the stake, And baited it with all th’ unmuzzled thoughts That tyrannous heart can think? To one of your receiving Enough is shown. A cypress, not a bosom, Hides my heart: so let me hear you speak.

VIOLA. I pity you.

OLIVIA. That’s a degree to love.

VIOLA. No, not a grize; for ’tis a vulgar proof That very oft we pity enemies.

OLIVIA. Why then methinks ’tis time to smile again. O world, how apt the poor are to be proud! If one should be a prey, how much the better To fall before the lion than the wolf! [Clock strikes.] The clock upbraids me with the waste of time. Be not afraid, good youth, I will not have you. And yet, when wit and youth is come to harvest, Your wife is like to reap a proper man. There lies your way, due west.

VIOLA. Then westward ho! Grace and good disposition attend your ladyship! You’ll nothing, madam, to my lord by me?

OLIVIA. Stay: I prithee tell me what thou think’st of me.

VIOLA. That you do think you are not what you are.

OLIVIA. If I think so, I think the same of you.

VIOLA. Then think you right; I am not what I am.

OLIVIA. I would you were as I would have you be.

VIOLA. Would it be better, madam, than I am? I wish it might, for now I am your fool.

OLIVIA. O what a deal of scorn looks beautiful In the contempt and anger of his lip! A murd’rous guilt shows not itself more soon Than love that would seem hid. Love’s night is noon. Cesario, by the roses of the spring, By maidhood, honour, truth, and everything, I love thee so, that maugre all thy pride, Nor wit nor reason can my passion hide. Do not extort thy reasons from this clause, For that I woo, thou therefore hast no cause; But rather reason thus with reason fetter: Love sought is good, but given unsought is better.

VIOLA. By innocence I swear, and by my youth, I have one heart, one bosom, and one truth, And that no woman has; nor never none Shall mistress be of it, save I alone. And so adieu, good madam; never more Will I my master’s tears to you deplore.

OLIVIA. Yet come again: for thou perhaps mayst move That heart, which now abhors, to like his love.

SCENE II. A Room in Olivia’s House.

SIR ANDREW. No, faith, I’ll not stay a jot longer.

SIR TOBY. Thy reason, dear venom, give thy reason.

FABIAN. You must needs yield your reason, Sir Andrew.

SIR ANDREW. Marry, I saw your niece do more favours to the Count’s servingman than ever she bestowed upon me; I saw’t i’ th’ orchard.

SIR TOBY. Did she see thee the while, old boy? Tell me that.

SIR ANDREW. As plain as I see you now.

FABIAN. This was a great argument of love in her toward you.

SIR ANDREW. ’Slight! will you make an ass o’ me?

FABIAN. I will prove it legitimate, sir, upon the oaths of judgment and reason.

SIR TOBY. And they have been grand-jurymen since before Noah was a sailor.

FABIAN. She did show favour to the youth in your sight only to exasperate you, to awake your dormouse valour, to put fire in your heart and brimstone in your liver. You should then have accosted her, and with some excellent jests, fire-new from the mint, you should have banged the youth into dumbness. This was looked for at your hand, and this was balked: the double gilt of this opportunity you let time wash off, and you are now sailed into the north of my lady’s opinion; where you will hang like an icicle on Dutchman’s beard, unless you do redeem it by some laudable attempt, either of valour or policy.

SIR ANDREW. And’t be any way, it must be with valour, for policy I hate; I had as lief be a Brownist as a politician.

SIR TOBY. Why, then, build me thy fortunes upon the basis of valour. Challenge me the Count’s youth to fight with him. Hurt him in eleven places; my niece shall take note of it, and assure thyself there is no love-broker in the world can more prevail in man’s commendation with woman than report of valour.

FABIAN. There is no way but this, Sir Andrew.

SIR ANDREW. Will either of you bear me a challenge to him?

SIR TOBY. Go, write it in a martial hand, be curst and brief; it is no matter how witty, so it be eloquent and full of invention. Taunt him with the licence of ink. If thou ‘thou’st’ him some thrice, it shall not be amiss, and as many lies as will lie in thy sheet of paper, although the sheet were big enough for the bed of Ware in England, set ’em down. Go about it. Let there be gall enough in thy ink, though thou write with a goose-pen, no matter. About it.

SIR ANDREW. Where shall I find you?

SIR TOBY. We’ll call thee at the cubiculo. Go.

[Exit Sir Andrew.]

FABIAN. This is a dear manikin to you, Sir Toby.

SIR TOBY. I have been dear to him, lad, some two thousand strong, or so.

FABIAN. We shall have a rare letter from him; but you’ll not deliver it.

SIR TOBY. Never trust me then. And by all means stir on the youth to an answer. I think oxen and wainropes cannot hale them together. For Andrew, if he were opened and you find so much blood in his liver as will clog the foot of a flea, I’ll eat the rest of th’ anatomy.

FABIAN. And his opposite, the youth, bears in his visage no great presage of cruelty.

SIR TOBY. Look where the youngest wren of nine comes.

MARIA. If you desire the spleen, and will laugh yourselves into stitches, follow me. Yond gull Malvolio is turned heathen, a very renegado; for there is no Christian that means to be saved by believing rightly can ever believe such impossible passages of grossness. He’s in yellow stockings.

SIR TOBY. And cross-gartered?

MARIA. Most villainously; like a pedant that keeps a school i’ th’ church. I have dogged him like his murderer. He does obey every point of the letter that I dropped to betray him. He does smile his face into more lines than is in the new map with the augmentation of the Indies. You have not seen such a thing as ’tis. I can hardly forbear hurling things at him. I know my lady will strike him. If she do, he’ll smile and take’t for a great favour.

SIR TOBY. Come, bring us, bring us where he is.

SCENE III. A street.

Enter Sebastian and Antonio.

SEBASTIAN. I would not by my will have troubled you, But since you make your pleasure of your pains, I will no further chide you.

ANTONIO. I could not stay behind you: my desire, More sharp than filed steel, did spur me forth; And not all love to see you, though so much, As might have drawn one to a longer voyage, But jealousy what might befall your travel, Being skilless in these parts; which to a stranger, Unguided and unfriended, often prove Rough and unhospitable. My willing love, The rather by these arguments of fear, Set forth in your pursuit.

SEBASTIAN. My kind Antonio, I can no other answer make but thanks, And thanks, and ever thanks; and oft good turns Are shuffled off with such uncurrent pay. But were my worth, as is my conscience, firm, You should find better dealing. What’s to do? Shall we go see the relics of this town?

ANTONIO. Tomorrow, sir; best first go see your lodging.

SEBASTIAN. I am not weary, and ’tis long to night; I pray you, let us satisfy our eyes With the memorials and the things of fame That do renown this city.

ANTONIO. Would you’d pardon me. I do not without danger walk these streets. Once in a sea-fight, ’gainst the Count his galleys, I did some service, of such note indeed, That were I ta’en here, it would scarce be answer’d.

SEBASTIAN. Belike you slew great number of his people.

ANTONIO. Th’ offence is not of such a bloody nature, Albeit the quality of the time and quarrel Might well have given us bloody argument. It might have since been answered in repaying What we took from them, which for traffic’s sake, Most of our city did. Only myself stood out, For which, if I be lapsed in this place, I shall pay dear.

SEBASTIAN. Do not then walk too open.

ANTONIO. It doth not fit me. Hold, sir, here’s my purse. In the south suburbs, at the Elephant, Is best to lodge. I will bespeak our diet Whiles you beguile the time and feed your knowledge With viewing of the town. There shall you have me.

SEBASTIAN. Why I your purse?

ANTONIO. Haply your eye shall light upon some toy You have desire to purchase; and your store, I think, is not for idle markets, sir.

SEBASTIAN. I’ll be your purse-bearer, and leave you for an hour.

ANTONIO. To th’ Elephant.

SEBASTIAN. I do remember.

SCENE IV. Olivia’s garden.

OLIVIA. I have sent after him. He says he’ll come; How shall I feast him? What bestow of him? For youth is bought more oft than begg’d or borrow’d. I speak too loud.— Where’s Malvolio?—He is sad and civil, And suits well for a servant with my fortunes; Where is Malvolio?

MARIA. He’s coming, madam: But in very strange manner. He is sure possessed, madam.

OLIVIA. Why, what’s the matter? Does he rave?

MARIA. No, madam, he does nothing but smile: your ladyship were best to have some guard about you if he come, for sure the man is tainted in ’s wits.

OLIVIA. Go call him hither. I’m as mad as he, If sad and merry madness equal be.

How now, Malvolio?

MALVOLIO. Sweet lady, ho, ho!

OLIVIA. Smil’st thou? I sent for thee upon a sad occasion.

MALVOLIO. Sad, lady? I could be sad: this does make some obstruction in the blood, this cross-gartering. But what of that? If it please the eye of one, it is with me as the very true sonnet is: ‘Please one and please all.’

OLIVIA. Why, how dost thou, man? What is the matter with thee?

MALVOLIO. Not black in my mind, though yellow in my legs. It did come to his hands, and commands shall be executed. I think we do know the sweet Roman hand.

OLIVIA. Wilt thou go to bed, Malvolio?

MALVOLIO. To bed? Ay, sweetheart, and I’ll come to thee.

OLIVIA. God comfort thee! Why dost thou smile so, and kiss thy hand so oft?

MARIA. How do you, Malvolio?

MALVOLIO. At your request? Yes, nightingales answer daws!

MARIA. Why appear you with this ridiculous boldness before my lady?

MALVOLIO. ‘Be not afraid of greatness.’ ’Twas well writ.

OLIVIA. What mean’st thou by that, Malvolio?

MALVOLIO. ‘Some are born great’—

OLIVIA. Ha?

MALVOLIO. ‘Some achieve greatness’—

OLIVIA. What say’st thou?

MALVOLIO. ‘And some have greatness thrust upon them.’

OLIVIA. Heaven restore thee!

MALVOLIO. ‘Remember who commended thy yellow stockings’—

OLIVIA. Thy yellow stockings?

MALVOLIO. ‘And wished to see thee cross-gartered.’

OLIVIA. Cross-gartered?

MALVOLIO. ‘Go to: thou art made, if thou desir’st to be so:’—

OLIVIA. Am I made?

MALVOLIO. ‘If not, let me see thee a servant still.’

OLIVIA. Why, this is very midsummer madness.

SERVANT. Madam, the young gentleman of the Count Orsino’s is returned; I could hardly entreat him back. He attends your ladyship’s pleasure.

OLIVIA. I’ll come to him.

Good Maria, let this fellow be looked to. Where’s my cousin Toby? Let some of my people have a special care of him; I would not have him miscarry for the half of my dowry.

[Exeunt Olivia and Maria.]

MALVOLIO. O ho, do you come near me now? No worse man than Sir Toby to look to me. This concurs directly with the letter: she sends him on purpose, that I may appear stubborn to him; for she incites me to that in the letter. ‘Cast thy humble slough,’ says she; ‘be opposite with a kinsman, surly with servants, let thy tongue tang with arguments of state, put thyself into the trick of singularity,’ and consequently, sets down the manner how: as, a sad face, a reverend carriage, a slow tongue, in the habit of some sir of note, and so forth. I have limed her, but it is Jove’s doing, and Jove make me thankful! And when she went away now, ‘Let this fellow be looked to;’ ‘Fellow!’ not ‘Malvolio’, nor after my degree, but ‘fellow’. Why, everything adheres together, that no dram of a scruple, no scruple of a scruple, no obstacle, no incredulous or unsafe circumstance. What can be said? Nothing that can be can come between me and the full prospect of my hopes. Well, Jove, not I, is the doer of this, and he is to be thanked.

Enter Sir Toby, Fabian and Maria.

SIR TOBY. Which way is he, in the name of sanctity? If all the devils of hell be drawn in little, and Legion himself possessed him, yet I’ll speak to him.

FABIAN. Here he is, here he is. How is’t with you, sir? How is’t with you, man?

MALVOLIO. Go off, I discard you. Let me enjoy my private. Go off.

MARIA. Lo, how hollow the fiend speaks within him! Did not I tell you? Sir Toby, my lady prays you to have a care of him.

MALVOLIO. Ah, ha! does she so?

SIR TOBY. Go to, go to; peace, peace, we must deal gently with him. Let me alone. How do you, Malvolio? How is’t with you? What, man! defy the devil! Consider, he’s an enemy to mankind.

MALVOLIO. Do you know what you say?

MARIA. La you, an you speak ill of the devil, how he takes it at heart! Pray God he be not bewitched.

FABIAN. Carry his water to th’ wise woman.

MARIA. Marry, and it shall be done tomorrow morning, if I live. My lady would not lose him for more than I’ll say.

MALVOLIO. How now, mistress!

MARIA. O Lord!

SIR TOBY. Prithee hold thy peace, this is not the way. Do you not see you move him? Let me alone with him.

FABIAN. No way but gentleness, gently, gently. The fiend is rough, and will not be roughly used.

SIR TOBY. Why, how now, my bawcock? How dost thou, chuck?

MALVOLIO. Sir!

SIR TOBY. Ay, biddy, come with me. What, man, ’tis not for gravity to play at cherry-pit with Satan. Hang him, foul collier!

MARIA. Get him to say his prayers, good Sir Toby, get him to pray.

MALVOLIO. My prayers, minx?

MARIA. No, I warrant you, he will not hear of godliness.

MALVOLIO. Go, hang yourselves all! You are idle, shallow things. I am not of your element. You shall know more hereafter.

SIR TOBY. Is’t possible?

FABIAN. If this were played upon a stage now, I could condemn it as an improbable fiction.

SIR TOBY. His very genius hath taken the infection of the device, man.

MARIA. Nay, pursue him now, lest the device take air and taint.

FABIAN. Why, we shall make him mad indeed.

MARIA. The house will be the quieter.

SIR TOBY. Come, we’ll have him in a dark room and bound. My niece is already in the belief that he’s mad. We may carry it thus for our pleasure, and his penance, till our very pastime, tired out of breath, prompt us to have mercy on him, at which time we will bring the device to the bar, and crown thee for a finder of madmen. But see, but see!

FABIAN. More matter for a May morning.

SIR ANDREW. Here’s the challenge, read it. I warrant there’s vinegar and pepper in’t.

FABIAN. Is’t so saucy?

SIR ANDREW. Ay, is’t, I warrant him. Do but read.

SIR TOBY. Give me. [Reads.] Youth, whatsoever thou art, thou art but a scurvy fellow.

FABIAN. Good, and valiant.

SIR TOBY. Wonder not, nor admire not in thy mind, why I do call thee so, for I will show thee no reason for’t.

FABIAN. A good note, that keeps you from the blow of the law.

SIR TOBY. Thou comest to the Lady Olivia, and in my sight she uses thee kindly: but thou liest in thy throat; that is not the matter I challenge thee for.

FABIAN. Very brief, and to exceeding good sense—less.

SIR TOBY. I will waylay thee going home; where if it be thy chance to kill me—

FABIAN. Good.

SIR TOBY. Thou kill’st me like a rogue and a villain.

FABIAN. Still you keep o’ th’ windy side of the law. Good.

SIR TOBY. Fare thee well, and God have mercy upon one of our souls! He may have mercy upon mine, but my hope is better, and so look to thyself. Thy friend, as thou usest him, and thy sworn enemy, Andrew Aguecheek. If this letter move him not, his legs cannot. I’ll give’t him.

MARIA. You may have very fit occasion for’t. He is now in some commerce with my lady, and will by and by depart.

SIR TOBY. Go, Sir Andrew. Scout me for him at the corner of the orchard, like a bum-baily. So soon as ever thou seest him, draw, and as thou draw’st, swear horrible, for it comes to pass oft that a terrible oath, with a swaggering accent sharply twanged off, gives manhood more approbation than ever proof itself would have earned him. Away.

SIR ANDREW. Nay, let me alone for swearing.

SIR TOBY. Now will not I deliver his letter, for the behaviour of the young gentleman gives him out to be of good capacity and breeding; his employment between his lord and my niece confirms no less. Therefore this letter, being so excellently ignorant, will breed no terror in the youth. He will find it comes from a clodpole. But, sir, I will deliver his challenge by word of mouth, set upon Aguecheek notable report of valour, and drive the gentleman (as I know his youth will aptly receive it) into a most hideous opinion of his rage, skill, fury, and impetuosity. This will so fright them both that they will kill one another by the look, like cockatrices.

Enter Olivia and Viola.

FABIAN. Here he comes with your niece; give them way till he take leave, and presently after him.

SIR TOBY. I will meditate the while upon some horrid message for a challenge.

[Exeunt Sir Toby, Fabian and Maria.]

OLIVIA. I have said too much unto a heart of stone, And laid mine honour too unchary on’t: There’s something in me that reproves my fault: But such a headstrong potent fault it is, That it but mocks reproof.

VIOLA. With the same ’haviour that your passion bears Goes on my master’s griefs.

OLIVIA. Here, wear this jewel for me, ’tis my picture. Refuse it not, it hath no tongue to vex you. And I beseech you come again tomorrow. What shall you ask of me that I’ll deny, That honour sav’d, may upon asking give?

VIOLA. Nothing but this, your true love for my master.

OLIVIA. How with mine honour may I give him that Which I have given to you?

VIOLA. I will acquit you.

OLIVIA. Well, come again tomorrow. Fare thee well; A fiend like thee might bear my soul to hell.

Enter Sir Toby and Fabian.

SIR TOBY. Gentleman, God save thee.

SIR TOBY. That defence thou hast, betake thee to’t. Of what nature the wrongs are thou hast done him, I know not, but thy intercepter, full of despite, bloody as the hunter, attends thee at the orchard end. Dismount thy tuck, be yare in thy preparation, for thy assailant is quick, skilful, and deadly.

VIOLA. You mistake, sir; I am sure no man hath any quarrel to me. My remembrance is very free and clear from any image of offence done to any man.

SIR TOBY. You’ll find it otherwise, I assure you. Therefore, if you hold your life at any price, betake you to your guard, for your opposite hath in him what youth, strength, skill, and wrath, can furnish man withal.

VIOLA. I pray you, sir, what is he?

SIR TOBY. He is knight, dubbed with unhatched rapier, and on carpet consideration, but he is a devil in private brawl. Souls and bodies hath he divorced three, and his incensement at this moment is so implacable that satisfaction can be none but by pangs of death and sepulchre. Hob, nob is his word; give’t or take’t.

VIOLA. I will return again into the house and desire some conduct of the lady. I am no fighter. I have heard of some kind of men that put quarrels purposely on others to taste their valour: belike this is a man of that quirk.

SIR TOBY. Sir, no. His indignation derives itself out of a very competent injury; therefore, get you on and give him his desire. Back you shall not to the house, unless you undertake that with me which with as much safety you might answer him. Therefore on, or strip your sword stark naked, for meddle you must, that’s certain, or forswear to wear iron about you.

VIOLA. This is as uncivil as strange. I beseech you, do me this courteous office, as to know of the knight what my offence to him is. It is something of my negligence, nothing of my purpose.

SIR TOBY. I will do so. Signior Fabian, stay you by this gentleman till my return.

[Exit Sir Toby.]

VIOLA. Pray you, sir, do you know of this matter?

FABIAN. I know the knight is incensed against you, even to a mortal arbitrement, but nothing of the circumstance more.

VIOLA. I beseech you, what manner of man is he?

FABIAN. Nothing of that wonderful promise, to read him by his form, as you are like to find him in the proof of his valour. He is indeed, sir, the most skilful, bloody, and fatal opposite that you could possibly have found in any part of Illyria. Will you walk towards him? I will make your peace with him if I can.

VIOLA. I shall be much bound to you for’t. I am one that had rather go with sir priest than sir knight: I care not who knows so much of my mettle.

SIR TOBY. Why, man, he’s a very devil. I have not seen such a firago. I had a pass with him, rapier, scabbard, and all, and he gives me the stuck-in with such a mortal motion that it is inevitable; and on the answer, he pays you as surely as your feet hits the ground they step on. They say he has been fencer to the Sophy.

SIR ANDREW. Pox on’t, I’ll not meddle with him.

SIR TOBY. Ay, but he will not now be pacified: Fabian can scarce hold him yonder.

SIR ANDREW. Plague on’t, an I thought he had been valiant, and so cunning in fence, I’d have seen him damned ere I’d have challenged him. Let him let the matter slip, and I’ll give him my horse, grey Capilet.

SIR TOBY. I’ll make the motion. Stand here, make a good show on’t. This shall end without the perdition of souls. [Aside.] Marry, I’ll ride your horse as well as I ride you.

Enter Fabian and Viola.

[To Fabian.] I have his horse to take up the quarrel. I have persuaded him the youth’s a devil.

FABIAN. He is as horribly conceited of him, and pants and looks pale, as if a bear were at his heels.

SIR TOBY. There’s no remedy, sir, he will fight with you for’s oath sake. Marry, he hath better bethought him of his quarrel, and he finds that now scarce to be worth talking of. Therefore, draw for the supportance of his vow; he protests he will not hurt you.

VIOLA. [Aside.] Pray God defend me! A little thing would make me tell them how much I lack of a man.

FABIAN. Give ground if you see him furious.

SIR TOBY. Come, Sir Andrew, there’s no remedy, the gentleman will for his honour’s sake have one bout with you. He cannot by the duello avoid it; but he has promised me, as he is a gentleman and a soldier, he will not hurt you. Come on: to’t.

SIR ANDREW. [Draws.] Pray God he keep his oath!

VIOLA. [Draws.] I do assure you ’tis against my will.

ANTONIO. Put up your sword. If this young gentleman Have done offence, I take the fault on me. If you offend him, I for him defy you.

SIR TOBY. You, sir? Why, what are you?

ANTONIO. [Draws.] One, sir, that for his love dares yet do more Than you have heard him brag to you he will.

SIR TOBY. [Draws.] Nay, if you be an undertaker, I am for you.

Enter Officers.

FABIAN. O good Sir Toby, hold! Here come the officers.

SIR TOBY. [To Antonio.] I’ll be with you anon.

VIOLA. [To Sir Andrew.] Pray, sir, put your sword up, if you please.

SIR ANDREW. Marry, will I, sir; and for that I promised you, I’ll be as good as my word. He will bear you easily, and reins well.

FIRST OFFICER. This is the man; do thy office.

SECOND OFFICER. Antonio, I arrest thee at the suit Of Count Orsino.

ANTONIO. You do mistake me, sir.

FIRST OFFICER. No, sir, no jot. I know your favour well, Though now you have no sea-cap on your head.— Take him away, he knows I know him well.

ANTONIO. I must obey. This comes with seeking you; But there’s no remedy, I shall answer it. What will you do? Now my necessity Makes me to ask you for my purse. It grieves me Much more for what I cannot do for you, Than what befalls myself. You stand amaz’d, But be of comfort.

SECOND OFFICER. Come, sir, away.

ANTONIO. I must entreat of you some of that money.

VIOLA. What money, sir? For the fair kindness you have show’d me here, And part being prompted by your present trouble, Out of my lean and low ability I’ll lend you something. My having is not much; I’ll make division of my present with you. Hold, there’s half my coffer.

ANTONIO. Will you deny me now? Is’t possible that my deserts to you Can lack persuasion? Do not tempt my misery, Lest that it make me so unsound a man As to upbraid you with those kindnesses That I have done for you.

VIOLA. I know of none, Nor know I you by voice or any feature. I hate ingratitude more in a man Than lying, vainness, babbling, drunkenness, Or any taint of vice whose strong corruption Inhabits our frail blood.

ANTONIO. O heavens themselves!

SECOND OFFICER. Come, sir, I pray you go.

ANTONIO. Let me speak a little. This youth that you see here I snatch’d one half out of the jaws of death, Reliev’d him with such sanctity of love; And to his image, which methought did promise Most venerable worth, did I devotion.

FIRST OFFICER. What’s that to us? The time goes by. Away!

ANTONIO. But O how vile an idol proves this god! Thou hast, Sebastian, done good feature shame. In nature there’s no blemish but the mind; None can be call’d deform’d but the unkind. Virtue is beauty, but the beauteous evil Are empty trunks, o’erflourished by the devil.

FIRST OFFICER. The man grows mad, away with him. Come, come, sir.

ANTONIO. Lead me on.

[Exeunt Officers with Antonio.]

VIOLA. Methinks his words do from such passion fly That he believes himself; so do not I. Prove true, imagination, O prove true, That I, dear brother, be now ta’en for you!

SIR TOBY. Come hither, knight; come hither, Fabian. We’ll whisper o’er a couplet or two of most sage saws.

VIOLA. He nam’d Sebastian. I my brother know Yet living in my glass; even such and so In favour was my brother, and he went Still in this fashion, colour, ornament, For him I imitate. O if it prove, Tempests are kind, and salt waves fresh in love!

SIR TOBY. A very dishonest paltry boy, and more a coward than a hare. His dishonesty appears in leaving his friend here in necessity, and denying him; and for his cowardship, ask Fabian.

FABIAN. A coward, a most devout coward, religious in it.

SIR ANDREW. ’Slid, I’ll after him again and beat him.

SIR TOBY. Do, cuff him soundly, but never draw thy sword.

SIR ANDREW. And I do not—

FABIAN. Come, let’s see the event.

SIR TOBY. I dare lay any money ’twill be nothing yet.

SCENE I. The Street before Olivia’s House.

Enter Sebastian and Clown.

CLOWN. Will you make me believe that I am not sent for you?

SEBASTIAN. Go to, go to, thou art a foolish fellow. Let me be clear of thee.

CLOWN. Well held out, i’ faith! No, I do not know you, nor I am not sent to you by my lady, to bid you come speak with her; nor your name is not Master Cesario; nor this is not my nose neither. Nothing that is so, is so.

SEBASTIAN. I prithee vent thy folly somewhere else, Thou know’st not me.

CLOWN. Vent my folly! He has heard that word of some great man, and now applies it to a fool. Vent my folly! I am afraid this great lubber, the world, will prove a cockney. I prithee now, ungird thy strangeness, and tell me what I shall vent to my lady. Shall I vent to her that thou art coming?

SEBASTIAN. I prithee, foolish Greek, depart from me. There’s money for thee; if you tarry longer I shall give worse payment.

CLOWN. By my troth, thou hast an open hand. These wise men that give fools money get themselves a good report—after fourteen years’ purchase.

Enter Sir Andrew, Sir Toby and Fabian.

SIR ANDREW. Now sir, have I met you again? There’s for you.

[Striking Sebastian.]

SEBASTIAN. Why, there’s for thee, and there, and there. Are all the people mad?

[Beating Sir Andrew.]

SIR TOBY. Hold, sir, or I’ll throw your dagger o’er the house.

CLOWN. This will I tell my lady straight. I would not be in some of your coats for twopence.

SIR TOBY. Come on, sir, hold!

SIR ANDREW. Nay, let him alone, I’ll go another way to work with him. I’ll have an action of battery against him, if there be any law in Illyria. Though I struck him first, yet it’s no matter for that.

SEBASTIAN. Let go thy hand!

SIR TOBY. Come, sir, I will not let you go. Come, my young soldier, put up your iron: you are well fleshed. Come on.

SEBASTIAN. I will be free from thee. What wouldst thou now? If thou dar’st tempt me further, draw thy sword.

SIR TOBY. What, what? Nay, then, I must have an ounce or two of this malapert blood from you.

Enter Olivia.

OLIVIA. Hold, Toby! On thy life I charge thee hold!

SIR TOBY. Madam.

OLIVIA. Will it be ever thus? Ungracious wretch, Fit for the mountains and the barbarous caves, Where manners ne’er were preach’d! Out of my sight! Be not offended, dear Cesario. Rudesby, be gone!

[Exeunt Sir Toby, Sir Andrew and Fabian.]

I prithee, gentle friend, Let thy fair wisdom, not thy passion, sway In this uncivil and unjust extent Against thy peace. Go with me to my house, And hear thou there how many fruitless pranks This ruffian hath botch’d up, that thou thereby Mayst smile at this. Thou shalt not choose but go. Do not deny. Beshrew his soul for me, He started one poor heart of mine, in thee.

SEBASTIAN. What relish is in this? How runs the stream? Or I am mad, or else this is a dream. Let fancy still my sense in Lethe steep; If it be thus to dream, still let me sleep!

OLIVIA. Nay, come, I prithee. Would thou’dst be ruled by me!

SEBASTIAN. Madam, I will.

OLIVIA. O, say so, and so be!

MARIA. Nay, I prithee, put on this gown and this beard; make him believe thou art Sir Topas the curate. Do it quickly. I’ll call Sir Toby the whilst.

CLOWN. Well, I’ll put it on, and I will dissemble myself in’t, and I would I were the first that ever dissembled in such a gown. I am not tall enough to become the function well, nor lean enough to be thought a good student, but to be said, an honest man and a good housekeeper goes as fairly as to say, a careful man and a great scholar. The competitors enter.

SIR TOBY. Jove bless thee, Master Parson.

CLOWN. Bonos dies, Sir Toby: for as the old hermit of Prague, that never saw pen and ink, very wittily said to a niece of King Gorboduc, ‘That that is, is’: so I, being Master Parson, am Master Parson; for what is ‘that’ but ‘that’? and ‘is’ but ‘is’?

SIR TOBY. To him, Sir Topas.

CLOWN. What ho, I say! Peace in this prison!

SIR TOBY. The knave counterfeits well. A good knave.

Malvolio within.

MALVOLIO. Who calls there?

CLOWN. Sir Topas the curate, who comes to visit Malvolio the lunatic.

MALVOLIO. Sir Topas, Sir Topas, good Sir Topas, go to my lady.

CLOWN. Out, hyperbolical fiend! how vexest thou this man? Talkest thou nothing but of ladies?

SIR TOBY. Well said, Master Parson.

MALVOLIO. Sir Topas, never was man thus wronged. Good Sir Topas, do not think I am mad. They have laid me here in hideous darkness.

CLOWN. Fie, thou dishonest Satan! I call thee by the most modest terms, for I am one of those gentle ones that will use the devil himself with courtesy. Say’st thou that house is dark?

MALVOLIO. As hell, Sir Topas.

CLOWN. Why, it hath bay windows transparent as barricadoes, and the clerestories toward the south-north are as lustrous as ebony; and yet complainest thou of obstruction?

MALVOLIO. I am not mad, Sir Topas. I say to you this house is dark.

CLOWN. Madman, thou errest. I say there is no darkness but ignorance, in which thou art more puzzled than the Egyptians in their fog.

MALVOLIO. I say this house is as dark as ignorance, though ignorance were as dark as hell; and I say there was never man thus abused. I am no more mad than you are. Make the trial of it in any constant question.

CLOWN. What is the opinion of Pythagoras concerning wildfowl?

MALVOLIO. That the soul of our grandam might haply inhabit a bird.

CLOWN. What think’st thou of his opinion?

MALVOLIO. I think nobly of the soul, and no way approve his opinion.

CLOWN. Fare thee well. Remain thou still in darkness. Thou shalt hold the opinion of Pythagoras ere I will allow of thy wits, and fear to kill a woodcock, lest thou dispossess the soul of thy grandam. Fare thee well.

MALVOLIO. Sir Topas, Sir Topas!

SIR TOBY. My most exquisite Sir Topas!

CLOWN. Nay, I am for all waters.

MARIA. Thou mightst have done this without thy beard and gown. He sees thee not.

SIR TOBY. To him in thine own voice, and bring me word how thou find’st him. I would we were well rid of this knavery. If he may be conveniently delivered, I would he were, for I am now so far in offence with my niece that I cannot pursue with any safety this sport to the upshot. Come by and by to my chamber.

[Exeunt Sir Toby and Maria.]

CLOWN. [Singing.] Hey, Robin, jolly Robin, Tell me how thy lady does.

MALVOLIO. Fool!

CLOWN. My lady is unkind, perdy.

CLOWN. Alas, why is she so?

MALVOLIO. Fool, I say!

CLOWN. She loves another— Who calls, ha?

MALVOLIO. Good fool, as ever thou wilt deserve well at my hand, help me to a candle, and pen, ink, and paper. As I am a gentleman, I will live to be thankful to thee for’t.

CLOWN. Master Malvolio?

MALVOLIO. Ay, good fool.

CLOWN. Alas, sir, how fell you besides your five wits?

MALVOLIO. Fool, there was never man so notoriously abused. I am as well in my wits, fool, as thou art.

CLOWN. But as well? Then you are mad indeed, if you be no better in your wits than a fool.

MALVOLIO. They have here propertied me; keep me in darkness, send ministers to me, asses, and do all they can to face me out of my wits.

CLOWN. Advise you what you say: the minister is here. [As Sir Topas] Malvolio, Malvolio, thy wits the heavens restore. Endeavour thyself to sleep, and leave thy vain bibble-babble.

MALVOLIO. Sir Topas!

CLOWN. [As Sir Topas] Maintain no words with him, good fellow. [As himself] Who, I, sir? not I, sir. God buy you, good Sir Topas. [As Sir Topas] Marry, amen. [As himself] I will sir, I will.

MALVOLIO. Fool, fool, fool, I say!

CLOWN. Alas, sir, be patient. What say you, sir? I am shent for speaking to you.

MALVOLIO. Good fool, help me to some light and some paper. I tell thee I am as well in my wits as any man in Illyria.

CLOWN. Well-a-day that you were, sir!

MALVOLIO. By this hand, I am. Good fool, some ink, paper, and light, and convey what I will set down to my lady. It shall advantage thee more than ever the bearing of letter did.

CLOWN. I will help you to’t. But tell me true, are you not mad indeed? or do you but counterfeit?

MALVOLIO. Believe me, I am not. I tell thee true.

CLOWN. Nay, I’ll ne’er believe a madman till I see his brains. I will fetch you light, and paper, and ink.

MALVOLIO. Fool, I’ll requite it in the highest degree: I prithee be gone.

CLOWN. [Singing.] I am gone, sir, and anon, sir, I’ll be with you again, In a trice, like to the old Vice, Your need to sustain; Who with dagger of lath, in his rage and his wrath, Cries ‘ah, ha!’ to the devil: Like a mad lad, ‘Pare thy nails, dad. Adieu, goodman devil.’

SCENE III. Olivia’s Garden.

Enter Sebastian.

SEBASTIAN. This is the air; that is the glorious sun, This pearl she gave me, I do feel’t and see’t, And though ’tis wonder that enwraps me thus, Yet ’tis not madness. Where’s Antonio, then? I could not find him at the Elephant, Yet there he was, and there I found this credit, That he did range the town to seek me out. His counsel now might do me golden service. For though my soul disputes well with my sense That this may be some error, but no madness, Yet doth this accident and flood of fortune So far exceed all instance, all discourse, That I am ready to distrust mine eyes And wrangle with my reason that persuades me To any other trust but that I am mad, Or else the lady’s mad; yet if ’twere so, She could not sway her house, command her followers, Take and give back affairs and their dispatch, With such a smooth, discreet, and stable bearing As I perceive she does. There’s something in’t That is deceivable. But here the lady comes.

Enter Olivia and a Priest.

OLIVIA. Blame not this haste of mine. If you mean well, Now go with me and with this holy man Into the chantry by: there, before him And underneath that consecrated roof, Plight me the full assurance of your faith, That my most jealous and too doubtful soul May live at peace. He shall conceal it Whiles you are willing it shall come to note, What time we will our celebration keep According to my birth. What do you say?

SEBASTIAN. I’ll follow this good man, and go with you, And having sworn truth, ever will be true.

OLIVIA. Then lead the way, good father, and heavens so shine, That they may fairly note this act of mine!

Enter Clown and Fabian.

FABIAN. Now, as thou lov’st me, let me see his letter.

CLOWN. Good Master Fabian, grant me another request.

FABIAN. Anything.

CLOWN. Do not desire to see this letter.

FABIAN. This is to give a dog, and in recompense desire my dog again.

Enter Duke, Viola, Curio and Lords.

DUKE. Belong you to the Lady Olivia, friends?

CLOWN. Ay, sir, we are some of her trappings.

DUKE. I know thee well. How dost thou, my good fellow?

CLOWN. Truly, sir, the better for my foes, and the worse for my friends.

DUKE. Just the contrary; the better for thy friends.

CLOWN. No, sir, the worse.

DUKE. How can that be?

CLOWN. Marry, sir, they praise me, and make an ass of me. Now my foes tell me plainly I am an ass: so that by my foes, sir, I profit in the knowledge of myself, and by my friends I am abused. So that, conclusions to be as kisses, if your four negatives make your two affirmatives, why then, the worse for my friends, and the better for my foes.

DUKE. Why, this is excellent.

CLOWN. By my troth, sir, no; though it please you to be one of my friends.

DUKE. Thou shalt not be the worse for me; there’s gold.

CLOWN. But that it would be double-dealing, sir, I would you could make it another.

DUKE. O, you give me ill counsel.

CLOWN. Put your grace in your pocket, sir, for this once, and let your flesh and blood obey it.

DUKE. Well, I will be so much a sinner to be a double-dealer: there’s another.

CLOWN. Primo, secundo, tertio, is a good play, and the old saying is, the third pays for all; the triplex, sir, is a good tripping measure; or the bells of Saint Bennet, sir, may put you in mind—one, two, three.

DUKE. You can fool no more money out of me at this throw. If you will let your lady know I am here to speak with her, and bring her along with you, it may awake my bounty further.

CLOWN. Marry, sir, lullaby to your bounty till I come again. I go, sir, but I would not have you to think that my desire of having is the sin of covetousness: but as you say, sir, let your bounty take a nap, I will awake it anon.

Enter Antonio and Officers.

VIOLA. Here comes the man, sir, that did rescue me.

DUKE. That face of his I do remember well. Yet when I saw it last it was besmear’d As black as Vulcan, in the smoke of war. A baubling vessel was he captain of, For shallow draught and bulk unprizable, With which such scathful grapple did he make With the most noble bottom of our fleet, That very envy and the tongue of loss Cried fame and honour on him. What’s the matter?

FIRST OFFICER. Orsino, this is that Antonio That took the Phoenix and her fraught from Candy, And this is he that did the Tiger board When your young nephew Titus lost his leg. Here in the streets, desperate of shame and state, In private brabble did we apprehend him.

VIOLA. He did me kindness, sir; drew on my side, But in conclusion, put strange speech upon me. I know not what ’twas, but distraction.

DUKE. Notable pirate, thou salt-water thief, What foolish boldness brought thee to their mercies, Whom thou, in terms so bloody and so dear, Hast made thine enemies?

ANTONIO. Orsino, noble sir, Be pleased that I shake off these names you give me: Antonio never yet was thief or pirate, Though, I confess, on base and ground enough, Orsino’s enemy. A witchcraft drew me hither: That most ingrateful boy there by your side From the rude sea’s enraged and foamy mouth Did I redeem; a wreck past hope he was. His life I gave him, and did thereto add My love, without retention or restraint, All his in dedication. For his sake Did I expose myself, pure for his love, Into the danger of this adverse town; Drew to defend him when he was beset; Where being apprehended, his false cunning (Not meaning to partake with me in danger) Taught him to face me out of his acquaintance, And grew a twenty years’ removed thing While one would wink; denied me mine own purse, Which I had recommended to his use Not half an hour before.

VIOLA. How can this be?

DUKE. When came he to this town?

ANTONIO. Today, my lord; and for three months before, No int’rim, not a minute’s vacancy, Both day and night did we keep company.

Enter Olivia and Attendants.

DUKE. Here comes the Countess, now heaven walks on earth. But for thee, fellow, fellow, thy words are madness. Three months this youth hath tended upon me; But more of that anon. Take him aside.

OLIVIA. What would my lord, but that he may not have, Wherein Olivia may seem serviceable? Cesario, you do not keep promise with me.

VIOLA. Madam?

DUKE. Gracious Olivia—

OLIVIA. What do you say, Cesario? Good my lord—

VIOLA. My lord would speak, my duty hushes me.

OLIVIA. If it be aught to the old tune, my lord, It is as fat and fulsome to mine ear As howling after music.

DUKE. Still so cruel?

OLIVIA. Still so constant, lord.

DUKE. What, to perverseness? You uncivil lady, To whose ingrate and unauspicious altars My soul the faithfull’st off’rings hath breathed out That e’er devotion tender’d! What shall I do?

OLIVIA. Even what it please my lord that shall become him.

DUKE. Why should I not, had I the heart to do it, Like to the Egyptian thief at point of death, Kill what I love?—a savage jealousy That sometime savours nobly. But hear me this: Since you to non-regardance cast my faith, And that I partly know the instrument That screws me from my true place in your favour, Live you the marble-breasted tyrant still. But this your minion, whom I know you love, And whom, by heaven I swear, I tender dearly, Him will I tear out of that cruel eye Where he sits crowned in his master’s spite.— Come, boy, with me; my thoughts are ripe in mischief: I’ll sacrifice the lamb that I do love, To spite a raven’s heart within a dove.

VIOLA. And I, most jocund, apt, and willingly, To do you rest, a thousand deaths would die.

OLIVIA. Where goes Cesario?

VIOLA. After him I love More than I love these eyes, more than my life, More, by all mores, than e’er I shall love wife. If I do feign, you witnesses above Punish my life for tainting of my love.

OLIVIA. Ah me, detested! how am I beguil’d!

VIOLA. Who does beguile you? Who does do you wrong?

OLIVIA. Hast thou forgot thyself? Is it so long? Call forth the holy father.

DUKE. [To Viola.] Come, away!

OLIVIA. Whither, my lord? Cesario, husband, stay.

DUKE. Husband?

OLIVIA. Ay, husband. Can he that deny?

DUKE. Her husband, sirrah?

VIOLA. No, my lord, not I.

OLIVIA. Alas, it is the baseness of thy fear That makes thee strangle thy propriety. Fear not, Cesario, take thy fortunes up. Be that thou know’st thou art, and then thou art As great as that thou fear’st.

Enter Priest.

O, welcome, father! Father, I charge thee, by thy reverence Here to unfold—though lately we intended To keep in darkness what occasion now Reveals before ’tis ripe—what thou dost know Hath newly passed between this youth and me.

PRIEST. A contract of eternal bond of love, Confirmed by mutual joinder of your hands, Attested by the holy close of lips, Strengthen’d by interchangement of your rings, And all the ceremony of this compact Sealed in my function, by my testimony; Since when, my watch hath told me, toward my grave, I have travelled but two hours.

DUKE. O thou dissembling cub! What wilt thou be When time hath sowed a grizzle on thy case? Or will not else thy craft so quickly grow That thine own trip shall be thine overthrow? Farewell, and take her; but direct thy feet Where thou and I henceforth may never meet.

VIOLA. My lord, I do protest—

OLIVIA. O, do not swear. Hold little faith, though thou has too much fear.

SIR ANDREW. For the love of God, a surgeon! Send one presently to Sir Toby.

OLIVIA. What’s the matter?

SIR ANDREW. ’Has broke my head across, and has given Sir Toby a bloody coxcomb too. For the love of God, your help! I had rather than forty pound I were at home.

OLIVIA. Who has done this, Sir Andrew?

SIR ANDREW. The Count’s gentleman, one Cesario. We took him for a coward, but he’s the very devil incardinate.

DUKE. My gentleman, Cesario?

SIR ANDREW. ’Od’s lifelings, here he is!—You broke my head for nothing; and that that I did, I was set on to do’t by Sir Toby.

VIOLA. Why do you speak to me? I never hurt you: You drew your sword upon me without cause, But I bespake you fair and hurt you not.

Enter Sir Toby, drunk, led by the Clown.

SIR ANDREW. If a bloody coxcomb be a hurt, you have hurt me. I think you set nothing by a bloody coxcomb. Here comes Sir Toby halting, you shall hear more: but if he had not been in drink, he would have tickled you othergates than he did.

DUKE. How now, gentleman? How is’t with you?

SIR TOBY. That’s all one; ’has hurt me, and there’s th’ end on’t. Sot, didst see Dick Surgeon, sot?

CLOWN. O, he’s drunk, Sir Toby, an hour agone; his eyes were set at eight i’ th’ morning.

SIR TOBY. Then he’s a rogue, and a passy measures pavin. I hate a drunken rogue.

OLIVIA. Away with him. Who hath made this havoc with them?

SIR ANDREW. I’ll help you, Sir Toby, because we’ll be dressed together.

SIR TOBY. Will you help? An ass-head, and a coxcomb, and a knave, a thin-faced knave, a gull?

OLIVIA. Get him to bed, and let his hurt be looked to.

[Exeunt Clown, Fabian, Sir Toby and Sir Andrew.]

SEBASTIAN. I am sorry, madam, I have hurt your kinsman; But had it been the brother of my blood, I must have done no less with wit and safety. You throw a strange regard upon me, and by that I do perceive it hath offended you. Pardon me, sweet one, even for the vows We made each other but so late ago.

DUKE. One face, one voice, one habit, and two persons! A natural perspective, that is, and is not!

SEBASTIAN. Antonio, O my dear Antonio! How have the hours rack’d and tortur’d me Since I have lost thee.

ANTONIO. Sebastian are you?

SEBASTIAN. Fear’st thou that, Antonio?

ANTONIO. How have you made division of yourself? An apple cleft in two is not more twin Than these two creatures. Which is Sebastian?

OLIVIA. Most wonderful!

SEBASTIAN. Do I stand there? I never had a brother: Nor can there be that deity in my nature Of here and everywhere. I had a sister, Whom the blind waves and surges have devoured. Of charity, what kin are you to me? What countryman? What name? What parentage?

VIOLA. Of Messaline: Sebastian was my father; Such a Sebastian was my brother too: So went he suited to his watery tomb. If spirits can assume both form and suit, You come to fright us.

SEBASTIAN. A spirit I am indeed, But am in that dimension grossly clad, Which from the womb I did participate. Were you a woman, as the rest goes even, I should my tears let fall upon your cheek, And say, ‘Thrice welcome, drowned Viola.’

VIOLA. My father had a mole upon his brow.

SEBASTIAN. And so had mine.

VIOLA. And died that day when Viola from her birth Had numbered thirteen years.

SEBASTIAN. O, that record is lively in my soul! He finished indeed his mortal act That day that made my sister thirteen years.

VIOLA. If nothing lets to make us happy both But this my masculine usurp’d attire, Do not embrace me till each circumstance Of place, time, fortune, do cohere and jump That I am Viola; which to confirm, I’ll bring you to a captain in this town, Where lie my maiden weeds; by whose gentle help I was preserv’d to serve this noble count. All the occurrence of my fortune since Hath been between this lady and this lord.

SEBASTIAN. [To Olivia.] So comes it, lady, you have been mistook. But nature to her bias drew in that. You would have been contracted to a maid; Nor are you therein, by my life, deceived: You are betroth’d both to a maid and man.

DUKE. Be not amazed; right noble is his blood. If this be so, as yet the glass seems true, I shall have share in this most happy wreck. [To Viola.] Boy, thou hast said to me a thousand times Thou never shouldst love woman like to me.

VIOLA. And all those sayings will I over-swear, And all those swearings keep as true in soul As doth that orbed continent the fire That severs day from night.

DUKE. Give me thy hand, And let me see thee in thy woman’s weeds.

VIOLA. The captain that did bring me first on shore Hath my maid’s garments. He, upon some action, Is now in durance, at Malvolio’s suit, A gentleman and follower of my lady’s.

OLIVIA. He shall enlarge him. Fetch Malvolio hither. And yet, alas, now I remember me, They say, poor gentleman, he’s much distract.

Enter Clown, with a letter and Fabian.

A most extracting frenzy of mine own From my remembrance clearly banished his. How does he, sirrah?

CLOWN. Truly, madam, he holds Belzebub at the stave’s end as well as a man in his case may do. Has here writ a letter to you. I should have given it you today morning, but as a madman’s epistles are no gospels, so it skills not much when they are delivered.

OLIVIA. Open ’t, and read it.

CLOWN. Look then to be well edified, when the fool delivers the madman. By the Lord, madam,—

OLIVIA. How now, art thou mad?

CLOWN. No, madam, I do but read madness: an your ladyship will have it as it ought to be, you must allow vox.

OLIVIA. Prithee, read i’ thy right wits.

CLOWN. So I do, madonna. But to read his right wits is to read thus; therefore perpend, my princess, and give ear.

OLIVIA. [To Fabian.] Read it you, sirrah.

FABIAN. [Reads.] By the Lord, madam, you wrong me, and the world shall know it. Though you have put me into darkness and given your drunken cousin rule over me, yet have I the benefit of my senses as well as your ladyship. I have your own letter that induced me to the semblance I put on; with the which I doubt not but to do myself much right or you much shame. Think of me as you please. I leave my duty a little unthought of, and speak out of my injury. The madly-used Malvolio.

OLIVIA. Did he write this?

CLOWN. Ay, madam.

DUKE. This savours not much of distraction.

OLIVIA. See him delivered, Fabian, bring him hither.

[Exit Fabian.]

My lord, so please you, these things further thought on, To think me as well a sister, as a wife, One day shall crown th’ alliance on’t, so please you, Here at my house, and at my proper cost.

DUKE. Madam, I am most apt t’ embrace your offer. [To Viola.] Your master quits you; and for your service done him, So much against the mettle of your sex, So far beneath your soft and tender breeding, And since you call’d me master for so long, Here is my hand; you shall from this time be Your master’s mistress.

OLIVIA. A sister? You are she.

Enter Fabian and Malvolio.

DUKE. Is this the madman?

OLIVIA. Ay, my lord, this same. How now, Malvolio?

MALVOLIO. Madam, you have done me wrong, Notorious wrong.

OLIVIA. Have I, Malvolio? No.

MALVOLIO. Lady, you have. Pray you peruse that letter. You must not now deny it is your hand, Write from it, if you can, in hand, or phrase, Or say ’tis not your seal, not your invention: You can say none of this. Well, grant it then, And tell me, in the modesty of honour, Why you have given me such clear lights of favour, Bade me come smiling and cross-garter’d to you, To put on yellow stockings, and to frown Upon Sir Toby, and the lighter people; And acting this in an obedient hope, Why have you suffer’d me to be imprison’d, Kept in a dark house, visited by the priest, And made the most notorious geck and gull That e’er invention played on? Tell me why?

OLIVIA. Alas, Malvolio, this is not my writing, Though I confess, much like the character: But out of question, ’tis Maria’s hand. And now I do bethink me, it was she First told me thou wast mad; then cam’st in smiling, And in such forms which here were presuppos’d Upon thee in the letter. Prithee, be content. This practice hath most shrewdly pass’d upon thee. But when we know the grounds and authors of it, Thou shalt be both the plaintiff and the judge Of thine own cause.

FABIAN. Good madam, hear me speak, And let no quarrel, nor no brawl to come, Taint the condition of this present hour, Which I have wonder’d at. In hope it shall not, Most freely I confess, myself and Toby Set this device against Malvolio here, Upon some stubborn and uncourteous parts We had conceiv’d against him. Maria writ The letter, at Sir Toby’s great importance, In recompense whereof he hath married her. How with a sportful malice it was follow’d May rather pluck on laughter than revenge, If that the injuries be justly weigh’d That have on both sides passed.

OLIVIA. Alas, poor fool, how have they baffled thee!

CLOWN. Why, ‘some are born great, some achieve greatness, and some have greatness thrown upon them.’ I was one, sir, in this interlude, one Sir Topas, sir, but that’s all one. ‘By the Lord, fool, I am not mad.’ But do you remember? ‘Madam, why laugh you at such a barren rascal? And you smile not, he’s gagged’? And thus the whirligig of time brings in his revenges.

MALVOLIO. I’ll be revenged on the whole pack of you.

OLIVIA. He hath been most notoriously abus’d.

DUKE. Pursue him, and entreat him to a peace: He hath not told us of the captain yet. When that is known, and golden time convents, A solemn combination shall be made Of our dear souls.—Meantime, sweet sister, We will not part from hence.—Cesario, come: For so you shall be while you are a man; But when in other habits you are seen, Orsino’s mistress, and his fancy’s queen.

Clown sings.

When that I was and a little tiny boy, With hey, ho, the wind and the rain, A foolish thing was but a toy, For the rain it raineth every day.

But when I came to man’s estate, With hey, ho, the wind and the rain, ’Gainst knaves and thieves men shut their gate, For the rain it raineth every day.

But when I came, alas, to wive, With hey, ho, the wind and the rain, By swaggering could I never thrive, For the rain it raineth every day.

But when I came unto my beds, With hey, ho, the wind and the rain, With toss-pots still had drunken heads, For the rain it raineth every day.

A great while ago the world begun, With hey, ho, the wind and the rain, But that’s all one, our play is done, And we’ll strive to please you every day.

THE TWO GENTLEMEN OF VERONA

ACT I Scene I. Verona. An open place Scene II. The same. The garden of Julia’s house Scene III. The same. A room in Antonio’s house

ACT II Scene I. Milan. A room in the Duke’s palace Scene II. Verona. A room in Julia’s house Scene III. The same. A street Scene IV. Milan. A room in the Duke’s palace Scene V. The same. A street Scene VI. The same. The Duke’s palace Scene VII. Verona. A room in Julia’s house

ACT III Scene I. Milan. An anteroom in the Duke’s palace Scene II. The same. A room in the Duke’s palace

ACT IV Scene I. A forest between Milan and Verona Scene II. Milan. The court of the Duke’s palace Scene III. The same Scene IV. The same

ACT V Scene I. Milan. An abbey Scene II. The same. A room in the Duke’s palace Scene III. Frontiers of Mantua. The forest Scene IV. Another part of the forest

DUKE OF MILAN, father to Silvia VALENTINE, one of the two gentlemen PROTEUS, one of the two gentlemen ANTONIO, father to Proteus THURIO, a foolish rival to Valentine EGLAMOUR, agent for Silvia in her escape SPEED, a clownish servant to Valentine LANCE, the like to Proteus PANTINO, servant to Antonio HOST, where Julia lodges in Milan OUTLAWS, with Valentine

JULIA, a lady of Verona, beloved of Proteus SILVIA, beloved of Valentine LUCETTA, waiting-woman to Julia

Servants, Musicians

SCENE: Verona; Milan; the frontiers of Mantua

SCENE I. Verona. An open place

Enter Valentine and Proteus.

VALENTINE. Cease to persuade, my loving Proteus. Home-keeping youth have ever homely wits. Were’t not affection chains thy tender days To the sweet glances of thy honoured love, I rather would entreat thy company To see the wonders of the world abroad Than, living dully sluggardized at home, Wear out thy youth with shapeless idleness. But since thou lov’st, love still, and thrive therein, Even as I would when I to love begin.

PROTEUS. Wilt thou be gone? Sweet Valentine, adieu. Think on thy Proteus when thou haply seest Some rare noteworthy object in thy travel. Wish me partaker in thy happiness When thou dost meet good hap; and in thy danger, If ever danger do environ thee, Commend thy grievance to my holy prayers, For I will be thy headsman, Valentine.

VALENTINE. And on a love-book pray for my success?

PROTEUS. Upon some book I love I’ll pray for thee.

VALENTINE. That’s on some shallow story of deep love, How young Leander crossed the Hellespont.

PROTEUS. That’s a deep story of a deeper love, For he was more than over shoes in love.

VALENTINE. ’Tis true; for you are over boots in love, And yet you never swam the Hellespont.

PROTEUS. Over the boots? Nay, give me not the boots.

VALENTINE. No, I will not, for it boots thee not.

PROTEUS. What?

VALENTINE. To be in love, where scorn is bought with groans, Coy looks with heart-sore sighs, one fading moment’s mirth With twenty watchful, weary, tedious nights. If haply won, perhaps a hapless gain; If lost, why then a grievous labour won; However, but a folly bought with wit, Or else a wit by folly vanquished.

PROTEUS. So, by your circumstance, you call me fool.

VALENTINE. So, by your circumstance, I fear you’ll prove.

PROTEUS. ’Tis love you cavil at. I am not Love.

VALENTINE. Love is your master, for he masters you; And he that is so yoked by a fool Methinks should not be chronicled for wise.

PROTEUS. Yet writers say, as in the sweetest bud The eating canker dwells, so eating love Inhabits in the finest wits of all.

VALENTINE. And writers say, as the most forward bud Is eaten by the canker ere it blow, Even so by love the young and tender wit Is turned to folly, blasting in the bud, Losing his verdure even in the prime, And all the fair effects of future hopes. But wherefore waste I time to counsel thee That art a votary to fond desire? Once more adieu. My father at the road Expects my coming, there to see me shipped.

PROTEUS. And thither will I bring thee, Valentine.

VALENTINE. Sweet Proteus, no. Now let us take our leave. To Milan let me hear from thee by letters Of thy success in love, and what news else Betideth here in absence of thy friend; And I likewise will visit thee with mine.

PROTEUS. All happiness bechance to thee in Milan.

VALENTINE. As much to you at home, and so farewell.

PROTEUS. He after honour hunts, I after love. He leaves his friends to dignify them more; I leave myself, my friends, and all for love. Thou, Julia, thou hast metamorphosed me, Made me neglect my studies, lose my time, War with good counsel, set the world at nought; Made wit with musing weak, heart sick with thought.

Enter Speed.

SPEED. Sir Proteus, ’save you. Saw you my master?

PROTEUS. But now he parted hence to embark for Milan.

SPEED. Twenty to one, then, he is shipped already, And I have played the sheep in losing him.

PROTEUS. Indeed a sheep doth very often stray, An if the shepherd be a while away.

SPEED. You conclude that my master is a shepherd then, and I a sheep?

PROTEUS. I do.

SPEED. Why then, my horns are his horns, whether I wake or sleep.

PROTEUS. A silly answer, and fitting well a sheep.

SPEED. This proves me still a sheep.

PROTEUS. True, and thy master a shepherd.

SPEED. Nay, that I can deny by a circumstance.

PROTEUS. It shall go hard but I’ll prove it by another.

SPEED. The shepherd seeks the sheep, and not the sheep the shepherd; but I seek my master, and my master seeks not me. Therefore I am no sheep.

PROTEUS. The sheep for fodder follow the shepherd; the shepherd for food follows not the sheep. Thou for wages followest thy master; thy master for wages follows not thee. Therefore thou art a sheep.

SPEED. Such another proof will make me cry “baa”.

PROTEUS. But dost thou hear? Gav’st thou my letter to Julia?

SPEED. Ay, sir. I, a lost mutton, gave your letter to her, a laced mutton, and she, a laced mutton, gave me, a lost mutton, nothing for my labour.

PROTEUS. Here’s too small a pasture for such store of muttons.

SPEED. If the ground be overcharged, you were best stick her.

PROTEUS. Nay, in that you are astray; ’twere best pound you.

SPEED. Nay, sir, less than a pound shall serve me for carrying your letter.

PROTEUS. You mistake; I mean the pound, a pinfold.

SPEED. From a pound to a pin? Fold it over and over, ’Tis threefold too little for carrying a letter to your lover.

PROTEUS. But what said she?

SPEED. [Nods his head.] Ay.

PROTEUS. Nod—“Ay”. Why, that’s “noddy”.

SPEED. You mistook, sir. I say she did nod, and you ask me if she did nod; and I say “Ay”.

PROTEUS. And that set together is “noddy”.

SPEED. Now you have taken the pains to set it together, take it for your pains.

PROTEUS. No, no, you shall have it for bearing the letter.

SPEED. Well, I perceive I must be fain to bear with you.

PROTEUS. Why, sir, how do you bear with me?

SPEED. Marry, sir, the letter, very orderly, having nothing but the word “noddy” for my pains.

PROTEUS. Beshrew me, but you have a quick wit.

SPEED. And yet it cannot overtake your slow purse.

PROTEUS. Come, come, open the matter; in brief, what said she?

SPEED. Open your purse, that the money and the matter may be both at once delivered.

PROTEUS. [Giving him a coin.] Well, sir, here is for your pains. What said she?

SPEED. Truly, sir, I think you’ll hardly win her.

PROTEUS. Why? Couldst thou perceive so much from her?

SPEED. Sir, I could perceive nothing at all from her; no, not so much as a ducat for delivering your letter. And being so hard to me that brought your mind, I fear she’ll prove as hard to you in telling your mind. Give her no token but stones, for she’s as hard as steel.

PROTEUS. What said she, nothing?

SPEED. No, not so much as “Take this for thy pains.” To testify your bounty, I thank you, you have testerned me; in requital whereof, henceforth carry your letters yourself. And so, sir, I’ll commend you to my master.

PROTEUS. Go, go, begone, to save your ship from wrack, Which cannot perish having thee aboard, Being destined to a drier death on shore.

[Exit Speed.]

I must go send some better messenger. I fear my Julia would not deign my lines, Receiving them from such a worthless post.

SCENE II. The same. The garden of Julia’s house

Enter Julia and Lucetta.

JULIA. But say, Lucetta, now we are alone, Wouldst thou then counsel me to fall in love?

LUCETTA. Ay, madam, so you stumble not unheedfully.

JULIA. Of all the fair resort of gentlemen That every day with parle encounter me, In thy opinion which is worthiest love?

LUCETTA. Please you, repeat their names, I’ll show my mind According to my shallow simple skill.

JULIA. What think’st thou of the fair Sir Eglamour?

LUCETTA. As of a knight well-spoken, neat, and fine; But, were I you, he never should be mine.

JULIA. What think’st thou of the rich Mercatio?

LUCETTA. Well of his wealth; but of himself, so-so.

JULIA. What think’st thou of the gentle Proteus?

LUCETTA. Lord, Lord, to see what folly reigns in us!

JULIA. How now? What means this passion at his name?

LUCETTA. Pardon, dear madam, ’tis a passing shame That I, unworthy body as I am, Should censure thus on lovely gentlemen.

JULIA. Why not on Proteus, as of all the rest?

LUCETTA. Then thus: of many good I think him best.

JULIA. Your reason?

LUCETTA. I have no other but a woman’s reason: I think him so because I think him so.

JULIA. And wouldst thou have me cast my love on him?

LUCETTA. Ay, if you thought your love not cast away.

JULIA. Why, he of all the rest hath never moved me.

LUCETTA. Yet he of all the rest I think best loves ye.

JULIA. His little speaking shows his love but small.

LUCETTA. Fire that’s closest kept burns most of all.

JULIA. They do not love that do not show their love.

LUCETTA. O, they love least that let men know their love.

JULIA. I would I knew his mind.

LUCETTA. Peruse this paper, madam.

[Gives her a letter.]

JULIA. To Julia—Say, from whom?

LUCETTA. That the contents will show.

JULIA. Say, say, who gave it thee?

LUCETTA. Sir Valentine’s page, and sent, I think, from Proteus. He would have given it you, but I, being in the way, Did in your name receive it. Pardon the fault, I pray.

JULIA. Now, by my modesty, a goodly broker! Dare you presume to harbour wanton lines? To whisper and conspire against my youth? Now trust me, ’tis an office of great worth, And you an officer fit for the place. There, take the paper; see it be returned, Or else return no more into my sight.

LUCETTA. To plead for love deserves more fee than hate.

JULIA. Will ye be gone?

LUCETTA. That you may ruminate.

JULIA. And yet I would I had o’erlooked the letter. It were a shame to call her back again And pray her to a fault for which I chid her. What fool is she, that knows I am a maid And would not force the letter to my view, Since maids in modesty say “No” to that Which they would have the profferer construe “Ay”. Fie, fie, how wayward is this foolish love That like a testy babe will scratch the nurse And presently, all humbled, kiss the rod! How churlishly I chid Lucetta hence, When willingly I would have had her here! How angerly I taught my brow to frown, When inward joy enforced my heart to smile! My penance is to call Lucetta back And ask remission for my folly past. What ho! Lucetta!

Enter Lucetta.

LUCETTA. What would your ladyship?

JULIA. Is ’t near dinner time?

LUCETTA. I would it were, That you might kill your stomach on your meat And not upon your maid.

[Drops and picks up the letter.]

JULIA. What is’t that you took up so gingerly?

LUCETTA. Nothing.

JULIA. Why didst thou stoop, then?

LUCETTA. To take a paper up that I let fall.

JULIA. And is that paper nothing?

LUCETTA. Nothing concerning me.

JULIA. Then let it lie for those that it concerns.

LUCETTA. Madam, it will not lie where it concerns, Unless it have a false interpreter.

JULIA. Some love of yours hath writ to you in rhyme.

LUCETTA. That I might sing it, madam, to a tune. Give me a note. Your ladyship can set—

JULIA. As little by such toys as may be possible. Best sing it to the tune of “Light o’ Love”.

LUCETTA. It is too heavy for so light a tune.

JULIA. Heavy? Belike it hath some burden then?

LUCETTA. Ay, and melodious were it, would you sing it.

JULIA. And why not you?

LUCETTA. I cannot reach so high.

JULIA. Let’s see your song. [Taking the letter.] How now, minion!

LUCETTA. Keep tune there still, so you will sing it out. And yet methinks I do not like this tune.

JULIA. You do not?

LUCETTA. No, madam, it is too sharp.

JULIA. You, minion, are too saucy.

LUCETTA. Nay, now you are too flat And mar the concord with too harsh a descant. There wanteth but a mean to fill your song.

JULIA. The mean is drowned with your unruly bass.

LUCETTA. Indeed, I bid the base for Proteus.

JULIA. This babble shall not henceforth trouble me. Here is a coil with protestation! [Tears the letter.] Go, get you gone, and let the papers lie. You would be fingering them to anger me.

LUCETTA. She makes it strange, but she would be best pleased To be so angered with another letter.

JULIA. Nay, would I were so angered with the same! O hateful hands, to tear such loving words! Injurious wasps, to feed on such sweet honey And kill the bees that yield it with your stings! I’ll kiss each several paper for amends. Look, here is writ kind Julia. Unkind Julia! As in revenge of thy ingratitude, I throw thy name against the bruising stones, Trampling contemptuously on thy disdain. And here is writ love-wounded Proteus. Poor wounded name, my bosom as a bed Shall lodge thee till thy wound be throughly healed; And thus I search it with a sovereign kiss. But twice or thrice was Proteus written down. Be calm, good wind, blow not a word away Till I have found each letter in the letter Except mine own name. That some whirlwind bear Unto a ragged, fearful, hanging rock, And throw it thence into the raging sea. Lo, here in one line is his name twice writ: Poor forlorn Proteus, passionate Proteus, To the sweet Julia. That I’ll tear away; And yet I will not, sith so prettily He couples it to his complaining names. Thus will I fold them one upon another. Now kiss, embrace, contend, do what you will.

LUCETTA. Madam, dinner is ready, and your father stays.

JULIA. Well, let us go.

LUCETTA. What, shall these papers lie like tell-tales here?

JULIA. If you respect them, best to take them up.

LUCETTA. Nay, I was taken up for laying them down. Yet here they shall not lie, for catching cold.

[Picks up pieces of the letter.]

JULIA. I see you have a month’s mind to them.

LUCETTA. Ay, madam, you may say what sights you see; I see things too, although you judge I wink.

JULIA. Come, come, will’t please you go?

SCENE III. The same. A room in Antonio’s house

Enter Antonio and Pantino.

ANTONIO. Tell me, Pantino, what sad talk was that Wherewith my brother held you in the cloister?

PANTINO. ’Twas of his nephew Proteus, your son.

ANTONIO. Why, what of him?

PANTINO. He wondered that your lordship Would suffer him to spend his youth at home While other men, of slender reputation, Put forth their sons to seek preferment out: Some to the wars to try their fortune there; Some to discover islands far away; Some to the studious universities. For any or for all these exercises He said that Proteus your son was meet, And did request me to importune you To let him spend his time no more at home, Which would be great impeachment to his age In having known no travel in his youth.

ANTONIO. Nor need’st thou much importune me to that Whereon this month I have been hammering. I have considered well his loss of time, And how he cannot be a perfect man, Not being tried and tutored in the world. Experience is by industry achieved And perfected by the swift course of time. Then tell me whither were I best to send him?

PANTINO. I think your lordship is not ignorant How his companion, youthful Valentine, Attends the Emperor in his royal court.

ANTONIO. I know it well.

PANTINO. ’Twere good, I think, your lordship sent him thither. There shall he practise tilts and tournaments, Hear sweet discourse, converse with noblemen, And be in eye of every exercise Worthy his youth and nobleness of birth.

ANTONIO. I like thy counsel; well hast thou advised, And that thou mayst perceive how well I like it, The execution of it shall make known. Even with the speediest expedition I will dispatch him to the Emperor’s court.

PANTINO. Tomorrow, may it please you, Don Alphonso With other gentlemen of good esteem Are journeying to salute the Emperor And to commend their service to his will.

ANTONIO. Good company. With them shall Proteus go.

Enter Proteus reading a letter.

And in good time! Now will we break with him.

PROTEUS. Sweet love, sweet lines, sweet life! Here is her hand, the agent of her heart; Here is her oath for love, her honour’s pawn. O, that our fathers would applaud our loves To seal our happiness with their consents. O heavenly Julia!

ANTONIO. How now? What letter are you reading there?

PROTEUS. May’t please your lordship, ’tis a word or two Of commendations sent from Valentine, Delivered by a friend that came from him.

ANTONIO. Lend me the letter. Let me see what news.

PROTEUS. There is no news, my lord, but that he writes How happily he lives, how well beloved And daily graced by the Emperor, Wishing me with him, partner of his fortune.

ANTONIO. And how stand you affected to his wish?

PROTEUS. As one relying on your lordship’s will, And not depending on his friendly wish.

ANTONIO. My will is something sorted with his wish. Muse not that I thus suddenly proceed, For what I will, I will, and there an end. I am resolved that thou shalt spend some time With Valentinus in the Emperor’s court. What maintenance he from his friends receives, Like exhibition thou shalt have from me. Tomorrow be in readiness to go. Excuse it not, for I am peremptory.

PROTEUS. My lord, I cannot be so soon provided; Please you deliberate a day or two.

ANTONIO. Look what thou want’st shall be sent after thee. No more of stay. Tomorrow thou must go. Come on, Pantino, you shall be employed To hasten on his expedition.

[Exeunt Antonio and Pantino.]

PROTEUS. Thus have I shunned the fire for fear of burning And drenched me in the sea, where I am drowned. I feared to show my father Julia’s letter Lest he should take exceptions to my love, And with the vantage of mine own excuse Hath he excepted most against my love. O, how this spring of love resembleth The uncertain glory of an April day, Which now shows all the beauty of the sun, And by an by a cloud takes all away.

Enter Pantino.

PANTINO. Sir Proteus, your father calls for you. He is in haste. Therefore, I pray you, go.

PROTEUS. Why, this it is: my heart accords thereto, And yet a thousand times it answers “No”.

SCENE I. Milan. A room in the Duke’s palace

Enter Valentine and Speed.

SPEED. Sir, your glove.

VALENTINE. Not mine. My gloves are on.

SPEED. Why, then, this may be yours, for this is but one.

VALENTINE. Ha? Let me see. Ay, give it me, it’s mine. Sweet ornament that decks a thing divine! Ah, Silvia, Silvia!

SPEED. [Calling.] Madam Silvia! Madam Silvia!

VALENTINE. How now, sirrah?

SPEED. She is not within hearing, sir.

VALENTINE. Why, sir, who bade you call her?

SPEED. Your worship, sir, or else I mistook.

VALENTINE. Well, you’ll still be too forward.

SPEED. And yet I was last chidden for being too slow.

VALENTINE. Go to, sir. Tell me, do you know Madam Silvia?

SPEED. She that your worship loves?

VALENTINE. Why, how know you that I am in love?

SPEED. Marry, by these special marks: first, you have learned, like Sir Proteus, to wreathe your arms like a malcontent; to relish a love-song, like a robin redbreast; to walk alone, like one that had the pestilence; to sigh, like a schoolboy that had lost his ABC; to weep, like a young wench that had buried her grandam; to fast, like one that takes diet; to watch, like one that fears robbing; to speak puling, like a beggar at Hallowmas. You were wont, when you laughed, to crow like a cock; when you walked, to walk like one of the lions; when you fasted, it was presently after dinner; when you looked sadly, it was for want of money. And now you are metamorphosed with a mistress, that, when I look on you, I can hardly think you my master.

VALENTINE. Are all these things perceived in me?

SPEED. They are all perceived without ye.

VALENTINE. Without me? They cannot.

SPEED. Without you? Nay, that’s certain, for without you were so simple, none else would. But you are so without these follies, that these follies are within you, and shine through you like the water in an urinal, that not an eye that sees you but is a physician to comment on your malady.

VALENTINE. But tell me, dost thou know my lady Silvia?

SPEED. She that you gaze on so as she sits at supper?

VALENTINE. Hast thou observed that? Even she I mean.

SPEED. Why, sir, I know her not.

VALENTINE. Dost thou know her by my gazing on her, and yet know’st her not?

SPEED. Is she not hard-favoured, sir?

VALENTINE. Not so fair, boy, as well-favoured.

SPEED. Sir, I know that well enough.

VALENTINE. What dost thou know?

SPEED. That she is not so fair as, of you, well-favoured.

VALENTINE. I mean that her beauty is exquisite but her favour infinite.

SPEED. That’s because the one is painted, and the other out of all count.

VALENTINE. How painted? And how out of count?

SPEED. Marry, sir, so painted to make her fair, that no man counts of her beauty.

VALENTINE. How esteem’st thou me? I account of her beauty.

SPEED. You never saw her since she was deformed.

VALENTINE. How long hath she been deformed?

SPEED. Ever since you loved her.

VALENTINE. I have loved her ever since I saw her, and still I see her beautiful.

SPEED. If you love her, you cannot see her.

VALENTINE. Why?

SPEED. Because Love is blind. O, that you had mine eyes, or your own eyes had the lights they were wont to have when you chid at Sir Proteus for going ungartered!

VALENTINE. What should I see then?

SPEED. Your own present folly and her passing deformity; for he, being in love, could not see to garter his hose; and you, being in love, cannot see to put on your hose.

VALENTINE. Belike, boy, then you are in love, for last morning you could not see to wipe my shoes.

SPEED. True, sir, I was in love with my bed. I thank you, you swinged me for my love, which makes me the bolder to chide you for yours.

VALENTINE. In conclusion, I stand affected to her.

SPEED. I would you were set, so your affection would cease.

VALENTINE. Last night she enjoined me to write some lines to one she loves.

SPEED. And have you?

VALENTINE. I have.

SPEED. Are they not lamely writ?

VALENTINE. No, boy, but as well as I can do them. Peace, here she comes.

Enter Silvia.

SPEED. [Aside.] O excellent motion! O exceeding puppet! Now will he interpret to her.

VALENTINE. Madam and mistress, a thousand good-morrows.

SPEED. [Aside.] O, give ye good e’en! Here’s a million of manners.

SILVIA. Sir Valentine and servant, to you two thousand.

SPEED. [Aside.] He should give her interest, and she gives it him.

VALENTINE. As you enjoined me, I have writ your letter Unto the secret nameless friend of yours, Which I was much unwilling to proceed in But for my duty to your ladyship.

SILVIA. I thank you, gentle servant, ’tis very clerkly done.

VALENTINE. Now trust me, madam, it came hardly off, For, being ignorant to whom it goes, I writ at random, very doubtfully.

SILVIA. Perchance you think too much of so much pains?

VALENTINE. No, madam; so it stead you, I will write, Please you command, a thousand times as much. And yet—

SILVIA. A pretty period. Well, I guess the sequel; And yet I will not name it. And yet I care not. And yet take this again.

[Offers him the letter.]

And yet I thank you, Meaning henceforth to trouble you no more.

SPEED. [Aside.] And yet you will; and yet another “yet”.

VALENTINE. What means your ladyship? Do you not like it?

SILVIA. Yes, yes, the lines are very quaintly writ, But, since unwillingly, take them again. Nay, take them.

[Offers the letter again.]

VALENTINE. Madam, they are for you.

SILVIA. Ay, ay, you writ them, sir, at my request, But I will none of them. They are for you. I would have had them writ more movingly.

VALENTINE. Please you, I’ll write your ladyship another.

SILVIA. And when it’s writ, for my sake read it over, And if it please you, so; if not, why, so.

VALENTINE. If it please me, madam? What then?

SILVIA. Why, if it please you, take it for your labour. And so good morrow, servant.

SPEED. [Aside.] O jest unseen, inscrutable, invisible, As a nose on a man’s face, or a weathercock on a steeple! My master sues to her, and she hath taught her suitor, He being her pupil, to become her tutor. O excellent device! Was there ever heard a better? That my master, being scribe, to himself should write the letter?

VALENTINE. How now, sir? What are you reasoning with yourself?

SPEED. Nay, I was rhyming. ’Tis you that have the reason.

VALENTINE. To do what?

SPEED. To be a spokesman from Madam Silvia.

VALENTINE. To whom?

SPEED. To yourself. Why, she woos you by a figure.

VALENTINE. What figure?

SPEED. By a letter, I should say.

VALENTINE. Why, she hath not writ to me.

SPEED. What need she, when she hath made you write to yourself? Why, do you not perceive the jest?

SPEED. No believing you indeed, sir. But did you perceive her earnest?

VALENTINE. She gave me none, except an angry word.

SPEED. Why, she hath given you a letter.

VALENTINE. That’s the letter I writ to her friend.

SPEED. And that letter hath she delivered, and there an end.

VALENTINE. I would it were no worse.

SPEED. I’ll warrant you, ’tis as well. For often have you writ to her, and she, in modesty Or else for want of idle time, could not again reply, Or fearing else some messenger that might her mind discover, Herself hath taught her love himself to write unto her lover. All this I speak in print, for in print I found it. Why muse you, sir? ’Tis dinner time.

VALENTINE. I have dined.

SPEED. Ay, but hearken, sir, though the chameleon Love can feed on the air, I am one that am nourished by my victuals, and would fain have meat. O, be not like your mistress! Be moved, be moved.

SCENE II. Verona. A room in Julia’s house

Enter Proteus and Julia.

PROTEUS. Have patience, gentle Julia.

JULIA. I must, where is no remedy.

PROTEUS. When possibly I can, I will return.

JULIA. If you turn not, you will return the sooner. Keep this remembrance for thy Julia’s sake.

[Gives him a ring.]

PROTEUS. Why, then we’ll make exchange. Here, take you this.

[Gives her a ring.]

JULIA. And seal the bargain with a holy kiss.

PROTEUS. Here is my hand for my true constancy. And when that hour o’erslips me in the day Wherein I sigh not, Julia, for thy sake, The next ensuing hour some foul mischance Torment me for my love’s forgetfulness. My father stays my coming; answer not. The tide is now—nay, not thy tide of tears, That tide will stay me longer than I should. Julia, farewell.

[Exit Julia.]

What, gone without a word? Ay, so true love should do. It cannot speak, For truth hath better deeds than words to grace it.

PANTINO. Sir Proteus, you are stayed for.

PROTEUS. Go, I come, I come. Alas, this parting strikes poor lovers dumb.

SCENE III. The same. A street

Enter Lance with his dog Crab.

LANCE. Nay, ’twill be this hour ere I have done weeping; all the kind of the Lances have this very fault. I have received my proportion, like the prodigious son, and am going with Sir Proteus to the Imperial’s court. I think Crab my dog be the sourest-natured dog that lives: my mother weeping, my father wailing, my sister crying, our maid howling, our cat wringing her hands, and all our house in a great perplexity, yet did not this cruel-hearted cur shed one tear. He is a stone, a very pebblestone, and has no more pity in him than a dog. A Jew would have wept to have seen our parting. Why, my grandam, having no eyes, look you, wept herself blind at my parting. Nay, I’ll show you the manner of it. This shoe is my father. No, this left shoe is my father; no, no, this left shoe is my mother. Nay, that cannot be so neither. Yes, it is so, it is so; it hath the worser sole. This shoe with the hole in it is my mother, and this my father. A vengeance on ’t, there ’tis. Now, sir, this staff is my sister, for, look you, she is as white as a lily and as small as a wand. This hat is Nan, our maid. I am the dog. No, the dog is himself, and I am the dog. O, the dog is me, and I am myself. Ay, so, so. Now come I to my father: “Father, your blessing.” Now should not the shoe speak a word for weeping. Now should I kiss my father. Well, he weeps on. Now come I to my mother. O, that she could speak now like a wood woman! Well, I kiss her. Why there ’tis; here’s my mother’s breath up and down. Now come I to my sister. Mark the moan she makes. Now the dog all this while sheds not a tear nor speaks a word; but see how I lay the dust with my tears.

PANTINO. Lance, away, away! Aboard! Thy master is shipped, and thou art to post after with oars. What’s the matter? Why weep’st thou, man? Away, ass. You’ll lose the tide if you tarry any longer.

LANCE. It is no matter if the tied were lost, for it is the unkindest tied that ever any man tied.

PANTINO. What’s the unkindest tide?

LANCE. Why, he that’s tied here, Crab, my dog.

PANTINO. Tut, man, I mean thou’lt lose the flood, and, in losing the flood, lose thy voyage, and, in losing thy voyage, lose thy master, and, in losing thy master, lose thy service, and, in losing thy service—why dost thou stop my mouth?

LANCE. For fear thou shouldst lose thy tongue.

PANTINO. Where should I lose my tongue?

LANCE. In thy tale.

PANTINO. In thy tail!

LANCE. Lose the tide, and the voyage, and the master, and the service, and the tied? Why, man, if the river were dry, I am able to fill it with my tears; if the wind were down, I could drive the boat with my sighs.

PANTINO. Come, come away, man. I was sent to call thee.

LANCE. Sir, call me what thou dar’st.

PANTINO. Will thou go?

LANCE. Well, I will go.

SCENE IV. Milan. A room in the Duke’s palace

Enter Valentine, Silvia, Thurio and Speed.

SILVIA. Servant!

VALENTINE. Mistress?

SPEED. Master, Sir Thurio frowns on you.

VALENTINE. Ay, boy, it’s for love.

SPEED. Not of you.

VALENTINE. Of my mistress, then.

SPEED. ’Twere good you knocked him.

SILVIA. Servant, you are sad.

VALENTINE. Indeed, madam, I seem so.

THURIO. Seem you that you are not?

VALENTINE. Haply I do.

THURIO. So do counterfeits.

VALENTINE. So do you.

THURIO. What seem I that I am not?

VALENTINE. Wise.

THURIO. What instance of the contrary?

VALENTINE. Your folly.

THURIO. And how quote you my folly?

VALENTINE. I quote it in your jerkin.

THURIO. My jerkin is a doublet.

VALENTINE. Well, then, I’ll double your folly.

THURIO. How!

SILVIA. What, angry, Sir Thurio? Do you change colour?

VALENTINE. Give him leave, madam, he is a kind of chameleon.

THURIO. That hath more mind to feed on your blood than live in your air.

VALENTINE. You have said, sir.

THURIO. Ay, sir, and done too, for this time.

VALENTINE. I know it well, sir. You always end ere you begin.

SILVIA. A fine volley of words, gentlemen, and quickly shot off.

VALENTINE. ’Tis indeed, madam, we thank the giver.

SILVIA. Who is that, servant?

VALENTINE. Yourself, sweet lady, for you gave the fire. Sir Thurio borrows his wit from your ladyship’s looks, and spends what he borrows kindly in your company.

THURIO. Sir, if you spend word for word with me, I shall make your wit bankrupt.

VALENTINE. I know it well, sir. You have an exchequer of words and, I think, no other treasure to give your followers, for it appears by their bare liveries that they live by your bare words.

SILVIA. No more, gentlemen, no more. Here comes my father.

DUKE. Now, daughter Silvia, you are hard beset. Sir Valentine, your father is in good health. What say you to a letter from your friends Of much good news?

VALENTINE. My lord, I will be thankful To any happy messenger from thence.

DUKE. Know ye Don Antonio, your countryman?

VALENTINE. Ay, my good lord, I know the gentleman To be of worth and worthy estimation, And not without desert so well reputed.

DUKE. Hath he not a son?

VALENTINE. Ay, my good lord, a son that well deserves The honour and regard of such a father.

DUKE. You know him well?

VALENTINE. I knew him as myself, for from our infancy We have conversed and spent our hours together. And though myself have been an idle truant, Omitting the sweet benefit of time To clothe mine age with angel-like perfection, Yet hath Sir Proteus, for that’s his name, Made use and fair advantage of his days: His years but young, but his experience old; His head unmellowed, but his judgement ripe; And in a word, for far behind his worth Comes all the praises that I now bestow, He is complete in feature and in mind, With all good grace to grace a gentleman.

DUKE. Beshrew me, sir, but if he make this good, He is as worthy for an empress’ love As meet to be an emperor’s counsellor. Well, sir, this gentleman is come to me With commendation from great potentates, And here he means to spend his time awhile. I think ’tis no unwelcome news to you.

VALENTINE. Should I have wished a thing, it had been he.

DUKE. Welcome him then according to his worth. Silvia, I speak to you, and you, Sir Thurio. For Valentine, I need not cite him to it. I will send him hither to you presently.

VALENTINE. This is the gentleman I told your ladyship Had come along with me but that his mistresss Did hold his eyes locked in her crystal looks.

SILVIA. Belike that now she hath enfranchised them Upon some other pawn for fealty.

VALENTINE. Nay, sure, I think she holds them prisoners still.

SILVIA. Nay, then, he should be blind, and being blind How could he see his way to seek out you?

VALENTINE. Why, lady, Love hath twenty pair of eyes.

THURIO. They say that Love hath not an eye at all.

VALENTINE. To see such lovers, Thurio, as yourself. Upon a homely object, Love can wink.

SILVIA. Have done, have done. Here comes the gentleman.

Enter Proteus.

VALENTINE. Welcome, dear Proteus! Mistress, I beseech you Confirm his welcome with some special favour.

SILVIA. His worth is warrant for his welcome hither, If this be he you oft have wished to hear from.

VALENTINE. Mistress, it is. Sweet lady, entertain him To be my fellow-servant to your ladyship.

SILVIA. Too low a mistress for so high a servant.

PROTEUS. Not so, sweet lady, but too mean a servant To have a look of such a worthy mistress.

VALENTINE. Leave off discourse of disability. Sweet lady, entertain him for your servant.

PROTEUS. My duty will I boast of, nothing else.

SILVIA. And duty never yet did want his meed. Servant, you are welcome to a worthless mistress.

PROTEUS. I’ll die on him that says so but yourself.

SILVIA. That you are welcome?

PROTEUS. That you are worthless.

SERVANT. Madam, my lord your father would speak with you.

SILVIA. I wait upon his pleasure.

Come, Sir Thurio, Go with me.—Once more, new servant, welcome. I’ll leave you to confer of home affairs; When you have done, we look to hear from you.

PROTEUS. We’ll both attend upon your ladyship.

[Exeunt Silvia and Thurio.]

VALENTINE. Now, tell me, how do all from whence you came?

PROTEUS. Your friends are well and have them much commended.

VALENTINE. And how do yours?

PROTEUS. I left them all in health.

VALENTINE. How does your lady? And how thrives your love?

PROTEUS. My tales of love were wont to weary you; I know you joy not in a love-discourse.

VALENTINE. Ay, Proteus, but that life is altered now. I have done penance for contemning Love, Whose high imperious thoughts have punished me With bitter fasts, with penitential groans, With nightly tears, and daily heart-sore sighs; For in revenge of my contempt of love, Love hath chased sleep from my enthralled eyes And made them watchers of mine own heart’s sorrow. O gentle Proteus, Love’s a mighty lord, And hath so humbled me as I confess There is no woe to his correction, Nor to his service no such joy on earth. Now, no discourse, except it be of love; Now can I break my fast, dine, sup, and sleep Upon the very naked name of love.

PROTEUS. Enough; I read your fortune in your eye. Was this the idol that you worship so?

VALENTINE. Even she; and is she not a heavenly saint?

PROTEUS. No, but she is an earthly paragon.

VALENTINE. Call her divine.

PROTEUS. I will not flatter her.

VALENTINE. O, flatter me, for love delights in praises.

PROTEUS. When I was sick, you gave me bitter pills, And I must minister the like to you.

VALENTINE. Then speak the truth by her; if not divine, Yet let her be a principality, Sovereign to all the creatures on the earth.

PROTEUS. Except my mistress.

VALENTINE. Sweet, except not any, Except thou wilt except against my love.

PROTEUS. Have I not reason to prefer mine own?

VALENTINE. And I will help thee to prefer her too: She shall be dignified with this high honour, To bear my lady’s train, lest the base earth Should from her vesture chance to steal a kiss, And, of so great a favour growing proud, Disdain to root the summer-swelling flower And make rough winter everlastingly.

PROTEUS. Why, Valentine, what braggartism is this?

VALENTINE. Pardon me, Proteus, all I can is nothing To her, whose worth makes other worthies nothing; She is alone.

PROTEUS. Then let her alone.

VALENTINE. Not for the world! Why, man, she is mine own, And I as rich in having such a jewel As twenty seas, if all their sand were pearl, The water nectar, and the rocks pure gold. Forgive me that I do not dream on thee, Because thou seest me dote upon my love. My foolish rival, that her father likes Only for his possessions are so huge, Is gone with her along, and I must after, For love, thou know’st, is full of jealousy.

PROTEUS. But she loves you?

VALENTINE. Ay, and we are betrothed; nay more, our marriage hour, With all the cunning manner of our flight, Determined of: how I must climb her window, The ladder made of cords, and all the means Plotted and ’greed on for my happiness. Good Proteus, go with me to my chamber, In these affairs to aid me with thy counsel.

PROTEUS. Go on before; I shall enquire you forth. I must unto the road to disembark Some necessaries that I needs must use, And then I’ll presently attend you.

VALENTINE. Will you make haste?

PROTEUS. I will.

[Exit Valentine.]

Even as one heat another heat expels, Or as one nail by strength drives out another, So the remembrance of my former love Is by a newer object quite forgotten. Is it mine eye, or Valentine’s praise, Her true perfection, or my false transgression, That makes me reasonless to reason thus? She is fair; and so is Julia that I love— That I did love, for now my love is thawed, Which like a waxen image ’gainst a fire Bears no impression of the thing it was. Methinks my zeal to Valentine is cold, And that I love him not as I was wont. O, but I love his lady too too much, And that’s the reason I love him so little. How shall I dote on her with more advice That thus without advice begin to love her? ’Tis but her picture I have yet beheld, And that hath dazzled my reason’s light; But when I look on her perfections, There is no reason but I shall be blind. If I can check my erring love, I will; If not, to compass her I’ll use my skill.

SCENE V. The same. A street

Enter Speed and Lance with his dog Crab.

SPEED. Lance, by mine honesty, welcome to Milan!

LANCE. Forswear not thyself, sweet youth, for I am not welcome. I reckon this always, that a man is never undone till he be hanged, nor never welcome to a place till some certain shot be paid and the hostess say “Welcome”.

SPEED. Come on, you madcap. I’ll to the alehouse with you presently, where, for one shot of five pence, thou shalt have five thousand welcomes. But, sirrah, how did thy master part with Madam Julia?

LANCE. Marry, after they closed in earnest, they parted very fairly in jest.

SPEED. But shall she marry him?

LANCE. No.

SPEED. How then? Shall he marry her?

LANCE. No, neither.

SPEED. What, are they broken?

LANCE. No, they are both as whole as a fish.

SPEED. Why then, how stands the matter with them?

LANCE. Marry, thus: when it stands well with him, it stands well with her.

SPEED. What an ass art thou! I understand thee not.

LANCE. What a block art thou that thou canst not! My staff understands me.

SPEED. What thou sayst?

LANCE. Ay, and what I do too. Look thee, I’ll but lean, and my staff understands me.

SPEED. It stands under thee indeed.

LANCE. Why, stand-under and under-stand is all one.

SPEED. But tell me true, will’t be a match?

LANCE. Ask my dog. If he say “Ay”, it will; if he say “No”, it will; if he shake his tail and say nothing, it will.

SPEED. The conclusion is, then, that it will.

LANCE. Thou shalt never get such a secret from me but by a parable.

SPEED. ’Tis well that I get it so. But, Lance, how sayst thou that my master is become a notable lover?

LANCE. I never knew him otherwise.

SPEED. Than how?

LANCE. A notable lubber, as thou reportest him to be.

SPEED. Why, thou whoreson ass, thou mistak’st me.

LANCE. Why, fool, I meant not thee, I meant thy master.

SPEED. I tell thee, my master is become a hot lover.

LANCE. Why, I tell thee, I care not though he burn himself in love. If thou wilt, go with me to the alehouse; if not, thou art an Hebrew, a Jew, and not worth the name of a Christian.

SPEED. Why?

LANCE. Because thou hast not so much charity in thee as to go to the ale with a Christian. Wilt thou go?

SPEED. At thy service.

SCENE VI. The same. The Duke’s palace

Enter Proteus alone.

PROTEUS. To leave my Julia, shall I be forsworn; To love fair Silvia, shall I be forsworn; To wrong my friend, I shall be much forsworn. And e’en that power which gave me first my oath Provokes me to this threefold perjury. Love bade me swear, and Love bids me forswear. O sweet-suggesting Love, if thou hast sinned, Teach me, thy tempted subject, to excuse it. At first I did adore a twinkling star, But now I worship a celestial sun. Unheedful vows may heedfully be broken, And he wants wit that wants resolved will To learn his wit t’ exchange the bad for better. Fie, fie, unreverend tongue, to call her bad Whose sovereignty so oft thou hast preferred With twenty thousand soul-confirming oaths. I cannot leave to love, and yet I do; But there I leave to love where I should love. Julia I lose, and Valentine I lose; If I keep them, I needs must lose myself; If I lose them, thus find I by their loss, For Valentine, myself; for Julia, Silvia. I to myself am dearer than a friend, For love is still most precious in itself, And Silvia—witness heaven that made her fair— Shows Julia but a swarthy Ethiope. I will forget that Julia is alive, Remembering that my love to her is dead; And Valentine I’ll hold an enemy, Aiming at Silvia as a sweeter friend. I cannot now prove constant to myself Without some treachery used to Valentine. This night he meaneth with a corded ladder To climb celestial Silvia’s chamber window, Myself in counsel, his competitor. Now presently I’ll give her father notice Of their disguising and pretended flight, Who, all enraged, will banish Valentine, For Thurio he intends shall wed his daughter. But Valentine being gone, I’ll quickly cross By some sly trick blunt Thurio’s dull proceeding. Love, lend me wings to make my purpose swift, As thou hast lent me wit to plot this drift.

SCENE VII. Verona. A room in Julia’s house

JULIA. Counsel, Lucetta; gentle girl, assist me, And ev’n in kind love I do conjure thee, Who art the table wherein all my thoughts Are visibly charactered and engraved, To lesson me and tell me some good mean How with my honour I may undertake A journey to my loving Proteus.

LUCETTA. Alas, the way is wearisome and long.

JULIA. A true-devoted pilgrim is not weary To measure kingdoms with his feeble steps; Much less shall she that hath Love’s wings to fly, And when the flight is made to one so dear, Of such divine perfection, as Sir Proteus.

LUCETTA. Better forbear till Proteus make return.

JULIA. O, know’st thou not his looks are my soul’s food? Pity the dearth that I have pined in By longing for that food so long a time. Didst thou but know the inly touch of love Thou wouldst as soon go kindle fire with snow As seek to quench the fire of love with words.

LUCETTA. I do not seek to quench your love’s hot fire, But qualify the fire’s extreme rage, Lest it should burn above the bounds of reason.

JULIA. The more thou damm’st it up, the more it burns. The current that with gentle murmur glides, Thou know’st, being stopped, impatiently doth rage; But when his fair course is not hindered, He makes sweet music with th’ enamelled stones, Giving a gentle kiss to every sedge He overtaketh in his pilgrimage; And so by many winding nooks he strays With willing sport to the wild ocean. Then let me go and hinder not my course. I’ll be as patient as a gentle stream And make a pastime of each weary step Till the last step have brought me to my love, And there I’ll rest as after much turmoil A blessed soul doth in Elysium.

LUCETTA. But in what habit will you go along?

JULIA. Not like a woman, for I would prevent The loose encounters of lascivious men. Gentle Lucetta, fit me with such weeds As may beseem some well-reputed page.

LUCETTA. Why then, your ladyship must cut your hair.

JULIA. No, girl, I’ll knit it up in silken strings With twenty odd-conceited true-love knots. To be fantastic may become a youth Of greater time than I shall show to be.

LUCETTA. What fashion, madam, shall I make your breeches?

JULIA. That fits as well as “Tell me, good my lord, What compass will you wear your farthingale?” Why e’en what fashion thou best likes, Lucetta.

LUCETTA. You must needs have them with a codpiece, madam.

JULIA. Out, out, Lucetta, that will be ill-favoured.

LUCETTA. A round hose, madam, now’s not worth a pin Unless you have a codpiece to stick pins on.

JULIA. Lucetta, as thou lov’st me, let me have What thou think’st meet and is most mannerly. But tell me, wench, how will the world repute me For undertaking so unstaid a journey? I fear me it will make me scandalized.

LUCETTA. If you think so, then stay at home and go not.

JULIA. Nay, that I will not.

LUCETTA. Then never dream on infamy, but go. If Proteus like your journey when you come, No matter who’s displeased when you are gone. I fear me he will scarce be pleased withal.

JULIA. That is the least, Lucetta, of my fear. A thousand oaths, an ocean of his tears, And instances of infinite of love, Warrant me welcome to my Proteus.

LUCETTA. All these are servants to deceitful men.

JULIA. Base men that use them to so base effect! But truer stars did govern Proteus’ birth. His words are bonds, his oaths are oracles, His love sincere, his thoughts immaculate, His tears pure messengers sent from his heart, His heart as far from fraud as heaven from earth.

LUCETTA. Pray heav’n he prove so when you come to him.

JULIA. Now, as thou lov’st me, do him not that wrong To bear a hard opinion of his truth. Only deserve my love by loving him. And presently go with me to my chamber To take a note of what I stand in need of To furnish me upon my longing journey. All that is mine I leave at thy dispose, My goods, my lands, my reputation; Only, in lieu thereof, dispatch me hence. Come, answer not, but to it presently. I am impatient of my tarriance.

SCENE I. Milan. An anteroom in the Duke’s palace

Enter Duke, Thurio and Proteus.

DUKE. Sir Thurio, give us leave, I pray, awhile; We have some secrets to confer about.

[Exit Thurio.]

Now tell me, Proteus, what’s your will with me?

PROTEUS. My gracious lord, that which I would discover The law of friendship bids me to conceal, But when I call to mind your gracious favours Done to me, undeserving as I am, My duty pricks me on to utter that Which else no worldly good should draw from me. Know, worthy prince, Sir Valentine my friend This night intends to steal away your daughter; Myself am one made privy to the plot. I know you have determined to bestow her On Thurio, whom your gentle daughter hates, And should she thus be stol’n away from you, It would be much vexation to your age. Thus, for my duty’s sake, I rather chose To cross my friend in his intended drift Than, by concealing it, heap on your head A pack of sorrows which would press you down, Being unprevented, to your timeless grave.

DUKE. Proteus, I thank thee for thine honest care, Which to requite command me while I live. This love of theirs myself have often seen, Haply when they have judged me fast asleep, And oftentimes have purposed to forbid Sir Valentine her company and my court. But fearing lest my jealous aim might err And so, unworthily, disgrace the man— A rashness that I ever yet have shunned— I gave him gentle looks, thereby to find That which thyself hast now disclosed to me. And that thou mayst perceive my fear of this, Knowing that tender youth is soon suggested, I nightly lodge her in an upper tower, The key whereof myself have ever kept; And thence she cannot be conveyed away.

PROTEUS. Know, noble lord, they have devised a mean How he her chamber-window will ascend And with a corded ladder fetch her down; For which the youthful lover now is gone, And this way comes he with it presently, Where, if it please you, you may intercept him. But, good my lord, do it so cunningly That my discovery be not aimed at; For love of you, not hate unto my friend, Hath made me publisher of this pretence.

DUKE. Upon mine honour, he shall never know That I had any light from thee of this.

PROTEUS. Adieu, my lord, Sir Valentine is coming.

DUKE. Sir Valentine, whither away so fast?

VALENTINE. Please it your Grace, there is a messenger That stays to bear my letters to my friends, And I am going to deliver them.

DUKE. Be they of much import?

VALENTINE. The tenor of them doth but signify My health and happy being at your court.

DUKE. Nay then, no matter. Stay with me awhile; I am to break with thee of some affairs That touch me near, wherein thou must be secret. ’Tis not unknown to thee that I have sought To match my friend Sir Thurio to my daughter.

VALENTINE. I know it well, my lord, and sure the match Were rich and honourable. Besides, the gentleman Is full of virtue, bounty, worth, and qualities Beseeming such a wife as your fair daughter. Cannot your grace win her to fancy him?

DUKE. No, trust me, she is peevish, sullen, froward, Proud, disobedient, stubborn, lacking duty, Neither regarding that she is my child Nor fearing me as if I were her father; And, may I say to thee, this pride of hers, Upon advice, hath drawn my love from her, And where I thought the remnant of mine age Should have been cherished by her childlike duty, I now am full resolved to take a wife And turn her out to who will take her in. Then let her beauty be her wedding dower, For me and my possessions she esteems not.

VALENTINE. What would your Grace have me to do in this?

DUKE. There is a lady of Verona here Whom I affect; but she is nice, and coy, And nought esteems my aged eloquence. Now therefore would I have thee to my tutor— For long agone I have forgot to court; Besides, the fashion of the time is changed— How and which way I may bestow myself To be regarded in her sun-bright eye.

VALENTINE. Win her with gifts if she respect not words; Dumb jewels often in their silent kind More than quick words do move a woman’s mind.

DUKE. But she did scorn a present that I sent her.

VALENTINE. A woman sometime scorns what best contents her. Send her another; never give her o’er, For scorn at first makes after-love the more. If she do frown, ’tis not in hate of you, But rather to beget more love in you. If she do chide, ’tis not to have you gone, Forwhy the fools are mad if left alone. Take no repulse, whatever she doth say; For “Get you gone” she doth not mean “Away!” Flatter and praise, commend, extol their graces; Though ne’er so black, say they have angels’ faces. That man that hath a tongue, I say, is no man If with his tongue he cannot win a woman.

DUKE. But she I mean is promised by her friends Unto a youthful gentleman of worth, And kept severely from resort of men, That no man hath access by day to her.

VALENTINE. Why then, I would resort to her by night.

DUKE. Ay, but the doors be locked and keys kept safe, That no man hath recourse to her by night.

VALENTINE. What lets but one may enter at her window?

DUKE. Her chamber is aloft, far from the ground, And built so shelving that one cannot climb it Without apparent hazard of his life.

VALENTINE. Why, then a ladder quaintly made of cords To cast up with a pair of anchoring hooks, Would serve to scale another Hero’s tower, So bold Leander would adventure it.

DUKE. Now, as thou art a gentleman of blood, Advise me where I may have such a ladder.

VALENTINE. When would you use it? Pray, sir, tell me that.

DUKE. This very night; for Love is like a child That longs for everything that he can come by.

VALENTINE. By seven o’clock I’ll get you such a ladder.

DUKE. But, hark thee: I will go to her alone; How shall I best convey the ladder thither?

VALENTINE. It will be light, my lord, that you may bear it Under a cloak that is of any length.

DUKE. A cloak as long as thine will serve the turn?

VALENTINE. Ay, my good lord.

DUKE. Then let me see thy cloak; I’ll get me one of such another length.

VALENTINE. Why, any cloak will serve the turn, my lord.

DUKE. How shall I fashion me to wear a cloak? I pray thee, let me feel thy cloak upon me.

[Takes Valentine’s cloak and finds a letter and a rope ladder concealed under it.]

What letter is this same? What’s here?—To Silvia? And here an engine fit for my proceeding. I’ll be so bold to break the seal for once.

[Reads.] My thoughts do harbour with my Silvia nightly, And slaves they are to me that send them flying. O, could their master come and go as lightly, Himself would lodge where, senseless, they are lying. My herald thoughts in thy pure bosom rest them, While I, their king, that thither them importune, Do curse the grace that with such grace hath blest them, Because myself do want my servants’ fortune. I curse myself, for they are sent by me, That they should harbour where their lord should be. What’s here? [Reads.] Silvia, this night I will enfranchise thee. ’Tis so; and here’s the ladder for the purpose. Why, Phaëthon—for thou art Merops’ son— Wilt thou aspire to guide the heavenly car, And with thy daring folly burn the world? Wilt thou reach stars because they shine on thee? Go, base intruder, overweening slave, Bestow thy fawning smiles on equal mates, And think my patience, more than thy desert, Is privilege for thy departure hence. Thank me for this more than for all the favours Which, all too much, I have bestowed on thee. But if thou linger in my territories Longer than swiftest expedition Will give thee time to leave our royal court, By heaven, my wrath shall far exceed the love I ever bore my daughter or thyself. Begone, I will not hear thy vain excuse, But, as thou lov’st thy life, make speed from hence.

VALENTINE. And why not death, rather than living torment? To die is to be banished from myself, And Silvia is myself; banished from her Is self from self—a deadly banishment. What light is light, if Silvia be not seen? What joy is joy, if Silvia be not by? Unless it be to think that she is by And feed upon the shadow of perfection. Except I be by Silvia in the night, There is no music in the nightingale. Unless I look on Silvia in the day, There is no day for me to look upon. She is my essence, and I leave to be If I be not by her fair influence Fostered, illumined, cherished, kept alive. I fly not death, to fly his deadly doom: Tarry I here, I but attend on death, But fly I hence, I fly away from life.

Enter Proteus and Lance.

PROTEUS. Run, boy, run, run, seek him out.

LANCE. So-ho, so-ho!

PROTEUS. What seest thou?

LANCE. Him we go to find. There’s not a hair on ’s head but ’tis a Valentine.

PROTEUS. Valentine?

VALENTINE. No.

PROTEUS. Who then? His spirit?

VALENTINE. Neither.

PROTEUS. What then?

VALENTINE. Nothing.

LANCE. Can nothing speak? Master, shall I strike?

PROTEUS. Who wouldst thou strike?

LANCE. Nothing.

PROTEUS. Villain, forbear.

LANCE. Why, sir, I’ll strike nothing. I pray you—

PROTEUS. Sirrah, I say, forbear.—Friend Valentine, a word.

VALENTINE. My ears are stopped and cannot hear good news, So much of bad already hath possessed them.

PROTEUS. Then in dumb silence will I bury mine, For they are harsh, untuneable, and bad.

VALENTINE. Is Silvia dead?

PROTEUS. No, Valentine.

VALENTINE. No Valentine indeed for sacred Silvia. Hath she forsworn me?

VALENTINE. No Valentine, if Silvia have forsworn me. What is your news?

LANCE. Sir, there is a proclamation that you are vanished.

PROTEUS. That thou art banished—O, that’s the news— From hence, from Silvia, and from me thy friend.

VALENTINE. O, I have fed upon this woe already, And now excess of it will make me surfeit. Doth Silvia know that I am banished?

PROTEUS. Ay, ay; and she hath offered to the doom— Which unreversed stands in effectual force— A sea of melting pearl, which some call tears; Those at her father’s churlish feet she tendered, With them, upon her knees, her humble self, Wringing her hands, whose whiteness so became them As if but now they waxed pale for woe. But neither bended knees, pure hands held up, Sad sighs, deep groans, nor silver-shedding tears Could penetrate her uncompassionate sire; But Valentine, if he be ta’en, must die. Besides, her intercession chafed him so, When she for thy repeal was suppliant, That to close prison he commanded her, With many bitter threats of biding there.

VALENTINE. No more, unless the next word that thou speak’st Have some malignant power upon my life. If so, I pray thee breathe it in mine ear, As ending anthem of my endless dolour.

PROTEUS. Cease to lament for that thou canst not help, And study help for that which thou lament’st. Time is the nurse and breeder of all good. Here if thou stay, thou canst not see thy love; Besides, thy staying will abridge thy life. Hope is a lover’s staff; walk hence with that And manage it against despairing thoughts. Thy letters may be here, though thou art hence, Which, being writ to me, shall be delivered Even in the milk-white bosom of thy love. The time now serves not to expostulate. Come, I’ll convey thee through the city-gate, And, ere I part with thee, confer at large Of all that may concern thy love affairs. As thou lov’st Silvia, though not for thyself, Regard thy danger, and along with me.

VALENTINE. I pray thee, Lance, an if thou seest my boy, Bid him make haste and meet me at the North Gate.

PROTEUS. Go, sirrah, find him out. Come, Valentine.

VALENTINE. O, my dear Silvia! Hapless Valentine!

[Exeunt Valentine and Proteus.]

LANCE. I am but a fool, look you, and yet I have the wit to think my master is a kind of a knave; but that’s all one if he be but one knave. He lives not now that knows me to be in love, yet I am in love, but a team of horse shall not pluck that from me, nor who ’tis I love; and yet ’tis a woman, but what woman I will not tell myself; and yet ’tis a milkmaid; yet ’tis not a maid, for she hath had gossips; yet ’tis a maid, for she is her master’s maid and serves for wages. She hath more qualities than a water-spaniel, which is much in a bare Christian. [Pulls out a paper.] Here is the cate-log of her condition. Imprimis, She can fetch and carry. Why, a horse can do no more; nay, a horse cannot fetch but only carry; therefore is she better than a jade. Item, She can milk. Look you, a sweet virtue in a maid with clean hands.

SPEED. How now, Signior Lance? What news with your mastership?

LANCE. With my master’s ship? Why, it is at sea.

SPEED. Well, your old vice still: mistake the word. What news, then, in your paper?

LANCE. The blackest news that ever thou heard’st.

SPEED. Why, man? How black?

LANCE. Why, as black as ink.

SPEED. Let me read them.

LANCE. Fie on thee, jolt-head, thou canst not read.

SPEED. Thou liest. I can.

LANCE. I will try thee. Tell me this, who begot thee?

SPEED. Marry, the son of my grandfather.

LANCE. O, illiterate loiterer! It was the son of thy grandmother. This proves that thou canst not read.

SPEED. Come, fool, come; try me in thy paper.

LANCE. [Gives him the paper.] There; and Saint Nicholas be thy speed.

SPEED. Imprimis, She can milk.

LANCE. Ay, that she can.

SPEED. Item, She brews good ale.

LANCE. And thereof comes the proverb, “Blessing of your heart, you brew good ale.”

SPEED. Item, She can sew.

LANCE. That’s as much as to say, “Can she so?”

SPEED. Item, She can knit.

LANCE. What need a man care for a stock with a wench, when she can knit him a stock?

SPEED. Item, She can wash and scour.

LANCE. A special virtue, for then she need not be washed and scoured.

SPEED. Item, She can spin.

LANCE. Then may I set the world on wheels, when she can spin for her living.

SPEED. Item, She hath many nameless virtues.

LANCE. That’s as much as to say, “bastard virtues”, that indeed know not their fathers, and therefore have no names.

SPEED. Here follow her vices.

LANCE. Close at the heels of her virtues.

SPEED. Item, She is not to be kissed fasting in respect of her breath.

LANCE. Well, that fault may be mended with a breakfast. Read on.

SPEED. Item, She hath a sweet mouth.

LANCE. That makes amends for her sour breath.

SPEED. Item, She doth talk in her sleep.

LANCE. It’s no matter for that, so she sleep not in her talk.

SPEED. Item, She is slow in words.

LANCE. O villain, that set this down among her vices! To be slow in words is a woman’s only virtue. I pray thee, out with’t, and place it for her chief virtue.

SPEED. Item, She is proud.

LANCE. Out with that too; it was Eve’s legacy and cannot be ta’en from her.

SPEED. Item, She hath no teeth.

LANCE. I care not for that neither, because I love crusts.

SPEED. Item, She is curst.

LANCE. Well, the best is, she hath no teeth to bite.

SPEED. Item, She will often praise her liquor.

LANCE. If her liquor be good, she shall; if she will not, I will, for good things should be praised.

SPEED. Item, She is too liberal.

LANCE. Of her tongue she cannot, for that’s writ down she is slow of; of her purse she shall not, for that I’ll keep shut. Now, of another thing she may, and that cannot I help. Well, proceed.

SPEED. Item, She hath more hair than wit, and more faults than hairs, and more wealth than faults.

LANCE. Stop there; I’ll have her. She was mine and not mine twice or thrice in that last article. Rehearse that once more.

SPEED. Item, She hath more hair than wit—

LANCE. More hair than wit. It may be; I’ll prove it: the cover of the salt hides the salt, and therefore it is more than the salt; the hair that covers the wit is more than the wit, for the greater hides the less. What’s next?

SPEED. And more faults than hairs.

LANCE. That’s monstrous! O, that that were out!

SPEED. And more wealth than faults.

LANCE. Why, that word makes the faults gracious. Well, I’ll have her; an if it be a match, as nothing is impossible—

SPEED. What then?

LANCE. Why, then will I tell thee that thy master stays for thee at the North Gate.

SPEED. For me?

LANCE. For thee? Ay, who art thou? He hath stayed for a better man than thee.

SPEED. And must I go to him?

LANCE. Thou must run to him, for thou hast stayed so long that going will scarce serve the turn.

SPEED. Why didst not tell me sooner? Pox of your love letters!

LANCE. Now will he be swinged for reading my letter; an unmannerly slave, that will thrust himself into secrets. I’ll after, to rejoice in the boy’s correction.

SCENE II. The same. A room in the Duke’s palace

Enter Duke and Thurio.

DUKE. Sir Thurio, fear not but that she will love you Now Valentine is banished from her sight.

THURIO. Since his exile she hath despised me most, Forsworn my company and railed at me, That I am desperate of obtaining her.

DUKE. This weak impress of love is as a figure Trenched in ice, which with an hour’s heat Dissolves to water and doth lose his form. A little time will melt her frozen thoughts, And worthless Valentine shall be forgot.

How now, Sir Proteus? Is your countryman, According to our proclamation, gone?

PROTEUS. Gone, my good lord.

DUKE. My daughter takes his going grievously.

PROTEUS. A little time, my lord, will kill that grief.

DUKE. So I believe, but Thurio thinks not so. Proteus, the good conceit I hold of thee, For thou hast shown some sign of good desert, Makes me the better to confer with thee.

PROTEUS. Longer than I prove loyal to your Grace Let me not live to look upon your Grace.

DUKE. Thou know’st how willingly I would effect The match between Sir Thurio and my daughter?

PROTEUS. I do, my lord.

DUKE. And also, I think, thou art not ignorant How she opposes her against my will?

PROTEUS. She did, my lord, when Valentine was here.

DUKE. Ay, and perversely she persevers so. What might we do to make the girl forget The love of Valentine, and love Sir Thurio?

PROTEUS. The best way is to slander Valentine With falsehood, cowardice, and poor descent, Three things that women highly hold in hate.

DUKE. Ay, but she’ll think that it is spoke in hate.

PROTEUS. Ay, if his enemy deliver it; Therefore it must with circumstance be spoken By one whom she esteemeth as his friend.

DUKE. Then you must undertake to slander him.

PROTEUS. And that, my lord, I shall be loath to do. ’Tis an ill office for a gentleman, Especially against his very friend.

DUKE. Where your good word cannot advantage him, Your slander never can endamage him; Therefore the office is indifferent, Being entreated to it by your friend.

PROTEUS. You have prevailed, my lord. If I can do it By aught that I can speak in his dispraise, She shall not long continue love to him. But say this weed her love from Valentine, It follows not that she will love Sir Thurio.

THURIO. Therefore, as you unwind her love from him, Lest it should ravel and be good to none, You must provide to bottom it on me, Which must be done by praising me as much As you in worth dispraise Sir Valentine.

DUKE. And, Proteus, we dare trust you in this kind Because we know, on Valentine’s report, You are already Love’s firm votary And cannot soon revolt and change your mind. Upon this warrant shall you have access Where you with Silvia may confer at large— For she is lumpish, heavy, melancholy, And, for your friend’s sake, will be glad of you— Where you may temper her by your persuasion To hate young Valentine and love my friend.

PROTEUS. As much as I can do I will effect. But you, Sir Thurio, are not sharp enough. You must lay lime to tangle her desires By wailful sonnets, whose composed rhymes Should be full-fraught with serviceable vows.

DUKE. Ay, much is the force of heaven-bred poesy.

PROTEUS. Say that upon the altar of her beauty You sacrifice your tears, your sighs, your heart. Write till your ink be dry, and with your tears Moist it again, and frame some feeling line That may discover such integrity. For Orpheus’ lute was strung with poets’ sinews, Whose golden touch could soften steel and stones, Make tigers tame, and huge leviathans Forsake unsounded deeps to dance on sands. After your dire-lamenting elegies, Visit by night your lady’s chamber-window With some sweet consort; to their instruments Tune a deploring dump; the night’s dead silence Will well become such sweet-complaining grievance. This, or else nothing, will inherit her.

DUKE. This discipline shows thou hast been in love.

THURIO. And thy advice this night I’ll put in practice. Therefore, sweet Proteus, my direction-giver, Let us into the city presently To sort some gentlemen well skilled in music. I have a sonnet that will serve the turn To give the onset to thy good advice.

DUKE. About it, gentlemen!

PROTEUS. We’ll wait upon your Grace till after supper, And afterward determine our proceedings.

DUKE. Even now about it! I will pardon you.

SCENE I. A forest between Milan and Verona

Enter certain Outlaws.

FIRST OUTLAW. Fellows, stand fast. I see a passenger.

SECOND OUTLAW. If there be ten, shrink not, but down with ’em.

THIRD OUTLAW. Stand, sir, and throw us that you have about ye. If not, we’ll make you sit, and rifle you.

SPEED. Sir, we are undone: these are the villains That all the travellers do fear so much.

VALENTINE. My friends—

FIRST OUTLAW. That’s not so, sir. We are your enemies.

SECOND OUTLAW. Peace! We’ll hear him.

THIRD OUTLAW. Ay, by my beard, will we, for he is a proper man.

VALENTINE. Then know that I have little wealth to lose. A man I am crossed with adversity; My riches are these poor habiliments, Of which if you should here disfurnish me, You take the sum and substance that I have.

SECOND OUTLAW. Whither travel you?

VALENTINE. To Verona.

FIRST OUTLAW. Whence came you?

VALENTINE. From Milan.

THIRD OUTLAW. Have you long sojourned there?

VALENTINE. Some sixteen months, and longer might have stayed If crooked fortune had not thwarted me.

FIRST OUTLAW. What, were you banished thence?

VALENTINE. I was.

SECOND OUTLAW. For what offence?

VALENTINE. For that which now torments me to rehearse; I killed a man, whose death I much repent, But yet I slew him manfully in fight, Without false vantage or base treachery.

FIRST OUTLAW. Why, ne’er repent it, if it were done so. But were you banished for so small a fault?

VALENTINE. I was, and held me glad of such a doom.

SECOND OUTLAW. Have you the tongues?

VALENTINE. My youthful travel therein made me happy, Or else I often had been miserable.

THIRD OUTLAW. By the bare scalp of Robin Hood’s fat friar, This fellow were a king for our wild faction.

FIRST OUTLAW. We’ll have him. Sirs, a word.

SPEED. Master, be one of them. It’s an honourable kind of thievery.

VALENTINE. Peace, villain.

SECOND OUTLAW. Tell us this: have you anything to take to?

VALENTINE. Nothing but my fortune.

THIRD OUTLAW. Know then that some of us are gentlemen, Such as the fury of ungoverned youth Thrust from the company of awful men. Myself was from Verona banished For practising to steal away a lady, An heir, and near allied unto the Duke.

SECOND OUTLAW. And I from Mantua, for a gentleman Who, in my mood, I stabbed unto the heart.

FIRST OUTLAW. And I for suchlike petty crimes as these. But to the purpose, for we cite our faults, That they may hold excused our lawless lives; And partly, seeing you are beautified With goodly shape, and by your own report A linguist, and a man of such perfection As we do in our quality much want—

SECOND OUTLAW. Indeed because you are a banished man, Therefore, above the rest, we parley to you. Are you content to be our general? To make a virtue of necessity And live as we do in this wilderness?

THIRD OUTLAW. What sayst thou? Wilt thou be of our consort? Say “Ay”, and be the captain of us all, We’ll do thee homage and be ruled by thee, Love thee as our commander and our king.

FIRST OUTLAW. But if thou scorn our courtesy, thou diest.

SECOND OUTLAW. Thou shalt not live to brag what we have offered.

VALENTINE. I take your offer and will live with you, Provided that you do no outrages On silly women or poor passengers.

THIRD OUTLAW. No, we detest such vile base practices. Come, go with us; we’ll bring thee to our crews And show thee all the treasure we have got, Which, with ourselves, all rest at thy dispose.

SCENE II. Milan. The court of the Duke’s palace

PROTEUS. Already have I been false to Valentine, And now I must be as unjust to Thurio. Under the colour of commending him, I have access my own love to prefer. But Silvia is too fair, too true, too holy To be corrupted with my worthless gifts. When I protest true loyalty to her, She twits me with my falsehood to my friend; When to her beauty I commend my vows, She bids me think how I have been forsworn In breaking faith with Julia, whom I loved; And notwithstanding all her sudden quips, The least whereof would quell a lover’s hope, Yet, spaniel-like, the more she spurns my love, The more it grows and fawneth on her still. But here comes Thurio. Now must we to her window, And give some evening music to her ear.

Enter Thurio and Musicians.

THURIO. How now, Sir Proteus, are you crept before us?

PROTEUS. Ay, gentle Thurio, for you know that love Will creep in service where it cannot go.

THURIO. Ay, but I hope, sir, that you love not here.

PROTEUS. Sir, but I do, or else I would be hence.

THURIO. Who? Silvia?

PROTEUS. Ay, Silvia, for your sake.

THURIO. I thank you for your own. Now, gentlemen, Let’s tune, and to it lustily awhile.

Enter Host and Julia in boy’s clothes, as Sebastian.

HOST. Now, my young guest, methinks you’re allycholly. I pray you, why is it?

JULIA. Marry, mine host, because I cannot be merry.

HOST. Come, we’ll have you merry. I’ll bring you where you shall hear music, and see the gentleman that you asked for.

JULIA. But shall I hear him speak?

HOST. Ay, that you shall.

JULIA. That will be music.

HOST. Hark, hark!

JULIA. Is he among these?

HOST. Ay; but peace, let’s hear ’em.

PROTEUS. Who is Silvia? What is she, That all our swains commend her? Holy, fair, and wise is she; The heaven such grace did lend her, That she might admired be.

Is she kind as she is fair? For beauty lives with kindness. Love doth to her eyes repair, To help him of his blindness; And, being helped, inhabits there.

Then to Silvia let us sing, That Silvia is excelling; She excels each mortal thing Upon the dull earth dwelling. To her let us garlands bring.

HOST. How now, are you sadder than you were before? How do you, man? The music likes you not.

JULIA. You mistake; the musician likes me not.

HOST. Why, my pretty youth?

JULIA. He plays false, father.

HOST. How, out of tune on the strings?

JULIA. Not so; but yet so false that he grieves my very heart-strings.

HOST. You have a quick ear.

JULIA. Ay, I would I were deaf; it makes me have a slow heart.

HOST. I perceive you delight not in music.

JULIA. Not a whit, when it jars so.

HOST. Hark, what fine change is in the music!

JULIA. Ay, that change is the spite.

HOST. You would have them always play but one thing?

JULIA. I would always have one play but one thing. But, host, doth this Sir Proteus, that we talk on, Often resort unto this gentlewoman?

HOST. I tell you what Lance, his man, told me: he loved her out of all nick.

JULIA. Where is Lance?

HOST. Gone to seek his dog, which tomorrow, by his master’s command, he must carry for a present to his lady.

JULIA. Peace, stand aside. The company parts.

PROTEUS. Sir Thurio, fear not you; I will so plead That you shall say my cunning drift excels.

THURIO. Where meet we?

PROTEUS. At Saint Gregory’s well.

THURIO. Farewell.

[Exeunt Thurio and Musicians.]

Enter Silvia above.

PROTEUS. Madam, good even to your ladyship.

SILVIA. I thank you for your music, gentlemen. Who is that that spake?

PROTEUS. One, lady, if you knew his pure heart’s truth, You would quickly learn to know him by his voice.

SILVIA. Sir Proteus, as I take it.

PROTEUS. Sir Proteus, gentle lady, and your servant.

SILVIA. What’s your will?

PROTEUS. That I may compass yours.

SILVIA. You have your wish. My will is even this, That presently you hie you home to bed. Thou subtle, perjured, false, disloyal man, Think’st thou I am so shallow, so conceitless, To be seduced by thy flattery, That hast deceived so many with thy vows? Return, return, and make thy love amends. For me, by this pale queen of night I swear, I am so far from granting thy request That I despise thee for thy wrongful suit, And by and by intend to chide myself Even for this time I spend in talking to thee.

PROTEUS. I grant, sweet love, that I did love a lady, But she is dead.

JULIA. [Aside.] ’Twere false, if I should speak it, For I am sure she is not buried.

SILVIA. Say that she be; yet Valentine thy friend Survives, to whom, thyself art witness, I am betrothed. And art thou not ashamed To wrong him with thy importunacy?

PROTEUS. I likewise hear that Valentine is dead.

SILVIA. And so suppose am I, for in his grave, Assure thyself, my love is buried.

PROTEUS. Sweet lady, let me rake it from the earth.

SILVIA. Go to thy lady’s grave and call hers thence, Or, at the least, in hers sepulchre thine.

JULIA. [Aside.] He heard not that.

PROTEUS. Madam, if your heart be so obdurate, Vouchsafe me yet your picture for my love, The picture that is hanging in your chamber; To that I’ll speak, to that I’ll sigh and weep; For since the substance of your perfect self Is else devoted, I am but a shadow; And to your shadow will I make true love.

JULIA. [Aside.] If ’twere a substance you would sure deceive it And make it but a shadow, as I am.

SILVIA. I am very loath to be your idol, sir; But since your falsehood shall become you well To worship shadows and adore false shapes, Send to me in the morning, and I’ll send it. And so, good rest.

PROTEUS. As wretches have o’ernight That wait for execution in the morn.

JULIA. Host, will you go?

HOST. By my halidom, I was fast asleep.

JULIA. Pray you, where lies Sir Proteus?

HOST. Marry, at my house. Trust me, I think ’tis almost day.

JULIA. Not so; but it hath been the longest night That e’er I watched, and the most heaviest.

Enter Eglamour.

EGLAMOUR. This is the hour that Madam Silvia Entreated me to call and know her mind; There’s some great matter she’d employ me in. Madam, madam!

SILVIA. Who calls?

EGLAMOUR. Your servant and your friend; One that attends your ladyship’s command.

SILVIA. Sir Eglamour, a thousand times good morrow.

EGLAMOUR. As many, worthy lady, to yourself. According to your ladyship’s impose, I am thus early come to know what service It is your pleasure to command me in.

SILVIA. O Eglamour, thou art a gentleman— Think not I flatter, for I swear I do not— Valiant, wise, remorseful, well accomplished. Thou art not ignorant what dear good will I bear unto the banished Valentine, Nor how my father would enforce me marry Vain Thurio, whom my very soul abhorred. Thyself hast loved, and I have heard thee say No grief did ever come so near thy heart As when thy lady and thy true love died, Upon whose grave thou vowed’st pure chastity. Sir Eglamour, I would to Valentine, To Mantua, where I hear he makes abode; And for the ways are dangerous to pass, I do desire thy worthy company, Upon whose faith and honour I repose. Urge not my father’s anger, Eglamour, But think upon my grief, a lady’s grief, And on the justice of my flying hence To keep me from a most unholy match, Which heaven and fortune still rewards with plagues. I do desire thee, even from a heart As full of sorrows as the sea of sands, To bear me company and go with me; If not, to hide what I have said to thee, That I may venture to depart alone.

EGLAMOUR. Madam, I pity much your grievances, Which, since I know they virtuously are placed, I give consent to go along with you, Recking as little what betideth me As much I wish all good befortune you. When will you go?

SILVIA. This evening coming.

EGLAMOUR. Where shall I meet you?

SILVIA. At Friar Patrick’s cell, Where I intend holy confession.

EGLAMOUR. I will not fail your ladyship. Good morrow, gentle lady.

SILVIA. Good morrow, kind Sir Eglamour.

LANCE. When a man’s servant shall play the cur with him, look you, it goes hard: one that I brought up of a puppy; one that I saved from drowning when three or four of his blind brothers and sisters went to it. I have taught him even as one would say precisely, “Thus I would teach a dog.” I was sent to deliver him as a present to Mistress Silvia from my master; and I came no sooner into the dining-chamber but he steps me to her trencher and steals her capon’s leg. O, ’tis a foul thing when a cur cannot keep himself in all companies! I would have, as one should say, one that takes upon him to be a dog indeed, to be, as it were, a dog at all things. If I had not had more wit than he, to take a fault upon me that he did, I think verily he had been hanged for’t; sure as I live, he had suffered for’t. You shall judge. He thrusts me himself into the company of three or four gentleman-like dogs under the Duke’s table; he had not been there—bless the mark!—a pissing-while but all the chamber smelt him. “Out with the dog!” says one; “What cur is that?” says another; “Whip him out”, says the third; “Hang him up”, says the Duke. I, having been acquainted with the smell before, knew it was Crab, and goes me to the fellow that whips the dogs. “Friend,” quoth I, “you mean to whip the dog?” “Ay, marry do I,” quoth he. “You do him the more wrong,” quoth I. “’Twas I did the thing you wot of.” He makes me no more ado but whips me out of the chamber. How many masters would do this for his servant? Nay, I’ll be sworn I have sat in the stock for puddings he hath stolen, otherwise he had been executed. I have stood on the pillory for geese he hath killed, otherwise he had suffered for’t. [To Crab.] Thou think’st not of this now. Nay, I remember the trick you served me when I took my leave of Madam Silvia. Did not I bid thee still mark me, and do as I do? When didst thou see me heave up my leg and make water against a gentlewoman’s farthingale? Didst thou ever see me do such a trick?

Enter Proteus and Julia disguised as Sebastian.

PROTEUS. Sebastian is thy name? I like thee well, And will employ thee in some service presently.

JULIA. In what you please; I’ll do what I can.

PROTEUS. I hope thou wilt. [To Lance.] How now, you whoreson peasant, Where have you been these two days loitering?

LANCE. Marry, sir, I carried Mistress Silvia the dog you bade me.

PROTEUS. And what says she to my little jewel?

LANCE. Marry, she says your dog was a cur, and tells you currish thanks is good enough for such a present.

PROTEUS. But she received my dog?

LANCE. No, indeed, did she not. Here have I brought him back again.

PROTEUS. What, didst thou offer her this from me?

LANCE. Ay, sir, the other squirrel was stolen from me by the hangman’s boys in the market-place, and then I offered her mine own, who is a dog as big as ten of yours, and therefore the gift the greater.

PROTEUS. Go, get thee hence, and find my dog again, Or ne’er return again into my sight. Away, I say. Stayest thou to vex me here? A slave that still an end turns me to shame.

[Exit Lance with Crab.]

Sebastian, I have entertained thee Partly that I have need of such a youth That can with some discretion do my business— For ’tis no trusting to yond foolish lout— But chiefly for thy face and thy behaviour, Which, if my augury deceive me not, Witness good bringing up, fortune, and truth. Therefore, know thou, for this I entertain thee. Go presently, and take this ring with thee, Deliver it to Madam Silvia. She loved me well delivered it to me.

JULIA. It seems you loved not her, to leave her token. She’s dead belike?

PROTEUS. Not so; I think she lives.

JULIA. Alas!

PROTEUS. Why dost thou cry “Alas”?

JULIA. I cannot choose But pity her.

PROTEUS. Wherefore shouldst thou pity her?

JULIA. Because methinks that she loved you as well As you do love your lady Silvia. She dreams on him that has forgot her love; You dote on her that cares not for your love. ’Tis pity love should be so contrary; And thinking on it makes me cry “Alas.”

PROTEUS. Well, give her that ring, and therewithal This letter. That’s her chamber. Tell my lady I claim the promise for her heavenly picture. Your message done, hie home unto my chamber, Where thou shalt find me sad and solitary.

JULIA. How many women would do such a message? Alas, poor Proteus, thou hast entertained A fox to be the shepherd of thy lambs. Alas, poor fool, why do I pity him That with his very heart despiseth me? Because he loves her, he despiseth me; Because I love him, I must pity him. This ring I gave him when he parted from me, To bind him to remember my good will; And now am I, unhappy messenger, To plead for that which I would not obtain, To carry that which I would have refused, To praise his faith, which I would have dispraised. I am my master’s true confirmed love, But cannot be true servant to my master Unless I prove false traitor to myself. Yet will I woo for him, but yet so coldly As, heaven it knows, I would not have him speed.

Enter Silvia attended.

Gentlewoman, good day. I pray you be my mean To bring me where to speak with Madam Silvia.

SILVIA. What would you with her, if that I be she?

JULIA. If you be she, I do entreat your patience To hear me speak the message I am sent on.

SILVIA. From whom?

JULIA. From my master, Sir Proteus, madam.

SILVIA. O, he sends you for a picture?

JULIA. Ay, madam.

SILVIA. Ursula, bring my picture there.

[She is brought the picture.]

Go, give your master this. Tell him from me, One Julia, that his changing thoughts forget, Would better fit his chamber than this shadow.

JULIA. Madam, please you peruse this letter.

Pardon me, madam, I have unadvised Delivered you a paper that I should not. This is the letter to your ladyship.

[Takes back the letter and gives her another.]

SILVIA. I pray thee, let me look on that again.

JULIA. It may not be. Good madam, pardon me.

SILVIA. There, hold. I will not look upon your master’s lines. I know they are stuffed with protestations And full of new-found oaths, which he will break As easily as I do tear his paper.

[She tears the second letter.]

JULIA. Madam, he sends your ladyship this ring.

SILVIA. The more shame for him that he sends it me; For I have heard him say a thousand times His Julia gave it him at his departure. Though his false finger have profaned the ring, Mine shall not do his Julia so much wrong.

JULIA. She thanks you.

SILVIA. What sayst thou?

JULIA. I thank you, madam, that you tender her. Poor gentlewoman, my master wrongs her much.

SILVIA. Dost thou know her?

JULIA. Almost as well as I do know myself. To think upon her woes, I do protest That I have wept a hundred several times.

SILVIA. Belike she thinks that Proteus hath forsook her?

JULIA. I think she doth, and that’s her cause of sorrow.

SILVIA. Is she not passing fair?

JULIA. She hath been fairer, madam, than she is. When she did think my master loved her well, She, in my judgement, was as fair as you. But since she did neglect her looking-glass And threw her sun-expelling mask away, The air hath starved the roses in her cheeks And pinched the lily-tincture of her face, That now she is become as black as I.

SILVIA. How tall was she?

JULIA. About my stature; for at Pentecost, When all our pageants of delight were played, Our youth got me to play the woman’s part, And I was trimmed in Madam Julia’s gown, Which served me as fit, by all men’s judgements, As if the garment had been made for me; Therefore I know she is about my height. And at that time I made her weep agood, For I did play a lamentable part. Madam, ’twas Ariadne, passioning For Theseus’ perjury and unjust flight, Which I so lively acted with my tears That my poor mistress, moved therewithal, Wept bitterly; and would I might be dead If I in thought felt not her very sorrow.

SILVIA. She is beholding to thee, gentle youth. Alas, poor lady, desolate and left! I weep myself to think upon thy words. Here, youth, there is my purse. I give thee this For thy sweet mistress’ sake, because thou lov’st her. Farewell.

JULIA. And she shall thank you for’t, if e’er you know her.

[Exeunt Silvia and Attendants.]

A virtuous gentlewoman, mild and beautiful. I hope my master’s suit will be but cold, Since she respects my mistress’ love so much. Alas, how love can trifle with itself! Here is her picture; let me see. I think If I had such a tire, this face of mine Were full as lovely as is this of hers; And yet the painter flattered her a little, Unless I flatter with myself too much. Her hair is auburn, mine is perfect yellow; If that be all the difference in his love, I’ll get me such a coloured periwig. Her eyes are grey as glass, and so are mine. Ay, but her forehead’s low, and mine’s as high. What should it be that he respects in her But I can make respective in myself, If this fond Love were not a blinded god? Come, shadow, come, and take this shadow up, For ’tis thy rival. O thou senseless form, Thou shalt be worshipped, kissed, loved, and adored; And were there sense in his idolatry, My substance should be statue in thy stead. I’ll use thee kindly for thy mistress’ sake, That used me so; or else, by Jove I vow, I should have scratched out your unseeing eyes To make my master out of love with thee.

SCENE I. Milan. An abbey

EGLAMOUR. The sun begins to gild the western sky, And now it is about the very hour That Silvia at Friar Patrick’s cell should meet me. She will not fail, for lovers break not hours, Unless it be to come before their time, So much they spur their expedition.

See where she comes. Lady, a happy evening!

SILVIA. Amen, amen. Go on, good Eglamour, Out at the postern by the abbey wall. I fear I am attended by some spies.

EGLAMOUR. Fear not. The forest is not three leagues off; If we recover that, we are sure enough.

Enter Thurio, Proteus and Julia.

THURIO. Sir Proteus, what says Silvia to my suit?

PROTEUS. O, sir, I find her milder than she was, And yet she takes exceptions at your person.

THURIO. What? That my leg is too long?

PROTEUS. No, that it is too little.

THURIO. I’ll wear a boot to make it somewhat rounder.

JULIA. [Aside.] But love will not be spurred to what it loathes.

THURIO. What says she to my face?

PROTEUS. She says it is a fair one.

THURIO. Nay, then, the wanton lies; my face is black.

PROTEUS. But pearls are fair; and the old saying is, “Black men are pearls in beauteous ladies’ eyes.”

JULIA. [Aside.] ’Tis true, such pearls as put out ladies’ eyes, For I had rather wink than look on them.

THURIO. How likes she my discourse?

PROTEUS. Ill, when you talk of war.

THURIO. But well when I discourse of love and peace.

JULIA. [Aside.] But better, indeed, when you hold your peace.

THURIO. What says she to my valour?

PROTEUS. O, sir, she makes no doubt of that.

JULIA. [Aside.] She needs not, when she knows it cowardice.

THURIO. What says she to my birth?

PROTEUS. That you are well derived.

JULIA. [Aside.] True, from a gentleman to a fool.

THURIO. Considers she my possessions?

PROTEUS. O, ay, and pities them.

THURIO. Wherefore?

JULIA. [Aside.] That such an ass should owe them.

PROTEUS. That they are out by lease.

JULIA. Here comes the Duke.

DUKE. How now, Sir Proteus! How now, Thurio! Which of you saw Sir Eglamour of late?

THURIO. Not I.

PROTEUS. Nor I.

DUKE. Saw you my daughter?

PROTEUS. Neither.

DUKE. Why then, she’s fled unto that peasant Valentine, And Eglamour is in her company. ’Tis true, for Friar Lawrence met them both As he in penance wandered through the forest; Him he knew well, and guessed that it was she, But, being masked, he was not sure of it. Besides, she did intend confession At Patrick’s cell this even, and there she was not. These likelihoods confirm her flight from hence. Therefore, I pray you, stand not to discourse, But mount you presently and meet with me Upon the rising of the mountain foot That leads toward Mantua, whither they are fled. Dispatch, sweet gentlemen, and follow me.

THURIO. Why, this it is to be a peevish girl That flies her fortune when it follows her. I’ll after, more to be revenged on Eglamour Than for the love of reckless Silvia.

PROTEUS. And I will follow, more for Silvia’s love Than hate of Eglamour that goes with her.

JULIA. And I will follow, more to cross that love Than hate for Silvia, that is gone for love.

SCENE III. Frontiers of Mantua. The forest

Enter Silvia and Outlaws.

FIRST OUTLAW. Come, come, be patient. We must bring you to our captain.

SILVIA. A thousand more mischances than this one Have learned me how to brook this patiently.

SECOND OUTLAW. Come, bring her away.

FIRST OUTLAW. Where is the gentleman that was with her?

SECOND OUTLAW. Being nimble-footed, he hath outrun us. But Moyses and Valerius follow him. Go thou with her to the west end of the wood; There is our captain. We’ll follow him that’s fled. The thicket is beset; he cannot ’scape.

[Exeunt Second and Third Outlaws.]

FIRST OUTLAW. Come, I must bring you to our captain’s cave. Fear not; he bears an honourable mind And will not use a woman lawlessly.

SILVIA. O Valentine, this I endure for thee!

SCENE IV. Another part of the forest

VALENTINE. How use doth breed a habit in a man! This shadowy desert, unfrequented woods, I better brook than flourishing peopled towns. Here can I sit alone, unseen of any, And to the nightingale’s complaining notes Tune my distresses and record my woes. O thou that dost inhabit in my breast, Leave not the mansion so long tenantless, Lest, growing ruinous, the building fall And leave no memory of what it was. Repair me with thy presence, Silvia; Thou gentle nymph, cherish thy forlorn swain.

What hallowing and what stir is this today? These are my mates, that make their wills their law, Have some unhappy passenger in chase. They love me well; yet I have much to do To keep them from uncivil outrages. Withdraw thee, Valentine. Who’s this comes here?

Enter Proteus, Silvia and Julia as Sebastian.

PROTEUS. Madam, this service I have done for you— Though you respect not aught your servant doth— To hazard life, and rescue you from him That would have forced your honour and your love. Vouchsafe me for my meed but one fair look; A smaller boon than this I cannot beg, And less than this, I am sure, you cannot give.

VALENTINE. [Aside.] How like a dream is this I see and hear! Love, lend me patience to forbear awhile.

SILVIA. O miserable, unhappy that I am!

PROTEUS. Unhappy were you, madam, ere I came; But by my coming I have made you happy.

SILVIA. By thy approach thou mak’st me most unhappy.

JULIA. [Aside.] And me, when he approacheth to your presence.

SILVIA. Had I been seized by a hungry lion, I would have been a breakfast to the beast Rather than have false Proteus rescue me. O heaven, be judge how I love Valentine, Whose life’s as tender to me as my soul! And full as much, for more there cannot be, I do detest false perjured Proteus. Therefore be gone, solicit me no more.

PROTEUS. What dangerous action, stood it next to death, Would I not undergo for one calm look! O, ’tis the curse in love, and still approved, When women cannot love where they’re beloved.

SILVIA. When Proteus cannot love where he’s beloved. Read over Julia’s heart, thy first best love, For whose dear sake thou didst then rend thy faith Into a thousand oaths; and all those oaths Descended into perjury to love me. Thou hast no faith left now, unless thou’dst two, And that’s far worse than none; better have none Than plural faith, which is too much by one. Thou counterfeit to thy true friend!

PROTEUS. In love Who respects friend?

SILVIA. All men but Proteus.

PROTEUS. Nay, if the gentle spirit of moving words Can no way change you to a milder form, I’ll woo you like a soldier, at arms’ end, And love you ’gainst the nature of love—force ye.

SILVIA. O heaven!

PROTEUS. I’ll force thee yield to my desire.

VALENTINE. [Comes forward.] Ruffian, let go that rude uncivil touch, Thou friend of an ill fashion!

PROTEUS. Valentine!

VALENTINE. Thou common friend, that’s without faith or love, For such is a friend now. Treacherous man, Thou hast beguiled my hopes; nought but mine eye Could have persuaded me. Now I dare not say I have one friend alive; thou wouldst disprove me. Who should be trusted, when one’s right hand Is perjured to the bosom? Proteus, I am sorry I must never trust thee more, But count the world a stranger for thy sake. The private wound is deepest. O time most accurst, ’Mongst all foes that a friend should be the worst!

PROTEUS. My shame and guilt confounds me. Forgive me, Valentine; if hearty sorrow Be a sufficient ransom for offence, I tender ’t here. I do as truly suffer As e’er I did commit.

VALENTINE. Then I am paid, And once again I do receive thee honest. Who by repentance is not satisfied Is nor of heaven nor earth, for these are pleased; By penitence th’ Eternal’s wrath’s appeased. And that my love may appear plain and free, All that was mine in Silvia I give thee.

JULIA. O me unhappy!

[Swoons.]

PROTEUS. Look to the boy.

VALENTINE. Why, boy! Why, wag! How now? What’s the matter? Look up; speak.

JULIA. O good sir, my master charged me to deliver a ring to Madam Silvia, which out of my neglect was never done.

PROTEUS. Where is that ring, boy?

JULIA. Here ’tis; this is it.

PROTEUS. How, let me see. Why, this is the ring I gave to Julia.

JULIA. O, cry you mercy, sir, I have mistook. This is the ring you sent to Silvia.

[Shows another ring.]

PROTEUS. But how cam’st thou by this ring? At my depart I gave this unto Julia.

JULIA. And Julia herself did give it me, And Julia herself have brought it hither.

[She reveals herself.]

PROTEUS. How? Julia?

JULIA. Behold her that gave aim to all thy oaths And entertained ’em deeply in her heart. How oft hast thou with perjury cleft the root! O Proteus, let this habit make thee blush. Be thou ashamed that I have took upon me Such an immodest raiment, if shame live In a disguise of love. It is the lesser blot, modesty finds, Women to change their shapes than men their minds.

PROTEUS. Than men their minds! ’Tis true. O heaven, were man But constant, he were perfect. That one error Fills him with faults, makes him run through all th’ sins; Inconstancy falls off ere it begins. What is in Silvia’s face but I may spy More fresh in Julia’s with a constant eye?

VALENTINE. Come, come, a hand from either. Let me be blest to make this happy close. ’Twere pity two such friends should be long foes.

PROTEUS. Bear witness, heaven, I have my wish for ever.

JULIA. And I mine.

Enter Outlaws with Duke and Thurio.

OUTLAWS. A prize, a prize, a prize!

VALENTINE. Forbear, forbear, I say! It is my lord the Duke. Your Grace is welcome to a man disgraced, Banished Valentine.

DUKE. Sir Valentine!

THURIO. Yonder is Silvia, and Silvia’s mine.

VALENTINE. Thurio, give back, or else embrace thy death; Come not within the measure of my wrath. Do not name Silvia thine; if once again, Verona shall not hold thee. Here she stands; Take but possession of her with a touch— I dare thee but to breathe upon my love.

THURIO. Sir Valentine, I care not for her, I. I hold him but a fool that will endanger His body for a girl that loves him not. I claim her not, and therefore she is thine.

DUKE. The more degenerate and base art thou To make such means for her as thou hast done, And leave her on such slight conditions.— Now, by the honour of my ancestry, I do applaud thy spirit, Valentine, And think thee worthy of an empress’ love. Know then, I here forget all former griefs, Cancel all grudge, repeal thee home again, Plead a new state in thy unrivalled merit, To which I thus subscribe: Sir Valentine, Thou art a gentleman, and well derived; Take thou thy Silvia, for thou hast deserved her.

VALENTINE. I thank your Grace; the gift hath made me happy. I now beseech you, for your daughter’s sake, To grant one boon that I shall ask of you.

DUKE. I grant it for thine own, whate’er it be.

VALENTINE. These banished men, that I have kept withal, Are men endued with worthy qualities. Forgive them what they have committed here, And let them be recalled from their exile. They are reformed, civil, full of good, And fit for great employment, worthy lord.

DUKE. Thou hast prevailed; I pardon them and thee. Dispose of them as thou know’st their deserts. Come, let us go; we will include all jars With triumphs, mirth, and rare solemnity.

VALENTINE. And as we walk along, I dare be bold With our discourse to make your Grace to smile. What think you of this page, my lord?

DUKE. I think the boy hath grace in him; he blushes.

VALENTINE. I warrant you, my lord, more grace than boy.

DUKE. What mean you by that saying?

VALENTINE. Please you, I’ll tell you as we pass along, That you will wonder what hath fortuned. Come, Proteus, ’tis your penance but to hear The story of your loves discovered. That done, our day of marriage shall be yours, One feast, one house, one mutual happiness.

THE TWO NOBLE KINSMEN

ACT I PROLOGUE Scene I. Athens. Before a temple Scene II. Thebes. The Court of the Palace Scene III. Before the gates of Athens Scene IV. A field before Thebes. Scene V. Another part of the same, more remote from Thebes

ACT II Scene I. Athens. A garden, with a castle in the background Scene II. The prison Scene III. The country near Athens Scene IV. Athens. A room in the prison Scene V. An open place in Athens Scene VI. Athens. Before the prison

ACT III Scene I. A forest near Athens Scene II. Another part of the forest Scene III. The same part of the forest as in scene I. Scene IV. Another part of the forest Scene V. Another part of the forest Scene VI. The same part of the forest as in scene III.

ACT IV Scene I. Athens. A room in the prison Scene II. A Room in the Palace Scene III. A room in the prison

ACT V Scene I. Athens. Before the Temples of Mars, Venus, and Diana Scene II. Athens. A Room in the Prison Scene III. A part of the Forest near Athens, and near the Place appointed for the Combat Scene IV. The same; a Block prepared EPILOGUE

ARCITE, the two noble kinsmen, cousins, PALAMON, nephews of Creon, King of Thebes

THESEUS, Duke of Athens HIPPOLYTA, Queen of the Amazons, later Duchess of Athens EMILIA, Sister of Hippolyta PIRITHOUS, friend to Theseus

Three QUEENS, widows of the kings killed in laying siege to Thebes

The JAILER of Theseus’s prison His DAUGHTER, in love with Palamon His BROTHER, The WOOER of the Jailer’s daughter Two FRIENDS of the Jailer, A DOCTOR

ARTESIUS, an Athenian soldier VALERIUS, a Theban WOMAN, attending on Emilia An Athenian GENTLEMAN Six KNIGHTS, three accompanying Arcite, three Palamon

Six COUNTRYMEN, one dressed as a Bavian or baboon Gerald, a SCHOOLMASTER NEL, a countrywoman A TABORER

A singing BOY A HERALD A MESSENGER A SERVANT

Hymen (god of weddings), lords, soldiers, four countrywomen (Fritz, Maudlin, Luce, and Barbary), nymphs, attendants, maids, executioner, guard

SCENE: Athens and the Neighbourhood, except in part of the first Act, where it is Thebes and the Neighbourhood

Flourish. Enter Prologue.

PROLOGUE. New plays and maidenheads are near akin: Much followed both, for both much money gi’en, If they stand sound and well. And a good play, Whose modest scenes blush on his marriage day And shake to lose his honour, is like her That after holy tie and first night’s stir Yet still is Modesty, and still retains More of the maid, to sight, than husband’s pains. We pray our play may be so, for I am sure It has a noble breeder and a pure, A learned, and a poet never went More famous yet ’twixt Po and silver Trent. Chaucer, of all admired, the story gives; There, constant to eternity, it lives. If we let fall the nobleness of this, And the first sound this child hear be a hiss, How will it shake the bones of that good man And make him cry from underground, “O, fan From me the witless chaff of such a writer That blasts my bays and my famed works makes lighter Than Robin Hood!” This is the fear we bring; For, to say truth, it were an endless thing And too ambitious, to aspire to him, Weak as we are, and, almost breathless, swim In this deep water. Do but you hold out Your helping hands, and we shall tack about And something do to save us. You shall hear Scenes, though below his art, may yet appear Worth two hours’ travel. To his bones sweet sleep; Content to you. If this play do not keep A little dull time from us, we perceive Our losses fall so thick, we must needs leave.

[Flourish. Exit.]

SCENE I. Athens. Before a temple

Enter Hymen with a torch burning; a Boy, in a white robe before singing, and strewing flowers. After Hymen, a Nymph encompassed in her tresses, bearing a wheaten garland; then Theseus between two other Nymphs with wheaten chaplets on their heads. Then Hippolyta, the bride, led by Pirithous, and another holding a garland over her head, her tresses likewise hanging. After her, Emilia, holding up her train. Then Artesius and Attendants.

Roses, their sharp spines being gone, Not royal in their smells alone, But in their hue; Maiden pinks of odour faint, Daisies smell-less, yet most quaint, And sweet thyme true;

Primrose, first-born child of Ver, Merry springtime’s harbinger, With harebells dim, Oxlips in their cradles growing, Marigolds on deathbeds blowing, Lark’s-heels trim;

[Strews flowers.]

All dear Nature’s children sweet Lie ’fore bride and bridegroom’s feet, Blessing their sense. Not an angel of the air, Bird melodious or bird fair, Is absent hence.

The crow, the sland’rous cuckoo, nor The boding raven, nor chough hoar, Nor chatt’ring ’pie, May on our bride-house perch or sing, Or with them any discord bring, But from it fly.

Enter three Queens in black, with veils stained, with imperial crowns. The first Queen falls down at the foot of Theseus; the second falls down at the foot of Hippolyta; the third before Emilia.

FIRST QUEEN. For pity’s sake and true gentility’s, Hear and respect me.

SECOND QUEEN. For your mother’s sake, And as you wish your womb may thrive with fair ones, Hear and respect me.

THIRD QUEEN. Now, for the love of him whom Jove hath marked The honour of your bed, and for the sake Of clear virginity, be advocate For us and our distresses. This good deed Shall raze you out o’ th’ book of trespasses All you are set down there.

THESEUS. Sad lady, rise.

HIPPOLYTA. Stand up.

EMILIA. No knees to me. What woman I may stead that is distressed, Does bind me to her.

THESEUS. What’s your request? Deliver you for all.

FIRST QUEEN. We are three queens whose sovereigns fell before The wrath of cruel Creon, who endure The beaks of ravens, talons of the kites, And pecks of crows, in the foul fields of Thebes. He will not suffer us to burn their bones, To urn their ashes, nor to take th’ offence Of mortal loathsomeness from the blest eye Of holy Phœbus, but infects the winds With stench of our slain lords. O, pity, Duke! Thou purger of the earth, draw thy feared sword That does good turns to th’ world; give us the bones Of our dead kings, that we may chapel them; And of thy boundless goodness take some note That for our crowned heads we have no roof Save this, which is the lion’s and the bear’s, And vault to everything.

THESEUS. Pray you, kneel not. I was transported with your speech and suffered Your knees to wrong themselves. I have heard the fortunes Of your dead lords, which gives me such lamenting As wakes my vengeance and revenge for ’em. King Capaneus was your lord. The day That he should marry you, at such a season As now it is with me, I met your groom By Mars’s altar. You were that time fair! Not Juno’s mantle fairer than your tresses, Nor in more bounty spread her. Your wheaten wreath Was then nor threshed nor blasted. Fortune at you Dimpled her cheek with smiles. Hercules, our kinsman, Then weaker than your eyes, laid by his club; He tumbled down upon his Nemean hide And swore his sinews thawed. O grief and time, Fearful consumers, you will all devour!

FIRST QUEEN. O, I hope some god, Some god hath put his mercy in your manhood, Whereto he’ll infuse power, and press you forth Our undertaker.

THESEUS. O, no knees, none, widow! Unto the helmeted Bellona use them, And pray for me, your soldier. Troubled I am.

[Turns away.]

SECOND QUEEN. Honoured Hippolyta, Most dreaded Amazonian, that hast slain The scythe-tusked boar; that with thy arm, as strong As it is white, wast near to make the male To thy sex captive, but that this thy lord, Born to uphold creation in that honour First nature styled it in, shrunk thee into The bound thou wast o’erflowing, at once subduing Thy force and thy affection; soldieress That equally canst poise sternness with pity, Whom now I know hast much more power on him Than ever he had on thee, who ow’st his strength And his love too, who is a servant for The tenor of thy speech, dear glass of ladies, Bid him that we, whom flaming war doth scorch, Under the shadow of his sword may cool us; Require him he advance it o’er our heads; Speak ’t in a woman’s key, like such a woman As any of us three; weep ere you fail. Lend us a knee; But touch the ground for us no longer time Than a dove’s motion when the head’s plucked off. Tell him if he i’ th’ blood-sized field lay swollen, Showing the sun his teeth, grinning at the moon, What you would do.

HIPPOLYTA. Poor lady, say no more. I had as lief trace this good action with you As that whereto I am going, and never yet Went I so willing way. My lord is taken Heart-deep with your distress. Let him consider; I’ll speak anon.

THIRD QUEEN. O, my petition was Set down in ice, which by hot grief uncandied Melts into drops; so sorrow, wanting form, Is pressed with deeper matter.

EMILIA. Pray, stand up; Your grief is written in your cheek.

THIRD QUEEN. O, woe! You cannot read it there. There through my tears, Like wrinkled pebbles in a glassy stream, You may behold ’em. Lady, lady, alack! He that will all the treasure know o’ th’ earth Must know the center too; he that will fish For my least minnow, let him lead his line To catch one at my heart. O, pardon me! Extremity, that sharpens sundry wits, Makes me a fool.

EMILIA. Pray you say nothing, pray you. Who cannot feel nor see the rain, being in ’t, Knows neither wet nor dry. If that you were The ground-piece of some painter, I would buy you T’ instruct me ’gainst a capital grief, indeed Such heart-pierced demonstration. But, alas, Being a natural sister of our sex, Your sorrow beats so ardently upon me That it shall make a counter-reflect ’gainst My brother’s heart and warm it to some pity, Though it were made of stone. Pray have good comfort.

THESEUS. Forward to th’ temple! Leave not out a jot O’ th’ sacred ceremony.

FIRST QUEEN. O, this celebration Will longer last and be more costly than Your suppliants’ war! Remember that your fame Knolls in the ear o’ th’ world; what you do quickly Is not done rashly; your first thought is more Than others’ laboured meditance, your premeditating More than their actions. But, O Jove, your actions, Soon as they move, as ospreys do the fish, Subdue before they touch. Think, dear Duke, think What beds our slain kings have!

SECOND QUEEN. What griefs our beds, That our dear lords have none!

THIRD QUEEN. None fit for th’ dead. Those that with cords, knives, drams, precipitance, Weary of this world’s light, have to themselves Been death’s most horrid agents, human grace Affords them dust and shadow.

FIRST QUEEN. But our lords Lie blist’ring ’fore the visitating sun, And were good kings when living.

THESEUS. It is true, and I will give you comfort To give your dead lords graves; The which to do must make some work with Creon.

FIRST QUEEN. And that work presents itself to th’ doing. Now ’twill take form; the heats are gone tomorrow. Then, bootless toil must recompense itself With its own sweat. Now he’s secure, Not dreams we stand before your puissance, Rinsing our holy begging in our eyes To make petition clear.

SECOND QUEEN. Now you may take him, drunk with his victory.

THIRD QUEEN. And his army full of bread and sloth.

THESEUS. Artesius, that best knowest How to draw out fit to this enterprise The prim’st for this proceeding, and the number To carry such a business: forth and levy Our worthiest instruments, whilst we dispatch This grand act of our life, this daring deed Of fate in wedlock.

FIRST QUEEN. Dowagers, take hands. Let us be widows to our woes; delay Commends us to a famishing hope.

ALL THE QUEENS. Farewell!

SECOND QUEEN. We come unseasonably; but when could grief Cull forth, as unpanged judgement can, fitt’st time For best solicitation?

THESEUS. Why, good ladies, This is a service, whereto I am going, Greater than any war; it more imports me Than all the actions that I have foregone, Or futurely can cope.

FIRST QUEEN. The more proclaiming Our suit shall be neglected when her arms, Able to lock Jove from a synod, shall By warranting moonlight corselet thee. O, when Her twinning cherries shall their sweetness fall Upon thy tasteful lips, what wilt thou think Of rotten kings or blubbered queens? What care For what thou feel’st not, what thou feel’st being able To make Mars spurn his drum? O, if thou couch But one night with her, every hour in ’t will Take hostage of thee for a hundred, and Thou shalt remember nothing more than what That banquet bids thee to.

HIPPOLYTA. Though much unlike You should be so transported, as much sorry I should be such a suitor, yet I think, Did I not, by th’ abstaining of my joy, Which breeds a deeper longing, cure their surfeit That craves a present med’cine, I should pluck All ladies’ scandal on me. Therefore, sir,

As I shall here make trial of my prayers, Either presuming them to have some force, Or sentencing for aye their vigor dumb, Prorogue this business we are going about, and hang Your shield afore your heart, about that neck Which is my fee, and which I freely lend To do these poor queens service.

ALL QUEENS. [To Emilia.] O, help now! Our cause cries for your knee.

EMILIA. [To Theseus, kneeling.] If you grant not My sister her petition in that force, With that celerity and nature, which She makes it in, from henceforth I’ll not dare To ask you anything, nor be so hardy Ever to take a husband.

THESEUS. Pray stand up. I am entreating of myself to do

That which you kneel to have me.—Pirithous, Lead on the bride; get you and pray the gods For success and return; omit not anything In the pretended celebration.—Queens, Follow your soldier. [To Artesius.] As before, hence you, And at the banks of Aulis meet us with The forces you can raise, where we shall find The moiety of a number for a business More bigger looked.

[Exit Artesius.]

[To Hippolyta.] Since that our theme is haste, I stamp this kiss upon thy currant lip; Sweet, keep it as my token. Set you forward, For I will see you gone.

[The wedding procession moves towards the temple.]

Farewell, my beauteous sister.—Pirithous, Keep the feast full; bate not an hour on ’t.

PIRITHOUS. Sir, I’ll follow you at heels. The feast’s solemnity Shall want till your return.

THESEUS. Cousin, I charge you, Budge not from Athens. We shall be returning Ere you can end this feast, of which I pray you Make no abatement. Once more, farewell all.

[Exeunt all but Theseus and the Queens.]

FIRST QUEEN. Thus dost thou still make good the tongue o’ th’ world.

SECOND QUEEN. And earn’st a deity equal with Mars.

THIRD QUEEN. If not above him, for Thou, being but mortal, mak’st affections bend To godlike honours; they themselves, some say, Groan under such a mast’ry.

THESEUS. As we are men, Thus should we do; being sensually subdued, We lose our human title. Good cheer, ladies. Now turn we towards your comforts.

SCENE II. Thebes. The Court of the Palace

Enter Palamon and Arcite.

ARCITE. Dear Palamon, dearer in love than blood And our prime cousin, yet unhardened in The crimes of nature, let us leave the city Thebes, and the temptings in ’t, before we further Sully our gloss of youth And here to keep in abstinence we shame As in incontinence; for not to swim I’ th’ aid o’ th’ current, were almost to sink, At least to frustrate striving; and to follow The common stream, ’twould bring us to an eddy Where we should turn or drown; if labour through, Our gain but life and weakness.

PALAMON. Your advice Is cried up with example. What strange ruins, Since first we went to school, may we perceive Walking in Thebes! Scars and bare weeds The gain o’ th’ martialist, who did propound To his bold ends honour and golden ingots, Which, though he won, he had not, and now flirted By peace for whom he fought! Who then shall offer To Mars’s so-scorned altar? I do bleed When such I meet, and wish great Juno would Resume her ancient fit of jealousy To get the soldier work, that peace might purge For her repletion, and retain anew Her charitable heart, now hard and harsher Than strife or war could be.

ARCITE. Are you not out? Meet you no ruin but the soldier in The cranks and turns of Thebes? You did begin As if you met decays of many kinds. Perceive you none that do arouse your pity But th’ unconsidered soldier?

PALAMON. Yes, I pity Decays where’er I find them, but such most That, sweating in an honourable toil, Are paid with ice to cool ’em.

ARCITE. ’Tis not this I did begin to speak of. This is virtue Of no respect in Thebes. I spake of Thebes, How dangerous, if we will keep our honours, It is for our residing, where every evil Hath a good colour; where every seeming good’s A certain evil; where not to be e’en jump As they are here were to be strangers, and, Such things to be, mere monsters.

PALAMON. ’Tis in our power— Unless we fear that apes can tutor ’s—to Be masters of our manners. What need I Affect another’s gait, which is not catching Where there is faith? Or to be fond upon Another’s way of speech, when by mine own I may be reasonably conceived, saved too, Speaking it truly? Why am I bound By any generous bond to follow him Follows his tailor, haply so long until The followed make pursuit? Or let me know Why mine own barber is unblessed, with him My poor chin too, for ’tis not scissored just To such a favourite’s glass? What canon is there That does command my rapier from my hip To dangle ’t in my hand, or to go tiptoe Before the street be foul? Either I am The fore-horse in the team, or I am none That draw i’ th’ sequent trace. These poor slight sores Need not a plantain; that which rips my bosom Almost to th’ heart’s—

ARCITE. Our uncle Creon.

PALAMON. He. A most unbounded tyrant, whose successes Makes heaven unfeared and villainy assured Beyond its power there’s nothing; almost puts Faith in a fever, and deifies alone Voluble chance; who only attributes The faculties of other instruments To his own nerves and act; commands men service, And what they win in ’t, boot and glory; one That fears not to do harm; good, dares not. Let The blood of mine that’s sib to him be sucked From me with leeches; let them break and fall Off me with that corruption.

ARCITE. Clear-spirited cousin, Let’s leave his court, that we may nothing share Of his loud infamy; for our milk Will relish of the pasture, and we must Be vile or disobedient; not his kinsmen In blood unless in quality.

PALAMON. Nothing truer. I think the echoes of his shames have deafed The ears of heavenly justice. Widows’ cries Descend again into their throats and have not Due audience of the gods.

Enter Valerius.

Valerius!

VALERIUS. The King calls for you; yet be leaden-footed Till his great rage be off him. Phœbus, when He broke his whipstock and exclaimed against The horses of the sun, but whispered to The loudness of his fury.

PALAMON. Small winds shake him. But what’s the matter?

VALERIUS. Theseus, who where he threats appalls, hath sent Deadly defiance to him and pronounces Ruin to Thebes, who is at hand to seal The promise of his wrath.

ARCITE. Let him approach. But that we fear the gods in him, he brings not A jot of terror to us. Yet what man Thirds his own worth—the case is each of ours— When that his action’s dregged with mind assured ’Tis bad he goes about?

PALAMON. Leave that unreasoned. Our services stand now for Thebes, not Creon. Yet to be neutral to him were dishonour, Rebellious to oppose; therefore we must With him stand to the mercy of our fate, Who hath bounded our last minute.

ARCITE. So we must. [To Valerius.] Is ’t said this war’s afoot? Or, it shall be, On fail of some condition?

VALERIUS. ’Tis in motion; The intelligence of state came in the instant With the defier.

PALAMON. Let’s to the King; who, were he A quarter carrier of that honour which His enemy come in, the blood we venture Should be as for our health, which were not spent, Rather laid out for purchase. But alas, Our hands advanced before our hearts, what will The fall o’ th’ stroke do damage?

ARCITE. Let th’ event, That never-erring arbitrator, tell us When we know all ourselves; and let us follow The becking of our chance.

SCENE III. Before the gates of Athens

Enter Pirithous, Hippolyta and Emilia.

PIRITHOUS. No further.

HIPPOLYTA. Sir, farewell. Repeat my wishes To our great lord, of whose success I dare not Make any timorous question; yet I wish him Excess and overflow of power, an ’t might be, To dure ill-dealing fortune. Speed to him! Store never hurts good governors.

PIRITHOUS. Though I know His ocean needs not my poor drops, yet they Must yield their tribute there. My precious maid, Those best affections that the heavens infuse In their best-tempered pieces keep enthroned In your dear heart!

EMILIA. Thanks, sir. Remember me To our all-royal brother, for whose speed The great Bellona I’ll solicit; and Since in our terrene state petitions are not Without gifts understood, I’ll offer to her What I shall be advised she likes. Our hearts Are in his army, in his tent.

HIPPOLYTA. In ’s bosom. We have been soldiers, and we cannot weep When our friends don their helms, or put to sea, Or tell of babes broached on the lance, or women That have sod their infants in—and after eat them— The brine they wept at killing ’em. Then if You stay to see of us such spinsters, we Should hold you here for ever.

PIRITHOUS. Peace be to you As I pursue this war, which shall be then Beyond further requiring.

[Exit Pirithous.]

EMILIA. How his longing Follows his friend! Since his depart, his sports, Though craving seriousness and skill, passed slightly His careless execution, where nor gain Made him regard, or loss consider, but Playing one business in his hand, another Directing in his head, his mind nurse equal To these so differing twins. Have you observed him Since our great lord departed?

HIPPOLYTA. With much labour, And I did love him for ’t. They two have cabined In many as dangerous as poor a corner, Peril and want contending; they have skiffed Torrents whose roaring tyranny and power I’ th’ least of these was dreadful; and they have Fought out together where Death’s self was lodged; Yet fate hath brought them off. Their knot of love, Tied, weaved, entangled, with so true, so long, And with a finger of so deep a cunning, May be outworn, never undone. I think Theseus cannot be umpire to himself, Cleaving his conscience into twain and doing Each side like justice, which he loves best.

EMILIA. Doubtless There is a best, and reason has no manners To say it is not you. I was acquainted Once with a time when I enjoyed a playfellow; You were at wars when she the grave enriched, Who made too proud the bed, took leave o’ th’ moon Which then looked pale at parting, when our count Was each eleven.

HIPPOLYTA. ’Twas Flavina.

EMILIA. Yes. You talk of Pirithous’ and Theseus’ love. Theirs has more ground, is more maturely seasoned, More buckled with strong judgement, and their needs The one of th’ other may be said to water Their intertangled roots of love; but I, And she I sigh and spoke of, were things innocent, Loved for we did, and like the elements That know not what nor why, yet do effect Rare issues by their operance, our souls Did so to one another. What she liked Was then of me approved, what not, condemned, No more arraignment. The flower that I would pluck And put between my breasts, O, then but beginning To swell about the blossom—she would long Till she had such another, and commit it To the like innocent cradle, where, phœnix-like, They died in perfume. On my head no toy But was her pattern; her affections—pretty, Though haply her careless wear—I followed For my most serious decking; had mine ear Stol’n some new air, or at adventure hummed one From musical coinage, why, it was a note Whereon her spirits would sojourn—rather, dwell on, And sing it in her slumbers. This rehearsal, Which fury-innocent wots well, comes in Like old importment’s bastard—has this end, That the true love ’tween maid and maid may be More than in sex individual.

HIPPOLYTA. You’re out of breath; And this high-speeded pace is but to say That you shall never, like the maid Flavina, Love any that’s called man.

EMILIA. I am sure I shall not.

HIPPOLYTA. Now, alack, weak sister, I must no more believe thee in this point— Though in ’t I know thou dost believe thyself— Than I will trust a sickly appetite, That loathes even as it longs. But sure, my sister, If I were ripe for your persuasion, you Have said enough to shake me from the arm Of the all-noble Theseus; for whose fortunes I will now in and kneel, with great assurance That we, more than his Pirithous, possess The high throne in his heart.

EMILIA. I am not Against your faith, yet I continue mine.

SCENE IV. A field before Thebes.

Cornets. A battle struck within; then a retreat. Flourish. Then enter, Theseus, as victor, with a Herald, other Lords, and Soldiers. The three Queens meet him and fall on their faces before him.

FIRST QUEEN. To thee no star be dark!

SECOND QUEEN. Both heaven and earth Friend thee for ever!

THIRD QUEEN. All the good that may Be wished upon thy head, I cry “Amen” to ’t!

THESEUS. Th’ impartial gods, who from the mounted heavens View us their mortal herd, behold who err And, in their time, chastise. Go and find out The bones of your dead lords and honour them With treble ceremony, rather than a gap Should be in their dear rites, we would supply ’t, But those we will depute which shall invest You in your dignities and even each thing Our haste does leave imperfect. So, adieu, And heaven’s good eyes look on you.

[Exeunt Queens.]

Enter a Herald and Soldiers bearing Palamon and Arcite on hearses.

What are those?

HERALD. Men of great quality, as may be judged By their appointment. Some of Thebes have told ’s They are sisters’ children, nephews to the King.

THESEUS. By th’ helm of Mars, I saw them in the war, Like to a pair of lions, smeared with prey, Make lanes in troops aghast. I fixed my note Constantly on them, for they were a mark Worth a god’s view. What prisoner was ’t that told me When I enquired their names?

HERALD. Wi’ leave, they’re called Arcite and Palamon.

THESEUS. ’Tis right; those, those. They are not dead?

HERALD. Nor in a state of life. Had they been taken When their last hurts were given, ’twas possible They might have been recovered; yet they breathe And have the name of men.

THESEUS. Then like men use ’em. The very lees of such, millions of rates, Exceed the wine of others. All our surgeons Convent in their behoof; our richest balms, Rather than niggard, waste. Their lives concern us Much more than Thebes is worth. Rather than have ’em Freed of this plight, and in their morning state, Sound and at liberty, I would ’em dead; But forty-thousandfold we had rather have ’em Prisoners to us than death. Bear ’em speedily From our kind air, to them unkind, and minister What man to man may do, for our sake, more, Since I have known frights, fury, friends’ behests, Love’s provocations, zeal, a mistress’ task, Desire of liberty, a fever, madness, Hath set a mark which nature could not reach to Without some imposition, sickness in will O’er-wrestling strength in reason. For our love And great Apollo’s mercy, all our best Their best skill tender. Lead into the city, Where, having bound things scattered, we will post To Athens ’fore our army.

SCENE V. Another part of the same, more remote from Thebes

Music. Enter the Queens with the hearses of their knights, in a funeral solemnity, &c.

Urns and odours bring away; Vapours, sighs, darken the day; Our dole more deadly looks than dying; Balms and gums and heavy cheers, Sacred vials filled with tears, And clamours through the wild air flying.

Come, all sad and solemn shows That are quick-eyed Pleasure’s foes; We convent naught else but woes. We convent naught else but woes.

THIRD QUEEN. This funeral path brings to your household’s grave. Joy seize on you again; peace sleep with him.

SECOND QUEEN. And this to yours.

FIRST QUEEN. Yours this way. Heavens lend A thousand differing ways to one sure end.

THIRD QUEEN. This world’s a city full of straying streets, And death’s the market-place where each one meets.

SCENE I. Athens. A garden, with a castle in the background

Enter Jailer and Wooer.

JAILER. I may depart with little while I live; something I may cast to you, not much. Alas, the prison I keep, though it be for great ones, yet they seldom come; before one salmon, you shall take a number of minnows. I am given out to be better lined than it can appear to me report is a true speaker. I would I were really that I am delivered to be. Marry, what I have, be it what it will, I will assure upon my daughter at the day of my death.

WOOER. Sir, I demand no more than your own offer, and I will estate your daughter in what I have promised.

JAILER. Well, we will talk more of this when the solemnity is past. But have you a full promise of her? When that shall be seen, I tender my consent.

Enter the Jailer’s Daughter, carrying rushes.

WOOER. I have sir. Here she comes.

JAILER. Your friend and I have chanced to name you here, upon the old business. But no more of that now; so soon as the court hurry is over, we will have an end of it. I’ th’ meantime, look tenderly to the two prisoners. I can tell you they are princes.

DAUGHTER. These strewings are for their chamber. ’Tis pity they are in prison, and ’twere pity they should be out. I do think they have patience to make any adversity ashamed. The prison itself is proud of ’em, and they have all the world in their chamber.

JAILER. They are famed to be a pair of absolute men.

DAUGHTER. By my troth, I think fame but stammers ’em; they stand a grise above the reach of report.

JAILER. I heard them reported in the battle to be the only doers.

DAUGHTER. Nay, most likely, for they are noble sufferers. I marvel how they would have looked had they been victors, that with such a constant nobility enforce a freedom out of bondage, making misery their mirth and affliction a toy to jest at.

JAILER. Do they so?

DAUGHTER. It seems to me they have no more sense of their captivity than I of ruling Athens. They eat well, look merrily, discourse of many things, but nothing of their own restraint and disasters. Yet sometime a divided sigh, martyred as ’twere i’ th’ deliverance, will break from one of them—when the other presently gives it so sweet a rebuke that I could wish myself a sigh to be so chid, or at least a sigher to be comforted.

WOOER. I never saw ’em.

JAILER. The Duke himself came privately in the night, and so did they.

Enter Palamon and Arcite, above.

What the reason of it is, I know not. Look, yonder they are; that’s Arcite looks out.

DAUGHTER. No, sir, no, that’s Palamon. Arcite is the lower of the twain; you may perceive a part of him.

JAILER. Go to, leave your pointing; they would not make us their object. Out of their sight.

DAUGHTER. It is a holiday to look on them. Lord, the difference of men!

SCENE II. The prison

Enter Palamon and Arcite in prison.

PALAMON. How do you, noble cousin?

ARCITE. How do you, sir?

PALAMON. Why, strong enough to laugh at misery And bear the chance of war; yet we are prisoners I fear for ever, cousin.

ARCITE. I believe it, And to that destiny have patiently Laid up my hour to come.

PALAMON. O, cousin Arcite, Where is Thebes now? Where is our noble country? Where are our friends and kindreds? Never more Must we behold those comforts, never see The hardy youths strive for the games of honour, Hung with the painted favours of their ladies, Like tall ships under sail; then start amongst ’em, And as an east wind leave ’em all behind us, Like lazy clouds, whilst Palamon and Arcite, Even in the wagging of a wanton leg, Outstripped the people’s praises, won the garlands, Ere they have time to wish ’em ours. O, never Shall we two exercise, like twins of honour, Our arms again, and feel our fiery horses Like proud seas under us! Our good swords now— Better the red-eyed god of war ne’er wore— Ravished our sides, like age must run to rust And deck the temples of those gods that hate us; These hands shall never draw ’em out like lightning To blast whole armies more.

ARCITE. No, Palamon, Those hopes are prisoners with us. Here we are, And here the graces of our youths must wither Like a too-timely spring; here age must find us And, which is heaviest, Palamon, unmarried. The sweet embraces of a loving wife, Loaden with kisses, armed with thousand Cupids, Shall never clasp our necks; no issue know us, No figures of ourselves shall we e’er see, To glad our age, and like young eagles teach ’em Boldly to gaze against bright arms and say “Remember what your fathers were, and conquer!” The fair-eyed maids shall weep our banishments And in their songs curse ever-blinded Fortune Till she for shame see what a wrong she has done To youth and nature. This is all our world. We shall know nothing here but one another, Hear nothing but the clock that tells our woes. The vine shall grow, but we shall never see it; Summer shall come, and with her all delights, But dead-cold winter must inhabit here still.

PALAMON. ’Tis too true, Arcite. To our Theban hounds That shook the aged forest with their echoes No more now must we hallow, no more shake Our pointed javelins whilst the angry swine Flies like a Parthian quiver from our rages, Struck with our well-steeled darts. All valiant uses, The food and nourishment of noble minds, In us two here shall perish; we shall die, Which is the curse of honour, lastly, Children of grief and ignorance.

ARCITE. Yet, cousin, Even from the bottom of these miseries, From all that fortune can inflict upon us, I see two comforts rising, two mere blessings, If the gods please: to hold here a brave patience, And the enjoying of our griefs together. Whilst Palamon is with me, let me perish If I think this our prison!

PALAMON. Certainly ’Tis a main goodness, cousin, that our fortunes Were twined together; ’tis most true, two souls Put in two noble bodies, let ’em suffer The gall of hazard, so they grow together, Will never sink; they must not, say they could. A willing man dies sleeping and all’s done.

ARCITE. Shall we make worthy uses of this place That all men hate so much?

PALAMON. How, gentle cousin?

ARCITE. Let’s think this prison holy sanctuary, To keep us from corruption of worse men. We are young and yet desire the ways of honour; That liberty and common conversation, The poison of pure spirits, might like women, Woo us to wander from. What worthy blessing Can be but our imaginations May make it ours? And here being thus together, We are an endless mine to one another; We are one another’s wife, ever begetting New births of love; we are father, friends, acquaintance; We are, in one another, families; I am your heir, and you are mine. This place Is our inheritance; no hard oppressor Dare take this from us; here with a little patience We shall live long and loving. No surfeits seek us; The hand of war hurts none here, nor the seas Swallow their youth. Were we at liberty, A wife might part us lawfully, or business; Quarrels consume us; envy of ill men Crave our acquaintance. I might sicken, cousin, Where you should never know it, and so perish Without your noble hand to close mine eyes, Or prayers to the gods. A thousand chances, Were we from hence, would sever us.

PALAMON. You have made me— I thank you, cousin Arcite—almost wanton With my captivity. What a misery It is to live abroad and everywhere! ’Tis like a beast, methinks. I find the court here, I am sure, a more content; and all those pleasures That woo the wills of men to vanity I see through now, and am sufficient To tell the world ’tis but a gaudy shadow That old Time as he passes by takes with him. What had we been, old in the court of Creon, Where sin is justice, lust and ignorance The virtues of the great ones? Cousin Arcite, Had not the loving gods found this place for us, We had died as they do, ill old men, unwept, And had their epitaphs, the people’s curses. Shall I say more?

ARCITE. I would hear you still.

PALAMON. Ye shall. Is there record of any two that loved Better than we do, Arcite?

ARCITE. Sure, there cannot.

PALAMON. I do not think it possible our friendship Should ever leave us.

ARCITE. Till our deaths it cannot;

Enter Emilia and her Woman, below.

And after death our spirits shall be led To those that love eternally. Speak on, sir.

EMILIA. This garden has a world of pleasures in’t. What flower is this?

WOMAN. ’Tis called narcissus, madam.

EMILIA. That was a fair boy, certain, but a fool, To love himself. Were there not maids enough?

ARCITE. Pray, forward.

PALAMON. Yes.

EMILIA. Or were they all hard-hearted?

WOMAN. They could not be to one so fair.

EMILIA. Thou wouldst not.

WOMAN. I think I should not, madam.

EMILIA. That’s a good wench. But take heed to your kindness, though.

WOMAN. Why, madam?

EMILIA. Men are mad things.

ARCITE. Will ye go forward, cousin?

EMILIA. Canst not thou work such flowers in silk, wench?

WOMAN. Yes.

EMILIA. I’ll have a gown full of ’em, and of these. This is a pretty colour; will ’t not do Rarely upon a skirt, wench?

WOMAN. Dainty, madam.

ARCITE. Cousin, cousin! How do you, sir? Why, Palamon!

PALAMON. Never till now I was in prison, Arcite.

ARCITE. Why, what’s the matter, man?

PALAMON. Behold, and wonder! By heaven, she is a goddess.

ARCITE. Ha!

PALAMON. Do reverence. She is a goddess, Arcite.

EMILIA. Of all flowers, Methinks a rose is best.

WOMAN. Why, gentle madam?

EMILIA. It is the very emblem of a maid. For when the west wind courts her gently, How modestly she blows and paints the sun With her chaste blushes! When the north comes near her, Rude and impatient, then, like chastity, She locks her beauties in her bud again, And leaves him to base briers.

WOMAN. Yet, good madam, Sometimes her modesty will blow so far She falls for ’t. A maid, If she have any honour, would be loath To take example by her.

EMILIA. Thou art wanton.

ARCITE. She is wondrous fair.

PALAMON. She is all the beauty extant.

EMILIA. The sun grows high; let’s walk in. Keep these flowers. We’ll see how near art can come near their colours. I am wondrous merry-hearted. I could laugh now.

WOMAN. I could lie down, I am sure.

EMILIA. And take one with you?

WOMAN. That’s as we bargain, madam.

EMILIA. Well, agree then.

[Exeunt Emilia and Woman.]

PALAMON. What think you of this beauty?

ARCITE. ’Tis a rare one.

PALAMON. Is’t but a rare one?

ARCITE. Yes, a matchless beauty.

PALAMON. Might not a man well lose himself, and love her?

ARCITE. I cannot tell what you have done; I have, Beshrew mine eyes for’t! Now I feel my shackles.

PALAMON. You love her, then?

ARCITE. Who would not?

PALAMON. And desire her?

ARCITE. Before my liberty.

PALAMON. I saw her first.

ARCITE. That’s nothing.

PALAMON. But it shall be.

ARCITE. I saw her too.

PALAMON. Yes, but you must not love her.

ARCITE. I will not, as you do, to worship her As she is heavenly and a blessed goddess. I love her as a woman, to enjoy her. So both may love.

PALAMON. You shall not love at all.

ARCITE. Not love at all! Who shall deny me?

PALAMON. I, that first saw her; I that took possession First with mine eye of all those beauties in her Revealed to mankind. If thou lovest her, Or entertain’st a hope to blast my wishes, Thou art a traitor, Arcite, and a fellow False as thy title to her. Friendship, blood, And all the ties between us, I disclaim If thou once think upon her.

ARCITE. Yes, I love her; And, if the lives of all my name lay on it, I must do so; I love her with my soul. If that will lose ye, farewell, Palamon. I say again, I love, and in loving her maintain I am as worthy and as free a lover And have as just a title to her beauty, As any Palamon, or any living That is a man’s son.

PALAMON. Have I called thee friend?

ARCITE. Yes, and have found me so. Why are you moved thus? Let me deal coldly with you: am not I Part of your blood, part of your soul? You have told me That I was Palamon and you were Arcite.

ARCITE. Am not I liable to those affections, Those joys, griefs, angers, fears, my friend shall suffer?

PALAMON. Ye may be.

ARCITE. Why then would you deal so cunningly, So strangely, so unlike a noble kinsman, To love alone? Speak truly; do you think me Unworthy of her sight?

PALAMON. No; but unjust, If thou pursue that sight.

ARCITE. Because another First sees the enemy, shall I stand still And let mine honour down, and never charge?

PALAMON. Yes, if he be but one.

ARCITE. But say that one Had rather combat me?

PALAMON. Let that one say so, And use thy freedom. Else, if thou pursuest her, Be as that cursed man that hates his country, A branded villain.

ARCITE. You are mad.

PALAMON. I must be, Till thou art worthy, Arcite; it concerns me; And in this madness, if I hazard thee And take thy life, I deal but truely.

ARCITE. Fie, sir! You play the child extremely. I will love her; I must, I ought to do so, and I dare, And all this justly.

PALAMON. O, that now, that now, Thy false self and thy friend had but this fortune, To be one hour at liberty, and grasp Our good swords in our hands! I would quickly teach thee What ’twere to filch affection from another! Thou art baser in it than a cutpurse. Put but thy head out of this window more And, as I have a soul, I’ll nail thy life to ’t.

ARCITE. Thou dar’st not, fool, thou canst not, thou art feeble. Put my head out? I’ll throw my body out And leap the garden, when I see her next And pitch between her arms, to anger thee.

Enter Jailer.

PALAMON. No more; the keeper’s coming. I shall live To knock thy brains out with my shackles.

ARCITE. Do!

JAILER. By your leave, gentlemen.

PALAMON. Now, honest keeper?

JAILER. Lord Arcite, you must presently to th’ Duke; The cause I know not yet.

ARCITE. I am ready, keeper.

JAILER. Prince Palamon, I must awhile bereave you Of your fair cousin’s company.

[Exeunt Arcite and Jailer.]

PALAMON. And me too, Even when you please, of life.—Why is he sent for? It may be he shall marry her; he’s goodly, And like enough the Duke hath taken notice Both of his blood and body. But his falsehood! Why should a friend be treacherous? If that Get him a wife so noble and so fair, Let honest men ne’er love again. Once more I would but see this fair one. Blessed garden And fruit and flowers more blessed that still blossom As her bright eyes shine on ye! Would I were, For all the fortune of my life hereafter, Yon little tree, yon blooming apricock! How I would spread and fling my wanton arms In at her window! I would bring her fruit Fit for the gods to feed on; youth and pleasure Still as she tasted should be doubled on her; And, if she be not heavenly, I would make her So near the gods in nature, they should fear her.

And then I am sure she would love me. How now, keeper? Where’s Arcite?

JAILER. Banished. Prince Pirithous Obtained his liberty, but never more Upon his oath and life must he set foot Upon this kingdom.

PALAMON. He’s a blessed man. He shall see Thebes again, and call to arms The bold young men that, when he bids ’em charge, Fall on like fire. Arcite shall have a fortune, If he dare make himself a worthy lover, Yet in the field to strike a battle for her; And, if he lose her then, he’s a cold coward. How bravely may he bear himself to win her If he be noble Arcite, thousand ways! Were I at liberty, I would do things Of such a virtuous greatness that this lady, This blushing virgin, should take manhood to her And seek to ravish me.

JAILER. My lord for you I have this charge to—

PALAMON. To discharge my life?

JAILER. No, but from this place to remove your lordship; The windows are too open.

PALAMON. Devils take ’em, That are so envious to me! Prithee, kill me.

JAILER. And hang for’t afterward!

PALAMON. By this good light, Had I a sword I would kill thee.

JAILER. Why, my Lord?

PALAMON. Thou bringst such pelting, scurvy news continually, Thou art not worthy life. I will not go.

JAILER. Indeed, you must, my lord.

PALAMON. May I see the garden?

JAILER. No.

PALAMON. Then I am resolved, I will not go.

JAILER. I must constrain you then; and, for you are dangerous, I’ll clap more irons on you.

PALAMON. Do, good keeper. I’ll shake ’em so, ye shall not sleep; I’ll make you a new morris. Must I go?

JAILER. There is no remedy.

PALAMON. Farewell, kind window. May rude wind never hurt thee!—O, my lady, If ever thou hast felt what sorrow was, Dream how I suffer.—Come, now bury me.

[Exeunt Palamon and Jailer.]

SCENE III. The country near Athens

Enter Arcite.

ARCITE. Banished the kingdom? ’Tis a benefit, A mercy I must thank ’em for; but banished The free enjoying of that face I die for, O, ’twas a studied punishment, a death Beyond imagination, such a vengeance That, were I old and wicked, all my sins Could never pluck upon me. Palamon, Thou hast the start now; thou shalt stay and see Her bright eyes break each morning ’gainst thy window And let in life into thee; thou shalt feed Upon the sweetness of a noble beauty That nature ne’er exceeded nor ne’er shall. Good gods, what happiness has Palamon! Twenty to one, he’ll come to speak to her; And if she be as gentle as she’s fair, I know she’s his; he has a tongue will tame Tempests and make the wild rocks wanton. Come what can come, The worst is death; I will not leave the kingdom. I know mine own is but a heap of ruins, And no redress there. If I go, he has her. I am resolved another shape shall make me Or end my fortunes. Either way I am happy. I’ll see her and be near her, or no more.

Enter four Countrymen, and one with a garland before them.

FIRST COUNTRYMAN. My masters, I’ll be there, that’s certain.

SECOND COUNTRYMAN. And I’ll be there.

THIRD COUNTRYMAN. And I.

FOURTH COUNTRYMAN. Why, then, have with you, boys. ’Tis but a chiding. Let the plough play today; I’ll tickle ’t out Of the jades’ tails tomorrow.

FIRST COUNTRYMAN. I am sure To have my wife as jealous as a turkey, But that’s all one. I’ll go through; let her mumble.

SECOND COUNTRYMAN. Clap her aboard tomorrow night, and stow her, And all’s made up again.

THIRD COUNTRYMAN. Ay, do but put A fescue in her fist and you shall see her Take a new lesson out and be a good wench. Do we all hold against the Maying?

FOURTH COUNTRYMAN. Hold? What should ail us?

THIRD COUNTRYMAN. Arcas will be there.

SECOND COUNTRYMAN. And Sennois. And Rycas; and three better lads ne’er danced Under green tree. And ye know what wenches, ha? But will the dainty domine, the schoolmaster, Keep touch, do you think? For he does all, ye know.

THIRD COUNTRYMAN. He’ll eat a hornbook ere he fail. Go to; The matter’s too far driven between him And the tanner’s daughter to let slip now; And she must see the Duke, and she must dance too.

FOURTH COUNTRYMAN. Shall we be lusty?

SECOND COUNTRYMAN. All the boys in Athens Blow wind i’ th’ breech on ’s. And here I’ll be, And there I’ll be, for our town, and here again, And there again. Ha, boys, hey for the weavers!

FIRST COUNTRYMAN. This must be done i’ th’ woods.

FOURTH COUNTRYMAN. O, pardon me.

SECOND COUNTRYMAN. By any means; our thing of learning says so— Where he himself will edify the Duke Most parlously in our behalfs. He’s excellent i’ th’ woods; Bring him to th’ plains, his learning makes no cry.

THIRD COUNTRYMAN. We’ll see the sports, then every man to ’s tackle; And, sweet companions, let’s rehearse, by any means, Before the ladies see us, and do sweetly, And God knows what may come on ’t.

FOURTH COUNTRYMAN. Content; the sports once ended, we’ll perform. Away, boys, and hold.

ARCITE. By your leaves, honest friends: pray you, whither go you?

FOURTH COUNTRYMAN. Whither? Why, what a question’s that?

ARCITE. Yes, ’tis a question To me that know not.

THIRD COUNTRYMAN. To the games, my friend.

SECOND COUNTRYMAN. Where were you bred, you know it not?

ARCITE. Not far, sir; Are there such games today?

FIRST COUNTRYMAN. Yes, marry, are there, And such as you never saw; the Duke himself Will be in person there.

ARCITE. What pastimes are they?

SECOND COUNTRYMAN. Wrestling, and running.—’Tis a pretty fellow.

THIRD COUNTRYMAN. Thou wilt not go along?

ARCITE. Not yet, sir.

FOURTH COUNTRYMAN. Well, sir, Take your own time. Come, boys.

FIRST COUNTRYMAN. My mind misgives me, This fellow has a vengeance trick o’ th’ hip; Mark how his body’s made for ’t.

SECOND COUNTRYMAN. I’ll be hanged, though, If he dare venture. Hang him, plum porridge! He wrestle? He roast eggs! Come, let’s be gone, lads.

[Exeunt Countrymen.]

ARCITE. This is an offered opportunity I durst not wish for. Well I could have wrestled— The best men called it excellent—and run Swifter than wind upon a field of corn, Curling the wealthy ears, never flew. I’ll venture, And in some poor disguise be there. Who knows Whether my brows may not be girt with garlands, And happiness prefer me to a place Where I may ever dwell in sight of her?

[Exit Arcite.]

SCENE IV. Athens. A room in the prison

Enter Jailer’s Daughter alone.

DAUGHTER. Why should I love this gentleman? ’Tis odds He never will affect me. I am base, My father the mean keeper of his prison, And he a prince. To marry him is hopeless; To be his whore is witless. Out upon ’t! What pushes are we wenches driven to When fifteen once has found us! First, I saw him; I, seeing, thought he was a goodly man; He has as much to please a woman in him, If he please to bestow it so, as ever These eyes yet looked on. Next, I pitied him, And so would any young wench, o’ my conscience, That ever dreamed, or vowed her maidenhead To a young handsome man. Then I loved him, Extremely loved him, infinitely loved him! And yet he had a cousin, fair as he too, But in my heart was Palamon, and there, Lord, what a coil he keeps! To hear him Sing in an evening, what a heaven it is! And yet his songs are sad ones. Fairer spoken Was never gentleman. When I come in To bring him water in a morning, first He bows his noble body, then salutes me thus: “Fair, gentle maid, good morrow. May thy goodness Get thee a happy husband.” Once he kissed me; I loved my lips the better ten days after. Would he would do so ev’ry day! He grieves much— And me as much to see his misery. What should I do to make him know I love him? For I would fain enjoy him. Say I ventured To set him free? What says the law then? Thus much for law or kindred! I will do it; And this night, or tomorrow, he shall love me.

SCENE V. An open place in Athens

A short flourish of cornets and shouts within. Enter Theseus, Hippolyta, Pirithous, Emilia; Arcite in disguise as a countryman, with a garland, Attendants, and others.

THESEUS. You have done worthily. I have not seen, Since Hercules, a man of tougher sinews. Whate’er you are, you run the best and wrestle, That these times can allow.

ARCITE. I am proud to please you.

THESEUS. What country bred you?

ARCITE. This; but far off, Prince.

THESEUS. Are you a gentleman?

ARCITE. My father said so; And to those gentle uses gave me life.

THESEUS. Are you his heir?

ARCITE. His youngest, sir.

THESEUS. Your father Sure is a happy sire then. What profess you?

ARCITE. A little of all noble qualities. I could have kept a hawk and well have hallowed To a deep cry of dogs. I dare not praise My feat in horsemanship, yet they that knew me Would say it was my best piece; last, and greatest, I would be thought a soldier.

THESEUS. You are perfect.

PIRITHOUS. Upon my soul, a proper man.

EMILIA. He is so.

PIRITHOUS. How do you like him, lady?

HIPPOLYTA. I admire him. I have not seen so young a man so noble, If he say true, of his sort.

EMILIA. Believe, His mother was a wondrous handsome woman; His face, methinks, goes that way.

HIPPOLYTA. But his body And fiery mind illustrate a brave father.

PIRITHOUS. Mark how his virtue, like a hidden sun, Breaks through his baser garments.

HIPPOLYTA. He’s well got, sure.

THESEUS. What made you seek this place, sir?

ARCITE. Noble Theseus, To purchase name and do my ablest service To such a well-found wonder as thy worth; For only in thy court, of all the world, Dwells fair-eyed Honour.

PIRITHOUS. All his words are worthy.

THESEUS. Sir, we are much indebted to your travel, Nor shall you lose your wish.—Pirithous, Dispose of this fair gentleman.

PIRITHOUS. Thanks, Theseus. Whate’er you are, you’re mine, and I shall give you To a most noble service: to this lady, This bright young virgin; pray, observe her goodness. You have honoured her fair birthday with your virtues, And, as your due, you’re hers; kiss her fair hand, sir.

ARCITE. Sir, you’re a noble giver.—Dearest beauty, Thus let me seal my vowed faith.

[He kisses her hand.]

When your servant, Your most unworthy creature, but offends you, Command him die, he shall.

EMILIA. That were too cruel. If you deserve well, sir, I shall soon see ’t. You’re mine, and somewhat better than your rank I’ll use you.

PIRITHOUS. I’ll see you furnished, and because you say You are a horseman, I must needs entreat you This afternoon to ride, but ’tis a rough one.

ARCITE. I like him better, Prince; I shall not then Freeze in my saddle.

THESEUS. Sweet, you must be ready,— And you, Emilia,—and you, friend,—and all, Tomorrow by the sun, to do observance To flowery May, in Dian’s wood.—Wait well, sir, Upon your mistress.—Emily, I hope He shall not go afoot.

EMILIA. That were a shame, sir, While I have horses.—Take your choice, and what You want at any time, let me but know it. If you serve faithfully, I dare assure you You’ll find a loving mistress.

ARCITE. If I do not, Let me find that my father ever hated, Disgrace and blows.

THESEUS. Go lead the way; you have won it. It shall be so; you shall receive all dues Fit for the honour you have won; ’twere wrong else. Sister, beshrew my heart, you have a servant, That, if I were a woman, would be master. But you are wise.

EMILIA. I hope too wise for that, sir.

SCENE VI. Athens. Before the prison

DAUGHTER. Let all the dukes and all the devils roar, He is at liberty! I have ventured for him And out I have brought him; to a little wood A mile hence I have sent him, where a cedar Higher than all the rest spreads like a plane Fast by a brook, and there he shall keep close Till I provide him files and food, for yet His iron bracelets are not off. O Love, What a stout-hearted child thou art! My father Durst better have endured cold iron than done it. I love him beyond love and beyond reason, Or wit, or safety. I have made him know it; I care not, I am desperate. If the law Find me and then condemn me for ’t, some wenches, Some honest-hearted maids, will sing my dirge And tell to memory my death was noble, Dying almost a martyr. That way he takes, I purpose is my way too. Sure he cannot Be so unmanly as to leave me here. If he do, maids will not so easily Trust men again. And yet he has not thanked me For what I have done; no, not so much as kissed me, And that, methinks, is not so well; nor scarcely Could I persuade him to become a free man, He made such scruples of the wrong he did To me and to my father. Yet I hope, When he considers more, this love of mine Will take more root within him. Let him do What he will with me, so he use me kindly; For use me so he shall, or I’ll proclaim him, And to his face, no man. I’ll presently Provide him necessaries and pack my clothes up, And where there is a path of ground I’ll venture, So he be with me. By him, like a shadow I’ll ever dwell. Within this hour the hubbub Will be all o’er the prison. I am then Kissing the man they look for. Farewell, father! Get many more such prisoners and such daughters, And shortly you may keep yourself. Now to him.

SCENE I. A forest near Athens

Cornets in sundry places. Noise and hallowing as people a-Maying. Enter Arcite alone.

ARCITE. The Duke has lost Hippolyta; each took A several land. This is a solemn rite They owe bloomed May, and the Athenians pay it To th’ heart of ceremony. O Queen Emilia, Fresher than May, sweeter Than her gold buttons on the boughs, or all Th’ enameled knacks o’ th’ mead or garden—yea, We challenge too the bank of any nymph That makes the stream seem flowers; thou, O jewel O’ th’ wood, o’ th’ world, hast likewise blessed a pace With thy sole presence. In thy rumination That I, poor man, might eftsoons come between And chop on some cold thought! Thrice blessed chance To drop on such a mistress, expectation Most guiltless on ’t. Tell me, O Lady Fortune, Next after Emily my sovereign, how far I may be proud. She takes strong note of me, Hath made me near her, and this beauteous morn, The prim’st of all the year, presents me with A brace of horses; two such steeds might well Be by a pair of kings backed, in a field That their crowns’ titles tried. Alas, alas, Poor cousin Palamon, poor prisoner, thou So little dream’st upon my fortune that Thou think’st thyself the happier thing, to be So near Emilia; me thou deem’st at Thebes, And therein wretched, although free. But if Thou knew’st my mistress breathed on me, and that I eared her language, lived in her eye, O coz, What passion would enclose thee!

Enter Palamon as out of a bush, with his shackles; he bends his fist at Arcite.

PALAMON. Traitor kinsman, Thou shouldst perceive my passion, if these signs Of prisonment were off me, and this hand But owner of a sword. By all oaths in one, I and the justice of my love would make thee A confessed traitor! O thou most perfidious That ever gently looked, the void’st of honour That e’er bore gentle token, falsest cousin That ever blood made kin! Call’st thou her thine? I’ll prove it in my shackles, with these hands, Void of appointment, that thou liest, and art A very thief in love, a chaffy lord, Nor worth the name of villain. Had I a sword, And these house-clogs away—

ARCITE. Dear cousin Palamon—

PALAMON. Cozener Arcite, give me language such As thou hast showed me feat.

ARCITE. Not finding in The circuit of my breast any gross stuff To form me like your blazon holds me to This gentleness of answer. ’Tis your passion That thus mistakes, the which, to you being enemy, Cannot to me be kind. Honour and honesty I cherish and depend on, howsoe’er You skip them in me, and with them, fair coz, I’ll maintain my proceedings. Pray be pleased To show in generous terms your griefs, since that Your question’s with your equal, who professes To clear his own way with the mind and sword Of a true gentleman.

PALAMON. That thou durst, Arcite!

ARCITE. My coz, my coz, you have been well advertised How much I dare; you’ve seen me use my sword Against th’ advice of fear. Sure, of another You would not hear me doubted, but your silence Should break out, though i’ th’ sanctuary.

PALAMON. Sir, I have seen you move in such a place, which well Might justify your manhood; you were called A good knight and a bold. But the whole week’s not fair If any day it rain. Their valiant temper Men lose when they incline to treachery; And then they fight like compelled bears, would fly Were they not tied.

ARCITE. Kinsman, you might as well Speak this and act it in your glass as to His ear which now disdains you.

PALAMON. Come up to me; Quit me of these cold gyves, give me a sword Though it be rusty, and the charity Of one meal lend me. Come before me then, A good sword in thy hand, and do but say That Emily is thine, I will forgive The trespass thou hast done me, yea, my life, If then thou carry ’t; and brave souls in shades That have died manly, which will seek of me Some news from earth, they shall get none but this: That thou art brave and noble.

ARCITE. Be content. Again betake you to your hawthorn house. With counsel of the night, I will be here With wholesome viands. These impediments Will I file off; you shall have garments and Perfumes to kill the smell o’ th’ prison. After, When you shall stretch yourself and say but “Arcite, I am in plight,” there shall be at your choice Both sword and armour.

PALAMON. Oh you heavens, dares any So noble bear a guilty business? None But only Arcite, therefore none but Arcite In this kind is so bold.

ARCITE. Sweet Palamon.

PALAMON. I do embrace you and your offer; for Your offer do ’t I only, sir; your person, Without hypocrisy I may not wish More than my sword’s edge on ’t.

[Wind horns of cornets.]

ARCITE. You hear the horns. Enter your musit, lest this match between ’s Be crossed ere met. Give me your hand; farewell. I’ll bring you every needful thing. I pray you, Take comfort and be strong.

PALAMON. Pray hold your promise, And do the deed with a bent brow. Most certain You love me not; be rough with me, and pour This oil out of your language. By this air, I could for each word give a cuff, my stomach Not reconciled by reason.

ARCITE. Plainly spoken. Yet pardon me hard language. When I spur My horse, I chide him not; content and anger In me have but one face.

[Wind horns.]

Hark, sir, they call The scattered to the banquet. You must guess I have an office there.

PALAMON. Sir, your attendance Cannot please heaven, and I know your office Unjustly is achieved.

ARCITE. ’Tis a good title. I am persuaded, this question, sick between ’s, By bleeding must be cured. I am a suitor That to your sword you will bequeath this plea, And talk of it no more.

PALAMON. But this one word: You are going now to gaze upon my mistress, For, note you, mine she is—

ARCITE. Nay, then—

PALAMON. Nay, pray you, You talk of feeding me to breed me strength. You are going now to look upon a sun That strengthens what it looks on; there You have a vantage o’er me. But enjoy ’t till I may enforce my remedy. Farewell.

SCENE II. Another Part of the forest

DAUGHTER. He has mistook the brake I meant, is gone After his fancy. ’Tis now well-nigh morning. No matter; would it were perpetual night, And darkness lord o’ th’ world. Hark, ’tis a wolf! In me hath grief slain fear, and but for one thing, I care for nothing, and that’s Palamon. I reck not if the wolves would jaw me, so He had this file. What if I hallowed for him? I cannot hallow. If I whooped, what then? If he not answered, I should call a wolf, And do him but that service. I have heard Strange howls this livelong night; why may ’t not be They have made prey of him? He has no weapons; He cannot run; the jingling of his gyves Might call fell things to listen, who have in them A sense to know a man unarmed and can Smell where resistance is. I’ll set it down He’s torn to pieces; they howled many together, And then they fed on him. So much for that. Be bold to ring the bell. How stand I then? All’s chared when he is gone. No, no, I lie. My father’s to be hanged for his escape; Myself to beg, if I prized life so much As to deny my act; but that I would not, Should I try death by dozens. I am moped. Food took I none these two days; Sipped some water. I have not closed mine eyes Save when my lids scoured off their brine. Alas, Dissolve, my life! Let not my sense unsettle, Lest I should drown, or stab, or hang myself. O state of nature, fail together in me, Since thy best props are warped! So, which way now? The best way is the next way to a grave; Each errant step beside is torment. Lo, The moon is down, the crickets chirp, the screech owl Calls in the dawn. All offices are done Save what I fail in. But the point is this: An end, and that is all.

SCENE III. The same part of the forest as in scene I.

Enter Arcite with meat, wine and files.

ARCITE. I should be near the place.—Ho! Cousin Palamon!

PALAMON. [From the bush.] Arcite?

ARCITE. The same. I have brought you food and files. Come forth and fear not; here’s no Theseus.

Enter Palamon.

PALAMON. Nor none so honest, Arcite.

ARCITE. That’s no matter. We’ll argue that hereafter. Come, take courage; You shall not die thus beastly. Here, sir, drink— I know you are faint—then I’ll talk further with you.

PALAMON. Arcite, thou mightst now poison me.

ARCITE. I might; But I must fear you first. Sit down and, good now, No more of these vain parleys; let us not, Having our ancient reputation with us, Make talk for fools and cowards. To your health.

PALAMON. Do.

ARCITE. Pray sit down, then, and let me entreat you, By all the honesty and honour in you, No mention of this woman; ’twill disturb us. We shall have time enough.

PALAMON. Well, sir, I’ll pledge you.

ARCITE. Drink a good hearty draught; it breeds good blood, man. Do not you feel it thaw you?

PALAMON. Stay, I’ll tell you After a draught or two more.

ARCITE. Spare it not; the Duke has more, coz. Eat now.

[Eats.]

ARCITE. I am glad you have so good a stomach.

PALAMON. I am gladder I have so good meat to ’t.

ARCITE. Is’t not mad lodging, Here in the wild woods, cousin?

PALAMON. Yes, for them That have wild consciences.

ARCITE. How tastes your victuals? Your hunger needs no sauce, I see.

PALAMON. Not much. But if it did, yours is too tart, sweet cousin. What is this?

ARCITE. Venison.

PALAMON. ’Tis a lusty meat. Give me more wine. Here, Arcite, to the wenches We have known in our days! The Lord Steward’s daughter, Do you remember her?

ARCITE. After you, coz.

PALAMON. She loved a black-haired man.

ARCITE. She did so; well, sir?

PALAMON. And I have heard some call him Arcite, and—

ARCITE. Out with’t, faith.

PALAMON. She met him in an arbour. What did she there, coz? Play o’ th’ virginals?

ARCITE. Something she did, sir.

PALAMON. Made her groan a month for ’t, Or two, or three, or ten.

ARCITE. The Marshal’s sister Had her share too, as I remember, cousin, Else there be tales abroad. You’ll pledge her?

ARCITE. A pretty brown wench ’tis. There was a time When young men went a-hunting, and a wood, And a broad beech; and thereby hangs a tale. Heigh ho!

PALAMON. For Emily, upon my life! Fool, Away with this strained mirth! I say again That sigh was breathed for Emily. Base cousin, Dar’st thou break first?

ARCITE. You are wide.

PALAMON. By heaven and earth, There’s nothing in thee honest.

ARCITE. Then I’ll leave you. You are a beast now.

PALAMON. As thou mak’st me, traitor.

ARCITE. There’s all things needful: files and shirts and perfumes. I’ll come again some two hours hence, and bring That that shall quiet all.

PALAMON. A sword and armour?

ARCITE. Fear me not. You are now too foul. Farewell. Get off your trinkets; you shall want naught.

PALAMON. Sirrah—

ARCITE. I’ll hear no more.

PALAMON. If he keep touch, he dies for ’t.

Enter Jailer’s Daughter.

DAUGHTER. I am very cold, and all the stars are out too, The little stars and all, that look like aglets. The sun has seen my folly. Palamon! Alas, no; he’s in heaven. Where am I now? Yonder’s the sea, and there’s a ship; how ’t tumbles! And there’s a rock lies watching under water; Now, now, it beats upon it; now, now, now, There’s a leak sprung, a sound one! How they cry! Run her before the wind, you’ll lose all else. Up with a course or two, and tack about, boys! Good night, good night; you’re gone. I am very hungry. Would I could find a fine frog; he would tell me News from all parts o’ th’ world; then would I make A carrack of a cockle shell, and sail By east and north-east to the king of pygmies, For he tells fortunes rarely. Now my father, Twenty to one, is trussed up in a trice Tomorrow morning. I’ll say never a word.

For I’ll cut my green coat a foot above my knee, And I’ll clip my yellow locks an inch below mine eye. Hey nonny, nonny, nonny. He’s buy me a white cut, forth for to ride, And I’ll go seek him through the world that is so wide. Hey nonny, nonny, nonny. O, for a prick now, like a nightingale, To put my breast against. I shall sleep like a top else.

SCENE V. Another part of the forest

Enter a Schoolmaster and five Countrymen, one dressed as a Bavian.

SCHOOLMASTER. Fie, fie, What tediosity and disinsanity Is here among ye! Have my rudiments Been laboured so long with ye, milked unto ye, And, by a figure, even the very plum-broth And marrow of my understanding laid upon ye, And do you still cry “Where?” and “How?” and “Wherefore?” You most coarse-frieze capacities, ye jean judgements, Have I said “Thus let be” and “There let be” And “Then let be” and no man understand me? Proh Deum, medius fidius, ye are all dunces! For why? Here stand I; here the Duke comes; there are you, Close in the thicket; the Duke appears; I meet him And unto him I utter learned things And many figures; he hears, and nods, and hums, And then cries “Rare!” and I go forward. At length I fling my cap up—mark there! Then do you As once did Meleager and the boar, Break comely out before him; like true lovers, Cast yourselves in a body decently, And sweetly, by a figure, trace and turn, boys.

FIRST COUNTRYMAN. And sweetly we will do it, Master Gerald.

SECOND COUNTRYMAN. Draw up the company. Where’s the taborer?

THIRD COUNTRYMAN. Why, Timothy!

TABORER. Here, my mad boys, have at ye.

SCHOOLMASTER. But I say, where’s their women?

Enter five Countrywomen.

FOURTH COUNTRYMAN. Here’s Friz and Maudlin.

SECOND COUNTRYMAN. And little Luce with the white legs, and bouncing Barbary.

FIRST COUNTRYMAN. And freckled Nel, that never failed her master.

SCHOOLMASTER. Where be your ribbons, maids? Swim with your bodies, And carry it sweetly and deliverly, And now and then a favour and a frisk.

NEL. Let us alone, sir.

SCHOOLMASTER. Where’s the rest o’ th’ music?

THIRD COUNTRYMAN. Dispersed, as you commanded.

SCHOOLMASTER. Couple, then, And see what’s wanting. Where’s the Bavian? My friend, carry your tail without offence Or scandal to the ladies; and be sure You tumble with audacity and manhood; And when you bark, do it with judgement.

BAVIAN. Yes, sir.

SCHOOLMASTER. Quo usque tandem? Here is a woman wanting.

FOURTH COUNTRYMAN. We may go whistle; all the fat’s i’ th’ fire.

SCHOOLMASTER. We have, as learned authors utter, washed a tile. we have been fatuus and laboured vainly.

SECOND COUNTRYMAN. This is that scornful piece, that scurvy hilding, That gave her promise faithfully, she would be here, Cicely, the sempster’s daughter. The next gloves that I give her shall be dogskin! Nay an she fail me once—You can tell, Arcas, She swore by wine and bread, she would not break.

SCHOOLMASTER. An eel and woman, A learned poet says, unless by th’ tail And with thy teeth thou hold, will either fail. In manners this was false position.

FIRST COUNTRYMAN. A fire ill take her; does she flinch now?

THIRD COUNTRYMAN. What Shall we determine, sir?

SCHOOLMASTER. Nothing. Our business is become a nullity, Yea, and a woeful and a piteous nullity.

FOURTH COUNTRYMAN. Now, when the credit of our town lay on it, Now to be frampul, now to piss o’ th’ nettle! Go thy ways; I’ll remember thee. I’ll fit thee.

DAUGHTER. [Sings.] The George Alow came from the south, From the coast of Barbary-a. And there he met with brave gallants of war, By one, by two, by three-a.

Well hailed, well hailed, you jolly gallants, And whither now are you bound-a? O let me have your company Till I come to the sound-a.

There was three fools fell out about an howlet: The one said it was an owl, The other he said nay, The third he said it was a hawk, And her bells were cut away.

THIRD COUNTRYMAN. There’s a dainty mad woman, Master, Comes i’ th’ nick, as mad as a March hare. If we can get her dance, we are made again; I warrant her, she’ll do the rarest gambols.

FIRST COUNTRYMAN. A madwoman? We are made, boys.

SCHOOLMASTER. And are you mad, good woman?

DAUGHTER. I would be sorry else. Give me your hand.

SCHOOLMASTER. Why?

DAUGHTER. I can tell your fortune. You are a fool. Tell ten. I have posed him. Buzz! Friend, you must eat no white bread; if you do, Your teeth will bleed extremely. Shall we dance, ho? I know you, you’re a tinker; sirrah tinker, Stop no more holes but what you should.

SCHOOLMASTER. Dii boni! A tinker, damsel?

DAUGHTER. Or a conjurer. Raise me a devil now, and let him play Qui passa o’ th’ bells and bones.

SCHOOLMASTER. Go, take her, And fluently persuade her to a peace. Et opus exegi, quod nec Jovis ira, nec ignis— Strike up, and lead her in.

SECOND COUNTRYMAN. Come, lass, let’s trip it.

DAUGHTER. I’ll lead.

THIRD COUNTRYMAN. Do, do!

SCHOOLMASTER. Persuasively, and cunningly. Away, boys; I hear the horns. Give me some meditation, And mark your cue.

[Exeunt all but Schoolmaster.]

Pallas inspire me.

Enter Theseus, Pirithous, Hippolyta, Emilia, and train.

THESEUS. This way the stag took.

SCHOOLMASTER. Stay, and edify!

THESEUS. What have we here?

PIRITHOUS. Some country sport, upon my life, sir.

THESEUS. Well, sir, go forward; we will “edify.” Ladies, sit down. We’ll stay it.

SCHOOLMASTER. Thou doughty Duke, all hail! All hail, sweet ladies!

THESEUS. This is a cold beginning.

SCHOOLMASTER. If you but favour, our country pastime made is. We are a few of those collected here That ruder tongues distinguish “villager.” And to say verity, and not to fable, We are a merry rout, or else a rabble, Or company, or by a figure, chorus, That ’fore thy dignity will dance a morris. And I that am the rectifier of all, By title pædagogus, that let fall The birch upon the breeches of the small ones, And humble with a ferula the tall ones, Do here present this machine, or this frame. And, dainty Duke, whose doughty dismal fame From Dis to Dædalus, from post to pillar, Is blown abroad, help me, thy poor well-willer, And with thy twinkling eyes look right and straight Upon this mighty Morr, of mickle weight. Is now comes in, which being glued together Makes Morris, and the cause that we came hither. The body of our sport, of no small study. I first appear, though rude and raw and muddy, To speak before thy noble grace this tenner, At whose great feet I offer up my penner. The next, the Lord of May and Lady bright, The Chambermaid and Servingman, by night That seek out silent hanging; then mine Host And his fat Spouse, that welcomes to their cost The galled traveller, and with a beck’ning Informs the tapster to inflame the reck’ning. Then the beest-eating Clown and next the Fool, The Bavian with long tail and eke long tool, Cum multis aliis that make a dance. Say “Ay,” and all shall presently advance.

THESEUS. Ay, ay, by any means, dear Domine.

PIRITHOUS. Produce.

SCHOOLMASTER. Intrate, filii! Come forth and foot it.

Music. Enter the Countrymen, Countrywomen and Jailer’s Daughter; they perform a morris dance.

Ladies, if we have been merry And have pleased ye with a derry, And a derry, and a down, Say the schoolmaster’s no clown. Duke, if we have pleased thee too And have done as good boys should do, Give us but a tree or twain For a Maypole, and again, Ere another year run out, We’ll make thee laugh, and all this rout.

THESEUS. Take twenty, Domine.—How does my sweetheart?

HIPPOLYTA. Never so pleased, sir.

EMILIA. ’Twas an excellent dance, And, for a preface, I never heard a better.

THESEUS. Schoolmaster, I thank you.—One see’em all rewarded.

PIRITHOUS. And here’s something to paint your pole withal.

[He gives money.]

THESEUS. Now to our sports again.

SCHOOLMASTER. May the stag thou hunt’st stand long, And thy dogs be swift and strong; May they kill him without lets, And the ladies eat his dowsets.

[Exeunt Theseus, Pirithous, Hippolyta, Emilia, Arcite and Train. Horns winded as they go out.]

Come, we are all made. Dii deæque omnes, You have danced rarely, wenches.

SCENE VI. The same part of the forest as in scene III.

Enter Palamon from the bush.

PALAMON. About this hour my cousin gave his faith To visit me again, and with him bring Two swords and two good armours. If he fail, He’s neither man nor soldier. When he left me, I did not think a week could have restored My lost strength to me, I was grown so low And crestfall’n with my wants. I thank thee, Arcite, Thou art yet a fair foe, and I feel myself, With this refreshing, able once again To outdure danger. To delay it longer Would make the world think, when it comes to hearing, That I lay fatting like a swine to fight And not a soldier. Therefore, this blest morning Shall be the last; and that sword he refuses, If it but hold, I kill him with. ’Tis justice. So, love and fortune for me!

Enter Arcite with armours and swords.

O, good morrow.

ARCITE. Good morrow, noble kinsman.

PALAMON. I have put you To too much pains, sir.

ARCITE. That too much, fair cousin, Is but a debt to honour, and my duty.

PALAMON. Would you were so in all, sir; I could wish ye As kind a kinsman as you force me find A beneficial foe, that my embraces Might thank ye, not my blows.

ARCITE. I shall think either, Well done, a noble recompence.

PALAMON. Then I shall quit you.

ARCITE. Defy me in these fair terms, and you show More than a mistress to me. No more anger, As you love anything that’s honourable! We were not bred to talk, man; when we are armed And both upon our guards, then let our fury, Like meeting of two tides, fly strongly from us; And then to whom the birthright of this beauty Truly pertains—without upbraidings, scorns, Despisings of our persons, and such poutings, Fitter for girls and schoolboys—will be seen, And quickly, yours or mine. Will ’t please you arm, sir? Or, if you feel yourself not fitting yet And furnished with your old strength, I’ll stay, cousin, And every day discourse you into health, As I am spared. Your person I am friends with, And I could wish I had not said I loved her, Though I had died; but, loving such a lady, And justifying my love, I must not fly from ’t.

PALAMON. Arcite, thou art so brave an enemy, That no man but thy cousin’s fit to kill thee. I am well and lusty; choose your arms.

ARCITE. Choose you, sir.

PALAMON. Wilt thou exceed in all, or dost thou do it To make me spare thee?

ARCITE. If you think so, cousin, You are deceived, for as I am a soldier, I will not spare you.

PALAMON. That’s well said.

ARCITE. You’ll find it.

PALAMON. Then, as I am an honest man and love With all the justice of affection, I’ll pay thee soundly.

[He chooses armour.]

This I’ll take.

ARCITE. That’s mine, then. I’ll arm you first.

[Arcite begins arming him.]

Pray thee, tell me, cousin, Where got’st thou this good armour?

ARCITE. ’Tis the Duke’s, And, to say true, I stole it. Do I pinch you?

PALAMON. No.

ARCITE. Is’t not too heavy?

PALAMON. I have worn a lighter, But I shall make it serve.

ARCITE. I’ll buckle ’t close.

PALAMON. By any means.

ARCITE. You care not for a grand guard?

PALAMON. No, no; we’ll use no horses: I perceive You would fain be at that fight.

ARCITE. I am indifferent.

PALAMON. Faith, so am I. Good cousin, thrust the buckle Through far enough.

ARCITE. I warrant you.

PALAMON. My casque now.

ARCITE. Will you fight bare-armed?

PALAMON. We shall be the nimbler.

ARCITE. But use your gauntlets though. Those are o’ th’ least; Prithee take mine, good cousin.

PALAMON. Thank you, Arcite. How do I look? Am I fall’n much away?

ARCITE. Faith, very little; love has used you kindly.

PALAMON. I’ll warrant thee, I’ll strike home.

ARCITE. Do, and spare not. I’ll give you cause, sweet cousin.

PALAMON. Now to you, sir.

[He begins to arm Arcite.]

Methinks this armour’s very like that, Arcite, Thou wor’st that day the three kings fell, but lighter.

ARCITE. That was a very good one; and that day, I well remember, you outdid me, cousin; I never saw such valour. When you charged Upon the left wing of the enemy, I spurred hard to come up, and under me I had a right good horse.

PALAMON. You had indeed; A bright bay, I remember.

ARCITE. Yes, but all Was vainly laboured in me; you outwent me, Nor could my wishes reach you. Yet a little I did by imitation.

PALAMON. More by virtue; You are modest, cousin.

ARCITE. When I saw you charge first, Me thought I heard a dreadful clap of thunder Break from the troop.

PALAMON. But still before that flew The lightning of your valour. Stay a little; Is not this piece too strait?

ARCITE. No, no, ’tis well.

PALAMON. I would have nothing hurt thee but my sword. A bruise would be dishonour.

ARCITE. Now I am perfect.

PALAMON. Stand off, then.

ARCITE. Take my sword; I hold it better.

PALAMON. I thank ye, no; keep it; your life lies on it. Here’s one; if it but hold, I ask no more For all my hopes. My cause and honour guard me!

ARCITE. And me my love!

[They bow several ways, then advance and stand.]

Is there aught else to say?

PALAMON. This only, and no more. Thou art mine aunt’s son. And that blood we desire to shed is mutual, In me thine, and in thee mine. My sword Is in my hand, and if thou killest me, The gods and I forgive thee. If there be A place prepared for those that sleep in honour, I wish his weary soul that falls may win it. Fight bravely, cousin; give me thy noble hand.

ARCITE. Here, Palamon. This hand shall never more Come near thee with such friendship.

PALAMON. I commend thee.

ARCITE. If I fall, curse me, and say I was a coward, For none but such dare die in these just trials. Once more farewell, my cousin.

PALAMON. Farewell, Arcite.

[They fight. Horns within. They stand.]

ARCITE. Lo, cousin, lo, our folly has undone us.

PALAMON. Why?

ARCITE. This is the Duke, a-hunting, as I told you. If we be found, we are wretched. O, retire, For honour’s sake and safety, presently Into your bush again. Sir, we shall find Too many hours to die in. Gentle cousin, If you be seen, you perish instantly For breaking prison and I, if you reveal me, For my contempt. Then all the world will scorn us, And say we had a noble difference, But base disposers of it.

PALAMON. No, no, cousin, I will no more be hidden, nor put off This great adventure to a second trial; I know your cunning and I know your cause. He that faints now, shame take him! Put thyself Upon thy present guard—

ARCITE. You are not mad?

PALAMON. Or I will make th’advantage of this hour Mine own, and what to come shall threaten me I fear less than my fortune. Know, weak cousin, I love Emilia, and in that I’ll bury Thee, and all crosses else.

ARCITE. Then, come what can come, Thou shalt know, Palamon, I dare as well Die, as discourse, or sleep. Only this fears me, The law will have the honour of our ends. Have at thy life!

PALAMON. Look to thine own well, Arcite.

Enter Theseus, Hippolyta, Emilia, Pirithous and train.

THESEUS. What ignorant and mad malicious traitors Are you, that ’gainst the tenor of my laws Are making battle, thus like knights appointed, Without my leave, and officers of arms? By Castor, both shall die.

PALAMON. Hold thy word, Theseus. We are certainly both traitors, both despisers Of thee and of thy goodness. I am Palamon, That cannot love thee, he that broke thy prison. Think well what that deserves. And this is Arcite. A bolder traitor never trod thy ground, A falser ne’er seemed friend. This is the man Was begged and banished; this is he contemns thee And what thou dar’st do; and in this disguise, Against thine own edict, follows thy sister, That fortunate bright star, the fair Emilia, Whose servant—if there be a right in seeing And first bequeathing of the soul to—justly I am; and, which is more, dares think her his. This treachery, like a most trusty lover, I called him now to answer. If thou be’st As thou art spoken, great and virtuous, The true decider of all injuries, Say “Fight again,” and thou shalt see me, Theseus, Do such a justice thou thyself wilt envy. Then take my life; I’ll woo thee to ’t.

PIRITHOUS. O heaven, What more than man is this!

THESEUS. I have sworn.

ARCITE. We seek not Thy breath of mercy, Theseus. ’Tis to me A thing as soon to die as thee to say it, And no more moved. Where this man calls me traitor, Let me say thus much: if in love be treason, In service of so excellent a beauty, As I love most, and in that faith will perish, As I have brought my life here to confirm it, As I have served her truest, worthiest, As I dare kill this cousin that denies it, So let me be most traitor, and you please me. For scorning thy edict, Duke, ask that lady Why she is fair, and why her eyes command me Stay here to love her; and if she say “traitor,” I am a villain fit to lie unburied.

PALAMON. Thou shalt have pity of us both, O Theseus, If unto neither thou show mercy. Stop, As thou art just, thy noble ear against us; As thou art valiant, for thy cousin’s soul, Whose twelve strong labours crown his memory, Let’s die together at one instant, Duke; Only a little let him fall before me, That I may tell my soul he shall not have her.

THESEUS. I grant your wish, for, to say true, your cousin Has ten times more offended, for I gave him More mercy than you found, sir, your offences Being no more than his. None here speak for ’em, For, ere the sun set, both shall sleep for ever.

HIPPOLYTA. Alas the pity! Now or never, sister, Speak, not to be denied. That face of yours Will bear the curses else of after ages For these lost cousins.

EMILIA. In my face, dear sister, I find no anger to ’em, nor no ruin; The misadventure of their own eyes kill ’em. Yet that I will be woman and have pity, My knees shall grow to’ th’ ground but I’ll get mercy.

Help me, dear sister; in a deed so virtuous The powers of all women will be with us. Most royal brother—

HIPPOLYTA. [Kneels.] Sir, by our tie of marriage—

EMILIA. By your own spotless honour—

HIPPOLYTA. By that faith, That fair hand, and that honest heart you gave me—

EMILIA. By that you would have pity in another, By your own virtues infinite—

HIPPOLYTA. By valour, By all the chaste nights I have ever pleased you—

THESEUS. These are strange conjurings.

PIRITHOUS. Nay, then, I’ll in too.

By all our friendship, sir, by all our dangers, By all you love most: wars and this sweet lady—

EMILIA. By that you would have trembled to deny A blushing maid—

HIPPOLYTA. By your own eyes, by strength, In which you swore I went beyond all women, Almost all men, and yet I yielded, Theseus—

PIRITHOUS. To crown all this, by your most noble soul, Which cannot want due mercy, I beg first.

HIPPOLYTA. Next, hear my prayers.

EMILIA. Last, let me entreat, sir.

PIRITHOUS. For mercy.

HIPPOLYTA. Mercy.

EMILIA. Mercy on these princes.

THESEUS. Ye make my faith reel. Say I felt Compassion to’em both, how would you place it?

[Emilia, Hippolyta and Pirithous rise.]

EMILIA. Upon their lives. But with their banishments.

THESEUS. You are a right woman, sister: you have pity, But want the understanding where to use it. If you desire their lives, invent a way Safer than banishment. Can these two live, And have the agony of love about ’em, And not kill one another? Every day They’d fight about you, hourly bring your honour In public question with their swords. Be wise, then, And here forget ’em; it concerns your credit And my oath equally. I have said they die. Better they fall by th’ law than one another. Bow not my honour.

EMILIA. O, my noble brother, That oath was rashly made, and in your anger; Your reason will not hold it; if such vows Stand for express will, all the world must perish. Besides, I have another oath ’gainst yours, Of more authority, I am sure more love, Not made in passion neither, but good heed.

THESEUS. What is it, sister?

PIRITHOUS. Urge it home, brave lady.

EMILIA. That you would ne’er deny me anything Fit for my modest suit and your free granting. I tie you to your word now; if ye fail in ’t, Think how you maim your honour— For now I am set a-begging, sir, I am deaf To all but your compassion—how their lives Might breed the ruin of my name. Opinion! Shall anything that loves me perish for me? That were a cruel wisdom. Do men prune The straight young boughs that blush with thousand blossoms Because they may be rotten? O, Duke Theseus, The goodly mothers that have groaned for these, And all the longing maids that ever loved, If your vow stand, shall curse me and my beauty, And in their funeral songs for these two cousins Despise my cruelty, and cry woe worth me, Till I am nothing but the scorn of women. For heaven’s sake, save their lives, and banish ’em.

THESEUS. On what conditions?

EMILIA. Swear ’em never more To make me their contention, or to know me, To tread upon thy dukedom, and to be, Wherever they shall travel, ever strangers To one another.

PALAMON. I’ll be cut a-pieces Before I take this oath! Forget I love her? O, all ye gods, despise me then! Thy banishment I not mislike, so we may fairly carry Our swords and cause along; else never trifle, But take our lives, Duke. I must love, and will And for that love must and dare kill this cousin On any piece the earth has.

THESEUS. Will you, Arcite, Take these conditions?

PALAMON. He’s a villain, then.

PIRITHOUS. These are men!

ARCITE. No, never, Duke. ’Tis worse to me than begging To take my life so basely. Though I think I never shall enjoy her, yet I’ll preserve The honour of affection, and die for her, Make death a devil.

THESEUS. What may be done? For now I feel compassion.

PIRITHOUS. Let it not fall again, sir.

THESEUS. Say, Emilia, If one of them were dead, as one must, are you Content to take th’ other to your husband? They cannot both enjoy you. They are princes As goodly as your own eyes, and as noble As ever fame yet spoke of. Look upon ’em, And, if you can love, end this difference; I give consent.—Are you content too, princes?

BOTH. With all our souls.

THESEUS. He that she refuses Must die, then.

BOTH. Any death thou canst invent, Duke.

PALAMON. If I fall from that mouth, I fall with favour, And lovers yet unborn shall bless my ashes.

ARCITE. If she refuse me, yet my grave will wed me, And soldiers sing my epitaph.

THESEUS. Make choice, then.

EMILIA. I cannot, sir, they are both too excellent; For me, a hair shall never fall of these men.

HIPPOLYTA. What will become of ’em?

THESEUS. Thus I ordain it And, by mine honour, once again, it stands, Or both shall die. You shall both to your country, And each within this month, accompanied With three fair knights, appear again in this place, In which I’ll plant a pyramid; and whether, Before us that are here, can force his cousin By fair and knightly strength to touch the pillar, He shall enjoy her; th’ other lose his head, And all his friends; nor shall he grudge to fall, Nor think he dies with interest in this lady. Will this content ye?

PALAMON. Yes. Here, cousin Arcite, I am friends again, till that hour.

[He offers his hand.]

ARCITE. I embrace ye.

THESEUS. Are you content, sister?

EMILIA. Yes, I must, sir, Else both miscarry.

THESEUS. Come, shake hands again, then; And take heed, as you are gentlemen, this quarrel Sleep till the hour prefixed, and hold your course.

PALAMON. We dare not fail thee, Theseus.

[They shake hands.]

THESEUS. Come, I’ll give ye Now usage like to princes, and to friends. When ye return, who wins, I’ll settle here; Who loses, yet I’ll weep upon his bier.

SCENE I. Athens. A room in the prison

Enter Jailer and his Friend.

JAILER. Hear you no more? Was nothing said of me Concerning the escape of Palamon? Good sir, remember.

FIRST FRIEND. Nothing that I heard, For I came home before the business Was fully ended. Yet I might perceive, Ere I departed, a great likelihood Of both their pardons; for Hippolyta And fair-eyed Emily, upon their knees, Begged with such handsome pity that the Duke Methought stood staggering whether he should follow His rash oath or the sweet compassion Of those two ladies. And, to second them, That truly noble prince, Pirithous, Half his own heart, set in too, that I hope All shall be well. Neither heard I one question Of your name or his ’scape.

JAILER. Pray heaven it hold so.

Enter Second Friend.

SECOND FRIEND. Be of good comfort, man; I bring you news, Good news.

JAILER. They are welcome.

SECOND FRIEND. Palamon has cleared you, And got your pardon, and discovered how And by whose means he escaped, which was your daughter’s, Whose pardon is procured too; and the prisoner, Not to be held ungrateful to her goodness, Has given a sum of money to her marriage, A large one, I’ll assure you.

JAILER. You are a good man And ever bring good news.

FIRST FRIEND. How was it ended?

SECOND FRIEND. Why, as it should be; they that never begged But they prevailed had their suits fairly granted; The prisoners have their lives.

FIRST FRIEND. I knew ’twould be so.

SECOND FRIEND. But there be new conditions, which you’ll hear of At better time.

JAILER. I hope they are good.

SECOND FRIEND. They are honourable; How good they’ll prove, I know not.

FIRST FRIEND. ’Twill be known.

Enter Wooer.

WOOER. Alas, sir, where’s your daughter?

JAILER. Why do you ask?

WOOER. O, sir, when did you see her?

SECOND FRIEND. How he looks?

JAILER. This morning.

WOOER. Was she well? Was she in health, sir? When did she sleep?

FIRST FRIEND. These are strange questions.

JAILER. I do not think she was very well, for now You make me mind her, but this very day I asked her questions, and she answered me So far from what she was, so childishly, So sillily, as if she were a fool, An innocent, and I was very angry. But what of her, sir?

WOOER. Nothing but my pity. But you must know it, and as good by me As by another that less loves her.

JAILER. Well, sir?

FIRST FRIEND. Not right?

SECOND FRIEND. Not well?

WOOER. No, sir, not well: ’Tis too true, she is mad.

FIRST FRIEND. It cannot be.

WOOER. Believe, you’ll find it so.

JAILER. I half suspected What you have told me. The gods comfort her! Either this was her love to Palamon, Or fear of my miscarrying on his ’scape, Or both.

WOOER. ’Tis likely.

JAILER. But why all this haste, sir?

WOOER. I’ll tell you quickly. As I late was angling In the great lake that lies behind the palace, From the far shore, thick set with reeds and sedges, As patiently I was attending sport, I heard a voice, a shrill one; and, attentive, I gave my ear, when I might well perceive ’Twas one that sung, and by the smallness of it A boy or woman. I then left my angle To his own skill, came near, but yet perceived not Who made the sound, the rushes and the reeds Had so encompassed it. I laid me down And listened to the words she sung, for then, Through a small glade cut by the fishermen, I saw it was your daughter.

JAILER. Pray, go on, sir.

WOOER. She sung much, but no sense; only I heard her Repeat this often: “Palamon is gone, Is gone to th’ wood to gather mulberries; I’ll find him out tomorrow.”

FIRST FRIEND. Pretty soul!

WOOER. “His shackles will betray him; he’ll be taken, And what shall I do then? I’ll bring a bevy, A hundred black-eyed maids that love as I do, With chaplets on their heads of daffadillies, With cherry lips and cheeks of damask roses, And all we’ll dance an antic ’fore the Duke, And beg his pardon.” Then she talked of you, sir; That you must lose your head tomorrow morning, And she must gather flowers to bury you, And see the house made handsome. Then she sung Nothing but “Willow, willow, willow,” and between Ever was “Palamon, fair Palamon,” And “Palamon was a tall young man.” The place Was knee-deep where she sat; her careless tresses, A wreath of bulrush rounded; about her stuck Thousand fresh water-flowers of several colours, That methought she appeared like the fair nymph That feeds the lake with waters, or as Iris Newly dropped down from heaven. Rings she made Of rushes that grew by, and to ’em spoke The prettiest posies: “Thus our true love’s tied,” “This you may loose, not me,” and many a one; And then she wept, and sung again, and sighed, And with the same breath smiled and kissed her hand.

SECOND FRIEND. Alas, what pity it is!

WOOER. I made in to her. She saw me, and straight sought the flood. I saved her And set her safe to land, when presently She slipped away, and to the city made With such a cry and swiftness that, believe me, She left me far behind her. Three or four I saw from far off cross her—one of ’em I knew to be your brother—where she stayed And fell, scarce to be got away. I left them with her And hither came to tell you.

Enter Jailer’s Brother, Jailer’s Daughter and others.

Here they are.

DAUGHTER. [Sings.]

May you never more enjoy the light, &c.

Is not this a fine song?

BROTHER. O, a very fine one.

DAUGHTER. I can sing twenty more.

BROTHER. I think you can.

DAUGHTER. Yes, truly can I. I can sing “The Broom” and “Bonny Robin.” Are not you a tailor?

BROTHER. Yes.

DAUGHTER. Where’s my wedding gown?

BROTHER. I’ll bring it tomorrow.

DAUGHTER. Do, very rarely, I must be abroad else To call the maids and pay the minstrels, For I must lose my maidenhead by cocklight. ’Twill never thrive else. [Sings.] O fair, O sweet, &c.

BROTHER. [To Jailer.] You must e’en take it patiently.

JAILER. ’Tis true.

DAUGHTER. Good ev’n, good men; pray, did you ever hear Of one young Palamon?

JAILER. Yes, wench, we know him.

DAUGHTER. Is’t not a fine young gentleman?

JAILER. ’Tis, love.

BROTHER. By no means cross her; she is then distempered Far worse than now she shows.

FIRST FRIEND. Yes, he’s a fine man.

DAUGHTER. O, is he so? You have a sister?

FIRST FRIEND. Yes.

DAUGHTER. But she shall never have him, tell her so, For a trick that I know; you’d best look to her, For if she see him once, she’s gone, she’s done, And undone in an hour. All the young maids Of our town are in love with him, but I laugh at ’em And let ’em all alone. Is ’t not a wise course?

DAUGHTER. There is at least two hundred now with child by him— There must be four; yet I keep close for all this, Close as a cockle; and all these must be boys He has the trick on ’t; and at ten years old They must be all gelt for musicians And sing the wars of Theseus.

SECOND FRIEND. This is strange.

DAUGHTER. As ever you heard, but say nothing.

FIRST FRIEND. No.

DAUGHTER. They come from all parts of the dukedom to him. I’ll warrant ye, he had not so few last night As twenty to dispatch. He’ll tickle ’t up In two hours, if his hand be in.

JAILER. She’s lost Past all cure.

BROTHER. Heaven forbid, man!

DAUGHTER. Come hither, you are a wise man.

FIRST FRIEND. [Aside.] Does she know him?

SECOND FRIEND. [Aside.] No, would she did.

DAUGHTER. You are master of a ship?

JAILER. Yes.

DAUGHTER. Where’s your compass?

JAILER. Here.

DAUGHTER. Set it to th’ north. And now direct your course to th’ wood, where Palamon Lies longing for me. For the tackling, Let me alone. Come, weigh, my hearts, cheerly.

ALL. Owgh, owgh, owgh! ’Tis up, the wind’s fair! Top the bowline; out with the mainsail; Where’s your whistle, master?

BROTHER. Let’s get her in.

JAILER. Up to the top, boy.

BROTHER. Where’s the pilot?

FIRST FRIEND. Here.

DAUGHTER. What kenn’st thou?

SECOND FRIEND. A fair wood.

DAUGHTER. Bear for it, master. Tack about! [Sings.] When Cinthia with her borrowed light, &c.

Enter Emilia alone, with two pictures.

EMILIA. Yet I may bind those wounds up, that must open And bleed to death for my sake else. I’ll choose, And end their strife. Two such young handsome men Shall never fall for me; their weeping mothers, Following the dead cold ashes of their sons, Shall never curse my cruelty.

[Looks at one of the pictures.]

Good heaven, What a sweet face has Arcite! If wise Nature, With all her best endowments, all those beauties She sows into the births of noble bodies, Were here a mortal woman, and had in her The coy denials of young maids, yet doubtless She would run mad for this man. What an eye, Of what a fiery sparkle and quick sweetness, Has this young prince! Here Love himself sits smiling; Just such another wanton Ganymede Set Jove afire with, and enforced the god Snatch up the goodly boy and set him by him, A shining constellation. What a brow, Of what a spacious majesty, he carries, Arched like the great-eyed Juno’s, but far sweeter, Smoother than Pelops’ shoulder! Fame and Honour, Methinks, from hence, as from a promontory Pointed in heaven, should clap their wings and sing To all the under-world the loves and fights Of gods and such men near ’em.

[Looks at the other picture.]

Palamon Is but his foil; to him a mere dull shadow; He’s swart and meagre, of an eye as heavy As if he had lost his mother; a still temper, No stirring in him, no alacrity; Of all this sprightly sharpness, not a smile. Yet these that we count errors may become him; Narcissus was a sad boy but a heavenly. O, who can find the bent of woman’s fancy? I am a fool; my reason is lost in me; I have no choice, and I have lied so lewdly That women ought to beat me. On my knees I ask thy pardon, Palamon, thou art alone And only beautiful, and these the eyes, These the bright lamps of beauty, that command And threaten love, and what young maid dare cross ’em? What a bold gravity, and yet inviting, Has this brown manly face! O Love, this only From this hour is complexion. Lie there, Arcite.

[She puts aside his picture.]

Thou art a changeling to him, a mere gypsy, And this the noble body. I am sotted, Utterly lost. My virgin’s faith has fled me. For if my brother but even now had asked me Whether I loved, I had run mad for Arcite; Now, if my sister, more for Palamon. Stand both together. Now, come ask me, brother. Alas, I know not! Ask me now, sweet sister. I may go look! What a mere child is Fancy, That, having two fair gauds of equal sweetness, Cannot distinguish, but must cry for both.

EMILIA. How now, sir?

GENTLEMAN. From the noble Duke your brother, Madam, I bring you news. The knights are come.

EMILIA. To end the quarrel?

GENTLEMAN. Yes.

EMILIA. Would I might end first! What sins have I committed, chaste Diana, That my unspotted youth must now be soiled With blood of princes, and my chastity Be made the altar where the lives of lovers— Two greater and two better never yet Made mothers joy—must be the sacrifice To my unhappy beauty?

Enter Theseus, Hippolyta, Pirithous and Attendants.

THESEUS. Bring ’em in Quickly, by any means; I long to see ’em. Your two contending lovers are returned, And with them their fair knights. Now, my fair sister, You must love one of them.

EMILIA. I had rather both, So neither for my sake should fall untimely.

THESEUS. Who saw ’em?

PIRITHOUS. I a while.

GENTLEMAN. And I.

THESEUS. From whence come you, sir?

MESSENGER. From the knights.

THESEUS. Pray, speak, You that have seen them, what they are.

MESSENGER. I will, sir, And truly what I think. Six braver spirits Than these they have brought, if we judge by the outside, I never saw nor read of. He that stands In the first place with Arcite, by his seeming Should be a stout man, by his face a prince, His very looks so say him; his complexion Nearer a brown than black, stern and yet noble, Which shows him hardy, fearless, proud of dangers; The circles of his eyes show fire within him, And as a heated lion so he looks. His hair hangs long behind him, black and shining Like ravens’ wings; his shoulders broad and strong; Armed long and round; and on his thigh a sword Hung by a curious baldric, when he frowns To seal his will with. Better, o’ my conscience, Was never soldier’s friend.

THESEUS. Thou hast well described him.

PIRITHOUS. Yet a great deal short, Methinks, of him that’s first with Palamon.

THESEUS. Pray, speak him, friend.

PIRITHOUS. I guess he is a prince too, And, if it may be, greater; for his show Has all the ornament of honour in ’t: He’s somewhat bigger than the knight he spoke of, But of a face far sweeter; his complexion Is, as a ripe grape, ruddy. He has felt Without doubt what he fights for, and so apter To make this cause his own. In ’s face appears All the fair hopes of what he undertakes And when he’s angry, then a settled valour, Not tainted with extremes, runs through his body And guides his arm to brave things. Fear he cannot; He shows no such soft temper. His head’s yellow, Hard-haired and curled, thick-twined like ivy tods, Not to undo with thunder. In his face The livery of the warlike maid appears, Pure red and white, for yet no beard has blessed him; And in his rolling eyes sits Victory, As if she ever meant to crown his valour. His nose stands high, a character of honour; His red lips, after fights, are fit for ladies.

EMILIA. Must these men die too?

PIRITHOUS. When he speaks, his tongue Sounds like a trumpet. All his lineaments Are as a man would wish ’em, strong and clean. He wears a well-steeled axe, the staff of gold; His age some five-and-twenty.

MESSENGER. There’s another, A little man, but of a tough soul, seeming As great as any; fairer promises In such a body yet I never looked on.

PIRITHOUS. O, he that’s freckle-faced?

MESSENGER. The same, my lord; Are they not sweet ones?

PIRITHOUS. Yes, they are well.

MESSENGER. Methinks, Being so few and well disposed, they show Great and fine art in nature. He’s white-haired, Not wanton white, but such a manly colour Next to an auburn; tough and nimble-set, Which shows an active soul. His arms are brawny, Lined with strong sinews. To the shoulder-piece Gently they swell, like women new-conceived, Which speaks him prone to labour, never fainting Under the weight of arms; stout-hearted still, But when he stirs, a tiger. He’s grey-eyed, Which yields compassion where he conquers; sharp To spy advantages, and where he finds ’em, He’s swift to make ’em his. He does no wrongs, Nor takes none. He’s round-faced, and when he smiles He shows a lover; when he frowns, a soldier. About his head he wears the winner’s oak, And in it stuck the favour of his lady. His age some six-and-thirty. In his hand He bears a charging-staff embossed with silver.

THESEUS. Are they all thus?

PIRITHOUS. They are all the sons of honour.

THESEUS. Now, as I have a soul, I long to see’em. Lady, you shall see men fight now.

HIPPOLYTA. I wish it, But not the cause, my lord. They would show Bravely about the titles of two kingdoms. ’Tis pity love should be so tyrannous.— O, my soft-hearted sister, what think you? Weep not till they weep blood. Wench, it must be.

THESEUS. You have steeled ’em with your beauty. Honoured friend, To you I give the field; pray order it Fitting the persons that must use it.

PIRITHOUS. Yes, sir.

THESEUS. Come, I’ll go visit ’em. I cannot stay, Their fame has fired me so; till they appear. Good friend, be royal.

PIRITHOUS. There shall want no bravery.

[Exeunt all but Emilia.]

EMILIA. Poor wench, go weep, for whosoever wins, Loses a noble cousin for thy sins.

SCENE III. A room in the prison

Enter Jailer, Wooer and Doctor.

DOCTOR. Her distraction is more at some time of the moon, than at other some, is it not?

JAILER. She is continually in a harmless distemper, sleeps little, altogether without appetite, save often drinking, dreaming of another world, and a better; and what broken piece of matter soe’er she’s about, the name Palamon lards it, that she farces every business withal, fits it to every question.

Look where she comes; you shall perceive her behaviour.

DAUGHTER. I have forgot it quite. The burden on ’t was “Down-a, down-a,” and penned by no worse man than Geraldo, Emilia’s schoolmaster. He’s as fantastical, too, as ever he may go upon’s legs, for in the next world will Dido see Palamon, and then will she be out of love with Æneas.

DOCTOR. What stuff’s here? Poor soul!

JAILER. Even thus all day long.

DAUGHTER. Now for this charm that I told you of: you must bring a piece of silver on the tip of your tongue, or no ferry. Then if it be your chance to come where the blessed spirits are, there’s a sight now! We maids that have our livers perished, cracked to pieces with love, we shall come there, and do nothing all day long but pick flowers with Proserpine. Then will I make Palamon a nosegay; then let him mark me—then.

DOCTOR. How prettily she’s amiss! Note her a little further.

DAUGHTER. Faith, I’ll tell you, sometime we go to barley-break, we of the blessed. Alas, ’tis a sore life they have i’ th’ other place—such burning, frying, boiling, hissing, howling, chattering, cursing—O, they have shrewd measure; take heed! If one be mad, or hang or drown themselves, thither they go; Jupiter bless us! And there shall we be put in a cauldron of lead and usurers’ grease, amongst a whole million of cutpurses, and there boil like a gammon of bacon that will never be enough.

DOCTOR. How her brain coins!

DAUGHTER. Lords and courtiers that have got maids with child, they are in this place. They shall stand in fire up to the navel and in ice up to the heart, and there th’ offending part burns and the deceiving part freezes. In troth, a very grievous punishment, as one would think, for such a trifle. Believe me, one would marry a leprous witch to be rid on ’t, I’ll assure you.

DOCTOR. How she continues this fancy! ’Tis not an engraffed madness, but a most thick, and profound melancholy.

DAUGHTER. To hear there a proud lady and a proud city wife howl together! I were a beast an I’d call it good sport. One cries “O this smoke!” th’ other, “This fire!”; one cries, “O, that ever I did it behind the arras!” and then howls; th’ other curses a suing fellow and her garden house.

[Sings.] I will be true, my stars, my fate, &c.

[Exit Jailer’s Daughter.]

JAILER. What think you of her, sir?

DOCTOR. I think she has a perturbed mind, which I cannot minister to.

JAILER. Alas, what then?

DOCTOR. Understand you she ever affected any man ere she beheld Palamon?

JAILER. I was once, sir, in great hope she had fixed her liking on this gentleman, my friend.

WOOER. I did think so too, and would account I had a great penn’orth on’t, to give half my state, that both she and I at this present stood unfeignedly on the same terms.

DOCTOR. That intemperate surfeit of her eye hath distempered the other senses. They may return and settle again to execute their preordained faculties, but they are now in a most extravagant vagary. This you must do: confine her to a place where the light may rather seem to steal in than be permitted. Take upon you, young sir, her friend, the name of Palamon; say you come to eat with her, and to commune of love. This will catch her attention, for this her mind beats upon; other objects that are inserted ’tween her mind and eye become the pranks and friskins of her madness. Sing to her such green songs of love as she says Palamon hath sung in prison. Come to her stuck in as sweet flowers as the season is mistress of, and thereto make an addition of some other compounded odours which are grateful to the sense. All this shall become Palamon, for Palamon can sing, and Palamon is sweet and every good thing. Desire to eat with her, carve her, drink to her, and still among intermingle your petition of grace and acceptance into her favour. Learn what maids have been her companions and play-feres, and let them repair to her with Palamon in their mouths, and appear with tokens, as if they suggested for him. It is a falsehood she is in, which is with falsehoods to be combated. This may bring her to eat, to sleep, and reduce what’s now out of square in her into their former law and regiment. I have seen it approved, how many times I know not, but to make the number more I have great hope in this. I will, between the passages of this project, come in with my appliance. Let us put it in execution and hasten the success, which, doubt not, will bring forth comfort.

SCENE I. Athens. Before the Temples of Mars, Venus, and Diana

Flourish. Enter Theseus, Pirithous, Hippolyta and Attendants.

THESEUS. Now let ’em enter and before the gods Tender their holy prayers. Let the temples Burn bright with sacred fires, and the altars In hallowed clouds commend their swelling incense To those above us. Let no due be wanting. They have a noble work in hand, will honour The very powers that love ’em.

PIRITHOUS. Sir, they enter.

Enter Palamon and Arcite and their Knights.

THESEUS. You valiant and strong-hearted enemies, You royal german foes, that this day come To blow that nearness out that flames between ye, Lay by your anger for an hour and, dove-like, Before the holy altars of your helpers, The all-feared gods, bow down your stubborn bodies. Your ire is more than mortal; so your help be; And, as the gods regard ye, fight with justice. I’ll leave you to your prayers, and betwixt ye I part my wishes.

PIRITHOUS. Honour crown the worthiest.

[Exeunt Theseus and his Train.]

PALAMON. The glass is running now that cannot finish Till one of us expire. Think you but thus, That were there aught in me which strove to show Mine enemy in this business, were ’t one eye Against another, arm oppressed by arm, I would destroy th’ offender, coz, I would Though parcel of myself. Then from this gather How I should tender you.

ARCITE. I am in labour To push your name, your ancient love, our kindred Out of my memory, and i’ th’ selfsame place To seat something I would confound. So hoist we The sails that must these vessels port even where The heavenly limiter pleases.

PALAMON. You speak well. Before I turn, let me embrace thee, cousin. This I shall never do again.

ARCITE. One farewell.

PALAMON. Why, let it be so. Farewell, coz.

ARCITE. Farewell, sir.

[Exeunt Palamon and his Knights.]

Knights, kinsmen, lovers, yea, my sacrifices, True worshippers of Mars, whose spirit in you Expels the seeds of fear and th’ apprehension Which still is father of it, go with me Before the god of our profession. There Require of him the hearts of lions and The breath of tigers, yea, the fierceness too, Yea, the speed also—to go on, I mean; Else wish we to be snails. You know my prize Must be dragged out of blood; force and great feat Must put my garland on, where she sticks, The queen of flowers. Our intercession, then, Must be to him that makes the camp a cistern Brimmed with the blood of men. Give me your aid, And bend your spirits towards him.

[They advance to the altar of Mars, fall on their faces before it, and then kneel.]

Thou mighty one, that with thy power hast turned Green Neptune into purple; whose approach Comets prewarn, whose havoc in vast field Unearthed skulls proclaim; whose breath blows down The teeming Ceres’ foison, who dost pluck With hand armipotent from forth blue clouds The masoned turrets, that both mak’st and break’st The stony girths of cities; me thy pupil, Youngest follower of thy drum, instruct this day With military skill, that to thy laud I may advance my streamer, and by thee Be styled the lord o’ th’ day. Give me, great Mars, Some token of thy pleasure.

[Here they fall on their faces as formerly, and there is heard clanging of armour, with a short thunder, as the burst of a battle, whereupon they all rise and bow to the altar.]

O, great corrector of enormous times, Shaker of o’er-rank states, thou grand decider Of dusty and old titles, that heal’st with blood The earth when it is sick, and cur’st the world O’ th’ pleurisy of people; I do take Thy signs auspiciously, and in thy name To my design march boldly.—Let us go.

Enter Palamon and his Knights, with the former observance.

PALAMON. Our stars must glister with new fire, or be Today extinct. Our argument is love, Which, if the goddess of it grant, she gives Victory too. Then blend your spirits with mine, You whose free nobleness do make my cause Your personal hazard. To the goddess Venus Commend we our proceeding, and implore Her power unto our party.

[Here they kneel as formerly.]

Hail, sovereign queen of secrets, who hast power To call the fiercest tyrant from his rage And weep unto a girl; that hast the might Even with an eye-glance to choke Mars’s drum And turn th’ alarm to whispers; that canst make A cripple flourish with his crutch, and cure him Before Apollo; that mayst force the king To be his subject’s vassal, and induce Stale gravity to dance. The polled bachelor, Whose youth, like wanton boys through bonfires, Have skipped thy flame, at seventy thou canst catch, And make him, to the scorn of his hoarse throat, Abuse young lays of love. What godlike power Hast thou not power upon? To Phœbus thou Add’st flames hotter than his; the heavenly fires Did scorch his mortal son, thine him. The huntress, All moist and cold, some say, began to throw Her bow away and sigh. Take to thy grace Me, thy vowed soldier, who do bear thy yoke As ’twere a wreath of roses, yet is heavier Than lead itself, stings more than nettles. I have never been foul-mouthed against thy law, Ne’er revealed secret, for I knew none—would not, Had I kenned all that were. I never practised Upon man’s wife, nor would the libels read Of liberal wits. I never at great feasts Sought to betray a beauty, but have blushed At simpering sirs that did. I have been harsh To large confessors, and have hotly asked them If they had mothers—I had one, a woman, And women ’twere they wronged. I knew a man Of eighty winters, this I told them, who A lass of fourteen brided; ’twas thy power To put life into dust. The aged cramp Had screwed his square foot round; The gout had knit his fingers into knots, Torturing convulsions from his globy eyes Had almost drawn their spheres, that what was life In him seemed torture. This anatomy Had by his young fair fere a boy, and I Believed it was his, for she swore it was, And who would not believe her? Brief, I am To those that prate and have done, no companion; To those that boast and have not, a defier; To those that would and cannot, a rejoicer. Yea, him I do not love that tells close offices The foulest way, nor names concealments in The boldest language. Such a one I am, And vow that lover never yet made sigh Truer than I. O, then, most soft sweet goddess, Give me the victory of this question, which Is true love’s merit, and bless me with a sign Of thy great pleasure.

[Here music is heard; doves are seen to flutter. They fall again upon their faces, then on their knees.]

O thou that from eleven to ninety reign’st In mortal bosoms, whose chase is this world And we in herds thy game, I give thee thanks For this fair token, which being laid unto Mine innocent true heart, arms in assurance My body to this business.—Let us rise And bow before the goddess.

[They rise and bow.]

Time comes on.

Still music of recorders. Enter Emilia in white, her hair about her shoulders, wearing a wheaten wreath. One in white holding up her train, her hair stuck with flowers. One before her carrying a silver hind, in which is conveyed incense and sweet odours, which being set upon the altar of Diana, her maids standing aloof, she sets fire to it; then they curtsy and kneel.

EMILIA. O sacred, shadowy, cold, and constant queen, Abandoner of revels, mute contemplative, Sweet, solitary, white as chaste, and pure As wind-fanned snow, who to thy female knights Allow’st no more blood than will make a blush, Which is their order’s robe, I here, thy priest, Am humbled ’fore thine altar. O, vouchsafe With that thy rare green eye, which never yet Beheld thing maculate, look on thy virgin; And, sacred silver mistress, lend thine ear, Which ne’er heard scurrile term, into whose port Ne’er entered wanton sound, to my petition, Seasoned with holy fear. This is my last Of vestal office. I am bride-habited But maiden-hearted. A husband I have ’pointed, But do not know him. Out of two I should Choose one, and pray for his success, but I Am guiltless of election. Of mine eyes, Were I to lose one, they are equal precious; I could doom neither; that which perished should Go to ’t unsentenced. Therefore, most modest queen, He of the two pretenders that best loves me And has the truest title in ’t, let him Take off my wheaten garland, or else grant The file and quality I hold I may Continue in thy band.

[Here the hind vanishes under the altar, and in the place ascends a rose tree, having one rose upon it.]

See what our general of ebbs and flows Out from the bowels of her holy altar With sacred act advances: but one rose! If well inspired, this battle shall confound Both these brave knights, and I, a virgin flower, Must grow alone, unplucked.

[Here is heard a sudden twang of instruments, and the rose falls from the tree.]

The flower is fall’n, the tree descends. O mistress, Thou here dischargest me. I shall be gathered; I think so, but I know not thine own will. Unclasp thy mystery!—I hope she’s pleased; Her signs were gracious.

[They curtsy and exeunt.]

SCENE II. Athens. A Room in the Prison

Enter Doctor, Jailer and Wooer in the habit of Palamon.

DOCTOR. Has this advice I told you, done any good upon her?

WOOER. O, very much. The maids that kept her company Have half persuaded her that I am Palamon; Within this half-hour she came smiling to me, And asked me what I would eat, and when I would kiss her. I told her “Presently,” and kissed her twice.

DOCTOR. ’Twas well done. Twenty times had been far better, For there the cure lies mainly.

WOOER. Then she told me She would watch with me tonight, for well she knew What hour my fit would take me.

DOCTOR. Let her do so, And when your fit comes, fit her home, and presently.

WOOER. She would have me sing.

DOCTOR. You did so?

WOOER. No.

DOCTOR. ’Twas very ill done, then; You should observe her every way.

WOOER. Alas, I have no voice, sir, to confirm her that way.

DOCTOR. That’s all one, if ye make a noise. If she entreat again, do anything. Lie with her, if she ask you.

JAILER. Hoa, there, doctor!

DOCTOR. Yes, in the way of cure.

JAILER. But first, by your leave, I’ th’ way of honesty.

DOCTOR. That’s but a niceness, Ne’er cast your child away for honesty. Cure her first this way; then if she will be honest, She has the path before her.

JAILER. Thank ye, Doctor.

DOCTOR. Pray, bring her in, And let’s see how she is.

JAILER. I will, and tell her Her Palamon stays for her. But, Doctor, Methinks you are i’ th’ wrong still.

[Exit Jailer.]

DOCTOR. Go, go; You fathers are fine fools. Her honesty? An we should give her physic till we find that!

WOOER. Why, do you think she is not honest, sir?

DOCTOR. How old is she?

WOOER. She’s eighteen.

DOCTOR. She may be, But that’s all one; ’tis nothing to our purpose. Whate’er her father says, if you perceive Her mood inclining that way that I spoke of, Videlicet, the way of flesh—you have me?

WOOER. Yes, very well, sir.

DOCTOR. Please her appetite, And do it home; it cures her, ipso facto, The melancholy humour that infects her.

WOOER. I am of your mind, Doctor.

Enter Jailer, Jailer’s Daughter and Maid.

DOCTOR. You’ll find it so. She comes, pray, humour her.

JAILER. Come, your love Palamon stays for you, child, And has done this long hour, to visit you.

DAUGHTER. I thank him for his gentle patience; He’s a kind gentleman, and I am much bound to him. Did you ne’er see the horse he gave me?

DAUGHTER. How do you like him?

JAILER. He’s a very fair one.

DAUGHTER. You never saw him dance?

DAUGHTER. I have often. He dances very finely, very comely, And for a jig, come cut and long tail to him, He turns ye like a top.

JAILER. That’s fine, indeed.

DAUGHTER. He’ll dance the morris twenty mile an hour, And that will founder the best hobby-horse If I have any skill in all the parish, And gallops to the tune of “Light o’ love.” What think you of this horse?

JAILER. Having these virtues, I think he might be brought to play at tennis.

DAUGHTER. Alas, that’s nothing.

JAILER. Can he write and read too?

DAUGHTER. A very fair hand, and casts himself th’ accounts Of all his hay and provender. That hostler Must rise betime that cozens him. You know The chestnut mare the Duke has?

JAILER. Very well.

DAUGHTER. She is horribly in love with him, poor beast; But he is like his master, coy and scornful.

JAILER. What dowry has she?

DAUGHTER. Some two hundred bottles, And twenty strike of oates; but he’ll ne’er have her. He lisps in’s neighing, able to entice A miller’s mare. He’ll be the death of her.

DOCTOR. What stuff she utters!

JAILER. Make curtsy; here your love comes.

Enter Wooer and Doctor come forward.

WOOER. Pretty soul, How do ye? That’s a fine maid; there’s a curtsy!

DAUGHTER. Yours to command i’ th’ way of honesty. How far is’t now to’ th’ end o’ th’ world, my masters?

DOCTOR. Why, a day’s journey, wench.

DAUGHTER. Will you go with me?

WOOER. What shall we do there, wench?

DAUGHTER. Why, play at stool-ball; What is there else to do?

WOOER. I am content, If we shall keep our wedding there.

DAUGHTER. ’Tis true, For there, I will assure you, we shall find Some blind priest for the purpose, that will venture To marry us, for here they are nice and foolish. Besides, my father must be hanged tomorrow, And that would be a blot i’ th’ business. Are not you Palamon?

WOOER. Do not you know me?

DAUGHTER. Yes, but you care not for me. I have nothing But this poor petticoat, and two coarse smocks.

WOOER. That’s all one; I will have you.

DAUGHTER. Will you surely?

WOOER. [Taking her hand.] Yes, by this fair hand, will I.

DAUGHTER. We’ll to bed, then.

WOOER. E’en when you will.

DAUGHTER. [Rubs off the kiss.] O sir, you would fain be nibbling.

WOOER. Why do you rub my kiss off?

DAUGHTER. ’Tis a sweet one, And will perfume me finely against the wedding. Is not this your cousin Arcite?

[She indicates the Doctor.]

DOCTOR. Yes, sweetheart, And I am glad my cousin Palamon Has made so fair a choice.

DAUGHTER. Do you think he’ll have me?

DOCTOR. Yes, without doubt.

DAUGHTER. Do you think so too?

DAUGHTER. We shall have many children. [To Doctor.] Lord, how you’re grown! My Palamon, I hope, will grow too, finely, Now he’s at liberty. Alas, poor chicken, He was kept down with hard meat and ill lodging, But I’ll kiss him up again.

MESSENGER. What do you here? You’ll lose the noblest sight That e’er was seen.

JAILER. Are they i’ th’ field?

MESSENGER. They are. You bear a charge there too.

JAILER. I’ll away straight. I must e’en leave you here.

DOCTOR. Nay, we’ll go with you; I will not lose the sight.

JAILER. How did you like her?

DOCTOR. I’ll warrant you, within these three or four days I’ll make her right again. You must not from her, But still preserve her in this way.

WOOER. I will.

DOCTOR. Let’s get her in.

WOOER. Come, sweet, we’ll go to dinner; And then we’ll play at cards.

DAUGHTER. And shall we kiss too?

WOOER. A hundred times.

DAUGHTER. And twenty.

WOOER. Ay, and twenty.

DAUGHTER. And then we’ll sleep together.

DOCTOR. Take her offer.

WOOER. Yes, marry, will we.

DAUGHTER. But you shall not hurt me.

WOOER. I will not, sweet.

DAUGHTER. If you do, love, I’ll cry.

SCENE III. A part of the Forest near Athens, and near the Place appointed for the Combat

Flourish. Enter Theseus, Hippolyta, Emilia, Pirithous and some Attendants.

EMILIA. I’ll no step further.

PIRITHOUS. Will you lose this sight?

EMILIA. I had rather see a wren hawk at a fly Than this decision. Every blow that falls Threats a brave life; each stroke laments The place whereon it falls, and sounds more like A bell than blade. I will stay here. It is enough my hearing shall be punished With what shall happen, ’gainst the which there is No deafing, but to hear; not taint mine eye With dread sights it may shun.

PIRITHOUS. Sir, my good lord, Your sister will no further.

THESEUS. O, she must. She shall see deeds of honour in their kind, Which sometime show well, penciled. Nature now Shall make and act the story, the belief Both sealed with eye and ear. You must be present; You are the victor’s meed, the price and garland To crown the question’s title.

EMILIA. Pardon me; If I were there, I’d wink.

THESEUS. You must be there; This trial is as ’twere i’ th’ night, and you The only star to shine.

EMILIA. I am extinct. There is but envy in that light which shows The one the other. Darkness, which ever was The dam of horror, who does stand accursed Of many mortal millions, may even now, By casting her black mantle over both, That neither could find other, get herself Some part of a good name, and many a murder Set off whereto she’s guilty.

HIPPOLYTA. You must go.

EMILIA. In faith, I will not.

THESEUS. Why, the knights must kindle Their valour at your eye. Know, of this war You are the treasure, and must needs be by To give the service pay.

EMILIA. Sir, pardon me; The title of a kingdom may be tried Out of itself.

THESEUS. Well, well, then, at your pleasure. Those that remain with you could wish their office To any of their enemies.

HIPPOLYTA. Farewell, sister. I am like to know your husband ’fore yourself By some small start of time. He whom the gods Do of the two know best, I pray them he Be made your lot.

EMILIA. Arcite is gently visaged, yet his eye Is like an engine bent, or a sharp weapon In a soft sheath; mercy and manly courage Are bedfellows in his visage. Palamon Has a most menacing aspect; his brow Is graved, and seems to bury what it frowns on; Yet sometimes ’tis not so, but alters to The quality of his thoughts. Long time his eye Will dwell upon his object. Melancholy Becomes him nobly; so does Arcite’s mirth; But Palamon’s sadness is a kind of mirth, So mingled as if mirth did make him sad And sadness merry. Those darker humours that Stick misbecomingly on others, on them Live in fair dwelling.

[Cornets. Trumpets sound as to a charge.]

Hark how yon spurs to spirit do incite The princes to their proof! Arcite may win me And yet may Palamon wound Arcite to The spoiling of his figure. O, what pity Enough for such a chance? If I were by, I might do hurt, for they would glance their eyes Towards my seat, and in that motion might Omit a ward or forfeit an offence Which craved that very time. It is much better I am not there.

[Cornets. A great cry and noise within crying “À Palamon!”]

Oh better never born Than minister to such harm.

What is the chance?

SERVANT. The cry’s “À Palamon.”

EMILIA. Then he has won. ’Twas ever likely. He looked all grace and success, and he is Doubtless the prim’st of men. I prithee run And tell me how it goes.

[Shout and cornets, crying “À Palamon!”]

SERVANT. Still “Palamon.”

EMILIA. Run and enquire.

Poor servant, thou hast lost. Upon my right side still I wore thy picture, Palamon’s on the left. Why so, I know not. I had no end in ’t else; chance would have it so. On the sinister side the heart lies; Palamon Had the best-boding chance.

[Another cry and shout within, and cornets.]

This burst of clamour Is sure th’ end o’ th’ combat.

SERVANT. They said that Palamon had Arcite’s body Within an inch o’ th’ pyramid, that the cry Was general “À Palamon.” But anon, Th’ assistants made a brave redemption, and The two bold titlers at this instant are Hand to hand at it.

EMILIA. Were they metamorphosed Both into one—O, why? There were no woman Worth so composed a man! Their single share, Their nobleness peculiar to them, gives The prejudice of disparity, value’s shortness, To any lady breathing.

[Cornets. Cry within, “Arcite, Arcite.”]

More exulting? “Palamon” still?

SERVANT. Nay, now the sound is “Arcite.”

EMILIA. I prithee, lay attention to the cry; Set both thine ears to th’ business.

[Cornets. A great shout and cry “Arcite, victory!”]

SERVANT. The cry is “Arcite”, and “Victory!” Hark, “Arcite, victory!” The combat’s consummation is proclaimed By the wind instruments.

EMILIA. Half-sights saw That Arcite was no babe. God’s lid, his richness And costliness of spirit looked through him; it could No more be hid in him than fire in flax, Than humble banks can go to law with waters That drift-winds force to raging. I did think Good Palamon would miscarry, yet I knew not Why I did think so. Our reasons are not prophets When oft our fancies are. They are coming off. Alas, poor Palamon!

Cornets. Enter Theseus, Hippolyta, Pirithous, Arcite as victor, and Attendants.

THESEUS. Lo, where our sister is in expectation, Yet quaking and unsettled.—Fairest Emily, The gods by their divine arbitrament Have given you this knight; he is a good one As ever struck at head. Give me your hands. Receive you her, you him; be plighted with A love that grows as you decay.

ARCITE. Emily, To buy you, I have lost what’s dearest to me, Save what is bought; and yet I purchase cheaply, As I do rate your value.

THESEUS. O loved sister, He speaks now of as brave a knight as e’er Did spur a noble steed. Surely the gods Would have him die a bachelor, lest his race Should show i’ th’ world too godlike. His behaviour So charmed me that methought Alcides was To him a sow of lead. If I could praise Each part of him to th’ all I have spoke, your Arcite Did not lose by ’t, for he that was thus good Encountered yet his better. I have heard Two emulous Philomels beat the ear o’ th’ night With their contentious throats, now one the higher, Anon the other, then again the first, And by-and-by out-breasted, that the sense Could not be judge between ’em. So it fared Good space between these kinsmen, till heavens did Make hardly one the winner.—Wear the garland With joy that you have won.—For the subdued, Give them our present justice, since I know Their lives but pinch ’em. Let it here be done. The scene’s not for our seeing. Go we hence Right joyful, with some sorrow.—Arm your prize; I know you will not lose her.—Hippolyta, I see one eye of yours conceives a tear, The which it will deliver.

EMILIA. Is this winning? O all you heavenly powers, where is your mercy? But that your wills have said it must be so, And charge me live to comfort this unfriended, This miserable prince, that cuts away A life more worthy from him than all women, I should and would die too.

HIPPOLYTA. Infinite pity That four such eyes should be so fixed on one That two must needs be blind for ’t.

THESEUS. So it is.

SCENE IV. The same; a Block prepared

Enter Palamon and his Knights pinioned; Jailer, Executioner and Guard.

PALAMON. There’s many a man alive that hath outlived The love o’ th’ people; yea, i’ th’ selfsame state Stands many a father with his child. Some comfort We have by so considering. We expire, And not without men’s pity; to live still, Have their good wishes; we prevent The loathsome misery of age, beguile The gout and rheum that in lag hours attend For gray approachers; we come towards the gods Young and unwappered, not halting under crimes Many and stale. That sure shall please the gods Sooner than such, to give us nectar with ’em, For we are more clear spirits. My dear kinsmen, Whose lives for this poor comfort are laid down, You have sold ’em too too cheap.

FIRST KNIGHT. What ending could be Of more content? O’er us the victors have Fortune, whose title is as momentary, As to us death is certain. A grain of honour They not o’erweigh us.

SECOND KNIGHT. Let us bid farewell; And with our patience anger tottering Fortune, Who at her certain’st reels.

THIRD KNIGHT. Come; who begins?

PALAMON. E’en he that led you to this banquet shall Taste to you all.—Ah ha, my friend, my friend, Your gentle daughter gave me freedom once; You’ll see ’t done now for ever. Pray, how does she? I heard she was not well; her kind of ill Gave me some sorrow.

JAILER. Sir, she’s well restored, And to be married shortly.

PALAMON. By my short life, I am most glad on’t. ’Tis the latest thing I shall be glad of; prithee, tell her so. Commend me to her, and, to piece her portion, Tender her this.

[Gives him his purse.]

FIRST KNIGHT. Nay let’s be offerers all.

SECOND KNIGHT. Is it a maid?

PALAMON. Verily, I think so. A right good creature, more to me deserving Then I can ’quite or speak of.

ALL KNIGHTS. Commend us to her.

[They give their purses.]

JAILER. The gods requite you all, and make her thankful.

PALAMON. Adieu; and let my life be now as short As my leave-taking.

[Lays his head on the block.]

FIRST KNIGHT. Lead, courageous cousin.

SECOND AND THIRD KNIGHT. We’ll follow cheerfully.

[A great noise within crying “Run!” “Save!” “Hold!”]

Enter in haste a Messenger.

MESSENGER. Hold, hold! O hold, hold, hold!

Enter Pirithous in haste.

PIRITHOUS. Hold, ho! It is a cursed haste you made If you have done so quickly!—Noble Palamon, The gods will show their glory in a life That thou art yet to lead.

PALAMON. Can that be, When Venus, I have said, is false? How do things fare?

PIRITHOUS. Arise, great sir, and give the tidings ear That are most dearly sweet and bitter.

PALAMON. What Hath waked us from our dream?

PIRITHOUS. List, then. Your cousin, Mounted upon a steed that Emily Did first bestow on him, a black one, owing Not a hair-worth of white, which some will say Weakens his price, and many will not buy His goodness with this note, which superstition Here finds allowance—on this horse is Arcite Trotting the stones of Athens, which the calkins Did rather tell than trample; for the horse Would make his length a mile, if ’t pleased his rider To put pride in him. As he thus went counting The flinty pavement, dancing, as ’twere, to th’ music His own hooves made—for, as they say, from iron Came music’s origin—what envious flint, Cold as old Saturn, and like him possessed With fire malevolent, darted a spark, Or what fierce sulphur else, to this end made, I comment not; the hot horse, hot as fire, Took toy at this and fell to what disorder His power could give his will; bounds, comes on end, Forgets school-doing, being therein trained And of kind manage. Pig-like he whines At the sharp rowel, which he frets at rather Than any jot obeys; seeks all foul means Of boist’rous and rough jad’ry to disseat His lord that kept it bravely. When naught served, When neither curb would crack, girth break, nor diff’ring plunges Disroot his rider whence he grew, but that He kept him ’tween his legs, on his hind hoofs On end he stands That Arcite’s legs, being higher than his head, Seemed with strange art to hang. His victor’s wreath Even then fell off his head and presently Backward the jade comes o’er, and his full poise Becomes the rider’s load. Yet is he living, But such a vessel ’tis that floats but for The surge that next approaches. He much desires To have some speech with you. Lo, he appears.

Enter Theseus, Hippolyta, Emilia, Arcite in a chair.

PALAMON. O miserable end of our alliance! The gods are mighty. Arcite, if thy heart, Thy worthy, manly heart, be yet unbroken, Give me thy last words. I am Palamon, One that yet loves thee dying.

ARCITE. Take Emilia And with her all the world’s joy. Reach thy hand; Farewell. I have told my last hour. I was false, Yet never treacherous. Forgive me, cousin. One kiss from fair Emilia.

[Emilia kisses Arcite.]

’Tis done. Take her. I die.

PALAMON. Thy brave soul seek Elysium!

[Arcite dies.]

EMILIA. I’ll close thine eyes, Prince; blessed souls be with thee! Thou art a right good man, and, while I live, This day I give to tears.

PALAMON. And I to honour.

THESEUS. In this place first you fought; e’en very here I sundered you. Acknowledge to the gods Our thanks that you are living. His part is played, and, though it were too short, He did it well; your day is lengthened, and The blissful dew of heaven does arrose you. The powerful Venus well hath graced her altar, And given you your love. Our master Mars, Hath vouched his oracle, and to Arcite gave The grace of the contention. So the deities Have showed due justice.—Bear this hence.

PALAMON. O cousin, That we should things desire, which do cost us The loss of our desire! That naught could buy Dear love, but loss of dear love!

[Arcite’s body is carried out.]

THESEUS. Never Fortune Did play a subtler game. The conquered triumphs; The victor has the loss; yet in the passage The gods have been most equal. Palamon, Your kinsman hath confessed the right o’ th’ lady Did lie in you, for you first saw her and Even then proclaimed your fancy. He restored her As your stol’n jewel and desired your spirit To send him hence forgiven. The gods my justice Take from my hand and they themselves become The executioners. Lead your lady off And call your lovers from the stage of death, Whom I adopt my friends. A day or two Let us look sadly, and give grace unto The funeral of Arcite, in whose end The visages of bridegrooms we’ll put on And smile with Palamon; for whom an hour, But one hour since, I was as dearly sorry As glad of Arcite, and am now as glad As for him sorry. O you heavenly charmers, What things you make of us! For what we lack We laugh, for what we have are sorry, still Are children in some kind. Let us be thankful For that which is, and with you leave dispute That are above our question. Let’s go off And bear us like the time.

EPILOGUE I would now ask ye how you like the play, But, as it is with schoolboys, cannot say. I am cruel fearful! Pray yet, stay a while, And let me look upon ye. No man smile? Then it goes hard, I see. He that has Loved a young handsome wench, then, show his face— ’Tis strange if none be here—and, if he will, Against his conscience let him hiss, and kill Our market. ’Tis in vain, I see, to stay ye. Have at the worst can come, then! Now what say ye? And yet mistake me not: I am not bold; We have no such cause. If the tale we have told For ’tis no other—any way content ye— For to that honest purpose it was meant ye— We have our end; and you shall have ere long, I dare say, many a better, to prolong Your old loves to us. We, and all our might, Rest at your service. Gentlemen, good night.

FINIS

THE WINTER’S TALE

ACT I Scene I. Sicilia. An Antechamber in Leontes’ Palace. Scene II. The same. A Room of State in the Palace.

ACT II Scene I. Sicilia. A Room in the Palace. Scene II. The same. The outer Room of a Prison. Scene III. The same. A Room in the Palace.

ACT III Scene I. Sicilia. A Street in some Town. Scene II. The same. A Court of Justice. Scene III. Bohemia. A desert Country near the Sea.

ACT IV Scene I. Prologue. Scene II. Bohemia. A Room in the palace of Polixenes. Scene III. The same. A Road near the Shepherd’s cottage. Scene IV. The same. A Shepherd’s Cottage.

ACT V Scene I. Sicilia. A Room in the palace of Leontes. Scene II. The same. Before the Palace. Scene III. The same. A Room in Paulina’s house.

LEONTES, King of Sicilia MAMILLIUS, his son CAMILLO, Sicilian Lord ANTIGONUS, Sicilian Lord CLEOMENES, Sicilian Lord DION, Sicilian Lord POLIXENES, King of Bohemia FLORIZEL, his son ARCHIDAMUS, a Bohemian Lord An Old Shepherd, reputed father of Perdita CLOWN, his son AUTOLYCUS, a rogue A Mariner A Gaoler Servant to the Old Shepherd Other Sicilian Lords Sicilian Gentlemen Officers of a Court of Judicature

HERMIONE, Queen to Leontes PERDITA, daughter to Leontes and Hermione PAULINA, wife to Antigonus EMILIA, a lady attending on the Queen MOPSA, shepherdess DORCAS, shepherdess Other Ladies, attending on the Queen

Lords, Ladies, and Attendants; Satyrs for a Dance; Shepherds, Shepherdesses, Guards, &c.

TIME, as Chorus

Scene: Sometimes in Sicilia; sometimes in Bohemia.

SCENE I. Sicilia. An Antechamber in Leontes’ Palace.

Enter Camillo and Archidamus.

ARCHIDAMUS. If you shall chance, Camillo, to visit Bohemia, on the like occasion whereon my services are now on foot, you shall see, as I have said, great difference betwixt our Bohemia and your Sicilia.

CAMILLO. I think this coming summer the King of Sicilia means to pay Bohemia the visitation which he justly owes him.

ARCHIDAMUS. Wherein our entertainment shall shame us; we will be justified in our loves. For indeed,—

CAMILLO. Beseech you—

ARCHIDAMUS. Verily, I speak it in the freedom of my knowledge. We cannot with such magnificence—in so rare—I know not what to say. We will give you sleepy drinks, that your senses, unintelligent of our insufficience, may, though they cannot praise us, as little accuse us.

CAMILLO. You pay a great deal too dear for what’s given freely.

ARCHIDAMUS. Believe me, I speak as my understanding instructs me and as mine honesty puts it to utterance.

CAMILLO. Sicilia cannot show himself over-kind to Bohemia. They were trained together in their childhoods, and there rooted betwixt them then such an affection which cannot choose but branch now. Since their more mature dignities and royal necessities made separation of their society, their encounters, though not personal, have been royally attorneyed with interchange of gifts, letters, loving embassies, that they have seemed to be together, though absent; shook hands, as over a vast; and embraced as it were from the ends of opposed winds. The heavens continue their loves!

ARCHIDAMUS. I think there is not in the world either malice or matter to alter it. You have an unspeakable comfort of your young Prince Mamillius. It is a gentleman of the greatest promise that ever came into my note.

CAMILLO. I very well agree with you in the hopes of him. It is a gallant child; one that indeed physics the subject, makes old hearts fresh. They that went on crutches ere he was born desire yet their life to see him a man.

ARCHIDAMUS. Would they else be content to die?

CAMILLO. Yes, if there were no other excuse why they should desire to live.

ARCHIDAMUS. If the king had no son, they would desire to live on crutches till he had one.

Enter Leontes, Polixenes, Hermione, Mamillius, Camillo and Attendants.

POLIXENES. Nine changes of the watery star hath been The shepherd’s note since we have left our throne Without a burden. Time as long again Would be fill’d up, my brother, with our thanks; And yet we should, for perpetuity, Go hence in debt: and therefore, like a cipher, Yet standing in rich place, I multiply With one “we thank you” many thousands more That go before it.

LEONTES. Stay your thanks a while, And pay them when you part.

POLIXENES. Sir, that’s tomorrow. I am question’d by my fears, of what may chance Or breed upon our absence; that may blow No sneaping winds at home, to make us say “This is put forth too truly.” Besides, I have stay’d To tire your royalty.

LEONTES. We are tougher, brother, Than you can put us to ’t.

POLIXENES. No longer stay.

LEONTES. One seve’night longer.

POLIXENES. Very sooth, tomorrow.

LEONTES. We’ll part the time between ’s then: and in that I’ll no gainsaying.

POLIXENES. Press me not, beseech you, so, There is no tongue that moves, none, none i’ th’ world, So soon as yours, could win me: so it should now, Were there necessity in your request, although ’Twere needful I denied it. My affairs Do even drag me homeward: which to hinder Were, in your love a whip to me; my stay To you a charge and trouble: to save both, Farewell, our brother.

LEONTES. Tongue-tied, our queen? Speak you.

HERMIONE. I had thought, sir, to have held my peace until You had drawn oaths from him not to stay. You, sir, Charge him too coldly. Tell him you are sure All in Bohemia’s well: this satisfaction The by-gone day proclaimed. Say this to him, He’s beat from his best ward.

LEONTES. Well said, Hermione.

HERMIONE. To tell he longs to see his son were strong. But let him say so then, and let him go; But let him swear so, and he shall not stay, We’ll thwack him hence with distaffs. [To Polixenes.] Yet of your royal presence I’ll adventure The borrow of a week. When at Bohemia You take my lord, I’ll give him my commission To let him there a month behind the gest Prefix’d for’s parting:—yet, good deed, Leontes, I love thee not a jar of th’ clock behind What lady she her lord. You’ll stay?

POLIXENES. No, madam.

HERMIONE. Nay, but you will?

POLIXENES. I may not, verily.

HERMIONE. Verily! You put me off with limber vows; but I, Though you would seek t’ unsphere the stars with oaths, Should yet say “Sir, no going.” Verily, You shall not go. A lady’s verily is As potent as a lord’s. Will go yet? Force me to keep you as a prisoner, Not like a guest: so you shall pay your fees When you depart, and save your thanks. How say you? My prisoner or my guest? By your dread “verily,” One of them you shall be.

POLIXENES. Your guest, then, madam. To be your prisoner should import offending; Which is for me less easy to commit Than you to punish.

HERMIONE. Not your gaoler then, But your kind hostess. Come, I’ll question you Of my lord’s tricks and yours when you were boys. You were pretty lordings then.

POLIXENES. We were, fair queen, Two lads that thought there was no more behind But such a day tomorrow as today, And to be boy eternal.

HERMIONE. Was not my lord The verier wag o’ th’ two?

POLIXENES. We were as twinn’d lambs that did frisk i’ th’ sun And bleat the one at th’ other. What we chang’d Was innocence for innocence; we knew not The doctrine of ill-doing, nor dream’d That any did. Had we pursu’d that life, And our weak spirits ne’er been higher rear’d With stronger blood, we should have answer’d heaven Boldly “Not guilty,” the imposition clear’d Hereditary ours.

HERMIONE. By this we gather You have tripp’d since.

POLIXENES. O my most sacred lady, Temptations have since then been born to ’s! for In those unfledg’d days was my wife a girl; Your precious self had then not cross’d the eyes Of my young play-fellow.

HERMIONE. Grace to boot! Of this make no conclusion, lest you say Your queen and I are devils. Yet go on; Th’ offences we have made you do we’ll answer, If you first sinn’d with us, and that with us You did continue fault, and that you slipp’d not With any but with us.

LEONTES. Is he won yet?

HERMIONE. He’ll stay, my lord.

LEONTES. At my request he would not. Hermione, my dearest, thou never spok’st To better purpose.

HERMIONE. Never?

LEONTES. Never but once.

HERMIONE. What! have I twice said well? when was’t before? I prithee tell me. Cram ’s with praise, and make ’s As fat as tame things: one good deed dying tongueless Slaughters a thousand waiting upon that. Our praises are our wages. You may ride ’s With one soft kiss a thousand furlongs ere With spur we heat an acre. But to th’ goal: My last good deed was to entreat his stay. What was my first? It has an elder sister, Or I mistake you: O, would her name were Grace! But once before I spoke to the purpose—when? Nay, let me have’t; I long.

LEONTES. Why, that was when Three crabbed months had sour’d themselves to death, Ere I could make thee open thy white hand And clap thyself my love; then didst thou utter “I am yours for ever.”

HERMIONE. ’Tis Grace indeed. Why, lo you now, I have spoke to th’ purpose twice. The one for ever earn’d a royal husband; Th’ other for some while a friend.

[Giving her hand to Polixenes.]

LEONTES. [Aside.] Too hot, too hot! To mingle friendship far is mingling bloods. I have tremor cordis on me. My heart dances, But not for joy,—not joy. This entertainment May a free face put on, derive a liberty From heartiness, from bounty, fertile bosom, And well become the agent: ’t may, I grant: But to be paddling palms and pinching fingers, As now they are, and making practis’d smiles As in a looking-glass; and then to sigh, as ’twere The mort o’ th’ deer. O, that is entertainment My bosom likes not, nor my brows. Mamillius, Art thou my boy?

MAMILLIUS. Ay, my good lord.

LEONTES. I’ fecks! Why, that’s my bawcock. What! hast smutch’d thy nose? They say it is a copy out of mine. Come, captain, We must be neat; not neat, but cleanly, captain: And yet the steer, the heifer, and the calf Are all call’d neat.—Still virginalling Upon his palm?—How now, you wanton calf! Art thou my calf?

MAMILLIUS. Yes, if you will, my lord.

LEONTES. Thou want’st a rough pash and the shoots that I have To be full like me:—yet they say we are Almost as like as eggs; women say so, That will say anything. But were they false As o’er-dy’d blacks, as wind, as waters, false As dice are to be wish’d by one that fixes No bourn ’twixt his and mine, yet were it true To say this boy were like me. Come, sir page, Look on me with your welkin eye: sweet villain! Most dear’st! my collop! Can thy dam?—may’t be? Affection! thy intention stabs the centre: Thou dost make possible things not so held, Communicat’st with dreams;—how can this be?— With what’s unreal thou coactive art, And fellow’st nothing: then ’tis very credent Thou may’st co-join with something; and thou dost, And that beyond commission, and I find it, And that to the infection of my brains And hardening of my brows.

POLIXENES. What means Sicilia?

HERMIONE. He something seems unsettled.

POLIXENES. How, my lord? What cheer? How is’t with you, best brother?

HERMIONE. You look As if you held a brow of much distraction: Are you mov’d, my lord?

LEONTES. No, in good earnest. How sometimes nature will betray its folly, Its tenderness, and make itself a pastime To harder bosoms! Looking on the lines Of my boy’s face, methoughts I did recoil Twenty-three years, and saw myself unbreech’d, In my green velvet coat; my dagger muzzled Lest it should bite its master, and so prove, As ornaments oft do, too dangerous. How like, methought, I then was to this kernel, This squash, this gentleman. Mine honest friend, Will you take eggs for money?

MAMILLIUS. No, my lord, I’ll fight.

LEONTES. You will? Why, happy man be ’s dole! My brother, Are you so fond of your young prince as we Do seem to be of ours?

POLIXENES. If at home, sir, He’s all my exercise, my mirth, my matter: Now my sworn friend, and then mine enemy; My parasite, my soldier, statesman, all. He makes a July’s day short as December; And with his varying childness cures in me Thoughts that would thick my blood.

LEONTES. So stands this squire Offic’d with me. We two will walk, my lord, And leave you to your graver steps. Hermione, How thou lov’st us show in our brother’s welcome; Let what is dear in Sicily be cheap: Next to thyself and my young rover, he’s Apparent to my heart.

HERMIONE. If you would seek us, We are yours i’ the garden. Shall ’s attend you there?

LEONTES. To your own bents dispose you: you’ll be found, Be you beneath the sky. [Aside.] I am angling now, Though you perceive me not how I give line. Go to, go to! How she holds up the neb, the bill to him! And arms her with the boldness of a wife To her allowing husband!

[Exeunt Polixenes, Hermione and Attendants.]

Gone already! Inch-thick, knee-deep, o’er head and ears a fork’d one!— Go, play, boy, play. Thy mother plays, and I Play too; but so disgrac’d a part, whose issue Will hiss me to my grave: contempt and clamour Will be my knell. Go, play, boy, play. There have been, Or I am much deceiv’d, cuckolds ere now; And many a man there is, even at this present, Now while I speak this, holds his wife by th’ arm, That little thinks she has been sluic’d in ’s absence, And his pond fish’d by his next neighbour, by Sir Smile, his neighbour. Nay, there’s comfort in ’t, Whiles other men have gates, and those gates open’d, As mine, against their will. Should all despair That hath revolted wives, the tenth of mankind Would hang themselves. Physic for’t there’s none; It is a bawdy planet, that will strike Where ’tis predominant; and ’tis powerful, think it, From east, west, north, and south. Be it concluded, No barricado for a belly. Know’t; It will let in and out the enemy With bag and baggage. Many thousand of us Have the disease, and feel’t not.—How now, boy!

MAMILLIUS. I am like you, they say.

LEONTES. Why, that’s some comfort. What! Camillo there?

CAMILLO. Ay, my good lord.

LEONTES. Go play, Mamillius; thou’rt an honest man.

[Exit Mamillius.]

Camillo, this great sir will yet stay longer.

CAMILLO. You had much ado to make his anchor hold: When you cast out, it still came home.

LEONTES. Didst note it?

CAMILLO. He would not stay at your petitions; made His business more material.

LEONTES. Didst perceive it? [Aside.] They’re here with me already; whisp’ring, rounding, “Sicilia is a so-forth.” ’Tis far gone When I shall gust it last.—How came’t, Camillo, That he did stay?

CAMILLO. At the good queen’s entreaty.

LEONTES. At the queen’s be’t: “good” should be pertinent, But so it is, it is not. Was this taken By any understanding pate but thine? For thy conceit is soaking, will draw in More than the common blocks. Not noted, is’t, But of the finer natures? by some severals Of head-piece extraordinary? lower messes Perchance are to this business purblind? say.

CAMILLO. Business, my lord? I think most understand Bohemia stays here longer.

LEONTES. Ha?

CAMILLO. Stays here longer.

LEONTES. Ay, but why?

CAMILLO. To satisfy your highness, and the entreaties Of our most gracious mistress.

LEONTES. Satisfy? Th’ entreaties of your mistress? Satisfy? Let that suffice. I have trusted thee, Camillo, With all the nearest things to my heart, as well My chamber-counsels, wherein, priest-like, thou Hast cleans’d my bosom; I from thee departed Thy penitent reform’d. But we have been Deceiv’d in thy integrity, deceiv’d In that which seems so.

CAMILLO. Be it forbid, my lord!

LEONTES. To bide upon’t: thou art not honest; or, If thou inclin’st that way, thou art a coward, Which hoxes honesty behind, restraining From course requir’d; or else thou must be counted A servant grafted in my serious trust, And therein negligent; or else a fool That seest a game play’d home, the rich stake drawn, And tak’st it all for jest.

CAMILLO. My gracious lord, I may be negligent, foolish, and fearful; In every one of these no man is free, But that his negligence, his folly, fear, Among the infinite doings of the world, Sometime puts forth. In your affairs, my lord, If ever I were wilful-negligent, It was my folly; if industriously I play’d the fool, it was my negligence, Not weighing well the end; if ever fearful To do a thing, where I the issue doubted, Whereof the execution did cry out Against the non-performance, ’twas a fear Which oft affects the wisest: these, my lord, Are such allow’d infirmities that honesty Is never free of. But, beseech your Grace, Be plainer with me; let me know my trespass By its own visage: if I then deny it, ’Tis none of mine.

LEONTES. Ha’ not you seen, Camillo? (But that’s past doubt: you have, or your eye-glass Is thicker than a cuckold’s horn) or heard? (For, to a vision so apparent, rumour Cannot be mute) or thought? (for cogitation Resides not in that man that does not think) My wife is slippery? If thou wilt confess, Or else be impudently negative, To have nor eyes nor ears nor thought, then say My wife’s a hobby-horse, deserves a name As rank as any flax-wench that puts to Before her troth-plight: say’t and justify’t.

CAMILLO. I would not be a stander-by to hear My sovereign mistress clouded so, without My present vengeance taken: ’shrew my heart, You never spoke what did become you less Than this; which to reiterate were sin As deep as that, though true.

LEONTES. Is whispering nothing? Is leaning cheek to cheek? is meeting noses? Kissing with inside lip? Stopping the career Of laughter with a sigh?—a note infallible Of breaking honesty?—horsing foot on foot? Skulking in corners? Wishing clocks more swift? Hours, minutes? Noon, midnight? and all eyes Blind with the pin and web but theirs, theirs only, That would unseen be wicked? Is this nothing? Why, then the world and all that’s in’t is nothing, The covering sky is nothing, Bohemia nothing, My wife is nothing, nor nothing have these nothings, If this be nothing.

CAMILLO. Good my lord, be cur’d Of this diseas’d opinion, and betimes, For ’tis most dangerous.

LEONTES. Say it be, ’tis true.

CAMILLO. No, no, my lord.

LEONTES. It is; you lie, you lie: I say thou liest, Camillo, and I hate thee, Pronounce thee a gross lout, a mindless slave, Or else a hovering temporizer that Canst with thine eyes at once see good and evil, Inclining to them both. Were my wife’s liver Infected as her life, she would not live The running of one glass.

CAMILLO. Who does infect her?

LEONTES. Why, he that wears her like her medal, hanging About his neck, Bohemia: who, if I Had servants true about me, that bare eyes To see alike mine honour as their profits, Their own particular thrifts, they would do that Which should undo more doing: ay, and thou, His cupbearer,—whom I from meaner form Have bench’d and rear’d to worship, who mayst see Plainly as heaven sees earth and earth sees heaven, How I am galled,—mightst bespice a cup, To give mine enemy a lasting wink; Which draught to me were cordial.

CAMILLO. Sir, my lord, I could do this, and that with no rash potion, But with a ling’ring dram, that should not work Maliciously like poison. But I cannot Believe this crack to be in my dread mistress, So sovereignly being honourable. I have lov’d thee,—

LEONTES. Make that thy question, and go rot! Dost think I am so muddy, so unsettled, To appoint myself in this vexation; sully The purity and whiteness of my sheets, (Which to preserve is sleep, which being spotted Is goads, thorns, nettles, tails of wasps) Give scandal to the blood o’ th’ prince, my son, (Who I do think is mine, and love as mine) Without ripe moving to’t? Would I do this? Could man so blench?

CAMILLO. I must believe you, sir: I do; and will fetch off Bohemia for’t; Provided that, when he’s remov’d, your highness Will take again your queen as yours at first, Even for your son’s sake, and thereby for sealing The injury of tongues in courts and kingdoms Known and allied to yours.

LEONTES. Thou dost advise me Even so as I mine own course have set down: I’ll give no blemish to her honour, none.

CAMILLO. My lord, Go then; and with a countenance as clear As friendship wears at feasts, keep with Bohemia And with your queen. I am his cupbearer. If from me he have wholesome beverage, Account me not your servant.

LEONTES. This is all: Do’t, and thou hast the one half of my heart; Do’t not, thou splitt’st thine own.

CAMILLO. I’ll do’t, my lord.

LEONTES. I will seem friendly, as thou hast advis’d me.

CAMILLO. O miserable lady! But, for me, What case stand I in? I must be the poisoner Of good Polixenes, and my ground to do’t Is the obedience to a master; one Who, in rebellion with himself, will have All that are his so too. To do this deed, Promotion follows. If I could find example Of thousands that had struck anointed kings And flourish’d after, I’d not do’t. But since Nor brass, nor stone, nor parchment, bears not one, Let villainy itself forswear’t. I must Forsake the court: to do’t, or no, is certain To me a break-neck. Happy star reign now! Here comes Bohemia.

Enter Polixenes.

POLIXENES. This is strange. Methinks My favour here begins to warp. Not speak? Good day, Camillo.

CAMILLO. Hail, most royal sir!

POLIXENES. What is the news i’ th’ court?

CAMILLO. None rare, my lord.

POLIXENES. The king hath on him such a countenance As he had lost some province, and a region Lov’d as he loves himself. Even now I met him With customary compliment, when he, Wafting his eyes to the contrary, and falling A lip of much contempt, speeds from me, and So leaves me to consider what is breeding That changes thus his manners.

CAMILLO. I dare not know, my lord.

POLIXENES. How, dare not? Do not? Do you know, and dare not? Be intelligent to me? ’Tis thereabouts; For, to yourself, what you do know, you must, And cannot say you dare not. Good Camillo, Your chang’d complexions are to me a mirror Which shows me mine chang’d too; for I must be A party in this alteration, finding Myself thus alter’d with’t.

CAMILLO. There is a sickness Which puts some of us in distemper, but I cannot name the disease, and it is caught Of you that yet are well.

POLIXENES. How caught of me? Make me not sighted like the basilisk. I have look’d on thousands who have sped the better By my regard, but kill’d none so. Camillo,— As you are certainly a gentleman, thereto Clerk-like, experienc’d, which no less adorns Our gentry than our parents’ noble names, In whose success we are gentle,—I beseech you, If you know aught which does behove my knowledge Thereof to be inform’d, imprison’t not In ignorant concealment.

CAMILLO. I may not answer.

POLIXENES. A sickness caught of me, and yet I well? I must be answer’d. Dost thou hear, Camillo, I conjure thee, by all the parts of man Which honour does acknowledge, whereof the least Is not this suit of mine, that thou declare What incidency thou dost guess of harm Is creeping toward me; how far off, how near; Which way to be prevented, if to be; If not, how best to bear it.

CAMILLO. Sir, I will tell you; Since I am charg’d in honour, and by him That I think honourable. Therefore mark my counsel, Which must be ev’n as swiftly follow’d as I mean to utter it, or both yourself and me Cry lost, and so goodnight!

POLIXENES. On, good Camillo.

CAMILLO. I am appointed him to murder you.

POLIXENES. By whom, Camillo?

CAMILLO. By the king.

POLIXENES. For what?

CAMILLO. He thinks, nay, with all confidence he swears, As he had seen’t or been an instrument To vice you to’t, that you have touch’d his queen Forbiddenly.

POLIXENES. O, then my best blood turn To an infected jelly, and my name Be yok’d with his that did betray the Best! Turn then my freshest reputation to A savour that may strike the dullest nostril Where I arrive, and my approach be shunn’d, Nay, hated too, worse than the great’st infection That e’er was heard or read!

CAMILLO. Swear his thought over By each particular star in heaven and By all their influences, you may as well Forbid the sea for to obey the moon As or by oath remove or counsel shake The fabric of his folly, whose foundation Is pil’d upon his faith, and will continue The standing of his body.

POLIXENES. How should this grow?

CAMILLO. I know not: but I am sure ’tis safer to Avoid what’s grown than question how ’tis born. If therefore you dare trust my honesty, That lies enclosed in this trunk, which you Shall bear along impawn’d, away tonight. Your followers I will whisper to the business, And will by twos and threes, at several posterns, Clear them o’ th’ city. For myself, I’ll put My fortunes to your service, which are here By this discovery lost. Be not uncertain, For, by the honour of my parents, I Have utter’d truth: which if you seek to prove, I dare not stand by; nor shall you be safer Than one condemned by the king’s own mouth, Thereon his execution sworn.

POLIXENES. I do believe thee. I saw his heart in ’s face. Give me thy hand, Be pilot to me, and thy places shall Still neighbour mine. My ships are ready, and My people did expect my hence departure Two days ago. This jealousy Is for a precious creature: as she’s rare, Must it be great; and, as his person’s mighty, Must it be violent; and as he does conceive He is dishonour’d by a man which ever Profess’d to him, why, his revenges must In that be made more bitter. Fear o’ershades me. Good expedition be my friend, and comfort The gracious queen, part of his theme, but nothing Of his ill-ta’en suspicion! Come, Camillo, I will respect thee as a father if Thou bear’st my life off hence. Let us avoid.

CAMILLO. It is in mine authority to command The keys of all the posterns: please your highness To take the urgent hour. Come, sir, away.

SCENE I. Sicilia. A Room in the Palace.

Enter Hermione, Mamillius and Ladies.

HERMIONE. Take the boy to you: he so troubles me, ’Tis past enduring.

FIRST LADY. Come, my gracious lord, Shall I be your playfellow?

MAMILLIUS. No, I’ll none of you.

FIRST LADY. Why, my sweet lord?

MAMILLIUS. You’ll kiss me hard, and speak to me as if I were a baby still. I love you better.

SECOND LADY. And why so, my lord?

MAMILLIUS. Not for because Your brows are blacker; yet black brows, they say, Become some women best, so that there be not Too much hair there, but in a semicircle Or a half-moon made with a pen.

SECOND LADY. Who taught this?

MAMILLIUS. I learn’d it out of women’s faces. Pray now, What colour are your eyebrows?

FIRST LADY. Blue, my lord.

MAMILLIUS. Nay, that’s a mock. I have seen a lady’s nose That has been blue, but not her eyebrows.

FIRST LADY. Hark ye, The queen your mother rounds apace. We shall Present our services to a fine new prince One of these days, and then you’d wanton with us, If we would have you.

SECOND LADY. She is spread of late Into a goodly bulk: good time encounter her!

HERMIONE. What wisdom stirs amongst you? Come, sir, now I am for you again. Pray you sit by us, And tell ’s a tale.

MAMILLIUS. Merry or sad shall’t be?

HERMIONE. As merry as you will.

MAMILLIUS. A sad tale’s best for winter. I have one Of sprites and goblins.

HERMIONE. Let’s have that, good sir. Come on, sit down. Come on, and do your best To fright me with your sprites: you’re powerful at it.

MAMILLIUS. There was a man,—

HERMIONE. Nay, come, sit down, then on.

MAMILLIUS. Dwelt by a churchyard. I will tell it softly, Yond crickets shall not hear it.

HERMIONE. Come on then, And give’t me in mine ear.

Enter Leontes, Antigonus, Lords and Guards.

LEONTES. Was he met there? his train? Camillo with him?

FIRST LORD. Behind the tuft of pines I met them, never Saw I men scour so on their way: I ey’d them Even to their ships.

LEONTES. How blest am I In my just censure, in my true opinion! Alack, for lesser knowledge! How accurs’d In being so blest! There may be in the cup A spider steep’d, and one may drink, depart, And yet partake no venom, for his knowledge Is not infected; but if one present Th’ abhorr’d ingredient to his eye, make known How he hath drunk, he cracks his gorge, his sides, With violent hefts. I have drunk, and seen the spider. Camillo was his help in this, his pander. There is a plot against my life, my crown; All’s true that is mistrusted. That false villain Whom I employ’d, was pre-employ’d by him. He has discover’d my design, and I Remain a pinch’d thing; yea, a very trick For them to play at will. How came the posterns So easily open?

FIRST LORD. By his great authority, Which often hath no less prevail’d than so On your command.

LEONTES. I know’t too well. Give me the boy. I am glad you did not nurse him. Though he does bear some signs of me, yet you Have too much blood in him.

HERMIONE. What is this? sport?

LEONTES. Bear the boy hence, he shall not come about her, Away with him, and let her sport herself With that she’s big with; for ’tis Polixenes Has made thee swell thus.

[Exit Mamillius with some of the Guards.]

HERMIONE. But I’d say he had not, And I’ll be sworn you would believe my saying, Howe’er you learn th’ nayward.

LEONTES. You, my lords, Look on her, mark her well. Be but about To say, “she is a goodly lady,” and The justice of your hearts will thereto add “’Tis pity she’s not honest, honourable”: Praise her but for this her without-door form, Which on my faith deserves high speech, and straight The shrug, the hum or ha, these petty brands That calumny doth use—O, I am out, That mercy does; for calumny will sear Virtue itself—these shrugs, these hum’s, and ha’s, When you have said “she’s goodly,” come between, Ere you can say “she’s honest”: but be it known, From him that has most cause to grieve it should be, She’s an adultress!

HERMIONE. Should a villain say so, The most replenish’d villain in the world, He were as much more villain: you, my lord, Do but mistake.

LEONTES. You have mistook, my lady, Polixenes for Leontes. O thou thing, Which I’ll not call a creature of thy place, Lest barbarism, making me the precedent, Should a like language use to all degrees, And mannerly distinguishment leave out Betwixt the prince and beggar. I have said She’s an adultress; I have said with whom: More, she’s a traitor, and Camillo is A federary with her; and one that knows What she should shame to know herself But with her most vile principal, that she’s A bed-swerver, even as bad as those That vulgars give bold’st titles; ay, and privy To this their late escape.

HERMIONE. No, by my life, Privy to none of this. How will this grieve you, When you shall come to clearer knowledge, that You thus have publish’d me! Gentle my lord, You scarce can right me throughly then, to say You did mistake.

LEONTES. No. If I mistake In those foundations which I build upon, The centre is not big enough to bear A school-boy’s top. Away with her to prison! He who shall speak for her is afar off guilty But that he speaks.

HERMIONE. There’s some ill planet reigns: I must be patient till the heavens look With an aspect more favourable. Good my lords, I am not prone to weeping, as our sex Commonly are; the want of which vain dew Perchance shall dry your pities. But I have That honourable grief lodg’d here which burns Worse than tears drown: beseech you all, my lords, With thoughts so qualified as your charities Shall best instruct you, measure me; and so The king’s will be perform’d.

LEONTES. Shall I be heard?

HERMIONE. Who is’t that goes with me? Beseech your highness My women may be with me, for you see My plight requires it. Do not weep, good fools; There is no cause: when you shall know your mistress Has deserv’d prison, then abound in tears As I come out: this action I now go on Is for my better grace. Adieu, my lord: I never wish’d to see you sorry; now I trust I shall. My women, come; you have leave.

LEONTES. Go, do our bidding. Hence!

[Exeunt Queen and Ladies with Guards.]

FIRST LORD. Beseech your highness, call the queen again.

ANTIGONUS. Be certain what you do, sir, lest your justice Prove violence, in the which three great ones suffer, Yourself, your queen, your son.

FIRST LORD. For her, my lord, I dare my life lay down, and will do’t, sir, Please you to accept it, that the queen is spotless I’ th’ eyes of heaven and to you—I mean In this which you accuse her.

ANTIGONUS. If it prove She’s otherwise, I’ll keep my stables where I lodge my wife; I’ll go in couples with her; Than when I feel and see her no further trust her. For every inch of woman in the world, Ay, every dram of woman’s flesh, is false, If she be.

LEONTES. Hold your peaces.

FIRST LORD. Good my lord,—

ANTIGONUS. It is for you we speak, not for ourselves: You are abus’d, and by some putter-on That will be damn’d for’t: would I knew the villain, I would land-damn him. Be she honour-flaw’d, I have three daughters; the eldest is eleven; The second and the third, nine and some five; If this prove true, they’ll pay for’t. By mine honour, I’ll geld ’em all; fourteen they shall not see, To bring false generations: they are co-heirs, And I had rather glib myself than they Should not produce fair issue.

LEONTES. Cease; no more. You smell this business with a sense as cold As is a dead man’s nose: but I do see’t and feel’t, As you feel doing thus; and see withal The instruments that feel.

ANTIGONUS. If it be so, We need no grave to bury honesty. There’s not a grain of it the face to sweeten Of the whole dungy earth.

LEONTES. What! Lack I credit?

FIRST LORD. I had rather you did lack than I, my lord, Upon this ground: and more it would content me To have her honour true than your suspicion, Be blam’d for’t how you might.

LEONTES. Why, what need we Commune with you of this, but rather follow Our forceful instigation? Our prerogative Calls not your counsels, but our natural goodness Imparts this; which, if you, or stupified Or seeming so in skill, cannot or will not Relish a truth, like us, inform yourselves We need no more of your advice: the matter, The loss, the gain, the ord’ring on’t, is all Properly ours.

ANTIGONUS. And I wish, my liege, You had only in your silent judgement tried it, Without more overture.

LEONTES. How could that be? Either thou art most ignorant by age, Or thou wert born a fool. Camillo’s flight, Added to their familiarity, (Which was as gross as ever touch’d conjecture, That lack’d sight only, nought for approbation But only seeing, all other circumstances Made up to th’ deed) doth push on this proceeding. Yet, for a greater confirmation (For in an act of this importance, ’twere Most piteous to be wild), I have dispatch’d in post To sacred Delphos, to Apollo’s temple, Cleomenes and Dion, whom you know Of stuff’d sufficiency: now from the oracle They will bring all, whose spiritual counsel had, Shall stop or spur me. Have I done well?

FIRST LORD. Well done, my lord.

LEONTES. Though I am satisfied, and need no more Than what I know, yet shall the oracle Give rest to the minds of others, such as he Whose ignorant credulity will not Come up to th’ truth. So have we thought it good From our free person she should be confin’d, Lest that the treachery of the two fled hence Be left her to perform. Come, follow us; We are to speak in public; for this business Will raise us all.

ANTIGONUS. [Aside.] To laughter, as I take it, If the good truth were known.

SCENE II. The same. The outer Room of a Prison.

Enter Paulina, a Gentleman and Attendants.

PAULINA. The keeper of the prison, call to him; Let him have knowledge who I am.

[Exit the Gentleman.]

Good lady! No court in Europe is too good for thee; What dost thou then in prison?

Enter Gentleman with the Gaoler.

Now, good sir, You know me, do you not?

GAOLER. For a worthy lady And one who much I honour.

PAULINA. Pray you then, Conduct me to the queen.

GAOLER. I may not, madam. To the contrary I have express commandment.

PAULINA. Here’s ado, to lock up honesty and honour from Th’ access of gentle visitors! Is’t lawful, pray you, To see her women? any of them? Emilia?

GAOLER. So please you, madam, To put apart these your attendants, I Shall bring Emilia forth.

PAULINA. I pray now, call her. Withdraw yourselves.

[Exeunt Gentleman and Attendants.]

GAOLER. And, madam, I must be present at your conference.

PAULINA. Well, be’t so, prithee.

[Exit Gaoler.]

Here’s such ado to make no stain a stain As passes colouring.

Re-enter Gaoler with Emilia.

Dear gentlewoman, How fares our gracious lady?

EMILIA. As well as one so great and so forlorn May hold together: on her frights and griefs, (Which never tender lady hath borne greater) She is, something before her time, deliver’d.

PAULINA. A boy?

EMILIA. A daughter; and a goodly babe, Lusty, and like to live: the queen receives Much comfort in ’t; says “My poor prisoner, I am as innocent as you.”

PAULINA. I dare be sworn. These dangerous unsafe lunes i’ th’ king, beshrew them! He must be told on’t, and he shall: the office Becomes a woman best. I’ll take’t upon me. If I prove honey-mouth’d, let my tongue blister, And never to my red-look’d anger be The trumpet any more. Pray you, Emilia, Commend my best obedience to the queen. If she dares trust me with her little babe, I’ll show’t the king, and undertake to be Her advocate to th’ loud’st. We do not know How he may soften at the sight o’ th’ child: The silence often of pure innocence Persuades, when speaking fails.

EMILIA. Most worthy madam, Your honour and your goodness is so evident, That your free undertaking cannot miss A thriving issue: there is no lady living So meet for this great errand. Please your ladyship To visit the next room, I’ll presently Acquaint the queen of your most noble offer, Who but today hammer’d of this design, But durst not tempt a minister of honour, Lest she should be denied.

PAULINA. Tell her, Emilia, I’ll use that tongue I have: if wit flow from ’t As boldness from my bosom, let’t not be doubted I shall do good.

EMILIA. Now be you blest for it! I’ll to the queen: please you come something nearer.

GAOLER. Madam, if ’t please the queen to send the babe, I know not what I shall incur to pass it, Having no warrant.

PAULINA. You need not fear it, sir: This child was prisoner to the womb, and is, By law and process of great nature thence Freed and enfranchis’d: not a party to The anger of the king, nor guilty of, If any be, the trespass of the queen.

GAOLER. I do believe it.

PAULINA. Do not you fear: upon mine honour, I Will stand betwixt you and danger.

SCENE III. The same. A Room in the Palace.

Enter Leontes, Antigonus, Lords and other Attendants.

LEONTES. Nor night nor day no rest: it is but weakness To bear the matter thus, mere weakness. If The cause were not in being,—part o’ th’ cause, She th’ adultress; for the harlot king Is quite beyond mine arm, out of the blank And level of my brain, plot-proof. But she I can hook to me. Say that she were gone, Given to the fire, a moiety of my rest Might come to me again. Who’s there?

FIRST ATTENDANT. My lord.

LEONTES. How does the boy?

FIRST ATTENDANT. He took good rest tonight; ’Tis hop’d his sickness is discharg’d.

LEONTES. To see his nobleness, Conceiving the dishonour of his mother. He straight declin’d, droop’d, took it deeply, Fasten’d and fix’d the shame on’t in himself, Threw off his spirit, his appetite, his sleep, And downright languish’d. Leave me solely: go, See how he fares.

[Exit First Attendant.]

Fie, fie! no thought of him. The very thought of my revenges that way Recoil upon me: in himself too mighty, And in his parties, his alliance. Let him be, Until a time may serve. For present vengeance, Take it on her. Camillo and Polixenes Laugh at me; make their pastime at my sorrow: They should not laugh if I could reach them, nor Shall she, within my power.

Enter Paulina carrying a baby, with Antigonus, lords and servants.

FIRST LORD. You must not enter.

PAULINA. Nay, rather, good my lords, be second to me: Fear you his tyrannous passion more, alas, Than the queen’s life? a gracious innocent soul, More free than he is jealous.

ANTIGONUS. That’s enough.

SERVANT. Madam, he hath not slept tonight; commanded None should come at him.

PAULINA. Not so hot, good sir; I come to bring him sleep. ’Tis such as you, That creep like shadows by him, and do sigh At each his needless heavings,—such as you Nourish the cause of his awaking. I Do come with words as med’cinal as true, Honest as either, to purge him of that humour That presses him from sleep.

LEONTES. What noise there, ho?

PAULINA. No noise, my lord; but needful conference About some gossips for your highness.

LEONTES. How! Away with that audacious lady! Antigonus, I charg’d thee that she should not come about me. I knew she would.

ANTIGONUS. I told her so, my lord, On your displeasure’s peril and on mine, She should not visit you.

LEONTES. What, canst not rule her?

PAULINA. From all dishonesty he can. In this, Unless he take the course that you have done, Commit me for committing honour—trust it, He shall not rule me.

ANTIGONUS. La you now, you hear. When she will take the rein I let her run; But she’ll not stumble.

PAULINA. Good my liege, I come,— And, I beseech you hear me, who professes Myself your loyal servant, your physician, Your most obedient counsellor, yet that dares Less appear so, in comforting your evils, Than such as most seem yours—I say I come From your good queen.

LEONTES. Good queen!

PAULINA. Good queen, my lord, good queen: I say, good queen, And would by combat make her good, so were I A man, the worst about you.

LEONTES. Force her hence.

PAULINA. Let him that makes but trifles of his eyes First hand me: on mine own accord I’ll off; But first I’ll do my errand. The good queen, (For she is good) hath brought you forth a daughter; Here ’tis; commends it to your blessing.

[Laying down the child.]

LEONTES. Out! A mankind witch! Hence with her, out o’ door: A most intelligencing bawd!

PAULINA. Not so. I am as ignorant in that as you In so entitling me; and no less honest Than you are mad; which is enough, I’ll warrant, As this world goes, to pass for honest.

LEONTES. Traitors! Will you not push her out? [To Antigonus.] Give her the bastard, Thou dotard! Thou art woman-tir’d, unroosted By thy Dame Partlet here. Take up the bastard, Take’t up, I say; give’t to thy crone.

PAULINA. For ever Unvenerable be thy hands, if thou Tak’st up the princess by that forced baseness Which he has put upon ’t!

LEONTES. He dreads his wife.

PAULINA. So I would you did; then ’twere past all doubt You’d call your children yours.

LEONTES. A nest of traitors!

ANTIGONUS. I am none, by this good light.

PAULINA. Nor I; nor any But one that’s here, and that’s himself. For he The sacred honour of himself, his queen’s, His hopeful son’s, his babe’s, betrays to slander, Whose sting is sharper than the sword’s; and will not, (For, as the case now stands, it is a curse He cannot be compell’d to’t) once remove The root of his opinion, which is rotten As ever oak or stone was sound.

LEONTES. A callat Of boundless tongue, who late hath beat her husband, And now baits me! This brat is none of mine; It is the issue of Polixenes. Hence with it, and together with the dam Commit them to the fire.

PAULINA. It is yours; And, might we lay th’ old proverb to your charge, So like you ’tis the worse. Behold, my lords, Although the print be little, the whole matter And copy of the father: eye, nose, lip, The trick of ’s frown, his forehead; nay, the valley, The pretty dimples of his chin and cheek; his smiles; The very mould and frame of hand, nail, finger: And thou, good goddess Nature, which hast made it So like to him that got it, if thou hast The ordering of the mind too, ’mongst all colours No yellow in ’t, lest she suspect, as he does, Her children not her husband’s!

LEONTES. A gross hag! And, losel, thou art worthy to be hang’d That wilt not stay her tongue.

ANTIGONUS. Hang all the husbands That cannot do that feat, you’ll leave yourself Hardly one subject.

LEONTES. Once more, take her hence.

PAULINA. A most unworthy and unnatural lord Can do no more.

LEONTES. I’ll have thee burnt.

PAULINA. I care not. It is an heretic that makes the fire, Not she which burns in ’t. I’ll not call you tyrant; But this most cruel usage of your queen, Not able to produce more accusation Than your own weak-hing’d fancy, something savours Of tyranny, and will ignoble make you, Yea, scandalous to the world.

LEONTES. On your allegiance, Out of the chamber with her! Were I a tyrant, Where were her life? She durst not call me so, If she did know me one. Away with her!

PAULINA. I pray you, do not push me; I’ll be gone. Look to your babe, my lord; ’tis yours: Jove send her A better guiding spirit! What needs these hands? You that are thus so tender o’er his follies, Will never do him good, not one of you. So, so. Farewell; we are gone.

LEONTES. Thou, traitor, hast set on thy wife to this. My child? Away with’t. Even thou, that hast A heart so tender o’er it, take it hence, And see it instantly consum’d with fire; Even thou, and none but thou. Take it up straight: Within this hour bring me word ’tis done, And by good testimony, or I’ll seize thy life, With that thou else call’st thine. If thou refuse And wilt encounter with my wrath, say so; The bastard brains with these my proper hands Shall I dash out. Go, take it to the fire; For thou set’st on thy wife.

ANTIGONUS. I did not, sir: These lords, my noble fellows, if they please, Can clear me in ’t.

LORDS We can: my royal liege, He is not guilty of her coming hither.

LEONTES. You’re liars all.

FIRST LORD. Beseech your highness, give us better credit: We have always truly serv’d you; and beseech So to esteem of us. And on our knees we beg, As recompense of our dear services Past and to come, that you do change this purpose, Which being so horrible, so bloody, must Lead on to some foul issue. We all kneel.

LEONTES. I am a feather for each wind that blows. Shall I live on to see this bastard kneel And call me father? better burn it now Than curse it then. But be it; let it live. It shall not neither. [To Antigonus.] You, sir, come you hither, You that have been so tenderly officious With Lady Margery, your midwife, there, To save this bastard’s life—for ’tis a bastard, So sure as this beard’s grey. What will you adventure To save this brat’s life?

ANTIGONUS. Anything, my lord, That my ability may undergo, And nobleness impose: at least thus much: I’ll pawn the little blood which I have left To save the innocent. Anything possible.

LEONTES. It shall be possible. Swear by this sword Thou wilt perform my bidding.

ANTIGONUS. I will, my lord.

LEONTES. Mark, and perform it, seest thou? for the fail Of any point in’t shall not only be Death to thyself, but to thy lewd-tongu’d wife, Whom for this time we pardon. We enjoin thee, As thou art liegeman to us, that thou carry This female bastard hence, and that thou bear it To some remote and desert place, quite out Of our dominions; and that there thou leave it, Without more mercy, to it own protection And favour of the climate. As by strange fortune It came to us, I do in justice charge thee, On thy soul’s peril and thy body’s torture, That thou commend it strangely to some place Where chance may nurse or end it. Take it up.

ANTIGONUS. I swear to do this, though a present death Had been more merciful. Come on, poor babe: Some powerful spirit instruct the kites and ravens To be thy nurses! Wolves and bears, they say, Casting their savageness aside, have done Like offices of pity. Sir, be prosperous In more than this deed does require! And blessing Against this cruelty, fight on thy side, Poor thing, condemn’d to loss!

[Exit with the child.]

LEONTES. No, I’ll not rear Another’s issue.

SERVANT. Please your highness, posts From those you sent to th’ oracle are come An hour since: Cleomenes and Dion, Being well arriv’d from Delphos, are both landed, Hasting to th’ court.

FIRST LORD. So please you, sir, their speed Hath been beyond account.

LEONTES. Twenty-three days They have been absent: ’tis good speed; foretells The great Apollo suddenly will have The truth of this appear. Prepare you, lords; Summon a session, that we may arraign Our most disloyal lady; for, as she hath Been publicly accus’d, so shall she have A just and open trial. While she lives, My heart will be a burden to me. Leave me, And think upon my bidding.

SCENE I. Sicilia. A Street in some Town.

Enter Cleomenes and Dion.

CLEOMENES The climate’s delicate; the air most sweet, Fertile the isle, the temple much surpassing The common praise it bears.

DION. I shall report, For most it caught me, the celestial habits (Methinks I so should term them) and the reverence Of the grave wearers. O, the sacrifice! How ceremonious, solemn, and unearthly, It was i’ th’ offering!

CLEOMENES But of all, the burst And the ear-deaf’ning voice o’ th’ oracle, Kin to Jove’s thunder, so surprised my sense That I was nothing.

DION. If the event o’ th’ journey Prove as successful to the queen,—O, be’t so!— As it hath been to us rare, pleasant, speedy, The time is worth the use on’t.

CLEOMENES Great Apollo Turn all to th’ best! These proclamations, So forcing faults upon Hermione, I little like.

DION. The violent carriage of it Will clear or end the business: when the oracle, (Thus by Apollo’s great divine seal’d up) Shall the contents discover, something rare Even then will rush to knowledge. Go. Fresh horses! And gracious be the issue!

SCENE II. The same. A Court of Justice.

Enter Leontes, Lords and Officers appear, properly seated.

LEONTES. This sessions (to our great grief we pronounce) Even pushes ’gainst our heart: the party tried The daughter of a king, our wife, and one Of us too much belov’d. Let us be clear’d Of being tyrannous, since we so openly Proceed in justice, which shall have due course, Even to the guilt or the purgation. Produce the prisoner.

OFFICER. It is his highness’ pleasure that the queen Appear in person here in court. Silence!

Hermione is brought in guarded; Paulina and Ladies attending.

LEONTES. Read the indictment.

OFFICER. [Reads.] “Hermione, queen to the worthy Leontes, king of Sicilia, thou art here accused and arraigned of high treason, in committing adultery with Polixenes, king of Bohemia; and conspiring with Camillo to take away the life of our sovereign lord the king, thy royal husband: the pretence whereof being by circumstances partly laid open, thou, Hermione, contrary to the faith and allegiance of a true subject, didst counsel and aid them, for their better safety, to fly away by night.”

HERMIONE. Since what I am to say must be but that Which contradicts my accusation, and The testimony on my part no other But what comes from myself, it shall scarce boot me To say “Not guilty”. Mine integrity, Being counted falsehood, shall, as I express it, Be so receiv’d. But thus, if powers divine Behold our human actions, as they do, I doubt not, then, but innocence shall make False accusation blush, and tyranny Tremble at patience. You, my lord, best know, Who least will seem to do so, my past life Hath been as continent, as chaste, as true, As I am now unhappy; which is more Than history can pattern, though devis’d And play’d to take spectators. For behold me, A fellow of the royal bed, which owe A moiety of the throne, a great king’s daughter, The mother to a hopeful prince, here standing To prate and talk for life and honour ’fore Who please to come and hear. For life, I prize it As I weigh grief, which I would spare. For honour, ’Tis a derivative from me to mine, And only that I stand for. I appeal To your own conscience, sir, before Polixenes Came to your court, how I was in your grace, How merited to be so; since he came, With what encounter so uncurrent I Have strain’d t’ appear thus: if one jot beyond The bound of honour, or in act or will That way inclining, harden’d be the hearts Of all that hear me, and my near’st of kin Cry fie upon my grave!

LEONTES. I ne’er heard yet That any of these bolder vices wanted Less impudence to gainsay what they did Than to perform it first.

HERMIONE. That’s true enough; Though ’tis a saying, sir, not due to me.

LEONTES. You will not own it.

HERMIONE. More than mistress of Which comes to me in name of fault, I must not At all acknowledge. For Polixenes, With whom I am accus’d, I do confess I lov’d him as in honour he requir’d, With such a kind of love as might become A lady like me; with a love even such, So and no other, as yourself commanded: Which not to have done, I think had been in me Both disobedience and ingratitude To you and toward your friend, whose love had spoke, Ever since it could speak, from an infant, freely, That it was yours. Now, for conspiracy, I know not how it tastes, though it be dish’d For me to try how: all I know of it Is that Camillo was an honest man; And why he left your court, the gods themselves, Wotting no more than I, are ignorant.

LEONTES. You knew of his departure, as you know What you have underta’en to do in ’s absence.

HERMIONE. Sir, You speak a language that I understand not: My life stands in the level of your dreams, Which I’ll lay down.

LEONTES. Your actions are my dreams. You had a bastard by Polixenes, And I but dream’d it. As you were past all shame (Those of your fact are so) so past all truth, Which to deny concerns more than avails; for as Thy brat hath been cast out, like to itself, No father owning it (which is, indeed, More criminal in thee than it), so thou Shalt feel our justice; in whose easiest passage Look for no less than death.

HERMIONE. Sir, spare your threats: The bug which you would fright me with, I seek. To me can life be no commodity. The crown and comfort of my life, your favour, I do give lost, for I do feel it gone, But know not how it went. My second joy, And first-fruits of my body, from his presence I am barr’d, like one infectious. My third comfort, Starr’d most unluckily, is from my breast, (The innocent milk in its most innocent mouth) Hal’d out to murder; myself on every post Proclaim’d a strumpet; with immodest hatred The child-bed privilege denied, which ’longs To women of all fashion; lastly, hurried Here to this place, i’ th’ open air, before I have got strength of limit. Now, my liege, Tell me what blessings I have here alive, That I should fear to die. Therefore proceed. But yet hear this: mistake me not: no life, I prize it not a straw, but for mine honour, Which I would free, if I shall be condemn’d Upon surmises, all proofs sleeping else But what your jealousies awake, I tell you ’Tis rigour, and not law. Your honours all, I do refer me to the oracle: Apollo be my judge!

FIRST LORD. This your request Is altogether just: therefore bring forth, And in Apollo’s name, his oracle:

[Exeunt certain Officers.]

HERMIONE. The Emperor of Russia was my father. O that he were alive, and here beholding His daughter’s trial! that he did but see The flatness of my misery; yet with eyes Of pity, not revenge!

Enter Officers with Cleomenes and Dion.

OFFICER. You here shall swear upon this sword of justice, That you, Cleomenes and Dion, have Been both at Delphos, and from thence have brought This seal’d-up oracle, by the hand deliver’d Of great Apollo’s priest; and that since then You have not dared to break the holy seal, Nor read the secrets in’t.

CLEOMENES, DION. All this we swear.

LEONTES. Break up the seals and read.

OFFICER. [Reads.] “Hermione is chaste; Polixenes blameless; Camillo a true subject; Leontes a jealous tyrant; his innocent babe truly begotten; and the king shall live without an heir, if that which is lost be not found.”

LORDS Now blessed be the great Apollo!

HERMIONE. Praised!

LEONTES. Hast thou read truth?

OFFICER. Ay, my lord, even so As it is here set down.

LEONTES. There is no truth at all i’ th’ oracle: The sessions shall proceed: this is mere falsehood.

Enter a Servant hastily.

SERVANT. My lord the king, the king!

LEONTES. What is the business?

SERVANT. O sir, I shall be hated to report it. The prince your son, with mere conceit and fear Of the queen’s speed, is gone.

LEONTES. How! gone?

SERVANT. Is dead.

LEONTES. Apollo’s angry, and the heavens themselves Do strike at my injustice.

[Hermione faints.]

How now there?

PAULINA. This news is mortal to the queen. Look down And see what death is doing.

LEONTES. Take her hence: Her heart is but o’ercharg’d; she will recover. I have too much believ’d mine own suspicion. Beseech you tenderly apply to her Some remedies for life.

[Exeunt Paulina and Ladies with Hermione.]

Apollo, pardon My great profaneness ’gainst thine oracle! I’ll reconcile me to Polixenes, New woo my queen, recall the good Camillo, Whom I proclaim a man of truth, of mercy; For, being transported by my jealousies To bloody thoughts and to revenge, I chose Camillo for the minister to poison My friend Polixenes: which had been done, But that the good mind of Camillo tardied My swift command, though I with death and with Reward did threaten and encourage him, Not doing it and being done. He, most humane And fill’d with honour, to my kingly guest Unclasp’d my practice, quit his fortunes here, Which you knew great, and to the certain hazard Of all incertainties himself commended, No richer than his honour. How he glisters Thorough my rust! And how his piety Does my deeds make the blacker!

Enter Paulina.

PAULINA. Woe the while! O, cut my lace, lest my heart, cracking it, Break too!

FIRST LORD. What fit is this, good lady?

PAULINA. What studied torments, tyrant, hast for me? What wheels? racks? fires? what flaying? boiling In leads or oils? What old or newer torture Must I receive, whose every word deserves To taste of thy most worst? Thy tyranny, Together working with thy jealousies, Fancies too weak for boys, too green and idle For girls of nine. O, think what they have done, And then run mad indeed, stark mad! for all Thy by-gone fooleries were but spices of it. That thou betray’dst Polixenes, ’twas nothing; That did but show thee, of a fool, inconstant And damnable ingrateful; nor was’t much Thou wouldst have poison’d good Camillo’s honour, To have him kill a king; poor trespasses, More monstrous standing by: whereof I reckon The casting forth to crows thy baby daughter, To be or none or little, though a devil Would have shed water out of fire ere done’t, Nor is’t directly laid to thee the death Of the young prince, whose honourable thoughts, Thoughts high for one so tender, cleft the heart That could conceive a gross and foolish sire Blemish’d his gracious dam: this is not, no, Laid to thy answer: but the last—O lords, When I have said, cry Woe!—the queen, the queen, The sweet’st, dear’st creature’s dead, and vengeance for’t Not dropp’d down yet.

FIRST LORD. The higher powers forbid!

PAULINA. I say she’s dead: I’ll swear’t. If word nor oath Prevail not, go and see: if you can bring Tincture, or lustre, in her lip, her eye, Heat outwardly or breath within, I’ll serve you As I would do the gods. But, O thou tyrant! Do not repent these things, for they are heavier Than all thy woes can stir. Therefore betake thee To nothing but despair. A thousand knees Ten thousand years together, naked, fasting, Upon a barren mountain, and still winter In storm perpetual, could not move the gods To look that way thou wert.

LEONTES. Go on, go on: Thou canst not speak too much; I have deserv’d All tongues to talk their bitterest.

FIRST LORD. Say no more: Howe’er the business goes, you have made fault I’ th’ boldness of your speech.

PAULINA. I am sorry for ’t: All faults I make, when I shall come to know them, I do repent. Alas, I have show’d too much The rashness of a woman: he is touch’d To th’ noble heart. What’s gone and what’s past help, Should be past grief. Do not receive affliction At my petition; I beseech you, rather Let me be punish’d, that have minded you Of what you should forget. Now, good my liege, Sir, royal sir, forgive a foolish woman: The love I bore your queen—lo, fool again! I’ll speak of her no more, nor of your children. I’ll not remember you of my own lord, Who is lost too. Take your patience to you, And I’ll say nothing.

LEONTES. Thou didst speak but well When most the truth, which I receive much better Than to be pitied of thee. Prithee, bring me To the dead bodies of my queen and son: One grave shall be for both. Upon them shall The causes of their death appear, unto Our shame perpetual. Once a day I’ll visit The chapel where they lie, and tears shed there Shall be my recreation. So long as nature Will bear up with this exercise, so long I daily vow to use it. Come, and lead me To these sorrows.

SCENE III. Bohemia. A desert Country near the Sea.

Enter Antigonus with the Child and a Mariner.

ANTIGONUS. Thou art perfect, then, our ship hath touch’d upon The deserts of Bohemia?

MARINER. Ay, my lord, and fear We have landed in ill time: the skies look grimly, And threaten present blusters. In my conscience, The heavens with that we have in hand are angry, And frown upon ’s.

ANTIGONUS. Their sacred wills be done! Go, get aboard; Look to thy bark: I’ll not be long before I call upon thee.

MARINER. Make your best haste, and go not Too far i’ th’ land: ’tis like to be loud weather; Besides, this place is famous for the creatures Of prey that keep upon ’t.

ANTIGONUS. Go thou away: I’ll follow instantly.

MARINER. I am glad at heart To be so rid o’ th’ business.

ANTIGONUS. Come, poor babe. I have heard, but not believ’d, the spirits of the dead May walk again: if such thing be, thy mother Appear’d to me last night; for ne’er was dream So like a waking. To me comes a creature, Sometimes her head on one side, some another. I never saw a vessel of like sorrow, So fill’d and so becoming: in pure white robes, Like very sanctity, she did approach My cabin where I lay: thrice bow’d before me, And, gasping to begin some speech, her eyes Became two spouts. The fury spent, anon Did this break from her: “Good Antigonus, Since fate, against thy better disposition, Hath made thy person for the thrower-out Of my poor babe, according to thine oath, Places remote enough are in Bohemia, There weep, and leave it crying. And, for the babe Is counted lost for ever, Perdita I prithee call’t. For this ungentle business, Put on thee by my lord, thou ne’er shalt see Thy wife Paulina more.” And so, with shrieks, She melted into air. Affrighted much, I did in time collect myself and thought This was so, and no slumber. Dreams are toys, Yet for this once, yea, superstitiously, I will be squar’d by this. I do believe Hermione hath suffer’d death, and that Apollo would, this being indeed the issue Of King Polixenes, it should here be laid, Either for life or death, upon the earth Of its right father. Blossom, speed thee well! There lie; and there thy character: there these;

[Laying down the child and a bundle.]

Which may if fortune please, both breed thee, pretty, And still rest thine. The storm begins: poor wretch, That for thy mother’s fault art thus expos’d To loss and what may follow! Weep I cannot, But my heart bleeds, and most accurs’d am I To be by oath enjoin’d to this. Farewell! The day frowns more and more. Thou’rt like to have A lullaby too rough. I never saw The heavens so dim by day. A savage clamour! Well may I get aboard! This is the chase: I am gone for ever.

[Exit, pursued by a bear.]

Enter an old Shepherd.

SHEPHERD. I would there were no age between ten and three-and-twenty, or that youth would sleep out the rest; for there is nothing in the between but getting wenches with child, wronging the ancientry, stealing, fighting—Hark you now! Would any but these boiled brains of nineteen and two-and-twenty hunt this weather? They have scared away two of my best sheep, which I fear the wolf will sooner find than the master: if anywhere I have them, ’tis by the sea-side, browsing of ivy. Good luck, an ’t be thy will, what have we here?

[Taking up the child.]

Mercy on ’s, a bairn! A very pretty bairn! A boy or a child, I wonder? A pretty one; a very pretty one. Sure, some scape. Though I am not bookish, yet I can read waiting-gentlewoman in the scape. This has been some stair-work, some trunk-work, some behind-door-work. They were warmer that got this than the poor thing is here. I’ll take it up for pity: yet I’ll tarry till my son come; he halloed but even now. Whoa-ho-hoa!

CLOWN. Hilloa, loa!

SHEPHERD. What, art so near? If thou’lt see a thing to talk on when thou art dead and rotten, come hither. What ail’st thou, man?

CLOWN. I have seen two such sights, by sea and by land! But I am not to say it is a sea, for it is now the sky: betwixt the firmament and it, you cannot thrust a bodkin’s point.

SHEPHERD. Why, boy, how is it?

CLOWN. I would you did but see how it chafes, how it rages, how it takes up the shore! But that’s not to the point. O, the most piteous cry of the poor souls! sometimes to see ’em, and not to see ’em. Now the ship boring the moon with her mainmast, and anon swallowed with yest and froth, as you’d thrust a cork into a hogshead. And then for the land service, to see how the bear tore out his shoulder-bone, how he cried to me for help, and said his name was Antigonus, a nobleman. But to make an end of the ship, to see how the sea flap-dragon’d it: but first, how the poor souls roared, and the sea mocked them, and how the poor gentleman roared, and the bear mocked him, both roaring louder than the sea or weather.

SHEPHERD. Name of mercy, when was this, boy?

CLOWN. Now, now. I have not winked since I saw these sights: the men are not yet cold under water, nor the bear half dined on the gentleman. He’s at it now.

SHEPHERD. Would I had been by to have helped the old man!

CLOWN. I would you had been by the ship side, to have helped her: there your charity would have lacked footing.

SHEPHERD. Heavy matters, heavy matters! But look thee here, boy. Now bless thyself: thou met’st with things dying, I with things new-born. Here’s a sight for thee. Look thee, a bearing-cloth for a squire’s child! Look thee here; take up, take up, boy; open’t. So, let’s see. It was told me I should be rich by the fairies. This is some changeling: open’t. What’s within, boy?

CLOWN. You’re a made old man. If the sins of your youth are forgiven you, you’re well to live. Gold! all gold!

SHEPHERD. This is fairy gold, boy, and ’twill prove so. Up with it, keep it close: home, home, the next way. We are lucky, boy, and to be so still requires nothing but secrecy. Let my sheep go: come, good boy, the next way home.

CLOWN. Go you the next way with your findings. I’ll go see if the bear be gone from the gentleman, and how much he hath eaten. They are never curst but when they are hungry: if there be any of him left, I’ll bury it.

SHEPHERD. That’s a good deed. If thou mayest discern by that which is left of him what he is, fetch me to th’ sight of him.

CLOWN. Marry, will I; and you shall help to put him i’ th’ ground.

SHEPHERD. ’Tis a lucky day, boy, and we’ll do good deeds on ’t.

Enter Time, the Chorus.

TIME. I that please some, try all: both joy and terror Of good and bad, that makes and unfolds error, Now take upon me, in the name of Time, To use my wings. Impute it not a crime To me or my swift passage, that I slide O’er sixteen years, and leave the growth untried Of that wide gap, since it is in my power To o’erthrow law, and in one self-born hour To plant and o’erwhelm custom. Let me pass The same I am, ere ancient’st order was Or what is now received. I witness to The times that brought them in; so shall I do To th’ freshest things now reigning, and make stale The glistering of this present, as my tale Now seems to it. Your patience this allowing, I turn my glass, and give my scene such growing As you had slept between. Leontes leaving Th’ effects of his fond jealousies, so grieving That he shuts up himself, imagine me, Gentle spectators, that I now may be In fair Bohemia, and remember well, I mentioned a son o’ th’ king’s, which Florizel I now name to you; and with speed so pace To speak of Perdita, now grown in grace Equal with wondering. What of her ensues I list not prophesy; but let Time’s news Be known when ’tis brought forth. A shepherd’s daughter, And what to her adheres, which follows after, Is th’ argument of Time. Of this allow, If ever you have spent time worse ere now; If never, yet that Time himself doth say He wishes earnestly you never may.

SCENE II. Bohemia. A Room in the palace of Polixenes.

Enter Polixenes and Camillo.

POLIXENES. I pray thee, good Camillo, be no more importunate: ’tis a sickness denying thee anything; a death to grant this.

CAMILLO. It is fifteen years since I saw my country. Though I have for the most part been aired abroad, I desire to lay my bones there. Besides, the penitent king, my master, hath sent for me; to whose feeling sorrows I might be some allay, or I o’erween to think so,—which is another spur to my departure.

POLIXENES. As thou lov’st me, Camillo, wipe not out the rest of thy services by leaving me now: the need I have of thee, thine own goodness hath made; better not to have had thee than thus to want thee. Thou, having made me businesses which none without thee can sufficiently manage, must either stay to execute them thyself, or take away with thee the very services thou hast done, which if I have not enough considered (as too much I cannot) to be more thankful to thee shall be my study; and my profit therein the heaping friendships. Of that fatal country Sicilia, prithee speak no more; whose very naming punishes me with the remembrance of that penitent, as thou call’st him, and reconciled king, my brother; whose loss of his most precious queen and children are even now to be afresh lamented. Say to me, when sawest thou the Prince Florizel, my son? Kings are no less unhappy, their issue not being gracious, than they are in losing them when they have approved their virtues.

CAMILLO. Sir, it is three days since I saw the prince. What his happier affairs may be, are to me unknown, but I have missingly noted he is of late much retired from court, and is less frequent to his princely exercises than formerly he hath appeared.

POLIXENES. I have considered so much, Camillo, and with some care; so far that I have eyes under my service which look upon his removedness; from whom I have this intelligence, that he is seldom from the house of a most homely shepherd, a man, they say, that from very nothing, and beyond the imagination of his neighbours, is grown into an unspeakable estate.

CAMILLO. I have heard, sir, of such a man, who hath a daughter of most rare note: the report of her is extended more than can be thought to begin from such a cottage.

POLIXENES. That’s likewise part of my intelligence: but, I fear, the angle that plucks our son thither. Thou shalt accompany us to the place, where we will, not appearing what we are, have some question with the shepherd; from whose simplicity I think it not uneasy to get the cause of my son’s resort thither. Prithee, be my present partner in this business, and lay aside the thoughts of Sicilia.

CAMILLO. I willingly obey your command.

POLIXENES. My best Camillo! We must disguise ourselves.

SCENE III. The same. A Road near the Shepherd’s cottage.

Enter Autolycus, singing.

AUTOLYCUS. When daffodils begin to peer, With, hey! the doxy over the dale, Why, then comes in the sweet o’ the year, For the red blood reigns in the winter’s pale.

The white sheet bleaching on the hedge, With, hey! the sweet birds, O, how they sing! Doth set my pugging tooth on edge; For a quart of ale is a dish for a king.

The lark, that tirra-lirra chants, With, hey! with, hey! the thrush and the jay, Are summer songs for me and my aunts, While we lie tumbling in the hay.

I have served Prince Florizel, and in my time wore three-pile, but now I am out of service.

But shall I go mourn for that, my dear? The pale moon shines by night: And when I wander here and there, I then do most go right.

If tinkers may have leave to live, And bear the sow-skin budget, Then my account I well may give And in the stocks avouch it.

My traffic is sheets; when the kite builds, look to lesser linen. My father named me Autolycus; who being, I as am, littered under Mercury, was likewise a snapper-up of unconsidered trifles. With die and drab I purchased this caparison, and my revenue is the silly cheat. Gallows and knock are too powerful on the highway. Beating and hanging are terrors to me. For the life to come, I sleep out the thought of it. A prize! a prize!

CLOWN. Let me see: every ’leven wether tods; every tod yields pound and odd shilling; fifteen hundred shorn, what comes the wool to?

AUTOLYCUS. [Aside.] If the springe hold, the cock’s mine.

CLOWN. I cannot do’t without counters. Let me see; what am I to buy for our sheep-shearing feast? “Three pound of sugar, five pound of currants, rice”—what will this sister of mine do with rice? But my father hath made her mistress of the feast, and she lays it on. She hath made me four-and-twenty nosegays for the shearers, three-man song-men all, and very good ones; but they are most of them means and basses, but one puritan amongst them, and he sings psalms to hornpipes. I must have saffron to colour the warden pies; “mace; dates”, none, that’s out of my note; “nutmegs, seven; a race or two of ginger”, but that I may beg; “four pound of prunes, and as many of raisins o’ th’ sun.”

AUTOLYCUS. [Grovelling on the ground.] O that ever I was born!

CLOWN. I’ th’ name of me!

AUTOLYCUS. O, help me, help me! Pluck but off these rags; and then, death, death!

CLOWN. Alack, poor soul! thou hast need of more rags to lay on thee, rather than have these off.

AUTOLYCUS. O sir, the loathsomeness of them offends me more than the stripes I have received, which are mighty ones and millions.

CLOWN. Alas, poor man! a million of beating may come to a great matter.

AUTOLYCUS. I am robbed, sir, and beaten; my money and apparel ta’en from me, and these detestable things put upon me.

CLOWN. What, by a horseman or a footman?

AUTOLYCUS. A footman, sweet sir, a footman.

CLOWN. Indeed, he should be a footman by the garments he has left with thee: if this be a horseman’s coat, it hath seen very hot service. Lend me thy hand, I’ll help thee: come, lend me thy hand.

[Helping him up.]

AUTOLYCUS. O, good sir, tenderly, O!

CLOWN. Alas, poor soul!

AUTOLYCUS. O, good sir, softly, good sir. I fear, sir, my shoulder blade is out.

CLOWN. How now! canst stand?

AUTOLYCUS. Softly, dear sir! [Picks his pocket.] good sir, softly. You ha’ done me a charitable office.

CLOWN. Dost lack any money? I have a little money for thee.

AUTOLYCUS. No, good sweet sir; no, I beseech you, sir: I have a kinsman not past three-quarters of a mile hence, unto whom I was going. I shall there have money or anything I want. Offer me no money, I pray you; that kills my heart.

CLOWN. What manner of fellow was he that robbed you?

AUTOLYCUS. A fellow, sir, that I have known to go about with troll-my-dames. I knew him once a servant of the prince; I cannot tell, good sir, for which of his virtues it was, but he was certainly whipped out of the court.

CLOWN. His vices, you would say; there’s no virtue whipped out of the court. They cherish it to make it stay there; and yet it will no more but abide.

AUTOLYCUS. Vices, I would say, sir. I know this man well. He hath been since an ape-bearer, then a process-server, a bailiff. Then he compassed a motion of the Prodigal Son, and married a tinker’s wife within a mile where my land and living lies; and, having flown over many knavish professions, he settled only in rogue. Some call him Autolycus.

CLOWN. Out upon him! prig, for my life, prig: he haunts wakes, fairs, and bear-baitings.

AUTOLYCUS. Very true, sir; he, sir, he; that’s the rogue that put me into this apparel.

CLOWN. Not a more cowardly rogue in all Bohemia. If you had but looked big and spit at him, he’d have run.

AUTOLYCUS. I must confess to you, sir, I am no fighter. I am false of heart that way; and that he knew, I warrant him.

CLOWN. How do you now?

AUTOLYCUS. Sweet sir, much better than I was. I can stand and walk: I will even take my leave of you and pace softly towards my kinsman’s.

CLOWN. Shall I bring thee on the way?

AUTOLYCUS. No, good-faced sir; no, sweet sir.

CLOWN. Then fare thee well. I must go buy spices for our sheep-shearing.

AUTOLYCUS. Prosper you, sweet sir!

Your purse is not hot enough to purchase your spice. I’ll be with you at your sheep-shearing too. If I make not this cheat bring out another, and the shearers prove sheep, let me be unrolled, and my name put in the book of virtue! [Sings.] Jog on, jog on, the footpath way, And merrily hent the stile-a: A merry heart goes all the day, Your sad tires in a mile-a.

SCENE IV. The same. A Shepherd’s Cottage.

Enter Florizel and Perdita.

FLORIZEL. These your unusual weeds to each part of you Do give a life, no shepherdess, but Flora Peering in April’s front. This your sheep-shearing Is as a meeting of the petty gods, And you the queen on ’t.

PERDITA. Sir, my gracious lord, To chide at your extremes it not becomes me; O, pardon that I name them! Your high self, The gracious mark o’ th’ land, you have obscur’d With a swain’s wearing, and me, poor lowly maid, Most goddess-like prank’d up. But that our feasts In every mess have folly, and the feeders Digest it with a custom, I should blush To see you so attir’d; swoon, I think, To show myself a glass.

FLORIZEL. I bless the time When my good falcon made her flight across Thy father’s ground.

PERDITA. Now Jove afford you cause! To me the difference forges dread. Your greatness Hath not been us’d to fear. Even now I tremble To think your father, by some accident, Should pass this way, as you did. O, the Fates! How would he look to see his work, so noble, Vilely bound up? What would he say? Or how Should I, in these my borrow’d flaunts, behold The sternness of his presence?

FLORIZEL. Apprehend Nothing but jollity. The gods themselves, Humbling their deities to love, have taken The shapes of beasts upon them. Jupiter Became a bull and bellow’d; the green Neptune A ram and bleated; and the fire-rob’d god, Golden Apollo, a poor humble swain, As I seem now. Their transformations Were never for a piece of beauty rarer, Nor in a way so chaste, since my desires Run not before mine honour, nor my lusts Burn hotter than my faith.

PERDITA. O, but, sir, Your resolution cannot hold when ’tis Oppos’d, as it must be, by the power of the king: One of these two must be necessities, Which then will speak, that you must change this purpose, Or I my life.

FLORIZEL. Thou dearest Perdita, With these forc’d thoughts, I prithee, darken not The mirth o’ th’ feast. Or I’ll be thine, my fair, Or not my father’s. For I cannot be Mine own, nor anything to any, if I be not thine. To this I am most constant, Though destiny say no. Be merry, gentle. Strangle such thoughts as these with anything That you behold the while. Your guests are coming: Lift up your countenance, as it were the day Of celebration of that nuptial which We two have sworn shall come.

PERDITA. O lady Fortune, Stand you auspicious!

FLORIZEL. See, your guests approach: Address yourself to entertain them sprightly, And let’s be red with mirth.

Enter Shepherd with Polixenes and Camillo, disguised; Clown, Mopsa, Dorcas with others.

SHEPHERD. Fie, daughter! When my old wife liv’d, upon This day she was both pantler, butler, cook, Both dame and servant; welcom’d all; serv’d all; Would sing her song and dance her turn; now here At upper end o’ th’ table, now i’ th’ middle; On his shoulder, and his; her face o’ fire With labour, and the thing she took to quench it She would to each one sip. You are retired, As if you were a feasted one, and not The hostess of the meeting: pray you, bid These unknown friends to ’s welcome, for it is A way to make us better friends, more known. Come, quench your blushes, and present yourself That which you are, mistress o’ th’ feast. Come on, And bid us welcome to your sheep-shearing, As your good flock shall prosper.

PERDITA. [To Polixenes.] Sir, welcome. It is my father’s will I should take on me The hostess-ship o’ the day. [To Camillo.] You’re welcome, sir. Give me those flowers there, Dorcas. Reverend sirs, For you there’s rosemary and rue; these keep Seeming and savour all the winter long. Grace and remembrance be to you both! And welcome to our shearing!

POLIXENES. Shepherdess— A fair one are you—well you fit our ages With flowers of winter.

PERDITA. Sir, the year growing ancient, Not yet on summer’s death nor on the birth Of trembling winter, the fairest flowers o’ th’ season Are our carnations and streak’d gillyvors, Which some call nature’s bastards: of that kind Our rustic garden’s barren; and I care not To get slips of them.

POLIXENES. Wherefore, gentle maiden, Do you neglect them?

PERDITA. For I have heard it said There is an art which, in their piedness, shares With great creating nature.

POLIXENES. Say there be; Yet nature is made better by no mean But nature makes that mean. So, over that art Which you say adds to nature, is an art That nature makes. You see, sweet maid, we marry A gentler scion to the wildest stock, And make conceive a bark of baser kind By bud of nobler race. This is an art Which does mend nature, change it rather, but The art itself is nature.

PERDITA. So it is.

POLIXENES. Then make your garden rich in gillyvors, And do not call them bastards.

PERDITA. I’ll not put The dibble in earth to set one slip of them; No more than, were I painted, I would wish This youth should say ’twere well, and only therefore Desire to breed by me. Here’s flowers for you: Hot lavender, mints, savory, marjoram, The marigold, that goes to bed with th’ sun And with him rises weeping. These are flowers Of middle summer, and I think they are given To men of middle age. You’re very welcome.

CAMILLO. I should leave grazing, were I of your flock, And only live by gazing.

PERDITA. Out, alas! You’d be so lean that blasts of January Would blow you through and through. [To Florizel] Now, my fair’st friend, I would I had some flowers o’ th’ spring, that might Become your time of day; and yours, and yours, That wear upon your virgin branches yet Your maidenheads growing. O Proserpina, From the flowers now that, frighted, thou let’st fall From Dis’s waggon! daffodils, That come before the swallow dares, and take The winds of March with beauty; violets dim, But sweeter than the lids of Juno’s eyes Or Cytherea’s breath; pale primroses, That die unmarried ere they can behold Bright Phoebus in his strength (a malady Most incident to maids); bold oxlips and The crown imperial; lilies of all kinds, The flower-de-luce being one. O, these I lack, To make you garlands of; and my sweet friend, To strew him o’er and o’er!

FLORIZEL. What, like a corse?

PERDITA. No, like a bank for love to lie and play on; Not like a corse; or if, not to be buried, But quick, and in mine arms. Come, take your flowers. Methinks I play as I have seen them do In Whitsun pastorals. Sure this robe of mine Does change my disposition.

FLORIZEL. What you do Still betters what is done. When you speak, sweet, I’d have you do it ever. When you sing, I’d have you buy and sell so, so give alms, Pray so; and, for the ord’ring your affairs, To sing them too. When you do dance, I wish you A wave o’ th’ sea, that you might ever do Nothing but that, move still, still so, And own no other function. Each your doing, So singular in each particular, Crowns what you are doing in the present deeds, That all your acts are queens.

PERDITA. O Doricles, Your praises are too large. But that your youth, And the true blood which peeps fairly through ’t, Do plainly give you out an unstained shepherd, With wisdom I might fear, my Doricles, You woo’d me the false way.

FLORIZEL. I think you have As little skill to fear as I have purpose To put you to ’t. But, come; our dance, I pray. Your hand, my Perdita. So turtles pair That never mean to part.

PERDITA. I’ll swear for ’em.

POLIXENES. This is the prettiest low-born lass that ever Ran on the green-sward. Nothing she does or seems But smacks of something greater than herself, Too noble for this place.

CAMILLO. He tells her something That makes her blood look out. Good sooth, she is The queen of curds and cream.

CLOWN. Come on, strike up.

DORCAS. Mopsa must be your mistress: marry, garlic, to mend her kissing with!

MOPSA. Now, in good time!

CLOWN. Not a word, a word; we stand upon our manners. Come, strike up.

[Music. Here a dance Of Shepherds and Shepherdesses.]

POLIXENES. Pray, good shepherd, what fair swain is this Which dances with your daughter?

SHEPHERD. They call him Doricles; and boasts himself To have a worthy feeding. But I have it Upon his own report, and I believe it. He looks like sooth. He says he loves my daughter. I think so too; for never gaz’d the moon Upon the water as he’ll stand and read, As ’twere, my daughter’s eyes. And, to be plain, I think there is not half a kiss to choose Who loves another best.

POLIXENES. She dances featly.

SHEPHERD. So she does anything, though I report it That should be silent. If young Doricles Do light upon her, she shall bring him that Which he not dreams of.

SERVANT. O master, if you did but hear the pedlar at the door, you would never dance again after a tabor and pipe; no, the bagpipe could not move you. He sings several tunes faster than you’ll tell money. He utters them as he had eaten ballads, and all men’s ears grew to his tunes.

CLOWN. He could never come better: he shall come in. I love a ballad but even too well, if it be doleful matter merrily set down, or a very pleasant thing indeed and sung lamentably.

SERVANT. He hath songs for man or woman of all sizes. No milliner can so fit his customers with gloves. He has the prettiest love-songs for maids, so without bawdry, which is strange; with such delicate burdens of dildos and fadings, “jump her and thump her”; and where some stretch-mouthed rascal would, as it were, mean mischief and break a foul gap into the matter, he makes the maid to answer “Whoop, do me no harm, good man”; puts him off, slights him, with “Whoop, do me no harm, good man.”

POLIXENES. This is a brave fellow.

CLOWN. Believe me, thou talkest of an admirable conceited fellow. Has he any unbraided wares?

SERVANT. He hath ribbons of all the colours i’ th’ rainbow; points, more than all the lawyers in Bohemia can learnedly handle, though they come to him by th’ gross; inkles, caddisses, cambrics, lawns; why he sings ’em over as they were gods or goddesses; you would think a smock were a she-angel, he so chants to the sleeve-hand and the work about the square on ’t.

CLOWN. Prithee bring him in; and let him approach singing.

PERDITA. Forewarn him that he use no scurrilous words in ’s tunes.

CLOWN. You have of these pedlars that have more in them than you’d think, sister.

PERDITA. Ay, good brother, or go about to think.

AUTOLYCUS. Lawn as white as driven snow, Cypress black as e’er was crow, Gloves as sweet as damask roses, Masks for faces and for noses, Bugle-bracelet, necklace amber, Perfume for a lady’s chamber, Golden quoifs and stomachers For my lads to give their dears, Pins and poking-sticks of steel, What maids lack from head to heel. Come buy of me, come; come buy, come buy; Buy, lads, or else your lasses cry. Come, buy.

CLOWN. If I were not in love with Mopsa, thou shouldst take no money of me; but being enthralled as I am, it will also be the bondage of certain ribbons and gloves.

MOPSA. I was promised them against the feast; but they come not too late now.

DORCAS. He hath promised you more than that, or there be liars.

MOPSA. He hath paid you all he promised you. Maybe he has paid you more, which will shame you to give him again.

CLOWN. Is there no manners left among maids? Will they wear their plackets where they should bear their faces? Is there not milking-time, when you are going to bed, or kiln-hole, to whistle of these secrets, but you must be tittle-tattling before all our guests? ’Tis well they are whispering. Clamour your tongues, and not a word more.

MOPSA. I have done. Come, you promised me a tawdry lace and a pair of sweet gloves.

CLOWN. Have I not told thee how I was cozened by the way and lost all my money?

AUTOLYCUS. And indeed, sir, there are cozeners abroad; therefore it behoves men to be wary.

CLOWN. Fear not thou, man. Thou shalt lose nothing here.

AUTOLYCUS. I hope so, sir; for I have about me many parcels of charge.

CLOWN. What hast here? Ballads?

MOPSA. Pray now, buy some. I love a ballad in print alife, for then we are sure they are true.

AUTOLYCUS. Here’s one to a very doleful tune. How a usurer’s wife was brought to bed of twenty money-bags at a burden, and how she longed to eat adders’ heads and toads carbonadoed.

MOPSA. Is it true, think you?

AUTOLYCUS. Very true, and but a month old.

DORCAS. Bless me from marrying a usurer!

AUTOLYCUS. Here’s the midwife’s name to’t, one Mistress Taleporter, and five or six honest wives that were present. Why should I carry lies abroad?

MOPSA. Pray you now, buy it.

CLOWN. Come on, lay it by; and let’s first see more ballads. We’ll buy the other things anon.

AUTOLYCUS. Here’s another ballad, of a fish that appeared upon the coast on Wednesday the fourscore of April, forty thousand fathom above water, and sung this ballad against the hard hearts of maids. It was thought she was a woman, and was turned into a cold fish for she would not exchange flesh with one that loved her. The ballad is very pitiful, and as true.

DORCAS. Is it true too, think you?

AUTOLYCUS. Five justices’ hands at it, and witnesses more than my pack will hold.

CLOWN. Lay it by too: another.

AUTOLYCUS. This is a merry ballad; but a very pretty one.

MOPSA. Let’s have some merry ones.

AUTOLYCUS. Why, this is a passing merry one and goes to the tune of “Two maids wooing a man.” There’s scarce a maid westward but she sings it. ’Tis in request, I can tell you.

MOPSA. We can both sing it: if thou’lt bear a part, thou shalt hear; ’tis in three parts.

DORCAS. We had the tune on ’t a month ago.

AUTOLYCUS. I can bear my part; you must know ’tis my occupation: have at it with you.

AUTOLYCUS. Get you hence, for I must go Where it fits not you to know.

DORCAS. Whither?

MOPSA. O, whither?

MOPSA. It becomes thy oath full well Thou to me thy secrets tell.

DORCAS. Me too! Let me go thither.

MOPSA. Or thou goest to th’ grange or mill.

DORCAS. If to either, thou dost ill.

AUTOLYCUS. Neither.

DORCAS. What, neither?

DORCAS. Thou hast sworn my love to be.

MOPSA. Thou hast sworn it more to me. Then whither goest? Say, whither?

CLOWN. We’ll have this song out anon by ourselves. My father and the gentlemen are in sad talk, and we’ll not trouble them. Come, bring away thy pack after me. Wenches, I’ll buy for you both. Pedlar, let’s have the first choice. Follow me, girls.

[Exit with Dorcas and Mopsa.]

AUTOLYCUS. [Aside.] And you shall pay well for ’em.

Will you buy any tape, Or lace for your cape, My dainty duck, my dear-a? Any silk, any thread, Any toys for your head, Of the new’st and fin’st, fin’st wear-a? Come to the pedlar; Money’s a meddler That doth utter all men’s ware-a.

SERVANT. Master, there is three carters, three shepherds, three neat-herds, three swine-herds, that have made themselves all men of hair. They call themselves saltiers, and they have dance which the wenches say is a gallimaufry of gambols, because they are not in ’t; but they themselves are o’ the mind (if it be not too rough for some that know little but bowling) it will please plentifully.

SHEPHERD. Away! we’ll none on ’t. Here has been too much homely foolery already. I know, sir, we weary you.

POLIXENES. You weary those that refresh us: pray, let’s see these four threes of herdsmen.

SERVANT. One three of them, by their own report, sir, hath danced before the king; and not the worst of the three but jumps twelve foot and a half by th’ square.

SHEPHERD. Leave your prating: since these good men are pleased, let them come in; but quickly now.

SERVANT. Why, they stay at door, sir.

Enter Twelve Rustics, habited like Satyrs. They dance, and then exeunt.

POLIXENES. O, father, you’ll know more of that hereafter. [To Camillo.] Is it not too far gone? ’Tis time to part them. He’s simple and tells much. [To Florizel.] How now, fair shepherd! Your heart is full of something that does take Your mind from feasting. Sooth, when I was young And handed love, as you do, I was wont To load my she with knacks: I would have ransack’d The pedlar’s silken treasury and have pour’d it To her acceptance. You have let him go, And nothing marted with him. If your lass Interpretation should abuse, and call this Your lack of love or bounty, you were straited For a reply, at least if you make a care Of happy holding her.

FLORIZEL. Old sir, I know She prizes not such trifles as these are: The gifts she looks from me are pack’d and lock’d Up in my heart, which I have given already, But not deliver’d. O, hear me breathe my life Before this ancient sir, who, it should seem, Hath sometime lov’d. I take thy hand! this hand, As soft as dove’s down and as white as it, Or Ethiopian’s tooth, or the fann’d snow that’s bolted By th’ northern blasts twice o’er.

POLIXENES. What follows this? How prettily the young swain seems to wash The hand was fair before! I have put you out. But to your protestation. Let me hear What you profess.

FLORIZEL. Do, and be witness to ’t.

POLIXENES. And this my neighbour, too?

FLORIZEL. And he, and more Than he, and men, the earth, the heavens, and all: That were I crown’d the most imperial monarch, Thereof most worthy, were I the fairest youth That ever made eye swerve, had force and knowledge More than was ever man’s, I would not prize them Without her love; for her employ them all; Commend them and condemn them to her service, Or to their own perdition.

POLIXENES. Fairly offer’d.

CAMILLO. This shows a sound affection.

SHEPHERD. But my daughter, Say you the like to him?

PERDITA. I cannot speak So well, nothing so well; no, nor mean better: By th’ pattern of mine own thoughts I cut out The purity of his.

SHEPHERD. Take hands, a bargain! And, friends unknown, you shall bear witness to’t. I give my daughter to him, and will make Her portion equal his.

FLORIZEL. O, that must be I’ th’ virtue of your daughter: one being dead, I shall have more than you can dream of yet; Enough then for your wonder. But come on, Contract us ’fore these witnesses.

SHEPHERD. Come, your hand; And, daughter, yours.

POLIXENES. Soft, swain, awhile, beseech you; Have you a father?

FLORIZEL. I have; but what of him?

POLIXENES. Knows he of this?

FLORIZEL. He neither does nor shall.

POLIXENES. Methinks a father Is at the nuptial of his son a guest That best becomes the table. Pray you once more, Is not your father grown incapable Of reasonable affairs? is he not stupid With age and alt’ring rheums? can he speak? hear? Know man from man? dispute his own estate? Lies he not bed-rid? and again does nothing But what he did being childish?

FLORIZEL. No, good sir; He has his health, and ampler strength indeed Than most have of his age.

POLIXENES. By my white beard, You offer him, if this be so, a wrong Something unfilial: reason my son Should choose himself a wife, but as good reason The father, all whose joy is nothing else But fair posterity, should hold some counsel In such a business.

FLORIZEL. I yield all this; But for some other reasons, my grave sir, Which ’tis not fit you know, I not acquaint My father of this business.

POLIXENES. Let him know ’t.

FLORIZEL. He shall not.

POLIXENES. Prithee let him.

FLORIZEL. No, he must not.

SHEPHERD. Let him, my son: he shall not need to grieve At knowing of thy choice.

FLORIZEL. Come, come, he must not. Mark our contract.

POLIXENES. [Discovering himself.] Mark your divorce, young sir, Whom son I dare not call; thou art too base To be acknowledged: thou a sceptre’s heir, That thus affects a sheep-hook! Thou, old traitor, I am sorry that, by hanging thee, I can But shorten thy life one week. And thou, fresh piece Of excellent witchcraft, whom of force must know The royal fool thou cop’st with,—

SHEPHERD. O, my heart!

POLIXENES. I’ll have thy beauty scratch’d with briers and made More homely than thy state. For thee, fond boy, If I may ever know thou dost but sigh That thou no more shalt see this knack (as never I mean thou shalt), we’ll bar thee from succession; Not hold thee of our blood, no, not our kin, Far than Deucalion off. Mark thou my words. Follow us to the court. Thou churl, for this time, Though full of our displeasure, yet we free thee From the dead blow of it. And you, enchantment, Worthy enough a herdsman; yea, him too That makes himself, but for our honour therein, Unworthy thee. If ever henceforth thou These rural latches to his entrance open, Or hoop his body more with thy embraces, I will devise a death as cruel for thee As thou art tender to ’t.

PERDITA. Even here undone. I was not much afeard, for once or twice I was about to speak, and tell him plainly The selfsame sun that shines upon his court Hides not his visage from our cottage, but Looks on alike. [To Florizel.] Will’t please you, sir, be gone? I told you what would come of this. Beseech you, Of your own state take care. This dream of mine— Being now awake, I’ll queen it no inch farther, But milk my ewes, and weep.

CAMILLO. Why, how now, father! Speak ere thou diest.

SHEPHERD. I cannot speak, nor think, Nor dare to know that which I know. O sir, You have undone a man of fourscore three, That thought to fill his grave in quiet; yea, To die upon the bed my father died, To lie close by his honest bones; but now Some hangman must put on my shroud and lay me Where no priest shovels in dust. O cursed wretch, That knew’st this was the prince, and wouldst adventure To mingle faith with him! Undone, undone! If I might die within this hour, I have liv’d To die when I desire.

FLORIZEL. Why look you so upon me? I am but sorry, not afeard; delay’d, But nothing alt’red: what I was, I am: More straining on for plucking back; not following My leash unwillingly.

CAMILLO. Gracious my lord, You know your father’s temper: at this time He will allow no speech (which I do guess You do not purpose to him) and as hardly Will he endure your sight as yet, I fear: Then, till the fury of his highness settle, Come not before him.

FLORIZEL. I not purpose it. I think Camillo?

CAMILLO. Even he, my lord.

PERDITA. How often have I told you ’twould be thus! How often said my dignity would last But till ’twere known!

FLORIZEL. It cannot fail but by The violation of my faith; and then Let nature crush the sides o’ th’ earth together And mar the seeds within! Lift up thy looks. From my succession wipe me, father; I Am heir to my affection.

CAMILLO. Be advis’d.

FLORIZEL. I am, and by my fancy. If my reason Will thereto be obedient, I have reason; If not, my senses, better pleas’d with madness, Do bid it welcome.

CAMILLO. This is desperate, sir.

FLORIZEL. So call it: but it does fulfil my vow. I needs must think it honesty. Camillo, Not for Bohemia, nor the pomp that may Be thereat glean’d; for all the sun sees or The close earth wombs, or the profound seas hides In unknown fathoms, will I break my oath To this my fair belov’d. Therefore, I pray you, As you have ever been my father’s honour’d friend, When he shall miss me,—as, in faith, I mean not To see him any more,—cast your good counsels Upon his passion: let myself and fortune Tug for the time to come. This you may know, And so deliver, I am put to sea With her whom here I cannot hold on shore; And, most opportune to her need, I have A vessel rides fast by, but not prepar’d For this design. What course I mean to hold Shall nothing benefit your knowledge, nor Concern me the reporting.

CAMILLO. O my lord, I would your spirit were easier for advice, Or stronger for your need.

FLORIZEL. Hark, Perdita. [Takes her aside.] [To Camillo.] I’ll hear you by and by.

CAMILLO. He’s irremovable, Resolv’d for flight. Now were I happy if His going I could frame to serve my turn, Save him from danger, do him love and honour, Purchase the sight again of dear Sicilia And that unhappy king, my master, whom I so much thirst to see.

FLORIZEL. Now, good Camillo, I am so fraught with curious business that I leave out ceremony.

CAMILLO. Sir, I think You have heard of my poor services, i’ th’ love That I have borne your father?

FLORIZEL. Very nobly Have you deserv’d: it is my father’s music To speak your deeds, not little of his care To have them recompens’d as thought on.

CAMILLO. Well, my lord, If you may please to think I love the king, And, through him, what’s nearest to him, which is Your gracious self, embrace but my direction, If your more ponderous and settled project May suffer alteration. On mine honour, I’ll point you where you shall have such receiving As shall become your highness; where you may Enjoy your mistress; from the whom, I see, There’s no disjunction to be made, but by, As heavens forfend, your ruin. Marry her, And with my best endeavours in your absence Your discontenting father strive to qualify And bring him up to liking.

FLORIZEL. How, Camillo, May this, almost a miracle, be done? That I may call thee something more than man, And after that trust to thee.

CAMILLO. Have you thought on A place whereto you’ll go?

FLORIZEL. Not any yet. But as th’ unthought-on accident is guilty To what we wildly do, so we profess Ourselves to be the slaves of chance, and flies Of every wind that blows.

CAMILLO. Then list to me: This follows, if you will not change your purpose, But undergo this flight, make for Sicilia, And there present yourself and your fair princess, For so, I see, she must be, ’fore Leontes: She shall be habited as it becomes The partner of your bed. Methinks I see Leontes opening his free arms and weeping His welcomes forth; asks thee, the son, forgiveness, As ’twere i’ th’ father’s person; kisses the hands Of your fresh princess; o’er and o’er divides him ’Twixt his unkindness and his kindness. Th’ one He chides to hell, and bids the other grow Faster than thought or time.

FLORIZEL. Worthy Camillo, What colour for my visitation shall I Hold up before him?

CAMILLO. Sent by the king your father To greet him and to give him comforts. Sir, The manner of your bearing towards him, with What you (as from your father) shall deliver, Things known betwixt us three, I’ll write you down, The which shall point you forth at every sitting What you must say; that he shall not perceive But that you have your father’s bosom there And speak his very heart.

FLORIZEL. I am bound to you: There is some sap in this.

CAMILLO. A course more promising Than a wild dedication of yourselves To unpath’d waters, undream’d shores, most certain To miseries enough: no hope to help you, But as you shake off one to take another: Nothing so certain as your anchors, who Do their best office if they can but stay you Where you’ll be loath to be. Besides, you know Prosperity’s the very bond of love, Whose fresh complexion and whose heart together Affliction alters.

PERDITA. One of these is true: I think affliction may subdue the cheek, But not take in the mind.

CAMILLO. Yea, say you so? There shall not at your father’s house, these seven years Be born another such.

FLORIZEL. My good Camillo, She is as forward of her breeding as She is i’ th’ rear our birth.

CAMILLO. I cannot say ’tis pity She lacks instructions, for she seems a mistress To most that teach.

PERDITA. Your pardon, sir; for this I’ll blush you thanks.

FLORIZEL. My prettiest Perdita! But, O, the thorns we stand upon! Camillo, Preserver of my father, now of me, The medicine of our house, how shall we do? We are not furnish’d like Bohemia’s son, Nor shall appear in Sicilia.

CAMILLO. My lord, Fear none of this. I think you know my fortunes Do all lie there: it shall be so my care To have you royally appointed as if The scene you play were mine. For instance, sir, That you may know you shall not want,—one word. [They talk aside.]

Enter Autolycus.

AUTOLYCUS. Ha, ha! what a fool Honesty is! and Trust, his sworn brother, a very simple gentleman! I have sold all my trumpery. Not a counterfeit stone, not a ribbon, glass, pomander, brooch, table-book, ballad, knife, tape, glove, shoe-tie, bracelet, horn-ring, to keep my pack from fasting. They throng who should buy first, as if my trinkets had been hallowed and brought a benediction to the buyer: by which means I saw whose purse was best in picture; and what I saw, to my good use I remembered. My clown (who wants but something to be a reasonable man) grew so in love with the wenches’ song that he would not stir his pettitoes till he had both tune and words; which so drew the rest of the herd to me that all their other senses stuck in ears: you might have pinched a placket, it was senseless; ’twas nothing to geld a codpiece of a purse; I would have filed keys off that hung in chains: no hearing, no feeling, but my sir’s song, and admiring the nothing of it. So that in this time of lethargy I picked and cut most of their festival purses; and had not the old man come in with a whoobub against his daughter and the king’s son, and scared my choughs from the chaff, I had not left a purse alive in the whole army.

Camillo, Florizel and Perdita come forward.

CAMILLO. Nay, but my letters, by this means being there So soon as you arrive, shall clear that doubt.

FLORIZEL. And those that you’ll procure from king Leontes?

CAMILLO. Shall satisfy your father.

PERDITA. Happy be you! All that you speak shows fair.

CAMILLO. [Seeing Autolycus.] Who have we here? We’ll make an instrument of this; omit Nothing may give us aid.

AUTOLYCUS. [Aside.] If they have overheard me now,—why, hanging.

CAMILLO. How now, good fellow! why shakest thou so? Fear not, man; here’s no harm intended to thee.

AUTOLYCUS. I am a poor fellow, sir.

CAMILLO. Why, be so still; here’s nobody will steal that from thee: yet, for the outside of thy poverty we must make an exchange; therefore discase thee instantly,—thou must think there’s a necessity in’t—and change garments with this gentleman: though the pennyworth on his side be the worst, yet hold thee, there’s some boot.

[Giving money.]

AUTOLYCUS. I am a poor fellow, sir: [Aside.] I know ye well enough.

CAMILLO. Nay, prithee dispatch: the gentleman is half flayed already.

AUTOLYCUS. Are you in earnest, sir? [Aside.] I smell the trick on’t.

FLORIZEL. Dispatch, I prithee.

AUTOLYCUS. Indeed, I have had earnest; but I cannot with conscience take it.

CAMILLO. Unbuckle, unbuckle.

[Florizel and Autolycus exchange garments.]

Fortunate mistress,—let my prophecy Come home to you!—you must retire yourself Into some covert. Take your sweetheart’s hat And pluck it o’er your brows, muffle your face, Dismantle you; and, as you can, disliken The truth of your own seeming; that you may (For I do fear eyes over) to shipboard Get undescried.

PERDITA. I see the play so lies That I must bear a part.

CAMILLO. No remedy. Have you done there?

FLORIZEL. Should I now meet my father, He would not call me son.

CAMILLO. Nay, you shall have no hat. [Giving it to Perdita.] Come, lady, come. Farewell, my friend.

AUTOLYCUS. Adieu, sir.

FLORIZEL. O Perdita, what have we twain forgot? Pray you a word.

CAMILLO. [Aside.] What I do next, shall be to tell the king Of this escape, and whither they are bound; Wherein my hope is I shall so prevail To force him after: in whose company I shall re-view Sicilia; for whose sight I have a woman’s longing.

FLORIZEL. Fortune speed us! Thus we set on, Camillo, to the sea-side.

CAMILLO. The swifter speed the better.

[Exeunt Florizel, Perdita and Camillo.]

AUTOLYCUS. I understand the business, I hear it. To have an open ear, a quick eye, and a nimble hand, is necessary for a cut-purse; a good nose is requisite also, to smell out work for the other senses. I see this is the time that the unjust man doth thrive. What an exchange had this been without boot! What a boot is here with this exchange! Sure the gods do this year connive at us, and we may do anything extempore. The prince himself is about a piece of iniquity, stealing away from his father with his clog at his heels: if I thought it were a piece of honesty to acquaint the king withal, I would not do’t: I hold it the more knavery to conceal it; and therein am I constant to my profession.

Enter Clown and Shepherd.

Aside, aside; here is more matter for a hot brain: every lane’s end, every shop, church, session, hanging, yields a careful man work.

CLOWN. See, see; what a man you are now! There is no other way but to tell the king she’s a changeling, and none of your flesh and blood.

SHEPHERD. Nay, but hear me.

CLOWN. Nay, but hear me.

SHEPHERD. Go to, then.

CLOWN. She being none of your flesh and blood, your flesh and blood has not offended the king; and so your flesh and blood is not to be punished by him. Show those things you found about her, those secret things, all but what she has with her: this being done, let the law go whistle, I warrant you.

SHEPHERD. I will tell the king all, every word, yea, and his son’s pranks too; who, I may say, is no honest man neither to his father nor to me, to go about to make me the king’s brother-in-law.

CLOWN. Indeed, brother-in-law was the farthest off you could have been to him, and then your blood had been the dearer by I know how much an ounce.

AUTOLYCUS. [Aside.] Very wisely, puppies!

SHEPHERD. Well, let us to the king: there is that in this fardel will make him scratch his beard.

AUTOLYCUS. [Aside.] I know not what impediment this complaint may be to the flight of my master.

CLOWN. Pray heartily he be at’ palace.

AUTOLYCUS. [Aside.] Though I am not naturally honest, I am so sometimes by chance. Let me pocket up my pedlar’s excrement. [Takes off his false beard.] How now, rustics! whither are you bound?

SHEPHERD. To the palace, an it like your worship.

AUTOLYCUS. Your affairs there, what, with whom, the condition of that fardel, the place of your dwelling, your names, your ages, of what having, breeding, and anything that is fitting to be known? discover!

CLOWN. We are but plain fellows, sir.

AUTOLYCUS. A lie; you are rough and hairy. Let me have no lying. It becomes none but tradesmen, and they often give us soldiers the lie; but we pay them for it with stamped coin, not stabbing steel; therefore they do not give us the lie.

CLOWN. Your worship had like to have given us one, if you had not taken yourself with the manner.

SHEPHERD. Are you a courtier, an ’t like you, sir?

AUTOLYCUS. Whether it like me or no, I am a courtier. Seest thou not the air of the court in these enfoldings? hath not my gait in it the measure of the court? receives not thy nose court-odour from me? reflect I not on thy baseness court-contempt? Think’st thou, for that I insinuate, or toaze from thee thy business, I am therefore no courtier? I am courtier cap-a-pe, and one that will either push on or pluck back thy business there. Whereupon I command thee to open thy affair.

SHEPHERD. My business, sir, is to the king.

AUTOLYCUS. What advocate hast thou to him?

SHEPHERD. I know not, an ’t like you.

CLOWN. Advocate’s the court-word for a pheasant. Say you have none.

SHEPHERD. None, sir; I have no pheasant, cock nor hen.

AUTOLYCUS. How bless’d are we that are not simple men! Yet nature might have made me as these are, Therefore I will not disdain.

CLOWN. This cannot be but a great courtier.

SHEPHERD. His garments are rich, but he wears them not handsomely.

CLOWN. He seems to be the more noble in being fantastical: a great man, I’ll warrant; I know by the picking on’s teeth.

AUTOLYCUS. The fardel there? What’s i’ th’ fardel? Wherefore that box?

SHEPHERD. Sir, there lies such secrets in this fardel and box which none must know but the king; and which he shall know within this hour, if I may come to th’ speech of him.

AUTOLYCUS. Age, thou hast lost thy labour.

SHEPHERD. Why, sir?

AUTOLYCUS. The king is not at the palace; he is gone aboard a new ship to purge melancholy and air himself: for, if thou beest capable of things serious, thou must know the king is full of grief.

SHEPHERD. So ’tis said, sir; about his son, that should have married a shepherd’s daughter.

AUTOLYCUS. If that shepherd be not in hand-fast, let him fly. The curses he shall have, the tortures he shall feel, will break the back of man, the heart of monster.

CLOWN. Think you so, sir?

AUTOLYCUS. Not he alone shall suffer what wit can make heavy and vengeance bitter; but those that are germane to him, though removed fifty times, shall all come under the hangman: which, though it be great pity, yet it is necessary. An old sheep-whistling rogue, a ram-tender, to offer to have his daughter come into grace! Some say he shall be stoned; but that death is too soft for him, say I. Draw our throne into a sheepcote! All deaths are too few, the sharpest too easy.

CLOWN. Has the old man e’er a son, sir, do you hear, an ’t like you, sir?

AUTOLYCUS. He has a son, who shall be flayed alive; then ’nointed over with honey, set on the head of a wasp’s nest; then stand till he be three quarters and a dram dead; then recovered again with aqua-vitæ or some other hot infusion; then, raw as he is, and in the hottest day prognostication proclaims, shall he be set against a brick wall, the sun looking with a southward eye upon him, where he is to behold him with flies blown to death. But what talk we of these traitorly rascals, whose miseries are to be smiled at, their offences being so capital? Tell me (for you seem to be honest plain men) what you have to the king. Being something gently considered, I’ll bring you where he is aboard, tender your persons to his presence, whisper him in your behalfs; and if it be in man besides the king to effect your suits, here is man shall do it.

CLOWN. He seems to be of great authority: close with him, give him gold; and though authority be a stubborn bear, yet he is oft led by the nose with gold: show the inside of your purse to the outside of his hand, and no more ado. Remember: “ston’d” and “flayed alive”.

SHEPHERD. An ’t please you, sir, to undertake the business for us, here is that gold I have. I’ll make it as much more, and leave this young man in pawn till I bring it you.

AUTOLYCUS. After I have done what I promised?

SHEPHERD. Ay, sir.

AUTOLYCUS. Well, give me the moiety. Are you a party in this business?

CLOWN. In some sort, sir: but though my case be a pitiful one, I hope I shall not be flayed out of it.

AUTOLYCUS. O, that’s the case of the shepherd’s son. Hang him, he’ll be made an example.

CLOWN. Comfort, good comfort! We must to the king and show our strange sights. He must know ’tis none of your daughter nor my sister; we are gone else. Sir, I will give you as much as this old man does when the business is performed, and remain, as he says, your pawn till it be brought you.

AUTOLYCUS. I will trust you. Walk before toward the sea-side; go on the right-hand. I will but look upon the hedge, and follow you.

CLOWN. We are blessed in this man, as I may say, even blessed.

SHEPHERD. Let’s before, as he bids us. He was provided to do us good.

[Exeunt Shepherd and Clown.]

AUTOLYCUS. If I had a mind to be honest, I see Fortune would not suffer me: she drops booties in my mouth. I am courted now with a double occasion: gold, and a means to do the prince my master good; which who knows how that may turn back to my advancement? I will bring these two moles, these blind ones, aboard him. If he think it fit to shore them again and that the complaint they have to the king concerns him nothing, let him call me rogue for being so far officious; for I am proof against that title and what shame else belongs to ’t. To him will I present them. There may be matter in it.

SCENE I. Sicilia. A Room in the palace of Leontes.

Enter Leontes, Cleomenes, Dion, Paulina and others.

CLEOMENES Sir, you have done enough, and have perform’d A saint-like sorrow: no fault could you make Which you have not redeem’d; indeed, paid down More penitence than done trespass: at the last, Do as the heavens have done, forget your evil; With them, forgive yourself.

LEONTES. Whilst I remember Her and her virtues, I cannot forget My blemishes in them; and so still think of The wrong I did myself: which was so much That heirless it hath made my kingdom, and Destroy’d the sweet’st companion that e’er man Bred his hopes out of.

PAULINA. True, too true, my lord. If, one by one, you wedded all the world, Or from the all that are took something good, To make a perfect woman, she you kill’d Would be unparallel’d.

LEONTES. I think so. Kill’d! She I kill’d! I did so: but thou strik’st me Sorely, to say I did: it is as bitter Upon thy tongue as in my thought. Now, good now, Say so but seldom.

CLEOMENES Not at all, good lady. You might have spoken a thousand things that would Have done the time more benefit and grac’d Your kindness better.

PAULINA. You are one of those Would have him wed again.

DION. If you would not so, You pity not the state, nor the remembrance Of his most sovereign name; consider little What dangers, by his highness’ fail of issue, May drop upon his kingdom, and devour Incertain lookers-on. What were more holy Than to rejoice the former queen is well? What holier than, for royalty’s repair, For present comfort, and for future good, To bless the bed of majesty again With a sweet fellow to ’t?

PAULINA. There is none worthy, Respecting her that’s gone. Besides, the gods Will have fulfill’d their secret purposes; For has not the divine Apollo said, Is ’t not the tenor of his oracle, That king Leontes shall not have an heir Till his lost child be found? Which that it shall, Is all as monstrous to our human reason As my Antigonus to break his grave And come again to me; who, on my life, Did perish with the infant. ’Tis your counsel My lord should to the heavens be contrary, Oppose against their wills. [To Leontes.] Care not for issue; The crown will find an heir. Great Alexander Left his to th’ worthiest; so his successor Was like to be the best.

LEONTES. Good Paulina, Who hast the memory of Hermione, I know, in honour, O that ever I Had squar’d me to thy counsel! Then, even now, I might have look’d upon my queen’s full eyes, Have taken treasure from her lips,—

PAULINA. And left them More rich for what they yielded.

LEONTES. Thou speak’st truth. No more such wives; therefore, no wife: one worse, And better us’d, would make her sainted spirit Again possess her corpse, and on this stage, (Where we offenders now appear) soul-vexed, And begin “Why to me?”

PAULINA. Had she such power, She had just cause.

LEONTES. She had; and would incense me To murder her I married.

PAULINA. I should so. Were I the ghost that walk’d, I’d bid you mark Her eye, and tell me for what dull part in ’t You chose her: then I’d shriek, that even your ears Should rift to hear me; and the words that follow’d Should be “Remember mine.”

LEONTES. Stars, stars, And all eyes else dead coals! Fear thou no wife; I’ll have no wife, Paulina.

PAULINA. Will you swear Never to marry but by my free leave?

LEONTES. Never, Paulina; so be bless’d my spirit!

PAULINA. Then, good my lords, bear witness to his oath.

CLEOMENES You tempt him over-much.

PAULINA. Unless another, As like Hermione as is her picture, Affront his eye.

CLEOMENES Good madam,—

PAULINA. I have done. Yet, if my lord will marry,—if you will, sir, No remedy but you will,—give me the office To choose you a queen: she shall not be so young As was your former, but she shall be such As, walk’d your first queen’s ghost, it should take joy To see her in your arms.

LEONTES. My true Paulina, We shall not marry till thou bid’st us.

PAULINA. That Shall be when your first queen’s again in breath; Never till then.

SERVANT. One that gives out himself Prince Florizel, Son of Polixenes, with his princess (she The fairest I have yet beheld) desires access To your high presence.

LEONTES. What with him? he comes not Like to his father’s greatness: his approach, So out of circumstance and sudden, tells us ’Tis not a visitation fram’d, but forc’d By need and accident. What train?

SERVANT. But few, And those but mean.

LEONTES. His princess, say you, with him?

SERVANT. Ay, the most peerless piece of earth, I think, That e’er the sun shone bright on.

PAULINA. O Hermione, As every present time doth boast itself Above a better gone, so must thy grave Give way to what’s seen now! Sir, you yourself Have said and writ so,—but your writing now Is colder than that theme,—‘She had not been, Nor was not to be equall’d’; thus your verse Flow’d with her beauty once; ’tis shrewdly ebb’d, To say you have seen a better.

SERVANT. Pardon, madam: The one I have almost forgot,—your pardon;— The other, when she has obtain’d your eye, Will have your tongue too. This is a creature, Would she begin a sect, might quench the zeal Of all professors else; make proselytes Of who she but bid follow.

PAULINA. How! not women?

SERVANT. Women will love her that she is a woman More worth than any man; men, that she is The rarest of all women.

LEONTES. Go, Cleomenes; Yourself, assisted with your honour’d friends, Bring them to our embracement.

[Exeunt Cleomenes and others.]

Still, ’tis strange He thus should steal upon us.

PAULINA. Had our prince, Jewel of children, seen this hour, he had pair’d Well with this lord. There was not full a month Between their births.

LEONTES. Prithee no more; cease; Thou know’st He dies to me again when talk’d of: sure, When I shall see this gentleman, thy speeches Will bring me to consider that which may Unfurnish me of reason. They are come.

Enter Florizel, Perdita, Cleomenes and others.

Your mother was most true to wedlock, prince; For she did print your royal father off, Conceiving you. Were I but twenty-one, Your father’s image is so hit in you, His very air, that I should call you brother, As I did him, and speak of something wildly By us perform’d before. Most dearly welcome! And your fair princess,—goddess! O, alas! I lost a couple that ’twixt heaven and earth Might thus have stood, begetting wonder, as You, gracious couple, do! And then I lost,— All mine own folly,—the society, Amity too, of your brave father, whom, Though bearing misery, I desire my life Once more to look on him.

FLORIZEL. By his command Have I here touch’d Sicilia, and from him Give you all greetings that a king, at friend, Can send his brother: and, but infirmity, Which waits upon worn times, hath something seiz’d His wish’d ability, he had himself The lands and waters ’twixt your throne and his Measur’d, to look upon you; whom he loves, He bade me say so,—more than all the sceptres And those that bear them living.

LEONTES. O my brother,— Good gentleman!—the wrongs I have done thee stir Afresh within me; and these thy offices, So rarely kind, are as interpreters Of my behind-hand slackness! Welcome hither, As is the spring to the earth. And hath he too Expos’d this paragon to the fearful usage, At least ungentle, of the dreadful Neptune, To greet a man not worth her pains, much less Th’ adventure of her person?

FLORIZEL. Good, my lord, She came from Libya.

LEONTES. Where the warlike Smalus, That noble honour’d lord, is fear’d and lov’d?

FLORIZEL. Most royal sir, from thence; from him, whose daughter His tears proclaim’d his, parting with her: thence, A prosperous south-wind friendly, we have cross’d, To execute the charge my father gave me For visiting your highness: my best train I have from your Sicilian shores dismiss’d; Who for Bohemia bend, to signify Not only my success in Libya, sir, But my arrival, and my wife’s, in safety Here, where we are.

LEONTES. The blessed gods Purge all infection from our air whilst you Do climate here! You have a holy father, A graceful gentleman; against whose person, So sacred as it is, I have done sin, For which the heavens, taking angry note, Have left me issueless. And your father’s bless’d, As he from heaven merits it, with you, Worthy his goodness. What might I have been, Might I a son and daughter now have look’d on, Such goodly things as you!

LORD. Most noble sir, That which I shall report will bear no credit, Were not the proof so nigh. Please you, great sir, Bohemia greets you from himself by me; Desires you to attach his son, who has— His dignity and duty both cast off— Fled from his father, from his hopes, and with A shepherd’s daughter.

LEONTES. Where’s Bohemia? speak.

LORD. Here in your city; I now came from him. I speak amazedly, and it becomes My marvel and my message. To your court Whiles he was hast’ning—in the chase, it seems, Of this fair couple—meets he on the way The father of this seeming lady and Her brother, having both their country quitted With this young prince.

FLORIZEL. Camillo has betray’d me; Whose honour and whose honesty till now, Endur’d all weathers.

LORD. Lay ’t so to his charge. He’s with the king your father.

LEONTES. Who? Camillo?

LORD. Camillo, sir; I spake with him; who now Has these poor men in question. Never saw I Wretches so quake: they kneel, they kiss the earth; Forswear themselves as often as they speak. Bohemia stops his ears, and threatens them With divers deaths in death.

PERDITA. O my poor father! The heaven sets spies upon us, will not have Our contract celebrated.

LEONTES. You are married?

FLORIZEL. We are not, sir, nor are we like to be. The stars, I see, will kiss the valleys first. The odds for high and low’s alike.

LEONTES. My lord, Is this the daughter of a king?

FLORIZEL. She is, When once she is my wife.

LEONTES. That “once”, I see by your good father’s speed, Will come on very slowly. I am sorry, Most sorry, you have broken from his liking, Where you were tied in duty; and as sorry Your choice is not so rich in worth as beauty, That you might well enjoy her.

FLORIZEL. Dear, look up: Though Fortune, visible an enemy, Should chase us with my father, power no jot Hath she to change our loves. Beseech you, sir, Remember since you ow’d no more to time Than I do now: with thought of such affections, Step forth mine advocate. At your request My father will grant precious things as trifles.

LEONTES. Would he do so, I’d beg your precious mistress, Which he counts but a trifle.

PAULINA. Sir, my liege, Your eye hath too much youth in ’t: not a month ’Fore your queen died, she was more worth such gazes Than what you look on now.

LEONTES. I thought of her Even in these looks I made. [To Florizel.] But your petition Is yet unanswer’d. I will to your father. Your honour not o’erthrown by your desires, I am friend to them and you: upon which errand I now go toward him; therefore follow me, And mark what way I make. Come, good my lord.

SCENE II. The same. Before the Palace.

Enter Autolycus and a Gentleman.

AUTOLYCUS. Beseech you, sir, were you present at this relation?

FIRST GENTLEMAN. I was by at the opening of the fardel, heard the old shepherd deliver the manner how he found it: whereupon, after a little amazedness, we were all commanded out of the chamber; only this, methought I heard the shepherd say he found the child.

AUTOLYCUS. I would most gladly know the issue of it.

FIRST GENTLEMAN. I make a broken delivery of the business; but the changes I perceived in the king and Camillo were very notes of admiration. They seemed almost, with staring on one another, to tear the cases of their eyes. There was speech in their dumbness, language in their very gesture; they looked as they had heard of a world ransomed, or one destroyed. A notable passion of wonder appeared in them; but the wisest beholder, that knew no more but seeing could not say if th’ importance were joy or sorrow; but in the extremity of the one, it must needs be. Here comes a gentleman that happily knows more.

The news, Rogero?

SECOND GENTLEMAN. Nothing but bonfires: the oracle is fulfilled: the king’s daughter is found: such a deal of wonder is broken out within this hour that ballad-makers cannot be able to express it. Here comes the Lady Paulina’s steward: he can deliver you more.

How goes it now, sir? This news, which is called true, is so like an old tale that the verity of it is in strong suspicion. Has the king found his heir?

THIRD GENTLEMAN. Most true, if ever truth were pregnant by circumstance. That which you hear you’ll swear you see, there is such unity in the proofs. The mantle of Queen Hermione’s, her jewel about the neck of it, the letters of Antigonus found with it, which they know to be his character; the majesty of the creature in resemblance of the mother, the affection of nobleness which nature shows above her breeding, and many other evidences proclaim her with all certainty to be the king’s daughter. Did you see the meeting of the two kings?

SECOND GENTLEMAN. No.

THIRD GENTLEMAN. Then you have lost a sight which was to be seen, cannot be spoken of. There might you have beheld one joy crown another, so and in such manner that it seemed sorrow wept to take leave of them, for their joy waded in tears. There was casting up of eyes, holding up of hands, with countenance of such distraction that they were to be known by garment, not by favour. Our king, being ready to leap out of himself for joy of his found daughter, as if that joy were now become a loss, cries “O, thy mother, thy mother!” then asks Bohemia forgiveness; then embraces his son-in-law; then again worries he his daughter with clipping her; now he thanks the old shepherd, which stands by like a weather-bitten conduit of many kings’ reigns. I never heard of such another encounter, which lames report to follow it, and undoes description to do it.

SECOND GENTLEMAN. What, pray you, became of Antigonus, that carried hence the child?

THIRD GENTLEMAN. Like an old tale still, which will have matter to rehearse, though credit be asleep and not an ear open. He was torn to pieces with a bear: this avouches the shepherd’s son, who has not only his innocence, which seems much, to justify him, but a handkerchief and rings of his that Paulina knows.

FIRST GENTLEMAN. What became of his bark and his followers?

THIRD GENTLEMAN. Wrecked the same instant of their master’s death, and in the view of the shepherd: so that all the instruments which aided to expose the child were even then lost when it was found. But O, the noble combat that ’twixt joy and sorrow was fought in Paulina! She had one eye declined for the loss of her husband, another elevated that the oracle was fulfilled. She lifted the princess from the earth, and so locks her in embracing, as if she would pin her to her heart, that she might no more be in danger of losing.

FIRST GENTLEMAN. The dignity of this act was worth the audience of kings and princes; for by such was it acted.

THIRD GENTLEMAN. One of the prettiest touches of all, and that which angled for mine eyes (caught the water, though not the fish) was, when at the relation of the queen’s death (with the manner how she came to it bravely confessed and lamented by the king) how attentiveness wounded his daughter; till, from one sign of dolour to another, she did, with an “Alas,” I would fain say, bleed tears, for I am sure my heart wept blood. Who was most marble there changed colour; some swooned, all sorrowed: if all the world could have seen it, the woe had been universal.

FIRST GENTLEMAN. Are they returned to the court?

THIRD GENTLEMAN. No: the princess hearing of her mother’s statue, which is in the keeping of Paulina,—a piece many years in doing and now newly performed by that rare Italian master, Julio Romano, who, had he himself eternity, and could put breath into his work, would beguile Nature of her custom, so perfectly he is her ape: he so near to Hermione hath done Hermione that they say one would speak to her and stand in hope of answer. Thither with all greediness of affection are they gone, and there they intend to sup.

SECOND GENTLEMAN. I thought she had some great matter there in hand; for she hath privately twice or thrice a day, ever since the death of Hermione, visited that removed house. Shall we thither, and with our company piece the rejoicing?

FIRST GENTLEMAN. Who would be thence that has the benefit of access? Every wink of an eye some new grace will be born. Our absence makes us unthrifty to our knowledge. Let’s along.

[Exeunt Gentlemen.]

AUTOLYCUS. Now, had I not the dash of my former life in me, would preferment drop on my head. I brought the old man and his son aboard the prince; told him I heard them talk of a fardel and I know not what. But he at that time over-fond of the shepherd’s daughter (so he then took her to be), who began to be much sea-sick, and himself little better, extremity of weather continuing, this mystery remained undiscover’d. But ’tis all one to me; for had I been the finder-out of this secret, it would not have relish’d among my other discredits.

Enter Shepherd and Clown.

Here come those I have done good to against my will, and already appearing in the blossoms of their fortune.

SHEPHERD. Come, boy; I am past more children, but thy sons and daughters will be all gentlemen born.

CLOWN. You are well met, sir. You denied to fight with me this other day, because I was no gentleman born. See you these clothes? Say you see them not and think me still no gentleman born: you were best say these robes are not gentlemen born. Give me the lie, do; and try whether I am not now a gentleman born.

AUTOLYCUS. I know you are now, sir, a gentleman born.

CLOWN. Ay, and have been so any time these four hours.

SHEPHERD. And so have I, boy!

CLOWN. So you have: but I was a gentleman born before my father; for the king’s son took me by the hand and called me brother; and then the two kings called my father brother; and then the prince, my brother, and the princess, my sister, called my father father; and so we wept; and there was the first gentleman-like tears that ever we shed.

SHEPHERD. We may live, son, to shed many more.

CLOWN. Ay; or else ’twere hard luck, being in so preposterous estate as we are.

AUTOLYCUS. I humbly beseech you, sir, to pardon me all the faults I have committed to your worship, and to give me your good report to the prince my master.

SHEPHERD. Prithee, son, do; for we must be gentle, now we are gentlemen.

CLOWN. Thou wilt amend thy life?

AUTOLYCUS. Ay, an it like your good worship.

CLOWN. Give me thy hand: I will swear to the prince thou art as honest a true fellow as any is in Bohemia.

SHEPHERD. You may say it, but not swear it.

CLOWN. Not swear it, now I am a gentleman? Let boors and franklins say it, I’ll swear it.

SHEPHERD. How if it be false, son?

CLOWN. If it be ne’er so false, a true gentleman may swear it in the behalf of his friend. And I’ll swear to the prince thou art a tall fellow of thy hands and that thou wilt not be drunk; but I know thou art no tall fellow of thy hands and that thou wilt be drunk: but I’ll swear it; and I would thou wouldst be a tall fellow of thy hands.

AUTOLYCUS. I will prove so, sir, to my power.

CLOWN. Ay, by any means, prove a tall fellow: if I do not wonder how thou dar’st venture to be drunk, not being a tall fellow, trust me not. Hark! the kings and the princes, our kindred, are going to see the queen’s picture. Come, follow us: we’ll be thy good masters.

SCENE III. The same. A Room in Paulina’s house.

Enter Leontes, Polixenes, Florizel, Perdita, Camillo, Paulina, Lords and Attendants.

LEONTES. O grave and good Paulina, the great comfort That I have had of thee!

PAULINA. What, sovereign sir, I did not well, I meant well. All my services You have paid home: but that you have vouchsaf’d, With your crown’d brother and these your contracted Heirs of your kingdoms, my poor house to visit, It is a surplus of your grace which never My life may last to answer.

LEONTES. O Paulina, We honour you with trouble. But we came To see the statue of our queen: your gallery Have we pass’d through, not without much content In many singularities; but we saw not That which my daughter came to look upon, The statue of her mother.

PAULINA. As she liv’d peerless, So her dead likeness, I do well believe, Excels whatever yet you look’d upon Or hand of man hath done; therefore I keep it Lonely, apart. But here it is: prepare To see the life as lively mock’d as ever Still sleep mock’d death. Behold, and say ’tis well.

Paulina undraws a curtain, and discovers Hermione standing as a statue.

I like your silence, it the more shows off Your wonder: but yet speak. First you, my liege. Comes it not something near?

LEONTES. Her natural posture! Chide me, dear stone, that I may say indeed Thou art Hermione; or rather, thou art she In thy not chiding; for she was as tender As infancy and grace. But yet, Paulina, Hermione was not so much wrinkled, nothing So aged as this seems.

POLIXENES. O, not by much!

PAULINA. So much the more our carver’s excellence, Which lets go by some sixteen years and makes her As she liv’d now.

LEONTES. As now she might have done, So much to my good comfort as it is Now piercing to my soul. O, thus she stood, Even with such life of majesty, warm life, As now it coldly stands, when first I woo’d her! I am asham’d: does not the stone rebuke me For being more stone than it? O royal piece, There’s magic in thy majesty, which has My evils conjur’d to remembrance and From thy admiring daughter took the spirits, Standing like stone with thee.

PERDITA. And give me leave, And do not say ’tis superstition, that I kneel, and then implore her blessing. Lady, Dear queen, that ended when I but began, Give me that hand of yours to kiss.

PAULINA. O, patience! The statue is but newly fix’d, the colour’s Not dry.

CAMILLO. My lord, your sorrow was too sore laid on, Which sixteen winters cannot blow away, So many summers dry. Scarce any joy Did ever so long live; no sorrow But kill’d itself much sooner.

POLIXENES. Dear my brother, Let him that was the cause of this have power To take off so much grief from you as he Will piece up in himself.

PAULINA. Indeed, my lord, If I had thought the sight of my poor image Would thus have wrought you—for the stone is mine— I’d not have show’d it.

LEONTES. Do not draw the curtain.

PAULINA. No longer shall you gaze on’t, lest your fancy May think anon it moves.

LEONTES. Let be, let be. Would I were dead, but that methinks already— What was he that did make it? See, my lord, Would you not deem it breath’d? And that those veins Did verily bear blood?

POLIXENES. Masterly done: The very life seems warm upon her lip.

LEONTES. The fixture of her eye has motion in ’t, As we are mock’d with art.

PAULINA. I’ll draw the curtain: My lord’s almost so far transported that He’ll think anon it lives.

LEONTES. O sweet Paulina, Make me to think so twenty years together! No settled senses of the world can match The pleasure of that madness. Let ’t alone.

PAULINA. I am sorry, sir, I have thus far stirr’d you: but I could afflict you further.

LEONTES. Do, Paulina; For this affliction has a taste as sweet As any cordial comfort. Still methinks There is an air comes from her. What fine chisel Could ever yet cut breath? Let no man mock me, For I will kiss her!

PAULINA. Good my lord, forbear: The ruddiness upon her lip is wet; You’ll mar it if you kiss it, stain your own With oily painting. Shall I draw the curtain?

LEONTES. No, not these twenty years.

PERDITA. So long could I Stand by, a looker on.

PAULINA. Either forbear, Quit presently the chapel, or resolve you For more amazement. If you can behold it, I’ll make the statue move indeed, descend, And take you by the hand. But then you’ll think (Which I protest against) I am assisted By wicked powers.

LEONTES. What you can make her do I am content to look on: what to speak, I am content to hear; for ’tis as easy To make her speak as move.

PAULINA. It is requir’d You do awake your faith. Then all stand still; Or those that think it is unlawful business I am about, let them depart.

LEONTES. Proceed: No foot shall stir.

PAULINA. Music, awake her: strike! [Music.] ’Tis time; descend; be stone no more; approach; Strike all that look upon with marvel. Come; I’ll fill your grave up: stir; nay, come away. Bequeath to death your numbness, for from him Dear life redeems you. You perceive she stirs.

Hermione comes down from the pedestal.

Start not; her actions shall be holy as You hear my spell is lawful. Do not shun her Until you see her die again; for then You kill her double. Nay, present your hand: When she was young you woo’d her; now in age Is she become the suitor?

LEONTES. [Embracing her.] O, she’s warm! If this be magic, let it be an art Lawful as eating.

POLIXENES. She embraces him.

CAMILLO. She hangs about his neck. If she pertain to life, let her speak too.

POLIXENES. Ay, and make it manifest where she has liv’d, Or how stol’n from the dead.

PAULINA. That she is living, Were it but told you, should be hooted at Like an old tale; but it appears she lives, Though yet she speak not. Mark a little while. Please you to interpose, fair madam. Kneel And pray your mother’s blessing. Turn, good lady, Our Perdita is found.

[Presenting Perdita who kneels to Hermione.]

HERMIONE. You gods, look down, And from your sacred vials pour your graces Upon my daughter’s head! Tell me, mine own, Where hast thou been preserv’d? where liv’d? how found Thy father’s court? for thou shalt hear that I, Knowing by Paulina that the oracle Gave hope thou wast in being, have preserv’d Myself to see the issue.

PAULINA. There’s time enough for that; Lest they desire upon this push to trouble Your joys with like relation. Go together, You precious winners all; your exultation Partake to everyone. I, an old turtle, Will wing me to some wither’d bough, and there My mate, that’s never to be found again, Lament till I am lost.

LEONTES. O peace, Paulina! Thou shouldst a husband take by my consent, As I by thine a wife: this is a match, And made between ’s by vows. Thou hast found mine; But how, is to be question’d; for I saw her, As I thought, dead; and have in vain said many A prayer upon her grave. I’ll not seek far— For him, I partly know his mind—to find thee An honourable husband. Come, Camillo, And take her by the hand, whose worth and honesty Is richly noted, and here justified By us, a pair of kings. Let’s from this place. What! look upon my brother: both your pardons, That e’er I put between your holy looks My ill suspicion. This your son-in-law, And son unto the king, whom heavens directing, Is troth-plight to your daughter. Good Paulina, Lead us from hence; where we may leisurely Each one demand, and answer to his part Perform’d in this wide gap of time, since first We were dissever’d. Hastily lead away!

A LOVER’S COMPLAINT

From off a hill whose concave womb reworded A plaintful story from a sist’ring vale, My spirits t’attend this double voice accorded, And down I laid to list the sad-tun’d tale; Ere long espied a fickle maid full pale, Tearing of papers, breaking rings a-twain, Storming her world with sorrow’s wind and rain.

Upon her head a platted hive of straw, Which fortified her visage from the sun, Whereon the thought might think sometime it saw The carcass of a beauty spent and done; Time had not scythed all that youth begun, Nor youth all quit, but spite of heaven’s fell rage Some beauty peeped through lattice of sear’d age.

Oft did she heave her napkin to her eyne, Which on it had conceited characters, Laund’ring the silken figures in the brine That seasoned woe had pelleted in tears, And often reading what contents it bears; As often shrieking undistinguish’d woe, In clamours of all size, both high and low.

Sometimes her levell’d eyes their carriage ride, As they did batt’ry to the spheres intend; Sometime diverted their poor balls are tied To th’orbed earth; sometimes they do extend Their view right on; anon their gazes lend To every place at once, and nowhere fix’d, The mind and sight distractedly commix’d.

Her hair, nor loose nor tied in formal plat, Proclaim’d in her a careless hand of pride; For some untuck’d descended her sheav’d hat, Hanging her pale and pined cheek beside; Some in her threaden fillet still did bide, And, true to bondage, would not break from thence, Though slackly braided in loose negligence.

A thousand favours from a maund she drew, Of amber, crystal, and of beaded jet, Which one by one she in a river threw, Upon whose weeping margent she was set, Like usury applying wet to wet, Or monarchs’ hands, that lets not bounty fall Where want cries ‘some,’ but where excess begs ‘all’.

Of folded schedules had she many a one, Which she perus’d, sigh’d, tore and gave the flood; Crack’d many a ring of posied gold and bone, Bidding them find their sepulchres in mud; Found yet mo letters sadly penn’d in blood, With sleided silk, feat and affectedly Enswath’d, and seal’d to curious secrecy.

These often bath’d she in her fluxive eyes, And often kiss’d, and often gave to tear; Cried, ‘O false blood, thou register of lies, What unapproved witness dost thou bear! Ink would have seem’d more black and damned here!’ This said, in top of rage the lines she rents, Big discontent so breaking their contents.

A reverend man that grazed his cattle nigh, Sometime a blusterer, that the ruffle knew Of court, of city, and had let go by The swiftest hours observed as they flew, Towards this afflicted fancy fastly drew; And, privileg’d by age, desires to know In brief the grounds and motives of her woe.

So slides he down upon his grained bat, And comely distant sits he by her side, When he again desires her, being sat, Her grievance with his hearing to divide: If that from him there may be aught applied Which may her suffering ecstasy assuage, ’Tis promised in the charity of age.

‘Father,’ she says, ‘though in me you behold The injury of many a blasting hour, Let it not tell your judgement I am old, Not age, but sorrow, over me hath power. I might as yet have been a spreading flower, Fresh to myself, if I had self-applied Love to myself, and to no love beside.

‘But woe is me! Too early I attended A youthful suit; it was to gain my grace; O one by nature’s outwards so commended, That maiden’s eyes stuck over all his face, Love lack’d a dwelling and made him her place; And when in his fair parts she did abide, She was new lodg’d and newly deified.

‘His browny locks did hang in crooked curls, And every light occasion of the wind Upon his lips their silken parcels hurls, What’s sweet to do, to do will aptly find, Each eye that saw him did enchant the mind: For on his visage was in little drawn, What largeness thinks in paradise was sawn.

‘Small show of man was yet upon his chin; His phoenix down began but to appear, Like unshorn velvet, on that termless skin, Whose bare out-bragg’d the web it seemed to wear. Yet show’d his visage by that cost more dear, And nice affections wavering stood in doubt If best were as it was, or best without.

‘His qualities were beauteous as his form, For maiden-tongued he was, and thereof free; Yet if men mov’d him, was he such a storm As oft ’twixt May and April is to see, When winds breathe sweet, unruly though they be. His rudeness so with his authoriz’d youth Did livery falseness in a pride of truth.

‘Well could he ride, and often men would say That horse his mettle from his rider takes, Proud of subjection, noble by the sway, What rounds, what bounds, what course, what stop he makes! And controversy hence a question takes, Whether the horse by him became his deed, Or he his manage by th’ well-doing steed.

‘But quickly on this side the verdict went, His real habitude gave life and grace To appertainings and to ornament, Accomplish’d in himself, not in his case; All aids, themselves made fairer by their place, Came for additions; yet their purpos’d trim Piec’d not his grace, but were all grac’d by him.

‘So on the tip of his subduing tongue All kind of arguments and question deep, All replication prompt, and reason strong, For his advantage still did wake and sleep, To make the weeper laugh, the laugher weep: He had the dialect and different skill, Catching all passions in his craft of will.

‘That he did in the general bosom reign Of young, of old, and sexes both enchanted, To dwell with him in thoughts, or to remain In personal duty, following where he haunted, Consent’s bewitch’d, ere he desire, have granted, And dialogued for him what he would say, Ask’d their own wills, and made their wills obey.

‘Many there were that did his picture get To serve their eyes, and in it put their mind, Like fools that in th’ imagination set The goodly objects which abroad they find Of lands and mansions, theirs in thought assign’d, And labouring in moe pleasures to bestow them, Than the true gouty landlord which doth owe them.

‘So many have, that never touch’d his hand, Sweetly suppos’d them mistress of his heart. My woeful self that did in freedom stand, And was my own fee-simple (not in part) What with his art in youth, and youth in art, Threw my affections in his charmed power, Reserv’d the stalk and gave him all my flower.

‘Yet did I not, as some my equals did, Demand of him, nor being desired yielded, Finding myself in honour so forbid, With safest distance I mine honour shielded. Experience for me many bulwarks builded Of proofs new-bleeding, which remain’d the foil Of this false jewel, and his amorous spoil.

‘But ah! Who ever shunn’d by precedent The destin’d ill she must herself assay, Or force’d examples ’gainst her own content, To put the by-pass’d perils in her way? Counsel may stop a while what will not stay: For when we rage, advice is often seen By blunting us to make our wills more keen.

‘Nor gives it satisfaction to our blood, That we must curb it upon others’ proof, To be forbode the sweets that seems so good, For fear of harms that preach in our behoof. O appetite, from judgement stand aloof! The one a palate hath that needs will taste, Though reason weep and cry, “It is thy last.”

‘For further I could say, “This man’s untrue”, And knew the patterns of his foul beguiling; Heard where his plants in others’ orchards grew, Saw how deceits were gilded in his smiling; Knew vows were ever brokers to defiling; Thought characters and words merely but art, And bastards of his foul adulterate heart.

‘And long upon these terms I held my city, Till thus he ’gan besiege me: “Gentle maid, Have of my suffering youth some feeling pity, And be not of my holy vows afraid: That’s to ye sworn, to none was ever said, For feasts of love I have been call’d unto, Till now did ne’er invite, nor never woo.

‘“All my offences that abroad you see Are errors of the blood, none of the mind: Love made them not; with acture they may be, Where neither party is nor true nor kind, They sought their shame that so their shame did find, And so much less of shame in me remains, By how much of me their reproach contains.

‘“Among the many that mine eyes have seen, Not one whose flame my heart so much as warmed, Or my affection put to th’ smallest teen, Or any of my leisures ever charmed: Harm have I done to them, but ne’er was harmed; Kept hearts in liveries, but mine own was free, And reign’d commanding in his monarchy.

‘“Look here what tributes wounded fancies sent me, Of pallid pearls and rubies red as blood, Figuring that they their passions likewise lent me Of grief and blushes, aptly understood In bloodless white and the encrimson’d mood; Effects of terror and dear modesty, Encamp’d in hearts, but fighting outwardly.

‘“And, lo! behold these talents of their hair, With twisted metal amorously empleach’d, I have receiv’d from many a several fair, Their kind acceptance weepingly beseech’d, With th’ annexions of fair gems enrich’d, And deep-brain’d sonnets that did amplify Each stone’s dear nature, worth and quality.

‘“The diamond, why ’twas beautiful and hard, Whereto his invis’d properties did tend, The deep green emerald, in whose fresh regard Weak sights their sickly radiance do amend; The heaven-hued sapphire and the opal blend With objects manifold; each several stone, With wit well blazon’d smil’d, or made some moan.

‘“Lo, all these trophies of affections hot, Of pensiv’d and subdued desires the tender, Nature hath charg’d me that I hoard them not, But yield them up where I myself must render, That is, to you, my origin and ender: For these of force must your oblations be, Since I their altar, you empatron me.

‘“O then advance of yours that phraseless hand, Whose white weighs down the airy scale of praise; Take all these similes to your own command, Hallowed with sighs that burning lungs did raise: What me, your minister for you, obeys, Works under you; and to your audit comes Their distract parcels in combined sums.

‘“Lo, this device was sent me from a nun, Or sister sanctified of holiest note, Which late her noble suit in court did shun, Whose rarest havings made the blossoms dote; For she was sought by spirits of richest coat, But kept cold distance, and did thence remove To spend her living in eternal love.

‘“But O, my sweet, what labour is’t to leave The thing we have not, mast’ring what not strives, Planing the place which did no form receive, Playing patient sports in unconstrained gyves, She that her fame so to herself contrives, The scars of battle ’scapeth by the flight, And makes her absence valiant, not her might.

‘“O pardon me, in that my boast is true, The accident which brought me to her eye, Upon the moment did her force subdue, And now she would the caged cloister fly: Religious love put out religion’s eye: Not to be tempted would she be immur’d, And now to tempt all, liberty procur’d.

‘“How mighty then you are, O hear me tell! The broken bosoms that to me belong Have emptied all their fountains in my well, And mine I pour your ocean all among: I strong o’er them, and you o’er me being strong, Must for your victory us all congest, As compound love to physic your cold breast.

‘“My parts had pow’r to charm a sacred nun, Who, disciplin’d and dieted in grace, Believ’d her eyes when they t’assail begun, All vows and consecrations giving place. O most potential love! Vow, bond, nor space, In thee hath neither sting, knot, nor confine, For thou art all and all things else are thine.

‘“When thou impressest, what are precepts worth Of stale example? When thou wilt inflame, How coldly those impediments stand forth, Of wealth, of filial fear, law, kindred, fame! Love’s arms are peace, ’gainst rule, ’gainst sense, ’gainst shame, And sweetens, in the suff’ring pangs it bears, The aloes of all forces, shocks and fears.

‘“Now all these hearts that do on mine depend, Feeling it break, with bleeding groans they pine, And supplicant their sighs to your extend, To leave the batt’ry that you make ’gainst mine, Lending soft audience to my sweet design, And credent soul to that strong-bonded oath, That shall prefer and undertake my troth.”

‘This said, his wat’ry eyes he did dismount, Whose sights till then were levell’d on my face; Each cheek a river running from a fount With brinish current downward flowed apace. O how the channel to the stream gave grace! Who, glaz’d with crystal gate the glowing roses That flame through water which their hue encloses.

‘O father, what a hell of witchcraft lies In the small orb of one particular tear! But with the inundation of the eyes What rocky heart to water will not wear? What breast so cold that is not warmed here? O cleft effect! Cold modesty, hot wrath, Both fire from hence and chill extincture hath.

‘For lo, his passion, but an art of craft, Even there resolv’d my reason into tears; There my white stole of chastity I daff’d, Shook off my sober guards, and civil fears, Appear to him as he to me appears, All melting, though our drops this diff’rence bore: His poison’d me, and mine did him restore.

‘In him a plenitude of subtle matter, Applied to cautels, all strange forms receives, Of burning blushes, or of weeping water, Or swooning paleness; and he takes and leaves, In either’s aptness, as it best deceives, To blush at speeches rank, to weep at woes, Or to turn white and swoon at tragic shows.

‘That not a heart which in his level came Could ’scape the hail of his all-hurting aim, Showing fair nature is both kind and tame; And veil’d in them, did win whom he would maim. Against the thing he sought he would exclaim; When he most burned in heart-wish’d luxury, He preach’d pure maid, and prais’d cold chastity.

‘Thus merely with the garment of a grace, The naked and concealed fiend he cover’d, That th’unexperient gave the tempter place, Which, like a cherubin, above them hover’d. Who, young and simple, would not be so lover’d? Ay me! I fell, and yet do question make What I should do again for such a sake.

‘O, that infected moisture of his eye, O, that false fire which in his cheek so glow’d! O, that forc’d thunder from his heart did fly, O, that sad breath his spongy lungs bestow’d, O, all that borrowed motion, seeming owed, Would yet again betray the fore-betrayed, And new pervert a reconciled maid.’

THE PASSIONATE PILGRIM

When my love swears that she is made of truth, I do believe her, though I know she lies, That she might think me some untutor’d youth, Unskilful in the world’s false forgeries. Thus vainly thinking that she thinks me young, Although I know my years be past the best, I smiling credit her false-speaking tongue, Outfacing faults in love with love’s ill rest. But wherefore says my love that she is young? And wherefore say not I that I am old? O, love’s best habit is a soothing tongue, And age, in love, loves not to have years told. Therefore, I’ll lie with love, and love with me, Since that our faults in love thus smother’d be.

Two loves I have, of comfort and despair, That like two spirits do suggest me still; My better angel is a man right fair, My worser spirit a woman colour’d ill. To win me soon to hell, my female evil Tempteth my better angel from my side, And would corrupt my saint to be a devil, Wooing his purity with her fair pride. And whether that my angel be turn’d fiend, Suspect I may, yet not directly tell; For being both to me, both to each friend, I guess one angel in another’s hell: The truth I shall not know, but live in doubt, Till my bad angel fire my good one out.

III

Did not the heavenly rhetoric of thine eye, ’Gainst whom the world could not hold argument, Persuade my heart to this false perjury? Vows for thee broke deserve not punishment. A woman I forswore; but I will prove, Thou being a goddess, I forswore not thee: My vow was earthly, thou a heavenly love; Thy grace being gain’d cures all disgrace in me. My vow was breath, and breath a vapour is; Then, thou fair sun, that on this earth doth shine, Exhale this vapour vow; in thee it is; If broken then, it is no fault of mine. If by me broke, what fool is not so wise To break an oath, to win a paradise?

Sweet Cytherea, sitting by a brook With young Adonis, lovely, fresh and green, Did court the lad with many a lovely look, Such looks as none could look but beauty’s queen. She told him stories to delight his ear; She show’d him favours to allure his eye; To win his heart, she touch’d him here and there; Touches so soft still conquer chastity. But whether unripe years did want conceit, Or he refus’d to take her figur’d proffer, The tender nibbler would not touch the bait, But smile and jest at every gentle offer. Then fell she on her back, fair queen, and toward: He rose and ran away; ah, fool too froward!

If love make me forsworn, how shall I swear to love? O never faith could hold, if not to beauty vowed. Though to myself forsworn, to thee I’ll constant prove; Those thoughts, to me like oaks, to thee like osiers bowed. Study his bias leaves, and makes his book thine eyes, Where all those pleasures live that art can comprehend. If knowledge be the mark, to know thee shall suffice; Well learned is that tongue that well can thee commend, All ignorant that soul that sees thee without wonder; Which is to me some praise, that I thy parts admire. Thine eye Jove’s lightning seems, thy voice his dreadful thunder, Which, not to anger bent, is music and sweet fire. Celestial as thou art, O do not love that wrong, To sing heaven’s praise with such an earthly tongue.

Scarce had the sun dried up the dewy morn, And scarce the herd gone to the hedge for shade, When Cytherea, all in love forlorn, A longing tarriance for Adonis made Under an osier growing by a brook, A brook where Adon used to cool his spleen. Hot was the day; she hotter that did look For his approach, that often there had been. Anon he comes, and throws his mantle by, And stood stark naked on the brook’s green brim: The sun look’d on the world with glorious eye, Yet not so wistly as this queen on him. He, spying her, bounc’d in, whereas he stood, “O Jove,” quoth she, “why was not I a flood?”

VII

Fair is my love, but not so fair as fickle, Mild as a dove, but neither true nor trusty, Brighter than glass, and yet, as glass is, brittle, Softer than wax, and yet, as iron, rusty: A lily pale, with damask dye to grace her, None fairer, nor none falser to deface her.

Her lips to mine how often hath she joined, Between each kiss her oaths of true love swearing! How many tales to please me hath she coined, Dreading my love, the loss thereof still fearing! Yet in the midst of all her pure protestings, Her faith, her oaths, her tears, and all were jestings.

She burnt with love, as straw with fire flameth; She burnt out love, as soon as straw out-burneth; She fram’d the love, and yet she foil’d the framing; She bade love last, and yet she fell a-turning. Was this a lover, or a lecher whether? Bad in the best, though excellent in neither.

VIII

If music and sweet poetry agree, As they must needs, the sister and the brother, Then must the love be great ’twixt thee and me, Because thou lov’st the one and I the other. Dowland to thee is dear, whose heavenly touch Upon the lute doth ravish human sense; Spenser to me, whose deep conceit is such As passing all conceit, needs no defence. Thou lov’st to hear the sweet melodious sound That Phœbus’ lute, the queen of music, makes; And I in deep delight am chiefly drown’d Whenas himself to singing he betakes. One god is god of both, as poets feign; One knight loves both, and both in thee remain.

Fair was the morn when the fair queen of love, * * * * * * Paler for sorrow than her milk-white dove, For Adon’s sake, a youngster proud and wild; Her stand she takes upon a steep-up hill; Anon Adonis comes with horn and hounds; She, silly queen, with more than love’s good will, Forbade the boy he should not pass those grounds. “Once,” quoth she, “did I see a fair sweet youth Here in these brakes deep-wounded with a boar, Deep in the thigh, a spectacle of ruth! See in my thigh,” quoth she, “here was the sore.” She showed hers: he saw more wounds than one, And blushing fled, and left her all alone.

Sweet rose, fair flower, untimely pluck’d, soon vaded, Pluck’d in the bud and vaded in the spring! Bright orient pearl, alack, too timely shaded! Fair creature, kill’d too soon by death’s sharp sting! Like a green plum that hangs upon a tree, And falls, through wind, before the fall should be.

I weep for thee, and yet no cause I have; For why thou left’st me nothing in thy will; And yet thou left’st me more than I did crave; For why I craved nothing of thee still. O yes, dear friend, I pardon crave of thee, Thy discontent thou didst bequeath to me.

Venus, with young Adonis sitting by her Under a myrtle shade, began to woo him; She told the youngling how god Mars did try her, And as he fell to her, she fell to him. “Even thus,” quoth she, “the warlike god embrac’d me,” And then she clipp’d Adonis in her arms; “Even thus,” quoth she, “the warlike god unlaced me;” As if the boy should use like loving charms; “Even thus,” quoth she, “he seized on my lips,” And with her lips on his did act the seizure; And as she fetched breath, away he skips, And would not take her meaning nor her pleasure. Ah, that I had my lady at this bay, To kiss and clip me till I run away!

XII

Crabbed age and youth cannot live together: Youth is full of pleasance, age is full of care; Youth like summer morn, age like winter weather; Youth like summer brave, age like winter bare. Youth is full of sport, age’s breath is short; Youth is nimble, age is lame; Youth is hot and bold, age is weak and cold; Youth is wild, and age is tame. Age, I do abhor thee; youth, I do adore thee; O, my love, my love is young! Age, I do defy thee. O, sweet shepherd, hie thee, For methinks thou stay’st too long.

XIII

Beauty is but a vain and doubtful good, A shining gloss that vadeth suddenly; A flower that dies when first it ’gins to bud; A brittle glass that’s broken presently: A doubtful good, a gloss, a glass, a flower, Lost, vaded, broken, dead within an hour.

And as goods lost are seld or never found, As vaded gloss no rubbing will refresh, As flowers dead lie wither’d on the ground, As broken glass no cement can redress, So beauty blemish’d once, for ever’s lost, In spite of physic, painting, pain and cost.

XIV

Good night, good rest. Ah, neither be my share: She bade good night that kept my rest away; And daff’d me to a cabin hang’d with care, To descant on the doubts of my decay. “Farewell,” quoth she, “and come again tomorrow:” Fare well I could not, for I supp’d with sorrow.

Yet at my parting sweetly did she smile, In scorn or friendship, nill I conster whether: ’T may be, she joy’d to jest at my exile, ’T may be, again to make me wander thither: “Wander,” a word for shadows like myself, As take the pain, but cannot pluck the pelf.

Lord, how mine eyes throw gazes to the east! My heart doth charge the watch; the morning rise Doth cite each moving sense from idle rest. Not daring trust the office of mine eyes, While Philomela sits and sings, I sit and mark, And wish her lays were tuned like the lark.

For she doth welcome daylight with her ditty, And drives away dark dreaming night. The night so pack’d, I post unto my pretty; Heart hath his hope and eyes their wished sight; Sorrow chang’d to solace, solace mix’d with sorrow; For why, she sigh’d, and bade me come tomorrow.

Were I with her, the night would post too soon; But now are minutes added to the hours; To spite me now, each minute seems a moon; Yet not for me, shine sun to succour flowers! Pack night, peep day; good day, of night now borrow: Short, night, tonight, and length thyself tomorrow.

It was a lording’s daughter, the fairest one of three, That liked of her master as well as well might be, Till looking on an Englishman, the fairest that eye could see, Her fancy fell a-turning. Long was the combat doubtful, that love with love did fight, To leave the master loveless, or kill the gallant knight; To put in practice either, alas, it was a spite Unto the silly damsel! But one must be refused; more mickle was the pain, That nothing could be used to turn them both to gain, For of the two the trusty knight was wounded with disdain: Alas she could not help it! Thus art with arms contending was victor of the day, Which by a gift of learning did bear the maid away: Then lullaby, the learned man hath got the lady gay; For now my song is ended.

XVI

On a day, alack the day! Love, whose month was ever May, Spied a blossom passing fair, Playing in the wanton air. Through the velvet leaves the wind All unseen ’gan passage find, That the lover, sick to death, Wish’d himself the heaven’s breath: “Air,” quoth he, “thy cheeks may blow; Air, would I might triumph so! But, alas, my hand hath sworn Ne’er to pluck thee from thy thorn: Vow, alack, for youth unmeet, Youth, so apt to pluck a sweet! Thou for whom Jove would swear Juno but an Ethiope were, And deny himself for Jove, Turning mortal for thy love.”

XVII

My flocks feed not, my ewes breed not, My rams speed not, all is amis: Love is dying, faith’s defying, Heart’s denying, causer of this. All my merry jigs are quite forgot, All my lady’s love is lost, God wot: Where her faith was firmely fix’d in love, There a nay is plac’d without remove. One silly cross wrought all my loss; O frowning fortune, cursed fickle dame! For now I see inconstancy More in women than in men remain.

In black mourn I, all fears scorn I, Love hath forlorn me, living in thrall. Heart is bleeding, all help needing, O cruel speeding, fraughted with gall. My shepherd’s pipe can sound no deal. My weather’s bell rings doleful knell; My curtal dog that wont to have play’d, Plays not at all, but seems afraid. With sighs so deep procures to weep, In howling wise, to see my doleful plight. How sighs resound through heartless ground, Like a thousand vanquish’d men in bloody fight!

Clear wells spring not, sweet birds sing not, Green plants bring not forth their dye; Herds stands weeping, flocks all sleeping, Nymphs black peeping fearfully. All our pleasure known to us poor swains, All our merry meetings on the plains, All our evening sport from us is fled, All our love is lost, for love is dead. Farewel, sweet love, thy like ne’er was For a sweet content, the cause of all my woe! Poor Corydon must live alone; Other help for him I see that there is none.

XVIII

Whenas thine eye hath chose the dame, And stall’d the deer that thou shouldst strike, Let reason rule things worthy blame, As well as fancy, partial might; Take counsel of some wiser head, Neither too young nor yet unwed.

And when thou com’st thy tale to tell, Smooth not thy tongue with filed talk, Least she some subtle practice smell,— A cripple soon can find a halt,— But plainly say thou lov’st her well, And set her person forth to sale.

What though her frowning brows be bent, Her cloudy looks will calm ere night, And then too late she will repent, That thus dissembled her delight; And twice desire, ere it be day, That which with scorn she put away.

What though she strive to try her strength, And ban and brawl, and say thee nay, Her feeble force will yield at length, When craft hath taught her thus to say: “Had women been so strong as men, In faith, you had not had it then.”

And to her will frame all thy ways; Spare not to spend, and chiefly there Where thy desert may merit praise, By ringing in thy lady’s ear: The strongest castle, tower and town, The golden bullet beats it down.

Serve always with assured trust, And in thy suit be humble true; Unless thy lady prove unjust, Press never thou to choose a new: When time shall serve, be thou not slack, To proffer, though she put thee back.

The wiles and guiles that women work, Dissembled with an outward show, The tricks and toys that in them lurk, The cock that treads them shall not know, Have you not heard it said full oft, A woman’s nay doth stand for nought.

Think women still to strive with men, To sin and never for to saint: There is no heaven, by holy then, When time with age shall them attaint, Were kisses all the joys in bed, One woman would another wed.

But soft, enough,—too much,—I fear Lest that my mistress hear my song: She will not stick to round me on th’ ear, To teach my tongue to be so long. Yet will she blush, here be it said, To hear her secrets so bewray’d.

XIX

Live with me and be my love, And we will all the pleasures prove That hills and valleys, dales and fields, And all the craggy mountains yield.

There will we sit upon the rocks, And see the shepherds feed their flocks, By shallow rivers, by whose falls Melodious birds sing madrigals.

There will I make thee a bed of roses, With a thousand fragrant posies, A cap of flowers, and a kirtle Embroidered all with leaves of myrtle.

A belt of straw and ivy buds, With coral clasps and amber studs; And if these pleasures may thee move, Then live with me and be my love.

Love’s Answer.

If that the world and love were young, And truth in every shepherd’s tongue, These pretty pleasures might me move To live with thee and be thy love.

As it fell upon a day In the merry month of May, Sitting in a pleasant shade Which a grove of myrtles made, Beasts did leap and birds did sing, Trees did grow and plants did spring; Everything did banish moan, Save the nightingale alone: She, poor bird, as all forlorn, Lean’d her breast up-till a thorn, And there sung the dolefull’st ditty, That to hear it was great pitty. “Fie, fie, fie,” now would she cry, “Tereu, Tereu,” by and by;

That to hear her so complain, Scarce I could from tears refrain, For her griefs so lively shown Made me think upon mine own. Ah, thought I, thou mourn’st in vain! None takes pitty on thy pain. Senseless trees they cannot hear thee, Ruthless bears they will not cheer thee; King Pandion he is dead, All thy friends are lapp’d in lead, All thy fellow birds do sing, Careless of thy sorrowing.

Whilst as fickle fortune smiled, Thou and I were both beguiled. Every one that flatters thee Is no friend in misery. Words are easy, like the wind; Faithful friends are hard to find. Every man will be thy friend Whilst thou hast wherewith to spend; But if store of crowns be scant, No man will supply thy want. If that one be prodigal, Bountiful they will him call, And with such-like flattering, “Pity but he were a king.”

If he be addict to vice, Quickly him they will entice; If to women he be bent, They have at commandement. But if Fortune once do frown, Then farewell his great renown. They that fawn’d on him before, Use his company no more. He that is thy friend indeed, He will help thee in thy need: If thou sorrow, he will weep; If thou wake, he cannot sleep. Thus of every grief in heart He with thee doth bear a part. These are certain signs to know Faithful friend from flatt’ring foe.

THE PHOENIX AND THE TURTLE

Let the bird of loudest lay, On the sole Arabian tree, Herald sad and trumpet be, To whose sound chaste wings obey.

But thou shrieking harbinger, Foul precurrer of the fiend, Augur of the fever’s end, To this troop come thou not near.

From this session interdict Every fowl of tyrant wing, Save the eagle, feather’d king; Keep the obsequy so strict.

Let the priest in surplice white, That defunctive music can, Be the death-divining swan, Lest the requiem lack his right.

And thou treble-dated crow, That thy sable gender mak’st With the breath thou giv’st and tak’st, ’Mongst our mourners shalt thou go.

Here the anthem doth commence: Love and constancy is dead; Phoenix and the turtle fled In a mutual flame from hence.

So they lov’d, as love in twain Had the essence but in one; Two distincts, division none: Number there in love was slain.

Hearts remote, yet not asunder; Distance and no space was seen ’Twixt this turtle and his queen; But in them it were a wonder.

So between them love did shine, That the turtle saw his right Flaming in the phoenix’ sight; Either was the other’s mine.

Property was thus appalled, That the self was not the same; Single nature’s double name Neither two nor one was called.

Reason, in itself confounded, Saw division grow together; To themselves yet either neither, Simple were so well compounded.

That it cried, How true a twain Seemeth this concordant one! Love hath reason, reason none, If what parts can so remain.

Whereupon it made this threne To the phoenix and the dove, Co-supremes and stars of love, As chorus to their tragic scene.

THRENOS

Beauty, truth, and rarity. Grace in all simplicity, Here enclos’d in cinders lie.

Death is now the phoenix’ nest; And the turtle’s loyal breast To eternity doth rest.

Leaving no posterity:— ’Twas not their infirmity, It was married chastity.

Truth may seem, but cannot be; Beauty brag, but ’tis not she; Truth and beauty buried be.

To this urn let those repair That are either true or fair; For these dead birds sigh a prayer.

THE RAPE OF LUCRECE

TO THE RIGHT HONOURABLE HENRY WRIOTHESLEY, EARL OF SOUTHAMPTON, and Baron of Titchfield.

The love I dedicate to your Lordship is without end; whereof this pamphlet, without beginning, is but a superfluous moiety. The warrant I have of your honourable disposition, not the worth of my untutored lines, makes it assured of acceptance. What I have done is yours; what I have to do is yours; being part in all I have, devoted yours. Were my worth greater, my duty would show greater; meantime, as it is, it is bound to your Lordship, to whom I wish long life, still lengthened with all happiness.

Your Lordship’s in all duty, WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE.

THE ARGUMENT.

Lucius Tarquinius (for his excessive pride surnamed Superbus), after he had caused his own father-in-law, Servius Tullius, to be cruelly murdered, and, contrary to the Roman laws and customs, not requiring or staying for the people’s suffrages, had possessed himself of the kingdom, went, accompanied with his sons and other noblemen of Rome, to besiege Ardea. During which siege the principal men of the army meeting one evening at the tent of Sextus Tarquinius, the king’s son, in their discourses after supper, everyone commended the virtues of his own wife; among whom Collatinus extolled the incomparable chastity of his wife Lucretia. In that pleasant humour they all posted to Rome; and intending, by their secret and sudden arrival, to make trial of that which everyone had before avouched, only Collatinus finds his wife, though it were late in the night, spinning amongst her maids: the other ladies were all found dancing and revelling, or in several disports. Whereupon the noblemen yielded Collatinus the victory, and his wife the fame. At that time Sextus Tarquinius being inflamed with Lucrece’s beauty, yet smothering his passions for the present, departed with the rest back to the camp; from whence he shortly after privily withdrew himself, and was (according to his estate) royally entertained and lodged by Lucrece at Collatium. The same night he treacherously stealeth into her chamber, violently ravished her, and early in the morning speedeth away. Lucrece, in this lamentable plight, hastily dispatched messengers, one to Rome for her father, another to the camp for Collatine. They came, the one accompanied with Junius Brutus, the other with Publius Valerius; and finding Lucrece attired in mourning habit, demanded the cause of her sorrow. She, first taking an oath of them for her revenge, revealed the actor, and whole manner of his dealing, and withal suddenly stabbed herself. Which done, with one consent they all vowed to root out the whole hated family of the Tarquins; and bearing the dead body to Rome, Brutus acquainted the people with the doer and manner of the vile deed, with a bitter invective against the tyranny of the king; wherewith the people were so moved, that with one consent and a general acclamation the Tarquins were all exiled, and the state government changed from kings to consuls.

From the besieged Ardea all in post, Borne by the trustless wings of false desire, Lust-breathed Tarquin leaves the Roman host, And to Collatium bears the lightless fire, Which in pale embers hid, lurks to aspire And girdle with embracing flames the waist Of Collatine’s fair love, Lucrece the chaste.

Haply that name of “chaste” unhapp’ly set This bateless edge on his keen appetite, When Collatine unwisely did not let To praise the clear unmatched red and white Which triumphed in that sky of his delight; Where mortal stars as bright as heaven’s beauties, With pure aspects did him peculiar duties.

For he the night before, in Tarquin’s tent Unlocked the treasure of his happy state, What priceless wealth the heavens had him lent In the possession of his beauteous mate; Reck’ning his fortune at such high proud rate That kings might be espoused to more fame, But king nor peer to such a peerless dame.

O happiness enjoyed but of a few, And, if possessed, as soon decayed and done As is the morning’s silver melting dew Against the golden splendour of the sun! An expired date, cancelled ere well begun. Honour and beauty in the owner’s arms, Are weakly fortressed from a world of harms.

Beauty itself doth of itself persuade The eyes of men without an orator; What needeth then apologies be made, To set forth that which is so singular? Or why is Collatine the publisher Of that rich jewel he should keep unknown From thievish ears, because it is his own?

Perchance his boast of Lucrece’ sov’reignty Suggested this proud issue of a king; For by our ears our hearts oft tainted be. Perchance that envy of so rich a thing, Braving compare, disdainfully did sting His high-pitched thoughts, that meaner men should vaunt That golden hap which their superiors want.

But some untimely thought did instigate His all-too-timeless speed, if none of those; His honour, his affairs, his friends, his state, Neglected all, with swift intent he goes To quench the coal which in his liver glows. O rash false heat, wrapped in repentant cold, Thy hasty spring still blasts and ne’er grows old!

When at Collatium this false lord arrived, Well was he welcomed by the Roman dame, Within whose face beauty and virtue strived Which of them both should underprop her fame. When virtue bragged, beauty would blush for shame; When beauty boasted blushes, in despite Virtue would stain that o’er with silver white.

But beauty, in that white intituled From Venus’ doves, doth challenge that fair field. Then virtue claims from beauty beauty’s red, Which virtue gave the golden age to gild Their silver cheeks, and called it then their shield; Teaching them thus to use it in the fight, When shame assailed, the red should fence the white.

This heraldry in Lucrece’ face was seen, Argued by beauty’s red and virtue’s white. Of either’s colour was the other queen, Proving from world’s minority their right. Yet their ambition makes them still to fight; The sovereignty of either being so great, That oft they interchange each other’s seat.

Their silent war of lilies and of roses, Which Tarquin viewed in her fair face’s field, In their pure ranks his traitor eye encloses; Where, lest between them both it should be killed, The coward captive vanquished doth yield To those two armies that would let him go Rather than triumph in so false a foe.

Now thinks he that her husband’s shallow tongue, The niggard prodigal that praised her so, In that high task hath done her beauty wrong, Which far exceeds his barren skill to show. Therefore that praise which Collatine doth owe Enchanted Tarquin answers with surmise, In silent wonder of still-gazing eyes.

This earthly saint, adored by this devil, Little suspecteth the false worshipper; For unstained thoughts do seldom dream on evil; Birds never limed no secret bushes fear. So guiltless she securely gives good cheer And reverend welcome to her princely guest, Whose inward ill no outward harm expressed.

For that he coloured with his high estate, Hiding base sin in pleats of majesty, That nothing in him seemed inordinate, Save sometime too much wonder of his eye, Which, having all, all could not satisfy; But, poorly rich, so wanteth in his store That, cloyed with much, he pineth still for more.

But she, that never coped with stranger eyes, Could pick no meaning from their parling looks, Nor read the subtle shining secrecies Writ in the glassy margents of such books; She touched no unknown baits, nor feared no hooks, Nor could she moralize his wanton sight, More than his eyes were opened to the light.

He stories to her ears her husband’s fame, Won in the fields of fruitful Italy; And decks with praises Collatine’s high name, Made glorious by his manly chivalry With bruised arms and wreaths of victory. Her joy with heaved-up hand she doth express, And, wordless, so greets heaven for his success.

Far from the purpose of his coming thither, He makes excuses for his being there. No cloudy show of stormy blust’ring weather Doth yet in his fair welkin once appear, Till sable Night, mother of dread and fear, Upon the world dim darkness doth display, And in her vaulty prison stows the day.

For then is Tarquin brought unto his bed, Intending weariness with heavy sprite; For after supper long he questioned With modest Lucrece, and wore out the night. Now leaden slumber with life’s strength doth fight, And every one to rest themselves betake, Save thieves and cares and troubled minds that wake.

As one of which doth Tarquin lie revolving The sundry dangers of his will’s obtaining, Yet ever to obtain his will resolving, Though weak-built hopes persuade him to abstaining. Despair to gain doth traffic oft for gaining, And when great treasure is the meed proposed, Though death be adjunct, there’s no death supposed.

Those that much covet are with gain so fond For what they have not, that which they possess They scatter and unloose it from their bond; And so, by hoping more, they have but less, Or, gaining more, the profit of excess Is but to surfeit, and such griefs sustain, That they prove bankrout in this poor-rich gain.

The aim of all is but to nurse the life With honour, wealth, and ease, in waning age; And in this aim there is such thwarting strife That one for all or all for one we gage: As life for honour in fell battle’s rage, Honour for wealth; and oft that wealth doth cost The death of all, and all together lost.

So that in vent’ring ill we leave to be The things we are, for that which we expect; And this ambitious foul infirmity, In having much, torments us with defect Of that we have. So then we do neglect The thing we have, and, all for want of wit, Make something nothing by augmenting it.

Such hazard now must doting Tarquin make, Pawning his honour to obtain his lust; And for himself himself he must forsake. Then where is truth, if there be no self-trust? When shall he think to find a stranger just, When he himself himself confounds, betrays To sland’rous tongues and wretched hateful days?

Now stole upon the time the dead of night, When heavy sleep had closed up mortal eyes. No comfortable star did lend his light, No noise but owls’ and wolves’ death-boding cries; Now serves the season that they may surprise The silly lambs. Pure thoughts are dead and still, While lust and murder wake to stain and kill.

And now this lustful lord leaped from his bed, Throwing his mantle rudely o’er his arm; Is madly tossed between desire and dread; Th’ one sweetly flatters, th’ other feareth harm. But honest fear, bewitched with lust’s foul charm, Doth too too oft betake him to retire, Beaten away by brain-sick rude desire.

His falchion on a flint he softly smiteth, That from the cold stone sparks of fire do fly; Whereat a waxen torch forthwith he lighteth, Which must be lodestar to his lustful eye, And to the flame thus speaks advisedly: “As from this cold flint I enforced this fire, So Lucrece must I force to my desire.”

Here pale with fear he doth premeditate The dangers of his loathsome enterprise, And in his inward mind he doth debate What following sorrow may on this arise. Then looking scornfully, he doth despise His naked armour of still-slaughtered lust, And justly thus controls his thoughts unjust:

“Fair torch, burn out thy light, and lend it not To darken her whose light excelleth thine. And die, unhallowed thoughts, before you blot With your uncleanness that which is divine. Offer pure incense to so pure a shrine. Let fair humanity abhor the deed That spots and stains love’s modest snow-white weed.

“O shame to knighthood and to shining arms! O foul dishonour to my household’s grave! O impious act including all foul harms! A martial man to be soft fancy’s slave! True valour still a true respect should have. Then my digression is so vile, so base, That it will live engraven in my face.

“Yea, though I die, the scandal will survive And be an eye-sore in my golden coat; Some loathsome dash the herald will contrive, To cipher me how fondly I did dote, That my posterity, shamed with the note, Shall curse my bones, and hold it for no sin To wish that I their father had not been.

“What win I if I gain the thing I seek? A dream, a breath, a froth of fleeting joy. Who buys a minute’s mirth to wail a week, Or sells eternity to get a toy? For one sweet grape who will the vine destroy? Or what fond beggar, but to touch the crown, Would with the sceptre straight be strucken down?

“If Collatinus dream of my intent, Will he not wake, and in a desp’rate rage Post hither, this vile purpose to prevent?— This siege that hath engirt his marriage, This blur to youth, this sorrow to the sage, This dying virtue, this surviving shame, Whose crime will bear an ever-during blame?

“O, what excuse can my invention make When thou shalt charge me with so black a deed? Will not my tongue be mute, my frail joints shake, Mine eyes forgo their light, my false heart bleed? The guilt being great, the fear doth still exceed; And extreme fear can neither fight nor fly, But coward-like with trembling terror die.

“Had Collatinus killed my son or sire, Or lain in ambush to betray my life, Or were he not my dear friend, this desire Might have excuse to work upon his wife, As in revenge or quittal of such strife; But as he is my kinsman, my dear friend, The shame and fault finds no excuse nor end.

“Shameful it is; ay, if the fact be known. Hateful it is, there is no hate in loving. I’ll beg her love. But she is not her own. The worst is but denial and reproving. My will is strong, past reason’s weak removing. Who fears a sentence or an old man’s saw Shall by a painted cloth be kept in awe.”

Thus, graceless, holds he disputation ’Tween frozen conscience and hot-burning will, And with good thoughts makes dispensation, Urging the worser sense for vantage still; Which in a moment doth confound and kill All pure effects, and doth so far proceed That what is vile shows like a virtuous deed.

Quoth he, “She took me kindly by the hand, And gazed for tidings in my eager eyes, Fearing some hard news from the warlike band Where her beloved Collatinus lies. O how her fear did make her colour rise! First red as roses that on lawn we lay, Then white as lawn, the roses took away.

“And how her hand, in my hand being locked, Forced it to tremble with her loyal fear, Which struck her sad, and then it faster rocked, Until her husband’s welfare she did hear; Whereat she smiled with so sweet a cheer That had Narcissus seen her as she stood, Self-love had never drowned him in the flood.

“Why hunt I then for colour or excuses? All orators are dumb when beauty pleadeth. Poor wretches have remorse in poor abuses; Love thrives not in the heart that shadows dreadeth. Affection is my captain, and he leadeth; And when his gaudy banner is displayed, The coward fights and will not be dismayed.

“Then, childish fear, avaunt! Debating, die! Respect and reason wait on wrinkled age! My heart shall never countermand mine eye. Sad pause and deep regard beseems the sage; My part is youth, and beats these from the stage. Desire my pilot is, beauty my prize; Then who fears sinking where such treasure lies?”

As corn o’ergrown by weeds, so heedful fear Is almost choked by unresisted lust. Away he steals with opening, list’ning ear, Full of foul hope, and full of fond mistrust; Both which, as servitors to the unjust, So cross him with their opposite persuasion That now he vows a league, and now invasion.

Within his thought her heavenly image sits, And in the self-same seat sits Collatine. That eye which looks on her confounds his wits; That eye which him beholds, as more divine, Unto a view so false will not incline, But with a pure appeal seeks to the heart, Which once corrupted takes the worser part;

And therein heartens up his servile powers, Who, flattered by their leader’s jocund show, Stuff up his lust, as minutes fill up hours; And as their captain, so their pride doth grow, Paying more slavish tribute than they owe. By reprobate desire thus madly led, The Roman lord marcheth to Lucrece’ bed.

The locks between her chamber and his will, Each one by him enforced, retires his ward; But, as they open, they all rate his ill, Which drives the creeping thief to some regard. The threshold grates the door to have him heard; Night-wand’ring weasels shriek to see him there; They fright him, yet he still pursues his fear.

As each unwilling portal yields him way, Through little vents and crannies of the place The wind wars with his torch, to make him stay, And blows the smoke of it into his face, Extinguishing his conduct in this case; But his hot heart, which fond desire doth scorch, Puffs forth another wind that fires the torch.

And being lighted, by the light he spies Lucretia’s glove, wherein her needle sticks; He takes it from the rushes where it lies, And griping it, the needle his finger pricks, As who should say, “This glove to wanton tricks Is not inured. Return again in haste; Thou seest our mistress’ ornaments are chaste.”

But all these poor forbiddings could not stay him; He in the worst sense construes their denial. The doors, the wind, the glove that did delay him, He takes for accidental things of trial; Or as those bars which stop the hourly dial, Who with a ling’ring stay his course doth let, Till every minute pays the hour his debt.

“So, so,” quoth he, “these lets attend the time, Like little frosts that sometime threat the spring, To add a more rejoicing to the prime, And give the sneaped birds more cause to sing. Pain pays the income of each precious thing: Huge rocks, high winds, strong pirates, shelves and sands The merchant fears, ere rich at home he lands.”

Now is he come unto the chamber door That shuts him from the heaven of his thought, Which with a yielding latch, and with no more, Hath barred him from the blessed thing he sought. So from himself impiety hath wrought, That for his prey to pray he doth begin, As if the heavens should countenance his sin.

But in the midst of his unfruitful prayer, Having solicited th’ eternal power That his foul thoughts might compass his fair fair, And they would stand auspicious to the hour, Even there he starts. Quoth he, “I must deflower. The powers to whom I pray abhor this fact, How can they then assist me in the act?

“Then Love and Fortune be my gods, my guide! My will is backed with resolution. Thoughts are but dreams till their effects be tried; The blackest sin is cleared with absolution. Against love’s fire fear’s frost hath dissolution. The eye of heaven is out, and misty night Covers the shame that follows sweet delight.”

This said, his guilty hand plucked up the latch, And with his knee the door he opens wide. The dove sleeps fast that this night-owl will catch; Thus treason works ere traitors be espied. Who sees the lurking serpent steps aside; But she, sound sleeping, fearing no such thing, Lies at the mercy of his mortal sting.

Into the chamber wickedly he stalks, And gazeth on her yet unstained bed. The curtains being close, about he walks, Rolling his greedy eyeballs in his head. By their high treason is his heart misled, Which gives the watch-word to his hand full soon To draw the cloud that hides the silver moon.

Look as the fair and fiery-pointed sun, Rushing from forth a cloud, bereaves our sight; Even so, the curtain drawn, his eyes begun To wink, being blinded with a greater light. Whether it is that she reflects so bright, That dazzleth them, or else some shame supposed; But blind they are, and keep themselves enclosed.

O, had they in that darksome prison died, Then had they seen the period of their ill! Then Collatine again by Lucrece’ side In his clear bed might have reposed still. But they must ope, this blessed league to kill; And holy-thoughted Lucrece to their sight Must sell her joy, her life, her world’s delight.

Her lily hand her rosy cheek lies under, Coz’ning the pillow of a lawful kiss; Who, therefore angry, seems to part in sunder, Swelling on either side to want his bliss; Between whose hills her head entombed is, Where like a virtuous monument she lies, To be admired of lewd unhallowed eyes.

Without the bed her other fair hand was, On the green coverlet; whose perfect white Showed like an April daisy on the grass, With pearly sweat resembling dew of night. Her eyes, like marigolds, had sheathed their light, And canopied in darkness sweetly lay, Till they might open to adorn the day.

Her hair, like golden threads, played with her breath: O modest wantons, wanton modesty! Showing life’s triumph in the map of death, And death’s dim look in life’s mortality. Each in her sleep themselves so beautify, As if between them twain there were no strife, But that life lived in death and death in life.

Her breasts like ivory globes circled with blue, A pair of maiden worlds unconquered, Save of their lord no bearing yoke they knew, And him by oath they truly honoured. These worlds in Tarquin new ambition bred; Who, like a foul usurper, went about From this fair throne to heave the owner out.

What could he see but mightily he noted? What did he note but strongly he desired? What he beheld, on that he firmly doted, And in his will his wilful eye he tired. With more than admiration he admired Her azure veins, her alabaster skin, Her coral lips, her snow-white dimpled chin.

As the grim lion fawneth o’er his prey, Sharp hunger by the conquest satisfied, So o’er this sleeping soul doth Tarquin stay, His rage of lust by grazing qualified— Slaked, not suppressed; for standing by her side, His eye, which late this mutiny restrains, Unto a greater uproar tempts his veins.

And they, like straggling slaves for pillage fighting, Obdurate vassals fell exploits effecting, In bloody death and ravishment delighting, Nor children’s tears nor mothers’ groans respecting, Swell in their pride, the onset still expecting. Anon his beating heart, alarum striking, Gives the hot charge and bids them do their liking.

His drumming heart cheers up his burning eye, His eye commends the leading to his hand; His hand, as proud of such a dignity, Smoking with pride, marched on to make his stand On her bare breast, the heart of all her land; Whose ranks of blue veins, as his hand did scale, Left their round turrets destitute and pale.

They, must’ring to the quiet cabinet Where their dear governess and lady lies, Do tell her she is dreadfully beset, And fright her with confusion of their cries. She, much amazed, breaks ope her locked-up eyes, Who, peeping forth this tumult to behold, Are by his flaming torch dimmed and controlled.

Imagine her as one in dead of night From forth dull sleep by dreadful fancy waking, That thinks she hath beheld some ghastly sprite, Whose grim aspect sets every joint a shaking. What terror ’tis! but she, in worser taking, From sleep disturbed, heedfully doth view The sight which makes supposed terror true.

Wrapped and confounded in a thousand fears, Like to a new-killed bird she trembling lies. She dares not look; yet, winking, there appears Quick-shifting antics, ugly in her eyes. Such shadows are the weak brain’s forgeries; Who, angry that the eyes fly from their lights, In darkness daunts them with more dreadful sights.

His hand, that yet remains upon her breast, Rude ram, to batter such an ivory wall! May feel her heart, poor citizen, distressed, Wounding itself to death, rise up and fall, Beating her bulk, that his hand shakes withal. This moves in him more rage, and lesser pity, To make the breach and enter this sweet city.

First, like a trumpet doth his tongue begin To sound a parley to his heartless foe, Who o’er the white sheet peers her whiter chin, The reason of this rash alarm to know, Which he by dumb demeanour seeks to show; But she with vehement prayers urgeth still Under what colour he commits this ill.

Thus he replies: “The colour in thy face, That even for anger makes the lily pale, And the red rose blush at her own disgrace, Shall plead for me and tell my loving tale. Under that colour am I come to scale Thy never-conquered fort; the fault is thine, For those thine eyes betray thee unto mine.

“Thus I forestall thee, if thou mean to chide: Thy beauty hath ensnared thee to this night, Where thou with patience must my will abide, My will that marks thee for my earth’s delight, Which I to conquer sought with all my might. But as reproof and reason beat it dead, By thy bright beauty was it newly bred.

“I see what crosses my attempt will bring; I know what thorns the growing rose defends; I think the honey guarded with a sting; All this beforehand counsel comprehends. But will is deaf, and hears no heedful friends; Only he hath an eye to gaze on beauty, And dotes on what he looks, ’gainst law or duty.

“I have debated, even in my soul, What wrong, what shame, what sorrow I shall breed; But nothing can affection’s course control, Or stop the headlong fury of his speed. I know repentant tears ensue the deed, Reproach, disdain, and deadly enmity; Yet strike I to embrace mine infamy.”

This said, he shakes aloft his Roman blade, Which, like a falcon tow’ring in the skies, Coucheth the fowl below with his wings’ shade, Whose crooked beak threats, if he mount he dies. So under his insulting falchion lies Harmless Lucretia, marking what he tells With trembling fear, as fowl hear falcon’s bells.

“Lucrece,” quoth he, “this night I must enjoy thee. If thou deny, then force must work my way, For in thy bed I purpose to destroy thee; That done, some worthless slave of thine I’ll slay. To kill thine honour with thy life’s decay; And in thy dead arms do I mean to place him, Swearing I slew him, seeing thee embrace him.

“So thy surviving husband shall remain The scornful mark of every open eye; Thy kinsmen hang their heads at this disdain, Thy issue blurred with nameless bastardy. And thou, the author of their obloquy, Shalt have thy trespass cited up in rhymes And sung by children in succeeding times.

“But if thou yield, I rest thy secret friend. The fault unknown is as a thought unacted; A little harm done to a great good end For lawful policy remains enacted. The poisonous simple sometimes is compacted In a pure compound; being so applied, His venom in effect is purified.

“Then, for thy husband and thy children’s sake, Tender my suit. Bequeath not to their lot The shame that from them no device can take, The blemish that will never be forgot, Worse than a slavish wipe, or birth-hour’s blot: For marks descried in men’s nativity Are nature’s faults, not their own infamy.”

Here with a cockatrice’ dead-killing eye He rouseth up himself and makes a pause; While she, the picture of pure piety, Like a white hind under the gripe’s sharp claws, Pleads in a wilderness where are no laws, To the rough beast that knows no gentle right, Nor aught obeys but his foul appetite.

But when a black-faced cloud the world doth threat, In his dim mist th’ aspiring mountains hiding, From earth’s dark womb some gentle gust doth get, Which blows these pitchy vapours from their biding, Hind’ring their present fall by this dividing; So his unhallowed haste her words delays, And moody Pluto winks while Orpheus plays.

Yet, foul night-waking cat, he doth but dally, While in his hold-fast foot the weak mouse panteth. Her sad behaviour feeds his vulture folly, A swallowing gulf that even in plenty wanteth. His ear her prayers admits, but his heart granteth No penetrable entrance to her plaining; Tears harden lust, though marble wear with raining.

Her pity-pleading eyes are sadly fixed In the remorseless wrinkles of his face. Her modest eloquence with sighs is mixed, Which to her oratory adds more grace. She puts the period often from his place, And midst the sentence so her accent breaks That twice she doth begin ere once she speaks.

She conjures him by high almighty Jove, By knighthood, gentry, and sweet friendship’s oath, By her untimely tears, her husband’s love, By holy human law, and common troth, By heaven and earth, and all the power of both, That to his borrowed bed he make retire, And stoop to honour, not to foul desire.

Quoth she, “Reward not hospitality With such black payment as thou hast pretended; Mud not the fountain that gave drink to thee, Mar not the thing that cannot be amended. End thy ill aim before the shoot be ended; He is no woodman that doth bend his bow To strike a poor unseasonable doe.

“My husband is thy friend; for his sake spare me. Thyself art mighty; for thine own sake leave me. Myself a weakling, do not then ensnare me; Thou look’st not like deceit; do not deceive me. My sighs, like whirlwinds, labour hence to heave thee. If ever man were moved with woman’s moans, Be moved with my tears, my sighs, my groans.

“All which together, like a troubled ocean, Beat at thy rocky and wrack-threat’ning heart, To soften it with their continual motion; For stones dissolved to water do convert. O, if no harder than a stone thou art, Melt at my tears and be compassionate! Soft pity enters at an iron gate.

“In Tarquin’s likeness I did entertain thee. Hast thou put on his shape to do him shame? To all the host of heaven I complain me, Thou wrong’st his honour, wound’st his princely name. Thou art not what thou seem’st; and if the same, Thou seem’st not what thou art, a god, a king; For kings like gods should govern everything.

“How will thy shame be seeded in thine age, When thus thy vices bud before thy spring? If in thy hope thou dar’st do such outrage, What dar’st thou not when once thou art a king? O, be remembered, no outrageous thing From vassal actors can be wiped away; Then kings’ misdeeds cannot be hid in clay.

“This deed will make thee only loved for fear, But happy monarchs still are feared for love. With foul offenders thou perforce must bear, When they in thee the like offences prove. If but for fear of this, thy will remove, For princes are the glass, the school, the book, Where subjects’ eyes do learn, do read, do look.

“And wilt thou be the school where Lust shall learn? Must he in thee read lectures of such shame? Wilt thou be glass, wherein it shall discern Authority for sin, warrant for blame, To privilege dishonour in thy name? Thou back’st reproach against long-living laud, And mak’st fair reputation but a bawd.

“Hast thou command? By him that gave it thee, From a pure heart command thy rebel will. Draw not thy sword to guard iniquity, For it was lent thee all that brood to kill. Thy princely office how canst thou fulfill, When, patterned by thy fault, foul Sin may say He learned to sin, and thou didst teach the way?

“Think but how vile a spectacle it were To view thy present trespass in another. Men’s faults do seldom to themselves appear; Their own transgressions partially they smother. This guilt would seem death-worthy in thy brother. O how are they wrapped in with infamies That from their own misdeeds askance their eyes!

“To thee, to thee, my heaved-up hands appeal, Not to seducing lust, thy rash relier. I sue for exiled majesty’s repeal; Let him return, and flatt’ring thoughts retire. His true respect will prison false desire, And wipe the dim mist from thy doting eyne, That thou shalt see thy state, and pity mine.”

“Have done,” quoth he. “My uncontrolled tide Turns not, but swells the higher by this let. Small lights are soon blown out, huge fires abide, And with the wind in greater fury fret. The petty streams that pay a daily debt To their salt sovereign, with their fresh falls’ haste Add to his flow, but alter not his taste.”

“Thou art,” quoth she, “a sea, a sovereign king, And, lo, there falls into thy boundless flood Black lust, dishonour, shame, misgoverning, Who seek to stain the ocean of thy blood. If all these petty ills shall change thy good, Thy sea within a puddle’s womb is hearsed, And not the puddle in thy sea dispersed.

“So shall these slaves be king, and thou their slave; Thou nobly base, they basely dignified; Thou their fair life, and they thy fouler grave; Thou loathed in their shame, they in thy pride. The lesser thing should not the greater hide; The cedar stoops not to the base shrub’s foot, But low shrubs wither at the cedar’s root.

“So let thy thoughts, low vassals to thy state”— “No more,” quoth he, “by heaven, I will not hear thee. Yield to my love. If not, enforced hate, Instead of love’s coy touch, shall rudely tear thee. That done, despitefully I mean to bear thee Unto the base bed of some rascal groom, To be thy partner in this shameful doom.”

This said, he sets his foot upon the light, For light and lust are deadly enemies. Shame folded up in blind concealing night, When most unseen, then most doth tyrannize. The wolf hath seized his prey, the poor lamb cries, Till with her own white fleece her voice controlled Entombs her outcry in her lips’ sweet fold.

For with the nightly linen that she wears He pens her piteous clamours in her head, Cooling his hot face in the chastest tears That ever modest eyes with sorrow shed. O, that prone lust should stain so pure a bed! The spots whereof could weeping purify, Her tears should drop on them perpetually.

But she hath lost a dearer thing than life, And he hath won what he would lose again. This forced league doth force a further strife; This momentary joy breeds months of pain; This hot desire converts to cold disdain. Pure Chastity is rifled of her store, And Lust, the thief, far poorer than before.

Look as the full-fed hound or gorged hawk, Unapt for tender smell or speedy flight, Make slow pursuit, or altogether balk The prey wherein by nature they delight; So surfeit-taking Tarquin fares this night. His taste delicious, in digestion souring, Devours his will, that lived by foul devouring.

O deeper sin than bottomless conceit Can comprehend in still imagination! Drunken desire must vomit his receipt, Ere he can see his own abomination. While lust is in his pride no exclamation Can curb his heat or rein his rash desire, Till, like a jade, self-will himself doth tire.

And then with lank and lean discoloured cheek, With heavy eye, knit brow, and strengthless pace, Feeble desire, all recreant, poor, and meek, Like to a bankrout beggar wails his case. The flesh being proud, desire doth fight with Grace, For there it revels; and when that decays, The guilty rebel for remission prays.

So fares it with this faultful lord of Rome, Who this accomplishment so hotly chased; For now against himself he sounds this doom, That through the length of times he stands disgraced. Besides, his soul’s fair temple is defaced, To whose weak ruins muster troops of cares, To ask the spotted princess how she fares.

She says her subjects with foul insurrection Have battered down her consecrated wall, And by their mortal fault brought in subjection Her immortality, and made her thrall To living death and pain perpetual, Which in her prescience she controlled still, But her foresight could not forestall their will.

E’en in this thought through the dark night he stealeth, A captive victor that hath lost in gain, Bearing away the wound that nothing healeth, The scar that will, despite of cure, remain; Leaving his spoil perplexed in greater pain. She bears the load of lust he left behind, And he the burden of a guilty mind.

He like a thievish dog creeps sadly thence; She like a wearied lamb lies panting there; He scowls, and hates himself for his offence; She, desperate, with her nails her flesh doth tear. He faintly flies, sweating with guilty fear; She stays, exclaiming on the direful night; He runs, and chides his vanished, loathed delight.

He thence departs a heavy convertite; She there remains a hopeless castaway. He in his speed looks for the morning light; She prays she never may behold the day. “For day,” quoth she, “night’s scapes doth open lay, And my true eyes have never practised how To cloak offences with a cunning brow.

“They think not but that every eye can see The same disgrace which they themselves behold; And therefore would they still in darkness be, To have their unseen sin remain untold. For they their guilt with weeping will unfold, And grave, like water that doth eat in steel, Upon my cheeks what helpless shame I feel.”

Here she exclaims against repose and rest, And bids her eyes hereafter still be blind. She wakes her heart by beating on her breast, And bids it leap from thence, where it may find Some purer chest, to close so pure a mind. Frantic with grief thus breathes she forth her spite Against the unseen secrecy of night.

“O comfort-killing night, image of hell, Dim register and notary of shame, Black stage for tragedies and murders fell, Vast sin-concealing chaos, nurse of blame, Blind muffled bawd, dark harbour for defame, Grim cave of death, whisp’ring conspirator With close-tongued treason and the ravisher!

“O hateful, vaporous, and foggy night, Since thou art guilty of my cureless crime, Muster thy mists to meet the eastern light, Make war against proportioned course of time; Or if thou wilt permit the sun to climb His wonted height, yet ere he go to bed, Knit poisonous clouds about his golden head.

“With rotten damps ravish the morning air; Let their exhaled unwholesome breaths make sick The life of purity, the supreme fair, Ere he arrive his weary noontide prick. And let thy misty vapours march so thick, That in their smoky ranks his smothered light May set at noon and make perpetual night.

“Were Tarquin night, as he is but night’s child, The silver-shining queen he would distain; Her twinkling handmaids too, by him defiled, Through Night’s black bosom should not peep again. So should I have co-partners in my pain; And fellowship in woe doth woe assuage, As palmers’ chat makes short their pilgrimage.

“Where now I have no one to blush with me, To cross their arms and hang their heads with mine, To mask their brows, and hide their infamy; But I alone alone must sit and pine, Seasoning the earth with showers of silver brine, Mingling my talk with tears, my grief with groans, Poor wasting monuments of lasting moans.

“O night, thou furnace of foul reeking smoke, Let not the jealous day behold that face Which underneath thy black all-hiding cloak Immodesty lies martyred with disgrace! Keep still possession of thy gloomy place, That all the faults which in thy reign are made May likewise be sepulchred in thy shade.

“Make me not object to the tell-tale day. The light will show charactered in my brow The story of sweet chastity’s decay, The impious breach of holy wedlock vow. Yea, the illiterate, that know not how To cipher what is writ in learned books, Will quote my loathsome trespass in my looks.

“The nurse, to still her child, will tell my story And fright her crying babe with Tarquin’s name. The orator, to deck his oratory, Will couple my reproach to Tarquin’s shame. Feast-finding minstrels, tuning my defame, Will tie the hearers to attend each line, How Tarquin wronged me, I Collatine.

“Let my good name, that senseless reputation, For Collatine’s dear love be kept unspotted. If that be made a theme for disputation, The branches of another root are rotted, And undeserved reproach to him allotted That is as clear from this attaint of mine As I, ere this, was pure to Collatine.

“O unseen shame, invisible disgrace! O unfelt sore, crest-wounding, private scar! Reproach is stamped in Collatinus’ face, And Tarquin’s eye may read the mot afar, How he in peace is wounded, not in war. Alas, how many bear such shameful blows, Which not themselves, but he that gives them knows!

“If, Collatine, thine honour lay in me, From me by strong assault it is bereft. My honey lost, and I, a drone-like bee, Have no perfection of my summer left, But robbed and ransacked by injurious theft. In thy weak hive a wand’ring wasp hath crept, And sucked the honey which thy chaste bee kept.

“Yet am I guilty of thy honour’s wrack; Yet for thy honour did I entertain him. Coming from thee, I could not put him back, For it had been dishonour to disdain him. Besides, of weariness he did complain him, And talked of virtue. O unlooked-for evil, When virtue is profaned in such a devil!

“Why should the worm intrude the maiden bud? Or hateful cuckoos hatch in sparrows’ nests? Or toads infect fair founts with venom mud? Or tyrant folly lurk in gentle breasts? Or kings be breakers of their own behests? But no perfection is so absolute That some impurity doth not pollute.

“The aged man that coffers up his gold Is plagued with cramps, and gouts and painful fits, And scarce hath eyes his treasure to behold, But like still-pining Tantalus he sits, And useless barns the harvest of his wits, Having no other pleasure of his gain But torment that it cannot cure his pain.

“So then he hath it when he cannot use it, And leaves it to be mastered by his young, Who in their pride do presently abuse it. Their father was too weak, and they too strong, To hold their cursed-blessed fortune long. The sweets we wish for turn to loathed sours Even in the moment that we call them ours.

“Unruly blasts wait on the tender spring; Unwholesome weeds take root with precious flowers; The adder hisses where the sweet birds sing; What virtue breeds iniquity devours. We have no good that we can say is ours, But ill-annexed Opportunity Or kills his life or else his quality.

“O Opportunity, thy guilt is great! ’Tis thou that execut’st the traitor’s treason; Thou sets the wolf where he the lamb may get; Whoever plots the sin, thou ’point’st the season. ’Tis thou that spurn’st at right, at law, at reason; And in thy shady cell, where none may spy him, Sits Sin, to seize the souls that wander by him.

“Thou mak’st the vestal violate her oath; Thou blow’st the fire when temperance is thawed; Thou smother’st honesty, thou murder’st troth, Thou foul abettor, thou notorious bawd! Thou plantest scandal and displacest laud. Thou ravisher, thou traitor, thou false thief, Thy honey turns to gall, thy joy to grief.

“Thy secret pleasure turns to open shame, Thy private feasting to a public fast, Thy smoothing titles to a ragged name, Thy sugared tongue to bitter wormwood taste. Thy violent vanities can never last. How comes it then, vile Opportunity, Being so bad, such numbers seek for thee?

“When wilt thou be the humble suppliant’s friend, And bring him where his suit may be obtained? When wilt thou sort an hour great strifes to end, Or free that soul which wretchedness hath chained? Give physic to the sick, ease to the pained? The poor, lame, blind, halt, creep, cry out for thee; But they ne’er meet with Opportunity.

“The patient dies while the physician sleeps; The orphan pines while the oppressor feeds; Justice is feasting while the widow weeps; Advice is sporting while infection breeds. Thou grant’st no time for charitable deeds. Wrath, envy, treason, rape, and murder’s rages, Thy heinous hours wait on them as their pages.

“When truth and virtue have to do with thee, A thousand crosses keep them from thy aid; They buy thy help; but Sin ne’er gives a fee; He gratis comes, and thou art well appaid As well to hear as grant what he hath said. My Collatine would else have come to me When Tarquin did, but he was stayed by thee.

“Guilty thou art of murder and of theft, Guilty of perjury and subornation, Guilty of treason, forgery, and shift, Guilty of incest, that abomination: An accessory by thine inclination To all sins past and all that are to come, From the creation to the general doom.

“Misshapen Time, copesmate of ugly night, Swift subtle post, carrier of grisly care, Eater of youth, false slave to false delight, Base watch of woes, sin’s pack-horse, virtue’s snare! Thou nursest all and murd’rest all that are. O hear me then, injurious, shifting Time! Be guilty of my death, since of my crime.

“Why hath thy servant, Opportunity Betrayed the hours thou gav’st me to repose, Cancelled my fortunes, and enchained me To endless date of never-ending woes? Time’s office is to fine the hate of foes, To eat up errors by opinion bred, Not spend the dowry of a lawful bed.

“Time’s glory is to calm contending kings, To unmask falsehood and bring truth to light, To stamp the seal of time in aged things, To wake the morn and sentinel the night, To wrong the wronger till he render right, To ruinate proud buildings with thy hours, And smear with dust their glitt’ring golden towers;

“To fill with worm-holes stately monuments, To feed oblivion with decay of things, To blot old books and alter their contents, To pluck the quills from ancient ravens’ wings, To dry the old oak’s sap and cherish springs, To spoil antiquities of hammered steel, And turn the giddy round of Fortune’s wheel;

“To show the beldam daughters of her daughter, To make the child a man, the man a child, To slay the tiger that doth live by slaughter, To tame the unicorn and lion wild, To mock the subtle in themselves beguiled, To cheer the ploughman with increaseful crops, And waste huge stones with little water-drops.

“Why work’st thou mischief in thy pilgrimage, Unless thou couldst return to make amends? One poor retiring minute in an age Would purchase thee a thousand thousand friends, Lending him wit that to bad debtors lends. O, this dread night, wouldst thou one hour come back, I could prevent this storm and shun thy wrack!

“Thou ceaseless lackey to eternity, With some mischance cross Tarquin in his flight. Devise extremes beyond extremity, To make him curse this cursed crimeful night. Let ghastly shadows his lewd eyes affright, And the dire thought of his committed evil Shape every bush a hideous shapeless devil.

“Disturb his hours of rest with restless trances, Afflict him in his bed with bedrid groans; Let there bechance him pitiful mischances, To make him moan, but pity not his moans. Stone him with hard’ned hearts harder than stones, And let mild women to him lose their mildness, Wilder to him than tigers in their wildness.

“Let him have time to tear his curled hair, Let him have time against himself to rave, Let him have time of Time’s help to despair, Let him have time to live a loathed slave, Let him have time a beggar’s orts to crave, And time to see one that by alms doth live Disdain to him disdained scraps to give.

“Let him have time to see his friends his foes, And merry fools to mock at him resort; Let him have time to mark how slow time goes In time of sorrow, and how swift and short His time of folly and his time of sport; And ever let his unrecalling crime Have time to wail th’ abusing of his time.

“O Time, thou tutor both to good and bad, Teach me to curse him that thou taught’st this ill! At his own shadow let the thief run mad, Himself himself seek every hour to kill. Such wretched hands such wretched blood should spill, For who so base would such an office have As sland’rous deathsman to so base a slave?

“The baser is he, coming from a king, To shame his hope with deeds degenerate. The mightier man, the mightier is the thing That makes him honoured or begets him hate; For greatest scandal waits on greatest state. The moon being clouded presently is missed, But little stars may hide them when they list.

“The crow may bathe his coal-black wings in mire, And unperceived fly with the filth away; But if the like the snow-white swan desire, The stain upon his silver down will stay. Poor grooms are sightless night, kings glorious day. Gnats are unnoted wheresoe’er they fly, But eagles gazed upon with every eye.

“Out, idle words, servants to shallow fools, Unprofitable sounds, weak arbitrators! Busy yourselves in skill-contending schools; Debate where leisure serves with dull debaters; To trembling clients be you mediators. For me, I force not argument a straw, Since that my case is past the help of law.

“In vain I rail at Opportunity, At Time, at Tarquin, and uncheerful night; In vain I cavil with mine infamy, In vain I spurn at my confirmed despite. This helpless smoke of words doth me no right. The remedy indeed to do me good Is to let forth my foul defiled blood.

“Poor hand, why quiver’st thou at this decree? Honour thyself to rid me of this shame, For if I die, my honour lives in thee, But if I live, thou liv’st in my defame. Since thou couldst not defend thy loyal dame, And wast afeared to scratch her wicked foe, Kill both thyself and her for yielding so.”

This said, from her betumbled couch she starteth, To find some desp’rate instrument of death; But this no slaughterhouse no tool imparteth To make more vent for passage of her breath, Which, thronging through her lips, so vanisheth As smoke from Ætna, that in air consumes, Or that which from discharged cannon fumes.

“In vain,” quoth she, “I live, and seek in vain Some happy mean to end a hapless life. I feared by Tarquin’s falchion to be slain, Yet for the self-same purpose seek a knife. But when I feared I was a loyal wife; So am I now.—O no, that cannot be! Of that true type hath Tarquin rifled me.

“O that is gone for which I sought to live, And therefore now I need not fear to die. To clear this spot by death, at least I give A badge of fame to slander’s livery, A dying life to living infamy. Poor helpless help, the treasure stol’n away, To burn the guiltless casket where it lay!

“Well, well, dear Collatine, thou shalt not know The stained taste of violated troth; I will not wrong thy true affection so, To flatter thee with an infringed oath. This bastard graff shall never come to growth; He shall not boast who did thy stock pollute That thou art doting father of his fruit.

“Nor shall he smile at thee in secret thought, Nor laugh with his companions at thy state; But thou shalt know thy int’rest was not bought Basely with gold, but stol’n from forth thy gate. For me, I am the mistress of my fate, And with my trespass never will dispense, Till life to death acquit my forced offence.

“I will not poison thee with my attaint, Nor fold my fault in cleanly-coined excuses; My sable ground of sin I will not paint, To hide the truth of this false night’s abuses. My tongue shall utter all; mine eyes, like sluices, As from a mountain-spring that feeds a dale, Shall gush pure streams to purge my impure tale.”

By this, lamenting Philomel had ended The well-tuned warble of her nightly sorrow, And solemn night with slow sad gait descended To ugly hell; when, lo, the blushing morrow Lends light to all fair eyes that light will borrow. But cloudy Lucrece shames herself to see, And therefore still in night would cloistered be.

Revealing day through every cranny spies, And seems to point her out where she sits weeping, To whom she sobbing speaks: “O eye of eyes, Why pry’st thou through my window? Leave thy peeping, Mock with thy tickling beams eyes that are sleeping. Brand not my forehead with thy piercing light, For day hath naught to do what’s done by night.”

Thus cavils she with everything she sees. True grief is fond and testy as a child, Who wayward once, his mood with naught agrees. Old woes, not infant sorrows, bear them mild. Continuance tames the one; the other wild, Like an unpractised swimmer plunging still With too much labour drowns for want of skill.

So she, deep-drenched in a sea of care, Holds disputation with each thing she views, And to herself all sorrow doth compare; No object but her passion’s strength renews, And as one shifts, another straight ensues. Sometime her grief is dumb and hath no words; Sometime ’tis mad and too much talk affords.

The little birds that tune their morning’s joy Make her moans mad with their sweet melody. For mirth doth search the bottom of annoy; Sad souls are slain in merry company. Grief best is pleased with grief’s society; True sorrow then is feelingly sufficed When with like semblance it is sympathized.

’Tis double death to drown in ken of shore; He ten times pines that pines beholding food; To see the salve doth make the wound ache more; Great grief grieves most at that would do it good; Deep woes roll forward like a gentle flood, Who, being stopped, the bounding banks o’erflows; Grief dallied with nor law nor limit knows.

“You mocking birds,” quoth she, “your tunes entomb Within your hollow-swelling feathered breasts, And in my hearing be you mute and dumb; My restless discord loves no stops nor rests. A woeful hostess brooks not merry guests. Relish your nimble notes to pleasing ears; Distress likes dumps when time is kept with tears.

“Come, Philomel, that sing’st of ravishment, Make thy sad grove in my disheveled hair. As the dank earth weeps at thy languishment, So I at each sad strain will strain a tear And with deep groans the diapason bear; For burden-wise I’ll hum on Tarquin still, While thou on Tereus descants better skill.

“And whiles against a thorn thou bear’st thy part To keep thy sharp woes waking, wretched I, To imitate thee well, against my heart Will fix a sharp knife to affright mine eye, Who if it wink shall thereon fall and die. These means, as frets upon an instrument, Shall tune our heart-strings to true languishment.

“And for, poor bird, thou sing’st not in the day, As shaming any eye should thee behold, Some dark deep desert seated from the way, That knows not parching heat nor freezing cold, Will we find out; and there we will unfold To creatures stern sad tunes to change their kinds. Since men prove beasts, let beasts bear gentle minds.”

As the poor frighted deer that stands at gaze, Wildly determining which way to fly, Or one encompassed with a winding maze, That cannot tread the way out readily; So with herself is she in mutiny, To live or die which of the twain were better, When life is shamed and Death reproach’s debtor.

“To kill myself,” quoth she, “alack, what were it, But with my body my poor soul’s pollution? They that lose half with greater patience bear it Than they whose whole is swallowed in confusion. That mother tries a merciless conclusion Who, having two sweet babes, when death takes one, Will slay the other, and be nurse to none.

“My body or my soul, which was the dearer, When the one pure, the other made divine? Whose love of either to myself was nearer, When both were kept for heaven and Collatine? Ay me, the bark pilled from the lofty pine, His leaves will wither and his sap decay; So must my soul, her bark being pilled away.

“Her house is sacked, her quiet interrupted, Her mansion battered by the enemy, Her sacred temple spotted, spoiled, corrupted, Grossly engirt with daring infamy. Then let it not be called impiety, If in this blemished fort I make some hole Through which I may convey this troubled soul.

“Yet die I will not till my Collatine Have heard the cause of my untimely death, That he may vow, in that sad hour of mine, Revenge on him that made me stop my breath. My stained blood to Tarquin I’ll bequeath, Which by him tainted shall for him be spent, And as his due writ in my testament.

“My honour I’ll bequeath unto the knife That wounds my body so dishonoured. ’Tis honour to deprive dishonoured life; The one will live, the other being dead. So of shame’s ashes shall my fame be bred, For in my death I murder shameful scorn; My shame so dead, mine honour is new born.

“Dear lord of that dear jewel I have lost, What legacy shall I bequeath to thee? My resolution, love, shall be thy boast, By whose example thou revenged mayst be. How Tarquin must be used, read it in me; Myself, thy friend, will kill myself, thy foe, And for my sake serve thou false Tarquin so.

“This brief abridgement of my will I make: My soul and body to the skies and ground; My resolution, husband, do thou take; Mine honour be the knife’s that makes my wound; My shame be his that did my fame confound; And all my fame that lives disbursed be To those that live and think no shame of me.

“Thou, Collatine, shalt oversee this will; How was I overseen that thou shalt see it! My blood shall wash the slander of mine ill; My life’s foul deed my life’s fair end shall free it. Faint not, faint heart, but stoutly say, ‘So be it.’ Yield to my hand; my hand shall conquer thee. Thou dead, both die, and both shall victors be.”

This plot of death when sadly she had laid, And wiped the brinish pearl from her bright eyes, With untuned tongue she hoarsely called her maid, Whose swift obedience to her mistress hies; For fleet-winged duty with thought’s feathers flies. Poor Lucrece’ cheeks unto her maid seem so As winter meads when sun doth melt their snow.

Her mistress she doth give demure good-morrow, With soft slow tongue, true mark of modesty, And sorts a sad look to her lady’s sorrow, For why her face wore sorrow’s livery, But durst not ask of her audaciously Why her two suns were cloud-eclipsed so, Nor why her fair cheeks over-washed with woe.

But as the earth doth weep, the sun being set, Each flower moistened like a melting eye, Even so the maid with swelling drops ’gan wet Her circled eyne, enforced by sympathy Of those fair suns set in her mistress’ sky, Who in a salt-waved ocean quench their light, Which makes the maid weep like the dewy night.

A pretty while these pretty creatures stand, Like ivory conduits coral cisterns filling. One justly weeps; the other takes in hand No cause, but company, of her drops spilling. Their gentle sex to weep are often willing, Grieving themselves to guess at others’ smarts, And then they drown their eyes or break their hearts.

For men have marble, women waxen, minds, And therefore are they formed as marble will; The weak oppressed, th’ impression of strange kinds Is formed in them by force, by fraud, or skill. Then call them not the authors of their ill, No more than wax shall be accounted evil, Wherein is stamped the semblance of a devil.

Their smoothness, like a goodly champaign plain, Lays open all the little worms that creep; In men, as in a rough-grown grove, remain Cave-keeping evils that obscurely sleep. Through crystal walls each little mote will peep. Though men can cover crimes with bold stern looks, Poor women’s faces are their own faults’ books.

No man inveigh against the withered flower, But chide rough winter that the flower hath killed; Not that devoured, but that which doth devour, Is worthy blame. O, let it not be hild Poor women’s faults, that they are so fulfilled With men’s abuses! Those proud lords, to blame, Make weak-made women tenants to their shame.

The precedent whereof in Lucrece view, Assailed by night with circumstances strong Of present death, and shame that might ensue By that her death, to do her husband wrong. Such danger to resistance did belong, The dying fear through all her body spread; And who cannot abuse a body dead?

By this, mild patience bid fair Lucrece speak To the poor counterfeit of her complaining: “My girl,” quoth she, “on what occasion break Those tears from thee, that down thy cheeks are raining? If thou dost weep for grief of my sustaining, Know, gentle wench, it small avails my mood. If tears could help, mine own would do me good.

“But tell me, girl, when went”—and there she stayed Till after a deep groan—“Tarquin from hence?” “Madam, ere I was up,” replied the maid, “The more to blame my sluggard negligence. Yet with the fault I thus far can dispense: Myself was stirring ere the break of day, And, ere I rose, was Tarquin gone away.

“But, lady, if your maid may be so bold, She would request to know your heaviness.” “O peace!” quoth Lucrece. “If it should be told, The repetition cannot make it less; For more it is than I can well express, And that deep torture may be called a hell, When more is felt than one hath power to tell.

“Go, get me hither paper, ink, and pen. Yet save that labour, for I have them here. What should I say?—One of my husband’s men Bid thou be ready by and by to bear A letter to my lord, my love, my dear. Bid him with speed prepare to carry it; The cause craves haste, and it will soon be writ.”

Her maid is gone, and she prepares to write, First hovering o’er the paper with her quill. Conceit and grief an eager combat fight; What wit sets down is blotted straight with will; This is too curious-good, this blunt and ill. Much like a press of people at a door, Throng her inventions, which shall go before.

At last she thus begins: “Thou worthy lord Of that unworthy wife that greeteth thee, Health to thy person! Next vouchsafe t’ afford, If ever, love, thy Lucrece thou wilt see, Some present speed to come and visit me. So I commend me from our house in grief. My woes are tedious, though my words are brief.”

Here folds she up the tenor of her woe, Her certain sorrow writ uncertainly. By this short schedule Collatine may know Her grief, but not her grief’s true quality; She dares not thereof make discovery, Lest he should hold it her own gross abuse, Ere she with blood had stained her stained excuse.

Besides, the life and feeling of her passion She hoards, to spend when he is by to hear her; When sighs and groans and tears may grace the fashion Of her disgrace, the better so to clear her From that suspicion which the world might bear her. To shun this blot, she would not blot the letter With words, till action might become them better.

To see sad sights moves more than hear them told, For then the eye interprets to the ear The heavy motion that it doth behold, When every part a part of woe doth bear. ’Tis but a part of sorrow that we hear. Deep sounds make lesser noise than shallow fords, And sorrow ebbs, being blown with wind of words.

Her letter now is sealed, and on it writ “At Ardea to my lord with more than haste.” The post attends, and she delivers it, Charging the sour-faced groom to hie as fast As lagging fowls before the northern blast. Speed more than speed but dull and slow she deems; Extremely still urgeth such extremes.

The homely villain curtsies to her low, And, blushing on her with a steadfast eye, Receives the scroll without or yea or no, And forth with bashful innocence doth hie. But they whose guilt within their bosoms lie Imagine every eye beholds their blame, For Lucrece thought he blushed to see her shame,

When, silly groom! God wot, it was defect Of spirit, life, and bold audacity. Such harmless creatures have a true respect To talk in deeds, while others saucily Promise more speed, but do it leisurely. Even so this pattern of the worn-out age Pawned honest looks, but laid no words to gage.

His kindled duty kindled her mistrust, That two red fires in both their faces blazed; She thought he blushed, as knowing Tarquin’s lust, And, blushing with him, wistly on him gazed. Her earnest eye did make him more amazed. The more she saw the blood his cheeks replenish, The more she thought he spied in her some blemish.

But long she thinks till he return again, And yet the duteous vassal scarce is gone. The weary time she cannot entertain, For now ’tis stale to sigh, to weep, to groan; So woe hath wearied woe, moan tired moan, That she her plaints a little while doth stay, Pausing for means to mourn some newer way.

At last she calls to mind where hangs a piece Of skilful painting, made for Priam’s Troy, Before the which is drawn the power of Greece, For Helen’s rape the city to destroy, Threat’ning cloud-kissing Ilion with annoy; Which the conceited painter drew so proud, As heaven, it seemed, to kiss the turrets bowed.

A thousand lamentable objects there, In scorn of Nature, Art gave lifeless life. Many a dry drop seemed a weeping tear, Shed for the slaughtered husband by the wife. The red blood reeked to show the painter’s strife, The dying eyes gleamed forth their ashy lights, Like dying coals burnt out in tedious nights.

There might you see the labouring pioneer Begrimed with sweat and smeared all with dust; And from the towers of Troy there would appear The very eyes of men through loop-holes thrust, Gazing upon the Greeks with little lust. Such sweet observance in this work was had, That one might see those far-off eyes look sad.

In great commanders grace and majesty You might behold, triumphing in their faces; In youth, quick bearing and dexterity; And here and there the painter interlaces Pale cowards marching on with trembling paces, Which heartless peasants did so well resemble, That one would swear he saw them quake and tremble.

In Ajax and Ulysses, O, what art Of physiognomy might one behold! The face of either ciphered either’s heart; Their face their manners most expressly told. In Ajax’ eyes blunt rage and rigour rolled, But the mild glance that sly Ulysses lent Showed deep regard and smiling government.

There pleading might you see grave Nestor stand, As ’twere encouraging the Greeks to fight, Making such sober action with his hand That it beguiled attention, charmed the sight. In speech, it seemed, his beard, all silver white, Wagged up and down, and from his lips did fly Thin winding breath, which purled up to the sky.

About him were a press of gaping faces, Which seemed to swallow up his sound advice, All jointly list’ning, but with several graces, As if some mermaid did their ears entice; Some high, some low, the painter was so nice. The scalps of many, almost hid behind, To jump up higher seemed to mock the mind.

Here one man’s hand leaned on another’s head, His nose being shadowed by his neighbour’s ear; Here one being thronged bears back, all boll’n and red; Another smothered seems to pelt and swear; And in their rage such signs of rage they bear As, but for loss of Nestor’s golden words, It seemed they would debate with angry swords.

For much imaginary work was there, Conceit deceitful, so compact, so kind, That for Achilles’ image stood his spear Griped in an armed hand; himself, behind, Was left unseen, save to the eye of mind. A hand, a foot, a face, a leg, a head, Stood for the whole to be imagined.

And from the walls of strong-besieged Troy, When their brave hope, bold Hector, marched to field, Stood many Trojan mothers, sharing joy To see their youthful sons bright weapons wield; And to their hope they such odd action yield That through their light joy seemed to appear, Like bright things stained, a kind of heavy fear.

And from the strand of Dardan, where they fought, To Simois’ reedy banks the red blood ran, Whose waves to imitate the battle sought With swelling ridges, and their ranks began To break upon the galled shore, and then Retire again till, meeting greater ranks, They join, and shoot their foam at Simois’ banks.

To this well-painted piece is Lucrece come, To find a face where all distress is stelled. Many she sees where cares have carved some, But none where all distress and dolour dwelled, Till she despairing Hecuba beheld, Staring on Priam’s wounds with her old eyes, Which bleeding under Pyrrhus’ proud foot lies.

In her the painter had anatomized Time’s ruin, beauty’s wrack, and grim care’s reign. Her cheeks with chops and wrinkles were disguised; Of what she was no semblance did remain. Her blue blood, changed to black in every vein, Wanting the spring that those shrunk pipes had fed, Showed life imprisoned in a body dead.

On this sad shadow Lucrece spends her eyes, And shapes her sorrow to the beldam’s woes, Who nothing wants to answer her but cries And bitter words to ban her cruel foes. The painter was no god to lend her those, And therefore Lucrece swears he did her wrong, To give her so much grief, and not a tongue.

“Poor instrument,” quoth she, “without a sound, I’ll tune thy woes with my lamenting tongue, And drop sweet balm in Priam’s painted wound, And rail on Pyrrhus that hath done him wrong, And with my tears quench Troy that burns so long, And with my knife scratch out the angry eyes Of all the Greeks that are thine enemies.

“Show me the strumpet that began this stir, That with my nails her beauty I may tear. Thy heat of lust, fond Paris, did incur This load of wrath that burning Troy doth bear; Thy eye kindled the fire that burneth here, And here in Troy, for trespass of thine eye, The sire, the son, the dame, and daughter die.

“Why should the private pleasure of some one Become the public plague of many moe? Let sin, alone committed, light alone Upon his head that hath transgressed so; Let guiltless souls be freed from guilty woe. For one’s offence why should so many fall, To plague a private sin in general?

“Lo, here weeps Hecuba, here Priam dies, Here manly Hector faints, here Troilus swounds; Here friend by friend in bloody channel lies, And friend to friend gives unadvised wounds, And one man’s lust these many lives confounds. Had doting Priam checked his son’s desire, Troy had been bright with fame and not with fire.”

Here feelingly she weeps Troy’s painted woes, For sorrow, like a heavy-hanging bell, Once set on ringing, with his own weight goes; Then little strength rings out the doleful knell. So Lucrece set a-work, sad tales doth tell To pencilled pensiveness and coloured sorrow; She lends them words, and she their looks doth borrow.

She throws her eyes about the painting round, And who she finds forlorn she doth lament. At last she sees a wretched image bound, That piteous looks to Phrygian shepherds lent. His face, though full of cares, yet showed content; Onward to Troy with the blunt swains he goes, So mild, that patience seemed to scorn his woes.

In him the painter laboured with his skill To hide deceit and give the harmless show An humble gait, calm looks, eyes wailing still, A brow unbent that seemed to welcome woe, Cheeks neither red nor pale, but mingled so That blushing red no guilty instance gave, Nor ashy pale the fear that false hearts have.

But, like a constant and confirmed devil, He entertained a show so seeming just, And therein so ensconced his secret evil, That jealousy itself could not mistrust False-creeping craft and perjury should thrust Into so bright a day such black-faced storms, Or blot with hell-born sin such saint-like forms.

The well-skilled workman this mild image drew For perjured Sinon, whose enchanting story The credulous Old Priam after slew; Whose words like wildfire burnt the shining glory Of rich-built Ilion, that the skies were sorry, And little stars shot from their fixed places, When their glass fell wherein they viewed their faces.

This picture she advisedly perused, And chid the painter for his wondrous skill, Saying some shape in Sinon’s was abused; So fair a form lodged not a mind so ill. And still on him she gazed, and gazing still, Such signs of truth in his plain face she spied, That she concludes the picture was belied.

“It cannot be,” quoth she, “that so much guile”— She would have said “can lurk in such a look.” But Tarquin’s shape came in her mind the while, And from her tongue “can lurk” from “cannot” took. “It cannot be” she in that sense forsook, And turned it thus: “It cannot be, I find, But such a face should bear a wicked mind.

“For even as subtle Sinon here is painted, So sober-sad, so weary, and so mild, As if with grief or travail he had fainted, To me came Tarquin armed too, beguiled With outward honesty, but yet defiled With inward vice. As Priam him did cherish, So did I Tarquin; so my Troy did perish.

“Look, look, how listening Priam wets his eyes, To see those borrowed tears that Sinon sheds! Priam, why art thou old and yet not wise? For every tear he falls a Trojan bleeds. His eye drops fire, no water thence proceeds; Those round clear pearls of his that move thy pity, Are balls of quenchless fire to burn thy city.

“Such devils steal effects from lightless hell, For Sinon in his fire doth quake with cold, And in that cold hot-burning fire doth dwell. These contraries such unity do hold, Only to flatter fools and make them bold; So Priam’s trust false Sinon’s tears doth flatter, That he finds means to burn his Troy with water.”

Here, all enraged, such passion her assails, That patience is quite beaten from her breast. She tears the senseless Sinon with her nails, Comparing him to that unhappy guest Whose deed hath made herself herself detest. At last she smilingly with this gives o’er; “Fool, fool!” quoth she, “his wounds will not be sore.”

Thus ebbs and flows the current of her sorrow, And time doth weary time with her complaining. She looks for night, and then she longs for morrow, And both she thinks too long with her remaining. Short time seems long in sorrow’s sharp sustaining. Though woe be heavy, yet it seldom sleeps, And they that watch see time how slow it creeps.

Which all this time hath overslipped her thought, That she with painted images hath spent, Being from the feeling of her own grief brought By deep surmise of others’ detriment, Losing her woes in shows of discontent. It easeth some, though none it ever cured, To think their dolour others have endured.

But now the mindful messenger, come back, Brings home his lord and other company; Who finds his Lucrece clad in mourning black, And round about her tear-distained eye Blue circles streamed, like rainbows in the sky. These water-galls in her dim element Foretell new storms to those already spent.

Which when her sad-beholding husband saw, Amazedly in her sad face he stares. Her eyes, though sod in tears, looked red and raw, Her lively colour killed with deadly cares. He hath no power to ask her how she fares; Both stood like old acquaintance in a trance, Met far from home, wond’ring each other’s chance.

At last he takes her by the bloodless hand, And thus begins: “What uncouth ill event Hath thee befall’n, that thou dost trembling stand? Sweet love, what spite hath thy fair colour spent? Why art thou thus attired in discontent? Unmask, dear dear, this moody heaviness, And tell thy grief, that we may give redress.”

Three times with sighs she gives her sorrow fire, Ere once she can discharge one word of woe. At length addressed to answer his desire, She modestly prepares to let them know Her honour is ta’en prisoner by the foe; While Collatine and his consorted lords With sad attention long to hear her words.

And now this pale swan in her wat’ry nest Begins the sad dirge of her certain ending: “Few words,” quoth she, “shall fit the trespass best, Where no excuse can give the fault amending. In me more woes than words are now depending; And my laments would be drawn out too long, To tell them all with one poor tired tongue.

“Then be this all the task it hath to say: Dear husband, in the interest of thy bed A stranger came, and on that pillow lay Where thou wast wont to rest thy weary head; And what wrong else may be imagined By foul enforcement might be done to me, From that, alas, thy Lucrece is not free.

“For in the dreadful dead of dark midnight, With shining falchion in my chamber came A creeping creature with a flaming light, And softly cried ‘Awake, thou Roman dame, And entertain my love; else lasting shame On thee and thine this night I will inflict, If thou my love’s desire do contradict.

“‘For some hard-favoured groom of thine,’ quoth he, ‘Unless thou yoke thy liking to my will, I’ll murder straight, and then I’ll slaughter thee And swear I found you where you did fulfil The loathsome act of lust, and so did kill The lechers in their deed. This act will be My fame and thy perpetual infamy.’

“With this, I did begin to start and cry, And then against my heart he sets his sword, Swearing, unless I took all patiently, I should not live to speak another word; So should my shame still rest upon record, And never be forgot in mighty Rome The adulterate death of Lucrece and her groom.

“Mine enemy was strong, my poor self weak, And far the weaker with so strong a fear. My bloody judge forbade my tongue to speak; No rightful plea might plead for justice there. His scarlet lust came evidence to swear That my poor beauty had purloined his eyes; And when the judge is robbed, the prisoner dies.

“O, teach me how to make mine own excuse, Or at the least, this refuge let me find: Though my gross blood be stained with this abuse, Immaculate and spotless is my mind; That was not forced; that never was inclined To accessary yieldings, but still pure Doth in her poisoned closet yet endure.”

Lo, here the hopeless merchant of this loss, With head declined and voice dammed up with woe, With sad set eyes and wretched arms across, From lips new-waxen pale begins to blow The grief away that stops his answer so. But wretched as he is, he strives in vain; What he breathes out his breath drinks up again.

As through an arch the violent roaring tide Outruns the eye that doth behold his haste, Yet in the eddy boundeth in his pride Back to the strait that forced him on so fast, In rage sent out, recalled in rage, being past: Even so his sighs, his sorrows make a saw, To push grief on, and back the same grief draw.

Which speechless woe of his poor she attendeth, And his untimely frenzy thus awaketh: “Dear lord, thy sorrow to my sorrow lendeth Another power; no flood by raining slaketh. My woe too sensible thy passion maketh More feeling-painful. Let it then suffice To drown one woe, one pair of weeping eyes.

“And for my sake, when I might charm thee so, For she that was thy Lucrece, now attend me: Be suddenly revenged on my foe, Thine, mine, his own. Suppose thou dost defend me From what is past. The help that thou shalt lend me Comes all too late, yet let the traitor die, For sparing justice feeds iniquity.

“But ere I name him, you fair lords,” quoth she, Speaking to those that came with Collatine, “Shall plight your honourable faiths to me, With swift pursuit to venge this wrong of mine; For ’tis a meritorious fair design To chase injustice with revengeful arms. Knights, by their oaths, should right poor ladies’ harms.”

At this request, with noble disposition Each present lord began to promise aid, As bound in knighthood to her imposition, Longing to hear the hateful foe bewrayed. But she, that yet her sad task hath not said, The protestation stops. “O, speak,” quoth she, “How may this forced stain be wiped from me?

“What is the quality of my offence, Being constrained with dreadful circumstance? May my pure mind with the foul act dispense, My low-declined honour to advance? May any terms acquit me from this chance? The poisoned fountain clears itself again, And why not I from this compelled stain?

With this, they all at once began to say, Her body’s stain her mind untainted clears, While with a joyless smile she turns away The face, that map which deep impression bears Of hard misfortune, carved in it with tears. “No, no,” quoth she, “no dame, hereafter living By my excuse shall claim excuse’s giving.”

Here with a sigh, as if her heart would break, She throws forth Tarquin’s name: “He, he,” she says, But more than “he” her poor tongue could not speak; Till after many accents and delays, Untimely breathings, sick and short assays, She utters this: “He, he, fair lords, ’tis he, That guides this hand to give this wound to me.”

Even here she sheathed in her harmless breast A harmful knife, that thence her soul unsheathed. That blow did bail it from the deep unrest Of that polluted prison where it breathed. Her contrite sighs unto the clouds bequeathed Her winged sprite, and through her wounds doth fly Life’s lasting date from cancelled destiny.

Stone-still, astonished with this deadly deed, Stood Collatine and all his lordly crew, Till Lucrece’ father that beholds her bleed, Himself on her self-slaughtered body threw, And from the purple fountain Brutus drew The murd’rous knife, and, as it left the place, Her blood, in poor revenge, held it in chase;

And bubbling from her breast, it doth divide In two slow rivers, that the crimson blood Circles her body in on every side, Who, like a late-sacked island, vastly stood Bare and unpeopled in this fearful flood. Some of her blood still pure and red remained, And some looked black, and that false Tarquin stained.

About the mourning and congealed face Of that black blood a wat’ry rigol goes, Which seems to weep upon the tainted place; And ever since, as pitying Lucrece’ woes, Corrupted blood some watery token shows, And blood untainted still doth red abide, Blushing at that which is so putrified.

“Daughter, dear daughter,” old Lucretius cries, “That life was mine which thou hast here deprived. If in the child the father’s image lies, Where shall I live now Lucrece is unlived? Thou wast not to this end from me derived. If children predecease progenitors, We are their offspring, and they none of ours.

“Poor broken glass, I often did behold In thy sweet semblance my old age new born; But now that fair fresh mirror, dim and old, Shows me a bare-boned death by time outworn. O, from thy cheeks my image thou hast torn, And shivered all the beauty of my glass, That I no more can see what once I was!

“O time, cease thou thy course and last no longer, If they surcease to be that should survive! Shall rotten death make conquest of the stronger, And leave the falt’ring feeble souls alive? The old bees die, the young possess their hive. Then live, sweet Lucrece, live again and see Thy father die, and not thy father thee!”

By this starts Collatine as from a dream, And bids Lucretius give his sorrow place; And then in key-cold Lucrece’ bleeding stream He falls, and bathes the pale fear in his face, And counterfeits to die with her a space; Till manly shame bids him possess his breath, And live to be revenged on her death.

The deep vexation of his inward soul Hath served a dumb arrest upon his tongue; Who, mad that sorrow should his use control Or keep him from heart-easing words so long, Begins to talk; but through his lips do throng Weak words, so thick come in his poor heart’s aid That no man could distinguish what he said.

Yet sometime “Tarquin” was pronounced plain, But through his teeth, as if the name he tore. This windy tempest, till it blow up rain, Held back his sorrow’s tide, to make it more. At last it rains, and busy winds give o’er. Then son and father weep with equal strife Who should weep most, for daughter or for wife.

The one doth call her his, the other his, Yet neither may possess the claim they lay, The father says “She’s mine.” “O, mine she is,” Replies her husband. “Do not take away My sorrow’s interest; let no mourner say He weeps for her, for she was only mine, And only must be wailed by Collatine.”

“O,” quoth Lucretius, “I did give that life Which she too early and too late hath spilled.” “Woe, woe,” quoth Collatine, “she was my wife, I owed her, and ’tis mine that she hath killed.” “My daughter” and “my wife” with clamours filled The dispersed air, who, holding Lucrece’ life, Answered their cries, “my daughter” and “my wife”.

Brutus, who plucked the knife from Lucrece’ side, Seeing such emulation in their woe, Began to clothe his wit in state and pride, Burying in Lucrece’ wound his folly’s show. He with the Romans was esteemed so As silly jeering idiots are with kings, For sportive words and utt’ring foolish things.

But now he throws that shallow habit by, Wherein deep policy did him disguise, And armed his long-hid wits advisedly, To check the tears in Collatinus’ eyes. “Thou wronged lord of Rome,” quoth he, “arise! Let my unsounded self, supposed a fool, Now set thy long-experienced wit to school.

“Why, Collatine, is woe the cure for woe? Do wounds help wounds, or grief help grievous deeds? Is it revenge to give thyself a blow For his foul act by whom thy fair wife bleeds? Such childish humour from weak minds proceeds. Thy wretched wife mistook the matter so, To slay herself, that should have slain her foe.

“Courageous Roman, do not steep thy heart In such relenting dew of lamentations, But kneel with me, and help to bear thy part To rouse our Roman gods with invocations, That they will suffer these abominations,— Since Rome herself in them doth stand disgraced,— By our strong arms from forth her fair streets chased.

“Now, by the Capitol that we adore, And by this chaste blood so unjustly stained, By heaven’s fair sun that breeds the fat earth’s store, By all our country rights in Rome maintained, And by chaste Lucrece’ soul that late complained Her wrongs to us, and by this bloody knife, We will revenge the death of this true wife.”

This said, he struck his hand upon his breast, And kissed the fatal knife, to end his vow; And to his protestation urged the rest, Who, wond’ring at him, did his words allow. Then jointly to the ground their knees they bow, And that deep vow which Brutus made before, He doth again repeat, and that they swore.

When they had sworn to this advised doom, They did conclude to bear dead Lucrece thence, To show her bleeding body thorough Rome, And so to publish Tarquin’s foul offence; Which being done with speedy diligence, The Romans plausibly did give consent To Tarquin’s everlasting banishment.

VENUS AND ADONIS

Vilia miretur vulgus; mihi flavus Apollo Pocula Castalia plena ministret aqua.

TO THE RIGHT HONOURABLE HENRY WRIOTHESLEY, EARL OF SOUTHAMPTON, and Baron of Titchfield.

Right Honourable, I know not how I shall offend in dedicating my unpolished lines to your lordship, nor how the world will censure me for choosing so strong a prop to support so weak a burthen: only, if your honour seem but pleased, I account myself highly praised, and vow to take advantage of all idle hours, till I have honoured you with some graver labour. But if the first heir of my invention prove deformed, I shall be sorry it had so noble a godfather, and never after ear so barren a land, for fear it yield me still so bad a harvest. I leave it to your honourable survey, and your honour to your heart’s content; which I wish may always answer your own wish and the world’s hopeful expectation.

Your honour’s in all duty, WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE.

Even as the sun with purple-colour’d face Had ta’en his last leave of the weeping morn, Rose-cheek’d Adonis tried him to the chase; Hunting he lov’d, but love he laugh’d to scorn; 4 Sick-thoughted Venus makes amain unto him, And like a bold-fac’d suitor ’gins to woo him.

“Thrice fairer than myself,” thus she began, “The field’s chief flower, sweet above compare, 8 Stain to all nymphs, more lovely than a man, More white and red than doves or roses are: Nature that made thee, with herself at strife, Saith that the world hath ending with thy life. 12

“Vouchsafe, thou wonder, to alight thy steed, And rein his proud head to the saddle-bow; If thou wilt deign this favour, for thy meed A thousand honey secrets shalt thou know: 16 Here come and sit, where never serpent hisses, And being set, I’ll smother thee with kisses.

“And yet not cloy thy lips with loath’d satiety, But rather famish them amid their plenty, 20 Making them red, and pale, with fresh variety: Ten kisses short as one, one long as twenty: A summer’s day will seem an hour but short, Being wasted in such time-beguiling sport.” 24

With this she seizeth on his sweating palm, The precedent of pith and livelihood, And trembling in her passion, calls it balm, Earth’s sovereign salve to do a goddess good: 28 Being so enrag’d, desire doth lend her force Courageously to pluck him from his horse.

Over one arm the lusty courser’s rein, Under her other was the tender boy, 32 Who blush’d and pouted in a dull disdain, With leaden appetite, unapt to toy; She red and hot as coals of glowing fire, He red for shame, but frosty in desire. 36

The studded bridle on a ragged bough Nimbly she fastens;—O! how quick is love!— The steed is stalled up, and even now To tie the rider she begins to prove: 40 Backward she push’d him, as she would be thrust, And govern’d him in strength, though not in lust.

So soon was she along, as he was down, Each leaning on their elbows and their hips: 44 Now doth she stroke his cheek, now doth he frown, And ’gins to chide, but soon she stops his lips, And kissing speaks, with lustful language broken, “If thou wilt chide, thy lips shall never open.” 48

He burns with bashful shame, she with her tears Doth quench the maiden burning of his cheeks; Then with her windy sighs and golden hairs To fan and blow them dry again she seeks. 52 He saith she is immodest, blames her miss; What follows more, she murders with a kiss.

Even as an empty eagle, sharp by fast, Tires with her beak on feathers, flesh and bone, 56 Shaking her wings, devouring all in haste, Till either gorge be stuff’d or prey be gone: Even so she kiss’d his brow, his cheek, his chin, And where she ends she doth anew begin. 60

Forc’d to content, but never to obey, Panting he lies, and breatheth in her face. She feedeth on the steam, as on a prey, And calls it heavenly moisture, air of grace, 64 Wishing her cheeks were gardens full of flowers So they were dew’d with such distilling showers.

Look how a bird lies tangled in a net, So fasten’d in her arms Adonis lies; 68 Pure shame and aw’d resistance made him fret, Which bred more beauty in his angry eyes: Rain added to a river that is rank Perforce will force it overflow the bank. 72

Still she entreats, and prettily entreats, For to a pretty ear she tunes her tale. Still is he sullen, still he lours and frets, ’Twixt crimson shame and anger ashy pale; 76 Being red she loves him best, and being white, Her best is better’d with a more delight.

Look how he can, she cannot choose but love; And by her fair immortal hand she swears, 80 From his soft bosom never to remove, Till he take truce with her contending tears, Which long have rain’d, making her cheeks all wet; And one sweet kiss shall pay this countless debt.

Upon this promise did he raise his chin, 85 Like a dive-dapper peering through a wave, Who, being look’d on, ducks as quickly in; So offers he to give what she did crave, 88 But when her lips were ready for his pay, He winks, and turns his lips another way.

Never did passenger in summer’s heat More thirst for drink than she for this good turn. 92 Her help she sees, but help she cannot get; She bathes in water, yet her fire must burn: “O! pity,” ’gan she cry, “flint-hearted boy, ’Tis but a kiss I beg; why art thou coy? 96

“I have been woo’d as I entreat thee now, Even by the stern and direful god of war, Whose sinewy neck in battle ne’er did bow, Who conquers where he comes in every jar; 100 Yet hath he been my captive and my slave, And begg’d for that which thou unask’d shalt have.

“Over my altars hath he hung his lance, His batter’d shield, his uncontrolled crest, 104 And for my sake hath learn’d to sport and dance, To toy, to wanton, dally, smile, and jest; Scorning his churlish drum and ensign red Making my arms his field, his tent my bed. 108

“Thus he that overrul’d I oversway’d, Leading him prisoner in a red rose chain: Strong-temper’d steel his stronger strength obey’d, Yet was he servile to my coy disdain. 112 Oh be not proud, nor brag not of thy might, For mast’ring her that foil’d the god of fight.

“Touch but my lips with those fair lips of thine, Though mine be not so fair, yet are they red, 116 The kiss shall be thine own as well as mine: What see’st thou in the ground? hold up thy head, Look in mine eyeballs, there thy beauty lies; Then why not lips on lips, since eyes in eyes? 120

“Art thou asham’d to kiss? then wink again, And I will wink; so shall the day seem night. Love keeps his revels where there are but twain; Be bold to play, our sport is not in sight, 124 These blue-vein’d violets whereon we lean Never can blab, nor know not what we mean.

“The tender spring upon thy tempting lip 127 Shows thee unripe; yet mayst thou well be tasted, Make use of time, let not advantage slip; Beauty within itself should not be wasted, Fair flowers that are not gather’d in their prime Rot, and consume themselves in little time. 132

“Were I hard-favour’d, foul, or wrinkled old, Ill-nurtur’d, crooked, churlish, harsh in voice, O’erworn, despised, rheumatic, and cold, Thick-sighted, barren, lean, and lacking juice, 136 Then mightst thou pause, for then I were not for thee; But having no defects, why dost abhor me?

“Thou canst not see one wrinkle in my brow, 139 Mine eyes are grey and bright, and quick in turning; My beauty as the spring doth yearly grow, My flesh is soft and plump, my marrow burning, My smooth moist hand, were it with thy hand felt, Would in thy palm dissolve, or seem to melt. 144

“Bid me discourse, I will enchant thine ear, Or like a fairy, trip upon the green, Or like a nymph, with long dishevell’d hair, Dance on the sands, and yet no footing seen. 148 Love is a spirit all compact of fire, Not gross to sink, but light, and will aspire.

“Witness this primrose bank whereon I lie: 151 These forceless flowers like sturdy trees support me; Two strengthless doves will draw me through the sky, From morn till night, even where I list to sport me. Is love so light, sweet boy, and may it be That thou shouldst think it heavy unto thee? 156

“Is thine own heart to thine own face affected? Can thy right hand seize love upon thy left? Then woo thyself, be of thyself rejected, Steal thine own freedom, and complain on theft. 160 Narcissus so himself himself forsook, And died to kiss his shadow in the brook.

“Torches are made to light, jewels to wear, Dainties to taste, fresh beauty for the use, 164 Herbs for their smell, and sappy plants to bear; Things growing to themselves are growth’s abuse, Seeds spring from seeds, and beauty breedeth beauty; Thou wast begot; to get it is thy duty. 168

“Upon the earth’s increase why shouldst thou feed, Unless the earth with thy increase be fed? By law of nature thou art bound to breed, That thine may live when thou thyself art dead; 172 And so in spite of death thou dost survive, In that thy likeness still is left alive.”

By this the love-sick queen began to sweat, For where they lay the shadow had forsook them, 176 And Titan, tired in the midday heat, With burning eye did hotly overlook them, Wishing Adonis had his team to guide, So he were like him and by Venus’ side. 180

And now Adonis with a lazy spright, And with a heavy, dark, disliking eye, His louring brows o’erwhelming his fair sight, Like misty vapours when they blot the sky, 184 Souring his cheeks, cries, “Fie, no more of love: The sun doth burn my face; I must remove.”

“Ay me,” quoth Venus, “young, and so unkind! What bare excuses mak’st thou to be gone! 188 I’ll sigh celestial breath, whose gentle wind Shall cool the heat of this descending sun: I’ll make a shadow for thee of my hairs; If they burn too, I’ll quench them with my tears. 192

“The sun that shines from heaven shines but warm, And lo I lie between that sun and thee: The heat I have from thence doth little harm, Thine eye darts forth the fire that burneth me; 196 And were I not immortal, life were done, Between this heavenly and earthly sun.

“Art thou obdurate, flinty, hard as steel? Nay more than flint, for stone at rain relenteth: 200 Art thou a woman’s son and canst not feel What ’tis to love, how want of love tormenteth? O had thy mother borne so hard a mind, She had not brought forth thee, but died unkind. 204

“What am I that thou shouldst contemn me this? Or what great danger dwells upon my suit? What were thy lips the worse for one poor kiss? Speak, fair; but speak fair words, or else be mute: 208 Give me one kiss, I’ll give it thee again, And one for int’rest, if thou wilt have twain.

“Fie, lifeless picture, cold and senseless stone, Well-painted idol, image dull and dead, 212 Statue contenting but the eye alone, Thing like a man, but of no woman bred: Thou art no man, though of a man’s complexion, For men will kiss even by their own direction.” 216

This said, impatience chokes her pleading tongue, And swelling passion doth provoke a pause; Red cheeks and fiery eyes blaze forth her wrong; Being judge in love, she cannot right her cause. 220 And now she weeps, and now she fain would speak, And now her sobs do her intendments break.

Sometimes she shakes her head, and then his hand, Now gazeth she on him, now on the ground; 224 Sometimes her arms infold him like a band: She would, he will not in her arms be bound; And when from thence he struggles to be gone, She locks her lily fingers one in one. 228

“Fondling,” she saith, “since I have hemm’d thee here Within the circuit of this ivory pale, I’ll be a park, and thou shalt be my deer; Feed where thou wilt, on mountain or in dale: 232 Graze on my lips, and if those hills be dry, Stray lower, where the pleasant fountains lie.

“Within this limit is relief enough, Sweet bottom grass and high delightful plain, 236 Round rising hillocks, brakes obscure and rough, To shelter thee from tempest and from rain: Then be my deer, since I am such a park, 239 No dog shall rouse thee, though a thousand bark.”

At this Adonis smiles as in disdain, That in each cheek appears a pretty dimple; Love made those hollows, if himself were slain, He might be buried in a tomb so simple; 244 Foreknowing well, if there he came to lie, Why there love liv’d, and there he could not die.

These lovely caves, these round enchanting pits, Open’d their mouths to swallow Venus’ liking. 248 Being mad before, how doth she now for wits? Struck dead at first, what needs a second striking? Poor queen of love, in thine own law forlorn, To love a cheek that smiles at thee in scorn! 252

Now which way shall she turn? what shall she say? Her words are done, her woes the more increasing; The time is spent, her object will away, And from her twining arms doth urge releasing: 256 “Pity,” she cries; “some favour, some remorse!” Away he springs, and hasteth to his horse.

But lo from forth a copse that neighbours by, A breeding jennet, lusty, young, and proud, 260 Adonis’ tramping courser doth espy, And forth she rushes, snorts and neighs aloud: The strong-neck’d steed, being tied unto a tree, Breaketh his rein, and to her straight goes he. 264

Imperiously he leaps, he neighs, he bounds, And now his woven girths he breaks asunder; The bearing earth with his hard hoof he wounds, Whose hollow womb resounds like heaven’s thunder; The iron bit he crusheth ’tween his teeth, 269 Controlling what he was controlled with.

His ears up-prick’d; his braided hanging mane Upon his compass’d crest now stand on end; 272 His nostrils drink the air, and forth again, As from a furnace, vapours doth he send: His eye, which scornfully glisters like fire, Shows his hot courage and his high desire. 276

Sometime he trots, as if he told the steps, With gentle majesty and modest pride; Anon he rears upright, curvets and leaps, As who should say, “Lo thus my strength is tried; And this I do to captivate the eye 281 Of the fair breeder that is standing by.”

What recketh he his rider’s angry stir, His flattering “Holla”, or his “Stand, I say”? 284 What cares he now for curb or pricking spur? For rich caparisons or trappings gay? He sees his love, and nothing else he sees, Nor nothing else with his proud sight agrees. 288

Look when a painter would surpass the life, In limning out a well-proportion’d steed, His art with nature’s workmanship at strife, As if the dead the living should exceed: 292 So did this horse excel a common one, In shape, in courage, colour, pace and bone.

Round-hoof’d, short-jointed, fetlocks shag and long, Broad breast, full eye, small head, and nostril wide, High crest, short ears, straight legs and passing strong, Thin mane, thick tail, broad buttock, tender hide: Look, what a horse should have he did not lack, Save a proud rider on so proud a back. 300

Sometimes he scuds far off, and there he stares; Anon he starts at stirring of a feather: To bid the wind a base he now prepares, And where he run or fly they know not whether; 304 For through his mane and tail the high wind sings, Fanning the hairs, who wave like feather’d wings.

He looks upon his love, and neighs unto her; She answers him as if she knew his mind, 308 Being proud, as females are, to see him woo her, She puts on outward strangeness, seems unkind, Spurns at his love and scorns the heat he feels, Beating his kind embracements with her heels. 312

Then like a melancholy malcontent, He vails his tail that like a falling plume, Cool shadow to his melting buttock lent: He stamps, and bites the poor flies in his fume. 316 His love, perceiving how he was enrag’d, Grew kinder, and his fury was assuag’d.

His testy master goeth about to take him, When lo the unback’d breeder, full of fear, 320 Jealous of catching, swiftly doth forsake him, With her the horse, and left Adonis there: As they were mad, unto the wood they hie them, Outstripping crows that strive to overfly them. 324

All swoln with chafing, down Adonis sits, Banning his boisterous and unruly beast; And now the happy season once more fits That love-sick love by pleading may be blest; 328 For lovers say, the heart hath treble wrong, When it is barr’d the aidance of the tongue.

An oven that is stopp’d, or river stay’d, Burneth more hotly, swelleth with more rage: 332 So of concealed sorrow may be said, Free vent of words love’s fire doth assuage; But when the heart’s attorney once is mute, The client breaks, as desperate in his suit. 336

He sees her coming, and begins to glow, Even as a dying coal revives with wind, And with his bonnet hides his angry brow, Looks on the dull earth with disturbed mind, 340 Taking no notice that she is so nigh, For all askance he holds her in his eye.

O what a sight it was, wistly to view How she came stealing to the wayward boy, 344 To note the fighting conflict of her hue, How white and red each other did destroy: But now her cheek was pale, and by and by It flash’d forth fire, as lightning from the sky. 348

Now was she just before him as he sat, And like a lowly lover down she kneels; With one fair hand she heaveth up his hat, Her other tender hand his fair cheek feels: 352 His tend’rer cheek receives her soft hand’s print, As apt as new-fall’n snow takes any dint.

Oh what a war of looks was then between them, Her eyes petitioners to his eyes suing, 356 His eyes saw her eyes, as they had not seen them, Her eyes woo’d still, his eyes disdain’d the wooing: And all this dumb play had his acts made plain With tears, which, chorus-like, her eyes did rain.

Full gently now she takes him by the hand, 361 A lily prison’d in a gaol of snow, Or ivory in an alabaster band, So white a friend engirts so white a foe: 364 This beauteous combat, wilful and unwilling, Show’d like two silver doves that sit a-billing.

Once more the engine of her thoughts began: “O fairest mover on this mortal round, 368 Would thou wert as I am, and I a man, My heart all whole as thine, thy heart my wound, For one sweet look thy help I would assure thee, Though nothing but my body’s bane would cure thee.”

“Give me my hand,” saith he, “why dost thou feel it?” “Give me my heart,” saith she, “and thou shalt have it. O give it me lest thy hard heart do steel it, And being steel’d, soft sighs can never grave it. 376 Then love’s deep groans I never shall regard, Because Adonis’ heart hath made mine hard.”

“For shame,” he cries, “let go, and let me go, My day’s delight is past, my horse is gone, 380 And ’tis your fault I am bereft him so, I pray you hence, and leave me here alone, For all my mind, my thought, my busy care, Is how to get my palfrey from the mare.” 384

Thus she replies: “Thy palfrey as he should, Welcomes the warm approach of sweet desire, Affection is a coal that must be cool’d; Else, suffer’d, it will set the heart on fire, 388 The sea hath bounds, but deep desire hath none; Therefore no marvel though thy horse be gone.

“How like a jade he stood tied to the tree, Servilely master’d with a leathern rein! 392 But when he saw his love, his youth’s fair fee, He held such petty bondage in disdain; Throwing the base thong from his bending crest, Enfranchising his mouth, his back, his breast. 396

“Who sees his true-love in her naked bed, Teaching the sheets a whiter hue than white, But when his glutton eye so full hath fed, His other agents aim at like delight? 400 Who is so faint that dare not be so bold To touch the fire, the weather being cold?

“Let me excuse thy courser, gentle boy, And learn of him, I heartily beseech thee, 404 To take advantage on presented joy, Though I were dumb, yet his proceedings teach thee. O learn to love, the lesson is but plain, And once made perfect, never lost again.” 408

“I know not love,” quoth he, “nor will not know it, Unless it be a boar, and then I chase it; ’Tis much to borrow, and I will not owe it; My love to love is love but to disgrace it; 412 For I have heard, it is a life in death, That laughs and weeps, and all but with a breath.

“Who wears a garment shapeless and unfinish’d? Who plucks the bud before one leaf put forth? 416 If springing things be any jot diminish’d, They wither in their prime, prove nothing worth; The colt that’s back’d and burden’d being young, Loseth his pride, and never waxeth strong. 420

“You hurt my hand with wringing. Let us part, And leave this idle theme, this bootless chat: Remove your siege from my unyielding heart, To love’s alarms it will not ope the gate: 424 Dismiss your vows, your feigned tears, your flatt’ry; For where a heart is hard they make no batt’ry.”

“What! canst thou talk?” quoth she, “hast thou a tongue? O would thou hadst not, or I had no hearing; 428 Thy mermaid’s voice hath done me double wrong; I had my load before, now press’d with bearing: Melodious discord, heavenly tune, harsh-sounding, Ear’s deep sweet music, and heart’s deep sore wounding.

“Had I no eyes but ears, my ears would love 433 That inward beauty and invisible; Or were I deaf, thy outward parts would move Each part in me that were but sensible: 436 Though neither eyes nor ears, to hear nor see, Yet should I be in love by touching thee.

“Say that the sense of feeling were bereft me, And that I could not see, nor hear, nor touch, 440 And nothing but the very smell were left me, Yet would my love to thee be still as much; For from the stillitory of thy face excelling Comes breath perfum’d, that breedeth love by smelling.

“But oh what banquet wert thou to the taste, 445 Being nurse and feeder of the other four; Would they not wish the feast might ever last, And bid suspicion double-lock the door, Lest jealousy, that sour unwelcome guest, Should by his stealing in disturb the feast?” 448

Once more the ruby-colour’d portal open’d, Which to his speech did honey passage yield, 452 Like a red morn that ever yet betoken’d Wrack to the seaman, tempest to the field, Sorrow to shepherds, woe unto the birds, Gusts and foul flaws to herdmen and to herds. 456

This ill presage advisedly she marketh: Even as the wind is hush’d before it raineth, Or as the wolf doth grin before he barketh, Or as the berry breaks before it staineth, 460 Or like the deadly bullet of a gun, His meaning struck her ere his words begun.

And at his look she flatly falleth down For looks kill love, and love by looks reviveth; 464 A smile recures the wounding of a frown; But blessed bankrout, that by love so thriveth! The silly boy, believing she is dead, Claps her pale cheek, till clapping makes it red. 468

And all amaz’d brake off his late intent, For sharply he did think to reprehend her, Which cunning love did wittily prevent: Fair fall the wit that can so well defend her! 472 For on the grass she lies as she were slain, Till his breath breatheth life in her again.

He wrings her nose, he strikes her on the cheeks, He bends her fingers, holds her pulses hard, 476 He chafes her lips; a thousand ways he seeks To mend the hurt that his unkindness marr’d: He kisses her; and she, by her good will, Will never rise, so he will kiss her still. 480

The night of sorrow now is turn’d to day: Her two blue windows faintly she up-heaveth, Like the fair sun when in his fresh array He cheers the morn, and all the world relieveth: 484 And as the bright sun glorifies the sky, So is her face illumin’d with her eye.

Whose beams upon his hairless face are fix’d, As if from thence they borrow’d all their shine. 488 Were never four such lamps together mix’d, Had not his clouded with his brow’s repine; But hers, which through the crystal tears gave light Shone like the moon in water seen by night. 492

“O where am I?” quoth she, “in earth or heaven? Or in the ocean drench’d, or in the fire? What hour is this? or morn or weary even? Do I delight to die, or life desire? 496 But now I liv’d, and life was death’s annoy; But now I died, and death was lively joy.

“O thou didst kill me; kill me once again: Thy eyes’ shrewd tutor, that hard heart of thine, 500 Hath taught them scornful tricks, and such disdain, That they have murder’d this poor heart of mine; And these mine eyes, true leaders to their queen, But for thy piteous lips no more had seen. 504

“Long may they kiss each other for this cure! Oh never let their crimson liveries wear, And as they last, their verdure still endure, To drive infection from the dangerous year: 508 That the star-gazers, having writ on death, May say, the plague is banish’d by thy breath.

“Pure lips, sweet seals in my soft lips imprinted, What bargains may I make, still to be sealing? 512 To sell myself I can be well contented, So thou wilt buy, and pay, and use good dealing; Which purchase if thou make, for fear of slips, Set thy seal manual on my wax-red lips. 516

“A thousand kisses buys my heart from me; And pay them at thy leisure, one by one, What is ten hundred touches unto thee? Are they not quickly told and quickly gone? 520 Say, for non-payment that the debt should double, Is twenty hundred kisses such a trouble?”

“Fair queen,” quoth he, “if any love you owe me, Measure my strangeness with my unripe years: 524 Before I know myself, seek not to know me; No fisher but the ungrown fry forbears: The mellow plum doth fall, the green sticks fast, Or being early pluck’d, is sour to taste. 528

“Look the world’s comforter, with weary gait His day’s hot task hath ended in the west; The owl, night’s herald, shrieks, ’tis very late; The sheep are gone to fold, birds to their nest, 532 And coal-black clouds that shadow heaven’s light Do summon us to part, and bid good night.

“Now let me say good night, and so say you; If you will say so, you shall have a kiss.” 536 “Good night,” quoth she; and ere he says adieu, The honey fee of parting tender’d is: Her arms do lend his neck a sweet embrace; Incorporate then they seem, face grows to face. 540

Till breathless he disjoin’d, and backward drew The heavenly moisture, that sweet coral mouth, Whose precious taste her thirsty lips well knew, Whereon they surfeit, yet complain on drouth, 544 He with her plenty press’d, she faint with dearth, Their lips together glued, fall to the earth.

Now quick desire hath caught the yielding prey, And glutton-like she feeds, yet never filleth; 548 Her lips are conquerors, his lips obey, Paying what ransom the insulter willeth; Whose vulture thought doth pitch the price so high, That she will draw his lips’ rich treasure dry. 552

And having felt the sweetness of the spoil, With blindfold fury she begins to forage; Her face doth reek and smoke, her blood doth boil, And careless lust stirs up a desperate courage, 556 Planting oblivion, beating reason back, Forgetting shame’s pure blush and honour’s wrack.

Hot, faint, and weary, with her hard embracing, Like a wild bird being tam’d with too much handling, Or as the fleet-foot roe that’s tir’d with chasing, 561 Or like the froward infant still’d with dandling: He now obeys, and now no more resisteth, While she takes all she can, not all she listeth. 564

What wax so frozen but dissolves with temp’ring, And yields at last to every light impression? Things out of hope are compass’d oft with vent’ring, Chiefly in love, whose leave exceeds commission: 568 Affection faints not like a pale-fac’d coward, But then woos best when most his choice is froward.

When he did frown, O had she then gave over, Such nectar from his lips she had not suck’d. 572 Foul words and frowns must not repel a lover; What though the rose have prickles, yet ’tis pluck’d. Were beauty under twenty locks kept fast, Yet love breaks through, and picks them all at last.

For pity now she can no more detain him; 577 The poor fool prays her that he may depart: She is resolv’d no longer to restrain him, Bids him farewell, and look well to her heart, 580 The which by Cupid’s bow she doth protest, He carries thence encaged in his breast.

“Sweet boy,” she says, “this night I’ll waste in sorrow, For my sick heart commands mine eyes to watch. 584 Tell me, love’s master, shall we meet tomorrow Say, shall we? shall we? wilt thou make the match?” He tells her no, tomorrow he intends To hunt the boar with certain of his friends. 588

“The boar!” quoth she; whereat a sudden pale, Like lawn being spread upon the blushing rose, Usurps her cheek, she trembles at his tale, And on his neck her yoking arms she throws. 592 She sinketh down, still hanging by his neck, He on her belly falls, she on her back.

Now is she in the very lists of love, Her champion mounted for the hot encounter: 596 All is imaginary she doth prove, He will not manage her, although he mount her; That worse than Tantalus’ is her annoy, To clip Elysium and to lack her joy. 600

Even as poor birds, deceiv’d with painted grapes, Do surfeit by the eye and pine the maw: Even so she languisheth in her mishaps, As those poor birds that helpless berries saw. 604 The warm effects which she in him finds missing, She seeks to kindle with continual kissing.

But all in vain, good queen, it will not be, She hath assay’d as much as may be prov’d; 608 Her pleading hath deserv’d a greater fee; She’s love, she loves, and yet she is not lov’d. “Fie, fie,” he says, “you crush me; let me go; You have no reason to withhold me so.” 612

“Thou hadst been gone,” quoth she, “sweet boy, ere this, But that thou told’st me thou wouldst hunt the boar. Oh be advis’d; thou know’st not what it is, With javelin’s point a churlish swine to gore, 616 Whose tushes never sheath’d he whetteth still, Like to a mortal butcher, bent to kill.

“On his bow-back he hath a battle set Of bristly pikes, that ever threat his foes; 620 His eyes like glow-worms shine when he doth fret; His snout digs sepulchres where’er he goes; Being mov’d, he strikes whate’er is in his way, And whom he strikes his crooked tushes slay. 624

“His brawny sides, with hairy bristles armed, Are better proof than thy spear’s point can enter; His short thick neck cannot be easily harmed; Being ireful, on the lion he will venture: 628 The thorny brambles and embracing bushes, As fearful of him, part, through whom he rushes.

“Alas! he naught esteems that face of thine, To which love’s eyes pay tributary gazes; 632 Nor thy soft hands, sweet lips, and crystal eyne, Whose full perfection all the world amazes; But having thee at vantage, wondrous dread! Would root these beauties as he roots the mead.

“Oh let him keep his loathsome cabin still, 637 Beauty hath naught to do with such foul fiends: Come not within his danger by thy will; They that thrive well, take counsel of their friends. When thou didst name the boar, not to dissemble, I fear’d thy fortune, and my joints did tremble.

“Didst thou not mark my face, was it not white? Saw’st thou not signs of fear lurk in mine eye? 644 Grew I not faint, and fell I not downright? Within my bosom, whereon thou dost lie, My boding heart pants, beats, and takes no rest, But like an earthquake, shakes thee on my breast.

“For where love reigns, disturbing jealousy 649 Doth call himself affection’s sentinel; Gives false alarms, suggesteth mutiny, And in a peaceful hour doth cry “Kill, kill!” 652 Distemp’ring gentle love in his desire, As air and water do abate the fire.

“This sour informer, this bate-breeding spy, This canker that eats up love’s tender spring, 656 This carry-tale, dissentious jealousy, That sometime true news, sometime false doth bring, Knocks at my heart, and whispers in mine ear, That if I love thee, I thy death should fear. 660

“And more than so, presenteth to mine eye The picture of an angry chafing boar, Under whose sharp fangs on his back doth lie An image like thyself, all stain’d with gore; 664 Whose blood upon the fresh flowers being shed, Doth make them droop with grief and hang the head.

“What should I do, seeing thee so indeed, That tremble at th’imagination? 668 The thought of it doth make my faint heart bleed, And fear doth teach it divination: I prophesy thy death, my living sorrow, If thou encounter with the boar tomorrow. 672

“But if thou needs wilt hunt, be rul’d by me; Uncouple at the timorous flying hare, Or at the fox which lives by subtilty, Or at the roe which no encounter dare: 676 Pursue these fearful creatures o’er the downs, And on thy well-breath’d horse keep with thy hounds.

“And when thou hast on foot the purblind hare, Mark the poor wretch, to overshoot his troubles 680 How he outruns the wind, and with what care He cranks and crosses with a thousand doubles: The many musits through the which he goes Are like a labyrinth to amaze his foes. 684

“Sometime he runs among a flock of sheep, To make the cunning hounds mistake their smell, And sometime where earth-delving conies keep, To stop the loud pursuers in their yell, 688 And sometime sorteth with a herd of deer; Danger deviseth shifts, wit waits on fear.

“For there his smell with others being mingled, 691 The hot scent-snuffing hounds are driven to doubt, Ceasing their clamorous cry, till they have singled With much ado the cold fault cleanly out; Then do they spend their mouths: echo replies, As if another chase were in the skies. 696

“By this, poor Wat, far off upon a hill, Stands on his hinder legs with list’ning ear, To hearken if his foes pursue him still. Anon their loud alarums he doth hear; 700 And now his grief may be compared well To one sore sick that hears the passing bell.

“Then shalt thou see the dew-bedabbled wretch Turn, and return, indenting with the way, 704 Each envious briar his weary legs do scratch, Each shadow makes him stop, each murmur stay: For misery is trodden on by many, And being low never reliev’d by any. 708

“Lie quietly, and hear a little more; Nay, do not struggle, for thou shalt not rise: To make thee hate the hunting of the boar, Unlike myself thou hear’st me moralize, 712 Applying this to that, and so to so, For love can comment upon every woe.

“Where did I leave?” “No matter where,” quoth he “Leave me, and then the story aptly ends: 716 The night is spent.” “Why, what of that?” quoth she. “I am,” quoth he, “expected of my friends; And now ’tis dark, and going I shall fall.” “In night,” quoth she, “desire sees best of all.” 720

But if thou fall, oh then imagine this, The earth, in love with thee, thy footing trips, And all is but to rob thee of a kiss. 723 Rich preys make true men thieves; so do thy lips Make modest Dian cloudy and forlorn, Lest she should steal a kiss and die forsworn.

“Now of this dark night I perceive the reason: Cynthia for shame obscures her silver shine 728 Till forging nature be condemn’d of treason, For stealing moulds from heaven, that were divine; Wherein she fram’d thee, in high heaven’s despite, To shame the sun by day and her by night. 732

“And therefore hath she brib’d the destinies, To cross the curious workmanship of nature, To mingle beauty with infirmities, And pure perfection with impure defeature, 736 Making it subject to the tyranny Of mad mischances and much misery.

“As burning fevers, agues pale and faint, Life-poisoning pestilence and frenzies wood, 740 The marrow-eating sickness, whose attaint Disorder breeds by heating of the blood; Surfeits, imposthumes, grief, and damn’d despair, Swear nature’s death, for framing thee so fair. 744

“And not the least of all these maladies But in one minute’s fight brings beauty under: Both favour, savour, hue and qualities, Whereat th’impartial gazer late did wonder, 748 Are on the sudden wasted, thaw’d and done, As mountain snow melts with the midday sun.

“Therefore despite of fruitless chastity, Love-lacking vestals and self-loving nuns, 752 That on the earth would breed a scarcity And barren dearth of daughters and of sons, Be prodigal: the lamp that burns by night Dries up his oil to lend the world his light. 756

“What is thy body but a swallowing grave, Seeming to bury that posterity, Which by the rights of time thou needs must have, If thou destroy them not in dark obscurity? 760 If so, the world will hold thee in disdain, Sith in thy pride so fair a hope is slain.

“So in thyself thyself art made away; A mischief worse than civil home-bred strife, 764 Or theirs whose desperate hands themselves do slay, Or butcher sire that reeves his son of life. Foul cank’ring rust the hidden treasure frets, But gold that’s put to use more gold begets.” 768

“Nay then,” quoth Adon, “you will fall again Into your idle over-handled theme; The kiss I gave you is bestow’d in vain, And all in vain you strive against the stream; 772 For by this black-fac’d night, desire’s foul nurse, Your treatise makes me like you worse and worse.

“If love have lent you twenty thousand tongues, And every tongue more moving than your own, 776 Bewitching like the wanton mermaid’s songs, Yet from mine ear the tempting tune is blown; For know, my heart stands armed in mine ear, And will not let a false sound enter there. 780

“Lest the deceiving harmony should run Into the quiet closure of my breast, And then my little heart were quite undone, In his bedchamber to be barr’d of rest. 784 No, lady, no; my heart longs not to groan, But soundly sleeps, while now it sleeps alone.

“What have you urg’d that I cannot reprove? The path is smooth that leadeth on to danger; 790 I hate not love, but your device in love That lends embracements unto every stranger. You do it for increase: O strange excuse! When reason is the bawd to lust’s abuse. 792

“Call it not, love, for love to heaven is fled, Since sweating lust on earth usurp’d his name; Under whose simple semblance he hath fed Upon fresh beauty, blotting it with blame; 796 Which the hot tyrant stains and soon bereaves, As caterpillars do the tender leaves.

“Love comforteth like sunshine after rain, But lust’s effect is tempest after sun; 800 Love’s gentle spring doth always fresh remain, Lust’s winter comes ere summer half be done. Love surfeits not, lust like a glutton dies; Love is all truth, lust full of forged lies. 804

“More I could tell, but more I dare not say; The text is old, the orator too green. Therefore, in sadness, now I will away; My face is full of shame, my heart of teen, 808 Mine ears, that to your wanton talk attended Do burn themselves for having so offended.”

With this he breaketh from the sweet embrace 811 Of those fair arms which bound him to her breast, And homeward through the dark laund runs apace; Leaves love upon her back deeply distress’d. Look how a bright star shooteth from the sky, So glides he in the night from Venus’ eye. 816

Which after him she darts, as one on shore Gazing upon a late embarked friend, Till the wild waves will have him seen no more, Whose ridges with the meeting clouds contend: 820 So did the merciless and pitchy night Fold in the object that did feed her sight.

Whereat amaz’d, as one that unaware Hath dropp’d a precious jewel in the flood, 824 Or ’stonish’d as night-wanderers often are, Their light blown out in some mistrustful wood; Even so confounded in the dark she lay, Having lost the fair discovery of her way. 828

And now she beats her heart, whereat it groans, That all the neighbour caves, as seeming troubled, Make verbal repetition of her moans; Passion on passion deeply is redoubled: 832 “Ay me!” she cries, and twenty times, “Woe, woe!” And twenty echoes twenty times cry so.

She marking them, begins a wailing note, And sings extemporally a woeful ditty; 836 How love makes young men thrall, and old men dote, How love is wise in folly foolish witty: Her heavy anthem still concludes in woe, And still the choir of echoes answer so. 840

Her song was tedious, and outwore the night, For lovers’ hours are long, though seeming short, If pleas’d themselves, others they think, delight In such like circumstance, with such like sport: 844 Their copious stories oftentimes begun, End without audience, and are never done.

For who hath she to spend the night withal, But idle sounds resembling parasites; 848 Like shrill-tongu’d tapsters answering every call, Soothing the humour of fantastic wits? She says, “’Tis so:” they answer all, “’Tis so;” And would say after her, if she said “No.” 852

Lo here the gentle lark, weary of rest, From his moist cabinet mounts up on high, And wakes the morning, from whose silver breast The sun ariseth in his majesty; 856 Who doth the world so gloriously behold, That cedar tops and hills seem burnish’d gold.

Venus salutes him with this fair good morrow: “Oh thou clear god, and patron of all light, 860 From whom each lamp and shining star doth borrow The beauteous influence that makes him bright, There lives a son that suck’d an earthly mother, May lend thee light, as thou dost lend to other.”

This said, she hasteth to a myrtle grove, 865 Musing the morning is so much o’erworn, And yet she hears no tidings of her love; She hearkens for his hounds and for his horn. 868 Anon she hears them chant it lustily, And all in haste she coasteth to the cry.

And as she runs, the bushes in the way Some catch her by the neck, some kiss her face, 872 Some twine about her thigh to make her stay: She wildly breaketh from their strict embrace, Like a milch doe, whose swelling dugs do ache, Hasting to feed her fawn hid in some brake. 876

By this she hears the hounds are at a bay, Whereat she starts like one that spies an adder Wreath’d up in fatal folds just in his way, The fear whereof doth make him shake and shudder; 880 Even so the timorous yelping of the hounds Appals her senses, and her spirit confounds.

For now she knows it is no gentle chase, But the blunt boar, rough bear, or lion proud, 884 Because the cry remaineth in one place, Where fearfully the dogs exclaim aloud, Finding their enemy to be so curst, They all strain court’sy who shall cope him first. 888

This dismal cry rings sadly in her ear, Through which it enters to surprise her heart; Who overcome by doubt and bloodless fear, With cold-pale weakness numbs each feeling part; 892 Like soldiers when their captain once doth yield, They basely fly and dare not stay the field.

Thus stands she in a trembling ecstasy, Till cheering up her senses sore dismay’d, 896 She tells them ’tis a causeless fantasy, And childish error, that they are afraid; Bids them leave quaking, bids them fear no more: And with that word, she spied the hunted boar. 900

Whose frothy mouth bepainted all with red, Like milk and blood being mingled both together, A second fear through all her sinews spread, Which madly hurries her she knows not whither: 904 This way she runs, and now she will no further, But back retires, to rate the boar for murther.

A thousand spleens bear her a thousand ways, She treads the path that she untreads again; 908 Her more than haste is mated with delays, Like the proceedings of a drunken brain, Full of respects, yet naught at all respecting, In hand with all things, naught at all effecting.

Here kennel’d in a brake she finds a hound, 913 And asks the weary caitiff for his master, And there another licking of his wound, ’Gainst venom’d sores the only sovereign plaster. 916 And here she meets another sadly scowling, To whom she speaks, and he replies with howling.

When he hath ceas’d his ill-resounding noise, Another flap-mouth’d mourner, black and grim, 920 Against the welkin volleys out his voice; Another and another answer him, Clapping their proud tails to the ground below, Shaking their scratch’d ears, bleeding as they go.

Look how the world’s poor people are amazed 925 At apparitions, signs, and prodigies, Whereon with fearful eyes they long have gazed, Infusing them with dreadful prophecies; 928 So she at these sad sighs draws up her breath, And sighing it again, exclaims on death.

“Hard-favour’d tyrant, ugly, meagre, lean, 931 Hateful divorce of love,” thus chides she death, “Grim-grinning ghost, earth’s worm, what dost thou mean? To stifle beauty and to steal his breath, Who when he liv’d, his breath and beauty set Gloss on the rose, smell to the violet. 936

“If he be dead, O no, it cannot be, Seeing his beauty, thou shouldst strike at it, O yes, it may, thou hast no eyes to see, But hatefully at random dost thou hit. 940 Thy mark is feeble age, but thy false dart Mistakes that aim, and cleaves an infant’s heart.

“Hadst thou but bid beware, then he had spoke, And hearing him, thy power had lost his power. 944 The destinies will curse thee for this stroke; They bid thee crop a weed, thou pluck’st a flower. Love’s golden arrow at him should have fled, And not death’s ebon dart to strike him dead. 948

“Dost thou drink tears, that thou provok’st such weeping? What may a heavy groan advantage thee? Why hast thou cast into eternal sleeping Those eyes that taught all other eyes to see? 952 Now nature cares not for thy mortal vigour, Since her best work is ruin’d with thy rigour.”

Here overcome, as one full of despair, She vail’d her eyelids, who like sluices stopp’d 956 The crystal tide that from her two cheeks fair In the sweet channel of her bosom dropp’d But through the flood-gates breaks the silver rain, And with his strong course opens them again. 960

O how her eyes and tears did lend and borrow; Her eyes seen in the tears, tears in her eye; Both crystals, where they view’d each other’s sorrow, Sorrow that friendly sighs sought still to dry; 964 But like a stormy day, now wind, now rain, Sighs dry her cheeks, tears make them wet again.

Variable passions throng her constant woe, As striving who should best become her grief; 968 All entertain’d, each passion labours so, That every present sorrow seemeth chief, But none is best, then join they all together, Like many clouds consulting for foul weather. 972

By this, far off she hears some huntsman holla; A nurse’s song ne’er pleas’d her babe so well: The dire imagination she did follow This sound of hope doth labour to expel; 976 For now reviving joy bids her rejoice, And flatters her it is Adonis’ voice.

Whereat her tears began to turn their tide, Being prison’d in her eye, like pearls in glass; 980 Yet sometimes falls an orient drop beside, Which her cheek melts, as scorning it should pass To wash the foul face of the sluttish ground, Who is but drunken when she seemeth drown’d.

O hard-believing love, how strange it seems 985 Not to believe, and yet too credulous; Thy weal and woe are both of them extremes; Despair and hope make thee ridiculous, 988 The one doth flatter thee in thoughts unlikely, In likely thoughts the other kills thee quickly.

Now she unweaves the web that she hath wrought, Adonis lives, and death is not to blame; 992 It was not she that call’d him all to naught; Now she adds honours to his hateful name. She clepes him king of graves, and grave for kings, Imperious supreme of all mortal things. 996

“No, no,” quoth she, “sweet death, I did but jest; Yet pardon me, I felt a kind of fear Whenas I met the boar, that bloody beast, Which knows no pity, but is still severe; 1000 Then, gentle shadow,—truth I must confess— I rail’d on thee, fearing my love’s decease.

“’Tis not my fault, the boar provok’d my tongue; Be wreak’d on him, invisible commander; 1004 ’Tis he, foul creature, that hath done thee wrong; I did but act, he’s author of my slander. Grief hath two tongues, and never woman yet, Could rule them both, without ten women’s wit.”

Thus hoping that Adonis is alive, 1009 Her rash suspect she doth extenuate; And that his beauty may the better thrive, With death she humbly doth insinuate; 1012 Tells him of trophies, statues, tombs and stories His victories, his triumphs and his glories.

“O love!” quoth she, “how much a fool was I, To be of such a weak and silly mind, 1016 To wail his death who lives, and must not die Till mutual overthrow of mortal kind; For he being dead, with him is beauty slain, And beauty dead, black Chaos comes again. 1020

“Fie, fie, fond love, thou art as full of fear As one with treasure laden, hemm’d with thieves, Trifles unwitnessed with eye or ear, Thy coward heart with false bethinking grieves.” 1024 Even at this word she hears a merry horn, Whereat she leaps that was but late forlorn.

As falcon to the lure, away she flies; The grass stoops not, she treads on it so light, 1028 And in her haste unfortunately spies The foul boar’s conquest on her fair delight; Which seen, her eyes, as murder’d with the view, Like stars asham’d of day, themselves withdrew.

Or as the snail, whose tender horns being hit, 1033 Shrinks backwards in his shelly cave with pain, And there all smother’d up, in shade doth sit, Long after fearing to creep forth again: 1036 So at his bloody view her eyes are fled Into the deep dark cabins of her head.

Where they resign their office and their light To the disposing of her troubled brain, 1040 Who bids them still consort with ugly night, And never wound the heart with looks again; Who like a king perplexed in his throne, By their suggestion gives a deadly groan. 1044

Whereat each tributary subject quakes, As when the wind imprison’d in the ground, Struggling for passage, earth’s foundation shakes, Which with cold terror doth men’s minds confound. This mutiny each part doth so surprise 1049 That from their dark beds once more leap her eyes.

And being open’d, threw unwilling light Upon the wide wound that the boar had trench’d In his soft flank, whose wonted lily white 1053 With purple tears that his wound wept, was drench’d. No flower was nigh, no grass, herb, leaf or weed, But stole his blood and seem’d with him to bleed.

This solemn sympathy poor Venus noteth, 1057 Over one shoulder doth she hang her head, Dumbly she passions, franticly she doteth; She thinks he could not die, he is not dead: 1060 Her voice is stopp’d, her joints forget to bow, Her eyes are mad, that they have wept till now.

Upon his hurt she looks so steadfastly, That her sight dazzling makes the wound seem three; And then she reprehends her mangling eye, 1065 That makes more gashes, where no breach should be: His face seems twain, each several limb is doubled, For oft the eye mistakes, the brain being troubled.

“My tongue cannot express my grief for one, 1069 And yet,” quoth she, “behold two Adons dead! My sighs are blown away, my salt tears gone, Mine eyes are turn’d to fire, my heart to lead: 1072 Heavy heart’s lead, melt at mine eyes’ red fire! So shall I die by drops of hot desire.

“Alas poor world, what treasure hast thou lost! What face remains alive that’s worth the viewing? Whose tongue is music now? what canst thou boast Of things long since, or anything ensuing? 1078 The flowers are sweet, their colours fresh and trim, But true sweet beauty liv’d and died with him.

“Bonnet nor veil henceforth no creature wear! 1081 Nor sun nor wind will ever strive to kiss you: Having no fair to lose, you need not fear; The sun doth scorn you, and the wind doth hiss you. But when Adonis liv’d, sun and sharp air 1085 Lurk’d like two thieves, to rob him of his fair.

“And therefore would he put his bonnet on, Under whose brim the gaudy sun would peep; 1088 The wind would blow it off, and being gone, Play with his locks; then would Adonis weep; And straight, in pity of his tender years, They both would strive who first should dry his tears.

“To see his face the lion walk’d along 1093 Behind some hedge, because he would not fear him; To recreate himself when he hath sung, The tiger would be tame and gently hear him. 1096 If he had spoke, the wolf would leave his prey, And never fright the silly lamb that day.

“When he beheld his shadow in the brook, The fishes spread on it their golden gills; 1100 When he was by, the birds such pleasure took, That some would sing, some other in their bills Would bring him mulberries and ripe-red cherries, He fed them with his sight, they him with berries.

“But this foul, grim, and urchin-snouted boar, 1105 Whose downward eye still looketh for a grave, Ne’er saw the beauteous livery that he wore; Witness the entertainment that he gave. 1108 If he did see his face, why then I know He thought to kiss him, and hath kill’d him so.

“’Tis true, ’tis true; thus was Adonis slain: He ran upon the boar with his sharp spear, 1112 Who did not whet his teeth at him again, But by a kiss thought to persuade him there; And nuzzling in his flank, the loving swine Sheath’d unaware the tusk in his soft groin. 1116

“Had I been tooth’d like him, I must confess, With kissing him I should have kill’d him first; But he is dead, and never did he bless My youth with his; the more am I accurst.” 1120 With this she falleth in the place she stood, And stains her face with his congealed blood.

She looks upon his lips, and they are pale; She takes him by the hand, and that is cold, 1124 She whispers in his ears a heavy tale, As if they heard the woeful words she told; She lifts the coffer-lids that close his eyes, Where lo, two lamps burnt out in darkness lies.

Two glasses where herself herself beheld 1129 A thousand times, and now no more reflect; Their virtue lost, wherein they late excell’d, And every beauty robb’d of his effect. 1132 “Wonder of time,” quoth she, “this is my spite, That thou being dead, the day should yet be light.

“Since thou art dead, lo here I prophesy, Sorrow on love hereafter shall attend: 1136 It shall be waited on with jealousy, Find sweet beginning, but unsavoury end; Ne’er settled equally, but high or low, That all love’s pleasure shall not match his woe.

“It shall be fickle, false and full of fraud, 1141 Bud, and be blasted in a breathing while; The bottom poison, and the top o’erstraw’d With sweets that shall the truest sight beguile. 1144 The strongest body shall it make most weak, Strike the wise dumb, and teach the fool to speak.

“It shall be sparing, and too full of riot, Teaching decrepit age to tread the measures; 1148 The staring ruffian shall it keep in quiet, Pluck down the rich, enrich the poor with treasures; It shall be raging mad, and silly mild, Make the young old, the old become a child. 1152

“It shall suspect where is no cause of fear, It shall not fear where it should most mistrust; It shall be merciful, and too severe, And most deceiving when it seems most just; 1156 Perverse it shall be, where it shows most toward, Put fear to valour, courage to the coward.

“It shall be cause of war and dire events, And set dissension ’twixt the son and sire; 1160 Subject and servile to all discontents, As dry combustious matter is to fire, Sith in his prime death doth my love destroy, They that love best their love shall not enjoy.” 1164

By this the boy that by her side lay kill’d Was melted like a vapour from her sight, And in his blood that on the ground lay spill’d, A purple flower sprung up, chequer’d with white, 1168 Resembling well his pale cheeks, and the blood Which in round drops upon their whiteness stood.

She bows her head, the new-sprung flower to smell, Comparing it to her Adonis’ breath; 1172 And says within her bosom it shall dwell, Since he himself is reft from her by death; She drops the stalk, and in the breach appears Green-dropping sap, which she compares to tears.

“Poor flower,” quoth she, “this was thy father’s guise, Sweet issue of a more sweet-smelling sire, For every little grief to wet his eyes, To grow unto himself was his desire, 1180 And so ’tis thine; but know, it is as good To wither in my breast as in his blood.

“Here was thy father’s bed, here in my breast; Thou art the next of blood, and ’tis thy right: 1184 Lo in this hollow cradle take thy rest, My throbbing heart shall rock thee day and night: There shall not be one minute in an hour Wherein I will not kiss my sweet love’s flower.”

Thus weary of the world, away she hies, 1189 And yokes her silver doves; by whose swift aid Their mistress mounted through the empty skies, In her light chariot quickly is convey’d; 1192 Holding their course to Paphos, where their queen Means to immure herself and not be seen.

FINIS *** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE COMPLETE WORKS OF WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE ***